After an 11 hour bus ride, a six hour plane ride to Los Angeles, and a 15 hour plane ride to Sydney, we arrived in Australia yesterday at 8:45 AM. This was 4:45 PM on Tuesday Knoxville time. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that Tim and the boys are back a day compared to where I am. I just finished lunch, and they just finished dinner and are preparing for bedtime.
By far the worst part of the travel was my bus ride from Knoxville to Washington DC. It never crossed my mind that it was Thanksgiving weekend when I booked my ticket, so the bus was packed! What should have been a nine hour trip took 11 hours. Boy, was I glad to reach the Lindsay’s house!
I was nervous about the long flight to Sydney. We lucked up and had an empty seat between us, so we could take turns stretching out. In the end, we both got some sleep and arrived feeling pretty rested.
We found the train station in the airport and bought tickets to take us to Stanwell Park, the station nearest the retreat center. However, wedon’t check into there until tomorrow, so we had to navigate the trains to end up at our hotel. After a few hours of learning to rail system, we did end up near ourhotel, deposited our bags, and went to the ocean, located just a few blocks away. It was absolutely stunning and a beautiful, sunny day. We are staying in Wollongong, which is a city of 290,000. It has a very relaxed vibe.
After a cold swim, we went back to the hotel and took our showers before dinner. We ended up in the room by seven and tried to stay awake until nine. Jet lag got the best of us, and we fell asleep by 8 PM. We got a great night’s sleep and woke up in time to see the sunrise over the ocean.
Today, which is Thursday, we have enjoyed a couple of local cafés for meals and some shopping time before we head to the retreat center tonight. It is the beginning of summer here, so it is very warm and the weather is perfect. Tomorrow we will work with the work crew and Ransomed Heart staff to set up for the retreat, and attendees will begin to arrive in the afternoon.
It’s still surreal that I’m sitting here in Australia typing this when it wasn’t even on my radar two months ago!!! What a gift!
