Long, Long dayy

My hand deserves a medal after the amount of writing it suffered today. In my first day of the Environmental  management class we wrote notes off of slideshows from 9am-noon. After three hours I understood all of the info., but the main point seemed to be USA lacks efficiency when it comes to producing products, reducing pollution and conservation of the earth's natural elements in our everyday lifestyles.

At 1:40pm, Adelle, Gabby and I were suppose to wait for one of our tour guides Brandon, outside of the apartments to take us on the train and to the hockey field to meet our coach and practice for the first time. At 2pm and still no Brandon, we decided to find our own way with some basic directions. About 20 paces later, Brandon came running toward us and rushed us on the next train out of Bondi Juntion toward Town Hall station. He told us that the reason he was late was because when he was leaving one of our teacher's homes, he witnessed a lady get robbed and he was a witness that the police wanted to talk to.

After getting off at Town Hall Station, in a panic we ran up and down platforms trying to find the train to take us to Maquarie University stop. This train ride was a good 30 minutes and crossed over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We finally got off at our station and we had five minutes before our session was suppose to start. We treked up huge hills with our goalie bags in tow and passed countless intersections until Brandon called another coordinator and found out we were suppose to get off at Maquarie Park and not Maquarie University.

We finally reached the field sweating and 15 minutes late when we met our coach Ziek. I'm not going to walk you through the practice but I will definitely say it was a day spent dusting off the goalie pads since I hadn't played since April. Next Tuesday we were invited to practice and play with the mixed boys and girls team that Ziek coaches, which should be pretty fun after seeing some of his athletes hit the ball around today on their day off.

Tomorrow I'm going to hit the 6:15am spin class again and then head to the beach with Gabby and anyone else who wants to go afterward. We are going to go to Bondi Beach again, but this time we are going to rent surfboards and spend the day surfing and shopping around the area. Tomorrow night we all have to get dolled-up and get the opportunity to go to this party at the Sydney Museum where everyone will be in tuxedos. We are suppose to have our Aussie class, but they said this is a rare opportunity that we just happen to get the chance to be apart of.

More tomorrow, have a great day and good night.

Love,

ME

Balancing Class, Hockey and on Rocks

Today started out a little different than usual. I couldn't fall asleep because my hand was in so much pain from hanging on a rock ledge yesterday. I was constantly waking up to needles jabbing in my palm. I woke up at 3am to eat a piece of bread, take a few Advil and slapped a bag of ice on it and slept with it under my pillow.

Adelle and I woke up at 6am for the 6:15am spin class at our gym down the block and it was like no other either of us had been to before. The lights were turned off except for the one on the instructor and we were glowing from the blacklights shinning on us and the whites of our clothing popping. The class was great and we joined desiree to lift for a bit after.

Today was our first day of summer class at 9am and here are the FUN FACTS about AUSSIE:

22million people in the country but there is 140 million sheep, 40 million kangaroos and 24 million cattle
In the 80's tourism went through the roof with the Crocodile Dundee Movies
The term "Shrimp on the Barby" is complete B.S. and they don't do that
Longest straight stretch of railway (478km) and longest fence (5,500km)
1965 they invented wine in a box

Double Bay Beach

When 10,000 Aussies were polled on what they felt were Australian Icons this was the order they listed.

1. Vegemite- a pasty type jelly initially for babies that people spread on toast.
2. Acoobra hat- kinda like a cowboy hat that takes 10 rabbits to make it.
3.Meat Pie- like hot dogs for us.
4. Surf and Lifesaver cap- resembles all the lifeguards on duty at every beach and being a member of the club.

The harbour wasn't mentioned until #6 and Kangaroos #15

Double Bay

Watson's Bay

After class we took the train to Double Bay Beach where we then took a ferry to Watson's Bay where we got off to hike up the Sydney Harbour National Park Gap Bluff.

Gap Bluff

The bluff is actually notorious for people jumping off of it during the Great Depression to commit suicide and today they have a huge fence and a help-line if you have any ill feelings.

After hiking up the bluff and learning about Captain Cook, how Bondi beach was named and more, our field trip was over and a few of us split up and went in different directions.

rocks alex and I climbed

wood plank

A group of us went down to Camp Cove beach and instead of walking up the path to another beach lookout, I opted to walk along the rocks below the cliff and climbed up some pretty steep rocks. First I had to walk in thigh high water over what seemed to be ruins of something in the water from years ago and then I had to walk across this wood plank to get to the shallow rocks before the enormous ones. It was a little tougher than the day before and a littler bit different because I didn't have anyone with me and nobody could see me too well from the beach. I noticed this one steep rock that had divets where I could put my hands and feet as if it were made to climb.

The difficulty was hoisting myself up there with a backpack on and not slipping on any of the moss covering the rocks being hit by water that I was standing on at the moment. I climbed up the rocks and made home on top of the HUGE rock because the highest rock was too steep from the only place I could reach to  get up it.

diveted rock

 I sat up on top of the rock and took in the amazing view of Sydney Harbour.  As I was climbing down the rock, Alex, a surfer in our group wanted a little more of an adventure and decided he wanted to climb the rocks too. I showed him where we went and we found this cool cave. The rest of the group was back from their hike so we carefully climbed down from the rocks and caught the last ferry leaving for Darling Harbour with them. As we were on our way, I took a picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, that Desiree and I are planning on walking up this coming Sunday.


After dinner and walking around the city, I have to get to some reading for tomorrow and be ready for our FIRST DAY OF FIELD HOCKEY. We have practice on Tuesday and Thursday at 3pm and on Thursday we stay a bit longer to practice with our coach's club team. We will take a 40min. train ride to the field where we'll meet the coach who is from South Africa and I'm assuming we'll play a bit. I'll let you know how it goes. Have a wonderful day!

Love,

ME

Lost My Shoes...Climbing Cliffs

I've never felt so uncoordinated in my life after the Zumba class a bunch of us took at our gym today. The hour long class was led by this guy who already led a step/dance class before this one. We had fun, but I think I'm going to stick to spin classes.

We decided after the class to make today and beach day and we walked down to Bondi Beach (Alot of them hadn't seen it yet) and took pictures overlooking the beach. We then continued down to the somewhat busy beach today and as soon as we put our backpacks down I was the first one to go running into the clear water. I think everyone else was kind of hesitant because to them the water was cold, but compared to back home it was about the same. There were more surfers than swimmers so I think I'm gonna rent a longboard the next time we go to the beach, and I'll be sire to bring my underwater disposable camera.

 Our big group split up with people who wanted to go eat and people who wanted to go walk the pathway around the cliffs. Well, I chose to go walk around the cliffs, but being the adrenaline junkies that a few of us are, we jumped off the walk path and were walking along the cliffs and rocks where the water was hitting. There were tons of little tide pools and weathered rock that was like a jungle gym for us with all the climbing up and down we had to do. We scaled the whole cliffs and rocks that had water crashing and rushing over them. We had to watch out for the green algae because it was like slipping on oil and we had a couple minor slips. We took pictures hanging from jagged cliffs overhead and ones in a mini waterfall. Ryan did a handstand with the water crashing only about a foot behind him. We went until there was no way we could go any father unless we wanted to be crashed into the rock wall by the waves or we had rock climbing equipment.

 We then hopped back onto the pathway every sane person was on and walked to the top where there was a mini park and people were playing with their dogs. I saw a really cute Wheaten Terrier that the women ordered from Pennsylvania and she lived in Australia. After snapping a few photos over a cliff with about a 75ft drop into the ocean I was happy to get back on the designated path.

However, when I looked for my shoes in my backpack, I realized I must have left them back at the beach, so I had to walk the couple mile walk home barefooted. I now have like hobbit feet. We're about to eat, but if you wanna check out some photos of what I've talked about you can check on my facebook because my camera died pretty early in the day.!! Have a great night!

Love,

 Me

Ooops, my bad

Don't laugh and don't judge, because the reason I couldn't post last night was because I was trying to plug in a blow dryer to the converter I have and it sparked and blew up a few sparks and all the outlets in our apartment were shut off including for the internet. Gabby fixed it today.

The night before last night we all went out on the town it was a blast. We went to Kings Cross, which is about a 5 minute train ride into an area known for clubs and whatever else might strike your fancy. We went to a club called The Bank which was a lot of fun and the club owner gave all 18 of us that went out, free shots when we came in. We danced there a while and then were escorted by a security guard on the street to a bar across the street.

 It was a hotel but I believe the club name inside was the Ivy. The ceiling was absolutely covered in different size disco balls wherever there wasn't already ivy covering a hanging down from the ceiling. The club had big chandeliers that were lit up with all different colors, a huge oval bar in the middle of the club, music videos showing on blank walls, and tons of mirrors reflecting the crazy assortment of lights they had going. The DJ played all american music and when "California Girls" came on, it was just a blissful moment.
We received a shout out from the DJ and when I went to the bar I met a girl form New Jersey who use to play lacrosse at Cornell but she had to quit due to major arm surgery.

 We decided to leave as a group to go home, but then a couple people wanted to stay out so I went with Gabby, AJ, Ryan and Olivia to this bar that looked awesome because of all the lights coming out of the windows up this hug set of stairs. After paying the cheap cover, Ryan, Gabby and I were in when we saw Olivia and AJ get stopped at the entrance. Turns out the bouncer wouldn't let AJ in because he was underdressed hahaha. It was quite funny at the time. After entering the club, now just the four of us, we quickly noticed we were in an older bar where everyone was dressed in suits. Trying to make the most of our money we danced a little bit and saw a few people our age wander in and out. This one guy around our age was running around the club spinning the hanging disco balls with his hand when one fell and hit Olivia in the head. It was pretty hysterical and the guy felt pretty bad.

 We left the club and jumped on the bus back to Bondi Juntion when we saw our group mates Brenna and Ashley jumping on the bus too because they went to a different club. We were talking to some other study aboad guys on the bus that were from Italy and Hawaii and were enjoying all the surfing down at Bondi. I told them my old government teacher has a brother who surfs and asked them if they knew, Rob Machado, and they just flipped haha.

We got back to the apartments around 3am and then I skyped my Dad for a little bit to fill him in because he HASN"T been reading my BLOG!!
 I then crashed and we woke up and went to the gym to get our membership and this new gym is AWESOME!! After doing a little extra grocery shopping and showering after our workout, we got ready and walked down Oxford street which has a ton of shopping!! I didn't buy a thing but lemme tell you, the amount of shoe shops in this city is just unreal and I hope I don't snap and buy a ton.


Last night we went out again as a group and got into a bar for free down on Oxford street. Our friend Ryan competed in the Michael Jackson contest on stage and we all lost our voices screaming for him. He then did a backflip on this small stage and every started chanting USA USA USA!! He won some trip to some place, but I couldn't hear him. After a while Adelle, Desiree, Brent and Zach went to a gay bar which is really expensive to get in and Zach ripped his pants all the way down dancing!! Ha he was a good sport about it. Today we're going to go to a Zumba class at our gym around the corner and I'm gonna go cook up some eggs. Have a great day!

Love,

ME

$10,000 Fine Might Be Worth It

I'm going to make this uber snappy for ya'll. Today we hopped on the railway to the Olympic Park in Sydney. We were given a tour and taken inside NSWIS (New South Whales Institute of Sport), where they have the most advanced training facilities, equipment, scientists, nutritionists, trainers and training rooms. For instance this is just a few of their gadgets: They have rooms heated to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and resemble cycling at 3,000 ft. I was given a heart monitor as one of the few people who got to test out the room. I started sweating just putting on the heart monitor in that room. They also have hyperbaric chambers that pump out 100% oxygen that athletes will sleep in and hang out in for 12 hours a day and then train at sea level.

They have video cameras every 10yds that take down your speed, form and record it for further trials at it when it comes to sprints and running. I also volunteered to have these reflective looking stickers that have grey circular balls attached to them. They stuck about 15 of them all over my lower body from my lower back to the backs of my heels and knee joints. Around the room there were in-fared cameras that put a model of my lower body on a tv in the same room that showed every slight movement my body was making. It helps them assess what movements a person is making while doing a certain action in a sport.
 They also had reaction boards that lit up and you had to hit the lit up parts as the wall as fast as you can and I WON...I felt kind of slow and discombobulated because I did it right after biking in that hot room. They also had us do push ups, dips, sit ups and squats in a room like 5 mins before out seminar on training to keep us awake. We were later given a tour of the sydney stadium where the olympics were held and now I'm going to hit you with some COOL stats:

It cost them $650 million to build the stadium and took 30 months to finish
It is the largest privately owned stadium holding 110,000 people
The poles in the picture above have the names of the 70,000 volunteers at the olympics
The lighted room picture above is actually the platinum suite which costs a check of $300,000!!! WIth that you got access to every event for the olympics, and tickets for any event at the stadium until 2030. Russell Crowe owns the suite next to this suite and also owns a rugby team of his own in Australia.
The podium we are standing on in the picture is the same one for the olympics.
They have the 2 biggest LED HD TV's in the southern hemisphere which cost $1 million each
It was the first "Green" Olympics with the stadium having a water catching system when it rains draining to a tank that could hold 3.1 million liters of water which they used to irrigate the fields and clean.
They use the stadium today for rugby, cricket, soccer and concerts like Snoop Dogg and Bono.
I would also like to say that the signature in this photo is of DAVID BECKHAM!! That is for my friend Gigs at school.
And my favorite stat is that it costs a civilian $5,000 if you touch the grass on the field...and $10,000 if you do it naked. hahah.

Adelle, Desiree and I went to exchange some money and went out to eat at a Japanese place around the corner from the apartments and went back to the apartments to workout. Desiree was trucking on the treadmill and Deli worked the elliptical as I warmed up and then did our lunges test for school with 20lb weights and lifted a bit. It's really nice to have that commonality and goals in mind with other people on a "vacation." They're all yelling at me to get ready now because they want to go out so I'll leave you be now. Have a good day and thanks for reading...more tomorrow!

Love,

ME

There's Beautiful and then there's BONDI

More than any other time in my life, I’ve really come to see that you’ll miss 100% percent of the shots you don’t take.  After I left you wondering how my run went today I’m here to tell you I found myself at a crossroad. I could either go left toward where I could see the water in the distance or go right toward the direction the front desk told me I’ll find the beach…eventually. But no matter what I chose, I knew I would find what I had my head set on, and that was the beach. The shot I’m talking about missing is this idea, “We’ll we’re gonna be here 5 weeks, we don’t have to do it all in one day.” When everyone was still sleeping or just hanging out, I knew I wanted to just put on my shoes and go for a run and stumble upon something, anything, because at least I’ll be out there seeing whatever this city and country has to offer. In the end I chose to go right.

 I ran until I found the “Bondi Beach” sign pointing the direction I was already going. I passed beautiful parks filled with families and children trying out rugby drills, I passed fresh sushi and fish markets that kinda got that scrunched nose look from me as I passed and the same color shop wasn’t seen all the way down to the beach. I was on a slight downhill run and I felt like I was playing that game, “Red light!...Green light!” every time I came to the end of a block and had to cross the road. With the fear of being hit by a car coming from the right, I didn’t even risk jumping across the street until the little green guy walk sign gave me the A-Okay. 

Bondi Road was the road I was heading down and it reminded me of a beach-like district back home, but so much more diverse when it came to the people eating in cafes, walking the streets and going about every day life in their aged-looking shops.

When I first saw the dark blue water from a distance I was already breaking down my steps to try and take it all in. But wow, I’ve been thinking all day about how I’d be able to describe to you the lookout I saw today over Bondi Beach and well, the best way I can describe the site is to tell you how it affected me. After college I’ve considered traveling to Ireland or Holland to give professional field hockey a go for a couple years, but now, I am certain I could find Sydney as a Home Sweet, Sweet Home and play professionally here. Not to mention, if I moved here, it would make my parents have to trek the 14 hour plan ride to visit me.  

Back to Bondi… The water was spotted a dark blue, like the diamond necklace in Titanic is what pops in my mind, with torquise splashed here and there around the jagged rocks and cliffs. The sandstone cliffs were sunken in and weathered by the misguided gusts of wind hitting the crescent shaped beach town. I met a Dutch couple who I spoke “Ik hou Van you” to and some explicit words I learned from a few Dutchies I love. I continued along the rocky running path carved into the Bondi Beach lookout and was just in awe of this view.

 After a couple hours running around the cliffs and taking pictures in the park, I was on a quicker run back to the apartments when I was about 4 blocks away and saw the 5 members of the study abroad group who had come in early like me, heading toward Bondi Beach. They asked if I’d like to join them and even though I was dead tired, hot, winded and whatever else…How many times do you get to see a sight like that? So I headed allllllll the way back to the beach with them, thankfully we walked, and we were only able to spend about 5 minutes at the closest lookout because he we had to head back to meet the 20 other students coming in from their flight.

Long story short, Adelle, Gabby and Desiree are my roommates for this trip. Adelle and I play field hockey together at Michigan State where Desiree is a soccer player on the women’s soccer team. Gabby also plays field hockey, which I mentioned earlier, but she attended art school in San Francisco. As a group, we were given groceries, a brief overview of the program in the lobby and some facts on Australia before we received our bus pass and hoped on the train to downtown. 

We toured the streets and Hyde Park and the Botanic Gardens which I already saw on my first day running around and Russ (our head honcho) and native Aussie, gave us brief facts on monuments, the legalized prostitution distrct, the transportation system and more. Four areas in Australia have banned water in plastic bottles and won’t sell them, the voltage coming out of sockets here can fry your blow dryer and they eat Kangaroo which has less than 2% of fat on the meat. (Yea, I know, they eat the little guy they put as stuffed animals in airports.) We walked down in front of the Opera house and around the back of it where we found high-end bars and food as well as a beautiful sunset view of the harbour bridge and city skyline. 

We took a boat ride under the bridge to a farther part of the city where we had dinner at a restaurant overlooking the water. Looking to commemorate the night, a bunch of us ordered a $10 drink at the bar. (Once again, this is legal for us 20 year olds in Australia) I noticed they had this drink called Ginuine which included the drink Absinthe in it, which is illegal to drink and be sold in the U.S. so of course Adelle and I had to get one. One drink set us pretty well for the rest of tonight. We had plans to go to the bar across the street tonight, but I had so much I wanted to write about and we have to get up quite early tomorrow for some tour…I guess I’ll let you know what happens when they fill us in on it first. I’ll try and shorten up the posting tomorrow. I don't have any pictures of tonight really because my camera died, but I'll post the pictures when my friends here post them.

Love,

ME

Lucky..or maybe Blessed

I want to back track a little bit because in the beginning this trip felt so rushed. In actuality though, the journey from San Diego to where I am now, was quite smooth compared to my other classmates whose flight left LAX at 2am this morning. It should be noted that my Mom tried for months to get my seat on Quantas airlines upgraded to First class with our air miles. She would call every day and see if they had any openings. The day before I was set to take off, she called at 4am when she woke up and found out I was going to get the full 9 yards. I received three wonderful meals, that were accompanied by a little Vino! (Don't worry, yes I'm still 20 and it's legal in the air with the drinking age 18 Down Under.) My bed was beyond comfortable, but it was quite awkward that the flight attendants made your bed for you and wanted to hang up my clothes because they gave us pajamas. This flight was the start to an amazing experience and allowed me to adjust to Australia time as if I had been living here on the regular.


The hotel I stayed in (after my run around the city..past blog) was full of buttons and switches but all the same tv stations except instead of America's Got Talent! it was Australia's Got Talent. When looking for dinner, I walked down the streets at 8pm and every lightshow was on trying to get you to walk in their adult store, club or risque shop. I grabbed some Subway and opted out of the nightlife scene for the night haha. After checking out yesterday morning, I confirmed a pick up from one of our program coordinators, Russ, who picked me and my huge goalkeeping bag up in his BMW convertible. The rest of the program participants were stuck in LAX because of the volcanic ash in Chile, but they wanted to get the people who did make it into town, checked into the shnazy apartments in Bondi Junction, Sydney.

When I got to the apartments that overlook the harbor to the left, I met Hallie and Cosette in the lobby waiting for our rooms to be ready. Hallie plays club soccer at MSU and Cosette plays tennis but decided she wanted to try golfing down here. We had to sign documents agreeing to a $500 fine if we get two noise complaints and $20 every time we lose our room key. About an hour later, Gabby joined us in the lobby and we found out she plays field hockey too !! She is an art student from Boston who found our school study abroad program on google haha.


Once they finally checked us in, we took the elevator up to the 11 floor where only 5 apartments are on the floor. The rooms have a fully loaded kitchen, dinner table, washer and dryer, two full baths a comfy living room and balcony with a table set. Our two bedrooms have two twin beds in each and large closets. We be livin' large !! After settling in we decided to take a trip to an indoor mall that was like 7 stories high. They had fresh food markets, hair salons and other brand name company stores we didn't recognize. After lunch we ventured back to the apartments which is only about a block away and went up to our place and took in the beautiful sunset. The girls were starting to get pretty tired and the Wimbledon match wasn't helping to keep their eyes open.


We were asking the front desk for any places to eat for dinner when we thought to ask if anyone else within our program had checked in. Brenna, Laura and one of the 5 guys apart of the trip. They had been traveling for 26 hours which included the 14 hour flight from LAX, a 8 hour lay over in Brisbane and a 6 hour stay in Sydney before checking in. They had already ordered some expensive pizza to the room, so we headed around the block where we found what looked to be an alright place to eat at.
After difficulties ordering because there was a language barrier we found a convenience store on our way back, where we could buy some milk and cereal. I bought the items in the picture and it cost me $30...no joke. And that is Australian dollars so its more like $35 american dollars. I was in shock and even voiced it kindly and rhetorically to the cashier saying, "WHat did I buy?!!" and he laughed and said shampoo can get expensive. Well, maybe I'll just let the salt water wash my hair the rest of this trip.
I went to sleep around 11pm after reading another handful of pages in my book 19 Minutes, which just keeps getting better...if you're looking for some summer reading, author Jodi Picoult is the answer.  I woke up this morning at 6:30am feeling a little tired, but once that thought popped into my head (You know, that thought that, IM IN SYDNEY, YOU'RE WASTING DAYLIGHT) well, I couldn't go to sleep after that. I took a picture of the sunrise after I ate some odd tasting Froot Loops with funky, but fresh Skim milk, and was happy I decided to stay up. After watching some Wimbledon and getting ready, I'm going to go off and doin' some 'splorin! I now have this new area of Bondi Juntion to check out. Adelle should be landing in an hour and then they'll have fun waiting in line at customs, so I'm sure I'll be back on my run before then. In case you were wondering, "Golly G, Molly! What happens if you get hit by a car coming from the opposite direction (happens a lot to tourists), and nobody knows where/who you are?!?!?!" Well, I have my handy-dandy mini wallet hooked onto my sports bra which contains all the necessities: a copy of my passport and visa, copy of my international health insurance card, drivers license, debit card, US and Aussie money and of course my room key. I have a map of the immediate area which I'll try not to lose like my last map :) Have an awesome rest of your day and I'll be sure to fill you in on how my day goes !

Love,

ME

Phew!! What A Day!

I think when all you have is some running shoes and an unexplored city in front of you, you're hopefully going to put to good use all of the little things your parents have taught you. I first found the nearest STA Travel Store (Student travel agency we booked with) and got a map with my head set on finding the harbor and Sydney Opera House.
 After jogging around a bit, I realized I was heading North toward, well, I don't know where, but it wasn't the direction I wanted to be going. I ran down some side streets where I some some apartments that looked quite worn out and had bars on their windows and doors looking to be their biggest investment. Needless to say, I was happy I wore running shoes and found an old mom and pop Deli Store and they steered me in the right direction.
 I had found the main drive into the city and I wanted to see Hyde Park. The churches, fountains, statues and overall trance everyone seemed to be under while laying under the trees in the park, was just a magnificent sight. After living in San Diego all my life, you get use to seeing people bike riding in packs, jogging with baby strollers and what not, but here, I'd never seen so many people just outside playing their desired sport. Whether it was rugby, soccer, or even frisbee (no field hockey sightings yet), I saw people of all ages enjoying big spans of parks.

After running down the main drag of the City that would drop me right near the Sydney Opera House, I decided to go off the beaten path once I passed this Music Conservatory. I had jogged right into their famous Botanic Gardens and it was sure a sight to see. Realizing I wasn't going to want to leave this place a while, I decided to grab a quick lunch outside the gardens and then head back in.
Inside the gardens you could see the city skyscrapers over the tops of trees, monuments dedicated to famous founders and of course endless flowers, trees and people enjoying themselves as if they didn't have a care in the world.

 I ran until I saw the Opera House and Harbour Bridge and it was a big "Wow, I'm really here" moment. I jogged along the wharf/lookout parallel to the sights and took some pictures along the way. I met a British student who had just flown in that day like I had, and he was here to study for a year with a friend.

I wanted to beat the rain and ran back to the hotel a different route and got lost in a few beautiful side streets. When I was a block away, I lost my map haha.

Today, I just got picked up and taken to our fancy apartments in Bondi Junction.. Most of the people are still stuck at LAX airport because of a volcano in Chile blew ash that has cancelled all flights into Australia. We are staying in the Tiffany Apartments that overlook the harbor and the sights are just unreal from the balcony. I'll be sure to post some pictures tomorrow of the apartment and new area we'll be staying in. As of right now we only have internet service service down in the lobby and won't have internet in the apartment until way later tonight. Have a spectacular day! Off to get some food around town with a few girls here for the program!

Love,

ME