Pictures you've been waiting for

Walk By myself

Me, Krysti, Sam

Us playing Flippy Cup. The guy in the front just recently got mugged and ended up in the ER. Scary!!

The path I walked up on my walk

Beautiful

Us girls at Syndey at the Mexican Restaurant

Merewether Beach

Jody and Nate on our walk to Merewether Beach

And us girls

On the way back. It was soo bright

Us in Sydney

The boat show.. not quite like Duluth.

We saw a real jelly fish in the ocean!!

The Opera House

Krysti, Nicole and I again at Cafe Pacifico

Keepin' Busy

G’Day everyone. Haha

So once again, it’s been a while. And once again, a lot has happened. I’ll start with last night. Dad, you’d be proud if me on this one (not). All of my roommates and I were doing history papers last night because they are due tomorrow so all our computer were plugged in. Mine wasn’t because I was at the table and the powerpoints were taken. My computer started to die and I had some good websites up for information so I went to plug it in. Well the next thing I knew flames shot out of the outlet and the whole apartment went completely black. I hit the main circuit I guess and blew out the whole apartment. Haha. The switches in our circuit breaker box weren’t working so we had to call the company that owns the villas. Oops. Us girls decided to go to Mackers and get some ice cream and sure enough the power was back on when we got back. But yeah, I almost burnt down the apartment.

Two weekends ago after Nicole sprained her ankle a group of us went to the beach to play beach volleyball. It was so fun. We played about 5 games and the bruises on my hand are just starting to go away. I guess I have no technique. It was a really nice day tho and the beach was gorgeous so it was well worth it. After our games we went to Harrys. It’s a little place on wheels and they have meat pies (an Australian specialty – very similar to pot pies at home). Also, they are the only place in Australia that sell REAL hotdogs. The other ones here are basically sausage sticks. Weird.

The next day a group of us went for a walk to Merewhether Beach. There was a juniors surf competition going on. It was a really long walk there, we had to pass Bar Beach. That’s past Nobbys and Newcastle Beach so it was a good distance. It was so sweet tho! We saw about 30 dolphins riding the waves that the surfers were on! They would jump out of the water and flip! I have some pictures but I haven’t taken them off my camera. I actually have to go to the hub tonight to print my history paper so I will get those pictures up in a few hours!

Other than that, this past few weeks have been really weird. There is this thing called culture shock that almost everyone goes through. Its basically a U curve on a graph and when you arrive to a new culture you are at the top of the curve and super excited. You are ready to meet new people and see new things. Then as time goes on (in our case a month to two months) you slowly make your way down the curve. Everyone is crabby with each other. We all miss our friends from home and families. We just miss everything about home. Now as the weeks continue, we are going to be on our up slope of the U curve and by the time we leave we will be at the top and not ready to go home. So then once we get home we go through it again because it’s a new culture. It’s actually quite interesting. It kind of sucks tho.

Well a week and a half ago I was having a really bad day. Everyone was mad at each other in the house and it was a nice day. I was convinced by Tony to go on a walk by myself. He said he does it in Boston all the time and he loves it so that’s what I did. I ended up going to some shops and walked all the way down to Newcastle beach. Then up a huge path (up a big hill) to see most of Newcastle and the ocean. It was so beautiful. I brought my creative writing assignment and finished it up there. Then listened to some Beatles and walked home. It was so refreshing and I’ve basically been looking at the upside of things since then.

This weekend is going to be a blast. My roommates and I are going to Sydney with Catherine. It’s part of our class so its already paid for (except for food). We leave Friday morning and hang out in Sydney. We plan on taking Catherine out to eat at a nice restaurant. Then we get up early Saturday morning to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb! It’s so famous here and it’s quite expensive (but its included so that’s nice)! It’s a 3 hour tour and we basically get harnessed and they take us up in groups. We get to see all of Sydney and the Opera House is going to be right in front of us. The sad thing is that we don’t get to bring our cameras but we could get a picture taken of our group at the top. So we’ll see. It might be worth it. After that we are either going to the Taronga Zoo or the Aquarium. I’ll let you know how Sydney turns out!

Parties, tattoos, sun rises, and sprained ankles!

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I last wrote. I still haven't gotten to the hub to put pics up. I might try to load them one at a time here in the apartment tho. Well the past week and a half has been nothing but eventful. For starters, the beginning of last week wasn't anything special.. just school and homework. Then Thursday I got a tattoo (sorry dad) in the middle of my upper back. I love it! Then, this past weekend one of our roommates decided to go out of town. The rest of us wanted to throw a party in our place to show that we could have fun without the other one. haha

Well we started out playing a game of circle of death. That's always a good one to start with. Throughout the whole night, someone had the genius idea of playing the coin game. That is when someone drops a coin in your drink without you seeing it, you have to finish what is in your cup. I got lucky, I only got it twice and everyone was so drunk by that point that I didn't finish it either time. ooops. haha. While this was going on, our Aussie friend that lives downstairs, Justin, was having a party of his own. When he only had 15-20 guys left at his place, he came up to ours with his friends. haha there was about 30-40 people in our tiny apartment that night.

When everyone got there we decided to play about 10 rounds of Flippy Cup. I didn't have too much to drink then either but it was fun! The 4 girl roommates all went in on Baileys and Guinness for Irish carbombs (we skipped the whiskey cuz its so expensive) but i had about 1 of those! Needless to say, my roommate and our guy friend ended up throwing up EVERYWHERE!!! Everyone else left and Nicole, Jody and I stayed back to clean and take care of them. Both just so happened to miss the bathroom multiple times. My room smelled like puke for 4 days! and that was using carpet cleaner twice, and deoderizer, and bleach in the bathroom. YUCK! Well Nicole and I had to leave. We were sobered up by the time we left because we were so mad. But we couldn't sleep in a puke filled house. We met our other roommate at the bar (well outside.. she got kicked out haha) and walked to our friend Jacks house.

Jacks roommates were having their own party. Krysti passed out on the couch. Nicole, Ethan, Jack, and I tried to sleep... for about 45 minutes. Around 5 am us four decided to watch the sunrise over the ocean. We left around 5:30 not realizing how cold it actually was. It was about a 20 minute walk each way! It was so worth it tho! It was beautiful!!! We got back around 7:30 to Jacks place and crashed til 10:30. We walked home and cleaned the rest of the day.

Finally, this week I have been doing nothing but homework. I have 3 papers due in the next 3 weeks. So today after Creative Writing, Nicole and I went to the library. After checking out books for our history class we were leaving when she slipped down the stairs! We left about 3:30 to catch the 4 train back to the city. No... security picked us up and drove us to the health and services building. The doctor looked at it and in the morning I am going with Nicole to get Xrays taken. They think she pulled a tendon. We didn't get back until 6:30. We couldn't make it to the train and didn't have enough money for a taxi so Catherine had to come pick us up and bring us home. It's been quite the week.

Also, today I took a few pictures of the campus. It's literally in a jungle. Haha. It's so pretty tho, especially when it's sunny out.

Weekend in Sydney

I will start with Autonomy Day. It really wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Kind of boring actually. You really need to be in the mood to drink and with a mishap from a roommate the night before the rest of us roommates weren’t ready. I had a bottle of Passion Pop ($4 bottle of champagne.. mix with orange juice and you are golden) and a can of beer (also $4). I was done drinking about noon and just relaxed at the apartment with Nicole the rest of the day. Later that night Nate (my roommate) had friends over but it wasn’t too bad.

Other than that, this past week has been pretty mellow. My roommates went out Wednesday night but I decided to stay in. Friday however, we decided to go o Sydney for the weekend. Sam, Nate, Nicole, Krysti, and I got a hostel (a place for students to stay in while backpacking or just traveling for cheap -- $27 per night – and that was a nice one) and stayed 2 nights. It’s mainly for students because the bedrooms are a lot like dorms. There were 4 bunks in my room (8 beds). It was really cool though because there was the Side Bar downstairs and a café where we ate breakfast. Also, there was a couch lounge with a big flat screen TV and a mini kitchen where you can cook your own food if you didn’t want to pay to eat out every night. Some people stay for weeks at a time. It was a really good experience and I would definitely stay in one again.

Friday night we arrived by train (it only cost us $18 each to get on a 3 hour train ride that goes straight from Newcastle to Sydney). We booked our room and then went to eat at a place called burgerlicious. It is supposed to be the #1 American Burger joint. We were all craving juicy burgers because it’s been a month since any of us has had it. If any of you who are reading this decide to come to Australia, don’t try the burgers. Definitely not American. They are disgusting. After that we went to the Side Bar for a few drinks and then went to bed.

Saturday morning we woke up and got ready. We walked approximately 7-8 miles throughout the day. We walked to Darling harbor which was absolutely beautiful. There was a boat show going on and the boats here aren’t like the boats you see at the DECC boat shows. They were all in the harbor and were yachts. Huge yachts. After walking around we walked to the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It’s a very famous bridge that people pay about $185 to climb it. Once on top you can see all of Sydney and it’s right in front of the Opera House. I get to do that later with my roommates and Catherine, the onsite program coordinator. It’s going to be amazing. We walked around the shops in the Rocks and Market City and Chinatown. We eventually made it back to the hostel to get all dressed up and go out to a fancy Mexican dinner at Café Pacifico. We walked there and all got Mexican Sangrias. Delicious. I ordered a Chimichanga (of course—for those of you who eat Mexican with me) and it had a bit of cinnamon in it so it was just sweet enough (so good!!) and got rice and beans. Before we got our food super loud music started up and we ended up getting free shots of Tequila for everyone in the restaurant. The chaser was different. It was tomato juice with tobasco sauce. Haha that was fun. After that, there was music going the rest of our meal so it was like one big party. We had a great time and spent about 2 hours there. Afterwards, we went back to the side bar and everyone danced the night away except Nate and I (we were too full to move so we sat outside under some heaters). Ended up going to bed around 2:30 and woke up at 8:30 to pack our stuff up and head out. We shopped a little bit more and then took the train back to Newcastle. The rest of Sunday night we just hung out and relaxed. The weekend was amazing and I hope mom and dad and britt get to make it out here so I can share this experience with them.

Again, I am in the apartment with slow internet so as soon as i can make it to the hub I will to post pictures of this past weekend!! =]