First Video Blog

Hey guys, so heres my budget-cut blog video of my first couple days here, and its not through Youtube, its through Vimeo. Youtube won't let me post videos of that size on their site so.. they lose. Just take a look at the vid and check it out! See you guys!

My First Video Blog in Australia from Andrew Howell on Vimeo.

Arriving in Sydney Australia :)

Hey guys! this a quick update to let you all know how I'm doing. I arrived on thursday Jan. 14th around 11am and when I got here it was awesome. All comfortable warm weather, tons of aussies waiting to meet and greet you and tons of new people to meet every single day. The first day was really just getting settled in, filling out paperwork and finding where I live, and it was very tiring since I was jet lagged and did not sleep that much on the plane, but I stuck it out until the evening because I knew I would get a much better sleep. The second day, and today were similar in the fact that what all of the new students are doing are going to do all your other essential needs like getting bank accounts, getting phones, getting groceries, etc. So I got hooked up with a bank, got a couple groceries and I am currently looking into getting a phone aswell. Friday was mainly just chill hang out and meet people day again. Today, saturday, was more exciting aswell. We all took a day trip and traveled to the city of sydney which is a decent amount of time away, I think around 45 mins. And when we got there we realized how HUGE and beautiful it was so a ton of us took pictures and went places and just enjoyed ourselves yet again. I visited the Opera House (the outside of it anyway), the bridge in Sydney harbour, and we also took a ferry to a different location to find a huge mall, with the largest IMAX theatre in the world. It was insane. And so since it was also the first day the sun was out, we all got burnt lol. So that was our day in a nutshell, and in the evening they had a saturday night evening service at the church. There's 2 sections to the church, there's the Main conference building in which most of the sunday services are held, and then theres the Hillsong College building right beside it, and we all call it the HUB. I have no idea why we call it this, but it is 'the hub'. And they have a smaller sanctuary type conference room there, which was where the saturday night service was held. It was really cool because we listened to a message that was televised or broadcasted from the city campus in Sydney, So it streamed live from the City to Hills and we were both listening in on the same teaching. Also, it was a guy named Mark Crow from Oklahoma and he was a great speaker.

This whole experience so far has just been so fun and exciting and mind blowing that I am finding myself not having enough time to catch people up back home with what Im doing, its just too exciting, but trust me I am trying my best. I've met sooo many cool people from different countries and different backgrounds with ALL different accents and its really great. Half the time we just spend making fun of each others accents lol, its great times. But yeah, OH YEAH, cockroaches. TONS of them, there hasn't been a day go by yet where I haven't killed or seen a cockroach. Its retarded lol. Some are huge, some are tiny, but none the less, they seem to love us, and we hate them, so they lose everytime. I just hope I don't wake up with one crawling right on my face one night. Creepy.

I live with 4 other Aussies at the moment, and there is 1 Norwegian guy coming next week, and Im rooming with him basically, so there are 6 guys in total in my house. Its really great cause most of the guys are local and have been here for a couple of years already, so they know all the ropes, they've already got wireless internet set up, food, dishes, everything. I kinda just hopped on board and they welcomed me with open arms. Its great. Oh and all the houses here are like realllllly nice. Its like beverly hills over here. seriously. Our shuttle bus driver explained to us the value of the houses around this local area, and they range from 500 G's to a million dollars per house. Thats how much you'd have to pay if you wanted to live here. insane. And so yeah, I'm about a 20-30 minute walk from my house to the school, so me and my new friends are looking into buying long boards and/or bikes. I have a feeling they will come in handy a lot.

I didn't actually expect to write this much in this blog, because really this blog was suppose to be an "apology-blog" for not posting sooner, but I do have bad news. My camera that I recently bought is retarded (thanks kjens lol). Or maybe its just my memory card, but it keeps on screwing up and saying theres a format error, and each time that happens I re-format it and it works for a bit and then poops out on me the next time. THEREFORE, I have lost all of my footage.... twice. Its really lame and sucky I know, but I am looking into getting an iPhone next week and luckily iPhones are amazing and they do everything including filming so I will be making videos like I promised. My only regret is losing my footage of todays trip to Sydney, it was B-E-A-Utiful.

Ok so tomorrow is Sunday and I am going to all 3 services, 2 in the morning and 1 at night, and apparently the night service on Sunday is where its at so I'm really excited for that, and besides that, I'm just hanging out all week and meeting crazy new people. I've met people from USA, Italy, Indonesia, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, and the list goes on and on, its insane. Its kind of hard to remember names, but you get use to it. So yeah, this place is incredible, this is just a starter blog to let you know videos will be on the way as soon as I get this stuff figured out, and then you guys can really see what I'm up to and how great this place is. Until then,

G'DAY MATE. ;)