It's exhausting being a live audience!

We were up a little later than we usually are on Saturday, so getting up for Sunday church was a little tougher than normal. It turned out to be even worse when we stepped outside, after getting ready, to see it down pouring. We had to rush back in to get Lauren’s red umbrella, which has holes and scrapes in it, so I would hardly call it an umbrella! Nonetheless, it did keep us out of some rain and managed to get us to the church dryer than we probably would have been without it. The new priest from last week was doing the mass again today which I liked because both of us could follow him a little better. Once church was over we headed back to the house to get some grub because we were both beyond starving! After lunch we checked outside to see if it was still raining, and sure enough it was, so we stayed inside and did a little bit of pre-packing since tomorrow we would be packing our bags for America. It wasn’t as hard as we both intended it to be, seeing as we were only doing little things, but the little things added up and soon enough our rooms were getting tidied up! We stopped a little early because we had to get ready to head to Parramatta for Australia’s Got Talent! Getting ready was super easy because we were both super excited to go see a televised show! It was still raining as we left our places, so we made a quick jog down to central station where we would catch the 3:30 train to Parramatta. Even though the show wasn’t until 6:30, we decided to get to Parramatta early to check out what the city had to offer. We arrived at Parramatta station, which was conveniently connected to a huge mall, so we decided to check it out. We weren’t disappointed when we found an ultra-cheap candy shop and bought a couple boxes of Mike & Ikes! It was only 5 o’ clock when we found that most of the stores were closing up for the day! This isn’t something new to us since a lot of places close early in Australia. That being said, we decided to leave and head toward the direction of Australia’s Got Talent. Since we had another hour to kill, we stopped at a few shops along the way and found the same souvenirs that you could find at the markets, only ten times more expensive! We left that shop quickly and decided to just hang out at the local Oporto, which kept us out of the rain for a good while. Since Claire (girl who had to AGT tickets) said she would meet us at 5:30 to exchange tickets, we left Oporto and arrived at the venue right at 5:30. Lauren and I thought that the place was about to open since the line was packed, but we soon found out that wasn’t the case. We waited and waited for Claire to arrive, but it didn’t happen for another hour! So at 6:30 we finally got our tickets and headed in the door! We met a couple of other couch surfers who had tagged along to see the show as well who were pretty cool! The whole gang was able to get seats on the second floor, which allowed for a great view! It was quite the sight to see since you only see this type of stuff on T.V.!

The somewhat funny host (left) and judge Kyle (right)

Everyone was waiting for the judges to come out, because apparently they were all big in Australia! The first judge that came out was Dawn, (no idea who she is)! The second was Timomatic, who we also didn’t know, but won on a previous season of Australia’s got talent. The third judge to come out was Geri, who was previously known as Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls, so of course we knew who she was. Lastly, Kyle came out, whom again, we had no clue who he was. It was cool to see everyone cheering and clapping as the judges came out because you could tell that everyone was excited! After all of the commotion ended, we finally had our first performance. It was a man who said he had been singing professionally for over 20 years, so apparently he had to be good. As he began to sing, there was not doubt in my mind that he would be getting to the next round because he was so good! Sure enough, after the judges made their decision to let him through to the next round, we had to sit for at least 15 minutes before the next person would come out. There was a guy named Dylan who would entertain the crowd in between acts, which was different than what we imagined since we were under the impression that it’d be act right after act. TV is quite different when you’re the live crowd! In between acts we had to do things such as: standing ovations, sitting ovations, cheers and boo’s, clapping while in our seats, just so they could have footage of different crowds doing different things. It was actually exhausting to be part of a live audience! Lauren and I were beginning to think that the judges were too nice since we were halfway through the show and no one had been buzzed yet (meaning their act was bad) including the dancing poodle! We were quite amazed by this because in America you can get buzzed off a show so easily! We had our first group not make it through when a couple of ballerina’s were doing an amazing routine on a floating ring in the air. It really looked like they had worked really hard of perfecting the routine and even just working out to have the strength to hold on to it in midair. But unfortunately they didn’t win the judges over and got the first no from the judges. From there the show took a turn and seemed to resemble more of a buck or hen party (bachelor or bachelorette) with all the male strippers that took the stage. I joked with Lauren saying she was getting a little flushed but I think she was more disgusted since there were even oompa loompa strippers at one point! And, they all got through to the next round. This is also around the time when we started to lose faith in the show because they seemed to be letting everyone through even if their talent was mediocre.  This show is obviously going to be overcrowded with acts. More and more people kept leaving through and we were thinking about doing it ourselves since it was already past 11 o’clock, but Lauren says she would have felt bad since there weren’t many people left. Turns out there weren’t that many acts left anyways so we decided to stick it out. Usually they save the best for last but that was not the case today; a Korean man took the stage dressed exactly like Psy the artist of Gangnum Style which was of course the song he was choosing to sing. Neither of us are a fan of this song since it’s so over played now and today was no different. We couldn’t believe that the judges actually let him through since he was claiming to have written another song titled “Color Men” which sounds oddly similar to Psy’s new song ‘Gentleman.’ We were definitely done watching the show after that and quickly made our way to the train station with the other couchsurfing, talking about our favorite acts the whole way. Soon enough we were back in Sydney and on our way to make some midnight sloppy joes. We always tell ourselves that we’ll eat before we go out and do things, but somehow always get caught in the trap with starving and eating much later than we would like. Those sloppy joes were delicious though!