Day 1

Flight Norfolk to DC was uneventful. DC to LA was interesting because of the differences in the terrain as you head west. In the East and Midwest, you have square green fields, with darker green trees clearly marking out watercourses or covering hills, brown rivers, beige highways. In the central states, farmed land has green circular irrigated fields; elsewhere it's dust colored. Farther west it looks dry, with canyons that were obviously formed by water, but the rivers are small and seem to disappear rather than join other rivers. Then mountains, some with snow. California has yellow brown hills and irrigated green lawns, then Los Angeles is miles of low buildings in neat grids, and highways.
The flight from LA to Syndey might have been interesting if you could see--"there's Hawaii, look, there's Fiji"--but we left at 10:30pm and arrived at 6:30am, while it was still dark. I shared my seat row with two college coeds, Paige and Alicia, who were pleasantly talkative. Watched about twenty minutes of Lost in Translation at Alicia's insistance, but went to sleep in the middle--not the movie's fault, it was just a long day. Slept a while, then watched How to Train Your Dragon .  Then it was time for breakfast and landing.
Getting my luggage took long enough that I missed my flight to Brisbane, but they had another one half an hour later and it only took a little jogging to catch that. Still no scenery, though, as it was overcast.
On the train into Brisbane I met Brodie, a five year old bull rider, who had never met an American before. I showed him American money and gave him some change. He wanted to know my favorite "footie" team, which apparently refers to rugby.
Met Josh, who has lost some weight since February. We walked around the Queen Street Mall, which is a market street and doesn't look much different from what you might find downtown in an American city, except there are more Asian influence than you'd see on the East Coast. When we went to Portigal a couple of years ago, you could tell at once that you weren't in the US because the people all looked similarly Iberian, their clothes looked a little dated, and nobody smiled. In contrast, you couldn't look at the people of Brisbane and tell you weren't in America. Everyone's helpful and lots of them are smiling.
Went to the Maritime Museum and I'll upload pics at some point. Then came to Griffith University and found Josh's dorm room, where we'll stay tonight.