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!