Days 99-108

I meant to post earlier, but for some reason I kept getting distracted.

Anyways, last week was my last week of classes at Sydney Uni. It was a little bittersweet realising that, actually. Classes are still going on this week, but my classes were all cancelled. I love being an Arts student sometimes! Next week is StuVac (which is short for study vacation, no classes, just cramming for finals. Which Australians do a lot of. They don't attend lectures, and then during StuVac they listen to the recordings of all of the lectures online and study all week). After a week of StuVac, it'll be 2 weeks of final exams (Nov 8-Nov 19th). I only have 1 sit down final (Nov 10th), 1 take home final (Nov 11th-18th) and 1 final report (Nov 19th). Then I'll fly home on Nov 20th. I don't really want to leave. Yes, I miss everyone from home, but its so much fun here still! I haven't gotten to the boring bit of living somewhere new yet. I'm trying not to think about it.

On to what I did last week.

Wednesday night I went to another St. Paul's Party. St. Paul's is another residential college on the Sydney Uni campus, right down the street from IH. They have a fully licensed bar on property and host parties every wednesday night. I went to one earlier in the semester. This past week, it was themed as a Full Moon Party. Full Moon parties are common in Thailand and occur every full moon. Basically, everyone gets covered in Fluoro (neon) paint, and there are blacklights everywhere and you drink out of buckets. It was the most fun I've had in a while. After the party, we went to the park across the street and played on the playground and then to get some kebabs down the street.

Thursday we went to one of the on campus bars for Oktoberfest, but by the time we got there, not many people were still there. The party was kind of dead, so we went home and hung out. Then we went to the park across the street again. The middle of the night is the only time you can go to the park and actually play on the swings and the flying fox (aka the zipline) without small children everywhere.

Friday was my internship, which went as usual. I did find out about an event that was taking place on Monday, which I volunteered for (I need more hours..). It was the launch of Register4, this online database of people who are willing to possibly participate in breast cancer research. Anyone over the age of 18 can register, even international people (you can fill out online questionnaires, etc to help with some research). If you want to sign up: http://www.register4.org.au. So on monday I volunteered for that, I was there from 9am-3pm. Handing out pamphlets about it to people walking down the street. They they had a catered buffet back at the office for lunch.  and I went back to my internship again on Tuesday.

One last note: I went to the shopping mall this morning, and its already decorated for Christmas!!

The Full Moon Party at St. Paul's
Left to right: Tanco, Rachel, Mikaela, Me

Days 91-98

A few exciting things happened this week.

Tuesday, I went to water polo practice with the Sydney Uni club team. We just did swimming drills, and ball handling skills for the most part. No scrimmaging, which was odd. Thats the highlight of practice in NOLA. It still felt good to be back in the pool with a water polo ball. The girls were all very nice, and at the end of practice, the coach offered me the chance to play with them in a game on Sunday and offered me a ride to the pool where the game would be held (at the University of New South Wales, about a 20 minute drive from Sydney Uni).

Friday, I went to my internship, as usual. I got there and come to find out, Friday was some huge fundraising day for the foundation. So, instead of doing my normal task of sitting at the computer and typing up the same document in various forms, I helped out the rest of the office by counting money that way coming in, and sorting/counting merchandise that wasn't sold. The after lunch, the office mania calmed down and I went back to my computer for my normal tasks. I much preferred the counting and sorting, to be honest.

Saturday was the IH Charity night. We had a "slave auction" in which people in the house offered up various talents ranging from music lessons to picnic spreads and baking to tennis lessons. People then bid on those offerings. There was also a raffle and an extreme pie eating contest, where people could bet on the contestants. Well, I participated in the eating contest. It was really intense, with 3 different rounds. The first round was an entire apple pie in two and a half minutes without using your hands. The second round was three pieces of thick bread: 1 w/ mayo on it, 1 w/ chili sauce on it, and the last w/ vegemite. The third round was a large piece of especially dense chocolate cake without using your hands. I didn't make it past the first round. I ate the all of the filling in the pie, but didn't know we were supposed to eat the outer crust as well. Oh well, I'm pretty glad I didn't make it on to the next rounds. My friend, Claire, actually took 3rd place, behind 2 guys. Anyways, at the end of the night, we raised over $5500 dollars towards a children's hospital project in Sierra Leone and the Pakistani Flood relief. It was a lot of fun as well!

Sunday, I went to the water polo game, and was a little nervous because I hadn't played a game since March, and I'd barely swam much since then either. I also didn't know any of the girls on the team I was playing with. We ended up losing, but it was nice to be back in the pool playing again. After the game, I waited while Megan (the coach) coached the next team (sydney uni has 5 levels of water polo teams, basically. L1 is the best and play at a national collegiate level and L5 in the most inexperienced/ social level. I played with the L4 team, still pretty social, but slightly more experienced than L5) and then she brought me home. I got home at 6pm. Changed super quickly, and then went to a different church than usual with a girl from IH. The service was pretty similar. After the service, I ran into a friend and ended up going to a restaurant with a bunch of people from the service and hanging out. I didn't make it home til around 11pm, but it was fun, and I didn't really have anything to do anyways. After I got back, I watched a movie with a friend. Then went to bed.

Pie eating contest. I'm all the way at the end of the table. The guy at the beginning of the table is the person who won. 

Days 85-90

Nothing too exciting happened during the week this past week. It was full of lazy days of watching all the tv shows that I missed while on break. I did go to my classes though! The only thing mildly interesting which happened this week was switching my flight home to November 20th. It was not an easy task, but it got done.

Friday night, IH had its annual ball. It was held at Sydney Center Point Tower in downtown. It's the highest point in the southern hemisphere, and it looks kind of like the space needle, except gold. It was so much fun, we all got dressed up, the theme was decadence. We had a nice fancy dinner of twice baked goat cheese souffle, steak and mashed potatoes and some dessert with pistachios which was really good. Unfortunately, by the time dessert came around, I was so full from the souffle, the steak and the endless wine being poured into my glass. The party ended at 10:30pm, when most people went to Ivy (the really fancy bar/club we went to that one time. the one with the pool) and the party continued. I got there with the last group though, and could barely find anyone and left with Alison and Adria when I found them. It was way too crowded in there!

Sunday, Adria and I went downtown to get our underwater pictures developed. We dropped it off at 11:30am, and were told that the pictures would be ready at 2:30pm. So Adria and I went wandering around town. Our main goal was to get souvenirs, which turned into sightseeing. We went to Hyde Park, saw St. Mary's Cathedral, then on our way to the Royal Botanical Gardens we stopped into the Art Gallery of New South Wales and poked around in there. Then we walked through the park to Government House. We signed up for a free guided tour through the house, but we had to wait about half an hour, so we just laid in the grass. When we finally got back to the photo place, at 3:30pm, the doors were closed. They close up shop at 3pm on Sundays, apparently. So, I'm going back tomorrow morning to actually pick up the pictures. 

At the ball

Addendum to the Spring Break Post

I can't believe I forgot to mention the humpback whales!

The whales migrate to Antarctica to give birth in the winter here, then in the Spring, they migrate back north with their babies. Well, right now, they are migrating north. When we were in Byron Bay, we got to see some. They were pretty far off in the distance, and you could only see their backs every now and then, or their blow holes. It was still really cool. Quite a few of them (we estimated about 7-10 whales) were in the area where we surfed. Right before we got in the water, our surf instructors spotted a few and pointed them out to us. Then on our walk to the lighthouse that afternoon, we stopped and saw more from a cliff top overlooking the same area. It was so cool!!

It was near impossible to actually get a picture of the whales breaking the surface, but they were in this general area, hanging out. So cool!

Days 71-84: Spring Break

I managed to finish all 3 of my essays by Wednesday morning, which was fantastic! All I need to do now is edit them and writ up my bibliographies and I can hand them in! I will say that getting those out of the way before break was one of the best ideas I have ever had. Some of my friends are stressing about the work they have to do now, and I don't really have any work to do!

This past week and a half, I was on spring break with a bunch of friends, mostly from IH. It would take far to long to go into detail what happened in those 11 days, but I'll break it down a bit.

• Flight to Cairns
• I wasn't asked to show ID once the entire way through security, nor did I have to take my shoes off
• about 3 hours, but it felt longer. 
• the seats didn't recline, so it was pretty uncomfortable
• Cairns
• arrived at dinner time and checked into the hostel
• room had 1 bed overbooked (they had 7 people booked into a 6 bed room), so they upgraded the four of us staying together into a 4 bed room, which costs more than the 6 bed room. So we ended up with a room to ourselves
• lounged out by the pool all day (they don't have a beach, only a lagoon which Adria and I learned that the lifeguards don't appreciate you walking around in)
• got our free "meal" from a nearby restaurant (the hostel provided vouchers for these free meals) which ended up being about 10 noodles and a teaspoon of sauce
• we ended up getting kanaroo burgers afterwards. They were quite good actually
• Jungle Tour/ Cape Tribulation
• Daintree Rainforest is the oldest in the world
• Day 1-walked through a gorge, went on a riverboat cruise to spot crocodiles, visited a bug museum, had lunch grilled for us (steak or fish), scenic drives, dropped off at our hostel in the afternoon, explored the beach across the street.
• Day 2- explored the beach again in the morning, picked up by our driver (who vaguely resembled steve irwin), more scenic driving, tropical fruit ice cream, lookout over the Daintree rainforest, short hike, saw a cassowary (the deadliest bird in the world), back to Cairns to hang out for a few hours before our bus
• Airlie Beach
• hung out around town all day and laid on the beach a bit. Very pretty city with very nice weather
• a few of us attempted to make pancakes for dinner, which turned out to be a disaster. Hostel cooking utensils aren't the best for making anything more involved than pasta, lesson learned. They were still edible though.
• celebrated Annelotte and Theresa's birthdays after dinner
• Whitsundays sailing/ snorkling
• my favorite part of the trip
• 3 hour cruise to get out to the pontoon on the great barrier reef
• we went on the submarine, went snorkeling for about 2.5 hours, ate lunch and rode the 3 hours back to Airlie Beach
• I bought a disposable underwater camera and took pictures, I really hope they turn out well, I have to go get them developed sometime this week
• Hervey Bay
• quaint little town with a nice beach
• Megan and Teresa went skydiving that afternoon, so a few of us went to their landing site on the beach to wait for them and take pictures
• Fraser Island
• the worlds largest sand island
• the last population of pure bred dingos in the world, unfortunately we didn't see any
• the weather started off really cloudy and cold, but cleared up and got warmer as the day progressed
• we walked through Central Station (part on the inner rainforest on the island), then got lunch, then drove down the beach to Eli Creek, The Maheno shipwreck, the colored sands, Lake McKenzie (which was gorgeous and i went swimming in it. the water was so clear and blue with white sands. Gorgeous!)
• Hervey Bay
• Had to wait at the bus station for 3 hours after the McDonalds next door closed at 10:30pm and we arrived at the bus stop at 8pm, for our 1:30am bus
• Byron Bay
• a very hippie surfer town
• it rained almost the whole time we were there
• Day 1- we did some shopping (though I only bought some postcards) in town. Went to a bar called Cheeky Monkeys for a little bit that night
• Day 2- surf lessons were so much fun! We all stood up on our boards quite a few times, it was great! After lunch, a few of us hiked over the beach and up to the lighthouse, passing the easterly most point in Australia on the way. After dinner, we planned on going back to Cheeky Monkeys, but got too tired and went to sleep instead.
• Day 3- it was still really rainy, so we changed our bus tickets and left at noon instead of 9pm.
• Sydney
• back into town at 1am

In general, it was the best vacation I have ever been on! I had so much fun, and we are all so much closer as a group, which is going to make leaving in November that much harder. 

This is almost all of us in front of the Maheno shipwreck on Fraser Island

Days 62-70

Wow, this past week has been quite the whirlwind!

Monday started my scholarly attempt at writing 3 essays in 10 days (research and all). One essay on assimilation in Australia in the 1950s, one essay on soldier resettlement scheme in Australia post-WWI, and one about Imperialistic aspects of America's westward expansion. So far, I've finished the first two, and now I'm taking a break from researching and outlining the third. I plan on writing the third essay and being done with it by Wednesday. Three days to write a 2500 word research paper, if someone told me to do that in high school, I would have thought they were crazy! Now, I'm imposing it on myself (the last two papers mentioned aren't due until Oct 8th and 9th, but I'll be gone on Mid-Semester Break the week before, so I'm getting them out of the way before I leave). So I've been spending a lot of time researching and writing those darn papers, but I've still managed to have a social life as well!

Thursday night I went to see Cadavatar, the Med school review (All of the schools here- engineering, arts, med, law, architecture, etc etc- put on reviews making fun of things in the school and things in general) with a few friends. It was hilarious! Granted, some of it was lost on me, not being a med student and all, but I still found it quite funny. They did a great job putting it on.

Friday night, my friend at IH, Soo-Jae, hosted a party in the building. There were a lot of people there, and it ended up segregating to the people who didn't live in IH inside and the people who do live here were outside on the patio. It was still a lot of fun though.

Saturday, I didn't get any work done on my papers. Instead, I slept in (after the party the night before) and then went to the park with Claire and Adria after lunch for a little bit because it was a really nice day out. After dinner, we had one last practice before iNight. Then, iNight started at 7:30pm and we were the first act!   We performed the Napolean Dynamite dance while wearing full spandex body suits. There are tons of pictures up on facebook now, as well as a video of our performance. After all of the acts went, iNight wrapped up around 11:30pm. The after-party started at midnight and went til about 3:15am. Then there was an after-after-party, which I did not attend, but apparently that went til about 5am. The party was a lot of fun. Most of the people from my act just stayed in the spandex body suits all night.

Sunday was another lazy day of sleeping in, and then getting work done before and after church.

Today was a day full of library research. I have checked out way more books from the library here than I ever have at Tulane. Probably because I have never checked out a book from Tulane's library. I haven't taken enough history classes at Tulane to need to check out books. You can't really go do research on organic chemistry at the library....

Figure out which one is me!!

Days 55-61

This past week, I've been good and studious, in that I turned down party offers to stay in and study. That doesn't mean that I was holed up all week reading for classes, though.

Wednesday night, a few of us got together and did some yoga together in the house with a video Megan downloaded from online. That was good, a nice study break. We managed to get IHMA (the members assoc of IH) to buy us a yoga instructional dvd to use. It came in, but not until Thursday, so we'll use that next time. After yoga, I stayed in and read for classes while other people went out to a bar.

Thursday night a group of 9 girls (including me!) went to see and aboriginal dance performance at the Opera House. It was really cool, but completely unexpected! They mixed traditional aboriginal dance with modern and hip hop dance. It was also theatrical, though they didn't speak english throughout, so you had to follow the storyline by listening to their tone of voice, watching their expressions and movements, and listening to the music. There were undercurrents of racial prejudice and white dominance in it as well. It was called "Wrong Skin" if you want to look it up on the opera house website. After we got back, we met up with other people in the coffee room at the house and a bunch of the rest of the group went out to a club later.

Friday, I went to my internship again. It wasn't too bad. Friday night, I did some reading, then joined a bunch of people who were partying in the coffee room of the House. It turned into an impromptu dance party for a small group of us, which was a ton of fun!

Saturday, a group of us took the ferry ride to Manly Beach after lunch. I was so happy for it to be decently warm again and to smell the salty air and stick my feet in the ocean. It was great. Then the group split up, some people went to OceanWorld, which was apparently pretty small and ghetto. Dora went shopping and Megan and I got gelato, walked around the town and hung out some more by the beach. We made it back to the House just in time for dinner. After dinner, Megan, Claire and I took the train to one of Megan's architecture friend's apartment. He invited us over to watch a rugby game on tv. It was New Zealand vs. Australia. It was a good game, but I didn't end up paying attention much. Most of the time, a bunch of us just talked (the friend had 4 other friends there as well), mostly about the differences in american and australian cultures. After the game (new zealand won 23-22. apparently that was expected), we walked down to this lookout down the road from his apartment. We could all of downtown from the other side of the harbour than we're used to.

Today, is study day. We also have to practice our dance for iNight this saturday. I'll tell you more about that next week. After practicing, it'll be dinner time, then church time, then more reading.

The group (minus Claire) at Manly Beach

Days 50-54

This weekend was fantastic! Friday night we went out clubbing at this place called Home Bar (the same place we went for my birthday) in Darling Harbour. It was a lot of fun. I really liked it, partially because I think the DJ was American. He didn't play much house music at all and played a bunch of songs about states ("Empire state of mind", "califorina girls", "california love", etc). It was kinda funny, because some of the europeans of the group weren't quite sure how to dance to music that wasn't house music (that's all they usually play in the clubs here and apparently in Europe. maybe a normal song here and there, but mostly house).

Saturday, a few of us woke up early (8am, pretty early after clubbing the night before!) and got breakfast before getting in a 12 passenger van and driving for 2 hours to the Blue Mountains. We got there and immediately went to Echo Point, this overlook spot where you can see the whole valley, it was really pretty, but the weather wasn't great. It was really overcast and drizzly. Then we got some lunch and drove another hour or so to get to Jenolan Caves. The road to get there was so twisty, and parts of the road near the end was only big enough for 1 car to get through, but it was still 2 way traffic. It got a little scary sometimes. We did the Lucas Cave tour which was about an hour and a half and consisted of about 1000 stairs. It was really cool though. After the tour was finished, we drove back to our hostel in Katoomba. We checked in and got our keys and chilled for an hour or so. Then we walked to a pub for dinner, except the pub was completely dead. There were 3 old people eating in there before we got there. Then all of a sudden, a group of 16 showed up and the bar tender/ owner person didn't know what to do with himself. The food was pretty good, and we hung out for a while. Slowly, we all left and went back to the hostel. We ended up watching Toy Story 2 in the tv room, and I forgot how great that move is! Afterwards, we just took over the tv room hanging out and goofing off. Then sleep, finally.

Sunday, we had to check out of the hostel by 10am, so we woke up just before 9 to get a shower. After we checked out, we went to a nearby grocery store to buy stuff for breakfast and went back to the hostel to eat it. then when we went to leave for Scenic World, the van's battery was dead, so we had to wait in the hostel again while waiting for a mechanic. Then Chris, who drove his own car to the blue mountains, realized that he could just shuttle people to scenic world (it was only about 4 minutes away) while waiting for the van to get a jump start. I was in the first group to head over there, along with Desiree, Claire and Megan. We got there, decided what we were going to do, which was take the railway down (the steepest in the world! parts of it are a 52 degree incline) the valley, then walk around a bit down there, then take the stairs back up. Luke, the guy who organized the trip, told us that he would call us when the van was ready at scenic world and when to meet back up. Well, non of us realized that we weren't going to have any cell phone reception in the middle of a rainforest. In short, none of us got the text message saying to meet back up at the van at 1pm. We took the stairs (all 1200 of them!) back up, it was really exhausting. Quite the workout! We got to the top and we were all sweating, despite the fact that we all has sweaters and coats on before the climb and proceeded to take hem off layer by layer during the climb. The views were well worth it! Well we got back to the top at 1:45pm. Then all of the text messages and missed calls came flooding into our phones. Everyone else had been waiting for us in the van for almost an hour. Needless to say, we felt really bad, but they didn't hate us, so it's ok. Everyone else took the railway down and the cable car back up, so they took a lot less time then we did. When we finally got back, we left right away and I proceeded to fall asleep within half an hour of driving, and I slept the entire way home. All in all, it was a really fun weekend, and quite the bonding experience with everyone who went!

All of the girls that went to the Blue Mountains

Days 42-49

Whoops! I forgot to blog sunday night...

Nothing really has happened in the past week. Working on another paper, planning and booking things for spring break (which they call mid semester break. Australias have very high expectations of something called Spring Break based on Hollywood's portrayal of drunken debauchery on the beach as spring break).

I've still been going to the same church, everyone is really nice and friendly there. They all remember my name from the first time I went, and I'm meeting more people each time I go.

I'm trying to go swimming more often than the once a week I've been going the past few weeks. I found a friend here at the House who swims every few days, so he's going to make me get up and go with him now. We're about the same pace and do about the same yardage (a sad 1200m on Saturday). Hopefully it'll work and I'll get back in shape!

Thursday evening, a small group of us went to this posh lounge downtown called Ivy. Apparently they recently spent millions of dollars renovating the building and now it's really nice. We ended up being able to get up to the Pool Bar (http://www.merivale.com/#/ivy/poolclub), which is usually reserved for VIPs and is usually really packed, but since it was a pretty quiet Thursday night, and pretty cold outside, we were able to get up there. I will say though that the water was freezing!! I stuck my hand in it. We just chilled out and talked to the people we came with. The majority of the other people at the bar were 35 year old businessmen. It was a good time just hanging out with friend. We also weren't buying drinks, cause they were pretty expensive. We called it an early night and were home by 12:45am.

Friday afternoon, a group of about 30 people from the House got together and went to a lazer tag place. The event was organized and paid for by IH. It was so much fun! We broke up into 3 teams (red, blue and yellow) and played 3 games. My team (red team) won every single game!

I just now got off of a skype call with my mom's third grade class. The connection was a bit shaky, but it worked. I brought over an australian friend from the House to talk to them with me. Her class is learning about Australia in social studies.

I should probably get back to working on my paper, but heres a picture before I go:

Me next to the pool at Ivy on Thursday night. (Sorry its a little fuzzy..)

Days 34-41

My weekdays have gotten decidedly less fun then they were a few weeks ago. Ah well, I guess that's what happens when classes really kick into gear.

I had my first paper her in Sydney due on Wednesday in my Australian Social History class. It wasn't too terrible. 1500 words, I ended up writing 2100 words and then having to cut out a lot, which was harder than writing the paper itself. I managed to get it down to 1600 words though, and I cleared that with the professor.

Thursday night, a bunch of us got together for another spring break planning meeting. Figured out some more of the specifics and had to cut a few stops out of our trip. We are now flying from Sydney to Cairns, staying there a few days, then taking a greyhound bus back to sydney. On the trip back, we'll stop at Whitsundays for a few days, then Frasier Island for a few days, and then to Byron Bay for the last few days, then back to Sydney 11 days later. Seriously, go to google images and search for those places (Cairns, Whitsundays, Frasier Island, and Byron Bay) they are all stunning! I'm so excited!! After the meeting, there was a BBQ on the rooftop with a bunch of people, that was a good time as well.

Friday afternoon, we all got together (all 11 of us girls going on the trip. No boys are coming along) in the computer lab of IH and booked our flights to Cairns. We pretty much took over the computer lab, there were only 2 other people in there, we took up all of the other computers. Then, after lunch, 4 of us took a bus downtown and went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. It was such a pretty day! After dinner, we had some drinks at the house, a bunch of other people went out afterwards, but a few of us stayed back and just went to sleep.

Saturday afternoon, IH took about 60 of us out to the log cabin that the house owns in a state park about 2 hours away from Sydney. When we got there, we walked around a bit, and then had another BBQ (they really like BBQs here, but they only ever have sausages, and they don't use hot dog buns, they use sliced bread) and then waited a bit for it to get dark outside so we could stargaze. Some astronomical society was there with their giant telescopes set up for us. They showed us where venus, mars, saturn (I could see it's rings!) and a really up close view of the moon (theres a crater about 180km long that looks just like a footprint on the moon! it was crazy looking) as well as some stars (a carbon star that was red, some other important stars that i dont remember the names of, and the jewelbox galaxy i think it was called- it had all different colored stars, very pretty). We also had a bunch of marshmallows, and their marshmallows here taste quite different, and they have pink raspberry flavored ones, which taste even weirder.

Sunday was pretty uneventful, I didn't do much all day. The I went to church after dinner.

Today I went to my internship again. I did some more event planning. Nothing too exciting. I did realize that I could never pursue a career which requires cubicle work though, it's pretty boring stuff.

A few of us at the rooftop BBQ Thursday night

Days 27-33

Now that the semester is under way, I'm doing much fewer interesting things and much more not interesting things (like reading for classes).

Wednesday night a few of us got together and went to Kuletos for happy hour. Its pretty safe to say that we all enjoy going there quite a bit. We've been at least once a week since we've been here. Our goal is to try all of their cocktails by the time we leave. We've already tried about half the list as a whole, not that we've each had an entire glass of those cocktails, but we all get different ones and try everyone else's. When we got back to IH, Dora was making homemade crepes because it was Claire's Name Day. Name day is this great tradition in Hungary (maybe other countriesa s well, but Dora told us about it and she's from Hungary). Each name is assigned a day of the year. When your name day comes up, you celebrate and people buy you presents. Its almost like your birthday! (PS- My name day is Nov 25th *wink*wink*)

Thursday, I finally met my "Buddy". (I joined the Buddy Club for international students. They pair you up with an aussie student who either just got back from study abroad in your home country or is going soon.) My "buddy" is really nice. I met up with her and one of her friends after class and went for coffee with them (well, I had hot chocolate, but I digress). We hung out and chatted for about an hour. She is a history/law major (you can study undergrad law here), and just got back from a year at UPenn. She's really sweet and nice. Later that evening, I went to bible study at the church I've been going to that is just down the road from campus. It was great, we had dinner and talked about hospitality (based on the sermon from last sunday). Afterwards, I started working on ym first paper of the semester and Skyped with mom for about an hour or so.

Friday was great, because I finally started my internship at the National Breast Cancer Foundation. There was another intern on her first day as well. They bought us lunch, it was great! We got a tour of the office and were given more details on our respective projects. I'm planning their Annual Research Update annual event. It's going to be a lot of work, and a bit of pressure for it to work, but I won't be here for the actual event, because it got moved back to February instead of the usual November. I looked at all the documents that were used in planning the event in years past. Then I got to go home at 3pm. I took that extra time to print out a few resumes and take them over to the mall near IH and apply for jobs. Hopefully I find one! After dinner, we watched How I Met Your Mother again :)

Saturday, I started stressing out about my paper. So I stayed back while a bunch of people went to the Aquarium (I knew that I'd be stressing out the whole time and wouldn't enjoy it anyways). I ended up going over to the Med School Library with a friend. He did med school stuff, I started typing my paper. I got a good bit of work done, so I felt a lot better about the paper. For dinner, a big group of people from IH went to a Korean BBQ restaurant downtown. It was one of the former Senior Residents (the same thing as an RA) last night in town before he headed back to India. So we went out to dinner and it was delicious! Although I'm still terrible at using chopsticks, I plan on being slightly proficient by the time I leave. Not that theres much use for chopsticks back home, but it doesn't matter. Two of the other girls and I skipped the majority of the walk home, leaving the boys behind. It was a lot of fun, but quite tiring (especially skipping up a hill).

Today, I went to the morning service at church. It was pretty good, but not quite what I was expecting. I think I'll stick with the evening service, more people my age. After that, I came home and took a nap before lunch. After lunch, I worked on my paper more. I'm currently 550 words over the limit and I haven't written my introduction or conclusion yet...uh oh. I need to cut it down a lot! I'm not sure how I plan on doing that just yet. I'll figure it out, It's not due until wednesday anyways. At dinner, I tried Vegemite on toast. Very interesting. It tasted kinda like concentrated soy sauce. It was really salty and kinda bitter. I don't think I'll eat it again, but now I can say that I have tried Vegemite in Australia! Later tonight, a group of us are meeting together to try and plan for spring break at the end of september. So exciting!

The girls at Kuletos for Claire's Name Day!

Days 20-26

So much has been going on, yet I don't feel like I've done all that much in the past week. I still haven't recovered from being sick just yet. Another week of classes has gone by, nothing too exciting. I started my tutorials, which is a group of about 20 students who meet with the professor once a week outside of lecture for discussions. I'm not the only American in my US Imperialism tutorial, there is one other girl from Texas there. The other students in my tutorial don't seem very anti-American, which is good. Some of them had even studied abroad in the US or were planning vacations there in the coming months. The professor is even a visiting professor at Yale sometimes. I also dropped out of the Australia's Underworld and added Australia: Colonies to Nation. The professor for Underworld managed to make such an interesting topic incredibly boring, also a 4000 word paper was essentially 90% of the grade for the class. I decided that I didn't need such a boring and time consuming class while studying abroad. I also realized that neither of my Australian classes were about how Australia was formed. So I switched into a basic, entry level Australian history class.

Most of my free time this week has either been spent doing readings for class or watching How I met Your Mother with friends. Aside from those two activities though, I have done some other things.

Thursday night was North American dinner night at IH. The menu included spare ribs, chicken wings (not hot wings though), fajitas, poutine (some canadian dish consisting of fries, gravy and cheese. interesting) and pumpkin pie. Weird menu right? It ended up being quite mediocre, but most people had never had pumpkin pie here. Apparently its much more American than I thought. Megan, Claire, Adria and I got asked to represent America and do a little presentation on the good ole US of A. So we got together, and put a bunch of pictures of typical American places and activities and then talked a bit about them. We had pictures of college football games, prom, 4th of July fireworks, disney, harry potter land, FL beaches, and some random cities. Apparently people liked our presentation.

Friday night we had our first formal dinner at IH. This involved a speech from a former IH director (and wine and champagne) and then a formal dinner (with better food than usual and more wine on the tables). After the dinner was over, we all went back to our rooms to get ready for the first IH party: Welcome to the Jungle. When I say we all went back to our rooms, I mean that we actually all went to Libby's room to get ready. There were about 8 of us in the room all doing makeup, etc. Helping each other put fake eyelashes on, or turn each others eyes into peacock feathers, and some nail painting as well. Then Adria did my hair up in her room, because it was getting ridiculously crowded in Libby's room. The party was a lot of fun (they got bartenders and an open bar). I ended up going as a forest nymph. We had a lot of fun dancing, I ended up getting really tired and going to sleep around 2:30am.

Heres a picture of Claire, Adria and I from the party

Saturday was a pretty relaxing, lazy day. Everyone slept in pretty late after the party. That evening, a group of us went downtown to get sushi. I didn't think I liked sushi at all, but I went along anyways, because someone said that they had cooked food as well. I got there and decided that I wanted to try some sushi, since it has been years since I actually tried it. Megan and I ended up ordering a bunch of stuff and sharing. I tried eel and cream cheese rolls (one of my favorites actually), salmon rolls, crab rolls, tuna rolls, and grilled scallop rolls. It was actually really good! Afterwards we ended up getting dessert at McDonalds. This McDonalds was odd though, because it had a cafe (with pastries and cakes and cheesecakes) and had chandeliers inside. Craziness. I got a lamington, which is a popular dessert here. Its basically a sponge cake, covered in chocolate and rolled in coconut, very yummy!

Sunday, we took the ferry to Watsons Bay in the afternoon. It was so pretty! We hung out there for about 3 hours or so and ate fish and chips (and calamari rings) on the beach watching the sun set over the harbour. Very pretty! On the bus ride home, I realized that I could just stay on the bus, passing IH, and go straight to church. I made it just in time for the service. It was really nice, because almost everyone I had met last week remembered my name and were excited to see me. After the service I went along for coffee down the street and met some more people. Then I came back to IH to get some reading done.

Adria and I on top of a cliff at Watsons Bay overlooking the Pacific Ocean

Days 16-19

Thursday was pretty uneventful. I had one class, US Imperialism. Then I came back to the House and did some readings after lunch. After dinner a group of us went to happy hour at a bar in Newtown, Kuleto's, where they have 2-for-1 cocktails that are quite yummy. Then we came back to the House and played a billiard game called Snooker that was really long and kinda complicated. Then some ping pong. Then we watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

Friday, I woke up feeling quite sick with a nasty head cold. Luckily, I didn't have any classes, so I went to the Chemist (its what they call a pharmacy here) and got some cold meds and came back to my room to ready for class all day. Well, I would read an article, then take a quick nap, then read another article, then take another nap. That night, one of my friends hosted a party at the House. I didn't drink any, since I'm sick, I figured alcohol wouldn't help me get better. Everyone else there drank a good bit, they were all pretty funny for the most part. It was very interesting being the only sober one there, but it wasn't terrible. When everyone was leaving to go out to a club around midnight, I just went back to my room and went to sleep.

Saturday, I skyped the family for a bit in the morning after I woke up. A few of us went to the mall to get some ice cream and a planner (which they call a diary here). Watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother again (its a really funny show if you haven't seen it!). The House had a BBQ for dinner, so I went to that, it was interesting. All kebabs, no burgers or hot dogs at this BBQ, and their BBQ sauce here is really tomato based and kinda thin. After dinner we had the interfloor trivia night, which was unlike any trivia night I had ever been to. The last round was ridiculous, you had to run around the house to find the answers to the questions, then use those answers to decode other parts. My team eventually gave up because it wasn't worth it. After that was over, a few of us watched a few more episodes of How I Met Your Mother (are you noticing a pattern yet?).

Sunday, a few of us went to the Taronga Zoo. We had a bit of an adventure trying to get there. We planned on taking a bus to Circular Quay, then the ferry to the zoo. What actually happened was that we got on the wrong bus, which took us across the Harbour Bridge (which we didn't realize until we were already on the bridge) to North Sydney. We got off at the first stop and found a store to go in and ask the cashier how to get to the zoo. Turns out there was a bus that ran straight to the zoo from where we were. We got to the zoo and it was amazing! The weather was beautiful, clear and sunny. We got to see all of the Australia animals, we ran out of time to see the African animals, but thats ok because those are at every zoo. It's a gorgeous zoo, I'll post pictures of facebook in a little bit. After the zoo, I got back and got changed into church clothes. After dinner I went to an Anglican church in Newtown, about a mile or so from the House. I went over there with a friend of mine from the House. The service was interesting, very different from what I'm used to though. I think I'll try their morning service next week.. After the service we stopped for ice cream on the way home. Then we came back to the House and I did some reading before bed.

Heres a picture form the zoo:

The Asian tourist who took the picture for us was quite amused that we were standing in the bushes...

Days 13-15

Monday was the first day of classes! I only had one class, my english class, from noon-1pm. It wasn't really anything special. I did realize that when telling a fellow international student that you are taking an english class, it has to be specified that you are taking a literature class as opposed to a language class. I got some funny looks saying I was taking an english class. Anyways, there are supposed to be 100 people in the class, but only 40 showed up. The professor is American, and pretty funny. The building wasn't terribly hard to find, although it was in the Physics Building, and I did get there half an hour early. I keep overestimating the time it takes to get to classes here. The campus is pretty big, but somehow it really doesn't take all that long to get there. After classes, we were planning on going down to the Royal Botanical Gardens by the opera house, but it was raining. We went shopping instead. Theres this huge mall that is mostly underground in the middle of the CBD. We were walking around and it just kept going and going, and then ended in a train station. We didn't know about the train station at first, and we were really confused as to why there were so many people power walking through the mall. Then we saw signs for the train station and realized it was about 5pm, everyone was on their way home from work. We made it home in time for dinner. Gathered up a group of people after dinner and watched 4 episodes of How I Met Your Mother, which one of my friends bought whilst shopping.

Tuesday, I had my three history classes. Australia's Social History at noon (which I have a friend from the wine trip in with me), US Imperialism at 2pm (which I made a friend trying to find the room, because it was crazy hard to find, and theres another girl from the wine trip in the class as well!), and Australia's Underworld at 3pm (its supposed to go until 5, but since it was the first lecture, she let us go at 4pm). I like all of my classes and professors. That night, a group of us planned on going to the local movie theater to see Inception, which was harder to do than you'd think. The movies were selling out way in advance, so about 6 of us took initiative and collected money from people who wanted tickets and we ran down there (quite literally, actually) to the theater and bought all 15 tickets. We were there an hour and a half before the movie. In hindsight, we could've just gone back to the house, its only about three blocks away, but we didn't. We went downstairs to the 24hr KMart and bought candy and water bottles for the movie.This then started a debate over candy and different names (American vs. Britsh/Aussie)- Milky Way bars here don't have caramel, so they're basically a three muskateers bar. Mars bars are the equivalent to an American Milky Way (nougat and caramel). Twix bars have a different font on their packaging that looks weird. They don't have Hershey's here, only Cadbury (which admittedly is amazing). And they have lots of other odd candy and chocolate varieties. Then we stood outside the theater, because the movie in our theater wasn't ending until 9:10pm, and ours started at 9:20. Eventually, everyone else showed up to the theaters and we all went in and managed to get seats together (in a 3 row block). The movie was absolutely amazing and mind blowing! I want to go see it again just so I can pick up on all the tings I missed when watching it last night, kinda like Shutter Island.

Today, I had english and social history again. Nothing too exciting once again. Its been raining all day long. Not fun. I've gone through 3 pairs of shoes today (flip flops, boat shoes and ballet flats) and they're all still soaked. Today has been incredibly uneventful. Went to a pizza party with 3 other girls in Newtown. The pizza was pretty bad, but they gave out free trips to random places. One of the girls I was with won a weekend trip to Fisher Island, which is pretty cool. Then we walked all the way home in the rain. They're showing some Australian comedy movie in the house in a bit, I'll probably go check that out.

Today, I'll leave you with an interesting display in the electronics/dvd/music store in the mall:

Yes, that is 90210 and Sabrina the Teenage Witch under a New Releases sign...

Days 10-12

Friday was pretty relaxing. A group of us went to a BBQ on campus held by one of the organizations. There were sausages, but no hot dog buns, just pieces of bread. Then we went to Victoria Park (the park across the street from IH) with some people from the house and we fed the ducks. Feeding the ducks then led to feeding the pigeons and seagulls as well. The ducks got bored with our bread, so we ended up throwing an entire loaf of bread to the pigeons at the same time, it was crazy! We also ate fairy bread, which is apparently a huge hit at birthday parties of 5 year olds. Its white bread with butter and sprinkles on top, very interesting and strangely addicting. After we ran out of bread (and tried feeding the pigeons a bagel) we headed back to the house to chill a bit before our evening plans. We got dressed up and went downtown to Opera Bar (by the Opera House, go figure!), but we only stayed for 5 minutes because it was really expensive ($17 cocktails!). Then we walked over to th Rocks (the historic part of downtown) and got pancakes. They were almost dessert pancakes. I got one that was 2 pancakes with banana, walnuts, chocolate syrup, whipped cream and chocolate ice cream on top. So good! My feet were killing me by the end of the night, because I forgot that the heels I wore weren't very well broken in. I got about 6 blisters on my feet.

Saturday, a few of us went over to Glebe (an area close to campus) for a market. It was pretty cool, they had all sorts of stuff there from books to clothes to jewelery and food too. It was pretty similar to the Ft. Pierce farmers market actually, but with a little less food. Then I relaxed all afternoon. In the evening, we all got all dressed up to go out to a club in Darling Harbour, Home Bar, for my birthday. I wore my gold sequin dress, everyone else wore black (or dark colors) so that I stood out (which was not my idea). We had some drinks in the house before we left, and then took the bus down there. We left the house around 11pm or so and stayed at Home Bar until 3:30am. I went to sleep at 4:30am. It was a really fun night though. Everyone was buying me drinks and we were all dancing. it was all fun until my feet started killing me from my heels (and the blisters from friday night).

Today was my birthday!! I slept in until 11am. Talked to mom and dad on the phone. The got some lunch. After lunch, Claire and I decided to do some baking. We went to the grocery store (Coles) and managed to find everything we needed (which was harder than expected) and came back to the house to bake. We didn't have much that we needed. We bought brownie mix and yellow cake mix. We didn't have a mixing bowl, we scrounged up measuring cups, spoons, knives, and cooling racks. It was interesting. Then we ate dinner. Now I'm just waiting for movie night which is going to start shortly. It's been a pretty good and relaxing birthday. Classes start tomorrow, so I didn't want to do anything too crazy tonight!

Heres a picture from before we left the house Saturday night:

Addition: After I posted this, my door got knocked on by a large group of people from IH. It was door-knock night apparently. This means that a small group started on the 8th floor (top floor) knocking on ppls doors, giving them candy, playing music and taking pictures of them. Slowly, more people joined the group. By the time they got to my room on the 6th floor there was probably about 20 people. We knocked on every door, blasting music and eating candy the whole time. It was a lot of fun. There was probably 35 people or so by the time we got to the lobby. Then we went into the main room and Claire and I brought our "surprise" (the baked goodies we made)  out to share with everyone. Then they sang me happy birthday (again) and we all ate the goodies. They actually came out very well and everyone liked them and appreciated us baking and sharing. Then we watched Shutter Island, and it was the perfect weather for watching it as well- stormy. Then we discussed the movie, among other things, and now i'm about to go to sleep. It is no longer my birthday here in Sydney. It feels like my birthday went forever though :)

A Quick Study on Aussie Culture

I've got some time to kill before dinner, so I'll let you know some things I've learned about Australian culture, as well as international cultures.

• First things first, they drive on the wrong side of the road. I thought Americans were the only ones to drive on the right side, apparently its only the British commonwealth countries that drive on the left. 
• The toilets here really don't swirl one was or the other, the water just rushes out from all sides and then stops. 
• I asked one of the Aussies that lives in the house, and there is an Outback Steakhouse chain here as well!
• Burger King = Hungry Jacks. Some sort of copyright over here made it so BK couldn't be BK here. The whole menu is basically the same though, just a little smaller.
• Their beaches are weird. The longest one, Bondi, is only 800m long. The cliffs make long beaches (like FL) quite difficult, I guess.
• The people who are taught english by the british say 'zed' as opposed to 'z', it's not just the Canadians.
• "to book it" (ie I just booked it to get here on time) is a very odd phrase, but apparently some Brits use an  equally odd phrase for it: "to cheese it".
• Everything is really expensive. Like 2 to 4 times as much as in the states. (like $20 covergirl mascara...)
• Most shops close at 6 here, except on thursday when they stay open until 9pm. Coffee shops close at 4pm (except in the CBD).
• They listen to House music, which is very odd to Americans, but completely normal to all of the Europeans
• They use change frequently. I do not. They have bills from $5 and up, but theres a $2 coin, a $1 coin, $0.50 coin, $0.20 coin and $0.10 coin. The bills also look like monopoly money. They're quite practical though because each different amount is a different size and color. Your cant crease it or tear it and its waterproof. 
• Napkins = serviettes; and they don't use them much
•  Arvo = afternoon. Good on ya = good for you. Brekky = breakfast. Washing powder = laundry detergent (they don't have the liquid kind). 
• There's a party every night of the week.

And heres a picture of some of the people who are teaching me these things:

Days 7-9

Tuesday was full of more orientation sessions, including opening a bank account and getting the classes that they enrolled me in, based on the classes I put on my application. They enrolled me in almost all of the classes I put on the application as back up classes, none of the history classes I actually wanted. It wasn't a very interesting day at all really.

Wednesday, I had an orientation session for my internship, a sort or pre-interview interview. The two women who organize the study abroad internship program told me that they were putting me through to be interviewed for my first choice, its a project with the National Breast Cancer Foundation to help plan their annual event. I should have an interview for that sometime next week. When I got back to IH after the orientation, I falked through the foyer and a group of my friends were in there about to go to Chinatown and lunch. I joined them and we went to a yum cha restaurant (the kind where they walk around with all of the dishes and you pick what you want) which was really good. I also was using chopsticks, and I am quite terrible at using them. After lunch we walked to Darling Harbour and then through downtown and caught the bus back to IH. It was pretty fun, but pretty exhausting. In the evening, we went to a bar that held crab racing. They placed the hermit crabs in the middle of a circular table and the first ones to reach the outside won. There was also a hose involved, so we got pretty wet. It was so much fun though! After the crab racing, we went to a chocolate bar and got chocolate con churros, which was amazing!

Thursday, a group of us from the house took the bus to Coogee Beach and did a walk all the way to Bondi Beach (about 7km) over the cliffs. The beaches here are kinda weird for me because of the cliffs, the beaches seem so small. The longest beach we saw was Bondi and that wasn't even 1km. We passed 5 beaches on our walk. The downside was that it started raining on us partway through the walk. And even when it wasn't raining, it was overcast, cold and windy. The views were great though! When we got to Bondi, we got lunch at Hungry Jacks (which is Burger King here) and then took a bus to the train station, and then a train back to campus. When we got back, I went to the International Office to fix my schedule. I decided to only switch one class. I'm now register to take Australia's Social History, Australia's Underworld (a class on the infamous characters in Australia's history), Literature of Travel and Discovery (which I will drop if and when I get the internship) and the Culture and Politics of US Imperialism (which should be really interesting for me to be in the class, I might get spotlighted a bit in class).The I took a nap. That night, there was a party at Manning Bar (one of the bars on campus!) for all of the international students from 7-1am. We left the house around 9pm and went there and danced all night til they stopped the music at 1am. It was so much fun, although sometimes the music got a little odd. Thats only because they listen to a lot of House music here, like in Europe. When we went to the DJ and asked him for American hip hop, he started playing things from about 10 years ago, like "Country Grammar". Earlier in the night, the DJ played the Full House theme song which was incredibly odd. When they kicked us out at 1am, we went back to the house and just hung out til about 2am. Then sleep.

Heres a picture of me and Bondi Beach:

Days 3-6

Sorry it's been a few days, I meant to update this earlier, but I didn't have internet on campus until today.

Anyways, on Friday I went out to lunch with Dr. Benedict, her nephew, son, and 2 grandkids to a Singaporean/ Malaysian restaurant. That was interesting. I had no idea what any of the dishes were, so I found one that was chicken and rice and ordered that, it ended up being satay chicken if you were wondering. It was pretty good actually. Then back to Dr. Benedict's house to chill out a bit before dinner at her son's house. The food was delicious, he's an awesome cook and photographer. He's got all these amazing pictures of various things around his house. Then back to Dr. Benedict's house to pack up my suitcases. The plan at this time was to bring my suitcases to the International House in the morning before my trip and leave them there for the night, because I wasn't actually supposed to check in until Sunday. So I was going to pack an overnight bag to leave at the house, and then bring the rest to IH, so I wouldn't have to worry about it on Sunday morning.

Sunday morning rolls around, we left the house at about 7:15am and drove into the city. When we got to IH, the senior resident said that I could actually check in, even though I was a day early. So we brought my stuff up to my room (which ended up being the wrong room, no wonder the key didn't open the door!). I just left it in the room and went to meeting spot for my trip. The trip consisted of going to the Australian Reptile Zoo (which had more than just reptiles in it) and then to Hunter Valley for 3 wine tastings (I think they have 187 different wineries in Hunter Valley) and then to a pub and then back to Sydney, all in ~10 hours. There were 14 of us on the trip, we took a 15 passenger van to get there. It was a fairly international group, 5 Americans (3 from CA, 1 from NC, and me), 3 Dutch, 3 Norwegians, 2 Brits, and 1 Swiss. We all had a lot of fun. The zoo was great, we got to pet the animals. Koalas are lazy, they sleep in the tree and turn around to eat some eucalyptus leaves whenever they're hungry, and they're pretty soft with really thick fur. Kangaroos are soft as well, which I didn't expect, but their fur was like that of a rabbit. I also saw dingos (and some dingo pups!), wombats (there were 2 and they were cuddling, it was adorable!), wallabies (mini-kangaroos), pandemelons (mini-wallabies), emus, flying foxes (like a fruit bat), some platys (I still don't know the plural...and the display they were kept in was called a Platypusary) and some odd birds. The we stopped at a subway and picked up the subs we ordered. Then on to Hunter Valley! We went to 3 different wineries, McGuigans, Lendemans, and the Golden Grape. I think we ended up trying about 20 different wine (and wine based) drinks. Various white wines, red wines, dessert wines, and wine based liqueurs. My favorite winery was definitely McGuigans. I also learned that I prefer white wine over red wine, and that port is pretty good as well. The third winery, the Golden Grape, had more of the liqueurs that we tasted. The last one he had us taste was called Dragon's Breath. He told us that we ad to all take it as a shot together. He poured a shot into each one of our glasses and then counted to three and we all drank it. It was terrible! It's chili schnapps. My mouth and throat was on fire! Someone should have taken a video of everyones' reactions right after we all drank it. Everyone was coughing and sputtering. A few people bought a small bottle of it, mainly as a gag gift, I don't think any of them planned on drinking it themselves. Then we went to a pub in Wollombi, and tried their version of jungle juice (a type of port, I think) and hung out for about an hour watching the sun set. There were some drunken locals there as well that were amusing, and they were quite amused by our foreignness. Then we had the long drive (about 2.5hrs) back to Sydney. I walked back to IH and got my room situated (I found the right room). Then the senior resident who checked me in that morning came up and knocked on my door and apologized for leading me to the wrong room, and then he showed me around the building and where everything was. The I crashed and went to sleep.

Sunday, I woke up at about 7:30am and went down to breakfast and met 2 girls there, they were really nice. One of them gave me directions on how to get to the shopping center (aka a mall, but they call them shopping centers here), which is only a few blocks from IH. I went over there, they have a Target, a 24hr KMart, 2 grocery stores, and a bunch of other, normal mall-type stores (clothing stores, candy shops, cell phone stores, food court, etc). I got there at about 9am and the Target wasn't open yet, so I went to KMart. They also have these funny ramp escalators here. Its like the love child of an escalator and a moving sidewalk, and I lose my balance every time I step on one. I did my shopping and then carried it back to my room. Finished putting my clothes, etc away and then read a bit. When I went down to lunch, I got my food and was sitting down at a table where 3 other girls were already eating. I was sitting down when I realized that one of the girls was Claire, the other Tulane student staying at IH. After lunch, they were going shopping at the same place I was in the morning, so I just stayed in IH and read a book up on the rooftop (which has really great views of the city!) and then they came back and we took a bus down to circular quay and went to the opera house (the three of them hadn't been yet). It was sunset by the time we got there, which was really pretty. There were a lot more people there than when I went on Thursday morning last week. The sun sets really early right now as well, because its winter. Its completely dark by 6pm now. We made it back to IH in time for dinner, and met up with another friend, Cameron. The five of us ate dinner and then walked around the building. A few people in the group hadn't seen some of the nifty rooms in the building. We went up to the computer lab and then played a game of pool (My team won, but only because of Cameron, no thanks to me!).

Today started the orientation activities (O-Week). We had various sessions all morning, with morning tea and lunch thrown in there too. I finally got the sim card that I ordered for my phone this afternoon at lunch (there were a ton of tables in the room, one of them was my new cell phone provider, along with the athletic center, the student union, the international office, and a ton of other things). Then I went to the library and got my UniKey so that I can access the university internet stuff. Once I got my Unikey, I was able to set up wireless on my laptop, which wasn't hard at all. I just got back from dinner. There's a party going on downstairs a little later that I think I'm going to attend. Should be fun! Round 2 of O-Week tomorrow!

I'll leave you with a picture of me and a 9yr old koala named Oscar.

Flight + Days 1-2

The flight was long, but pretty uneventful. They gave us 3 meals throughout the flight, they weren't terrible for the most part. The plane was huge- 2 floors and 10 seats in each row. I slept through all of the movies they showed, Date Night, How to Train Your Dragon and some other movie I'd never heard of, but I did get to watch an episode of Big Bang Theory! Customs wasn't as bad as I expected, and it moved very quickly. Baggage claim took forever, but all of my luggage made it to Sydney! My flight landed at 6:30am-ish, so I had the whole day ahead of me still.

The shuttle driver was very nice and brought me right to Dr. Benedict's house. Dr. Benedict is a relative of one of my best friends from home. When I left the airport, the weather wasn't looking so great- overcast, cold and rainy- but it got better as we drove and it was sunny by the time I got to the house in one of the suburbs. I ate some breakfast, showered and then ran some errands with Dr. Benedict and her nephew. Her grandkids came over in the afternoon, and they were hilarious. A 5 year old boy and a 7 year old girl, cute kids. Then dinner and an early bed time.

Today, I woke up at 6:45am to get dressed and ready so that I could take the bus into the city with Gayan (Dr. Benedict's son who works in the city). Once we got off the bus in the city, Gayan pointed me in the direction of the Harbour and continued on to work. I wandered my way through the streets towards the Harbour, feeling pretty out of place surrounded by the business people in their dark suits and briefcases. I was glad I went early though, because it meant that I had less crowds to deal with outside the Opera House. I took so many pictures of the Opera House and the Bridge, it's slightly ridiculous! The I walked through The Royal Botanical Gardens which were really pretty, and saw the Government House which is inside the gardens. Then I walked around Circular Quay to The Rocks area. The Rocks is a really old, really cool part of town. The up to the Bridge, I didn't walk the whole way across (its a long bridge!), but I did walk part of it. Then up and down George St (one of the main roads through the CBD). Then over to Darling Harbour, which was pretty neat. Then I got tired and trekked my way back near George St. to catch the bus to go back to suburbia. When I got back to the house around 3:30pm, I crashed and took a 4hr nap.
Overall, it was a pretty spectacular day!