A few weekends ago, me and pretty much everyone else in my group migrated down to Sydney for the weekend for Mardi Gras. There were 16 of us in 1 room and 1 bathroom in the hostel for 4 days...as you can imagine, we didn't sleep much. We had all day to tour the city on Friday, so I went down to Darling Harbour. It is HUGE...filled with shops and restaurants. I checked out the Sydney Aquarium and Wildlife World, which were pretty sweet. I finally got to chill with the kangaroos and koalas!! The shopping malls are outrageous there...I've never seen so many designer stores in my life!! I did get to splurge a little bit though...I bought myself a real pair of Australian Uggs!! Totally worth it! :) Mardi Gras was an eye opening experience. They "Gay Parade" was Saturday night and it was amazing. All the floats were bright as can be and extremely colorful and in every direction, you could hear techno, Madonna, and Cher playing in the background. So much fun...it was a great weekend. Of course, I was extremely tired for about 3 days after!!
Two weekends ago, we had a couple birthdays to celebrate. Andrew, a boy in my group, turned 21, so we celebrated that for a couple nights. My birthday was last Monday, so my roommates took me out to dinner on the boardwalk overlooking the Newcastle Harbour. We decided to celebrate my birthday on St. Patrick's Day so we had no excuses :) We went down to Finnegan's...which is an Irish Pub right down the street from out apartment. Guinness and Green everywhere!! I've discovered that regardless of what country you are in, if you celebrate your birthday while you are there, you won't remember much of it in the morning. I woke up with a "Kiss me I'm Irish" shirt on and I'm not sure how that got there. Aussie birthday celebration did not disappoint!
This past weekend was by far the best one to date...and it will take a lot to beat it! We went down to Sydney again as a group for the weekend. Friday afternoon, we took a tour of the Sydney Opera House. It is huge and really interesting inside! There are 3 smaller drama theaters, 1 Orchestra Hall, and the Opera Hall. I only have pictures of the Orchestra Hall...copyright laws restricted us from taking pictures of the other theaters, but that's fine. The Opera House overlooks the whole harbour and has an amazing view. It was beautiful.
Saturday morning, we had to wake up bright and early to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. That was amazing. We got to climb through all the steel frames all the way to the very top. No cameras were allowed on the climb, but the guide brought a camera and took some pictures of us. The view from the top was spectacular. You could see every part of Sydney. The climb took about 3 hours and we were dead beat at the end! When Sarah gets here, I'm going to do the climb again with her but we are going at night so we can see everything lit up.
Sunday was the greatest day of my life. Me and 3 other girls traveled down to Wollongong, which is about an hour and a half south of Sydney, and we went SKYDIVING!! We did a tandem jump (harnessed onto an instructor) from about 14,000 feet in the air. The first 60 seconds was the free fall, and man did we fall!! About 10,000 feet to be exact! I was the 3rd person to jump, so I watched 2 of my friends plumage out of the plane and that really did not help my nerves. You hear them screaming for about 2 seconds and then they are gone! I was harnessed on to my instructor, and when it was my turn, he was scooting towards the door while I was trying to scoot away from the door. I lost that battle. I had to sit on the edge of the plane with my feet hanging outside and that's when the outer body experience started...the first time I looked down. I knew I was screwed because there was no way my instructor was going to not jump at that point. Before I knew it, I was barrel rolling out of the plane heading for Earth at about 120mph, my eyes and skin being sucked to the back of my head. Luckily, I knew I was breathing the whole time because I was screaming my head off. In my head, all I could hear was Tom Petty singing, "Free Falling." It was totally and completely 100% the best experience of my life. I'm trying to convince Sarah to go with me but its not looking promising. I have like 500 pictures of the dive along with a video.
Basically, my weekends are the fun parts! I DO go to school on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but those are really the only days I even think about school...ironic, considering I came here for school. Oh well! I usually get all my homework done Thursday afternoon so I don't have to worry about it at all. Most days, when I'm not jumping out of planes and climbing huge bridges, I'm at the beach. My life was consumed for about 4 days while I was reading the Twilight novel series. But other then that...nothing too exciting going on during the week. I have big plans coming up: Sarah is visiting in 3 weeks and we are heading north to the Whitsunday Islands and Great Barrier Reef, and I'm also planning trips to Melbourne, Brisbane, and New Zealand...so I'll have many more stories to share soon!
Here is some random information that I've picked up so far while I've been here:
- a weedwacker is called a "whipper-sniper"
- a windbreaker is called a "wind-cheater"
- Australia has the same land mass as the US, but has the population of California
- 1/5 of Australia's entire population is in Sydney
- There have been 4 shark attacks since I arrived here
- The Opera House is home to the world's largest organ...the tallest pipe is 3 stories high and the smallest is the size of your index finger
- Finding Nemo fans...P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney does NOT exist! But I did find out that there is a dentist office on the harbour that it is modeled after.
- The Opera House was supposed to take 3 years to build and cost $2 million, but it took 17 years to build and cost about $102 million...and I thought I was over budget!!
Alright...well I miss you all very much! Hopefully I will talk to you sooner then a month! :)
GO BUCKY!
Mindy
