The Last Two Months

Well, it's been two months since I last posted to this. Ooops!! I've been really busy with school unfortunately, but I have done a few fun things since my last post on March 1st. Oh, this is my house that I've been living at with Joe from Arizona since mid March. It's a four bedroom place with a decent backyard and everything included (utilities, laundry, internet). It has rooms for four people usually, but there's only two of us here. There was an Aussie girl named Roz here for the first two weeks we were here, but it was only temporary for work, and I think we'll have the house to ourselves, that is until the day finally comes in 13 days when Jess gets here!!

Here's a map showing how close we are to the ocean...about two blocks...




The weekend of March 20th was my friend Eric's 21st birthday, so we (me, Joe, Eric, Brian, Mikkel, & Andy) went to Sydney for the weekend. It was awesome. The six of us just crammed into a 4 star hotel with a lobby like so...

The first night in Sydney we hit up Star City casino to lose, I mean win, some money. It was an incredible place with valet parking and the whole get up. We all played different games. Joe was the only one who came out ahead. The second day, we walked around to see what there was to see in Sydney and saw the famous Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

Mikkel in front of the Opera House

Eric, Brian, Andy, and Joe (from left to right) in front of the harbour bridge.

That night, we started off the night having a few brews from the top of the Sydney skytower, the tallest structure in Sydney.

Joe and I in front of the Skytower Bar

Mmmm doesn't that look tasty

The towa

The rest of the night was spent celebrating his 21st, with 21 drinks of various forms for him, and we closed down the casino at 4 AM. Night=success. The next day we hung out on Bondi beach, one of Australia's most famous beaches.

Bondi

April 2nd-the 9th was our Easter Break here. I made the mistake many times over of calling it Spring break all though it is Autumn here despite the 70 degree weather during the days here. For the break, we (me, Andy, Craig, Mikkel, Brian, Joe, and Eric) spent time in Surfer's Paradise (yes, that is the name of a city), Byron Bay, and Brisbane, which are all up the east coast from Newcastle. We flew into Brisbane on the morning of the 3rd and immediately caught a train down to Surfer's Paradise, which looked like this...

Sign at the beach's main entrance

City skyline from the beach

YHA Main Beach Hostel

We didn't do a whole lot there besides going out at night and hanging out by the beach during the day. They had some pretty good nightlife and also a great surfing beach. We didn't surf at all but we did go body surfing (swimming and letting the waves catch your body and take you towards shore), which was short-lived because we got caught in a rip current along with about 20 other people and decided not to go back in after that.

After two days in Surfer's Paradise, we took a coach that the 7 of us were the only passengers on to Byron Bay, which looks like this from a scenic lookout.


While there we did some random things. One was a day trip to a town called Nimbin, which has a history of being known as a hippie village that smokes a lot of the green stuff (no mom not tobacco). No, I didn't take part in the local festivities, but it was definitely a very interesting place.

The tour bus called "The Happy Coach" and bus driver. Notice "Be Happy" on the front of the bus and the driver's dreads.

The VERY colorful street and store facades on Cullen St.

A waterfall we stopped to see on the way to Nimbin

Also while in Byron Bay, Mikkel and I went skydiving. The view of the coastline from the plane was incredible, and the rush I felt when I watched Mikkel jump out and then I jumped out was like nothing else. I am definitely going again. I bought a video of it that you can see here. You need to click pause and then play in order to see the video.

After Byron Bay, we went to Brisbane and stayed there for two nights until we flew back on the morning of April 9th.

View of Brisbane from our Hostel's roof.

This past weekend, I went rock climbing/hiking/camping in the Blue Mountains with Craig, Joe, and Eric, but I'll have to save that for the next post since it's super late here and I have to get up to work on school stuff tomorrow.