Easter Break: Brisbane to Sydney/The Blue Mountains

Here is a map of Australia in case you are wondering where Megan and I went. We started in Brisbane (where I live), flew to Sydney, flew to Cairns, and ended back in Brisbane.

April 12, 2009: Megan arrives

Today, Megan arrived. I was so excited for her to come! Her flight got in around 6:05am, but I was wide awake by then to greet her. It was Easter, so mostly everything was closed, but we found ways to entertain ourselves downtown. We made our way back to my apartment to pack for the next morning. Megan ended up falling asleep at 7, despite all her efforts to prove me wrong ( I told her she would be asleep by 8, she thought otherwise).

Me inside the fishbowl

Meg kissing the fish

Kangaroo sniffing Meg's butt

These little guys were so cool! Made of scrap metals.

The two of us waiting for the bus right by my apartment

April 13, 2009: Off to Sydney

Today started off extremely early. Megan woke up around 2:30 am and because I am such a light sleeper, I obviously woke up as well. I was pretty excited about the week so I wasn't able to fall back asleep. We left for the airport around 5:45am. This is the conversation that took place after we arrived at the train station:

Me: Excuse me, where is the 6:30 train?

Transit Lady: There is no train at 6:30.

Me: I checked the schedule last night, it said there was supposed to be one at 6:30.

Transit Lady: We are on our holiday schedule.

Me(annoyed): And what holiday are we supposed to be celebrating?

Transit Lady: Easter Monday.

Seriously?! Easter Monday? We ended up paying almost double what we would on the train to catch a cab. Let's just say, I was NOT a happy camper on the way to the airport.

We arrived in Sydney at 10:30 am. We checked into Wake Up! and got lunch at a pretty awful pizza place. It was pouring all day, so we were pretty miserable. We spent the afternoon walking all over Sydney, going shopping, taking pictures of the Opera House, the Harbor Bridge, the Sky Tower, the botanical gardens, etc. We walked for about 5 hours straight and we were both exhausted. We came back to Wake Up! to take a nap before dinner. That night, we met Phil, our new friend from the UK. He came to the Ice Bar with us that night. It was pretty cool, but would have been better if we weren't the ONLY people in it. We also weren't allowed to take pictures so it was a pretty disappointing experience overall. We decided to head in early because we had to be up by 5:45am to catch our train to the Blue Mountains.

It was POURING in Sydney our first day!

View of Sydney Harbor/The Harbor Bridge

I just found this randomly in the middle of the city

Awesome waterfall in the Botanical Gardens

The Ice Bar! (Don't go-it sucks!)

April 14, 2009: Conquering the Blue Mountain Canyon

Meg and I woke up at 5:40 to catch our train to Katoomba. After practically missing it because I thought it left at 6:36 instead of 6:26, we sat for 2 hours and talked/stared out the window. We arrived in Katoomba at 8:26, right in time for our 8:30 canyoning trip. As soon as we arrived at the Blue Mountains Adventure Company, our journey began. We were fitted into wetsuits (so uncomfortable!) and packed our bags. There were only 5 people total in our group, including the guide, so it was a very personal experience. Dylan was our instructor. He was super nice and used the word 'mate' all the time. Greg was probably in his mid-20s and extremely fit, and Terry was in his mid to late 50s and in great shape for his age! The trip was divided into 2 parts. The first part involved making us feel comfortable abseiling down rock. The second part was actually navigating through the canyon and finishing with a 30 metre abseil down a waterfall (that's about 100 feet, or the same height as the big drop on the Excalibur at Valley Fair).

Part 1:

We drove for about 20 minutes until we arrived at our abseiling location. Once we arrived, we went bush walking for about 20 minutes. Seriously, Dylan was one of the fastest walkers ever! Megan and I were already struggling to keep up with him. Once we got to the site, we started on a baby cliff (probably about 10 feet high). Megan and I had a little trouble getting used to the abseiling but we quickly moved on to a bigger cliff.

Side view of the abseil down

The second cliff was much harder to abseil down because it was steeper and was very uneven. The trick to canyoning is slowly lowering yourself down while keeping your feet on the rock until you are basically parallel to the ground. Then you can slowly lower yourself down. Once we had perfected the medium cliff, we moved to the 60 foot cliff. This was literally vertical and quite scary to look over. Because of the steep angle, you could actually push yourself off the wall and 'hop' down the cliff. Dylan and Greg were the only ones who were actually able to do it. Megan and I went down this about 6 times until we felt comfortable enough to conquer the waterfall. We took a break for lunch and treats before heading to the canyon.

Meg getting ready to abseil down the 60 footer

Part 2:

Once we arrived at the canyon, we had to walk for over 30 minutes down hundreds of stairs. We should have known what that meant-a hell of a walk back up to the top. However, we were too excited about getting into the water to notice. In the canyon, we had to wear wetsuits, shoes, backpacks with flotation devices in them and helmets. The water was fairly cool, but not too bad. Right away, we got soaking wet. We were walking through the canyon when we arrived at an 8 foot drop. Dylan had us jump as far out as we could and land right on our backs! We all went completely underwater until our backpacks brought us to the surface. It was definitely an adrenaline rush but it was a great way to start the canyon! The views inside the canyon were absolutely beautiful. I took lots of pics with my waterproof camera so unfortunately, I won't be able to post them for awhile. The walk through the canyon was probably about an hour-we were sliding down rocks slides, jumping from cliffs, swimming through trenches, jumping into holes, etc. It was hard to walk through the canyon because the rocks were so slippery. Meg was pretty bruised up by the time we got back. On our way, we saw a poisonous snake-a baby Brown Snake. They are actually more dangerous than adults because when they are young, they can't control their venom and will actually strike numerous times. We quickly passed by it. (Australia has 7 of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world) We finally made it to the waterfall. As soon as we got close, we could hear the rushing of the water. I was the last one to go down. I wasn't too nervous when I got there until I was strapped in and getting lowered down. The water was shooting onto my face, my feet were slipping, the rope was slipping through my hands and I felt like I was going to plunge to my death! The water pressure was so strong it was knocking me off course, but I finally made it to the end and fell into the water. It was such a rush! Dylan met us at the bottom and we all celebrated successfully finishing the canyon!

The trip up the stairs was hell. Megan almost puked, and I got stuck carrying the 10 lb rope on the my backpack. It was an awesome workout, but after 40 minutes straight of climbing up stairs, I was exhausted. We arrived back at Blue Mountain Adventure Company were offered beers as a reward. Meg and I were so physically drained that we went to bed at like 7:30 that night. It was an amazing day overall and probably one of the highlights of my entire study abroad experience!

Beautiful lookout in the Blue Mountains

April 14, 2009: Lazy day on Manly Beach

Today was beautiful! The weather was absolutely gorgeous-there were no clouds in the sky and it was one of the nicest days Sydney had had in a long time. We caught a 30 minute ferry to Manly Beach. The ferry ride was quite beautiful! I took some awesome pictures of the Opera House/Sydney Harbor.

On the ferry-it was so sunny!

The Sydney Opera House

Once we arrive in Manly, we set up camp and laid out for about 3 hours. We made our back to Sydney for dinner. After, we went to the Sydney Tower. The view at night was awesome-Sydney was all lit up and you could see heaps of stuff.

Manly Warf, obviously

Meg and I on Manly beach

Sydney at night from the Sky Tower

Melbourne

Day 1: Arriving

Last weekend (April 2-6) I took a trip to Melbourne.  I really wanted to see the city because of it's reputation of being "the most cultured" in Australia.  Because of my beautiful school schedule, I was able to leave Thursday morning and come back Monday night.  Unfortunately, none of my friends have the luxury of going to school 3 days a week so it wasn't worth it for them to come with me.  Consequently, I went solo.  

I arrived in the Avalon Airport on Thursday afternoon.  It was literally in the middle of nowhere.  I felt like I was in the outback.  I took an hour bus ride to the city where my friend, Juan, met me.  I sat next to Juan on the plane from LA to Brisbane so in reality, I had only known him for about 8 hours (I was sleeping for the other 6).  We had kept in contact since the plane ride and when I told him I was coming to Melbourne, he kindly offered to let me stay with him.  Walking with Juan was his friend Christoph (German).  On the way home, we ran into one of their friends.  She was heading to a live drum performance and invited us.  We accepted the invitation and got to see some really cool songs.  After, we went back to Hawthorne House.  That is where Juan and Christoph live.  It's a 56 person share house with a HUGE living room.  There is a counter with 3 sets of stoves, 6 fridges, 4 sinks and so much more.  I got to meet a ton of really cool people from all over the world so it was awesome.  That night, we went out for G's birthday.  We started out the night in a club and eventually made our way to a chill bar.  After drinking way too much champagne, we made our way back for the night.  This picture pretty much sums up Juan's personality/ the night :)

Day 2: The City

Waking up the next morning was extremely difficult, but I wanted to make the most of my time in Melbourne.  While Juan went to class, I went to the city.  Melbourne is much different than Brisbane.  It's bigger, dirtier, busier and there is so much to see/do!  It reminded me a little of New York City.  When I got off the train, I walked along the Yarra River to try to find something to eat.  Here is a picture I took:

I didn't want to eat somewhere familiar so I made my way over to what I later learned was South Bank.  It was one of my favorite parts of Melbourne.  I picked up a spinach and egg sandwich from Espresso Run.  It was delicious!  All of the food in Melbourne was spectacular. This is a picture of some of the restaurants at South Bank:

After breakfast, I decided to go to the Melbourne Aquarium.  The first exhibit I saw were the penguins from Antarctica!  It was so awesome.  Just getting to see those guys paid for the entrance fee.  There was an entire cage of fake snow for them and they loved coming up to the glass and staring at everyone. 

I really enjoyed the aquarium because I got to see some incredible animals.  One of my favorite exhibits was the area dedicated to all the animals from Finding Nemo.  I saw Nemo, Dory, the big scary fish with the light on its head, sea horses, puffer fish, ink, etc.  Another favorite part was seeing the sharks get fed.  There were GIANT, and I mean ENORMOUS sting rays in the cage.  When the divers went in, the rays would put their mouths over the divers' heads to get their attention-the divers had to wear helmets to protect themselves.  It was really cool to see, but kinda freaky.  Here is the cage with all the fish:

Lastly, this is a picture of a really cool jelly from the jellyfish exhibit.  They live in Australia-eek!

When I finished touring the aquarium, it was pouring.  Luckily, I brought my umbrella but with the wind, it didn't do much.  I walked around the city taking more pictures.  This was a pretty cool bridge.  It's called the Prince's Bridge, and lining the sides are plaques of every country in the world.  It has cool facts about each one on there.  

I made my way over the Federation Square, just as my camera died.  I was able to snatch this one picture before heading back to Juan's place to recharge.  Federation Square is one of the most famous places in Melbourne because it has heaps of cultural events, classes, music events etc.

I met Juan back at his apartment and w

e left about an hour later to go explore more of the city.  He took me on a fabulous tour of everything!  The first place we went was the Victoria Market.  It has amazing fresh food and cheap souvenirs.  I bought some pretty sweet postcards that some of you may or may not get :)

After, we headed to China Town and got some yummy bubble tea.  It had balls of tapioca at the bottom.  Here is a picture of it: 

We also went to QB Square, Victoria Library and Taco Bill (NOT Bell haha).  It was $5 margarita night or $20 Pancho Villa night (1400 mL) so Juan definitely wanted to take me there.  We met up with about 10 people and had an awesome time. Here is me with my pineapple margarita.  I was freezing (who brings warm clothes when they come to Australia?!) so Juan lent me his jacket.  I can't even tell you how many people were staring at me because of the horns.  It was hilarious.

Day 3: The Great Ocean Road

The next morning, I left for my tour of the Great Ocean Road.  This trip, I did completely on my own.  I got to meet a lot of people from all over the world (Spain, Brazil, UK, Netherlands, China, etc).  Our trip started at 7:40 am.  There were 18 of us total in the van.  We drove 3 hours to Tower Hill.  I got to see some wild kangaroos, koalas and emus there!

From Tower Hill, we drove to the Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, and London Bridge.  It was FREEZING cold at all of these places but I was able to get some incredible pictures:

Later that night, we went to the 12 Apostles. I actually didn't think they were anything too special because it was super foggy and raining!

The next day, we saw more of the Great Ocean Road and also went into the rainforest.  Here is me inside a tree!

Notice what I'm wearing? Yeah, it was bloody freezing!!! And pouring.  I got back around 8 pm Sunday night, absolutely exhausted.  It was an amazing trip, but a little too long for me.

Day 5: Half-day in Melbourne

Today was my last day to see Melbourne (probably ever) so I wanted to make the most of my time.  I said goodbye to Juan in the morning and made my way to the Australian Moving Image museum where I took this awesome picture:

The architecture in this building was so amazing. I just loved it!  After looking around, I went to the Victoria Art Museum.  It was free and naturally, I got bored after 30 min so I left.  But it was cool to see some art!  After, I got some gelato (lamington flavored-it's Australian) and sat along the Yarra River and talked to Megan on the phone.  I also walked like 8 blocks to the Victoria Market to find out that it was closed.  Dangit.  For lunch, I ate Pad Thai in Chinatown and quickly finished to make my way to Southern Cross Station.  From there, I took my hour-long bus ride and arrived at the airport.  I ran into Jorge and Camila (2 people from my tour of the Great Ocean Road) and talked to them for awhile.  Then, I heard over the loudspeaker that my flight was going to be delayed 4 hours. FOUR HOURS!  I didn't get back into Brisbane until 10:30 that night.  It took me 8 hours to get home-I was not a happy camper but very relieved to be in my bed.

All in all, I really enjoyed traveling by myself.  I met some really awesome people because I was forced to branch out.  As for my future travelings plans, expect a huge blog entry about the next 2 weeks of my life-Megan is coming to visit and we are going all over Australia.

Until then, g'day :)

Brisbane Forest Park/Mila's Birthday/Surfer's Paradise

Last week was a good week.  I only had 2 full days of classes and 5 days off.  

Brisbane Forest Park

On Thursday, my Australia's Terrestrial Environment class took a field trip to the Brisbane Forest Park and Mt Jolly.  It was a pretty fun trip.  The day started around 10 am when we took a bus to the park.  The drive was about an hour.  We were driving along the side of a mountain/cliff so it was a littler nerve racking.  The worst part was when the driver cut a corner too close and slammed the side of the bus into a rock.  I swear I felt the bus tip a little toward the edge and everyone went absolutely silent.  We all felt a little uneasy after that experience.

Once in the park, we went through two different types of forests.  We saw lots of eucalyptus trees and also a rainforest.  It was quite beautiful to be walking along the trails, but we were busy with a 12 page packets, so I was focusing on filling out the answers most of the time.

After we got done with our tour of the forests, we drove to a wildlife sanctuary.  There, we got to see lots of cute animals!  I saw snakes, turtles, birds, kangaroos, walabees, and a platypus. 

The day finished with tea and scones on top of Mt. Jolly.  The view was absolutely beautiful and it was a good way to end the trip.  We headed home around 6 pm and everyone on the bus was sleeping the entire ride home.

Mila's Birthday

The next day, I spent the majority of the day getting stuff ready for Mila's birthday.  She did NOT want any sort of celebration so I, of course, tried as hard as I could to make as big of a deal about her birthday as I could.  I decorated my deck with streamers, baked her a cake, and made her a really cute picture frame with a lizard on it (she has a weird obsession with lizards). That night, I had her come over so I could sing "Happy Birthday" and give her the cake.  Although she didn't show it, I secretly know she enjoyed it :)

Surfer's Paradise

The next morning, 5 of us left for Surfer's Paradise in the Gold Coast.  It was me, Mila, Bethany, Suzanne and Alyssa.  It took us about 2 hours and $5 to get there.  We arrived at the bus station and our "limo" from the hostel came to pick us up.  It was the ugliest limo I have ever seen, but it was hilarious to ride in.  We arrived at the Sleeping In Backpackers Hostel and were immediately offered a chance to sign up for "The Big Night Out".  We jumped on the opportunity to do something fun (since it was Mila's real birthday) so we all signed up to go.  We spent the day on the beach.  The highlight of the day was that Mila and Alyssa had to be rescued by the life guards because they got stuck in the rip.  It all happened so quickly!  In literally 5 seconds, I looked behind me and saw that both of them were over 10 feet away from me.  Luckily, they didn't get eaten by sharks :)  Later, we came back to the hostel to get ready for our night.  When we went to the lobby at 8:30, we were presented with cowboy hats, glow sticks, and passes for free drinks.  We started the night drinking goon (Australian version of franzia).  The party bus soon arrived and everyone loaded onto it.  The entire bus sang Happy Birthday to Mila!!  It was so awesome to see her as the center of attention because she hates it!  We danced until the bus arrived at the first bar.  The rest of the night continued in the same fashion.  There were about 200 people that signed up for "The Big Night Out" and it was cool to meet people from all over the world.  That night, for some reason, I met a lot of Irish.  Their accents are very difficult to understand and I realized I prefer the Australian accent-sorry Lisa:-)

The next morning, after getting hardly enough sleep, we got up for our surfing lesson.  It was 2 hours long and we started with the basics.  We learned about the different positions and ocean safety.  We started out just learning how to ride the wave into shore.  After, we learned how to steer and lastly, we learned how to jump onto the board.  I was able to get up for about 5 seconds before getting thrown into the water.  Surfing is such a workout!  My entire body was sore the next day-arms, butt, stomach and neck!  Also, my swimsuit snapped in the middle so I had to quickly buy a new one before taking off my wetsuit top to avoid flashing everyone.  The wetsuit top was skin tight and clung pretty tightly to my body so it was a very uncomfortable situation.  After our lesson, we chilled on the beach until it was time to go home.

As for this week, nothing too exciting has happened.  I had 4 assignments due so I spent quite a bit of time on schoolwork.  I leave for Melbourne on Thursday, and I am going on  a 2-day tour of the Great Ocean Road on Saturday/Sunday.  I am very excited to leave Brisbane by plane!  I will take lots of pictures!

G'day mates :)

One-month Anniversary!

Because blogger sucks, these posts are actually out of order so sorry for the confusion...

On Saturday night, we saw "The Watchmen".  It was a pretty good movie, although it was long.  Today, (Sunday) we went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.  We got to see all kinds of animals, it was SO cool!  We saw dingos, porcupines, wombats, koalas, walabees, kangas, roos, snakes, crocs, birds, tazzie devils and more!  Here are some pictures (check facebook for a many more!)

This weekend was a very good weekend.  Friday was very uneventful-I just bought stuff for my apartment and relaxed.  Saturday, I went to the Brisbane Botanical Gardens.  It was so beautiful!  Here are some pictures:

Bridge near the Brisbane River

Look at these tree roots!

Cool tree

Me in the bamboo trees!

The Australian Way

There are a couple of things I was hoping to blog about in the entry, so I'll try to cover it all.  

Topic 1: New apartment! Sorry about the poor quality of the pictures.

Topic 2:

Sunday is my one-month anniversary of my arrival in Australia, and over the past 4 weeks, I've come to appreciate the Aussie way.  Some things include:

1. Victoria Bitter-EVEN if Matias calls it "bogan juice"  It's cheap and tasty!

2. Tim Tams. A chocolate biscuit made by Arnott's Biscuits, Australia.  Two layers of chocolate malted biscuit, separated by a light chocolate cream filling, and coated in a thin layer of chocolate.

3. The fashion. Everyone wears such cute (and much less) clothing!  Big belts, high waisted everything, cute shoes and short-shorts are definitely in.  It makes sense to wear less clothing because of the heat, and because everyone is in amazing shape...

Gladiator sandals

Short Dresses/big belts

High waisted short-shorts

4. Burger Urge.  They are extremely healthy and the meat is high quality and inexpensive.   They put so many yummy vegetables on it- I feel like I'm eating a salad!

Topic 3: Classes.

My classes started this week.  Luckily, I only have class Tuesday-Thursday so I get a nice 4-day weekend.  I am taking:

Australia's Terrestrial Environment

This class is going to be awesome.  We are learning about the history of the biology of Australia.  I get to go on two fieldtrips to the zoo and rainforest.  It's apparently fairly easy, so it will be a nice class.

Australian Popular Culture

Once again, this class is going to be fairly easy.  The majority of students are from the states, so we are all in the same boat.  During our first class, we watched the opening and closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics.  It was cool to see the different elements of Australian culture in the ceremony.

Statistics for Economists

Apparently this is a very challenging class.  I was not very happy to hear about that, but I need it for credit.  

Economics of Natural Resources

I believe this class is going to be really interesting.  It's small-there's probably only about 25 of us in it.  I sat next to Alex, a french exchange student last class.  Funny story about him actually.  We were listening to the professor talk when he whispers "what is lumber?"  In his accent, I was having a lot of trouble understanding him.  I thought he was asking for my number and I managed to make a FOOL of myself.  Great...

Overall, I think I am going to really enjoy my classes.  We don't have a lot of homework, so I'll have plenty of time to continue my adventures!

I'll try and blog some good stories-for now, I'm just enjoying the sun and getting my new apt. settled.

xoxo

The Gold Coast

New pictures:

Mila, Karen and I at "Fish and Wine" in the Gold Coast

Afternoon at the beach at the Gold Coast

Lifeguard at Gold Coast

Brisbane city at night

This is what happens when you don't wear sun screen properly...

Trail in South Brisbane 

Ferris wheel at night

Ferris wheel during the day

My attempt at taking a picture on the city cat, of another city cat/North Quay

New updates:

1. I moved into my new place!  It's very nice and I'll try to post pictures soon.

2. School starts tomorrow-luckily, I don't have class until Tuesday, but it's going to be so weird starting school.  I've had almost 3 months off.

3. I went to the Gold Coast last weekend.  It's an area south of Brisbane on the coast, obviously.  I went with my friends Mila, Karen, Dave, Fredrik and Oz.  We stayed in a really nice hostel that was air conditioned!  It was about an hour train ride and another hour bus ride to the hostel.  Our first day, we went to the beach, went out to dinner and then went out to the bars.  Our second day, we checked out the surf competition.  Apparently, the best surfer in Australia was there!  It was really cool to see people actually catching the wave because it's so difficult.  I was freaking out the entire time about sharks, but I did spend some time playing in the waves.

The third shark attack in 1 week happened again in Sydney today-looks like I won't be getting in the ocean in Sydney!

G'day