Australia. Sadly, I was only there for a week, and yet, it was such a great trip!
My friend Danielle was studying there for my last semester of college. In three years, this was the longest that we'd gone without seeing eachother, so since I was graduating, I wanted to have a great Spring Break trip. My other college friends either had trips planned or didn't want to go anywhere; it was a rather last minute decision to head off to Australia - literally, I think I booked my flight about two weeks before I left. One day, I was just curious to see how much it would cost to go out there; airfare was incredibly cheap (at least for the average MSP-SYD ticket). I tried to get a hold of Danielle to see if it'd even be possible to go out and visit her - after a few days of no communication, we got in touch, and the spring break week worked out for her schedule! I booked my flight and was to leave in a few weeks.
This was my first trip to a foreign country alone. Surprisingly, my anxiety/nervous-ness was exteremly low for trying to figure out the train schedule to get to Danielle. After 24 hours of travelling, I finally landed in Sydney. Getting through customs was pretty easy - I told Danielle I'd bring her the biggest bottle of Ranch dressing I could find, among other things. I had to smooth talk the customs guy to get the monstrous bottle through - Danielle's lucky he didn't spike it to the ground. ;) I had to take a train down to Wollongong. After getting onto the wrong train, I managed to figure out where I was and get down to the Wollongong stop; almost missing it, because there were so many people on the train, it was hard to maneuver through them.
Nothing was better after travelling around for 24+ hours than to get off the train and see a familiar face :) Danielle was waiting at the station, which was perfect, because as soon as I got off the train, I realized I didn't know where to go next.
It was such a great week hanging out with Danielle. I barely got any jet lag, which was nice, because I didn't miss out on too much by sleeping through it.
Danielle had met a ton of great people out there - it was so nice to finally put faces to the names (regardless of already seeing pictures from Facebook posts....). But to meet everybody was great. Of all the people, I will never forget Danielle's roommate, Stan. I don't think anybody who meets Stan can ever forget him. He talked about the dirtiest things in broken English. Anything and everything was turned sexual, with most of his statements told in yelling form. Of all the stories Danielle told me before, nothing could've prepared me for actually seeing him in person. Oh, Stan.
But it's been great, since Danielle's kept in touch with so many of them (even still lives with her roommate from Australia, Ally) that it's been fun to see them even to this day, almost five years later.
One of the highlights during the week was going up to Sydney for a few days to celebrate Danielle's 21st birthday. Not only that, but her birthday falls on St. Patrick's Day; so Sydney turned into a green blur of crazy. We went out to a nice restaurant, right next to the harbour bridge; it was here that I had alligator and kangaroo for the first time. Loved the kangaroo; alligator was ok (and probably something I'd never get again). But that kangaroo - definitely good. Then we went out onto George Street for some bar hopping.
Another great time was in the hostel that night. We took over a huge room and had about 20 people with about 15 beds. Actually we even carried a few people over into the second room, where there were a few other older adults staying there; they probably hated us that night.
One of my other favorite things from Sydney was this street "performer" who played the recorder. He held about three recorders in his hand; yet he only played the same note on one over and over and over again. Same tone, repeated non-stop. I wasn't sure where this talent was, but it kind of gave me a little hope to be a street performer......
......speaking of which, I forgot to add one thing to my bucket list - at one point, somewhere, I want to be a street performer. I'm not sure what I'd play, or where I'd play it. I wonder - and maybe someone can help me out on this - is there some kind of street performer etiquette? Mainly, I wouldn't want to be taking up someone's "spot" and make somebody rather upset. Is it just free-for-all for finding your spot? But anyways, sometime I would like to do that for a day to see how much money they actually make. Well, who knows what kind of talent I have, so there's a good chance I will not make any.....
But I digress...
The week flew by very quickly; most of it spent in Wollongong on the campus. We only went to Sydney for the few days for Danielle's birthday.
It was a great week, yet, I barely saw anything of Australia. I definitely want to go back, but to a different area. I already have on the bucket list to go to the great barrier reef. I'd also like to just go to the west side of the country. I know at some point, I'm going to get back there, but at least the first time was such a great time! :)
I'll post some pictures later :)
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