Last days in Sydney

Day 3 in Sydney came and went. Waking up at 8:30 was a treat after the early morning the day before. Russ, our trip leader in Sydney, gave us a tour of Sydney with impressive history and great advice for the semester. Notably, he told us to realize we are in another country and things are done differently here. He said not to think of these as weird/gross/wrong, just different. He also told us to take advantage of any and every invitations from Australians in order to get unique experiences. We walked through Hyde Park, the Central Business District, and a park where we got to see the famous Sydney Opera House. What a view! We walked along the water towards the Opera House that got larger and larger as we got closer. It was so much bigger than it looks like on TV or in pictures and was loaded with people in and around it.

Then, we got on a bus to take us to a zoo! Oh baby. Again, a few hours later, we arrived at a zoo and was greeted by a zookeeper holding a six month old wallaby. It was so cute and soft and many of us got the chance to hold it. We walked in and saw more wallabies, kangaroos, koalas, wombats, *penguins*, and many others. We got to pet them all except for the wombats (which were ugly anyways) and the penguins. The animals were real friendly except for the kangaroo, but that was probably because it knew I ate his cousin two days prior.

We got back and the four of us living together on the beach (Sahill, Craig, Paul, and I) went out for some Asian food. T’was okay. Sahill’s friend, Matt, from Maryland who is taking a winter course in Sydney met up with us and we wasted some time before our dinner cruise. We walked again to the Inner Harbor where we got onto a real big yacht/dinner boat. Being exclusive again, us Maryland kids ate together. The boat showed us wonderful day and night views of the city and allowed for us to snap a bunch of photos.

Post boat trip we went to Kings Cross(ing?) for its nightlife. We got rejected from several bars because we were not dressed appropriately for “Indie Night,” but ended up having fun at several more accepting bars.

The next day we had a meeting in the morning where Russ gave us a great PowerPoint presentation about our next 4 months in Australia and how to make the most of it. After that, a lot of people went to Bondi Beach, but the four of us living together went for a monstrous walk around the city of Sydney for a few hours. We sat at an open bar for a few hours and bonded. How cute.

When night came we hung out and went out to Sydney’s Festival First Night. Sydney Festival comes around once a year and lasts for a few nights. The city shuts down several blocks and splits up the different areas into different venues. Over 300,000 people attended and the place was out of control. We went with just under 15 people and after about five minutes we were down to six. We raged hard the whole time we were at the DJ/outdoor rave that was one of the craziest places I’ve ever been. After, we went to one of the bars from the first night. It was packed with guys and wrecks so we called it a night.