Absent Minded

I finally had a night where I slept well! The secret was to not take any cold/sinus medicine. I woke up and just lounged around. Still coughing and hacking and sneezing all day long. I had class at 2pm today. I signed up to work at a study abroad fair booth from 12-1:30pm today. So went to campus around 11am it was bright and sunny out. I got the the print shop and put my flash drive that Matt gave me when he was here into the computer and pulled up all of my documents and printed them off. It was then time to go to the fair. I walked around the international office and couldn't find the booth anywhere. So I went in and found the lady in charge. Turns out the fair is in 2 weeks. Not really sure how I messed that one up so badly. So I had an hour and a half until class. I went back home and ate lunch. It rained on my way home, so I was wet and cold :(

Went onto campus at 1:00pm, it was bright and sunny again. Met with my econ professor to go over some questions I had about the project. She said "Good, good, crap, good, right idea but still wrong...." all the way through my work. So I'm glad I went and learned that all the hard work I did needs to get redone. Went to my econ class and then back to home. It decided to rain again on my way back home. I got home and decided to work on my econ project.

I get home and I can't find my flash drive anywhere. I realize that I left it in the computer on campus. So I hiked back onto campus in the sunshine with my rain jacket. Got to the computer lab and found my flash drive YAY!! Then I walked back home no rain. I get to my front door and my ID card that I need to swipe in order to enter my own house is not in my pocket. I know that I had it when I went on to campus. It was in my front pocket, because stuff always falls out of the back pockets. So I had to book it t to the housing office before they closed and get a temp card. Came back home and did a double check all over my room and book bag. Still couldn't find my ID. So I hiked very quickly back onto campus because I only had 30 minutes before the office closed and it was getting dark. About 20 yards in front of the computer lab was my ID!! YAY!!! Now I don't have to pay a fee to cancel it (so no stranger gets into my house!) and I don't have to pay a fee to get a new one!!! YAY!!! I booked it back to the housing office and returned the temporary card in time.

Finally, I got home and was able to work on my econ project. I came in my room and sat down at my desk and couldn't find my flash drive. AHHHH!!!! Some how I put it in my book bag. But I least I didn't have to go back onto campus to get it! :)

I have pretty much just been sitting at my desk since, working on my econ project, econ homework for tomorrow, and my nutrition education project. Very busy week! Good thing I'm still sick, it just makes this week go by so much easier (sarcasm).

More Sickey Tuesday

Did not sleep well last night. I'm not sure if it is the medicine that I took or because I'm sick. I'm not lying on my death bed sick, but I definitely have a very sore throat, draining sinuses, a nasty cough, and this evening I started sneezing left and right. I thought to myself AWESOME!

I went to my Australian Studies class. We finally got to watch the tail end of Ned Kelly. Turns out the police came and burned the entire building where the Kelly Gang was hiding. The police captured Ned Kelly. The rest of the gang shot themselves in the head so the police could not capture them. Despite 35,000 signatures on a petition to release Ned Kelly, he was hanged in October of 1880. He was 25 years old.

We then watch an Australian cult classic called The Castle. If you have never heard of or seen this movie before PLEASE do NOT do it!!!! This was such a terrible movie. Terrible plot, terrible acting, terrible everything!! The teacher started the movie and then left. So did 3/4 of the class. I was one of the few who suffered through it. I was hoping the teacher would come back and give as extra credit or something for making it all the way through that movie. But she never did. The movie ended and what was left of the class got up and left.

I came back home and worked on my econ assignment a bunch more. I watched the premiere of Australia's Got Talent with my roommates Nickey and Suzie. It was pretty entertaining. For some reason during the commercial break we were talking and an add for The Pacific (a movie about Americans coming to Australia during WWII) came on. Suzie looked at me and sternly informed me that the Aussies did not want the Americans over here. It was a big deal that the American boys came over and stole the Aussies' girlfriends. She said that 250 women became wartime brides to the Americans. Yes that is correct 250. I kind of chuckled to myself because that is really a small number to get pissed off about. She proceeded to tell me that the Aussies had a saying about the American soldiers "over paid, over sexed, and over here" and that the Australians did not need the Americans. I sat very quietly and patiently while waiting for her to finish her lecture/rant. I am a little bit of a history buff and know for a fact that the Australian army was called upon by England to serve and defend Great Britain. The Japanese started attacking Australia and the Aussie boys were all over in Europe. So the Americans who happened to be close by came to the rescue. I'm not sure if she was trying to start a heated discussion, reveal hatred towards America, or just wanted attention. But I just calmly listened to everything she had to say and then replied "Suzie, you would be speaking Japanese if it were not for the Americans."

I'm learning that even though Suzie is Australian she is very wrong about a lot of Australian ways, cultures, and traditions. I know this because I compare what she tells me to what other Aussies tell me and what I have learned from my Australian Studies class. I'm not offended by the comment Suzie said to me about what happened during WWII only because I'm used to her pulling that sort of crap. I just ignore it. I have a million more stories of the crazy things that come our of her mouth. But I won't post them because it is not nice. I posted the WWII discussion because I was most shocked at her audacity to even say that sort of thing.

Sickey Monday

Woke up with muscle aches all over my body, a heavy head, and coughing up gook out of my throat. Well at least I didn't get sick while on vacation. But unfortunately I do have a big economics homework to do for next Monday. I know that means it is due in 7 days. I also have a big mid semester test in Economics next week that I would like to start studying for this week so I will have time to meet with the teacher if I have questions (which I will). I really hate economics. It is just not my thing.

After coming around this morning I met up with Sophie and we went to the mall to do some more grocery shopping. I walked out side to the bus stop in shorts and a T-shirt only to be greeted by cold air and a heavy mist of rain. I would have gone back inside and changed but we were running late for the bus already.

After we got back from grocery shopping we met up with my roommate Nickey and we all decided to put our pajamas back on and go to the common room and watch a movie. We were the only ones there so was watched The Devil Wears Prada and cuddled up in pillows and blankets.

Went to my food microbiology class. Normally we have a professor who is actually pretty good at making the material interesting. Today we got to have a guest lecturer who said "um" and "uh" at least 7-10 times per each sentence. I am not exaggerating either. When he wasn't saying one syllable non-sense words he was stuttering. I spent the whole time counting his filler words and his stutters and have no clue what we talked about. The best part was that there were 84 slide for a 2 hour lecture. He started about 15 minutes late and spent 15 minutes on the first slide. He then realized that we was behind and would speed through a bunch of information and then say "well you don't need to know that" or"nobody uses that procedure anymore." I just kept thinking if it isn't important, or is out of date, why are you wasting out time!!!! I was very sleepy, cold, and miserably sick. I just wanted out of there.

After class I met up with my friend Alyssa and we were able to catch up with each other and share stories from our trips. Her parents flew down from Wisconsin and met her in New Zealand. They rented a camper and drove all over New Zealand. She said is was quite a blast and SUPER DUPER expensive. They pretty much import EVERYTHING so the prices are ridiculously high.

I came home and ate leftovers and then started working on my econ assignment. I also took a nice 2 hour break to watch tv and drink hot chocolate. Which felt amazing. I'm headed off to bed to hopefully rest and recover from whatever little bug is in my body.

Recover day!

Today I woke up and scrounged around for what was still edible of what little food I had for breakfast. I posted all of my blogs entries and uploaded pictures. So check them out! I put 3 hours worth of work into them. Took a much needed shower around 11:30am. I had every intension of doing laundry today but decided to wait until tomorrow.

Sophie and I went the IGA (closest to us, but most expensive of the grocery stores) and bought necessary items like bread and milk.

After that I came home and went through all of my receipts from traveling in order to figure out how much money I spent. It was definitely more than I had intended. I just wasn't prepared for how expensive things were going to be. For example. A head of lettuce was $15 per kg. (this is because of the flooding that happened last month) The floods effected the priced of most produce. Therefore going out to eat at restaurants was quite expensive as well. At home in the US spending $100 on a dinner for 2 meant you had a very nice dinner at a very classy restaurant. Unfortunately, a dinner like that in Broome, Darwin, or Sydney meant you ate out at a regular restaurant. The bill was less then $50 if we ate at a pub. Another example was when we paid $160 for the two of us to swim in the croc tanks. We picked a date and paid about 1 month in advance. Did not realize that we still had to pay and entrance fee of $28 each to get into the Crocasaurus Cove. We assumed that was included in the price.

Anyway, I then went to the Fremantle farmers market and bought produce. When it is the end of the day they sell stuff very cheap there. I spent $17 on 3 very full bags of fruits and veggies.

I came home and made dinner. Then Andrew and Sophie came over and we played cranium. If any of you have every played cranium before you know that it requires at least 4 people. You must have 2 teams. So I bounced around and played on both teams. I would play on Sophie's team when it was her turn and then move to the other side of the table when it was Andrew's turn. The best part of playing on both teams is that no matter what happens, you win!

Now I'm just getting ready for bed. Good night!

Airport day!

Matt and I woke up, packed up, and checked out but 9am. We then headed straight to the airport. We bought an $8 footlong breakfast sub from Subway at the airport and spent our last hour together reminiscing over the highlights of our trip together.

Matt's plane left at 1pm so he went through security around 11am. I then had to catch a transfer shuttle over to the domestic airport. I arrived at noon for my 5:50pm flight. So I took my sweet time looking at every single item in every single shop in the terminal. I was able to catch up on all of my blog posts. I also went for a lot of walks.

I finally boarded my plane at 5:30pm. We left at 5:50pm Sydney time. Flew 5 hours to arrive in Perth at 9:00pm local time.

My friend Andrew was able to pick me up and drive me home. I arrived home and settled in and went straight to bed.

I did fine all day until I climbed into bed all by myself. That was when Matt leaving hit me. So I just cuddled with my teddy bear and fell asleep that way.

Day 2 in Sydney!

Friday April 9^th

Woke up around 9am and took our sweet time getting ready. We had not scheduled tours or appointments. Our plans were mostly sight seeing things with no time limits. We exited out hotel and stopped by a street vendor selling fruit for breakfast. We then walked along the street all the way to the Royal Botanical Gardens. On our way we saw a sign for 50% off opals! So we stopped in because I was still searching for opals for my “mum.” We entered into a very business office like building. The sign said 3 floor for opals. We got up there and were greeted by men in business suits. They rushed us through 2 security doors and then sat us down at a desk surrounded with areas that were blocked off by barred doors with heavy duty locks. (We were not really sure what to think at that moment in time, other than we were in the WRONG place). Turns out it was a jewelry manufacture. They made the jewelry there. So instead of buying it from a jewelry store we just skipped the middle man and bought it straight from them. All of the workers were very nice to us. I bought some earrings for mom and then we continued on our way to the gardens.

We stopped in at a mall just so I could show Matt how ugly their 80’s styled clothes were. It was pretty funny going around to all of the stores. We agreed that the guys had cool cloths but the girls… not so much.

We did make it to the gardens. They were on the north eastern side of the city. It was pretty cool to look out at all of the trees, flowers, bushes, and grassy hills, and then see skyscrapers behind all of it. We bought some sandwiches and had a little picnic in the gardens over looking the harbor, opera house, and bridge.

There were so many birds making so much racquet that we stopped and stared up into the trees to see what they were fighting over. Here is a picture and a video of what we saw.

Do you know what it is?

Bats! Hundreds and hundreds of bats all up in the trees. It was so weird to think all of these bats in the city!

After lunch we walked over to the opera house. We could have gotten a 1 hour tour for $50 but decided against it. We just walked around the outside instead. We were getting pretty tired of spending money by this point in time.

The opera house is actually covered in tiles! We just though it was big panels or something.

After the opera house we made our way to The Rocks. This is part of the city known for shops, open markets, and street performers. We were able to finish our souvenir shopping here. We also were able to walk under the harbor bridge. We wanted to walk over it to the other side of the city, but we were tired and would have had to walk quite a bit out of our way in order to get on the bridge. So we decided to walk under it instead. We then had to walk all the way home. We did stop in a puppet shop! It was really cool. They had some modern toy puppets but most were from different parts of the world and from a long-long time ago. We finished our walk home (about 45 minutes) and sat on the bed and rested our feet and watched a tv show. We then got ready for our last night in Sydney/ Matt’s last night in Australia. We dressed up and we both looked sharp. Matt wore a blue button up dress shirt, black dress pants, and a coordinating blue and black tie. I wore a new black dress with blue accents. We didn’t even know what the other had packed but we matched perfectly. Yes I had heals to go with my lovely evening dress but I wore silver flip flops all the way to the restaurant and then changed shoes out front. We ate at a place called I'm Angus. It was a very nice steak place that has some famous Australian chef neither of us had ever heard of. We both enjoyed our food very much.

The last thing we did for the evening was make our way to the cinemas to watch “Date Night” with Steve Carrel and Tina Fey. We paid $17 each for a ticket and then decided to get a scoop of ice cream (1 because we didn’t get dessert, and 2 our theaters back home do not serve ice cream) 2 scoops= $10.00. We HIGHLY recommend watching the movie. It was absolutely hysterical. We were laughing the whole time. It was a great way to end our journey crossed Australia.

Fist day in SYDNEY!!

April 8^th First day in Sydney

Matt and I took the red eye flight to Sydney from Darwin. We arrived here at 6:30am. We caught a train ($30) to get to central station. We then had to walk 1 block to our hotel. Yes HOTEL not hostel. Matt thought we were staying in hostels for the entire trip. This was my birthday present to him. We are in the 4 star Marque Hotel. It is beautiful. We dropped off our luggage because our room would not be ready until 2 pm. We then set out for our fist day in Sydney!

Our first destination was the Toronga Zoo! We walked to Darling Harbor and then caught a cruise over to the Zoo.

Darling Harbor is where there is a lot of fine dining, the aquarium, the Maritime Museum, and gorgeous fountains and sculptures. Here is the view from Darling Harbor.

On our way over to the zoo we passed under the Harbor Bridge. When Matt and I were looking for things to do in Sydney we found that you could pay to walk up to the top of the bridge. It was very expensive and you were not allowed to bring a camera. You had to pay $35 for a picture. So we decided to save our $$ instead. Here is the bridge and here is a close up of the people who have to wear grey suits and are harnessed into the bridge so they can' fall off.

Here is a pic of the Opera House from the cruise.

It was $100 for cruise and zoo tickets. We arrived at the Zoo around 10:00am along with 10,000 other people. I’m serious. There were actually 10,000 people at the zoo. Turns out the state of New South Wales (where Sydney is located) has all of their schools on break. There were so many kids!!!

The Zoo is locate crossed the harbor and is on a giant hill. When you get to the top, there is a breath taking view of the Sydney skyline including the opera house and the harbor bridge. We did enjoy seeing many of the animals. We made it a point to see all of the Australian animals for Matt.

We became hungry for lunch and walked to the food courts. What a total chaotic mess!!!! 10,000 people all wanted to eat lunch at the same time! Matt and I tried to look for other food places but they only had ice cream carts. Which was fine, but we wanted real food. So on our walk back we spotted 2 giant turtles. One climbed on top of the other and started grunting very loudly. It was very funny to watch all of the kids asking questions and the parents returning answers such as; “they are leapfroggin” or “He wanted a piggy-back ride.” The kids excepted piggy back ride and then started chanting it! Matt and I almost fell over because we were laughing so hard.

We made it back to the food courts and stood in line for 30 minutes or so. We each got a $9 scoop of ravioli. We decided to pass on the $3 (each) breadsticks.

As we finished walking around the zoo there was an enclosure of chickens, roosters, and deer. In this enclosure was a giant tree where a leopard was laying. Matt turns and says “Kaylin, look at the kitty!” I turn to him and reply “Matt, the kitty isn’t real” It was a fake leopard that was very shiny and smiling. We had a good laugh at that.

On our way out we had to exit through the gift shop. I wanted something that said Toronga Zoo on it. I found a coffee mug for $20 and key chains for $12 and decided that we had enough pictures as souvenirs. We had already blown through $120 that day.

Caught the cruise ferry ride back to Darling Harbor and went the Sydney Aquarium! $57 for the 2 of us to get in. It was pretty cool, but again full of kids and groups. The coolest thing about the aquarium is that it floats! It is on the end of harbor is supported by pylons. The aquarium had a Where’s Wally theme. We know this as Where’s Waldo. So in most exhibits they would have a picture out of one of the books as the background with lots of cartoon characters drawn all over it and then Wally, the Wizard, the bad guy, Woof (Wally’s dog) would be hidden in the water amongst the fish. It was pretty cool.

After the aquarium we had had enough walking for the day and headed home. Because it was Thursday it was late night shopping. All of the stores were open until 9:00pm. The walk back was very crowded on the streets and then it started raining. So everyone moved under the awnings along the sidewalks and it became even more crowded.

Matt and I stopped in at a Turkish Kababs place and got lamb kababs. These are pretty much wraps. Lamb, tomato, lettuce, onion, cheese, and garlic sauce. We walked back to our hotel, settled into our room, ate the kababs, and headed to the roof for the pool and spa! Because the pool is on the roof and it rained a lot, the water was very cold. So we went back to our room and took very long showers. The last time we had had a shower was the night before we swam with the crocs. We had to check out, swim with the crocs, and could not have a shower until Sydney. Got to Sydney and or room wasn't ready until 2 pm. So we walked all over the Zoo and Aquarium. We then went straight to bed. We only got about 3-4 hours of sleep on the plane and then hit the ground running all day long.