Shops.HarryPotter.PlayingRugby.ProRugbyGame.YES!

I've been lagging so I'll try and sum this up the best I can.

Paddington

Paddington

Saturday: I went with a few of the girls to Paddington market because it is said to be a great type of market on the weekend to shop. Long story short, I was told to not take pictures by one guy and then when I asked a lady how much one of the dresses was on the mannequin she told me it was $213. Soo, obviously I got over Paddington real quick.

We then hopped on the bus and went to Paddy's market over by Darling Harbour where I got my Uggs.

Paddy's

dressing rm @ paddys!

 A couple of the girls bought a pair, some purses and even extra suitcases! I bought a winter hat and some cool lace up shoes for $25. We also tried on a few things inside this dressing room that was a little curtain right in the middle of this open market and shoved in between some clothes. hilarious!

We then went out because it would be our last Saturday in Sydney. We were told by a girl here that she could get us in for free at this club in Kings Cross but we ended up have to pay $10. We split up because some people didn't bring money and went back to our local dive bar.

harry potter night

I ended up having to leave early because a friend of mine was not doing so hot so we had to catch the bus home. She went to bed and I stayed up with Alex and AJ for a bit but then Alex passed out.

AJ and I stayed up talking until about 3am about ice hockey, field hockey and music...and then we heard a knock on the door and I joked, "Ha watch us get a warning with only two people." Turns out, we did. The guy was raising his voice to A.J. and I, asking if we think it's funny and this guy gives our group warnings whenever we have gotten together to go out. A.J. was respectful and told him we were sorry and that was it. We cracked up about it and the guy gives us glares whenever he sees us up late walking around.

Sunday: was the epic of all days because we went to see Harry Potter on the biggest IMAX screen in the WORLLDD. We made sure to get there early because it was sold out and there was a beautiful senset.

As we were waiting to be let into the actual theatre, we took pictures in front of the sign and got our group together to go in. As we walked in we saw some posters to get some necessary pictures with. In one picture is Adelle and Harry Potter and I'm hanging out with Lucious Malfoy!

While we were sitting on the floor in line waiting to be let in to the actual theatre, we were talking about the series and how it's crazy it's over. Then, Desiree started to cry! The rest of us thought it was soooo funny, but she was a hugee fan. Adelle and Liz are in the picture with Desiree below as she is starting to cry and I think they are about ready to burst into tears as well...and laughter.

As we were being let in we were handed out 3D glasses and took our seats in the middle of the theatre.
We were lucky we booked early. I had never seen a 3D movie before because they cost around $13 at home, but this movie was fantastic.

The movie was nothing short of amazing, well except for the fact that Desiree was crying the entire movie. She sat in between Adelle and I, and listened as she recited lines about to be said because she read the books a few times.
We cracked up about it after the movie because it was literally sniffles and tears the whole time.

Monday: We had our Australian class on sports. We learned about the Aussie Rules Football(AFL) and Rugby League/Union. We also learned about cricket and watched videos of the AUS. Olympic team beating the USA team in men's swimming relay.

Centennial Park

 As part of the class he headed out to the park in athletic gear and everyone had a shot at cricket. Brooke and I batted in the most "runs" for the two of us, just beating Alex and A.J's team. Adelle, Desiree and I both had a chance to "Bowl" the ball which is an over arm throw with a straight elbow the whole time. My lower back, ribs and arm were shot the next day. Cricket was absolutely a blast and we're planning on playing in Cairns. Thennnn, we played touch rubgy.

Zach and my dragon faces

Adelle and Desiree were on the other team and I was with our teacher Russ because our team wasn't doing well. All I'm going to say is people were yelling and beyond competitive and I just got over the intensity because I felt alone when it came to trying to cool people down. Adelle got punched by a girl on my team right in the arm and it was soooooo funny at the time because Adelle looked the girl in the eye and said, "Don't punch me again," because the girl had hit her before. Adelle has a fat bruise from it.

Dragons CLub

Later Monday night, Russ took us to his team the Dragons in a stadium right in the middle of a neighborhood. They sell out all the time, but they want to keep a tradition and not build a new stadium.
The tradition is to go to the team's club restaurant and eat dinner and fill up your beer belly...I skipped out on that last part. Before the game, a bunch of us bought face paint and I drew a dragon on my face in the mirror. Zach wanted one too so as we were on the train I managed to paint one him a fierce looking one.


The stadium was packed because it was the final home game and their hall a fame player was retiring. They were playing the Sharks who weren't very good and the Dragons had the best defense in the league.

We ended up winning (we stayed till the end, some people left early) and it was just an overall great experience and nice that we actually understood the rules because of class and playing earlier. Here is a 2 min. clip of the game.

Hope you enjoyed the post. We leave in 3 hours for Cairns which is up north and where the Great Barrier  Reef is...I'll catch you up more then and fill you in all the happenings!

Praise to Derek! God Bless!

Love,

ME

Sydney Opperraaaa!!! House

eFriday was obviously a big day because after the zoo and blue mountains, the last thing on Friday to talk about was the Sydney opera House. Our group attended Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet symphony at 8pm sharp.

We all got dolled up and left early for the show because we were told they will lock you out if you are not there a certain amount of time before the show begins.

We're on the subway and we're starting to worry we're cutting it close. We already left three of the girls in our group because they weren't down in the lobby when we wanted to go.


Our luck got even worse when we hopped off the train and saw it was pouring rain outside and us girls were all in heels and dresses with a good 3/4 of a mile run to the opera house.
We started to run with our bags or whatever we had over our heads. We made it with a few minutes to spare before they rang the bell and asked everyone to take their seats. The picture to the right is what I saw entering the opera house room. The wood floor was beautiful and everyone was dressed very nice.

We were seated the second row facing the conductor, and with the symphony's backs to us. They were great seats that sat a little higher and we could see every expression on the conductor's face.

Our groups were a little separated but I sat next to Hallie, Kelsey and Aj but then, rushing in was Brooke, Olivia and Hannah who caught up with the group and made it inside before the doors closed.

The rest of the group was a row up and to the left from us. When the symphony started, myself and a couple others fell in love with the performance. I've never had the musical talents like my mom and brother, but I can appreciate the great details that went into the music we heard that night. Our conductor James Gaffigan is one of the most outstanding young American conductors working today and that night he made his Australian debut.

The lead violinist is a young guy named, Sergey Khachatryan, who is one of the best in the world having been the youngest to win an international competition and has played all over the world. The violin he played that night was a "1740 Ysaye Guarneri violin on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation." You gotta be good if they're lending you something that old. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times we must have clapped for him and actually caused him to come out and play an encore.

To the right is a quick video I took while inside the opera house during their warm up before the performance began.

During intermission we took pictures (on facebook) and a few people grabbed a drink before the bells were ringing and we had to head back inside. I can't do the show justice and try and describe the music, so I just won't. However, I'll say thats definitely not my typical music of choice, but I ended up loving it.

More to come on what happened this weekend and the start of this week. Thank you for reading :)


LOVE,

ME

KANGAROO & KOALA PETTING!!!

Even though I posted first on the blue mountains, the zoo was actually our first stop on Friday before the Blue mountains and then the Opera House. I was the last person to get off the bus still groggy and tired, when we were met at the entrance by a zoo keeper holding a baby wallaby that we all had the chance to pet and hold. 

After that, it was off to races as everyone stormed into the zoo with tickets already in hand. Since we had quite a bit to do today, we were only allotted an hour at the zoo which was quite small. 

The next little critter we got to see was the wombat in the picture to the left. He was kind of preoccupied with munching on his carrots, but he does look like a miniature tank. I was told that wombats can actually total cars like deer in Michigan. I was told by some of the field hockey guys we play with that the reason this happens if because when wombats have a light shined on them in the dark, they freeze mid-movement. They talked about turning a flashlight on and watching the little guy stop moving and then turn it off and he goes about his night. 

I caught up to a few of the girls and Kelsey and I decided to take pictures with the lizzards.

We also got to put our hand out and have this creepy owl looking bird jump onto us, but the name of the bird was just too complicated to remember. A picture of this bird and myself are to the left.

Up next we got to hang out with some little guys who I met earlier in the trip at the WIldlife World in Sydney...KOALAS! I took a video because normally these guys never move and are just bundled up in a little ball, but not this hyper little guy so here it is..

The main attraction was obviously the Kangaroos. We entered a gated area where little baby "joey" kangaroos were hopping around, fuzzy grey ones were munching on the ground in front of a few visitors and the big guys stuck to feeding on lettuce out of their tin bowls.

This zoo is different then most zoos because the main focus of the zoo is personal interaction with the animals from petting to holding, feeding and even one friend of mine, got in a little boxing match with a roo.

Amanda and I spent time feeding the smaller kangaroos over the railing and I think they stayed in there because they weren't big enough to hop over it yet like the others. You can buy little cups of grass and grains for a dollar before you come in to hand feed them.

 These guys never showed even a hint of being scared of humans of all sizes even when little kids came storming after them. They simply just wanted to grab jewelry and hold onto your hand as they stuffed their little nose in your palm to eat.

The bigger kangaroos (who still were relatively small compared to older ones in zoos that won't let you pet them) didn't like the grains and grass but were given their own bowl of veggies to snack on as we probably annoyed them like crazy while they were eating.

One of those most hilarious moments though was when we were watching the kangaroos hanging out inside their little pin area. One Kangaroo decided he was done hanging out with the baby joeys and jumped over the railing(normal to do), but he jumped right into a 10 year old boy who didn't see the kangaroo and started to walk. The kangaroo knocked him almost on his butt and I couldn't help but laugh and then the boy looked at me and I felt really bad, but he smiled and looked excited he just got jumped on by one and probably went and told his friends.

There were other animals such as cute dingos, but we opted to hang out with the Kangaroos and Koalas the whole time..and don't worry, I'm not actually sitting on the Kangaroo and I'll post more photos when Amanda uploads the ones of us petting the koalas.

Hope you enjoyed the post...more to come on the Opera House, Paddington/Patty's Market, Harry Potter on the biggest IMAX screen in the world and our first professional rugby game...and how could I forget, my class and I getting our own shot at rugby and cricket in the park! Probably not the beset idea with a bunch of competitive college athletes :)

CHEERS

LOVE,

ME

Fri. Field Trip pt. 1 Blue Mountains

We've all been talking about this weekend for some time and it definitely lived up to all of our expectations. This was the order of the field trip on Friday. ZOO, Blue Montains and then Opera. I've decided I'll explain the Blue Mts. in this post only and will report on the other two soon. At 8am we were all bundled up as we hopped aboard our big bus that would take us 2 hours away to the zoo and then the Blue Mountains. I can't tell you much of how the ride went, because about 20 minutes in, most of us fell asleep. Howeverrrr, before we fell asleep we had a choice of movies to pick from and I can't even remember what the other ones were, but a few of us went crazy when Summer Heights High was an option. This is one clip of "Jonah" who also
plays a female student named Ja'me and Mr. G. The above clip is of Jonah and this next one is of Ja'mie. watch it if you have a minute.

When we woke up in the blue mountains it was a cute town that reminded me a little bit of Big Bear Mountain. We parked and walked out onto the lookout called Echo Point, where you could really start to take in just how huge the whole area was. In this picture it is Amanda on the left and Cossette on the right. Amanda is here playing rugby, which is really big down here, and she got to meet like the "John Madden" for Rugby and went out to a bar with him and some of the players after a game. Cossette, if you remember from my first post is here golfing.

As you can see from the picture, we're dressed pretty warm with jackets, mittens, beanies and what not. We were cold at first, but once we got hiking it started to heat up.

As we walked along the lookout you could see the Eucalyptus trees stretching pretty far with a bit of a blue haze over them. We're told this is because the type of oils on top of the leaves and the amount of sunlight that reflects off of them. I also learned Koalas eat only a certain type of Eucalyptus leaf which you're not suppose to because it kind of messes with you're head...maybe that's why Koalas sleep 20 hours a day.

We walked around up top for about 10 minutes and took pictures with a bunch of people and a group one that is on my facebook. If you look up the Blue Mountains, the main attraction you could say is the Three Sisters. They aren't real people, but three thin and pointy mountains right next to each other layered top to bottom with all types of rock and sediments throughout the millions of years. The picture to the right is of Desiree, myself and Adelle standing in front of them.

We were told that the 1,000 step trek to the bottom would take about and hour which sounded kind of long if you really think about. We found out quickly it wasn't the number of steps, but the kind of steps we were taking on. In the picture to the left, you're seeing when we had it easy. We had a metal staircase with sterdy, evenly placed steps with a flat surface. However, 90% of the walk down were very short and steep steps carved out of rock and worn into dips because of the amount of feet having treked up and down them before us.

The steps were starting to make my legs shake from having to slow-mo walk down them and with them being so steep. We reached another lookout a bit lower in the pic to the right, but still very cool where we snapped a few photos.

Once we were near the bottom we started walking on metal stairs again. Our trail was not only a dirt trail, but covered in snowball sized rocks everywhere with dips and turns.

Besides the Eucalyptus trees, the area was covered with ferns and red trunked trees that were as hard as rock. I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if some dinosaur just popped out of nowhere because I felt like we were in a Jurassic Park movie.

When we were about 20 mins. into the walk I tripped (typical) on a rock and that trip caused me to trip again and look like I just snapped my ankle because my hands even touched the ground in front of me keeping me from face planting. The people behind me thought I sprained it and one of the teachers offered to take me back up. The thing is, my ankles are so flexible I didn't feel a thing, but nobody seemed to believe me because of how bad it looked.

waterfall

We walked for sometime and we all seemed to enjoy every minute of it. Nobody complained, it wasn't too cold, nobody got hurt, though a few close calls, and we would stop to take photos on rocks, climbing trees and along the winding trail.

The picture to the left is of a tree holding up a huge rock over us. As we continued along we saw only a couple other hikers, no animals and thankfully had no lectures mid-walk. We were however told that one of the oldest living trees in the whole world (millions of years old) is found in this park, but only a few rangers and scientists know its exact location.

Near the end of the walk we started to hear some water and eventually found a pretty waterfall that a bridge took us over. The picture up and to the right is the waterfall starting at the top right. Once passed the waterfall we found the path we'd take back up the mountain...THE STEEPEST RAILWAY IN THE WORLD>>>CHECK OUT THIS LINK. I screamed my head off the whole time because we weren't given seat belts and I totally thought this was going to be a slow scenic tour and you couldn't see how steep the railway was from the ground. If you look on facebook im desperately holding onto the fencing inside the ride. To the right is us going in between the mountains on this fast ride and it eventually completely closed around us for what seemed like forever and I kept yelling, "Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?!?!" because it was sooo dark. The reason why it was so scary is because it used to be used for mining.

Thanks for reading this post and I'll be sure to report on the ZOO, Opera House, Harry Potter on the Biggest IMAX screen and how we're going to play Rugby in the park tomorrow and then go to a professional game!

CHEERS,

Love,

ME

The Rocks, Surfing, DEACON, Scary Canary

On Monday we had class where we learned about ecosystems and more ecosystems and how you shouldn't eat fish in the Great Lakes when you're pregnant.

After that we went on a field trip to the Rocks which is an old part of Sydney where the poor were pushed to live and housing looked more like scraps and rubble. We also took a picture with this aboriginal guy who was selling his music. 

 Now, it is a thriving shopping area with a lot of history and views of the Bridge. This trip wasn't as fascinating as our past ones, but afterward a bunch of us went to this very popular place called Pancakes on the Rocks. 
Any time of the day they serve all sorts of pancakes that are covered in creme, syrup butter and or even ice cream. The chocolate chip ones I got was more like eating a fudge brownie so I only made it through one.

Tuesday we had more class and field hockey was pushed back to 4pm. We were pretty early for once and were met by a few more players than usual who were back form their holiday. Now there was three of us goal keepers and if it wasn't for having a high boiling point I would've snapped at this other goalie from the get go. In the end, we got along quite well, I guess if somebody brought in another keeper to my team without me knowing I might come off a little bit harsh too.

Wednesday I didn't have class until 6pm where we had a quiz so I decided to go to Manly Beach with Brenna and Gabby. We rented boards for $15 and I opted to wear a rashie (rashguard) instead of a wetsuit because I thought I could brave the 20 degree celcius water. After giving Gabby a few quick instructional tips, we hit the waves and found out Mother Nature was ready to rock us.

The first wave I caught, I didn't realize Gabby was behind me and I was heading straight into her. I ditched the board so the fin wouldn't hit her head underneath and she was fine. The next wave I caught and I was yelling to Brenna the whole time I was on the wave because she wanted to take pictures, but she was busy talking to a photographer.
After that, I blew out on every single wave and Gabby didn't catch a wave, but we'll get her one before we leave. This is evidence of me not paying attention when I was in knee deep water not holding onto my board and a wave slammed it into the outside of my knee.

When leaving Manly, we were walking toward the ferry and somebody grabbed onto my backpack. I turned around and saw JEAMIE DEACON. Jeamie was a senior when I was a freshmen at MSU on the hockey team and she also visited me in San Diego for Spring Break. I knew she was in Australia, but the chances of that happening are just astronomical. We chatted the whole ferry ride back and decided that we would get together with Adelle too and go to the Scary Canary for a drink after Adelle and my 6-9pm class.

In class we were handed back our Australian Quiz which I managed a 8 1/2 out of 10 which I thought was pretty alright and then I saw a few peoples scores as fives, sixes and even a three. So far so good with classes and I usually study about 30 mins. before the exams and do quite well.

Adelle, Gabby and I headed to Scary Canary to meet Deacon and her Aussie friend, but while on the bus this drunk guy was tossing a couple free mini stereos to anyone who wanted one on our section of the train and I'm happy to say I didn't hold onto the box for nothing in the club because this little guy BUMPS!!

Scary Canary was fun because if you're an international you don't have to pay to get in. We took a picture with this guy wearing one of those shirts with a drawn on muscular body and he was quite drunk, but hilarious. They also had a wet t-shirt contest going on, but we stayed away from that and ended up leaving before the show began. Turns out Deacon is driving up the Australian coast and we will see her again when we all happen to be in Cairns (great barrier reef) for the same few days!

Today (thurs) we had class and I took my exam on ecosystems and then we went to practice where we did a ton of shooting and me getting up and down for a good majority of the practice. Tomorrow is our big weekend with our roadtrip to the zoo to wrestle some Kangaroos, hike the Blue Mountains and come back in time for the Sydney Opera House Symphony!! Thanks for reading :)

Love,

ME