I'm in Australia. You're not.: 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.