Since my last post received a complaint about length, I’m going to try to make this one a bit longer. This past weekend Dickinson was nice enough to send us to Sydney. We flew out of Brisbane Friday morning, landing in Sydney around 10:30. Russ Alexander, one of Ann’s friends from Sydney who also runs abroad programs, picked us up from the airport and took us to the bus. The bus took us to our hotel for the weekend, which was probably the nicest place I will stay in Australia. It was a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment with full kitchen and living room on the 62^nd floor of the World Tower, and could be bought for about $1.5 million. It was nice. So we checked in, left our bags there, and then went to a park to have lunch. After lunch we walked a little bit of the cliffs of the shore, with Russ telling us about little bits of Sydney’s history along the way. After walking the cliffs, the bus took us back into the city where we continued walking (Ann calls the Sydney trip “fat camp” because we walk all the time) around the city, looking at historic buildings and museums. One place we went through was the botanical gardens. While there, Russ held out bread and got a Sulfur Crested Cockatoo to land on his arm. After that, if you just stood there holding out your hand like you had bread, another cockatoo would land on your arm, shoulder, or head. After the botanical gardens, we walked around the bay a little bit and down to the opera house. From there, we went back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.

We took the subway through the city to an area called The Rocks and went to a restaurant where you picked a cut of meat and grilled it yourself. It was pretty fun and interesting, and really good. After dinner we had a bar crawl, going to 5 different bars. We started in an old bar that had its own microbrewery, and ended up in a new more club like bar, with each bar having its own interesting atmosphere. One was a rooftop bar, really quiet with a good view, and another was in a crowded room with a live band made up of a guitarist and violinist. All in all it was a pretty fun night.

Saturday started earlier than some would have liked, and involved a lot more walking. We left the hotel around 9 and took a bus back to the cliffs, and walked the coastline again, this time seeing a lot of aboriginal rock carvings and different beaches, including the famous Bondi beach. After this walk, which ended around noon, we got on a bus to the Paddington St. market, where there were a lot of neat little things to buy, none of which I did. We had lunch there, and then walked back to the hotel, and we had free time for the afternoon, where I, and I’m pretty sure everyone else, napped. We had dinner that night in Darling Harbour, at a family style Malaysian restaurant. It was really good; we had a couple chicken dishes, a beef dish, and ice cream for dessert. After that we again had free time for the night, and I decided to spend it in the hotel hanging out with people, watching TV, and playing games.

Sunday was a completely free day, and Kyle and I decided to wake up and go to mass at St. Mary’s cathedral, because it was a beautiful church from the outside, and it was only a couple blocks from our hotel. Unfortunately, there was a mix up in mass times and we missed it. We still got to go inside and check it out, and it was amazing. After that, Kyle and I just wandered the city looking for breakfast, going by Lamborghini and Bentley dealerships on the way. After we got breakfast around 11, we went down to the Opera House, where Dickinson had bought us tickets to a tour. The tour was pretty good; we got to go inside three of the theatres, but a lot of the information was given by video, which was a little lame, but still interesting. After that was over, we had a few more hours of free time before we had to fly back to Brisbane. A bunch of us went to Paddy’s Market in Chinatown, different than the Paddington St. Market, where they had everything dirt cheap. They had “replica” MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and soccer jerseys for $5-$15. I only bought one, restraining myself greatly because I didn’t have a lot of cash on me, and needed to buy other things. After that, we flew safely back to Brisbane, and got ready for a regular school week. This Friday I leave to go to the Whitsunday Islands in North Queensland, in the Great Barrier Reef. I’ll again try to post after that, but I only have two weeks of class left and its starting to get a little busy, so we’ll have to wait and see about that.

So, it’s been a while since my last post. But, before a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t done that much. Mostly I just did school work, went to school, and hung out. Not all that different from back home, so I didn’t feel the need to write about it. Then came Easter break, and then I got really busy for a couple weeks.

On April 20^th, my Dad and Christine landed in Sydney, and then traveled up to Brisbane on the 23^rd. That night, we went to a Queensland Reds rugby game. The Reds won, beating their rivals the New South Wales Waratahs. The next morning was Easter, so we woke up and went to mass at St. Stephens in Brisbane. That afternoon we walked around South Bank, an area of Brisbane that has a lot of shops, and on the weekend, a market type thing. On Monday, we toured around the UQ campus, and took the CityCat ferry around the city. We ended up having dinner at the Bavarian Biergarten, and then I was left at King’s to get ready for my trip to the reef.

Monday night at 11 I got on a bus with a group of people from my Marine Science class to head about 7 hours north to Heron Island. The ride was kind of miserable, as I couldn’t sleep that well. We arrived at the ferry dock at 7 a.m., and then had to wait 4 hours for our ferry. The ferry ride out to the island was pretty rough, most people felt nauseous at one point, and I’d guess almost half of the passengers got sick. Needless to say, when we arrived at the island everyone was pretty happy. The island is really small, only 800 meters long and 300 meters wide, and the only things on the island are the research station we were at and a resort. We were there from Tuesday until Saturday. While there we had to perform a pretty basic research assignment, and create a 5 minute presentation about it. Other than that, we had pretty much free time. The food was amazing, and the weather was pretty good. It was windy the entire time we were there, so we didn’t get to take a boat out to deeper waters to snorkel, but we still got to snorkel around the shallow waters a lot. We saw sea turtles, sharks, rays, all kinds of fish, cone snails, coral, and all kinds of other stuff. At night we went out to the beach, and because there was nothing out there we could see a lot of stars. Maybe the most I’ve ever been able to see at once. It was crazy. Once Saturday came around, we got back on the ferry to head back to the mainland. The ride back was much calmer, with nobody getting sick. After another not awesome 7 hour bus ride, we got back to Brisbane around midnight.

Also on Saturday, Amy, Lenaya, and my Aunt Eleanor arrived in Brisbane. So on Sunday, I woke up and went into the city to meet up with them and my Dad and Christine. We went into the Queen Street mall for breakfast, and then walked over to Riverside to get the CityCat back to King’s. I showed them around King’s and UQ, and then we went back to the hotel. We didn’t do too much the rest of that day, just hung out and chatted. On Monday, my Dad and Christine flew back home, and Amy, Lenaya, Aunt Eleanor, and I, went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I had been before, but they hadn’t, and it was fun to see all of the animals again. I had to write a paper Monday night, and they went to bed early because they had to get up early on Tuesday. I had regular school on Tuesday, but met back up with Amy and Lenaya for dinner. We went to JoJo’s on Queen Street, which was really good. After dinner I said bye to them, as they left to go to the Whitsunday’s for a few days before Sydney. This past week I was back into regular school mode. This week I’m going to be busy doing work, and this weekend I’m going to an AFL game. Then I only have 3 weeks of class left. It’s crazy how fast the semester has gone by, and how much I still have to do before going home. I have Sydney, Melbourne, Ayer’s Rock, and the Whitsunday’s to visit before heading home. I’ll try to post about all of them as soon as I’m back, but I’m going to be busy so I can’t make any promises!