Our Executive Editor Clebrating New Year's Eve in Finland
To be written...
Our General Manager is off to Australia and Writes:
Dear students and ESLA community,
It’s already been three weeks since I sailed off to the down under continent! Getting here took me almost two and a half days because of the fact that I decided to take a different route to get to Australia.First, I went to Orlando, Florida, to visit my son and stay there for a week. Then, my flight made a 12-hour layover in JFK, New York, which I took advantage of to walk around in the city and make some snow balls. Hehe… Around 11:00 p.m., my flight began its journey towards Dubai.
I was so excited to be able to get on such a massive 500-passenger Fly Emirates plane as the 380 Air Bus! I was really impressed as I found out that first class actually had private spa with a shower! Wow! But, the price was definitely out of my league so I went economy class. It was really funny to see that probably out of the 470 passengers in economy class, there were 468 Hindi passengers, some woman from Uganda sitting next to me and a Colombian!
The trip took twelve and a half hours and we arrived in Dubai (DBX) at 8:30 p.m. It was just amazing to see the Burj Al Arab through the plane’s window, the only 7-star hotel in the world! And the airport was just as awesome! There, I laid over for six hours and then caught my next plane towards Perth (PER) Australia. Last flight took us ten and a half hours!
First shocking experience was that I got on the wrong side of the car as I tried to open the right door and realized that the steering wheel was there! Yep, I was told “aussies drive on the right side mate”. They just love the word “mate” as in friend and “cheers” as in thank you, and so they always drive on the left lane of the roads and take round points to the left side. That was just insane for me! A few days ago, I almost got run over by a car for looking to the wrong side when crossing the street!
Second shocking experience was when I flushed the toilet; the water started spinning counter clock wise! Then I remembered: “of course, we’re below the Ecuadorian line”.
Third shocking experience and last so far: no Colombian food restaurants anywhere here in Perth! So, I’ll have to start getting used to eating Aussies’ famous Bar-B-Q's; kangaroo meat and Kebabs, which is like the famous “wraps” of El Corral in Colombia.
People here are friendly. There are lots of Brazilians and Japanese, and just about now we’re having temperatures of 37° degrees and above.
Ok guys, I’ll be letting you know more about Perth as I’m able to go further on my own and make my way around the city much more confidently.
Cheers mate!
Iván.