Bright spots

Today has actually sucked: my water's been turned off so I couldn't do all my smelly laundry from the trip, Australia Post jacked up their postcard prices on me, and a whole host of other things happened. However, there was a huge bright spot in my day... it's the sun! Yesterday rained but today it's bright and sunny.

Just kidding. I mean, it is sunny, but that wasn't the bright spot today. It came in my mailbox.

I absolutely love the mail and it sometimes going to the mailbox is my favorite part of my day. Today was special because it marked the first mail I received in Australia.*

Check out this sweet stamp? How much does one of these cost?

Outback

The Northern Territory, where I spent the past five days, covers a huge amount of land, much of which is dry, dusty, and sparsely populated – the Outback.

Did you know the outback has trees? 

To get there, you either drive a long, long, long time, or you take the one train that runs north to south through the middle of Australia along the telegraph route, which was the original reason Alice Springs got started as a town. It sits almost directly between Darwin at the Top End of Australia and Adelaide in the south (now is the time where you find Alice Springs on google earth and see that is in the middle of the country). The telegraph line went up through Indonesia and across Asia and the Middle East to Europe, cutting the time needed to send a message to or from London to about three days, compared with mailing a letter on a ship and waiting months for news.

An Outback Sneak Peek

Full report coming soon - I am planning to write it up on the plane back to Sydney. Thank you for the support you've shown: it's lovely to get emails saying, "Hey, I really missed your blog and I'm excited to read about the things you do," because it serves as motivation to write more. Even when my mother leaves me voicemails in the middle of the nights to the effect of, "I really encourage you to write about your trip!"

In the meantime, here is a photo of Kata Tjuta, where you can see the effect of the sun's movement on the color of the rocks. Click to enlarge.

Back in action

It’s been an inexcusably long time between posts. In fact, it’s been so long that my grandparents have emailed me to shame me into writing again. When my grandparents use the computer, they mean business.

I’m happy to report I’ve done too many thing in the past month for a full rundown. Here are some of the highlights:

Costumes and electric adventures

I think I missed the memo somewhere that 18th September is Halloween in Australia*. On my morning run I stumbled upon this:

The Weekend

It's officially Tuesday night, which means I have time to write about the weekend! It absolutely poured here which was been great for my productivity - I didn't left the house, or want to, at all. Today the sun came out again so I went out to run a few errands (read: get a smoothie. And then run some errands. Sample errand: buy tape)

The Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur, occurred on Friday night and Saturday, so I had a relatively low key weekend. I'd been introduced to some extended family friends who graciously hosted me for services on Saturday and the break fast that evening, and I ended up spending quite a bit of time with them over the weekend.

Yankees/Sox

In honor of the late season, Sunday night Yankees-Red Sox game I'm currently missing (since it's Monday morning and I'm working), I thought this would be a good time to reveal my cap count.