I'm a tourist.

So Sydney started out with light rain today (and of course, everything I would wear in the rain stayed in my other suitcase back in Brisbane) which didn't give me much confidence for a good day - but I was wrong.

We started with coffee from Starbucks on Darling Harbour and a little time to read the Australian Paper. That's where we realized that today was the day that Sydney was hosting a huge relief-effort concert for the Tsunami victims. There's much Asian influence throughout Australia, largely because of the close proximity... and Australia has over 150 people still missing from the disaster. More than that, some of their famous "sport" players have died - cricket players, football players - and even the wife of an athlete was killed while they were on their honeymoon. They were only married 8 days and it's a pretty big story here.

Anyway - it's a free concert held at the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Jimmy was smart enough to figure out that we needed to see the Opera House in the morning, just in case they closed it off to set up for the big show. That's exactly what happened. So after Starbucks we walked to Circular Quay (pronounced Circular Key) and saw it all. The Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, the Botanical Gardens, and even a 2 hour "coffee cruise" up and down the entire Harbour. Then a quick trip through The Rocks and a small walk through The Rocks Market just as it was closing down. Maybe we'll have time to hit a different market tomorrow morning before we leave.

Bottom line - my feet hurt. And this whole "Relief Effort" on TV is quite amusing. All 3 major networks joined together to show it, and it's much different than what the US did after September 11th. People are joking around, the concert gives a "celebratory" mood and they've got 3 locations that cameras cut away to. It's working - as the last number I saw was over 15 million dollars raised tonight alone! (For a bit of perspective, Australia only has 20 million people in the whole country)! As far as we can tell, all the money is going to World Vision Australia. We work directly with World Vision at my station through child sponosorship because of their Christian connection and specific Christian message in foreign countries. Amusing because the whole thing is much more layed back than ours was... and because there's no way the US would go for ALL of the donations to go to a Christian organization.

Oh - one other quick thing about Sydney - I spoke yesterday about the Harbour and the Skyscrapers, but today I saw some of Sydney's oldest buildings built in the 1800's. The architecture here is fabulous! I can't get over the old-world, detailed work that is still all over the city - more than any other city I've ever seen. It really is beautiful.

Otherwise, I suffered a small blonde moment earlier today when I was looking at calendars for 2005 and put it down as I mentioned to Jimmy... "Gosh, I'd love to have a calendar, but I forgot, the days won't be right in the states." ba-dum-ching!

Not sure we're gonna make it out for coffee/dessert tonight... I'm still sitting in my bathrobe from a long shot shower.

Oh ya - I forgot to ask someone to record the season opener of Alias last Wednesday -so if there's a re-broadcast or anything, I'd be very appreciative.

Finally, we fly back to Brisbane tomorrow and drive to the Gold Coast for a few evenings before the whole thing is over. If you want to see links to the various places we've been, they're on Jimmy's site : www.jimmylakey.blogspot.com

Sorry about the crazy weather in the US - guess we picked a good time to get away.

Buh-Bye -
Carrie