It's just about that time my friends, SUMMMMEE...Wait, no, no, it's almost just the end of lectures, I still have a full month until my finals. And it's not summer, it's winter. It's way too damn cold here. My final week of lectures was this past week, meaning that this next week I only have tutorials aka dissertations/discussions. That means that June is our final exam period; lucky for me, mine are grouped together at the very end of June right before I have to leave this lovely place. And this schoolwork is catching up to me FAST!
I haven't blogged about the present recently, so here is a bit of it.
I finally went to Scubar on last Monday night (5/14-the only place to party hard on a Monday night), and learned a hard lesson: Never wear a hat to a club, people will want to wear it, they will literally steal it off your head, and this will become more prevalent as the night goes on. It was a good time though! Courtney, Lauren, Verena, and myself all got our dance moves on the floor.
Courtney and I at Scubar which fyi is pronounced "Scuba" by all the Aussies
That Thursday night was my ball for Shalom; the ticket was fifty bucks, but it was well worth it! We spent the night in the gorgeous Darling Harbor for a night of eating, drinking, and dancing with friends. Here's a few pics from that very special night!
Sukhi, Rachel, Tanya, Kara, Renee and Myself
Being my usual jokester self
The boys showing me some love, Aww!
After my crazy night on Thursday, I needed a down night on Friday to just chill out, and besides I knew I was going to be going out on Saturday night. Saturday night, me and all my girls, Alex, and his cousin, Paul (who knew Maxi from Bondi Rescue!!) went to this house party. Let's just say that this picture sums up the night:
Alex, Verena, and Courtney.. Classic
Verena, Courtney, and Me showing some love
This past week has been a very non-partying week, not because I had a bunch of stuff to do, but because all of my friends did. So, I was ready to get out on the town Friday night to take part in Vivid Sydney. Vivid Sydney is this lights festival in Circular Quay aka the main downtown area of Sydney where they basically do artistic light designs and as many light designs as possible. The city was packed to say the least.
My cider at dinner at Three Wise Monkeys
Having some fun at Vivid Sydney
Getting artsy at the festival
Here is where you had to scream at this thing to get all the flaps to fly up, we did it! It was hilarious to see little kids scream and only see the first row of flaps go up and then these huge guys go up all alone and raise all of the flaps. So funny!
I temporarily forgot how to hopscotch there! Anyways, it was a great night and reminded of how much I love this city.
My trip to the Blue Mountains was the best surprise! Alex messaged me on Friday afternoon, asking if I wanted to take an overnight bag and "go somewhere with him" on Saturday night (I jokingly told my mom and dad if they didn't hear from me in 48 hours to call the popo). I had a feeling he was either planning on taking me to Newcastle or the Hunter Valley, but as we headed to the west of Sydney late Saturday afternoon, I started to get a small inkling that we were heading to the Blue Mountains instead. And I was spot on!
Alex planned to make it to the Three Sisters for sunset, but we hit traffic and missed the sunset. Instead we drove around and checked out the small town of Katoomba. It's a really cute town, it kind of reminded me of a winter-y, mountainous Webster Groves. After grabbing some Italian food (I had the best steak I've ever had in my entire life), we went back to our crack den of a hostel. Side note: apparently our hostel used to be an old nursing home--Sounds promising already, right? Anyways, thank god I had Alex there with me, I had the worst bed in the place, right by the window, and the guy above me would not stop moving!
The next day we grabbed breakfast in Katoomba before we went out to the see the Three Sisters. They were definitely a sight to see... Apparently everyone else thought so too, there were a ton of tourists!
Posing with the Three Sisters in the distance
We walked down to the first sister, which is the only one accessible still
We went back into Katoomba because I just had to buy this hat that I tried on earlier before heading out to Jenolan Caves for the afternoon.
The drive to Jenolan Caves
After an hour or so of driving, some of which was on a one way road through the mountains, we arrived to the home of the Jenolan Caves; we arrived just in the nick of time, and joined the tour of the main cave.
The Broken Column
Home of the fairies
After the extremely informative tour we went out to see the other sights, we went to the huge Devil Wells and the Blue Pond which is not photo-shopped in my pictures. And since we were there at around 5 PM, we were lucky enough to see a platypus in the wild. Apparently this is exceptionally rare; the platypus are expected to die out in fifty years or so since experts can't figure out how to breed them in captivity.
Inside Devil's Well
Jenolan's Blue Pond
The platypus we saw in the wild!
View driving home
It was a great weekend, there's still so many things I haven't done in the Blue Mountains. Hopefully, a second trip is in the near future.
The walk right next to Lake Burley-Griffin near the National Gallery of Australia
Just a quick quote from Bill Bryson, the author of In a Sunburned Country:
"The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn't get much better than this."
Yep, that sums up Australia. I have yet to find a place here that I can't stand or I hate. Everything is just beautiful. Canberra, for example. I was blessed enough to travel there this past weekend. I absolutely loved it. Here's a video I took summing up how beautiful Canberra is and how much it made me miss Autumn.
We hoped to leave Sydney at 7 am, but Alex, the Aussie I've been dating here, had so much work to do that he was up super late. Instead, we ended up leaving Sydney at 9 am, two hours later than we had planned. The drive to Canberra was uneventful, we just talked and listened to our music (I got Alex hooked on the song "If I Die Young" by the Band Perry). We didn't plan our petrol breaks well because we almost ran out, thankfully we made it the station with 17 km to spare! There, Alex had to put more oil in the car and he was lucky enough to have one of the local guys give him a hand (The guy who helped him had hands just like you, Dad!).
We were about to run out of petrol... Only 17 km until empty!
View inside the Australian War Memorial
We made it to Canberra around one or so, we made the decision to see the Australian War Memorial first, since the tour was 90 minutes and they had one starting at 1:30 pm we could catch. Alex is huge on doing tours, and he's right, this one was incredible. Our tour guide told us all about WWI mainly, and about the ANZACs (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). Before I came here, I thought Australia had never been in any wars, turns out they've been in all the same wars as us. Similar to our D-Day, the Australians had ANZAC day on April 25, 1915. By some faulty intelligence or error, the Australians landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey, the one place that was guarded by Turkish forces. Some 8,000 Australians were slaughtered, and those that survived the initial attack had to rough it on the mountains of the coast with minimal supplies. It was a huge failure, and it was a turning point in Australia's relationship with Britain.
Alex playing in the "submarine"
View of Parliament House from the Australian War Memorial
The flowers added next to the names of the lost soldiers in WWI
Once we finished up playing around the War Memorial (They had a section for kids that we had to go explore/play in), Alex had to go finish up some work (He had a 2500 word essay due at midnight!). As interesting and entertaining it would be to sit with him while he did his work, I took the alternate route: I wanted to go walk around Canberra.
It was the perfect time, right at sunset. I'm so glad I got to see Canberra in the fall; it was unnerving how much it made me miss Missouri. Yes, I actually missed Missouri! The leaves don't change in most of Australia because most of the trees are eucalyptus, and therefore, don't lose their leaves. But, they had trees just like home in Canberra, and they were all changing color. The best part was all the leaves on the ground... I think that's what made it smell like home. I found a section of trees (the picture from the very top) where I could walk through the leaves, hear them crunching under my Uggs, take in the water, and breathe in the smell of autumn.
Selfie around sunset around Lake Burley-Griffin
Let me just elaborate on just how cool Canberra is. It was built in 1912, after Walter Burley Griffin, an American architect, won a competition with his plan for the city. It's in a hexagonal shape, and it's brilliant; everything just lines up. It's so cute! After my musings near the lake, I called up Alex because I was cold and hungry, and we attempted to head up to Mount Black for sunset. We barely missed it, so instead Alex showed me his uni he attended his 1st and 2nd year, ANU. After a bit of sightseeing, we went downtown for dinner at Gus's; it was soooo good! We ate outside which would have been rough (it was in the single digits at night!), luckily, they had heaters and candlelight to set the mood. Once I was thoroughly stuffed with an unbelievable amount of carbohydrates, we went to get some more at Coco Black; Alex got a super rich hot chocolate and I had some chocolate ice cream to accompany our $2 a piece chocolates.
We got back to the hotel around 9; Alex had work to do,so I just took advantage of the bathtub and went to bed all toasty and warm, we had a bunch of places we had to get to tomorrow.
Hoping to catch the 9:30 am tour of the National Museum of Australia, we checked out bright and early at 9 am. Being the only two people on this tour, we got to ask as many questions as we wanted. Australia has one interesting history. My favorite story of the whole tour was this: apparently, a convict in South Australia escaped from his crew, he came across a grave site where he found spears, that he thought he could use for hunting. When he ran into a clan of Aborigines later, they thought he was a reincarnation of one of their dead, so they welcomed him into their clan. He stayed with them for 30 years, and took part of the negotiations over land in Melbourne with the British. He had been so immersed in their society that he had almost forgotten English, but it all came back when he helped with negotiations. Pretty cool story, huh?
Alex "Tim-Tebowing"-at my request- at the National Museum of Australia
We grabbed some breakfast in the historic, cute part of town, it sort of reminded me of Kirkwood, Mo. I finally tried eggs benedict, and I LOVED it! We made our way to the Parliament House to catch the 1 pm tour.
Looking out over the mountains at the top of Parliament House
We were lucky enough to have an amazing tour guide that knew an insane amount of information on the Australian political system. Here's some things I learned about the ridiculously complicated Australian government:
Parliament is broken into two houses: the House of Representatives with 150 representatives from 150 different areas divided by equal population, and the Senate that has 12 senators for each of the 7 states.
Both houses are equal in terms of power, but the majority in the House of Representatives creates the government, and within the government is the Prime Minister (Julia Gillard), who the people do not directly vote for!
Parliament House has many interpretations in its design. People are suppose to be above government which is why you can go above the Parliament and sit on top of it. The red rock/soil outside of Parliament is suppose to represent the red soil of the outback with the fountain out front to represent a billabong which was a traditional place of gathering for Aboriginals.
The Head of State is the Queen of England, and technically, she can come in and do whatever the hell she wants.
Once we finished our tour of the Parliament House, we checked out the High Court which is the highest court of the land. It was a very interesting building, and we were the only ones there, so Alex asked a million and one questions, and this is what I gained from it:
There are seven justices on the High Court, and two of them serve on the appeal court to deem the case worthy of the High Court's attention
Criminal and constitution issues can appear before them
View overlooking the mountains to the west on Canberra from Mount Ainslie
We caught the last few rays of the day from the lookout on Mount Ainslie. I was once again filled with this feeling I get sometimes over here; it's this feeling almost like fear/sadness mixed together, I realize that I may never see this beautiful place again or be in this same moment ever again. It's the weirdest emotion. It was a perfect weekend and the best time to see Canberra in all its fall glory.
I am not the same person that I was two and half months ago. That, I am sure of.
Sydney feels like home to me. I know where everything is. I know how to get from point A to point B (most of the time). I don't feel lost anymore. I feel like I belong here. It took awhile obviously, two and a half months, but I can see myself living here. I can see myself working here, maybe even living here. Weird, I know! But, I can't go back to my old way of life because that old me doesn't exist. Yes, there are things that I miss like days on the river with my dad, sitting around at dinnertime with everyone watching the Nightly News with Brian Williams, and country music, but I have a life here now, too. I have things here that I will miss just as dearly as I did when I left the US. I used to dream of home, of being back at my house... Sometimes if I see a dad or mom with their little girl, I get a little misty eyed just because I think of how much I miss being around my mom and dad.
Now the thought of going back home, to my old life, scares me. I'll be happy to see my family, but I won't be able to drink, and, after living in such a cool city like Sydney, I don't think I can live in St. Louis. I don't know if I want to stay and work in the Missouri. It'll be great to see my friends from back home, but I will be surrounded by all Americans. I'm so over that, especially going back to Greek life (more so the boys not the girls), I know it'll keep me busy and distracted, but those frat guys are completely 100% the same and boring.
Obviously from this post, you, my audience, can tell that things are a bit different now.
