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