May 6 - May 8

Travel days!  Well, I flew from the following route: Cincinnati, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Brisbane, Roma.  It took about 31 hours, and I completely missed Saturday.  L  Nice flights all together, but I’d pass on Los Angeles International Airport any day.  What a mess.  I spent about 6 hours in the Brisbane Airport, and just so future travelers know, the international and domestic terminals are separated by a 10 minute bus ride.  There were some very unhappy people in line with me that missed their flights.  The flight to Roma is in a tiny plane with propellers, two seats either side of the aisle.  Queensland is beautiful from the air.  Lots of rolling hills and some nice lakes around Brisbane from the looks of it.  I can’t wait to get back and actually have some time to look around.  Tiffany (I may have talked about before.  I met her in my first 2 classes in Abu Dhabi, and she was in a cased hole school the same time I was in my open hole school in Abu Dhabi.  She was born in Hong Kong, and raised for most of her life in Maryland.  Very, very nice girl.), picked me up at the airport with Tom, the electrical and instrumentation guy in Roma.  And what did I do right away??  I went to work.  Oh well, at least I’m getting used to it right away.  Spent a couple hours there, and then headed out to dinner with some co-workers.  There is ONE main street in Roma.  Okay, maybe there are two, but let me tell you, it’s a small place.  Two supermarkets (I’d really only call one a real supermarket), at last count 3 bottle shops (liquor and beer, hooray!), a McDonalds, a KFC, a mini-Target, at least 2 churches, a hospital, an airport, and a lots of cows/emus/kangaroos.  Thus far, I have only seen the cows, but hopefully I’ll meet up with a kangaroo soon.  Small town living this is.  The house I’m living in is pretty nice – brand new.  I live with Tiffany and Tamara, a ‘pre-school’ Russian girl.  She leaves for school in June sometimes, and she gets to go to Tyumen, Russia.  Jealous!  I have a room to myself, and share a bathroom again.  I crashed pretty hard after such a long journey.  Home sweet bed.  J