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 :)