Hello everyone! It feels good to finally be able to get on the internet, check my e-mail, and update this. We are having a wonderful time so far, just tired with the 15 hour time difference.
Our flight actually went very well. We left on Friday @6pm from Nashville and made it to LA without problems and then left LA @midnight Friday/Saturday am. The flight was actually really fun, if you could call it that. I sat next to a college student from DC who was going to visit her parents, who are working in Australia, for spring break. Qantas is one of the nicer airlines I've ever flown...they had individual blankets, pillows, toothbrushes, lanyards, and socks in every seat, plus guides on how to prevent DVT's. (For those of you who were worried @ that, I got up like 5 times or so to go to the bathroom since they brought us a drink about every hour. :)
After dinner, I was able to sleep for 6-7 hours and then watched the Queen and the Prestige on my own tv. Those are both wonderful movies if you haven't seen them! I slept some more, had breakfast, and then we were there!
The wonderful assistant director of the Monash Medical Centre picked us up in his VERY SMALL car with our LARGE AMOUNT of luggage! He asked us if we were planning on going bushwacking. We just told him girls pack a lot! We had a nice ride (@1.25 hrs.) to Clayton from the Melbourne Airport, where we talked about his favorite footballers (mix b/t rugby/american football), his family, pharmacy in Australia vs. the US, and many sorts of things. Once we arrived at our lodging (staff dorms), he offered to drop us off back in Melbourne to do sightseeing. We both declined so we could have showers and lunch.
After we got settled, we went and had a pizza lunch and braved grocery shopping and found ourselves some dinner. (For those of you who love Laughing Cow cheese, Amy and Betsy esp., they have 10x the flavors here! I was so excited).
After dinner, we were going to watch a movie, but both of us fell asleep at 7pm. I fell asleep, in my clothes, with all of the lights on...the jet lag finally caught up to me. I woke up around midnight, actually got ready for bed, and slept again until 7am. I actually felt pretty refreshed this am.
We arrived at the hospital pharmacy (about 5 min. walk from our lodging) at 9am, had orientation, got badges made, and started our day. I worked in the outpatient pharmacy today, which was very busy. I got about a 2 min. orientation and was told to go to work! :) LUCKILY, everything is stocked by its generic, because the brand names here are 99% totally different from the US, for you pharmacy people reading this. I could recognize the packaging, for ex. Lovenox is Clexane here, but looks just like the Lovenox back home. Most of the meds I have known, but there have been some strange ones.
Anyway, I'm going to leave the hospital, trying to find a calling card, and eat some dinner. We have a trip to Sydney planned for this weekend (actually Wed-next Tues) for an extended Easter holiday. We should have a wonderful time. Tomorrow, we start working on our projects.
Hope you are all doing well and thanking for reading! It feels nice to keep connected to everyone in the US.
Lesson 1 I have learned: Look LEFT before crossing the street!
Lesson 2 (this is silly, but for those of you who asked me to look): the toilet water does flush clockwise
Lesson 3: While grocery shopping, only buy what you can carry!
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2 comments:
Hey Leslie...glad to hear all is well. We are having fun in England. We are all very impressed with your blog and will be checking it to see how things are going for you. Have a great week and we'll speak to you soon.
Nate, Rebecca, & Crystal
Luckily blogspot does all of the formatting...I am website-challenged. How are things in England?
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