pictures are worth more than i can say...

So, I just spent a couple of hours loading pictures to my computer and then facebook (dude, you have to check them out!) and I'm sick of sitting here on my computer so this will be shortish. Sorry about that.

Now, where to begin?! Tasmania was fabulous! It was a bit chilly (um, especially at night) but beyond gorgeous. I met Manon in Hobart Wednesday night after spending the day traveling and exploring Melbourne. Luckily she got to town before I did and booked us a place to stay for the night! We both hadn't eaten so we grabbed a pizza and had leftovers for breakfast the next morning because Manon had never had cold pizza for breakfast... crazy, I know. She liked it. :) The next morning we rented a car that we named Chunky. She's adorable, but a manual and to be driven on the LEFT side of the road... obviously it was interesting. I was supposed to do most of the driving for insurance purposes because Manon isn't 21 yet, but I'm so glad we split the driving in half anyway.

We headed up the east coast of Tassie and stopped for the night in St. Helen's after seeing the Bay of Fires (those really red rocks by the white sand beaches). Our hostel was tiny, but luckily we weren't the only ones there. A few Germans joined us and we all made dinner and watched Juno together. It's amazing to me how American movies are everywhere! We left the next day and headed to Freycinet National Park and walked around (for five hours). We saw the most beautiful views and kangaroos! The walk to Wineglass Bay lookout, then to Wineglass Bay, across the isthmus, down Hazards Beach, and back up to the car park took a very long time, but we enjoyed each other's company and the beautiful nature. :) Once we finished there we stayed the night at a very clean YHA that had a nice cozy wood-burning fireplace thing. It was very nice because there aren't any central heating systems in Tasmania that we saw. I really don't get how people can live with their homes being so cold all the time! I suppose they just get used to it... I was for sure not built for cold climates.

The next day we drove around, picked some strawberries at a fruit farm, and saw more breathtaking views. We made it all the way down to the Tasman Peninsula and saw all of the major things to see there including Port Arthur. It was random because we also ran into the Germans there! We never thought we'd see them again, but the world is proving to be an increasingly small place. We stayed that night at a tiny hostel that only had 4 beds and the water supply was only rainwater that had collected. It was a trip. The couple that owned the place told us about this quiz night that they were having, so we went. We were like 30 minutes late (oops) but we joined teams and had fun. Manon's team actually won! The prize- chocolate! After it was over we mingled and the quiz master invited us to stay at his house with him and his wife when we went to Hobart. It was a very nice offer so we said of course we'll stay! The next day we toured Port Arthur and then drove more (continuing south down the island) to our next destination. Once we found the hostel, the sign said "no vacancies" and we momentarily freaked out. Then we remembered Lum's offer (the quiz master) and since we weren't that far from Hobart, we headed that way! ***** Note: this entire time neither one of us had mobile service because Tasmania only has Telstra, NOT Vodafone. We did, however, get service while we were in Hobart so we drove that direction with only the hope that once we got service and called, we could stay at their house. Our risk paid off and they graciously hosted us for two nights! They cooked us dinner and we had pleasant conversation all evening. Maureen even gave us hot water bottles for our bed which was AMAZING! The next day (after they made us breakfast! so nice!) we went to Bruny Island and drove around and took in some more views. This island has mostly gravely dirt roads so our little Chunky didn't fare so well and it was a bit more stressful than we had expected. The ferry ride was really fun though. We got back to their house and went with Maureen to her choir practice which was so fun. Then they cooked us dinner again (steaks! wow!!) and we went to quiz night with them at a bar. Our team won!! It was really fun, but I wish I knew more of the answers. The prize this time was money! Lum gave us our share ($10 each) and it paid for lunch the next day. We returned our Chunky the next morning and walked around the city with our hosts all day. We had fish and chips down by the water and it was quite good. They drove us to the airport that evening and were SO nice. I can't get over how great it was to be at their house. It was as cozy as being at a friend's parent's house or something even though they were strangers.

Our flight was 2 hours late out of Hobart (blah) but we finally made it to Melbourne where we stayed up all night and met some friends at the casino before catching our early flight back to Sydney. Once we got home we slept for a while and then I had work! I was kinda tired, but it was great to be back. Now my life is back into a semi-schedule. The only new thing is that I worked behind the bar Friday and Saturday night! It was great! but now I don't have any bar shifts this week so that's interesting... whatev. I still like my job. We said goodbye to a few people who are traveling on and they will be missed. :( It makes me really sad actually because I really liked them. I guess I'll have to get used to saying "see you later" to all my new friends. It's not goodbye. :)

i. love. my. job.

Get this, Friday I worked a double, Saturday I worked a double, Sunday I worked a double, and today I worked the lunch shift. This evening was my first chance to sit around and be lazy and can I tell you I enjoyed it! My legs are tired and I swear my wrist could hold up an elephant by now after carrying all those trays! But seriously, I love my job! I have so much fun at work (most of the time) that I honestly don't mind the double shifts. The people are great, like I mentioned before, and I'm getting to the point where I'm pretty good at what I do. I haven't spilled a drink in over a week now! haha, hilarious that that is an achievement. Today I was even a cocktail waitress in the bar area and possibly might start training behind the bar soon? We'll see about that, but if I do that'd be so fun. My work mate/ flat mate/ IEP mate/ good mate Allie starts behind the bar this week and I am so excited for her. But she worked at a bar back home and actually knows what she is doing, while I know absolutely nothing about making drinks. It would be totally awesome to work WITH her behind the bar, but right now that is only a dream. :) Who knows, it may happen... and we'd get SOOO many tips! haha

So, tomorrow I have to get organized (you've got to get organized, you've got to get organized... if you know what that is from you're awesome) for my trip! Wednesday morning I am flying to Melbourne then on to Hobart, Tasmania! Manon left this morning with her boss and I am meeting her there for a week of fun roomie-bonding traveling! I am so excited, but I've been gone so much lately that I have no idea what the plans are. I'm totally winging this trip and it's super exciting for me. I will miss work, especially since so many of the cool people are leaving soon :(, but no worries! I just hope it doesn't rain all week and that I can fit a week's worth of needed stuff into my backpack... this will be interesting.

Love and miss you all! Hope things are great back in the states. :)

Daily Life

Hi there! I haven't done any more super exciting things (like throw up after drinking wine, ha!), but I'd like to tell you about my semi-scheduled life here in Sydney since things are starting to become routine. Since I work at a restaurant I usually work the dinner shift (so far) so my evenings go fairly late usually which means I sleep later and later into the day. I haven't gone past noon so far and I'm going to try to maintain that. Once I get up, I do the usual breakfast, shower, get ready for the day thing like everyone else on the planet, but then I have some free time. Some days I choose to surf... the internet. Thanks to Abbey showing me a blog a while back (gofugyourself.com) that keeps me fairly entertained for a bit. Other days I walk around the city, go to a park and read a book, or meet friends for lunch, etc. Normal random day things. Then I usually have work in the evenings. I leave my uniform in the change room at work so I just go wearing whatever and get ready there. At work I run drinks to tables mostly, but I also wash glasses, polish wine glasses, fold napkins, make settings, clear and re-set tables, and whatever random things the managers come up with for us to do. It sounds terribly boring and it does get monotonous, but the people are fantastic. I genuinely like almost every single person I work with which is a big deal since it is a huge restaurant. Jordon's has room for 600 guests to eat dinner so there are quite a few staff members. The other "support" girls (my job) are awesome, the bartenders are hilarious, the "captains" (waiters/waitresses) are mostly amazing, the "foodys" (guys that run food and work in the kitchen) are generally good guys, and the chefs are nice but they don't wear name tags like everyone else has to so it's harder to get to know them. I have closed almost every shift I've worked so far and almost every night someone is going "upstairs" (to COHI BAR) after work for a "cheeky beer." I've gone fairly regularly since I like everyone so much. I only dislike 1. the fact the the drinks at COHI are pretty expensive and I worked so hard for my money and 2. almost every single person I work with smokes so it sometimes bothers me and I think I would smell bad when I got home if I didn't have a nice 10-15 minute walk home to air-out. After the walk home I try not to wake Manon as I crawl into my top bunk to crash and do it all over again. :) Life is good. I still don't really know my purpose here, but I'm enjoying getting to know everyone!!

Miss you all! Send me mail! :) Cheers!

Taronga Zoo

Friday Russo and I went to Taronga Zoo! You have to ride a ferry to get there (love!) and it's a huge zoo set on a massive hill. We rode a gondola to the top and started checking out the animals. The most interesting part was this emu that was walking around the path on this walkabout. It walked RIGHT in front of me. I could have touched it, but look at those eyes! I was scared of it. We also saw kangaroos, wallabies, a wombat, and a platypus. The bird show was really awesome too. These birds just flew around and looked awesome. It's hard to explain, but it was fun. There will, of course, be pictures on facebook soonish. The giraffes there were sharing the branch! I loved it so much. And in that picture I was "filing" an elephant's toenails... it was a kid's toy thing, but I liked my outfit that day and I wanted to share that with all of you. I bought those shoes in Bondi (the i heart billy! shoes!) and I got those shirts at the mall near the grocery store. There are a lot of stores here... I need to cut myself off soon...

Anyway, the zoo was super fun. I kept thinking of how you would hate it Danielle! The pictures will tell the stories better than I can, so look forward to seeing those soon.

Hunter Valley

Last Thursday we took a trip to the Hunter Valley (just north of Sydney) to go on a wine tasting tour! Amazingly, Allie, Victoria and I all had the same day off! Clark and Russo came as well and it was a great group. We visited 5 wineries and a cheese shop and a chocolate shop. It was INCREDIBLE! I learned so much about what wines I liked and what makes what taste good, etc. We left at 7:15 in the morning and started drinking wine around 10:30. We drank a bit here and a bit there and never really got drunk, but were all pleasantly chatty all day. :) Russo borrowed my camera for most of the day since he forgot his, so check out the pictures on facebook once I post them - they are amazing.

Since we drank so much, I napped the whole ride home. Once we got back to the flat, I watched Glee!! then I promptly threw up (twice). It must have been a mixture of all the wines (white, red, blush - yuck, and dessert wines) and the food we tasted or something. I felt awful. I even missed an International night with my housemates! Somehow the others managed to go out that night, but not me. Russo was really nice and pretty much took care of me and set me up with a movie on my laptop in bed once I was all done puking. At that point, I was really homesick. :( I just hate throwing up!

Overall, it was a great day... it just had an interesting ending!

cool people

So, just so you know, my third shift at work went much smoother. I didn't break or spill anything and Allie and I went for a drink with everyone after we closed. I didn't work today and I don't work again till Tuesday so I'm happy about having a break. Although Allie did just freak me out a bit ago and asked me, "aren't you supposed to be at work?!" which literally made my heart skip a beat. But I'm 99% sure I don't work again till Tuesday... I think. Blah!

So, I wanted to tell you a little bit more about my housemates. Let's start with Manon, my actual bunk-bed mate. She's French so she's instantly cooler than any American because she speaks French, English, Spanish, Italian, and German which just blows my mind. Her English is amazing, but most of the time she chooses words that I say to repeat in my exact tone. Her first choice was "groceries." Try saying that word over and over and NOT making it sound weird. It's all cool though because I have started to do the same with her, but the words I enjoy hearing her say the most are usually curse words. I have decided that cussing is so much more hilarious and inoffensive with a French accent. She also jokes around in English which I have heard is the hardest thing to do in a foreign language. Today at the beach, for instance, was pretty much a non-stop giggle-fest on my side. She is so much fun to be around! We co-bought a shirt/dress today at the Bondi market and we are going to send it back and forth to each other traveling pants style. I can not wait for that to start. Anyway, Manon is 20 and is here on an internship dealing with human rights. After this she goes to Argentina to study (in Spanish!) for a semester before returning to France. We get along SO amazingly well. I can't wait to make her come visit Texas!

Next we have Mike and Philippe. They live in the room next to ours and they are from Belgium. Both studying and here on internships as well. They also speak a multitude of languages and have such a good grasp of English that they are hilarious. Mike was having trouble saying the "ow" sound so he repeats the word "Howard" all the time but his mouth opens incredibly big when he says the "ow." He chose the word Howard because of the show The Big Bang Theory; he loves it. Now we have taken the word "Howard" and changed it into a way of saying something is cool. Today I got a text from him that said, "Hey roomies, the temperature is Howard in bondi, just perfect. We're waiting on you! :-)." I almost died laughing, but he was right it was perfect out there. His friend, Philippe, just got here last week and hasn't stared working yet. When Clark and Allie first saw him they couldn't believe he was real because he's quite pretty. They both have such a big crush on him, but not anything compared to this Chloe girl. She's French as well, but not a friend of Manon's, she's just random. I first met her Thursday night and she was ATTACKING Philippe. I mean hard core trying to make out with him at this bar. He was pushing her away and almost knocked over the table. I could not believe it was all really happening. When I first got there I said hi to him and we were talking and she came and stood right by my face inbetween me and Philippe and wouldn't let me talk to him. I had to grab his arm and drag him away from her when we wanted to leave. It was so nuts! Now it's a joke/threat for Philippe every time we go anywhere. She actually came to the beach today and set her towel right in front of Philippe's even though there wasn't really room. I mean, he is really cute and he's a totally nice and funny guy, but chill out girl! I havn't gotten to know him as well as some of the others, but I like him a lot so far.

Katie moved in the same day I did and she is from Germany. She's really funny as well (I really like the way they explain things in English... we've decided that Americans speak lazy English and the foreign speakers all use many more words to explain things, most of which are perfectly appropriate). She is a world-champion walker and has been everywhere! When you see her and ask what she's been up to you're amazed at what all she accomplished in one day. If I ever want to go anywhere, I can ask her and she's already been there, twice! She also has a bunch of random job-ish things like handing out flyers for this yoga place in exchange for free yoga classes (I was J). BUT, the most hilarious thing about Katie is that she recently got a "real" job where she will be decorating Christmas trees all around the city! She had like 3 interviews for this position and they are really serious about their decorating styles. She can't wait to start and I just can't wait to see her trees!

Katie shares her room with two girls from Columbia who are here studying English. They don't really hang out around the apartment much. They seem really busy, but the times I do see them they are nice! Hopefully they will cook some food for us soon and be a part of the group more...

The back room has Bastian and Michael, both German. Michael is here on an internship like everyone else pretty much. He's really nice and went to church with me and Allie last week. He works kinda late every evening which is a bummer because he's super cool. He met a bunch of people at this other church that he goes to and he hangs with them a lot, too. Tomorrow is his night to cook though, so I'm looking forward to hanging out with him more! Bastian is here on working holiday like me. He's 19 and just finished his service year in Germany where he worked with Alzheimer's patients. He is living and working in Australia for a year before he starts Uni because he doesn't know what to study. He'd like to study fashion merchandising, but apparently that's expensive to study. Hearing about their college experiences makes me so annoyed that we have to pay so much in the states to go to school. It's kinda ridiculous.

So that's pretty much my house. There are apartments above and below mine and there are usually people in and out from both of those. For the most part everyone is cool... and I'll just leave it at that. I'm going to take a page out of my friend's book and not talk bad about people... or complain in my blog. :) Hope things are going well back home for everyone! I'd love to hear about it, either way!

second day on the job...

So, if my first day of work was good and easy... my second day was an almost total disaster. It was Friday night so I was expecting it to be super busy and hectic, but it really wasn't. The night before was crazy busy for a while because we were under-staffed because two people didn't show up or something. Anyway, that was the good news. Bad news, I still don't know what the heck I am doing most of the time and there are like thousands of table numbers to remember. I ended up spilling a Stella on a lady (she was super nice about it though and I said at least I didn't spill your red wine on you!), then I broke 3 glasses over the evening and the last one cut my right hand and my left arm. I also ALMOST fell up the stairs at one point, but I caught myself (yes, it's possible to fall UP the stairs). The manager mercifully let me and Allie go home at 11 after only 5 hours of work since it wasn't so busy. We ended up meeting our friends at the Cargo Bar across the harbour. We danced for a little while then (I was exhausted) we went home.

Hopefully after a day at Manly Beach my shift tonight will go smoothly... fingers crossed...