Homeward Bound

G’day,

Well today is my last day in Sydney. It’s really hard to believe that this experience is over. I have had the most incredible time here and I have very mixed feelings about heading home. On one hand, I am very excited to see all the friends and family that I have missed SO much over the past 4 months. On the other hand, I have made some lifelong friends here and am going to have a really hard time leaving them, knowing that they will be on the other side of the world now when I talk to them and that it will most likely be a very long time until the next time I see them.

Spending four and a half months in Australia has taught me a lot about myself. I’ve learned that I am a much more independent person than I ever knew. I always considered myself to be a fairly independent person, but being on my own in a brand new country without knowing a single person really pushed me to do things for myself and learn how to adapt to a new environment.

Australian culture is very similar to the U.S. which was neither good nor bad. In one way, I sometimes wished that I had gone somewhere that I would experience a completely different culture with a different language and people with different values and traditions. However, in another way, going somewhere so similar to the U.S. made me really look deeper into the small differences between the two countries. Australians seem to be much more laid back in general which makes for a much more relaxed environment in school and in the work place. Also, even though the language is the same, there were times when I felt like I needed a dictionary to translate the slang words and terms that are so different from our slang. For example instead of “how are you doing” they greet you with “how are you going?” These slight differences aren’t very noticeable on the surface, but they are things that I will miss and will have a strange time adjusting to not hearing or experiencing once I’m back home.

Being abroad has been a life changing experience and one I will never forget and will always hold close to my heart. I hope that anyone who has the opportunity to study or work in a different country will take that chance because until you do, you can’t understand the emotional and life-altering effects of being on your own in a foreign place. I am going to miss Australia SO much and it’s really hard to leave all the great friends and acquaintances I have been here. I’m sure that someday I will come back and visit everyone and re-visit all the amazing places that I’ve been.

In 24 hours I’ll be landing in Boston, Massachusetts with a whole new perspective on life and a whole new appreciation for traveling. I can’t wait to see all of you and give you big giant hugs and kisses!! See you back in the U.S!!!

Love,
Lauren

FIJI

BULA!!

That's hello in Fijian :) (Once again my internet connection is not working so I still can't upload pictures...I'll keep trying though!!)

I got home from Fiji Tuesday night and had the greatest trip! Emily and I left on Friday and got to the Fiji international airport around 8pm. We were welcomed with shell necklaces and live fijian music and lots of people shouting BULA and asking if we needed help getting anywhere. Fijians are without a doubt the nicest, happiest most helpful people I have ever met! A man in a skirt and bright flower button down shirt helped Emily and I get a ride to our resort which was a 2 hour drive from the airport. On the way we learned the meaning of "fiji time" which is a phrase they use a lot to explain that something may take a long time or not be right on schedule...it's just a very laid back environment where no one is ever in a rush.

We finally got to Mango Bay Resort a little after 10pm. We were once again welcomed with loud BULA shouts and smiling faces. We signed into the resort and were taken to our 8-person dorm. Mango Bay is mainly a backpackers resort so they have big dorms with 8 beds and you just pick your own bed when you get there. Every bed has a mosquito net to keep out the bugs at night. Here's a picture of our place:

The first night we got there, Em and I went to the bar which looks out to the ocean. We got a drink and made some friends playing ping pong and pool. We met a girl named Heather from Canada and two Aussies named Leon and Godfrey. We all hung out for a while until everyone was tired and we went to bed. The next morning we woke up and it was really overcast and cloudy but we didn't let that stop us from enjoying the day. We ate breakfast which consisted of white bread toast and fruit (not ideal...but it was free!) Then we took a trip into the closest town to our resort, Sigatoka. When they said we would drive into town I figured it would be a 5 minute trip, but it was actually an hour away and the only thing separating our resort and the town were a few small villages. The rest was just open land and lots of wild horses, dogs and cows.

The rest of the week was filled with relaxing on the beach, going on hikes, playing volleyball and hanging out with the Fijians who work on the resort, and more. It was such a great experience and a wonderful vacation to top off all the amazing things I’ve done since I’ve been abroad!!

I absolutely LOVED Fiji and already want to go back!!

Next post will probably be the day I am leaving Sydney and it is going to be a really really weird experience! I’ll talk about all the things I’ve learned and how I’ve grown through this experience. For now, I’m going to get some sleep and get ready for final exams!

Love always,
Lauren

Lots of Catching Up!

Hi Everyone!



So once again it's been a little too long since my last post...sorry!! But I do have lots to catch you all up on so I'll just get started! A little disclaimer...my internet connection is really bad right now so I'm going to upload all the pictures later!



First off, Since I last wrote, I have finally gotten over all my sicknesses and am almost fully recovered! With that out of the way, here's what I've been up to:



Emily and I made an Aussie friend in our Gender and Human Rights class, Whitney, and she invited us over for dinner at her house last week. She lives in North Sydney which is on the other side of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Her house was absolutely GORGEOUS right on the water and really secluded with a big jungle of trees and wildlife in her backyard! Here's a picture from her back deck:

Her parents are both from the U.S. but met in Australia after they had both moved here years ago. Whitney had done a year at a prep school in Massachusetts which was how she initially struck up conversation with Emily and me in class (she said she recognized the way we dressed!) It was so nice of her to have us over and her family was great!

The next night, Emily, Theresa, Brian and I decided we wanted to have a fancy night out! There are a few bars in Sydney which we have come to know as very high class and swanky and we thought it would be fun to check them all out! The three of us started out at a bar called "The Ivy" which was absolutely amazing inside. Here are a couple pictures of the bar:

At the Ivy we met up with our friend Alex who joined us on our classy adventure. Our next stop was a bar called "The Establishment." This is basically the kind of place where older business men go to show off their money by buying young gold diggers expensive drinks. I opted out of that scene and remained an innocent observer :) After exploring the Establishment for a big, we took an elevator upstairs to a place called "Hemmesphere." (and you all are probably thinking that I am a terrible speller...okay most of the time I am...but that actually is the way they spell it!) The best way to accurately describe this place is by quoting my Lonely Planet Sydney Guide Book where it says, "This mature, private lounge is pure Sydney opulence; a lush gentlemen's-club vibe peppered with Moroccan twists. Melt into a deep, leather chair, order a cigar and mandarin caipiroska and wait for someone famous to show up."

I couldn't have said it better myself! This place was seriously out of our league and honestly none of us even really knew how we got let in at all! But we rolled with it and took a seat at a little round table in the outdoor section of the bar. We tried to order drinks at the bar but they told us to please have a seat as it was table service only! I chose not to get a drink here seeing as we were only pretending to be rich and my bank account was telling a different story...but the guys did order some fancy cocktails which was fun...Alex's actually required the waitress to light the glass on fire...it was quite entertaining! Anyways, we didn't take any pictures of hemmesphere sadly, but hopefully this description can give you an indication of what the night was like.

The rest of the week consisted of studying for my Gender and Human Rights final on Friday and working on my take-home exam for Australia: Land and Nation that was due Tuesday. Luckily, Emily and Becca are both in my Gender class and we were all able to help each other out with the studying. When Friday came around we all felt pretty good and after the exam we all agreed that we definitely passed!! This was certainly means for celebration, so we had a big party in UniLodge to celebrate the end of the semester! (Friday was also the last day of classes.) It was really fun to have everyone hanging out together...and also sad to think that our time together is coming to an end!

After our UniLodge party, we went across the street to a local bar for a little bit before calling it a night. The next couple days were spent working on my take home final for Australia: Land and Nation which I successfully turned in yesterday! After turning in my paper, Emily and I went to the Sydney Aquarium!! It was SO much fun and I took a billion pictures so I will just post a couple favorites:

I should have noted earlier that a group of our friends left on Monday for the Whitsunday Islands and it has been me and Emily holding down the fort in Sydney. Most people did their Student Vacation trips this week, but Emily and I don't leave for Fiji until Friday so we have had some roommate togetherness time!! After the aquarium we went to the gym and then came back, watched a movie and went to bed.

This morning, my friend Brett from the Sydney Uni Ultimate Frisbee team picked me up outside of UniLodge and brought me to a place called The Featherdale Wildlife Park. He had asked me what I hadn't done that I wanted to do before leaving Australia and I told him that I hadn't really been able to pet kangaroos and koalas, so he said he would take me to this place where we could do all of that and more! He packed us a picnic lunch of peanut butter and jelly which he hadn't ever eaten before but said he was trying to make an American lunch for me!! (Aussies think PB&J is really bizarre...) Anyways, we got to the park and immediately stepped into an open sandy area full of hopping kangaroos!! They were SO adorable and you could just go up and pet them and feed them like it was no big deal. We played with the kangaroos for a while before moving on to the rest of the park where we saw a million different types of birds (Brett knew almost every one it was really impressive!) and a bunch of different marsupials! I even got to pet a koala! :) It was a fantastic day and I really really appreciated him taking the time out to bring me there! Here are some of the highlights:

And now we're about caught up!! After the wildlife park, Emily and I went to the gym to take our weekly spin class, came back and watched another movie and now we're about to get to bed! Tomorrow is our last free day before we leave for Fiji on Friday!! I'm not sure if the place I'll be staying will have an internet cafe so I may not write until I get home next Wednesday. Of course I'll be taking millions of pictures and I'll be sure to update everyone as soon as I return for my LAST week in sydney!!!

Love you and miss you all!

Lauren

Sick in Sydney!

Hey all!

Don't worry, the title of this blog is not sick OF sydney...because that would be entirely false...but rather sick IN sydney...because, yes, big surprise, I've been sick for the past week!


Those of you who know me well know that I can't go a month without getting sick or acquiring some strange injury or disease. Well my time in Australia hasn't been much different. The first couple months weren't bad, just a few minor colds here and there. But this past week has certainly been a doozy! It started out with a cold that got progressively worse to the point where my voice was gone and I was considering turning myself in to the swine flu police! Instead I decided to try and fight it with some sudafed and advil and I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, during this little bout with the potential swine flu, I somehow managed to contract some sort of virus of the armpit (just don't ask...) I had to see a doctor and was prescribed some perscription medication to make it go away. A week went by and everything was clearing up nicely. Then one morning while Emily and I were in pilates class, I lifted my arms over my head to get into one of the positions and to my surprise, I revealed a HUGE nasty rash going from my armpits down to my elbows on both sides of my body!! Mortified, I scuttered out of the pilates class half way through and ran back to my apartment. So back to the doctor I went, only to be told that I am apparently now allergic to pennicilin! I was prescribed more medication this time to clear up the allergic reaction. For the past 3 days I have felt like a little kid with chicken pox...I can't remember the last time I've been this itchy! So needless to say I haven't had much sleep because I wake up every 5 minutes scratching my armpits like a monkey!!


And that is the story of my week being sick in sydney! Sorry for potentially too much detail but I tend to overshare! Anyways, I'm happy to say that today I am finally really feeling on the mend!! I was able to go to the gym (twice to make up for lost time) and got a good night sleep last night! Now, the rest of my week will be spent studying and writing all my final papers! We are in our last week of classes at Uni and then we have a week vacation (called StuVac because they abbreviate EVERYTHING here!) and then finals week after that. I'm working on getting as much work done this week as possible because next week Emily and I are off to FIJI!! We are SO excited to have a little getaway on the beautiful island! Some of our friends had gone to fiji in the first couple weeks that we were here (when we went to Cairns) and we are staying in the same resort that they stayed in which they told us was fantastic. We are leaving next Friday (June 12th) and returning to Sydney on June 16th. When we get back, I have one final exam on the 19th and a final paper due on the 20th, and then school is over and I have a few days to enjoy Sydney before heading back to the states!!


Speaking of enjoying Sydney, a couple weeks ago Emily and I decided to walk around Sydney Uni campus and take some pictures so our friends and families could get a bit of an idea of where we are going to school! Here are some of the pictures I took that day:


First off, here is a shot of the great UniLodge that I'm always referring to. This has been my home for the past 4 months and has treated me very well! Emily and I live in room 2103 and our room looks into the middle of the building which is a big courtyard.


This is the bridge I cross every day to get to class. In order to get on campus, we have to pass through Victoria Park which has lots of trees, flowers, grass, and a little pond with birds, ducks and fish. All of which I will showcase now:












These flowers are everywhere and they remind me of the orange-beaked ducks two pictures ago! I love them :)

And here are just a few that I took of some buildings on campus:

This should give you a bit of an idea of the massive hill that we have to trek up every day to get to class! At the top of the hill is the Great Hall where I have my Arab-Israeli Conflict tutorial class.


Here is a close-up shot of the Great Hall. It is pretty much straight out of Harry Potter!


This is the Sydney Uni Library...but as you can see it's nothing that great, so when I want to get some quiet studying done, I go to the Law Library, shown below:


This building is brand new and the architecture is really cool. I go into the basement to study and I also have my Australia: Land and Nation class in one of the lecture halls.

I don't have any classes in this building but I think it's beautiful so I took a picture!

Okay and that's all I have for now!! Hopefully you can sort of get a better sense of my academic life here in Sydney! Yes, I DO study on top of all the partying and adventuring! :) I can't believe how fast this last month is flying by...I have really started to feel at home here and it will be so sad to leave but of course I have all of you to look forward to seeing when I get back to the states!!


xoxoxoxo,
Lauren


P.S. Just wanted to give a little shout out to the little bro...he came in 6th in the 400 meter run at the all-district track and field meet the other day and broke his personal record by running it in under 52 seconds!! Anyone who has run the 400 before knows that that's a great accomplishment! CONGRATS BUDDY!!

Bathurst!

G'day Mates!

So as I wrote in my last really quick post, I just spent the weekend in Bathurst which is a very small town in the middle of nowhere about 4 hours from Sydney. I went with the Sydney Uni Ultimate Frisbee (SUUFA) team for a tournament called "the bathurst stampede" and it was an awesome weekend! It started with getting picked up at 5pm on Friday evening by a "party bus" which was really just a rental 12-person van, but we certainly managed to turn it into a party bus! (I'll spare you the details.) It took us about 4 hours to get to Bathurst and when we arrived a lot of the team had already gotten there and were settling in to our accomidations which were really cute little cabins. We were told to bring our own sleeping bags which obviously I don't have so I had my sheets and then a blanket that Becca let me borrow and thank goodness she did because it was FREEZING! The girls in my cabin were Fiona and Hammer (that's her nickname, obviously) and they were really sweet and a lot of fun to room with! We stayed up and chatted a little bit and then got to bed a little after midnight. The beds were only about 5'5 long and about 2 feet wide so I JUST barely fit in it and I like to move a lot in my sleep so I definitely woke myself up a few times by almost falling out! Needless to say I didnt have the best night sleep and then we woke up at 7:45 the next morning to go to the fields and play in our first day of the tournament.

Since SUUFA is such a big team, we ended up splitting up into basically an A and B team and having two separate teams for the whole tournament. I got to play on the A team which was really fun because it was with the girls I roomed with in the Cabin as well as Mike and Brett who are two guys I have known for a while from training. The first day of the tournament we played 4 games and went undefeated. It was great to play with such experienced players and I felt like I learned a lot and played really well!

The theme of the tournament was "stampede of your dreams" and therefore the home team hosted a pajama party at a local bar. Pretty much every player from all 10 teams showed up at a bar at 7pm in their pajamas which definitely got us some funny looks, but seeing as Bathurst is a pretty quiet town, we made up most of the population at the bar anyway! Not only were we all in pajamas, but the host team also hired a sumo-wrestling company to provide sumo suits and a mat for the players to wrestle each other. I wrestled a girl named Nikki on our team and it was really funny. I don't have any pictures yet but Brett does, so in my next post I'll be sure to get the pictures from him and post them because we looked pretty hilarious in those sumo suits! The rest of night, Mike and Izzy (another player on our team) took me around and introduced me to everyone they knew at the party! It was really nice of them because seeing as I went into it not knowing anyone, they made it really easy for me to meet new people. I learned some new slang, such as "bogan" which is the equivalent to our "hicks" or "rednecks" and apparently the whole population of bathurst are bogans. I also had a guy named Max help me work on my Australian accent...but it didn't go over so well...I'm really bad at saying "mate" properly! All in all it was a really fun night and the best part was when I got back to the cabin I was already in my PJs so I just jumped into my little bed and went to sleep!

Today (Sunday) we were given breakfast sandwiches at the field before our first game which was amazing. Then we played the top seed at the tournament in a bonus game and we beat them by one point! It was really exciting, but we knew that we would have to face them again in the finals and that they would want revenge. Our next game was the semi-finals which we won pretty easily, and then we faced the same team as the first game in the finals. We played really hard and there was a ton of running, but they ended up outplaying us and we came in second. It was unfortunate to go undefeated the whole tournament and then lose in the finals, but we still had a lot of fun and played really hard so it didn't really matter. The funniest part about the second day of games was that after each game while we would shake the other team's hands, people I had met at the bar the night before were all saying "good game Lauren" but I met SO many people that I hardly remembered anyone elses name! I guess they had the advantage of only having one new name to remember.

The last game ended around 4pm and then we got right on the "party bus" and headed back to Sydney. I just got back into my room now, and I have a 2500 word essay to finish before tomorrow!! Luckily I had been working on it last week, but it still looks like I'm going to be up pretty late finishing it tonight. But I don't regret leaving for the weekend because I really did have such a great time...even though now I'm going to be up all night working on my paper and I'm almost completely broke!! (It got to be REALLY expensive after paying for the tournament fee, party bus fee, accomidation fee, food and drinks!!) Anyways, on that note I should really get going on my work but I wanted to write this first because I've been so terrible with the updates lately. Unfortunately I didnt take any of my own pictures this weekend but lots of other people did and I will be able to get them at some point and put them up! Until then hopefully my words have been descriptive enough! :)

SO MUCH LOVE,

Lauren

quick post!!

Hi everyone!

I know I'm getting really bad at these blog posts and this one is going to be super quick because I'm just about to run out the door! I'm off to Bathurst which is about 5 hours southwest of Sydney (I think). I'm going for a weekend long frisbee tournament and I have to go catch the bus in about 3 minutes! I just wanted to write and let everyone know that I am still alive and I promise to write all about this weekend and what I've been doing over the past couple weeks when I get back. Sorry again for not keeping everyone updated!!

Love you all HEAPS and I'll write a nice long post soon!

Lauren

More Adventures...lame title this week because I can't think of anything better...

Hey heyyyy,

I know it's been quite a while since I last wrote but I've been doing a good job of keeping myself busy! I guess I'll just start with a recap of last week. Monday night I played in my first division one frisbee league game and it was SO much fun. It's a co-ed league and I'm not actually on the team but my friend Mike asked if I would play for them for the night because they were missing some of the girls on the team. I agreed and when I got there we found out that our team only had 2 girls and you're supposed to play with 4 guys and 3 girls on the field so that meant we had to borrow a girl from the other team and it also meant that we wouldnt have any subs for the entire game! I was a little intimidated because when I started to warm up before the game I was throwing the frisbee with a girl who told me she's been playing for 9 years!! But once the game got going I started to play pretty well and ended up scoring a few points and doing pretty well on defense so I was really excited. The team asked me to play with them again next week so I have my next game this coming Monday. They were all really nice and I had an awesome time!

Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday consisted of doing lots of school work (crazy I know!) and not really too much else. The girls and I would take some breaks to hang out in my room every once in a while which kept us sane:




Friday (yesterday) I had my gender class and then I took a long nap and went to the gym with Emily before heading out to the Orient Hotel which is a bar on the Rocks that we went to last weekend. Becca has a friend here who was studying in Queensland and his semester is over so he and a bunch of his friends on his program are visiting Sydney for a couple days so they all came to UniLodge and we hung out with them for a while before heading out for the night. We had a really good time with everyone and it was a nice release after having studied all week! Here are a few of the many many pictures that were taken:


Laura, Emily and I in Laura's room before heading out for the night



Alex, me and Justin...he's making an angry face at me because for some reason I did that to him in all the pictures last weekend, haha


Aaron, Emily, Laura, Justin, Me


...aaaand of course what would the night be without some of my signature dance moves?!




So that's about it for now...sorry there's not much to update you on. It's really getting to be that time where our school work gets heavy so we haven't been able to do as much during the week. We only have 4 more weeks of classes and then one week off before finals! Unfortunately it seems like all of my big assignments are due within the same 2-week period so I'm spending the rest of my weekend doing lots of reading, researching, writing and studying! I know...so lame! But I'll continue to write updates when anything new and exciting happens!

XOXO,
Lauren

Wow it's already May?!

G'day Mates!

Well today is May 1st and I can't believe I've already been in Australia for almost 3 months! It's crazy because in some ways I feel like I stepped off the plane a couple days ago, and in other ways I feel like I've lived in Sydney my whole life!! When I was flying back to Sydney from Brisbane, we landed and I said "home sweet home" to Emily and then realized how weird it was that Sydney has actually started to feel like home.

This past week was really stressful because Emily and I had our big presentation for our Gender class and that was on top of a bunch work for all my other classes so I spent the whole week either studying, reading, or practicing our presentation. Thankfully it's Friday now and we got it all done! I got my first grade on Tuesday and it was an A (or Australia's equivalent to an A) which was really exciting! It was in one of my easier classes, but hey, I'll take it! Next week is going to be another big week for school work with two research papers due and a presentation in my Arab-Israeli conflict class. But who wants to hear about all my school work?? On to more exciting things...

First and foremost I want to give a little shout out to Dad and Matthew...HAPPY BIRTHDAYS!!! I got to talk to them on the phone this morning (I was a little groggy after just waking up from a fun night out) but it was great to be able to talk to everyone (mom too of course.) After I talked to the fam on the phone for a bit, I had a pretty relaxing day! I wrote some emails, read some of my book, and went to the gym. It was really nice to have a low key day! Last night was our friend Ying's 21st birthday so Becca, Laura, Emily and I went out with her and all of her friends to a bar called The Loft which was a really nice place and we had champagne and cheese and crackers and it was a lot of fun! Ying's favorite color is black so the theme of her party was "little black dresses" for all the ladies. (I borrowed Becca's!) Here are a few pictures from the night:

This is the hallway of the wonderful UniLodge in which we have been living for the past 2.5 months!

Strawberries and champagne!

The weather is cooling off, but still nice enough to enjoy a drink outside!

Not much else very eventful has taken place since I last wrote. I did get to have a quick skype chat with Ashley and Andrea in Peru!! It should have been longer but I messed up the time difference and went on an hour late (woops!) But they both seemed great and we are going to talk again soon! It will be crazy for the three of us to be living on 4 Symphony again in September with all new stories about our world travels!!

The rest of my weekend is pretty unplanned so far. I think we may try and get to the aquarium at some point which I've been dying to do for a while so hopefully next time I write I'll have lots of pictures of Australian sea creatures from behind the safety of a glass case! Monday night my friend Mike invited me to play with his div. 1 ultimate frisbee team which should be a lot of fun and very competitive! I guess it will be a nice chance to see if I can hold my own with some really good players!

Okay well that's all I have for now! I'll write in a few days but until then, I hope everyone had a wonderful time in the crazy 90 degree weather in April (if you're in new england!) and I hope you all are doing well!

So much love,

Lauren :)

Weekend Trip to Brisbane and the Gold Coast!

Hey Everybody,

So the week after we got back from New Zealand flew by! I spent the week trying to catch up with as much school work as possible before leaving on Friday night for Brisbane which is where I just got home from!

Emily and I flew out of Sydney Friday at 9pm and arrived in Brisbane at 10:30pm. My family friend from home, Jess and her fiancé Jamie picked us up at the airport and drove us around the city a little bit before taking us back to their cute house in the Brisbane suburbs. They let Emily and I stay at their place the whole weekend which was SO nice of them and they were really great hosts!!

Saturday was Anzac day which is an Australian national holiday in remembrance of soldiers who fought in the world war. Jamie’s family had a big barbeque and invited Emily and I to join them. It was a great day of relaxing out in the hot sun and eating lots of food! It was also fun to get to know Jamie’s family. They had Emily and I help them plan their trip to the U.S. for Jess and Jamie’s wedding which is coming up in a few weeks!

Saturday night Jamie had a soccer game, so while he and Jess were there, Emily and I went into the city to explore. We ate at a little sit down outdoor restaurant and then walked around the city for a few hours. It is a lot smaller than Sydney and seemed to be a lot more modern as well. It was also really easy to get around and we always ended up back on Queen Street somehow (which is the main strip of the city where all the shopping and bars are.) Jess and Jamie picked us up around 11pm and we went back to their house, watched some TV and went to bed.

Sunday we woke up early and headed for the Gold Coast. It was about a 45 minute drive from their house in Brisbane and is also where Jess teaches at Bond University. We spent the beginning of the day relaxing on the beach and taking walks along the shore. It was absolutely beautiful weather (probably around 80 degrees without a cloud in the sky). It was awesome to be back in the sun since it’s been cloudy and cool in Sydney! After we were all a little burnt and ready to get out of the sun for a bit, we drove down to another beach called Miami Beach to have a barbeque. Jamie grilled sausages and veggie burgers and we ate at a little picnic table in the shade.

After our barbeque, the plan was to go to Spring Brook which is a rainforest in Brisbane (the hinterlands.) We got about half way up the mountain and came to a road block saying that there was a detour and it would take us about 50 minutes to get to the top. At this point the sun was already starting to go down and we didn’t have much time to spend in the hinterlands, so we decided to change the plans and go to Mount Tambourine which is another mountain that is a bit more commercialized than Spring Brook but just as beautiful. When we got to the top, we went on about an hour long hike through the rainforest and came to a beautiful waterfall. I took my chances and stood right on the edge and looked down over the cliff. It was really cool to be so close to such a huge natural waterfall!

the view from the top of the waterfall, looking down

the view of the waterfall from a lookout further down the path

When we finished our hike, we ended up at a lookout at the perfect time to see the sun setting over mountains in the distance. Of course being obsessed with sunrises and sunsets I took about 5000 pictures, but I’ll spare you and just include one of my favorites:

After the sun set, Jamie drove us home (I slept the whole way) and then when we got back Jess, Emily and I went out for Sushi which was scrumptious! Then we came back and Emily and I decided to get some of our homework done.

A little side note: Emily and I are in the same Gender and Human Rights class and were supposed to have a presentation this Thursday, but in our last class, our teacher made an announcement that there is a university-wide strike and that there would be no classes held this Thursday, and therefore all presentations would be pushed back. Thrilled that we didn’t have to spend our whole weekend in Brisbane working on our presentation, we decided to enjoy our weekend here and work on our presentation when we got back to Sydney. Well, to our dismay, our teacher had sent out an email on Saturday saying that the strike was cancelled and classes would now be held as per usual, therefore our presentation was moved back to this Thursday. Needless to say, we both panicked and got really stressed out and upset over this, but we’ve calmed down a bit and realized we just have to do the best we can do in the short amount of time we have to work on it. We got up early this morning (Monday) to get a bunch of our research done and we’re already making some good progress. We didn’t want to miss out on seeing the rest of Brisbane though, so around noon we left the house and went into the city. Emily and I shopped around while Jess finished grading some papers. We had a successful shopping day (mom don’t look at my bank statement!!) and then we met back up with Jess around 4 to go for a run around the city. Emily went off on her own and I decided to run with Jess which probably wasn’t the best idea seeing as she was the captain of the BU track and cross country team…needless to say I couldn’t keep the pace that she would usually run but we did have a good run around the city and went over the Story Bridge which is Brisbane’s version of the Sydney Harbor bridge, but a lot smaller. After the run we quickly showered and went out for a really nice Indian dinner before coming to the airport!

Right now I’m sitting in the Brisbane airport waiting to board my plane and I don’t have internet so I am typing this in a word document and will post it when I get back to Sydney. I have quite a busy week of school work coming up which is going to be a little stressful but I’m going to try and stay calm and get it all done!

I miss everyone TONS and realized that tomorrow it will be exactly 2 months until I come home!! Crazy that more than half of my trip is already over!

Love you all heaps,
Lauren

The Rest of New Zealand!

Hi Again!

I just got back to my Sydney apartment a couple hours ago after the most incredible week in New Zealand! I wanted to write every day but my internet connection was terrible at the hotel so I have a lot to catch you all up on now! When I last left off, I had told you that our sky diving trip had been postponed. Well Wednesday morning we got picked up from our hotel at 9am by the New Zealand Skydive company van. We were driven about 45 minutes outside of the city to an extremely remote area with lots of grass, cows and sheep (pretty much what the majority of New Zealand looks like.) When we got there we found out that there was only one guy to do the tandem jumping, so we were all going to have to go up in the plane separately. At first we didn’t like that idea but then we realized that we would be able to take pictures of each other from the ground which ended up being pretty cool. The guy who strapped us in and did the dive with us was named Roy and he was super friendly and made us all feel really comfortable (or as comfortable as you can feel jumping out of a plane at 12000 feet!!) We had the option to jump either 9000 feet or 12000 feet so obviously I chose the latter. When we got to 12000 feet, Roy had me dangle my feet out of the plane and all I could see were the clouds below me and at that moment I actually felt nervous for the first time. Then Roy pretty much just leaned out and off we went! It was the most unbelievable experience of my life and I would give anything to relive it! The free fall lasted for about 30 seconds, all of which I was screaming and trying and then the parachute opened and it was the most incredible view. Skydiving had always been on my list of things to do in life and it was everything I had hoped it would be! Here are a few pictures of my sky diving experience:

After skydiving, we were all pretty exhausted and went back to our hotel, watched a movie and went to bed. The next day (Thursday) we took a little road trip to a place called the Waitekere Ranges which was an area with lots of forrest and beaches. We pulled over at a spot where we found a waterfall and Laura and I went exploring a bit through the forrest to find the bottom of it. Here are a couple pictures of that little adventure:

We also walked around the beach for a while and just did some exploring. After that, we drove to parnell street which was supposed to be Auckland's big shopping area, but by the time we got there most things were closed. That was probably a good thing though because I wasn't tempted to spend any money! Then we went back to the hotel and tried to get to bed at a decent hour because we were waking up Friday morning at 3:30am to start our drive to Rotorua! The plan was to meet up with 6 of our friends who were travelling up from the South Island and to go sledging which is a form of white water rafting, but instead of being in a raft, you have an individual sled that you stick your arms in and you kick with your feet down the rapids.

We got in the car at about 4am Friday morning with packed lunches and lots of road trip snacks and CDs for the ride. The drive was supposed to take a little over 3 hours and our sledging trip started at 9am so we wanted to leave plenty of time incase we got lost. I drove the whole way and we actually didn't get lost at all and ended up being a couple hours early so we slept in our car until the group we were meeting showed up. At 9am we started to get in our wetsuits and met our guides who all had dreadlocks and seemed pretty crazy! They drove us out to the rapids and gave us a quick lesson on how to use the sledges and then we all jumped in and were on our way down the river! The first rapid was quite a shock...I don't think any of us expected to be completely submerged and flipped around...but I loved every second of it. Here are a couple pictures from sledging:

I was the first one to jump in...don't mind the cheesy face I'm making!!

BEFORE

AFTER

Here's a group shot we took at the end. We were all trying to make serious faces but as you can see many of us, including myself, failed miserably!

After sledging, we got out of our wetsuits, dried off, and headed about 20 minutes across town to go zorbing. Zorbing is essentially rolling down a hill in a big plastic ball filled with water. If you think that sounds ridiculous, you're right! To get a better idea of what I'm talking about, here is a picture of the zorb:

This is my friend Arjun and me flying down a steep hill in a big plastic ball...who comes up with this stuff?!

And a little jump for joy after the ride!

After zorbing we were all getting pretty tired so the two groups went our separate ways and planned on meeting up again the next day in Waitomo to explore in the famous Waitomo caves. Waitomo was another pretty long drive from Auckland, but luckily we had made our reservation for 2pm, so we were able to get a decent amount of sleep that night. When we got to Waitomo we were driven about 20 minutes out to our assigned cave: Tumu Tumu. Our tour was titled, "tumu tumu toobing." This was because the cave we were exploring was filled with water, so for parts of the tour, we would have to sit in tubes and "black water raft" until we were able to walk again. This was definitely the most terrifying part of the trip for me because when we got in our tubes, the tour guides made us shut all of our head lights off and it became pitch black in the caves. Most of you know that I'm terrified of the dark and on top of it, the tour guides were making scary noises that echoed throughout the cave! The girls made fun of me because I'm always the one who wants to jump out of planes and do anything physically scary, but once I got into the dark caves I turned into the biggest wimp ever!! The only cool thing about turning our lights off was that we were able to see the glow worms that the caves in Waitomo are famous for. Other than that, I enjoyed the parts where we had our lights on and were walking through the caves much better!

We finished our cave tour around 7pm and met up with the other group to caravan back to Auckland. They had been driving in a camper van all week so we offered to have them stay in our hotel room for our last night in New Zealand. We all piled into our hotel at around 10pm and had a great last night in Auckland! Becca, Emily, Laura and I had to wake up at 5:15am the next morning to return our rental car and catch our 8am flight. We packed all our things, left the others sleeping in our hotel room (they later got kicked out by room service) and headed for the airport. When we got there we ran into Kate, another Northeastern girl who was flying home with us, and she informed us that our flight was delayed 10 hours!!!

Luckily the airline gave us a free hotel room to stay in while we waited, so after an exhausting rush to the airport that morning, we all just crashed in the airport hotel until lunch time. Then we got a free lunch and were finally taken back to the airport around 4pm. Our flight didn't end up leaving Auckland until about 7pm...almost 12 hours later than expected! Needless to say we arrived safely back in Sydney and now 2 days later, I'm still recovering from our crazy week in New Zealand!

I hope you enjoyed reading about all my adventures! I'm going to add pictures to my previous post so you can see Mt. Eden and Piha beach, so be sure to check that out as well! Miss you all!!

Love,

Lauren

First Couple Days in NEW ZEALAND!

Hi Everyone!!

Well I arrived in New Zealand on Sunday evening and right now it is Tuesday night...and boy have we already squeezed a lot in!! Sunday Becca, Laura, Emily, Kate and I landed in the airport around 5pm NZ time. At this point, Kate went off to do her own travelling, while the rest of us got a ride to our hotel in Auckland. Our hotel is an amazing 2-bedroom suite with a kitchen, huge living room and a balcony! It also has 2 gyms (yes, of course i've already hit them up) and a roof top pool and hot tub! The weather here has been partly cloudy and about 65-70 so not too bad!

Monday (yesterday) we decided to start off with a little tour of Auckland so we got a ticket to an on and off tour bus that takes you all around the city to the main hot spots and you can jump out at anytime and explore and then hop on the next bus that comes around. We walked all around the main street (Queen Street) and did some window shopping and then we got back on the bus and were driven to an amazing lookout spot where you could see the whole city and all the little islands around it.

Tuesday (today) the plan had been to get picked up at 9am to go skydiving!! However, when we got to the lobby, we got a phone call saying that our pilot called in sick and we had to reschedule our jump to tomorrow. At first we were pretty bummed but we decided to not let the day go to waste, so we took a cab down to the airport and picked up our rental car a day earlier than we had originally planned. I was nominated to be the driver and it was pretty weird at first!! Probably the most confusing thing of all was that the blinker and the windshield wiper functions were switched, so every time i went to make a turn, I would flip on the windshield wipers instead of the blinker!! It was actually pretty amusing. Driving on the left side of the road was pretty tough at first and rotaries were a little confusing but I definitely got the hang of it.

The first pleace we decided to drive to was called Mt. Eden which is Auckland's most famous volcano. When we first saw it, we thought it looked more like a grassy hill, but once we got to the top, we saw the HUGE crater and then it started to look more like a volcano! The view from up there was incredible and since we had all packed lunches, we decided to have a picnic on top of the volcano. It was a great start to the day.

Here you can see the crater at the center of Mt. Eden and the city of Auckland in the background

Laura, Me, Becca and Emily before our volcano picnic!

Next we decided to take a road trip to a place called Piha Beach. It was by far the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. The beach has black sand which was so unusual, and right in the middle of the sand were these huge rock formations that were absolutely breathtaking. I climbed up the rock (there was a path...I'm not that adventurous) and the view was incredible! The ocean was an amazing shade of blue/green and there were all these mountains and hills surrounding the water. We stayed at Piha for the rest of the day and then it was time for the drive home. I probably should have mentioned before that the drive to Piha beach was the most insanely hilly, curvey and narrow road I have ever driven on...nevermind the fact that it was my first time driving on the other side of the road!!! I wish I had taken video because it was unbelievable and I was pretty much holding my breath for the entire 30 minute drive up and down "scenic road." The way back seemed a little easier...maybe because I was more prepared that time...but in any case we made it back alive without any damage done to the car so I was very pleased with my driving perfomance! Here are a couple pictures of Piha:

This was a view from a lookout over a cliff that we stopped at to take pictures

An awesome picture taken by Laura!

After doing a handstand in front of the big rock, I decided to climb up and check out the view from the top!

And this black sand message goes out to everyone reading this blog!!

When we got back to the hotel we hit up the roof deck pool for a bit, then came back and ate dinner and watched a movie. So I would say that for a group of girls who had their plans pretty much thrown out the window, we made the most of our day!! Now I'm about to go to bed and hopefully the next time I write I will have actually jumped out of a plane!!

LOVE YOU ALL,
Lauren

Hunter Valley, Rugby Game, Beautiful Beaches, and a new way to get up to my loft!

Hi Everyone

So to make up for my boring post last week, I have LOTS to tell you about this past weekend! The first thing I did was a trip to the Hunter Valley Wineries which is about 2 hours north of Sydney. We went as a big group - Me, Emily, Becca and Laura and a bunch of our guy friends. We got picked up near Central Station at 8am and got to our first winery at around 10am. The first place we went to was called Draytons and we were all piled into a little room where we had a woman serve us about 10 different wines starting with whites and moving onto reds and finishing with ports and dessert wines. Here are a couple pictures from Draytons:

After Draytons we went to another winery that I don't have pictures of. Then we went to McGuigans Winery and the Blue Tongue Brewery which were right next to each other. McGuigans had my favorite red wine called Noon Harvest which was my one purchase of the day. The Blue Tongue Brewery was obviously beer tasting rather than wine...which was what I probably should have stayed away from because I was already getting drunk at that point...but you only live once right! So at Blue Tongue, we got little paddles with 6 different samples of beer and then when you're finished with the samples, you bring up your empty paddle and get a full glass of whichever beer was your favorite. Here is a picture of me with the paddle:

The beer I chose to get a full glass of was called ginger beer and it's basically like alcoholic ginger ale...so obviously I chose the beer that tasted least like beer!! (sorry dad but I just didn't get the beer-loving gene!) After the beer tasting we went to a cheese tasting where we sampled about 5 different cheeses that they also make there and they were SO yummy!

After the first 4 stops, I was well on my way to being drunk so while the rest of the group went into one more winery, I stayed outside and played in the roses and enjoyed the beautiful views!!

After the wine tasting was over, we all got back on the bus and slept pretty much the whole 2 hour ride home. However, our day was far from over because we had tickets to a rugby game that night! We got back to Sydney around 6:30 and took a cab straight to the rugby stadium. I got my energy back as soon as we walked up to the stadium because I was SO excited to be a sporting event (of course!) The game was 80 minutes long with a break at half time. I had seen rugby on TV before but seeing them play in person was unbelievable. They are gigantic men and they make huge tackles without padding and then continue playing as they are bleeding from the head!! It was pretty intense! We were able to sit in the front row at around the 30 yard line so our seats were amazing and we were really up close to the action. Becca and I also got on the jumbo-tron which may have been one of the most exciting parts of the night!! Here's a picture from the game:

After the rugby game, we somehow found the stamina to go out to a bar called Bungalow 8 on Darling Harbor, but I didn't stay out late because I was pretty exhausted from the day! I also knew that I was going to be waking up for Theresa's birthday bbq that her aunt was having for her at Bronte Beach the next morning. The bbq was amazing and Theresa's family cooked us scrumptious food!! It was really cool because it is on a first come first serve basis and you just grab a table and there's a big grill and it's open to anyone to grill on and you can have a picnic outside on the lawn which overlooks the beach. So we ate a ton of food and played some frisbee on the lawn for a while and then we decided to go for a walk along the beaches to Bondi Beach. Along the way we stopped at a cliff to take some pictures. It was a beautiful day and being on the cliffs looking out to the ocean was unbelievable! Here are some scenic pictures!

After spending the entire day on the beach, we came back to UniLodge and hung out in my and Emily's room for the rest of the night. This was when I discovered a new (and much more challenging) way of getting up to my loft!! The boys were doing it so I obviously had to try too!



Okay well that was officially my longest blog ever!! It was definitely a busy, fun-filled weekend and I enjoyed every minute of it!


That's all for now...this week is the last week of classes before Easter Break when the girls and I are heading to New Zealand!! I'll probably do one more update before we leave.

so much love,

Lauren

Sorry It's Been So Long!

G'day mates!

Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote. I guess I should start by saying that my extremely busy weekend ended up being the exact opposite!! The trip to Hunter Valley didn't happen because the tour was booked, and my frisbee tournament didn't happen because I couldn't find a ride to the field which ended up being almost 45 minutes away! So that was a bit of a buzz kill, but this time we planned ahead and already have our tour planned for Hunter Valley tomorrow! We get picked up at Central Station at 8:00am, spend the whole day going around to different wineries and breweries, and then head back to Sydney in the evening. Right after we get back, I am going to a Sydney Wartah's Rugby game with my sports class. (Saturday's gonna be a reeeally long day!!) I'm so excited to see my first official rugby game though so it should be a really great time.

The weather has been pretty bad this week...raining and cloudy every day! It's pretty sad because I was thinking that this might be one of our last really nice beach weeks before the weather starts to cool off, but we didn't get to the beach at all :( I'm already starting to lose my tan which is not cool! So hopefully we'll still have some more beach days before the "winter" officially starts.

Instead of going to Hunter Valley last saturday, Laura, Becca, Emily and I went to Oxford Street and to the Paddington Markets. It was a lot of fun and I didn't buy anything which was sad for me but happy for my wallet!! Then we ate dinner at Broadway Cafe across the street, hung out at UniLodge for a little bit, and then went back to Argyle (the bar on the rocks) that we've been frequenting lately. It's a fun place and we knew a bunch of people there so it was definitely a good time. Here are a couple pictures:

Sunday I spent the day finishing up my papers that were due on Monday. After I turned those papers in I felt super relieved and now don't have any major assignments due until after I get back from New Zealand (which is where we're going for easter break if I haven't mentioned that yet!)

Tuesday was Theresa's birthday (another Northeastern girl from our trip) and so we all went out to a really nice dinner to celebrate. Brian and I were late because we had salsa dancing class...which by the way is SO much fun and I can't wait to try out my new moves at some latin bars!! I ate monkfish at the restaurant which I've never heard of but it was scrumptious!

Wednesday I started to feel a little sick again (big surprise...im always sick!) so I went to classes and then took it easy for the rest of the day. I was able to meet up with Grandma and Grandpa Barry's colleague's son's friend Ric (that was a mouthful!) He goes to University of Sydney also and we met up for a coffee. He was super nice and said he would show me some new parts of Sydney so I'm excited to keep in touch with him! Thursday I was still sick so I just went to class and then relaxed and did some reading but nothing too exciting. Luckily the weather wasn't nice so I didn't feel as bad about not being outside!

And that brings us to today! This morning I woke up feeling a little bit better thankfully! So I went to my one class from 11-1 and then went straight to the gym. Then I came back and all the girls were tired so they took naps while I just hung out, read a book and enjoyed some down time. Then the girls and I made dinner and now we're about to watch a movie. We're not going out because we have such a big day tomorrow!! I'll write after this weekend and let everyone know how everything was. In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying the nicer weather that you're starting to get! And a special thanks to Grandpa Barry and Heather for answering my request for emails about your lives!!!

Love Love Love Love Love Love,

Lauren