TravelBio

So when I last wrote an entry I was just about to take a course in Sydney to be certified as a manual laborer.  A lot has changed since then.  I am writing from a farm near the town of Leeton, a small community in southern New South Wales, a long way from Sydney, or any city for that matter. The White Card certification class wasn't bad - it really wasn't all that helpful either - but having the card doesn't really get me much closer to landing a job.  A lot of it comes down to networking, scouring the Internet job sites, patience, and luck. I was surprised at the level of competition for backpacker jobs in Sydney.  I switched hostels and several people staying there had been looking for weeks.  One of my dorm mates managed to find a restaurant job for a whopping one day a week.  Restaurant work certainly didn't seem promising. While searching though job listings on the Internet I found two 'sales and marketing' companies who were hiring.  A...

This is my third night in Sydney - here's a quick update so far.  I'm staying in a hostel in a part of the city called Kings Cross, not too far from downtown.  The downtown area in Australian cities is known colloquially as the CBD, or Central Business District.  Aussies have a knack for shortening words - more on that later when I get a hang of the local lingo! Over the past two days I've done a lot of walking.  A city the size of Sydney (4.5 million plus in the metro area) certainly can't be explored through and through in two days, but I sure have tried.  My cross city treks have ostensibly been in the name of job hunting, but in addition I've explored a lot of the city and gotten my bearings.  From the University of Sydney, to the CBD / Darling Harbor, Kings Crossing, and Bondi Beach, the city is pretty walk-able. North Sydney and the Harbor Bridge in the background and an  old cannon from the British colonial era in  "the Rocks," a...

I'm at the JFK airport in New York with a bit of time on my hands before my flight leaves, so here's a quick update.  I left Columbus this morning (Friday the 31st of January) and will spend the weekend in Honolulu - eventually.  I first flew Columbus to JFK; next will be JFK to LAX, then LAX to Honolulu.  I'll arrive in Hawaii at 8:50 pm local time, or 1:50 in the morning back home.  Definitely a long day of travel! After reaching LA I still had nearly 6 hours of flying ahead of me to reach Honolulu Honolulu, Hawaii's largest city, is on the island of Oahu.  I'd like to visit the other islands too, but that will have to wait till next time! While in Honolulu I'll stay with a friend who goes to law school at the University of Hawaii.  After a few days seeing the sights and, weather permitting, enjoying the beach, I fly to Australia!  I am scheduled to fly Hawaiian Airlines, leaving Tuesday morning and arriving in Sydney Wednesday evening....

My flight from Korea to the US had a free stopover in Dallas, and since I was using American Airlines again I had another free stopover along the way to Australia.  It had to be within the US and make sense with my route.  So if I had a layover in Los Angeles, for example, I could extend it for a longer time without any extra charge.  But I couldn't just pick a random city to fly to first - say Maimi - unfortunately it doesn't work like that. The American Airlines rewards program has been great: I used AA miles to book my flight back to the States from Seoul and to Australia as well. There were several different flight combinations out of Columbus, and since I would likely need at least two layovers, I had flexibility with my free stopover.  One of my options happened to be Los Angeles, where my cousin and her husband live.  It seemed like a great opportunity to visit them along the way.  The only problem was the award space availability; the...