Has it really only been two days?

Hey everybody. It's Brian again, writing for the group. The jet lag is subsiding. Surprisingly, the beer might actually have helped. Maybe. For some reason, the three of us all woke up at 4am, separately, in different areas of the hotel. This makes sense, because after all, it was 1pm in NJ. Fortunately, we were able to go back to sleep.

For breakfast, we had food, and our first (and most definitely only) taste of vegemite. A month is not nearly long enough to acquire the taste for it, but it will probably be long enough to get the taste out of our mouths. (Me - Salty dog food. Brandon – Salt, then, eew? Jon – Looks like mud, only mud tastes better. Gina - I wouldn't eat this deep fried and covered with ice cream.)

The group parted ways for the first time today. Brian went to a chamber concert in Turramurra (Tarra-marra, despite the U's), while the others ate lunch at a classy establishment on Oxford Street called Bite-Me Burger before heading to the first host families. (They tell me the burgers were delicious.) Brandon even ate the pickles. Apparently that's a big deal.

We were reunited later in the afternoon, for some tea, which means dinner. Interestingly enough, no tea was actually served. We had lamb stew, and a sample from our host's expansive wine cellar. After dinner, we went to the Hillsong church.

Overall, we were completely blown away by the quality, and quantity, of what's being done there. We went to what we were told was a small service, of only a few thousand people, probably 75% of which were under 30, which is amazing. They really get it. The people are there because they genuinely want to be there, and it showed. The presentation was slick, but it was a means to an end, not the end in itself. A lot of “mega-churches” like that can get so caught up in the production that they forget that there's a reason for what they're doing. They didn't. The message was inspiring, and accessible, but not shallow. The music was passionate, but not forced, which unfortunately, is rarer than it should be. http://www2.hillsong.com/ for more information on what they do. Check out our video for a few seconds of what we saw.

For dessert, here's a short list of crazy things from the past two days that we've noticed. Telephone poles are octagonal, not round. There is nothing wrong with offering someone a beer at 7:30am. Sydney is hard to navigate, even for locals. The toasters lower your bread in automatically. You're more lost after asking for directions than before. Some grass looks like Astroturf, but isn't. Gina really, really hates spiders. Toilets don't actually swirl backwards, they just kind of, ssskkoosh straight down.

Time for bed. Good night.