Tasmania Day 0

Aiight, so now it's midsemester break and the Wednesday before the Friday of my flight it came to my attention that I'd no longer be traveling with Kevin, since he wants to go to the mainland for a bunch of the week, and I don't really want to. Frantically I went onto workaway and couch surfing and set up an epic week. The rest goes from here.

Day 0: traveling [Friday]

So, after pulling the majority of an all nighter on Thursday night (mostly occupied by timtam slams and ridiculous banter, as well as practice neuroscience presentations and breakdowns of how-many-words-must-i-write-an-hour-to-finish-this?) I rapidly packed and walked the treacherous 3 blocks to the Bella Vista motel, the pickup spot for our bus to Christchurch. Armed with a mere 45 minutes of sleep and a far-too-ripe banana, the half hour late bus began to rock me to sleep. I passed out near instantly and was only surprised to be woken up in a town called Oamaru. There I got a scone and wandered around the weirdest specialty food mart. International would be the easiest way to describe it, but man was it weird.

A few hours later we were finally in Christchurch, with 5 hours to burn before the flight to Melbourne. Tom, my chem lab partner extraordinaire, and more relevantly, Christchurch resident, came to scoop and show me the city, or at least what remains of the city post earthquake. our journey started with lunch at a New York deli. cheeky.  Tis always funny to see how people interpret America.

Then, after a tour of the city, mostly consisting of, "that used to be a movie theatre... there used to be a massive factory over there... that building was twice as tall... all these houses are about to fall, and this barrier is to block that from hitting cars..." we went to the beach. It was quite lovely and soft serve vanilla with sprinkles and a flake only topped off the great day. We also ventured up to a look out and then headed to our final destination, a Mackers parking lot.

On our way we spotted a man casually traveling along the road on his penny farthing. amazing. Once we were done chatting and wiping the condensation off of the windows, I went to the airport. Check in was a breeze, once I was done trying to use the wrong machine, and before I knew it I was enjoying a nice chicken pie of sorts and salad for dinner. The plane took off, and I passed out. From window, to palm, to tray table, the 3:45 passed rather quickly and I landed in Melbourne. The thought of going out crossed my mind, with the 10:30pm -> 6am layover, but once we were done showing that we brought nothing illegal into the country, sleep sounded like a better option. When we decided that $115 for a motel room for 5 hours was too much and it became clear to us that benches were free, we set up camp in the airport and slept in basically 45 minute intervals, with rude awakenings disguised as announcements waking us up. No airport workers thought twice about our moving in, so all was well, but if i can help it, I will never ever ever sleep in an airport ever again. Come sunrise the flight was off to Hobart. We were told to turn off all our "electronicals" before boarding. Twas a short, sleep filled flight, dropping me off in Hobart at 7:25am, ready for Day 1.