untitled...(tricky, hey?)

I get home Saturday evening around 8:30 for a quiet night at the dorms…or so I thought. I watch a movie with my friend, MJ, and then decide to head to bed ‘cause I’m so pooped from walking around Sydney all day. I’m in my bathroom, washing my hands…when all of the sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of the hugest, hairiest, scariest spider I have ever seen just hanging out on my bathroom wall!!! None of my roomies are around and I am FLIPPIN’ out! After a minute I kinda regain my composure, go get my camera and snap a pic, and then call MJ. The call went a ‘lil like this:
MJ: “Hola?”
Me: “I need you. There’s a spider in my bathroom.”
MJ: “I’ll be right up.” (She’s thinking: “girly girl”)
MJ confidently walks in with a flip flop in one hand and says “Where’s the spider?” I lead her down the hallway of spidertown, timidly peek in the room, and point at the spider. MJ’s confidence melts as she begins screaming and trying to run away. After our girly panic attack MJ takes charge and finds some boys in the hallway. They come, freak out as well (very unashamedly I must mention), and tell us to call the office.

Finally our knight in shining armour comes armed with a t-shirt. He throws it on top of the spider and then walks out. I say thank you…but I don’t think he speaks/understands English. Ah, well. The excitement is over. But I still have pictures to freak myself out again any time I want!

Check ‘em out under: Australia - Creatures

oh, there's nemo!

Shopping, shopping, shopping – it was the name of the game Saturday morning at the Sydney Paddy’s market. I got a lot of cool stuff…maybe some of it is even for you!

After shopping Amy, Emma, Kristin, and I went for a walk on Darling Harbor. We stopped into a tourist shop and were able to catch a little didgeridoo show. It was really cool! The didgeridoo player told us all about its history and how to play it. He plays it along to a contemporary beat – it was very good! Afterwards I tried playing one…I got a ‘lil noise out of it!!!

Then we went to go Find Nemo in Sydney, Australia! We ended up finding him at the Sydney Aquarium. It was a really cool. My favourite animal was probably the platypus. I don’t know if it was a youngin’ or what, but it was about the size of a 3 month old cat (what, does that make any sense…I couldn’t say kitten ‘cause there’s quite a variety of sizes so on and so forth) anyways, the point is that it was smaller and cuter than I expected. Another favourite were the cool seahorses! They even had potbelly ones! And they also had this creepy, gigantic crab…like the size of 15 three-month-old cats all stacked together. Seriously – it was huge! They also had a whole tank devoted to Nemo and his friends. It was pretty spectacular. ;)

Just another beautiful day in Sydney! See pictures at the end of the “Australia – Sydney” album!

weekending it up in narooma

My roommate, Jessie, took me home this weekend to meet the family. (She actually went for her mom’s birthday, which was on Saturday!) Jessie lives 3 ½ hours south along the coast in a town called Narooma (pop. About 8,000). Jessie’s parents are named Sue and Graham. Sue is a kindergarten teacher, and Graham is a high school counsellor. Her sister, Elisa, is in year 11 and is really sweet! She’s into music and is a very good artist.

Jessie has an awesome house, and her room has the most beautiful view of the ocean! On Saturday we went into the cute little town that had lots of cool, quirky shops. We looked at clothes, art, gifts, and my favourite – the old fashioned candy shop! Yum-o! After that we all took a nice walk along the beach – it’s beautiful! Then Jessie and I headed to the Australian movie Oyster Farmer, which her parents had seen last week and had highly recommended it to us! The movie was excellent – kinda arty and apparently “very Australian”.

Once we got back we had the best “tea” ever! We had fresh prawns, then garlic prawns with rice, and then fish! Plus, yummy chocolate birthday cake! It was so good!

We had a sunny Sunday and I was anxious to go surfing! (Saturday had been kinda dreary.) Sue has been surfing for about 18 months now, but she’s really into it and very good. Sue let me use her board and she was basically my surf coach – pushing me onto waves and giving me tips. It was great and I really improved! I stood up quite a bit! It was SO fun! Jessie and Elisa caught a few waves while I was learning. They make it look so easy! We went out again later that day. Apparently the surf hasn’t been that good, but it was okay for me to learn on and stuff. It was such a great time! It really wears ya out though! That evening we watched Hitch and then headed to bed early because we woke up at 6:30 Monday morning to head for Wollongong.

I can’t wait to go surfing again! Jessie doesn’t like surfing here as much as she does back home, but hopefully we can go out here sometime soon!!!

Pictures under: Australia – Narooma

robin hood...my hero!

Our mission: to find cute, clever, and creative costumes for our movie characters themed campus party of Friday. The dilemma: not wanting to pay very much for a costume we will never wear again. The plan: Amy and I rode our bikes to the local “salvo” aka Salvation Army or thrift store to look for some cheap costumes. We didn’t really have any characters in mind and were going to see what we could find. First off, the salvo wasn’t that cheap. Example: used shirts were like A$10! So we were a little dismayed at first, but we kept hunting. Soon we found a rack of reject shirts from “Valleygirl” and we find our costume! The tank tops were a hideous metallic green…but on the other hand they were only $1! I had been thinking about the movie Robin Hood earlier and with the sight of the green shirts my friend and I determined we would be the “men in tights” from Robin Hood, Men in Tights!

Four of us girls all sported the ugly shirts with shorts and of course – tights! We also made super cool bows and arrows from some sticks we found. And we made newspaper piratey hats with purple feathers that totally could have passed for the real caps! ;)

Three of my roomies went as the Harry Potter gang – Harry, Hermonie, and Ron. My other roommate, Sarah, and her boyfriend went as Danny and Sandy from Grease. Other cute costumes were Napoleon Dynamite (he pulled off his personality too!), Robin from Batman, Pippy Longstocking, and the Peter Pan gang with a lot of tinker bells (the “men in tights” and the Peter Pan gang totally had a dance off! It wasn’t official, but I think we won!). It was a great nite!

See the pictures for yourself under Australia – Nightlife.