Evie gave me lift to the Cairns airport as said before. I had to wait a little until I could check-in and used the time to use some of my remaining cap+ credit that was about to expire by calling family at home.
The flight from Cairns to Melbourne was easy and boring, about 3.5 hours. I killed some time by watching series on my laptop. Landed in Melbourne I got my backpack unharmed and left the airport. I gave my friend Andrew a ring that I’m ready to be picked up – when he drove just past me. Perfect timing! Bags in the trunk, me in the front. It was great to see him again!
Andrew is my former exchange student who has become a good friend of mine over the years. His family has kinda become my family too. Everybody has been in Germany (again) after I had visited them the last time in 2007.
Andrew’s car was out of petrol, unfortunately the petrol station at the airport was closed. He decided to give it a try and began the way home. The fuel gauge was way below zero and the car was still going. Luckily we made it home without problems 🙂
Everybody else was already asleep. No surprise considering it was around 1 am. I unpacked quickly and went to bed, too.
When I got up the next morning around 9 am, nobody was home except for Andrew and me, and it stayed that way all day. We had breakfast and then I finally played the piano again. So good! I could still play all my songs, 10-11 weeks without playing weren’t as bad as I had feared.
Later we started doing laundry and in the afternoon Andrew had to go to work for about 3 hours. I played some more piano, but most of the remaining time that day I spent with my phone. It had become buggier and slower every day, so at the Cairns library already I had started to flash a new firmware on it and give it a fresh start. In the end it took me almost 2 days to get it up and running smoothly, but now I am very happy with it. See this blogpost for details.
In the late afternoon my host parents finally came home and I got to see them again after about 15 months. So nice! Later we had dinner and afterwards we watched my skydive video 🙂 sometime later that evening my host sister Erin finally came home. I was really happy to see her again after about 10 months. Now we’re all reunited, only Samira is missing (Erin’s former exchange student, who had stayed here for half a year after Erin was in Germany for about 9 months or so).
We spent the evening watching the footie (AFL) – no more crappy rugby as it’s shown in NSW and QLD, but the real Australian Football League which is most famous here in Victoria (VIC).
It’s great to be here again. It’s a whole different world from my backpacker life the 2.5 months before. I now have my own room, a family to live with and friends living around. For the next days and weeks I will be catching up with friends and looking for a job. I will also spent a day at University with different people to get a feeling how that is like.
Whenever I do something interesting I will blog about it, so stay tuned!
Melbourne is awesome, and I will have a great time here, I’m sure of it. MELBOURNE!!!