I just got back to Sydney after an incredible weekend up in Cairns.

The girls and I flew to Cairns Thursday night and checked in to a pretty nice hostel. It was raining pretty hard when we first arrived, but luckily the weather didn’t have much of an impact on any of our activities. On Friday, while everyone else was going whitewater rafting, I decided to head over to the AJ Hackett bungy jumping site. When I first got there, I had to wait about 15-20 minutes while they prepared the ropes, and in the meantime they showed me where the bar was in case I needed some liquid courage. I didn’t think alcohol would go over well at the time, so I just waited it out. During the long walk up to the platform I must have asked myself what the fuck I was doing at least 30 times… my heart was pounding by the time I got up there. They strapped me in and wrapped a towel around my ankles, and then I had to waddle out to the platform… at which point I was kind of like “wait you want me to do what to get myself down from here??”. They kept telling me to look over and smile at the camera, but I think I would have preferred to throw up instead. Just after stepping off of the platform I was absolutely convinced I had just jumped to my death. Convinced. It was terrifying. Right after the initial drop, you kind of bounce back up, twist around, fall some more, and then you repeat that cycle three or four times. It was crazy at first, but then you actually get to enjoy the rush. I was able to relax a little bit, and it felt incredible. They finally brought me down into a raft, and I think my body was in shock for a good ten minutes after the jump. I don’t think the magnitude of what I had just done really sunk in at first, but throughout the rest of the day I just got very calm and relaxed… I guess in comparison to the jump, nothing else could have much of an effect on me.

After I got back from the bungy site, I was ready to be picked up for my tour of the Great Barrier Reef. The tour company messed up the pick-up time, so I ended up having to take a taxi to the helicopter launch site. This normally would have made me really stressed out, but like I said, after the bungy I was just kind of like “no worries, it’s fine” for the rest of the day. The helicopter flight over the reef was beautiful. We saw some turtles, and the different colors of the water were amazing to look at from up above. Then the helicopter landed on a tiny little platform in the water, and we were picked up by a cruise ship. I went on a submarine ride and got some nice pictures of the coral and lots of fish. The cruise was very peaceful, and I really didn’t want it to end. While on board, I decided that I want to make it my goal to visit the other 6 wonders of the world. It might take me a while, but hopefully I will get to see them all someday.

The next day, Marie and I set off on our trip up to Cape Tribulation, which is about 2 and a half hours north of Cairns. Our tour bus stopped first at a nice wildlife sanctuary, where we got to see some cassowaries, koalas, crocodiles, and plenty of little joeys! They gave us a free “breakfast with the birds” which was nice because we hadn’t eaten anything yet. Well, it didn’t take long for the birds to decide they were hungry too. They attacked our table and feasted on what had been some really delicious croissants. I tried to get the food away from them, but they won in the end. Bastards.

After the wildlife sanctuary, they took us to Mossman Gorge, and we went for a cruise along the Daintree River, which is home to several hundred crocodiles. They told us plenty of nice, comforting stories like how just six weeks ago a little boy got eaten by a crocodile along the river. We didn’t get to see many ourselves because they said it was a little too cold for the crocodiles to want to come out of the water, but I was surprisingly all right with that. After the cruise we drove for a little while longer and finally made it to Cape Tribulation. Our hostel was directly in the rainforest, and they don’t have power lines up in that area, so we lost electricity several times throughout our stay there. We went on a nightwalk through the rainforest that evening, but we didn’t see much. There were plenty of spiders and lizards, but nothing very exciting beyond that.

Sunday morning we got up bright and early for a morning horse ride along the beach. I had never been on a horse before so it was a bit interesting at first… I felt like I was going to fall off, and I would have agreed to go bungy jumping again in a second if it meant I could get out of the horseback riding! I settled in pretty quickly though, and it ended up being a lot of fun! My horse’s name was Morgan… he was kind of a jerk to the other horses, and he kept trying to bite and kick some of them. He was good for riding though, and he only tried to take me into one tree so we get along pretty well. We rode for about 2 and a half hours, and the scenery was beautiful, but I was definitely sore after the ride was over.

In the afternoon, we went on a jungle surfing tour. I had been looking forward to this ever since we booked it way back in January, so I was very excited. For jungle surfing, you basically climb up a tall platform, and then they attach you to a series of ziplines that bring you down. It starts out a little slow, but then you go down a really long zipline, and they stop you right above the water so it was pretty cool to look down and see your feet dangling. Then they send you down really quickly, and you really start to feel like you are flying between the trees. The final zipline was the best because they flip you upside down and then send you flying. I wasn’t scared to do any of it, but I’m not sure if that was because it just wasn’t that scary or because the bungy jumping had made me fearless. One woman in our group was crying though, so maybe I’m just an adrenaline junky. Who’s to say? It was an awesome experience, and I doubt I will ever do anything quite like it again.

We returned to Cairns that night, and flew back to Sydney early this morning. Best Easter weekend ever.

Some of my favourite commercials here in Australia…

So I’m sitting here at work, and I just saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in my entire life.

Fuck you Australia.

It’s hard to believe the semester has gone by so quickly. I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to here and then some, plus I still have an amazing trip to Cairns to look forward to and a trip to the Blue Mountains with Kelly next weekend. I have no regrets about coming to Sydney for the semester, and I feel like being here has helped me with a lot of things. My friends from home have been great. I got a really nice package from Chris and Amy, and my conversations with everyone else back home have been full of pleasant surprises. As much as I miss everyone, I know they’re happy for me, and I know they’ll be there when I get back. They haven’t made me feel guilty at all for coming, and they’ve been encouraging me to keep doing amazing things while I’m here. There’s really only been one disappointment, but in reality, it should have just been expected, and I guess I’m glad I have my closure once and for all. Besides, I have something so much better to look forward to once I get back So to all my friends back home – thanks for being so great! I miss you, but I will be seeing you very soon, and we will get to celebrate my 21st birthday!!!

But anyway let me get back to what I’ve been up to lately- I’m still in Sydney after all! Yesterday we decided to finally go check out Luna Park. The creepy face of the entrance-way had been lurking in the background of our Opera House pictures for so long, and now it was finally time to go see what it was all about.

Admission to the park is free, but then they have really confusing price packages for the rides. Xu and I decided to go inside this area they called Coney Island. The only rides we could really go on in there were these 3 giant slides that you went down in sacks. It sounds like a basic carnival attraction, but they really made it into a professional set-up, with Xu wondering what the hell kind of company would specialize in making Australia’s finest slide sacks.

We felt special because we were able to ride the slide for the “tall kids” that was basically a vertical plummet that caused me to scream like a small child. We had a lot of fun, even though Xu kept wondering why she didn’t have enough momentum to get all the way to the end. It’s physics Xu… just physics!

After Coney Island, we met up with the rest of the girls and went for a ride on the ferris wheel. The weather was great, so we really picked the perfect day to come to Luna Park, and we basically saw weddings-galore as we spun around on the ferris wheel. I think we counted at least eight weddings, and they all wanted their pictures taken with the Opera House in the background. Can’t say I blame them.

We ended our trip with a ride on the carousel. Xu insisted on riding on the horse with the bizarre lion’s mouth across his chest. I was torn between a pony and the sole rooster amongst them…. needless to say, I picked the rooster.

As we were leaving, Lisa and Anna got their picture taken with these frightening characters. If I were a little kid, these things would scare the hell out of me.

But that’s Luna Park for you.

Once we got back across the harbour, we went out for our highly anticipated dinner at Pancakes on the Rocks. We had a little trouble finding the place, and when we thought we were close, we asked a local how to get the rest of the way there to which he responded: “Oh you’re heaps and heaps away!” After some more searching, we found a guy with a shirt that said “Pancakes on the Rocks” across the back, and we decided to follow him. We were really hoping he was a waiter on his way back to work instead of finishing his shift and heading home, and we were in luck! At this point we were starving, and we were really hoping our pancakes would meet up to expectations. They did.

We all had amazing meals, and it was by far the best breakfast food any of us had had in a long time. It was epic.

Tonight I went to see “The Best of the West End” at the Opera House. It was basically a symphony concert in which they played songs from Broadway musicals. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed something so much that involved so many violins before, so it turned out to be an amazing night. They played some songs from Phantom of the Opera, the Lion King, Cats, Hairspray, Jesus Christ Superstar, and several others that I wasn’t as familiar with. I wasn’t really sure what to expect for the inside of the Opera House, and I had heard some not so great things about it, but it was actually really cool. The theatre we were in was kind of set up in a circle, and we were actually sitting behind the performers. We were in the first row behind them though, so we talked to the drummer a little bit, and it’s not like you really need to see all that much during an orchestra concert. I got yelled at once again for trying to take pictures. I kinda figured we weren’t supposed to be taking pictures in there, but I didn’t really care. They were at least nicer about it than the guy was in Melbourne during Wicked. My shoes were ridiculously loud on the stairs inside the Opera House, much to the amusement of my friends. I tried to blame the acoustics, but I don’t think anyone was going for that. I even surprised myself with just how much noise they were making… I wasn’t really stomping my feet or anything either so I don’t know how they managed to be SO loud. Rachel’s comment of the night: “No wonder why the Opera House is starting renovations soon, your shoes sound like elephants going through here!”

I'm guessing Becky wasn't really prepared for this picture

In other news, my internship is going pretty slowly. I’m supposed to be making plans for their centenary celebration next year, but they don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get things done, and they keep telling me that I will have work to do soon. The people there are really nice, so that has been good, but the only real work I have done so far involved stuff with their archives so it’s a bit like I’m working at HGARC all over again…. oy.

On St. Patrick’s Day some of us decided to finally check out Scruffy Murphy’s despite being warned by one of our program directors that it is only for “derelicts and hookers” and my roommate’s warning that I would “get glassed in the eye” if I went. Scruffy’s has a bit of a reputation in Sydney for being a violent, trashy bar. The city put special laws in place because of some of the things that have gone on at Scruffy Murphy’s. With that said, we wanted to go because it’s an Irish bar, it was St. Patrick’s Day, and we just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Well, it turned out to be awesome! The upstairs level was kind of the Scruffy’s I had envisioned… there was really bad karaoke, random and seemingly irritated drag queens (I think they were annoyed at how bad the karaoke was), and lots and lots of drunk Irish people. The downstairs level is where we spent the majority of the night. They played some awesome American music, with my two favorite songs of the night being Jump Around and Gangsta’s Paradise. We didn’t stay very long out of fear of eventually being glassed in the eye and because we all had to go to work in the morning, but we definitely want to go back at some point.

Tomorrow I’m going to be spending the day relaxing on the beach. It’s a rough life I know.

Cheers!

I’m really catching up on my blogs all of a sudden… four posts in one day. I doubt this will ever happen again.

I’ve noticed a lot of unusual, strange, and some kind of cool things since being here in Australia. I’ll start with the good things…

1. There’s no tipping here – can I just say how much I love this please. If you try to pay extra at a restaurant they just give the money back to you because it’s like they don’t know what to do with it. Once I get back to Boston I’ll probably forget to leave tips for a while, and I’ll just seem like a jackass.

2. $2 coins – I love, love, love these! They are so amazingly convenient. I really wish we had them back in the States.

3. 30 cent ice cream at McDonalds – with the exchange rate, that’s basically free. The ice cream is pretty good too. Even if it weren’t, it’s 30 cents.

4. The beaches – Bondi in particular is amazing. I don’t go to the beach very often back in the US, but if the beaches there were more like the ones here, maybe I would.

5. Aussie lingo – the phrases they use are awesome. No worries, good on ya, how are you going, and no dramas are my favorites, but I’m sure there are plenty of others that I will come across as well.

6. The friendliness – not to say that people in Boston are rude…. but people here are just so nice. Everyone is very laid back and willing to help you if you are unsure about something. They just seem very approachable, which isn’t always the case with people back home.

7. Non-deadly animals – the kangaroos, koalas, emus, wombats, dingoes, and platypusses aren’t likely to kill you, and they’re really cool to see.

8. Aussie sports – Australians are obsessed with sports. Aussie rules football is interesting to watch, but cricket kind of sucks. They also love their tennis, and they go crazy for the Olympics. Australia and Greece are the only two countries that have attended every Olympic Games.

Now for some of the odd things…

9. Our beds are on wheels – it might not seem that bad, but let me tell you, it gets annoying. Especially if your bed is next to a metal railing.

10. Bats and cockroaches – I’m actually at the point where I’m not startled by cockroaches anymore. In Boston I would freak out, but here they’re so common that I don’t even care anymore. There are tons of bats here too. I haven’t gotten incredibly close to them, but it’s still a little creepy to see them flying overhead.

11. Skin cancer – Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer per capita. I can’t say I’m all that surprised. I got very badly sunburned when I first got here. It has turned into a nice tan now, but I can see how living here would inevitably lead to skin cancer.

12. They don’t give cute names to their drinks – I tried to order a screwdriver, and they thought I was crazy. They just call it a vodka and orange juice. Where’s the fun in that? Some places know what a sex on the beach is but not all of them.

13. Aussie guys are really persistent – and overly friendly. It takes some getting used to at the clubs. They really just don’t give up.

14. They don’t refrigerate eggs – maybe it’s not a big deal… but it seems weird. They just have eggs in the regular aisles in the food store. It bothers me for some reason.

15. Deadly creatures – out of all the deadliest creatures in the world, most of them are from Australia. Snakes, jellyfish, spiders, sharks, crocodiles- you name it. If something attacks you here, you’ll probably die. It’s a comforting thought.

Although Sydney and Boston don’t seem all that different to me, there are some things I miss from back home…

1. The T – I didn’t appreciate the T enough when I was in Boston. Yes it may be loud, run late, and be packed with lost tourists trying to get to Fenway, but I miss it!  The bus system in Sydney really can’t compare. The buses don’t have route maps on them, and they don’t announce any stops. On the T I always knew which stop I was at and if not, I had the soothing “next stop government center” or “the destination of this train is boston college” being played over the loud speaker to remind me. I miss my charlie card too.

2. Driving on the right side of the road – I’ve almost gotten used to crossing the street now, but there are still times where I almost get hit by cars because I forget which way to look for them. I’ll probably have trouble re-adjusting to normalcy in Boston too… I guess I’ll just have to run everytime I need to cross the street and hope for the best.

3. Fast internet – the internet here SUCKS. It sometimes takes twenty minutes for a page to load. Forget about emailing pictures to people or watching anything on youtube.  I don’t understand how people here can put up with this crap.

4. Breakfast – the cooking facilities here are very limited, and I never have time in the mornings to go out for a nice breakfast. I can’t cook french toast or pancakes or anything like that. I don’t even have a good pot to cook eggs in. It kinda sucks.

5. Orange juice – I have tried four different brands of OJ here, and none of them taste very good. It’s not that they just taste different from what I’m expecting… they actually taste bad. It’s very unfortunate.

6. Preservatives – yes, preservatives. They go so unnoticed at times, but when you don’t have them in your food, especially your breads, you tend to pick up on it. My bagels got moldy after just two days because apparently Australians have something against preservatives.

7. Individually wrapped muffins and bagels – the smallest quantity I can buy them in is always a four pack. Sometimes I just want one damn bagel… especially since they get moldy so quickly. That shouldn’t be such a hard request.

8. Calorie information – I don’t know how many calories there are in a kilojoule. I just don’t. And when I’m standing in the middle of the food store trying to decide whether or not to buy something, I’m really not in the mood to do some conversions.

9. TV shows starting at normal times – A lot of hour-long shows here start on the half-hour. That in itself isn’t that weird, but LOST is supposed to start at 10:30 on Wednesday nights, but it usually comes on around 10:37. Not sure why.

10. Income – I really miss being able to work. I’ve been spending so much money on travel, and I don’t have any income to balance it out. My tax refund was nice, but I wish I were able to work so I could at least be making some money every week.

11. Fitrec – I bought a gym membership here at the University of Sydney, but it’s not quite the same as Fitrec. Hopefully this summer I will get re-acquainted.

12. Personalized ring tones – The ring tone I have on my phone here is kind of cute, but I miss being able to tell who’s calling me just by the sound.

13. American sports – I missed the end of football season, and I’ll miss the beginning of baseball season. Cricket is the most ridiculous sport ever. I seriously need to be back near Fenway.

I’ll be home soon though

My flight to Alice Springs was interesting. They only had one option for a movie, and alas, it was Twilight. Oh Twilight. I decided to watch it so I could see what all the fuss was about. Well, for the entire first half of the movie, I couldn’t figure out whether or not Edward Cullen was supposed to have down syndrome, or if that had been just an added effect. I also just loved the logic in the movie… Edward: “I’ve killed people before” Bella: “I don’t care.” Edward: “I really want to kill you.” Bella: “It doesn’t matter, I love you.” What??? He basically wants to eat her, and she’s fine with it??? What the hell kind of movie is this?!?

Anyway, once I got off the plane I met up with Owen and Lyle, and we headed over to the hostel. This was my first hostel experience, and it wasn’t actually that bad, but I didn’t really want to stay in the room for long either so we went to explore Alice Springs. There is nothing to do in Alice Springs. Not a thing. On one street corner you can see about a dozen aboriginals yelling at each other and on the next corner there’s just a swarm of flies or a random dog running around. That’s it. We tried to catch a nice view of the sunset, but even that was obscured by the clouds so we really had absolutely nothing to do. We left for our tour the next morning, and our first stop was Kata Tjuta.

Kata Tjuta was beautiful, and the weather was great for us. It had rained a few days earlier, which I guess is very rare for the area, and that’s probably why we had such good temperatures. I had expected it to be unbelievably hot. The flies were overwhelming though so we all had to be incredibly attractive fly nets to wear over our heads. This made all of the hiking very interesting. Imagine hiking through the Outback with a big bag over your head. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? At one of the stops along the way, we were given the opportunity to go on short camel rides. It was really cool, but I don’t think I could have handled any ride longer than like five minutes because they aren’t exactly the most comfortable animals to ride. That night we went to see the sunset at Uluru, and then later on we camped out under the stars in sleeping bags and swags. I was a little nervous about something biting and killing me because Australia has an abundance of deadly creatures out in the desert, but the campsite was pretty safe. The sky was beautiful, and I fell asleep watching shooting stars above me. It was great.

We had to get up at 4:30 the next morning in order to see the sunrise at Uluru. It was really pretty, but I was almost too tired to appreciate it. We spent the day touring the Uluru area, and I did the walk around the base. The Aboriginal people try to discourage people from climbing the rock because I guess it’s a sacred site, but Owen and a few others climbed anyway. It probably would’ve been cool to climb, but the climb itself looked incredibly dangerous. About 35 people have died doing it because there aren’t really any footholes and it’s pretty steep. So I think I’m glad I didn’t do it because of that, in addition to the fact that my soul is also free of aboriginal cursing.

After Uluru we drove to King’s Canyon. I decided to sleep outside again because it had been so nice the night before, but I woke up around 3:30am because I was freezing, and there was a pack of dingoes howling nearby. We hiked King’s Canyon for about 3 and a half hours that morning, and it was absolutely wonderful. I mean, if I had tripped, I probably would have died, but luckily I didn’t. I think the hike was about 7 km, but thankfully it wasn’t very hot at that point in the day so it was enjoyable.  We headed back to Alice Springs that night, where this time at the hostel I was put in a room with seven guys. Seven. Owen was one of them, but still… seven guys and me. It was weird.

We met a lot of great people on the tour. Most of them were German, and a few were British. Not a lot of Americans seem to travel in this area. I don’t know if I could handle the backpacking lifestyle, but after talking to some of them, I am giving a lot more thought to trying to spend time in other countries. I want to improve my foreign language skills, so I am going to start looking into programs in Spain I think. I might as well make some use of the seven years of Spanish I’ve taken. I don’t know when I’d find time to do this, but it has given me a lot to think about at least. Overall, I really enjoyed my trip to the Outback, and I was just proud of myself for not getting killed by some bizarre Australian creature!

My trip to New Zealand got off to a rough start. First I watched Burn After Reading on the plane… not so great a movie. Then I waited at the airport for 45 minutes for the free hotel shuttle to pick me up even though it should have been there in 15. I had to call them twice, but it eventually came, and I was able to relax. The next morning I had to get to the opposite side of Auckland to leave for my tour of the glowworm caves in Waitomo. Well since it was Sunday, the regular bus didn’t run very early in the morning. My only choices were to take a cab ride that would have cost a fortune or take the free shuttle back to the airport and catch the $15 airport bus that goes downtown. I decided to do that, but I didn’t realize it would take over an hour. I ended up getting to the pick-up point for my tour just as the bus pulled away. The woman at the desk said it would be okay though if I got in a cab and met up with the bus down the road. So I did that and the bus driver was really nice about it and things were looking up. The bus ride was 3 hours long, but I loved it because I got to see the countryside that way. Unfortunately, the glowworm caves were not as nice. The tour guide was an asshole to us because one girl tried to take a picture, and I guess photography wasn’t allowed. The guide seriously flipped out and started yelling things like “what don’t you understand” “wasn’t I clear” etc. etc. She barely spoke English so she just kept saying “excuse me” and it was really awkward. The glowworms were kind of a let down too. It was basically just a tour of a dark cave with a few specks of light here and there. Kinda lame.

We got back to Auckland around 4:30 that night. I stayed in the main part of the city for dinner, and I went up into the Sky Tower, but then I wasn’t sure how I’d get home. I didn’t really understand the regular bus routes so I didn’t want to do that, but I wasn’t excited about taking the airport bus again because the hotel shuttle is such a pain in the ass. So I had the bright idea of walking around for a while in the general direction of the hotel so that when I eventually had to take a cab, it wouldn’t cost as much. Well that was fine for the first hour or so, but then my ankle started to hurt a lot (I think I injured it at the gym a day or two before), and my map wasn’t great. It started to get dark so I figured it was time to get a cab. Well, I was in kind of a secluded area at this point so there weren’t many cabs going by, and the ones that did had people in them. I tried unsuccessfully to get 4 cabs, so then I thought I would just find a stop for the airport bus and do that. Well I waited at the stop for about 45 minutes. The buses are supposed to run every 15-20 minutes, but nothing was coming. I went across the street to try to find a payphone and call a cab at this point, and of course two minutes after I did, I saw an airport bus go by. But then I found a payphone and tried to use that. The cash slot was out of order, and then it wouldn’t accept foreign credit cards. The only thing that would have worked was a prepaid phone card, but you had to buy those at the local stores which were all closed at this point because it was a Sunday night. So here I am somewhere in Auckland, my ankle is swollen at this point, my cell phone doesn’t work in New Zealand and the payphones are useless to me, it’s getting dark, I missed my chance to get on the airport bus, and I couldn’t get a cab to stop for me.  So I started crying. I decided to wait at the airport bus stop again and keep trying for cabs in the meantime. About six more cabs went by that would not stop for me, and I even tried to flag down a Domino’s delivery car at one point because I thought it was a cab. Finally, after five or so hours in this part of the city, I managed to get on the second to last airport bus of the night, and I finally made it home a little after 11:00.

The next day was a little better. (I mean it couldn’t really have been much worse). I made it downtown with plenty of time to catch my bus to Matamata where I was going on a tour of the Lord of the Rings site. The tour was of a family sheep farm where they had set up the Shire during filming. It was really cool, and the tour guide was great. I got to go inside one of the hobbit holes, which was fun, and then I learned a lot more about sheep than I really cared to know. When I got back to Auckland that night, I decided to just go for the airport bus right away. My ankle was really hurting at this point, so I didn’t try to do anything else.

On my last day, I went on a cruise around the harbour for about an hour and a half. It was really nice, but not as great as Sydney Harbour. After the cruise they passed out free ferry tickets to Devonport, which was only ten minutes away. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was actually really, really nice over there. It almost reminded me of some of the Boston harbor islands, except that there were actually things to do. The landscape was beautiful, so I took pictures for a while, but then I made my way over to Devonport Chocolates because I had seen a lot of ads for the store earlier in the day. Yeah let me just say that their chocolate sucked and was over-priced. I actually threw some of it out because it just wasn’t good at all, so I figured why get the calories if I won’t even enjoy it.

After that I headed back to the airport. There was some kind of engineering problem with the plane, so we left pretty late that night. The in-flight movies didn’t work either, and my ipod was almost dead, so I was forced to play around with the radio for a while. Well, let me just say, it turned out to be quite interesting. I listened to some basic Lady Gaga and Beyonce for a while, but then I decided to scroll through the various genres. I clicked on the hip-hop hoping to find a little Kanye, especially given my recent obsession with Heartless, but he was not to be found. I would’ve settled for some Chris Brown, but none of that either. The only titles they had were songs I hadn’t thought about in years. They had “No Diggity” “California Love” and “OPP” just to name a few. I couldn’t believe it. Needless to say I listened to No Diggity for a while and enjoyed every second of it. The 90s seemed to be a theme for that flight because I went to the tv show section and found a 90s themed episode of the Simpsons I hadn’t seen before. A flight is always good if it can provide me with an episode of the Simpsons that I haven’t actually seen. To my surprise, things got even better after that though. I watched a show called “Rick and Steve: the happiest gay couple in the world” or something to that effect. I nearly died laughing. It was so absolutely perfect. I’d try to recap it now, but it just wouldn’t do it any justice. Watch it if you ever have the opportunity.

I got back to Sydney around 9:00 that night, did some laundry, and tried to sleep before I had to get up for my flight to the Outback the next morning.

It’s official, the first half of the semester is over! I had two essays and two finals due yesterday and today, but now I am done! I’m leaving for the airport in an hour to start my spring break. First I’ll be traveling around Auckland, and then I am flying back to Australia for a camping safari in the Outback. It should be quite an experience!

My trip to the Gold Coast ended on a high note. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and go zorbing!! It was SO cool! Basically, you climb inside a giant plastic ball and get pushed down a hill. You have the choice between wet and dry. In dry, you are strapped in, and you actually rotate upside down each time the ball does. In wet, you sit in a pool of water and slide around instead of rotating. I decided to do the dry one, and it was completely awesome. My feet weren’t strapped in incredibly well, so it was a little freaky when I went over the first flip, but it was definitely worth doing.

Once I get back from spring break, I will have more time to post some long overdue entries about Australia since the stress of classes will be gone, so stay tuned for more updates!