So the adventure begins

Well we all made it down here in one piece. After meeting up with the entire family at LAX Thursday night we proceeded with our typical alcohol fueled "what have you been up to" conversations before boarding the plane. Of course there was some slip up with Qantas and in lieu of our party of 9 being seated in close proximity we were scattered through out the 747. I had the distinct pleasure of being seated next two two children who relished annoying each other (and myself) at every possible opportunity. No matter, three cocktails and an Ambien was all I needed to tune them out for the remaining 15 hours. I have to admit it was fairly cute when I woke up half way through the trip to find the 7 year old boy out cold, curled against me. He looked so peaceful sleeping that it almost pained me to hit the rug rat over the head and shoved him over to his sister. All kidding aside the flight was surprisingly pleasant and we were on the ground in Melbourne before I knew it....minus a fairly horrifying landing (plane swerved all over the wet runway)

The family scattered a bit since it took so long for us all to get off the plane thus some reached immigration before others. Jacob was the last one through and for what ever reason he decided to tell the authorities that he was traveling alone in Australia for the next 7 days. This apparently raised a red flag and unbeknownst to him they marked his card as a possible security threat. Much to my luck Jake and I walked through customs together where I was immediately branded suspicious by association. We were pulled to the side and the gentleman, while very polite, informed us that because we had been flagged we were subject to complete inspection of our luggage and a lengthy interrogation process. I thought about cracking jokes about packing Asian sex slaves but that probably wouldn't have helped the matter. YAY INTERROGATION!! My sister at this point is walking through customs and when our officer noticed that we were making too much eye contact he nabbed her as well and had her join our little convict party. This all really was more or less a light hearted situation and after conversing with 3 of his superiors they deemed us an unlikely terrorist trio and sent us on our merry way. Fools, they'll let anyone in this country ;)

We arrived at our hotel (The Langham) with mouths agape. This place is ridiculously ostentatious. Of course we collectively looked like the rag tag Americans typified in movies like The National Lampoon's European Vacation. Once checked in, cleaned up and very jet lagged we hopped on our private tour of the city with our guides Bruce and Katie. They were extremely knowledgeable and fantastic guides. We spent the next 4 hours zipping all over Melbourne and I have to admit, I'm thoroughly impressed. It reminds me of a larger, cleaner San Francisco and I'd consider moving here at the drop of a hat. The picture above is the view of their city center from my hotel room. That picture doesn't do the city justice so I'll be sure to send more soon. Oh, I should mention that we officially saw our first bushman while on the tour. Bruce and Katie took us to this fantastic coffee/tea house for afternoon tea and as we were leaving I look over to see some kid in his mid twenties squatting down to inspect the under carriage of his car. He should have spent more time inspecting his own under carriage as his lack of belt coupled with gravity had a southerly pull on his pants. This all in full, hairy view of my family who spent the next 30 minutes cracking up through a jet lagged, caffeine induced haze. Hence, our first bushman of the trip.

The tour was followed up by a fantastic dinner at this Italian restaurant on the renowned Lygon St. (reminds me of 6th St. in Austin but full of restaurants instead of bars). We all turned in fairly early to catch up on sleep and of course still moderately being on Pacific time I woke up well before sunrise and couldn't fall back asleep.

Today the plan is to get breakfast and then we're heading out of the city down the coast where we'll eventually end up at some island around 7pm be able to walk through a massive colony of wild penguins. I'm sure there will be many an interesting pictures of this to share ;)

I hope all is going well with everyone back home and I'll keep these posts coming!!