Bondi

We had our team off site at Bondi yesterday and I took this video of the beach from the place we were at. Afterwards we went lawn bowling (basically bocci ball) and had dinner and went out for drinks. One thing is for sure, Australians definitely party harder than Americans. At least, when they go out for drinks with co-workers. We had drinks while lawn bowling, drinks at dinner (a few bottles of wine), and then went out to a pub afterward for, you guessed it, more drinks. In the U.S., particularly with coworkers, I feel like there was an unspoken 2 drink limit. Here, it's more like there is a two drink minimum.

My team is super fun and really friendly. I like them a lot and they immediately made me feel at home. There is another American on the team, Maureen, and she's already been helping me out, giving me advice, looking out for me and generally being like an unofficial big sister, which is great. Strangely enough, she is the childhood best friend of the older sister of Dan, a guy I met in San Francisco. They all grew up in New York and knew each other there, then she moved to Texas, then Chicago, then came out here. He had come out to San Francisco to get his MBA at Stanford, and I randomly met him at a bar. When I told him that I was moving to Sydney, he told me I had to look Maureen up and say hi, to which I responded in shock that I had already met her (over video conference) since she was one of the people on my team. Definitely a 'small world' kinda connection. Sadly she is going back to the U.S. for about 5 weeks for a few friends weddings, so I'll have to figure out these first few weeks without her, but it is nice to have someone who knows where you're coming from and what you're going through when you get out here.

Incidentally Dan is also the source of many random coincidences in my life. Specifically, I had just finished reading the book 'My Horizontal Life: A collection of one night stands' by Chelsea Handler (highly recommended, btw, It's really funny), and I was reading the acknowledgements and I saw Dan's best friends' name listed. Turns out his best friend is really good friends with Chelsea Handler (from the TV show 'Chelsea Lately') which he only discovered after I introduced him to the show. Isn't it ironic? Don't ya think? This also serves as the first time I've ever (sort of) known ANYONE in the acknowledgements section of a book. It's even cooler to me cause it wasn't like I knew it in advance and went looking for it. I happened to just stumble across it.

In other news, Pat got an offer today from a Sydney rugby team. He is still going to come out and try out for other teams out here, but it looks like it is pretty much a sure thing that he will be moving out here in the next few months as well. It's nice to have that to look forward to as well. Plus I'm pretty much guaranteed to get hooked up with lots of free tickets to rugby games. So I'm definitely excited about seeing Pat...but more about free rugby tickets.

It's strange cause realistically, I've only been here for like 3 days, so everything still feels very surreal and I'm not sure I've totally absorbed that this is my new life. I'm still missing everyone a ton and getting sad, but then I realize I have only been here a few days and once more time passes and I get better adjusted, that will likely fade more and more.

Oh yeah, and I FINALLY got a working cell phone. You guys can call me at 011 61 466 772 964.