Pretty sure that was all juice!

Now that my credit card was back in commission we decided it would just be best to go ahead and buy the rest of our plane tickets for all our travels in Australia. That meant we are officially going to Cairns next week to go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef along with Tasmania and Melbourne at the end of the month. We celebrated by heading to the library first thing this morning to go ahead and print out all of our itineraries! Plus, its just a huge relief having all those big purchases out of the way since we’re famous for putting off buying expensive things, although these plane tickets were nothing compared to plane tickets in the US. They are so much cheaper! I had the task of printing out the itineraries while Riley went ahead and got to work on his study guide. He has his first exam in Anthropology on Monday and has to complete an outline so he knows what to write about for his final essay. Needless to say he’s not excited about having to write an essay for his exam since he’d much rather take a test, but what can ya do? Sydney University sure does love their writing. Once he was confident in his outline we headed back to get even more writing done – blogs. They always seem to pile up as I’m sure you guys know since we don’t post them as often as we used to. Our days have just been so packed lately with all the final things to do in Sydney! We took the afternoon easy since we knew our evening was going to be a little crazier than usual – we were going on our first pub crawl. I know, you guys are probably shocked by this since we’re not the type to do this, but it was only going to be $5 and we’ve never been on an official pub crawl so we figured why not. We were supposed to meet everyone at 8 o’clock at the Queen Victoria Building, but we were so excited that we got there 20 minutes and no one there seemed to be waiting for a pub crawl. So we wandered into the Queen Victoria Building to get out of the cold and slight drizzle. We have actually never been in the QVB because we honestly didn’t know that you could just wander in. I’ve read online about tours and thought it was more of a parliament building than a shopping mall, because that’s exactly what it turned out to be – a huge 3 story mall. I mean the stores were all top brand like Ralph Lauren and Chanel, so we obviously just did some window shopping. There was however a cool clock in the middle that had rotating minutes, hours, dates, and months. There was a vertical line where all the circles would align to tell the actual time and date! As it got closer to 8 o’clock we made our way back outside to be confronted by a fairly large group of students. We were greeted by the hosts of the pub crawl and given the rundown on how the night would go. Basically we were going to 4 pubs/bars and would get free entry to all of them and supposedly pizza at the 3^rd bar. That was good enough for us, so we just have to wait until everyone arrived until we headed off to Sweeney’s which was literally just a block away. Once we got there we all made our way up 4 flights of stairs to the balcony or rooftop. Riley was surprised that it was actually an open rooftop with fresh air; he thought it would still be a closed in room. I didn’t mind the fresh air except for the smokers. Anyways, right as we were getting adjusted to the small space a guy stuck out his hand to introduce himself to me, saying he was Andrias from Germany. Seeing as I’m going to Germany in just a few shorts months I am always excited to meet German people so I can get more of a feel for what I’m getting myself into. And the conversation between all of us took off from there. From having met all our German friends in Fiji we are accustomed to their accent and humor by now so we all got along perfectly. We shared our first drink together which was basically just cranberry juice before we headed off to the next bar. The next pub was Scruffy’s Murphys which we’re familiar with since it’s the pub we went to for St. Patrick’s Day as I’m sure you can imagine why (its an irish pub). We were able to get a nice beer at this pub and share it quietly upstairs with an American from Minnesota, a guy from Iran and another girl from Hamburg, Germany. Most of our conversations centered about our journeys through Australia as well as the girl’s upcoming trip to the west coast of the US. The third bar, Scu bar, was a little more chaotic than the last two since it was more like a bar in Charlotte. There was loud music, black dance floor and DJ in the back corner of the room bobbing his head to the music. We grabbed a table near the back and were informed by the host to stay there since the pizza would be coming out soon. Andrias had warned us not to get our hopes up since he had never gotten pizza here in all the seven times he’s done the pub crawl, but we were still hopeful. Sure enough, not even five minutes later they had brought out 5 small pizzas, I mean personal size pizzas, and we were first in line! Because it was so dark inside we barely knew what we were eating, but some were barbeque flavored and others more vegetarian. We signaled Andrias to come over and he was so excited that he was able to finally get a slice of pizza! By then they had moved the pool table away to make room for the dance floor and the rhythm of the songs got to us. We soon found ourselves on the dance floor but not for long since we barely knew half the songs. We were just as content with sitting off to the side and people watching. It was definitely entertaining to watch one half-dressed girl dance with five guys circling her. She obviously liked the attention. The last bar was called Side Bar which is right next to the Central Station bus stop so it was closer to where we used to live. We stepped down the stairs into the same type of scene – dark room with loud music and lots of people on the dance floor. There was a huge bar in the middle of the room and everyone dancing off to the one corner. We took to the dance floor first but then a couple of guys were getting too close for my comfort so we moved around. We were beginning to hear the same songs that had played at the previous bar so we decided to grab our drink and find a seat. We agreed that the loud music and crazy dancing wasn’t our thing and we don’t know how some international students can do this almost every night! We’re obviously more into the trivia nights and board games. It was a good experience though and we met some cool people along the way. In the end we left around 12:30 just like we had planned and walked back feeling normal.