The Bogan Encounter

Bogan: Australian term used to describe members of society that are a combination of what the Yanks call Rednecks, Jocks and Trailer Park Trash.

Drink from the Spout and You're Out!

Once again, my week was epic!

So, Tuesday night, yes, I know I went out on a Tuesday night, to the World Bar with Courtney and her roommates, Jess and Verena. It's located in this special part of downtown Sydney known as Kings Cross, it's kind of like the smaller version of Times Square in the sense that it has this one big lit-up Coca-Cola sign, and it is basically just a pack of bars! World Bar was having a special for all backpackers, so we pretended that we were staying at the YHA in Central and got into the pub for free with $5 vodkas and beers, a free drink, and a free glass of champagne! They had karaoke going on in the back, where we were delighted by these fellows below in my video singing, "Barbie Girl". Being the adventurous girl that I am here, and accompanied by my also fearless friends, we signed up to sing the song "What I Got" by Sublime. Classic! We also say the song, "Just Like a Pill" by P!nk, (the most random, depressing song ever!) thanks to Verena. Her logic was that since she does really well singing it on Guitar Hero (It's a video game, Mom and Dad), that she would rock it karaoke-style. Haha we were terrible! None of us knew the words, not even Verena, and we definitely got booed! But hell, we didn't care, we were having too much fun!

Posing at Kings Cross

World Bar is also known for having these teapots. They're pricey, but you split it between two people and it's a sweet deal. Courtney and I split the Fruit Tingle, and they gave us two shot glasses each since it basically is a mixture of shots all together. It was definitely worth it!

Courtney and I with our teapot!

Wednesday night, Darren, the first Irish I've ever met, took me up to the Centerpoint Tower to see the city. He planned it perfectly, we got up to the tower right when the sun was setting. I could see everything, all the way back to the Blue Mountains! It was two of my college friends' birthdays, so they were going out that same night to Lowenbrau, this German pub in the Rocks. Darren and I headed there until they arrived to have a few drinks and chat. He had some hilarious stories about his "Nan"! Once the whole college gang arrived, I introduced Darren to everyone at Jacksons on George Street. Nothing was really going on at any of the clubs, so we called it an early night at about midnight. 

Sydney Aquarium

I had to stay in the rest of the week just about to make up for going away last weekend, and going out Tuesday and Wednesday night, but I had a wonderful, touristy Saturday. We had to go to the Sydney Aquarium in Darling Harbor for our Marine Environment class, Kara, Emily, and I in the morning. It doesn't even compare to the Atlanta Aquarium or the Shedd Aquarium! Surprising, huh?! 

We grabbed lunch in Darling Harbor which is a super cool area to be in, it was so lively! We then spent the rest of the day at Bondi Beach where I got beat up catching some waves. It was a great workout though! We came back to a cold dinner at Shalom and a down night to chill out and relax. :) 

Darling Harbor

UNSW Sailing Weekend 2012 ❤

After being in the city for the past month, I was so keen to get away from all the clubs and the lights. Once I got out of class on Friday, I finished a load of laundry, packed up, and was ready to go around 5.

Alix and I made our way over to the UNSW Languages campus where they kept all of their sporting equipment and store basically everything else for all the clubs at UNSW. Once the cars were all packed up and ready to go, we hopped into Shannon's station wagon (of course, I snagged shotgun!), and were on our way. It was dark most of the drive, but we did make it over the Harbor Bridge in the daylight!

Once we got there everyone was just chilling on the beach, drinking goon, and enjoying the stars. In the Southern Hemsisphere you can actually see the Milky Way, and lucky for me, someone in my group was able to get a picture of it. It was insane, I haven't seen that many stars since I went on my cruise to Mexico. Once we ran out of wine on the beach, we headed back to the second house for a very late dinner of spaghetti. We were able to get back to the beach afterwards and enjoy a bonfire right on the sand... I finally got to do something so very Australian: have a campfire on the beach :)





Here is the picture of what the sky looked like our first night at Hawks Nest; gorgeous isn't it?!








Unfortunately, Weather was not a very happy lady this weekend; she was very cloudy and blue. I was woken up by Ajay early Saturday morning, and with very little prospects of the weather improving, I assumed that this was the best it was going to be, so I better take advantage of it. After grabbing a quick breakfast (They spent $1500 on FOOD for the weekend!), we got out the kayaks and headed out in Port Stephens. Kayaking is actually super hard because it all depends on how you center the boat with your weight, so I got a decent workout doing it. I was completely soaked and freezing after that, and I figured that there was nothing else I'd be doing in the water, so I stupidly took a hot shower to warm up and put on fresh clothes. I realized that no one was in the house, so I headed back down to the beach, but I'm one of those people that can't just sit there on a cloudy day, so I went for a run around Port Stephen instead. I always love runs like that along the beach, they always clear my head and make me appreciate where I am.  This is where the stupidity kicks in, first of all it rained a little bit during my run, not too much, but then Ajay offered to take me out sailing, and I thought when am I ever going to get the chance to do this again, so I said sure, why not. I ended up getting completely soaked head to toe, and had to take another hot shower, and put on my last remaining dry clothes.
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All of us together for the weekend hat party!

To kill time we played the longest game of Cranium ever, and then it was time to start drinking. A group of us headed to the back the house where we played the best game of Kings Cup ever. The theme of the party was crazy hats, so luckily for me, I had a one of my college friend's lend me her pirate hat. We closed the night again by drinking by the campfire on the beach.

Sunday, I somehow adapted the sleeping patterns on a koala; pretty sure I just napped all day Sunday on the beach... Oh and I ate a huge lunch since we had a ton of food to finish off. The sun finally came out on our that afternoon, but it was still freezing for me when I was laying out on the beach. We headed back into Sydney late that night.

It was a great weekend, so glad I went!

Cheers to the Freakin' Weekend! 3/9-3/11

One of my craziest weekends yet... It was jam packed!

The part of the Argyle we were in

After doing some homework on Friday, it was time to pre-game for the night with all my Shalommies. After I had finished a significant amount of my Coke Zero and Bombora (basically a cheap Australian version of Malibu), we caught the bus to Circular Quay and ran into the highly bar-knowledgeable Daniel. After waiting in Circular Quay for what felt like forever, we headed to Jackson's on George Street where I paid $8.50 for a beer! Once everyone else arrived to George Street, we all headed to the Argyle to meet up. Even though my feet were killing me, I hung in there and survived the cobblestone red carpet. There I met my first Irish bloke, and ended up having a drink with him. Little did I know that all my friends had left, but they realized I was missing and came back for me, thank god!

The Argyle was amazing! It's located in a pretentious part of town known as the Rocks; it's the place where they first settled in Sydney, which is why it's very rustic, the cobblestone is original to the first settlers.

Once we returned to Jackson's on George Street, everyone from my college took over the dance floor! I danced for as long I could, but I had to call it a night. Luckily, Emily was ready to call it a night too, and Jason, being the good guy that he is, went back with us to make sure we were safe :). I finally got to hit the sack at 2 o'clock in the morning!

The next day was the one and only, FUTURE MUSIC FESTIVAL! We knew that drinks would be crazy expensive in there, so we drank as much as possible before hand, but not in a belligerent way, just enough to  numb any crowd anxiety that I had. We had to walk over to Randwick Racecourse which was right by our uni. Once we reached the racecourse, we had to head through this tunnel which reeked of horse manure for obvious reasons, and it was super hot on Saturday too, so the smell was sort of intensified. 

At Courtney's apartment before the festival with Verena, Courtney, and  myself

Everyone was crazy there! Either they were ridiculously drunk or they were rolling on E; I only bought two drinks there, but they cost $23 dollars! After watching Jessie J and fetching my first drink we headed over to Gym Class Heroes. I was fine at first, but the crowd started pushing hardcore, and I started getting really bad crowd anxiety; I just had to get out of there as soon as possible. I lost Courtney and Verena for a bit, after wandering around aimlessly for about an hour or so, I found them near the food. Verena knew exactly how I felt because she hates crowd too, especially after her experience in Germany's Love Parade. 

Okay, so side note, because I had never even heard about this until Verena told me. Back in Summer of 2010, Verena and her boyfriend, Julien, went to the Love Parade which was the biggest techno music festival in the world. People started to go into this tunnel and somehow a mass panic broke out inside the tunnel; it was too many people trying to get through it at once. Verena was one of the people in that tunnel, she said that all you could hear was people screaming from being in so much pain and being crushed to death, and that the police were doing nothing; she tried to get by a police officer, but he wouldn't let her through even though she told him that people were quote, "Dying in there". People were trying to hop police barricades covered with spikes in order to get out of this thing, and many people ended up having to get their arms or legs amputated. I can't believe that I had never heard of it before. 

Here's the link, everyone should read about it... it's unreal: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/24/love-parade-festival-tunnel-stampede

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=ckKqdYyRqn0

With everyone during the festival

Some random guy all dressed up lol

Back to the Future Music Festival! Together the three of us went back into the crowd after grabbing some food, and watched Fatboy Slim and Swedish House Mafia . Here's some videos I took to just show how crazy the event was!

I recorded Courtney when she was on this Brazilian guy's shoulders, she was so terrified because he was literally jumping up and down like "a track star" in her words... That's not Ecstasy that's making her laugh, it's fear lol 

My view from when I was on Reese's shoulders

At these festivals, everyone tends to put either girls (or even guys!) on their shoulders, this guy here, Reese, was nice enough to offer me his shoulders ha!

Like most of my weekends, I like to close with a day at the beach. I wanted to go someplace new, so I thought Courtney, Lauren, and I could try Maroubra beach which is about a single twenty minute bus ride away. It was a brilliant idea! Maroubra was amazing; it was a gorgeous day and yet it was SO quiet. It was so relaxing; it's so obvious that it's a local beach (Lauren couldn't even find any postcards!). 

Maroubra Beach

That's all I've got for now! Just got to study my butt off this week, then I'm off to Hawk's Nest!

Changes so far: Month 1

I thought I'd just do a short post about the changes that I've noticed about myself thus far.

When I first arrived here, I was very enthralled with everything; even the small things were exciting like the Australian license plates and hearing an Australian voice during a commercial not an American one. I remember when I first got off the plane from Brisbane, I had this sort of euphoric feeling when I first saw all the green and felt the humid, summer heat. This enchanted feeling sort of numbed the stress I felt from being in such a new situation. Also, my orientation tired us out so much that by the end of the day, I was so exhausted that as soon as my head hit the pillow I was out. Basically, I was in the honeymoon stage of culture shock.

After Cairns, I felt culture shock like none other when I arrived in Sydney. I wasn't in that crazy, over the top exciting feeling anymore; I just wanted to be home (I've noticed that if I get stressed here or super anxious, the same feeling kicks in again). Luckily for me, since I live in a college, they kept us busy majority of that first week. My American friends that I had made in Cairns, also made me feel a little better that week since I was already comfortable with them. I also went running a lot the first week or so in Sydney; I was so stressed because I knew that I had five months until I went home, that I had terrible anxiety, but running made me feel way better, and it tired me out, so it was easier to sleep at night. Beating myself to a pulp, helped me clear my head when home seemed so far away. In the first two weeks, especially that first night when I went to a house party with Renee and Lea, I had to really focus when they, the Australians, spoke; since I was concentrating so hard on what they were saying, it was kind of hard for me to be myself. I probably cried once a day that first week here... I was that homesick!

It has officially been one month since I left home... I miss home every single day. Being here I have realized how important my family and friends are to me. I am so lucky to have such a good family and friends, and being here, I know how rare it is to have the people in my life like I do back home. As much as I love it here, America is my home and always will be; yes, there are some things I wish I could change about it or things that they did in Australia that I wish they'd do in America, but I love America. People say Australia is a beautiful country, and I agree one hundred percent, but America is just as beautiful. I also think that while I love my home, that there isn't much for me in Fenton, but I have a life back at Mizzou... Mizzou feels like my real home to me.

I'm getting more comfortable here. I don't have to focus when Australians talk; it just sounds natural to me now.  My room is becoming more like home to me. If I do feel that stress again of being way too far from home, I try to do something new like go to a new beach, or make plans for a future trip like going sailing with friends one weekend, or go for a super hard, long run. I'm learning what works for me. Blogging also helps.

That's it for now, one month down and four to go.

MARDI GRAS!!!

Mardi Gars in Sydney is nothing like Mardi Gras back in the States. That's all I gotta say!

Jess, one of Courtney's roommates, Me, and Courtney 

Even St. Louis's Mardi Gras, which is one of the biggest in the country, is NOTHING like how it is in Sydney. Here Mardi Gras is all about gays, lesbians, and transgenders and everything in between. It is flamboyant, outrageous, revealing, scarring, fun, crazy, and loud. It's just super-duper gay. And I don't mean it in a derogatory way like we sometimes use in America, but honestly, that's the best way to describe it. Men were walking around in butt-less chaps, or were dressed up as drag queens, but it wasn't just the men either, women wore tight leather or barely anything at all. It was a very different Mardi Gras experience!

Me, Courtney, and Kristin

The day started out with us taking a taxi cab to Oxford Street since Kristin couldn't catch a bus, so we were right near the parade spot were Kylie Minogue was going to perform after the parade. Once I bought my boa and gold mask, we headed down the block to grab some Thai food for late lunch/early breakfast. We just chilled and talked for almost three hours there until we had to grab a spot along the parade blockade. We were right next to a bakery... As you can imagine, I bought not only one, but TWO pastries... one croissant-ish thing stuffed with apples and the other stuffed with chocolate ricotta. For two bucks each, you just couldn't beat it. Finally the parade started!

Verena, Courtney's German roommate,  and I

One of the many scantily dressed men

Some random chick that wanted a hug lol

One of the many crazy floats, everyone was dancing!

Now here's the God story. Once we headed out of the parade area which was a very big hike for Kristin, I thought she was about to kill everyone, we caught a cab for her and Courtney to take back home. Unsure of where Verena, Jess, and I were, I started heading down random streets away from the parade hoping to find some bus stop. As we headed around a corner, I spotted a bus marked for Randwick; Somehow we had managed to find the right bus to take us back home! As we ran to the bus stop, I couldn't help but think how lucky we were. But, when I got on the bus, I had completely forgotten that my bus pass had expired! The bus ticket machine made this awful buzzing noise, but rather than make me pay the bus driver just said, "Don't worry about it". Someone was looking out for me. 

It was a long day, and we stood for hours, but it was an experience that I'll always remember :) 

Friday, March 2

Yesterday, I woke up planning on going running after my 9 am, 2 hour statistics lecture (which is starting to scare me a little bit!), but no of course, it was raining. I have never seen rain like this before; it has literally been raining nonstop here. NONSTOP. So, I was once again forced to not go running outside or go to the beach. I had been planning on spending my afternoon buying a fan (yes, I finally decided to give in), buying some clothes, and buying a much-needed umbrella, but instead I got a phone call from my friend Courtney inviting me to go with them to the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Power House Museum. After we stopped by the hospital to pick up Kristin's pain meds, we maneuvered her and her gimp leg into a taxi headed for the museum. The exhibition was so worth it! They wouldn't let me take any pictures, but they had everything! Clothes from the movies, small props from the films like wands, the Quibbler, and other things like that. How cool would it be if your job was to be the person to create those small detailed props?!

After a nap and dinner it was time to get my spirits for the weekend. Another first time Aussie experience; I bought my first bottle of alcohol: Bombora, which is sort of like a cheap version of Malibu made in Australia. It was so nice to walk into the "Bottle-O" and not even be asked to show my ID to buy my fifth. I felt so cool walking down the street with my brown bag. It really is ridiculous that America's drinking age is 21; it's going to be so weird to go back to not being able to order a drink at the bar or bottle-o.

Last night, I had another crazy Aussie experience: I rode in the front seat of an Australian car. It was so odd to pop into the front seat of the car and not have the gas pedal, the brake pedal, or the STEERING WHEEL, in front of me. Not only was it a manual, but Tom, is from Darwin and hadn't drove a car in ages apparently... And it showed. Sydney driving is crazy, everything is so congested, and there's a bunch of weird turns and round-a-bouts, so when you add that top Tom's driving; it was an experience. I kept laughing with a mixture of elation and fear. Don't worry, Mom, I made it back in one piece.

A big huge group of us went to the Rege last night to just drink and chill. It was so nice to just chill and hangout. I'm really going to miss these people when I have to go home. But, as they were saying last night, I can always come back.

Ben, Me, Aaron, Kara, and Suhki with Jason in the back. As he put it, he felt like a horse in the stable trying to poke its head, so it can watch the humans. 

Emily, Tom, and Jaime

Me, Aaron, Kara, and Suhki

Tom, Jaime, Declan, Tess, and Kara at the Rege 

Let the Schoolwork Begin!

While all my friends back home are almost halfway through the semester, I am just now starting my semester here in Australia. It weirds me out even more that I will be registering for classes in less than a week for my Fall 2012 semester (I'm oddly super excited because that means that going home isn't so far away!). This week is pure lectures and introductions much like Syllabus Week back home; we start tutorials next week which are similar to discussions in America. Lucky for me, I only start three of my classes, Indigenous Australia, Theory of Statistics, and Engineering Mechanics, this week, but I'll start my fourth class, The Marine Environment, next week. Since I didn't have any class on Monday, I started school on Tuesday (three day weekends every weekend!). So far all of my lecturers have been very engaging and easy to comprehend, I actually feel excited about my classes!

I have a lot of free time right now which I'm not sure if I really like; I plan on going running/exercising, studying, surfing, dancing, and going out a lot to occupy my time. I'd look for a bar tending job here, but I'd have to get RSA certified, which I don't think I want to do.