For NYE, a big group of us trekked over to Birchgrove Park, where we had a pretty decent view of the Sydney Harbor We left the apartment at 2ish and didn't get to the park until like 4:30, not because it's actually that far away, but because the crowds were HUGE and we kinda got lost in the suburbs :P
Anyways, it was awesome. We took picnic blankets and our "hampers" i.e. coolers full of groceries and picnic food, and just hung out, played cards, sipped wine, and waited until it got dark for the fireworks to begin. The place was absolutely packed with people from all over the world; when I was in line for the bathroom, the two people in front of me were French, the two behind me were Italian, and those behind them were German. Getting back to the apartment was a bit of a pain because it was so crowded; we ended up walking a good portion of the way, and even though we left directly after the midnight fireworks, we really didn't reach the apartment til 2 AM, by which time we were all exhausted and grimy from sitting out all day (who would've thunk that I would get a sunburn at the end of December?)
The line up for today is: lunch in a half hour, then class all afternoon, and then studying! because we have our first big exam in two days. At some point I WILL figure out how to post the pics from facebook without having to post everything twice :P
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Highlights of the day!
Wooo I am pooped. Unfortunately we do NOT get a lot of down time here so this is gonna be a quick post to update on the day:
-Woke up early to do a workout (in the gym, sadly, not running the beautiful weather outside). while I was biking I was watching the Australian news and aussie version of Disney Channel, both which were so funny. First of all, Aussies are not obsessed with the weather like us Americans. The weather portion of the news was literally a 10 second segments of a map of the entire Australia with maybe three cities highlighted, and the weatherman was like, "the weather today looks fine, that is all". Also, this whole reverse season thing is still new to me. There were a bunch of commercials for kids toys and theme parks that were like, "this summer 2012-2013, keep cool by exploring our new water park!" weird, right? AND I saw a special on a Tasmanian Devil who bore surprising low resemblance to the looney toons creatue we all love
-We went on a walking tour of the city led by our very well-versed Aussie leader, Russ, who is absolutely fantastic. He told us all about how the original Australians were sent as banished convicts from Europe (England, Ireland, etc) in 1788 and had to basically build the country from scratch, even though they were short, sick, not motivated, underskilled criminals. For example, the city's first architect was hand picked by the governor simply because it was noted that he had some considerable writing and drawing skill. How was this discovered? He had been convicted of document forgery. Also, it's funny because while many of the species of plants and animals have similar origins to what we are familiar with in the US, the isolation of the continent has allowed for very different evolution. Thus, there exist plants here that have been around since the dinosaurs (I'm talking about the Wollemi Pine tree). Also, did you know that there used to be a carnivorous version of the kangaroo that existed in the dinosaur era? They were called fangeroos. I'm not kidding!
-Another cool thing about the city: the mix of history with modern entertainment! The city is always looking to promote museums and gardens, so they open up places like historic barracks on special weekends to become a dance party, complete with a DJ and booze! For example, in the city's main art museum, people are allowed to come and dance like a regular club during special evenings throughout the year. The hilarious thing is, to keep up the museum ambiance, they give everyone a museum headset and play the music through that! So everyone is dancing individually with their headsets on. Once you take the headset off, it's just silent and you can look around at other people dancing with seemingly no music.
-The animals here are insane. I literally had a wild cockatoo and wild parrots just chilling on my shoulders and arms today in the park (I have the talon marks to prove it). This doesn't happen in real life!
-We walked through much of the city and the botanical gardens, which are absolutely gorgeous (the city is full of so much green space!) before going through an extensive photography tutorial with a guy named Paul. Because New Years' Eve is tomorrow, he taught us all the tricks of photography to be able to capture the fireworks. Now I can throw around words like aperature, shutter speed, ISO, exposure, etc. I sure as heck don't know what any of that means, but don't I sound fancy?
-After the photography session in the botanical gardens (where I got to photograph a lot of poisonous cactuses (cacti?)) We ventured off to the Circular Quay, Sydney's main harbor, which was JAM PACKED with tourists (due to NYE and also the docking of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship). The atmosphere was pretty cool; the streets were lined with arts and crafts tents and shoppers everywhere. Natalie from NSW gave us a historic tour of the city and told us all about the indigenous people and their history, along with some colonial history. We got to go to Foundation Park, visit some very old cottages, and even see an active archeological site and a brand new museum exhibit of indigenous art. Afterwards, the group was POOPED and broke off to do their own thing.
-TA Greg, Danielle, Hannah and I took the train (metro) and a bus to Bondi (Bond-eye), a breathtakingly beautiful beach carved into these jutting cliffs full of picturesque rocks and nature. We hiked three HILLY (and this is me talking as a runner!) miles all the way to Coogee, another area nearby, before heading back to Bondi by bus, we grabbed some Japanese food to eat. Now we are back at the apartment, it's nearly 10 PM, and we are adventuring out once more to experience Sydney's night lift for the first time, since everyone basically crashed last night. I myself am exhausted; I think the travel is definitely catching up with me. But, we have a free day tomorrow which means I can sleep in, so adventuring tonight it is!
Okay I thought that was gonna be a short post but I got carried away.
-Woke up early to do a workout (in the gym, sadly, not running the beautiful weather outside). while I was biking I was watching the Australian news and aussie version of Disney Channel, both which were so funny. First of all, Aussies are not obsessed with the weather like us Americans. The weather portion of the news was literally a 10 second segments of a map of the entire Australia with maybe three cities highlighted, and the weatherman was like, "the weather today looks fine, that is all". Also, this whole reverse season thing is still new to me. There were a bunch of commercials for kids toys and theme parks that were like, "this summer 2012-2013, keep cool by exploring our new water park!" weird, right? AND I saw a special on a Tasmanian Devil who bore surprising low resemblance to the looney toons creatue we all love
-We went on a walking tour of the city led by our very well-versed Aussie leader, Russ, who is absolutely fantastic. He told us all about how the original Australians were sent as banished convicts from Europe (England, Ireland, etc) in 1788 and had to basically build the country from scratch, even though they were short, sick, not motivated, underskilled criminals. For example, the city's first architect was hand picked by the governor simply because it was noted that he had some considerable writing and drawing skill. How was this discovered? He had been convicted of document forgery. Also, it's funny because while many of the species of plants and animals have similar origins to what we are familiar with in the US, the isolation of the continent has allowed for very different evolution. Thus, there exist plants here that have been around since the dinosaurs (I'm talking about the Wollemi Pine tree). Also, did you know that there used to be a carnivorous version of the kangaroo that existed in the dinosaur era? They were called fangeroos. I'm not kidding!
-Another cool thing about the city: the mix of history with modern entertainment! The city is always looking to promote museums and gardens, so they open up places like historic barracks on special weekends to become a dance party, complete with a DJ and booze! For example, in the city's main art museum, people are allowed to come and dance like a regular club during special evenings throughout the year. The hilarious thing is, to keep up the museum ambiance, they give everyone a museum headset and play the music through that! So everyone is dancing individually with their headsets on. Once you take the headset off, it's just silent and you can look around at other people dancing with seemingly no music.
-The animals here are insane. I literally had a wild cockatoo and wild parrots just chilling on my shoulders and arms today in the park (I have the talon marks to prove it). This doesn't happen in real life!
-We walked through much of the city and the botanical gardens, which are absolutely gorgeous (the city is full of so much green space!) before going through an extensive photography tutorial with a guy named Paul. Because New Years' Eve is tomorrow, he taught us all the tricks of photography to be able to capture the fireworks. Now I can throw around words like aperature, shutter speed, ISO, exposure, etc. I sure as heck don't know what any of that means, but don't I sound fancy?
-After the photography session in the botanical gardens (where I got to photograph a lot of poisonous cactuses (cacti?)) We ventured off to the Circular Quay, Sydney's main harbor, which was JAM PACKED with tourists (due to NYE and also the docking of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship). The atmosphere was pretty cool; the streets were lined with arts and crafts tents and shoppers everywhere. Natalie from NSW gave us a historic tour of the city and told us all about the indigenous people and their history, along with some colonial history. We got to go to Foundation Park, visit some very old cottages, and even see an active archeological site and a brand new museum exhibit of indigenous art. Afterwards, the group was POOPED and broke off to do their own thing.
-TA Greg, Danielle, Hannah and I took the train (metro) and a bus to Bondi (Bond-eye), a breathtakingly beautiful beach carved into these jutting cliffs full of picturesque rocks and nature. We hiked three HILLY (and this is me talking as a runner!) miles all the way to Coogee, another area nearby, before heading back to Bondi by bus, we grabbed some Japanese food to eat. Now we are back at the apartment, it's nearly 10 PM, and we are adventuring out once more to experience Sydney's night lift for the first time, since everyone basically crashed last night. I myself am exhausted; I think the travel is definitely catching up with me. But, we have a free day tomorrow which means I can sleep in, so adventuring tonight it is!
Okay I thought that was gonna be a short post but I got carried away.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Pics!
Me being the lazy Amurrican that I am, I have decided to post all my pics to facebook instead of trying to upload them individually here. But you can still access them even if you don't have a facebook, using this link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151398347292125.538557.714677124&type=1&l=c7e6b8dd7e
Also, I ate a kangaroo yesterday and saw the Sydney Opera House. Is this real life?
Also, I ate a kangaroo yesterday and saw the Sydney Opera House. Is this real life?
Friday, December 28, 2012
First Day So Far
Wooo it's been a long day (couple of days? The time difference confuses me...) It's currently 3:04 PM in Sydney, but it's 11:04 PM the previous day back home. Anyways, I took a flight on 27 Dec from Dulles to San Fran, which was delayed by an hour (grr) but during which I got to sit in one of those economy seats with lots of leg room next to a friendly elderly british chatterbox who snored heavily when he slept :) I also got a lot of work done and the flight was only about 6 hours. THEN came the 14 hour flight, which was a lot more cumbersome considering I had hungrily scarfed down an airport cheeseburger immediately before boarding and considering I was smushed against the window next to some guy that played with his feet, EW. Luckily we were able to touch down without any problems, make it safely to our apartments, and explore a bit.
We are staying at the Harmony Oaks Apt on Quay Street which is smack dab in the middle of China/Thai town and just a block away from Central Station. After settling in (i.e. hastily dropping our stuff off in the apts), the five of us (two other students and the two instructors) made a ten minute walk to the mall where we ate at the food court and made a quick run to the grocery store. Some culture shock things:
This place, as my dad would call it, is like "Bizarro World". Everything is backwards! It's 75 degrees at the end of December, people drive and walk on the left side of the street, the "do not walk" sign sounds like you're being shot at by a tie-fighter in Star Wars, and the four story mall doesn't have any escalators, just really long elevated moving walkways. Plus the stores and brands are all different, like, instead of "forever 21" they have "forever new", and they have liquor stores IN the mall, and beer is super expensive (like $50 for a six pack) and there are a surprising number of Asians EVERYWHERE. And they spell things like the british, like yogurt is "yoghurt". silly aussies.
Anyways our apartment is really cool, it has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (each with a separate tub and shower), a living room, a dining room, and a fully equipped kitchen (now stocked with vegemite, heh heh). There are several balconies with pretty decent views since I'm on floor 16! I'll have to take pictures of everything and post about more discoveries later; for now, I'm running late for our meeting in the lobby!
We are staying at the Harmony Oaks Apt on Quay Street which is smack dab in the middle of China/Thai town and just a block away from Central Station. After settling in (i.e. hastily dropping our stuff off in the apts), the five of us (two other students and the two instructors) made a ten minute walk to the mall where we ate at the food court and made a quick run to the grocery store. Some culture shock things:
This place, as my dad would call it, is like "Bizarro World". Everything is backwards! It's 75 degrees at the end of December, people drive and walk on the left side of the street, the "do not walk" sign sounds like you're being shot at by a tie-fighter in Star Wars, and the four story mall doesn't have any escalators, just really long elevated moving walkways. Plus the stores and brands are all different, like, instead of "forever 21" they have "forever new", and they have liquor stores IN the mall, and beer is super expensive (like $50 for a six pack) and there are a surprising number of Asians EVERYWHERE. And they spell things like the british, like yogurt is "yoghurt". silly aussies.
Anyways our apartment is really cool, it has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (each with a separate tub and shower), a living room, a dining room, and a fully equipped kitchen (now stocked with vegemite, heh heh). There are several balconies with pretty decent views since I'm on floor 16! I'll have to take pictures of everything and post about more discoveries later; for now, I'm running late for our meeting in the lobby!
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Big Day Today!
Today I leave for a 3 week trip to Sydney, Australia with Engineering students from the University of Maryland. I have a 23 hour flight ahead of me, and will actually arrive on SATURDAY since we will be crossing the international date line. I'll check back in with you once I arrive in the outback, mate!
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