iSurf

It's not just a rumor that people in Australia like to surf. Trust me, I've seen it. And now I can say I've done it. How could I have explained myself to people in the states if I came back having not tried surfing? There was no way I was trying my luck at Bondi though. Way too crowded. Way too many people to potentially decapitate. I booked us on the Learn To Surf one day trip. The name seemed pretty appropriate for me. Some people have gone on week long surf trips and have come back speechless about the experience. But since Anthony and Christina weren't staying forever, the one day trip was easily the best option.

We waited outside the Sydney YHA hostel to be picked up by a couple surf hippies in vans. I noticed the hippie driving our van was wearing a knitted beanie. Really an awesome look for him, but not very practical in 90 degree heat. We climbed into the van with our fellow surf beginners and headed out. There was a middle-aged Indian couple in the front (who our hippie was racistly questioning about whether or not they played sitar), an Irish duo, and I can't really remember anyone else. Emily fell asleep within 12 seconds of the trip. That was one less person to talk to. I instead had to listen in as our hippie told the Indian couple that they were the first Indians in the world to ever try surfing. The conversation was getting awkward for sure. I stayed out of it. My attention shifted to the surf board that was stuffed into the van so that it poked harshly at my leg with every small bump in the road.

Sitar (see how educational this blog can be)

I was really curious what the included lunch we were promised would be. The hippies didn't seem like the cooking type. I wasn't too shocked when we pulled into a grocery store car park and some bread, deli meat, and condiments were purchased for us. I bought a box of Tim Tams, a little Aussie biscuit (cookie) treat. It was a decent sized box and nobody in the van seemed to want to help me eat them. They were doomed to melt. But they made the short ride go by even faster. As we pulled into Boat Harbour, I was shocked to hear that we were technically still in Sydney. How big is this damn city anyways? We got out of our van and hopped into the 4 wheel drive vehicle being driven by the other hippie. He took us right down to the water where I was to have my very first surf lesson. The beach was absolutely empty and the waves looked beginner friendly. Saweeeet.

Tim Tams helped me reach this destination...

To wear a wetsuit, or not to wear a wetsuit? That turned out to be the question. As usual, the girls showed off their genetically superior common sense by accepting the offer of protective wear. However, G and myself are far too manly for such silly things. Wetsuit, that's a laugher. What was even funnier was seeing us later with baby powder smeared all over our burning red chests after hours of scraping our bodies against rough-surfaced surfboards. We're not there yet though.

I was still proud of my bare chest at this point. I wanted to get right out into the water, but also acknowledged the usefulness of a quick surfing tutorial that they put on for us. We put all the boards in a circle on the sand and began our lesson. They taught us a really great 4-step process for catching a wave and standing up. Really good. When I finally did get in the water after about 30 minutes of repeating the same stand up action over and over, I immediately ditched their technique for my less effective "oh crap the waves here, try to stand" style.

Somehow it wasn't working. I could catch the wave good enough, but my weight was heavy in the front and what I thought was going to be a day of surfing started out like a day of nosediving. A few more tries saw me almost getting up, but most of my time was spent in the water. I then looked over to see the Indian man pathetically attempt to push himself up into a standing position on his board. He had fallen into the water well before that could happen. There's no doubt that sight was hysterical, but it made me feel only slightly better.

But you don't have to be smart to surf. I came to this conclusion after seeing that our instructors were pretty good at it. In a brief conversation with one of them, I mentioned I was from the Boston area. His reaction would have made me think Boston was his favourite place on the planet. "Boston, that's awesome!" he said. "That's inland, right?" It wasn't worth going there with him. Later this same hippie came over to each of us, made sure we caught the wave just right, and gave us a push when it came. We all seemed to have success with this. I caught my wave pretty much all the way in (or that's how I remember it). G seemed to be a natural at surfing while I was focusing more on cool ways to fall. By the end of the day, the surf instructors came through with their promise that we'd all stand. All four of us had some success. It blows my mind when I think about it. To look over to my right out of nowhere and see Christina zooming by on a surf board is a real treat. While Christina and Emily weren't busy making fun of Anthony's paddling technique, they were getting their surf on for real. And I don't like to brag, but some of my wipeouts were nothing short of epic. What makes these experiences so awesome is that you're with the people you see a lot in everyday life, but you're doing these unbelievable things that you probably would have assumed to be out of your reach. I think all four of us agree that this was a great experience regardless of any injuries that may have resulted.

That brings me to our chest burns. Neither me nor G kept it a secret while we were in the water that our chests were experiencing some serious chafing. It wasn't just our semi-constant complaining that gave us away. Our chests did a poor job keeping a normal skin colour. Luckily baby powder had been a recent purchase and became very necessary on this day.

Smart

I learned a valuable lesson. It has nothing to do with wetsuits. Let's face it, bare chest is still the way to go. But I'll never again use a surfboard that's going to hurt my chest. Hopefully I'll get the chance to surf again while here. If not, I'll try my best to continue the hobby once I get to the states. A possibility since I'll be once again walking off the plane into summer heat (awesome life). It would also be less likely to get attacked by a shark in the US which you might agree is a plus. Now I just need to find the waves.

St. Patrick's and Wildlife

Don't laugh at me because I'm still only on my St. Patrick's day blog. There's just been too much going on to blog a lot lately. I've still got everything fresh in my mind so I'll bang out some serious blogage in one of my upcoming free days. Now, if you're offended by drinking on boats and petting Australian wildlife I warn you not to read on.

Lots of people know about St. Patrick's day tradition in the states. People have pride in their Irish blood and on this night they fill it with alcohol. So what we did was book a $70 (AUD) Sydney Harbour cruise which included a meal I assumed could be nothing short of gourmet considering the price. The open bar on the boat didn't exactly hurt the situation either. Pretty much everyone I know in Australia came along for this, Anthony and Christina included.

I was sort of hoping for free Guinness all night. When I saw that the only free beverage was Heineken (and some fruity stuff for girls) I was obviously upset. So I vowed to drink twice as many to really stick it to the man. But we still had our meal to look forward to. A nice buffet maybe?? It was about 10 minutes in (and about 3 Heinekens) when we saw huge stacks of pizza being brought on board. Just pizza. And even worse, it was from Domino's. I was so hungry that I had to break my very serious vow to never again eat Domino's soggy, vomitous food. I had 5 or 6 slices in my hand before I knew it. The $70 dollar cover wasn't enough to pay for paper plates apparently.

This cruise was really good though. A diverse cultural experience. I was able to meet people from all over...The United States. St. Patty's is nowhere near as big down here. That didn't make it any less fun to dress up in green and act like an animal. All the study abroad Americans culminated into one big Sydney Harbour sloppy, drunk pizza party. I think most of us found the time to look around and realize we were cruising around one of the most beautiful harbours in the world. Some blurry/grainy photos we took of the scene don't do it justice. Unfortunately, the bathroom lines were a bit long. I recognized this as an excellent opportunity to mark my territory in the Sydney Harbour Pacific. Sorry Nemo.

The rest of Dia de los drunkos was nothing special. The next chapter of G and Christina's trip involves dingos, kangaroos, koalas, and death birds. Featherdale Wildlife Park was the destination. For a really good price you can see pretty much all the Australian wildlife you can think of. It was the same 4: G, Christina, Emily, and your narrator. It was good to go to Featherdale as it was quite a bit better than the wildlife place I went to back in my Cairns orientation. First we saw the Australian birds. They really are cool looking, but they're all over the place in the Sydney parks. You don't have to pay to see most of them. This was followed by the famous wombat. This particular one looked like he had too much to drink on St. Patty's last night. If he had his shoes on it's likely either G or myself would have had no choice but to take a sharpie to his face...

Then on to the wallabies. Tiny things. And a wallaby on performance enhancing drugs = a kangaroo. That's what we saw after this. They were in the same area as the koalas and the scariest predator on earth, the emu. I was trying to have fun and pet koalas and kangaroos and crap, but the looming threat of an emu sneak attack couldn't be ignored. We fed the animals green stuff out of an ice cream cone. Just like what they get in the wild I'd imagine. I found the kangaroos to be polite eaters but the emus thrust their ugly sharp-beaked faces at the cone/my fingers. No fun. Unfortunately, they were all apparently kept without food for days and couldn't get enough of it. Those things deserve to be locked up more than Michael Vick.

Christina wrestling a wallaby

More wallabies

Emu... COMPLETELY EVIL!... Emu.

Looks so wise but trust me, there's nothing going through his head here.

How she bonded with this one I will never understand.

Kangaroos

Hi dog lovers. I know I'm speaking to everyone because who doesn't love dogs. For those of you who don't know, a dingo is just a dog. But it's not the kind you might find picking the trash for used tissues and laying her fat body in a pool of slobber at the Vincent residence. Miss you Zoe.

Dingos are wild dogs. In good shape. Mean things by reputation. That's why I was surprised to see the Featherdale employee go right up and pet them. I should have known these guys were raised in the park as pets.

What else? What else? Here, just enjoy some pics.

Joey

Tassie Devil (they still don't look like Taz)

The wild weed whacker

An echidna. Knuckles anyone?

There has to be someone else who finds this funny.

Blue Tongue Lizard. Wouldn't stuck his tongue out for a picture but I'll confirm, it was blue.

Albino Kangaroos. I feel like there's a joke here.

A very rare species

My hands are hurting so I'd say it's time for a break from typing. Ouch and goodbye.

We're tourists. Deal with it.

Bondi Beach!

I love it. Australia's most famous strip of sand (or so the introduction to "Bondi Rescue" says). My guess is that it's extremely touristy to go straight to Bondi on your vacation to Sydney. If you remember, it was one of the first things I did upon my arrival here. While a tourist, do as tourists do. That's how G and Christina felt and I completely agreed. It was important that they make the most out of their stay. So this was our Bondi Beach day.

We got a very early start. I was sitting on the train to Bondi Junction thinking how on a normal beach day, I'd still be laying in bed contemplating movement. That's one good thing about having G around. He's always up and ready to go. And he'd bought a sweet boomerang while we were at Paddy's Market so we were ready to whip that thing around on the sand. As the wheels on the bus went round, Bondi Beach came into view. I was stunned to see that there was nobody on the beach. Nobody. The previous few times I'd been there, I'd laid within a few inches of a half naked stranger. But as if the gods were saying "give that boomerang a throw" all we saw was never-ending sand. 

The first few boomerang throws were nothing short of pathetic. It was the least athletic I've ever felt as I watched the boomerang sink directly into the sand without any cool flight pattern. We discovered our problem. We weren't throwing hard enough. But there was literally no one there so I took the liberty of trying the first really hard throw. I chucked it close to my hardest and saw that it behaved as you would expect a boomerang to behave. It flew so far and started swinging back around, but still fell well short of coming all the way back. We saw there was no way to control this thing and thought it would be good to put it away so nobody steps in front of it and takes one in the neck. It seemed like a solid minute after we put the boomerang away when a life guard came over to scold us. 

"No boomerangs on the beach guys...Too dangerous...You nearly hit that woman...Go up by the park"

It was no use arguing with the guy. There was no camera crew with him and therefore no hope of being featured on "Bondi Rescue". Though, I have seen stupider stuff on that show than the scolding of boomerang throwers. We just laughed at him after he'd left instead. It was our fault though. We should know better than to aim our throws at imaginary women.

Boomerang throwers beware

Our attention shifted to the water.  We commented on how small the waves looked until we got in the there. After about 30 minutes of swimming/body surfing, we agreed that we felt like we'd lost a fight against mother nature. The waves were huge and we caught a couple of them all the way into the shore. We chilled for a while and discovered some interesting tan lines (Christina), but it was food time. We ate kebabs, something it seems like I've been doing a few times a day since getting here. Delicious. Normally I get chicken, but the lamb was calling my name on this day. Mmmm. I just realized I'm getting one after I type this up. No, I have sandwich stuff to use up. Damn.

The beach drained us, but we had plans for the evening that we couldn't pass on. At the aquarium, we bought passes that also allowed us access to the lifts to the top of Sydney Tower. That's the big, tall, gold, spire thing in downtown Sydney. It's the tallest building in the city, standing at 309 meters (1,014 feet). That's where Anthony, Christina, Emily, and myself headed. It was about a 20 minute elevator ride but we finally made it. I took a solid amount of pictures up there. A lot of the them were of shiny white nothing as I forgot to turn the flash off 70% of the time. Even the other ones were nothing special. The real treat was just looking out at the entire city. Oh, and we got photo booth pictures taken. I somehow came out of the experience hating photo booths. Emily went back up to the tower since that night so the day time pictures are completely stolen from her. Check it.

^Darling Harbour^

^My favorite buildling in Sydney^

^$10 American to whoever finds the Opera House in this one^

^St. Mary's Cathedral^

^ANZ (Olympic Park) Stadium^

I love kangaroos.

On this night, I found out that I also like to eat them. The four of us headed to dinner after the tower. It was Wolfie's Grill that provided me with the chance to eat both kangaroo and crocodile for the first time. I know kangaroos are seen as some sort of sacred animal here and they're on the national coat of arms and blah blah. But since there are 50 million of them throughout Australia, more than double the human population, I felt no shame in devouring just a portion of one. And eating crocodile is fair game in my mind. I just get a bad vibe from them. Doesn't it seem like they just deserve to be eaten?

Me with a friendly kangaroo

Me with a delicious kangaroo

Don't worry the picture of me eating was taken first so it definitely wasn't the same kangaroo. Anthony and I both got the kangaroo and crocodile plate while the girls went with extremely boring alternatives. Typical. The kangaroo is the one that looks like your average steak. To a certain extent, thats what it was. It was delicious nonetheless. The crocodile was an interesting thing to eat. I'd say the texture was a combination of fish and chicken. But the taste was something of it's own. Thank god because fish is absolutely disgusting. I think I'd rather eat human. But ignore that and just know that the croc definitely satisfied my taste buds. Just as we planned, the bottle of wine that we ordered was never brought out. We had to ask for it again and finally,  just as we were about finishing our meals, we got it. I feel like waiters think it's a joke when young people ask for a decent bottle of wine. Our guy must have laughed and ignored the request. Anyways we had a good day and a good night. Their visit is going well so far don't you think?

U.S.A. invades Australia

A real size comparison of Australia and the United States (and the U.K. in red but ignore that)

Now, I'm in Australia and you're not: 

For the most part, this statement is true. That wouldn't be the case, though, if some of my blog readers from the states were to come visit me here. When I finalized my plans and knew for sure I was studying for five months in Australia, my friend Anthony (known to many as G) made it clear to me that he would come to visit. I told him that was a nice thought, but I'd just booked my 2,000+ dollar flight and assured him there were better odds of me laughing at a Carlos Mencia joke. 

Despite these absolutely insurmountable odds, I found myself riding the Sydney city rail one Saturday morning on my way to meet Anthony and Christina at the international airport terminal. Either they like me enough to pay loads and come visit, or they saw an opportunity to travel to Australia and I happened to be their way in. We'll call it somewhere in the middle in order to preserve my self-esteem. 

As I waited at the terminal, I was anxious to see them and compare their pale winter skin to my new brown look. I prayed I hadn't missed them off the plane as they were without Aussie mobiles and there were more than a few people in the airport to get lost amongst. I looked up at the same sign I'd looked up at four or five times already. It reassured me their flight had landed. This time, I finally realized that the sign also told me which gate I was meant to meet them at: "Gate C or D". I thought "Holy crap, what gate am I at?" (it was early morning so the brain was at half functionality). Thanks to some serious dumb luck, I saw that the 2 signs above where I had been waiting read C and D. Even better, ten minutes later, I saw my friend's ugly faces coming down the gate D ramp. It was time to plan a little over a week of craziness where we'd end up having heaps of fun which you'll start reading about approximately now.

Christina is the most thorough packer I've ever met. I just want to put that out there. She packed more for an 8 day trip than I brought for my entire 5 months. I wish that was an exaggeration. So the first order of business was to go back to Unilodge and unload everything. This took some heavy machinery and hours of work, but it was worth it to finally get them settled in. Okay, enough digs at X. Also, no offense, but the two of them were in need of a shower. It's a long trip down here. I realize they might not be my friends anymore after reading this. 

Downstairs here is Paddy's Market 

Paddy's market is the biggest and craziest touristy market place I could ever imagine encountering in my human life. This is where I buy most of the souvenirs I get for myself (and very occasionally for others). They have hats, flags, kangaroo parts, jewelry, NBA jerseys (real cheap), crazy amounts of t-shirts, sunglasses (referred to only as sunnies here), beach towels, post cards, fruits, car parts, illegal underground passports, private jets (w/ pilot license), swimming pools, and rattle snakes. I like walking around Paddy's and talking to the extremely knowledgeable salespeople who seem to all come from different parts of Asia. Once, there was a really nice brown Red Sox hat I wanted to buy. I asked the sales guy for a smaller size and he did his job well. He came back with a slightly smaller brown one, though this one had the Yankees logo stitched into the front. He looked at me as if I was then meant to snatch it from him immediately and pay up. What could I do but shake my head and walk away?

 Anyways, this is the spot I thought might be appropriate to take Anthony and Christina the day they arrived. They somehow had the energy to walk towards Chinatown where Paddy's is located and do some pretty serious looking around. I'm not the greatest host, so I had nothing crazy planned for them as they stepped off the plane. But this seemed to be a good way to see bits of the city and buy some cool crap. 

This was sweet enough, but we also got a chance to check out Darling Harbour. We took it easy the rest of the day/night. I think we were all a bit tired and it was pouring. It was probably better to rest up and prepare for Sunday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There's an aquarium in Sydney. It's sort of been on my list of things to do since I've arrived to check it out. Some people here have argued that there are aquariums in the states and going here would be a waste of time and money. That's a pretty stupid thing to say. There are completely different animals at the Sydney aquarium, and since it's not even THAT expensive, me, Anthony, Christina, and Emily decided to go.

The aquarium isn't exactly a beautiful structure. It looks like a large, crappy white tent with a picture of a dugong on it. But it's in Darling Harbour, so at least the walk to it was nice. 

At Darling Harbour en route to aquarium. 

G...can't bring him anywhere.

The inside of the aquarium was a lot cooler looking. Right off the bat there were some good animals to check out. After taking 18 minutes to figure out how to work Emily's sister's camera, I was finally able to do just that. Platypus...one of the first animals we saw. Now that's the way an aquarium walk should start. They ease you in with the decently exciting animals and gradually build up to the big kahunas. I'm talking dugongs baby. They're native to the Eastern hemisphere, so I don't want to see anybody from the states commenting on how they see these all the time. In your face. But you may have seen a manatee (the same damn thing except a dugong's tail is like a dolphin's while manatees are paddle-like.) Thanks Wikipedia for making me sound marginally intelligent. It only took 15 minutes of back and forth walking down a ramp to get to the glass observatory tube at the bottom of the pool. Pretty much worth it to get this close to an animal like this.

You should have seen this one going to town on the lettuce. Picture Queen Latifah with a plate of donuts in front of her. But we had to move on from this tank. We walked through some more dark hallway with tanks filled with Australian ocean life. There weren't three minutes that went by where we didn't hear a child yelling something about the characters of Finding Nemo. But for me, the next big attraction was the shark tank. It was the exact same thing as the dugong tank but with sharks. I hope you're following. Another long walk down back and forth ramps to this:

They were some scary looking things. But they weren't alone in the tank. There were enormous sting rays in there too. I'm talking the size of an average bedroom. If those were the ones that got Steve Irwin, then props to him for having the sweetest death ever. 

I've always wondered why they put heaps of other animals in the same tank as the sharks. Do they not eat them? There were fish and turtles swimming all around amongst them. All I'm saying is it would suck to be a fish swimming free in the ocean with your school and then be caught and thrown in a small pool with 5 beastly sharks. Good fun. I'll throw a couple more random aquarium photos your way at this point.

As if we'd just gotten off a ride at Disney, we were thrown into the aquarium gift shop before we were allowed to exit. But I couldn't stand to be surrounded by stuffed animals for too long, so we had to leave. There was still plenty of the day left and we wanted to make some cool dinner plans. It was grill on the roof time. We went to the grocery store and got our supplies then headed up to the roof. It had been raining a bit and there was a layer of water for us to slip on, but that didn't dampen our spirits enough to ruin our barbie. Do I need to specify that barbie is not a plastic doll? We put our coins into the slots on the grill and fired it up. Hamburgers aren't just good in the northern hemisphere. I also saw what it looks like when a hot dog falls from five stories up (I'm really getting a good education down here). And what did I have planned for nighttime activities for my guests who traveled a million miles to get here? 

...We played Cranium. 

You all love that game, admit it. What would you rather do on a vacation? And this one is an Australian version. Every now and then you'll get a trivia question about cricket or something. It puts a little fun twist into the game. I'm pretty sure Anthony and Christina ended up winning? Someone correct me if that's wrong. But yeah, they had Cranium experience and it showed. 

Oh but they were in Australia, so how about some fun that couldn't be had in Massachusetts. One and a half days of their trip were already over so we quickly made an itinerary and booked some stuff for the rest of their stay....