The Sydney Cricket Ground was legitimately delightful. Jim hadn’t been sure what he’d expected; his greatest exposure to cricket before this had come from Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a secret favorite; after learning that Dwight was into Battlestar Galactica he’d been far too afraid of finding out they had something in common to admit his own science fiction interests). There, “cricket” was ultimately code for some kind of intergalactic conquesting planet and a curse word across most of the galaxy. Here it seemed…calm. Deliberate. It did turn out that the cricket ground didn’t only host cricket—apparently some major concerts were scheduled, though unfortunately later in the summer and he probably couldn’t have gotten tickets anyway—but they were nice enough to let him peek through a gate and see the clean clear lines of the oval. They too had a gift shop, and pictures of something called a “test match” for the “Ashes” which he was assured were very important and involved the utter domination of their former colonial overlords the English.

He walked back down Anzac Parade towards the hostel, but somehow got turned around, because instead of the hostel he found himself at the Anzac Memorial, which he supposed was appropriate given the street name. There was probably a turn somewhere, he thought, but then again, maybe left and rights were different down here because of the Coriolis effect. He seemed to remember something like that from middle school science.

He bought a meal from somewhere in the nearby vicinity and sat in the park. It was wide and beautiful, though he found himself missing some of the wildness of Nay Aug Park back in Scranton. Still, it was a lovely place to people watch, and for a Pennsylvanian the weather was just fine and dandy. And since he remembered passing the Memorial on his way to the hostel the first time, he was hopeful that sitting there for a little while might help him reorient himself. But for the moment he was content to watch the people go by. Eventually the light failed, and he made his way back to the hostel, focusing more carefully this time on the landmarks so he wouldn’t get lost again.

**

Pam could have spent hours in the Museum.

No, she decided, Pam would spend hours in the Museum. The one time she’d been in a museum even near this good, she’d been on a trip to Philly with Roy and they’d have Flyers tickets and he’d hustled her through in twenty-five minutes. Well, she was Pam Beesly not Pam Anderson and that meant she marched to the beat of her own drummer, and that drummer was not beating a march but parade rest. She worked her way through every room as slowly as she could, savoring every moment. There was beautiful Australian Aboriginal art she’d never even conceived of before and classic European (or European-style) art exactly like she’d always longed to do herself, and Asian art that made her wish she knew the tradition it came from in more detail, and she was simply in heaven.

It was dark when she left.

That wasn’t a problem, though, because Sydney was a city, and there were lights all around.  She had…well, not forgotten, because Scranton wasn’t that kind of a city, but not really realized how bright a real downtown got at night. She felt like she’d always imagined Audrey Hepburn would in Paris (she wasn’t entirely sure if Audrey Hepburn had a movie set in Paris, but it felt like the kind of thing she ought to have), wandering down the street, watching the people and (after a strategic stop at a coffee shop) sipping a drink in one hand. She picked a hostel out of her set of flyers at random, mostly because she found the name hilarious, asked a friendly stranger where it was, and wandered that way, whistling quietly to herself.

If it was winter in Sydney, it could be the new year, and if it was the new year it was going to be the Year of Beesly.

Now, she thought as she checked into the hostel and put her single bag away, if only she could find Jim Halpert and convince him to change his calendars too.