Thursday, February 28, 2013

Goodbye Woodduck, Hello G'day!

We woke up late knowing that we could reserve another night in our run-down, unpopular hostel, but those thoughts quickly went down the drain. After breakfast we walked to the reception desk where the manager told us that no, he would not be able to book us for another 3 nights since Mardi Gras, Australia style, is this weekend and everyone is booked. Terror and worry about what to do ran through our minds as we looked at each other with disbelief. Fortunately, before panic really stuck he informed us that he had room in his other hostel that was right down the road. With relief we asked him to book us for the hostel, and with that being said the real fun started: packing all our stuff! We had both found housing the previous day (guess that should be a post all in itself!) so we were sure that we could manage to live at another hostel for just 3 days. Nonetheless packing and then carrying our luggage up the street, then down another street was challenging to say the least! But when we finally arrived we were glad to see that this hostel looked 10 times better than the other hostel. The rooms were set up different, making it appear more clean and orderly as well as the bathrooms being single stalled with one shower instead of one bathroom with 5 toilets and 5 showers. The kitchen was also bigger, along with the TV room and backyard patio. Although this may sound all fine and dandy, it’s still not the luxury life, or as good as it seems. Knowing we were settled in for now we quickly took showers so we could head to the university for some orientation week events. We both agreed that the 45 minute walk to the university was getting old, although it is great exercise! And when we say walk, Lauren tends to walk like she’s competing for the gold medal in the Olympics. Maybe that was due to the pouring rain outside, or the fact that we were running late for a meeting (that ended up being at a later time) but either way I was running to catch up with her. The first stop was of course the library again (we think the security guard is tired of seeing us) to get internet and check on a couple of things. With an hour to now spare until the meeting about casual work in Australia we wasted it away on the internet finalizing and staying on top of a few things. Once the time came we headed off to the “Looking for Casual Work” meeting that didn’t quite measure up to our expectations. We think the meeting was more geared towards new students right out of high school who have never held a job before since the information was so basic. We made note of a few things and may look into the option of finding work here since the minimum wage is so high but haven’t fully decided. We headed back to the library so Lauren could talk to her Mum (that’s how they say mom is Australia) and started on what seems to be the never-ending search…for bikes this time. Unsuccessful though since bikes seem to go really fast here we decided it was time to wrap up for the day. Walking back through the Broadway shopping centre we took a few leisurely walks through Target, Kmart, and this Reject Store (that did not have as good of deals as we were hoping for) then finally to Bi-Lo and Coles to pick up vegetables for dinner. Once the vegetables were obtained and we were ready to head back to the hostel we noticed a stranded umbrella staring us down while it called for help since it was broken. Being the good citizens that we are, we decided to check and see if the umbrella was ok. Luckily, the umbrella was big and barely damaged (easily fixed with just a couple tricks) and it accompanied us back on the windy trip back to the hostel. With the wind being strong at times we put the umbrella away since it wasn’t even worth fighting with. Ten feet from the hostel, standing under a traffic light waiting for the light to turn, I asked if Lauren wanted the umbrella back out. Her response was “Yeah sure, I guess.” In girl language ‘yes you better take out the umbrella,’ so the gentleman that I was I took out the umbrella and proceeded to open it when the unthinkable happened. Not even halfway open a blustering wind ripped the top cover of the umbrella off leaving me leaving me standing with just the metal spokes. While I watched the cover roll into traffic I slowly turned to Lauren “You made this happen.” Lauren looked just as confused and bewildered as I did but after looking after each other we quickly burst into laughter. When else would that ever happen to an umbrella, only in movies when people have such horrible luck. Once the light turned for us to walk we ran the rest of the way to the hostel in amazement, thinking about what the other people in their cars just witnessed. With our stomachs growling we dropped our stuff in the rooms and made our way to the semi-crowded kitchen to finish the rest of the unstuffed peppers that we had saved!

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Little Taste of Home


With nothing to wake up early for we took it upon ourselves to sleep in for the first time since we arrived in Sydney. With that being said I think our bodies thank us. Both of our feet were killing us last night from being tortured all day with walking to do several inspections. Not to mention it was a few too many miles in a pair of flip flops. Without hesitation we pulled on our tennis shoes and headed to our first inspection of the day. Like Lee, Stella the tenant was a little slow on responding, but she had a nice place to offer. We waited outside what seemed to be a well secured apartment complex right across from Central Station. We had a little feeling of home since it was conveniently located right above McDonalds and KFC. We also had a small flicker of excitement and homeliness whenever we walked into a clean, modern apartment with a big bathroom and living room, and not to mention a balcony that wrapped around the whole living room. Unfortunately, that balcony had bars to ensure safety which reminded Stella of jail bars. But a balcony provides a city view that we have never had so we didn't mind. More disappointing news is that two Germans were living in the supposedly available space and the tenant didn't know if they were for sure leaving yet. So basically we inspected a place that may not even be available, great! Knowing we still quite a few blog posts to catch up on we headed to the University of Sydney library that always has reliable internet. There we spent multiple hours working on blog, facebooking, and catching up on American life. Time well spent we must say! Although orientation week had started Riley was too scared to step back into the sun since he’s convinced its targeted just for him and bypasses sunblock. That sad pale boy ;) Once we did step back outside the sun was so blinding! We soon found out that orientation events were all over with, but luckily we were able to scope out the booths that we want to stop at tomorrow: Bush-walking and Long-boarding Society, St. Peters Catholic Church, and Photography Society. Since no one was at the booths to hand out information we headed back into another computer lab to seriously get to work on more housing options. We soon came to a conclusion that we were too tired and hungry to even think about inspecting tonight although we did set up one for the way home. Wanting to finally make dinner again we headed to the nearest shopping center to stop by the supermarket called Coles. We ended up going to Kmart for the never ending Tupperware search which sadly ended in no Tupperware again since it is so expensive here. Once in Coles we ended up with all the ingredients for unstuffed peppers with no intentions of originally having that for dinner. With groceries and Starburst gummy worms (that are unlike any gummy worm in the US, way chewier and at least 5 inches long!) we headed to our last inspection. Again they were four people packed in every room with no Americans or even English speaking people in sight. It is becoming a very common occurrence here. With night approaching we stepped it into high gear and arrived back at the hostel in no time to start cooking our dinner. We enjoyed the dinner on the rooftop for once, getting a good view of the Sydney skyline.   

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Do you know where the BBQ is? Baw-bee-cue?!

Second day of orientation flew by a lot quicker. Once we arrived on campus we were handed packets and drawstring bags with Sydney shirts in them and filed into the auditorium room. This packet had our approved classes as well as our enrolled classes for the semester and it was like high school all over again. We were both enrolled in four classes and seem to have two classes together! We were then split into smaller groups with our country's adviser and instructed on how to complete our enrolment forms, switch classes, and upload an appropriate picture for our campus ID card - you cannot smile. We were dismissed and told we would be walked to the International Welcome BBQ. Turns out, our adviser didn't know the location of the BBQ and we were left to find it ourselves. Luckily there was a Chinese guy with an 'Ask Me' pin on his shirt so we stopped and asked him "Do you know where the BBQ is?" His response you may ask, "Baw-bee-cue" (In Chinese confused voice) followed by uncontrollable laughing like that was the funniest question ever. Creeped out we slowly walked away to find the BBQ on our own. Riley could not contain his laughter over how funny it was to him. We followed the crowd over to the BBQ and upon arrival was handed a piece of bread. Then another Aussie put a sausage on the bread and that was that. We don't know if this is a BBQ to them, but obviously our American background had us hoping for hamburgers and hotdogs. Riley didn't mind the sausage drenched in barbeque sauce though and got seconds! We sat with one of the University of Sydney Student Ambassadors who gave us a couple of tips about the university and surrounding areas like where to get the best foods, or what places to stay away from. Turns out he is the vice president on the photography club on campus and quickly convinced us to attend one of their workshops on how to use our camera more efficiently. Then it was off to the International Lounge to wait for our free day tour of the Sydney Harbour. While waiting we met a guy named Rico (who had his name tattooed on his lower forearm) from the Netherlands, Ben from Texas and some girl which a strong accent from Finland/Scotland. Soon enough we were loaded onto a bus and on our way to the Harbour. Seeing a glimpse of water out the bus window was exciting for both of us. We got out and gathered in front of this sign.


We walked down the boardwalk and right around the corner...

BAM! Sydney Opera House!


Pano Pic of the Opera House, Bridge, and some random boat!

The tour guide said this was Australia's version of Disney World! Creepy entrance though...








Just us being typical tourist!


When Lauren gets back to the states, please ask her about the lights in Sydney.
She could not stop talking about the lights!

Thought this was ironic! Where I should  be and where I am now! 

Walking the bridge (not actually us). Something we will be doing very very soon! 


The tour ended and they left us stranded. Luckily, We have used the public transportation to get around Sydney before, so finding our way back was easy peasy. Once we arrived back, it was time to do a couple more inspections.. which ran a little late into the night and into the international party time. starving, we had to find some food and what better place than Dominos! It was a lot longer journey than we had expected, but pizza is worth any walk. We made it to Dominos to find a big line waiting at the door. Maybe Dominos is as popular in Australia as it is in the states, but no it was 5.90 traditional pizza day.. which meant ham and pineapple it was! With pizza in hand and walking down the street, many people didn't hesitate to give a little stare. It must be something that doesn't happen often. We finally arrived at the international party two hours late, but it didn't make a difference.. the place was still POPPIN! The music was so loud we could hardly hear another talking. Once we made it to the dance floor we were slightly disappointed to find that hardly anyone was dancing. If you remember the kids dancing in Charlie Brown you will know what I am talking about. Once we got on the dance floor everyone started to move ;) it was crazy! The DJ wasn't as good as we would have hoped since he played one song all the way through, waiting for it to end before starting another. We're used to DJs mixing songs together to continually have music going. However, the hosts for the night were pretty funny and offered dance competitions to give away free trips to places in Australia. Tooheys New. Thankfully we didn't give it a go because those people were getting down! The night had to end sometime and with it getting late we left the party and started our journey back to the hostel. But don't worry, we are street smart and walked in well lit-up, populated areas.


We Need a Passport for that?!

Orientation commenced today. We were finally able to step onto the campus as enrolled students at University of Sydney. All exchange students showed up at the steps of the Great Hall where we were getting a beat down from the sun before we all packed into this historic building that resembled an old church. Like any other orientation there were many presenters that can get boring after awhile. However that was not the case here; we got much advice to fall in love...with an Australian and bring them back home, be flexible, and just get involved. Over 30 countries at represented this semester at University of Sydney this semester with America and Brazel being the highest represented surprisingly. From there we were told we were going to have Morning Tea, which turned out to not be so much in the morning, or tea for that matter. Our next orientation session got pushed back an hour so we had time to finally go get a prepaid cell phon, or so we had hoped. We thought a company called Vodaphone would be the best option and since there was a store on campus, thats where we headed. Once again, we were assisted with an oriental person that barely understood our situation, because of this he tried getting up to set up a bank account for a prepaid phone. We knew this couldn't be the case..because its just a dang prepaid phone! We headed to the mall where we ran into more trouble and disappointing news. Apparently in Australia you need a passport to buy a prepaid phone, and a passport is something we did not have with us. We were able to finally finalize which phone company would be the best option for us and headed into our last orientation session of the day. One of the presentors this time was a spokeperson for the Extreme Adventures crew (the same company that we took the Blue Mountains trip with) advertising their Spring Break trip. This trip is almost $1800 dollars and includes snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, bungee jumping, cruises, meals and accomondation AND they decided to give one free trip away! Everyone in the audience was to stand up and put their hands on their head for heads or hands on their bums for tails and a staff member would flip a coin. Riley lost out on the second round, but Lauren lasted until there were only 8 people left! With her heart beating so fast she forgot to look around to see what other people had chosen and chose tails like 6 other remaining people. Of course it was heads, but what bothers me is he wasn't even that excited!

With orientation done for the day, and like the hero that Riley is he volunteered himself to walk all the way back to the hostel (45 minutes one way) and retrieve my passport. Lauren stayed at the university to continue the search for apartments. Finally able to get a phone we headed to the mall again, but with 6 universities around this mall and thousands of international students the phones were basically all sold out! We had to again go to 4 different stores to find a cheap 40 dollar phone. In the process we ran into 2 America girls from our school and helped them get a phone just like ours. The phone salesman that activated our phone was actually very interested in us Americans and one of the first things he asked was "Obama or Romney?" We then continued to talk about the presidential debates and how he thought that Obama tore Romney apart. We were all surprised to hear him talk about US politics with such knowledge. In all the excitement of finally getting phones me and another girl accidently switched sim cards in our phones which we thought had changed our numbers around, but we quickly got it sorted out! With no time to waste it was time to get a move on calling people and arranging inspections.

A-Ten-Hut! Inspection Time!

Our first stop was a place looking for one girl. We walked onto a semi-secluded walkway with bamboo and elephant ear plants draping over the walkway. Stepping into the apartment we were confronted by a shirtless guy from Boston. We felt like we were getting interrogated by him considering all the questions he asked, where we were from; why we were here; did we talk to the tenant already? He softened up quickly once he found out we were American since he wanted more Americans in the apartment and took it upon himself to show us around. The place was pretty spacious, the empty bed was in a room with only one other person which was nice. The people were also welcoming. Not completely sold we moved on to the next location which was a little closer to campus but also more expensive. The tenant was a guy from Italy who was moving to get closer to his work location. The apartment was placed in a nice quadrant with shops all around the bottom floor. He led us into an apartment that gave us an instant heat wave from the kitchen being right at the door. The place was a step up with one bed available in a guy room with 2 other people. The highlight on the apartment was the top story, open pool on the roof on the complex overlooking the entire city of Sydney. Talk about gorgeous! The people were a little older and not as friendly, so we were at a crossroads. With it getting dark, and us getting hungry we decided to stop at a restaurant we had seen advertised. What were called Bondi Burgers were actually just chicken sandwiches, such a let down, but good nonetheless. It was the first time we had eaten meat in a long time; pasta just wasn't cutting it that night. We tried to call a few more tenants on the way home but with no luck we called it a day. Once we arrived back the hostel we dropped everything, grabbed our laptops and heading out to McDonalds to get free wifi and get our blog on. Unfortunately, McDonald's was not cooperating that night, forcing us to get a soft serve cone and head home.

Watch your back. There’s an Emu about!

Today we got to leave Sydney and head to the Blue Mountains with Extreme Adventures who put on a day trip for the exchange students at University of Sydney. Like all other days we had to leave the hostel super early in order to catch the bus leaving the university at 8:30. Once we arrived at the meet up location we also met people from the Boston area, and Lauren finally got to meet up with another Lauren who coincidentally is also from ECU in North Carolina! Then it was off to the first stop on the trip, the Wentworth Falls












Mommy – this is the largest and prettiest waterfall I have ever seen. Definitely a place you will have to come to someday! Even the tour guides said this was the most water they had ever seen come down due to the heavy rainfall the night before.



The next destination was a visit to the Three Sisters, not before a stop in a gift shop though where we were in awe of the life-size koala bear!





We could have had a lot more fun with the koala bears, but it was time to pay a visit to the Three Sisters.



Story be told that the three sisters fell in love with three boys from another tribe. This was strictly forbidden so the girls decided to run away. When the father found out about this he summoned the power to turn them into stone. If you look to the left of the first sister you can see the path that we walked to get up close and personal.




When Lauren wasn’t looking I was able to touch one of the Three Sisters.


Now its off to the real journey, taking 900 steps down the path to potentially take the trolley back up to the top of the canyon. The steps were so steep and slippery from the rainfall that people started falling one by one.



By the way, while hiking in Australia you should always expect the unexpected.





Like a fallen tree in the middle of the wet, slippery path. Hikers had previously warned us of the fallen tree but obviously the advice went in one ear and out another. Knowing there was no turning back we slowly but surely all crossed over the tree, with many white shoes turned to brown. We not only had trees to worry about but also the deadly creatures that lurked in the wetland…leeches! There were one too many scenes that resembled Lauren wailing her arms like Olive Oil from Popeye, while shouting “Riley, get it off!” Luckily we have no pictures of leeches, but we should have gotten one of the massive leech that latched onto one guy from Morocco almost the whole trip. 900 steps deep we found out the trolley to take us up was not in service due to more fallen trees so it was another 900 killer steps up! We now have buns of steel!


Zoo Time! But we’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.


We walked into the zoo and thought we saw kangaroos just roaming around, but they turned out to be wallabys Still equally as adorable though! 


This was a photogenic wallaby. Pretty sure he has had his picture taken many of times by now!

But apparently this wallaby like Riley more!

You know, just turtles doing what turtles do best.  

Do you see a rock or a wombat?

These pelicans freaked Lauren out by how fake but real they were!
Also, do not try and feed a pelican, it is a life changing experience.

Just living the life of a Koala!

One of my goals in Australia was to touch a koala bear.. and I succeeded in the first week!

I think me and this koala could become good friends!
He decided to be photogenic
 after we were done touching him. 
He just decided to photogenic. 
     
Now it was off to Kangaroo Country!
Just like a dog, I got him to sit and beg for a treat!

Well, We thought it was Kangaroo Country.. not attack of the Emu!


At the end of the feeding, we thought we would be nice and give the cone to the kangaroo...

.. but the emu had other intentions!


Riley finally believed Lauren that there are Flying Fox Bats! 

The whole crew decided to get a picture at the end of a long, tiring, and exciting day. 

 Oh yea, we about forgot to add this guy in here..
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I'm sexy and I know it!

Monday, February 25, 2013

The Troubles Continue

Last night we couldn't get internet to work at McDonalds, now we don't have the proper cord to connect the camera to the computer. We have lots of pictures we want to show from the Blue Mountains trip, so be patient and it will be up soon :)

Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Umbrella Causility is Rising

The day started bright and early yet again as we are still in the search of a permanent place to live. As I (Lauren) was in the bathroom getting ready for the day I noticed it was going to be a wet, rainy day. Never knew that we would be stepping in hurricane force winds though. The winds here seriously stop me in my tracks sometimes. We grabbed the average 4 pieces of toast each loaded with peanut butter and strawberry jam then we were out the door. First stop of our day was to get to the library on University of Sydney campus to once again have secure, fast internet. Currently from our hostel it takes us 40 minutes to reach the university and exactly the reason we are looking for something closer. We spent the better half of the morning looking up places on the internet as well as updating this blog, checking facebook, and emailing tenants. We left the library in high hopes that we would finally find some place nice. However, those hopes were slowly dashed throughout the day...

On our list was yet another attempt to see the apartment that Lee was offering. Since we had failed to get a cell phone early on we were stuck using pay phones whenever we could find them. This made it very difficult since the person cannot call you back, and the time runs out quickly! We arrived at Lee's place once again and used someone's phone to ring him. We gave us the all too common respond of "I'll be there in 3 minutes." Fifteen minutes later we were finally introduced to Lee himself. He led us up to the room which was the biggest disappointment of all. Since this was the first apartment that we were inspecting (that's what they call checking something out) an apartment we were still stuck in the American mindset that the place would be clean and spacious. However, we were rudely awakened whenever we walked into a messy, tight squeezed apartment with 3 people to a room. The strangest thing was that Lee didn't even know which beds were available or how many people lived there. We agreed this was a place for neither of us to stay and left Lee in the dust, once and for all. We had a couple of other places left on our list but that list slowly dwindled whenever the tenants either weren't available or didn't answer the phone. We had one potential place left where international students were preferred. When we got a hold of the tenant he directed us where to go, which landed us on the front door of an apartment complex with a security pad. Of course we weren't know how to get inside, which apartment door to knock on, or even how to work the system. Common sense would be that the tenant would come down and meet us at the front door, but apparently Australians have different views on salesman dealings. We waited 15 minutes and with no tenant in sight we decided to call it a day. Discouraged and frustrated we headed to Coles (the main supermarket here) to figure out what was for dinner. With storm clouds growing dark in the sky we quickly headed back to the hostel. That 40 minute walk takes a lot longer when you're tired, exhausted, and discouraged. I could tell that Riley was exhausted whenever he started talking to umbrellas. For one, he protects us with an extended umbrella which he calls a 'beating stick.' Then broken and disowned umbrellas started popping out of nowhere. The first umbrella was 'Dad!' the next was "Mom!" and finally "Cousin!" All are umbrellas that were ditched on the side of the curb or near trashcans. Closer to the hostel we stumbled upon a whole pile, or family of umbrellas. At least humor got us through the tough day! Tomorrow is our adventure trip where we get to pet a koala, which we are both excited and ready for :)

Things we have realized:

~People do not like to sell stuff over here. The mannerisms that go along with selling are so laid back and ignorant that people are seriously losing out on our business.

~Ice cream cones at McDonalds are 30 cents, maybe ice cream won't be so rare after all!

Friday, February 22, 2013

Bonzi Bondi!

The alarm clock was set for 8:00 AM but we both shot out of our beds way before that because we both knew that today was beach day! The day starts like any other.. eating like 6 slices of toast each for breakfast. Mainly because the free breakfast offered at the hostel doesn't add up to much and they like to eat their cereal with warm milk which we both find rather disgusting. Riley eats it like a champ though. And so we were off to Bondi Beach, but not really knowing how to get there. We stopped at the travel store down the street from the hostel and the guy informed us that we will have to take both the train and a bus to get there. There were multiple reasons to be excited today, but one of the main reasons was because we were both taking our first train ride to the famous Bondi Beach. It seems that 10:15 A.M. will be our time for everything seeing as the last two days we reached our destinations at that time. We got off the train and figured walking a mile to the beach wouldn't be so bad verses taking the bus, but not knowing which way to go exactly we quickly decided that taking the bus down there wouldn't be so bad the first time. The ticket prices of both the train and the bus were not that bad; Train -  3.60 AUD for a round trip, Bus - 2.20 AUD for a one way. Stepping off the bus we were both excited to finally see water, smell the salt water and unfortunately feel the colder temperature. And the walk went as followed:






Of course we headed straight to the beach and laid out for a bit. With it being such a windy day we didn't last long but rather went to check out the shops instead. First thing we found were some great postcards! We started walking back into the town to find some ice cream and a Dominos Pizza that Lauren 'spotted.' Ice cream is definitely going to be a special occasion for us. Alex - Ben and Jerry's ice cream charges an outrageous 12.95 for a pint of ice cream! Are you serious! And then they show movies on the beach for 22.95! That's a no. We enjoyed the rest of the day close to the beach stumbling upon this park that gave us a great view of the waves crashing against the rocks!




Wanting to watch the sunset but also knowing we had to get back before it was too dark we traveled back through the town passing the Dominos Pizza. We had originally thought about grabbing some pizza, but they don't have the same great deals that the US has. Maybe pizza will also be a special occasion deal for us. Subway sounded like a better choice whenever we got back into Kings Cross bus station. With it being yet another exhausting day we went to bed early while everyone else in the hostel was getting ready to go out for the night.












Top of the Mornin' to ya!

The day started out bright and early with a trip to the University of Sydney. We really wanted to check out the University with our own eyes instead of just looking at pictures. Being unsure of which way to go, we had to ask a couple Aussies for help, and like usual, they were all pretty helpful. Their street names remind us of many things outside of Australia; Crown Street for UNCC, Riley Street for obvious reasons, and Broadway street for New York. We knew we finally made it to the university when we walked through Victoria Park and saw the long pathway leading up to the main entrance:

   


We decided to explore a little and figured the best place to start would be the Student Centre. Surprisingly, they had a big lounge with cool couches dedicated only to international students! There is also an international support desk where a lady helped us get our uni of sydney log in information. We think we are one step ahead of the other international students because this is probably something that we'll do at orientation. It was really nice to finally be on a desktop computer with secure internet that wasn't going to go in and out. Of course, since it seems like its been forever, Facebook is the first thing that we checked. We also got a head start on looking for more permanent places to stay, ones that are preferably closer to campus. And this is the first time that we spoke to Lee.
Lee is a tenant that we tried to contact first with a payphone that would not work for us, and then with an Australian girl's cell phone who was kind enough to let us borrow it. So we set up a time at 3:30 PM (12:30 A.M. East coast time) to take a look at a potential place for Lauren or Riley. We started making our way to the apartment to ensure that we could find the place in enough time. Unfortunately  when we arrived promptly at 3:30, Lee decided not to show promptly at 3:30. We waited 45 minutes until we finally asked another guy to borrow his phone to call. Once we got up with Lee again, he gave his sincerest apologies and said he would be down in five minutes... which turned into another 45 minutes. Knowing that we had to get back to the hostel before it got too late we regretfully decided we had waited long enough for Lee and walked away defeated. Yet, we were not down and out. Once we were back at the hostel, we decided to go to the kitchen and make some dinner. However, people like to apparently eat late here and at 7:00 when we arrived back the kitchen was packed! Finally, we were able to eat it on the balcony and look at what Sydney's skyline had to offer at night. Exhausted from the estimated 10 miles of walking we went to bed super early!

P.S. We have come to a conclusion that:

~ Grocery items that are cheap over in the US is definitely not cheap over here (ie a box of Mac 'n Cheese is  4.95, canned vegetables are 1.79, one cookie at Subway is a dollar!)

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Final Destination

Finally being in Sydney, Australia makes the last 3 months of preparations and one long plane ride all worth it, although the plane ride was tough to endure at times. We were lucky enough to not have any delays, so smooth sailing on that part, along with our choice of dinner - Wendy's at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport is highly recommended! In addition we would also highly recommend Quantas airlines. The supper at 11 o'clock at time was delicious as well as the breakfast around 5 AM. Not like we could sleep that whole time in between, but we did enjoy a free movie along with a few Big Bang Theory episodes! We both originally sat next to Sydney natives who shared some of their wisdom and tips for us.
The highlight of the trip was actually getting our first stamp in our visas! Next it was onto finding the shuttle bus which would take us to our hostel. Needless to say the shuttle ride was almost as bumpy as the plane ride since we had to get used to riding on the other side of the road. Come to find out we live with no Australians but rather all French people. We spent the rest of the day relaxing on the rooftop and exploring a small part of the city. We stumbled upon a supermarket which is right down the street from the hostel so we'll be able to cook more than we thought, as well as save money!

P.S.  We have come to a conclusion that:

 ~ Internet is a luxury around here. There are shops all around the city designated to Internet.
 ~ None of the shops have front doors since its like 75 degrees here!
 ~ And a bottle of sunscreen is 23.95.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

The never ending packing

The day we thought would never come has finally arrived. We now have less than 18 hours left in the United States! Our last day, who am I kidding, weekend has consisted of finalizing everything, packing and trying to make sure we don't forget anything. But its so hard to pack for the unexpected, even though we think we know what to expect once we get there. One thing we are definitely looking forward to is the warm weather and most of all, beaches!


Riley's packing job (3 hours)


Lauren's packing job (3 days)