"The future of our country is not found in our boardrooms, but in our classrooms."- Michael Milken

Well, my travels have slowed down for the next month. With my blog I’m sure people reading this don’t think I’m doing much in school, but I am. It’s a different school system here, there isn’t weekly homework assignments and small pointless work to do like back home. My classes come in waves, its weird but I like it a lot more. My classes have large assignments that are worth between 30-70% of my grade. 3 of my 4 class do not give marks for participation and they do not take attendance in the lectures. It is up to me to get to class, learn the material and know when my assignments are due. This past week was hell for me. I had 2 lectures to present, a small research paper, and a lab report, each of these were worth 30% of my grade in each class. Now today, I am finished with all of those assignments and I do not have anything due until the 1st week of June.

Hmm wondering how I did on some of my assignments? I received two 6’s, which is ‘Distinction’. Their marking system goes up to 7, so if you get a 6 or a 7, it means an ‘A’ back home. To get a 7, is almost impossible here, unless everything is absolutely perfect, even the Australians say its hard. And no, they are not easy graders AT ALL.

Anyways, like I said nothing else is due until the first week of June and then I’m done with classes, with only 1 final to take. In the next week or so I am going to try and finish 1 of the 2 research final essays that I have. I want to get everything done because well, first , I have the time and secondly, Dan is coming June 4th!!!! So I don’t want to be stressed the first few days that he is here :-).

Plans for the evening? Well, I'm totally making tacos for Cinco de Mayo. I found mozzarella cheese a few days ago, I'm overly excited for mozzarella cheese.


Happy Cinco de Mayo!

"P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney! You asked me where I'm going? OK, I'll tell you: P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney! That's where I'm going! " - Finding Nemo

P.Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way….

…Well I didn’t find nemo, but I did fall in love with Sydney! The past two weeks have been long weekends because of ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) and Memorial Day. So a bunch of us decided that we were going to take advantage and head down to Sydney!

Melissa, Kelly and I were all on the same flight heading down, we hopped on VirginBlue for a 9pm flight and we were in Sydney by 10:30! There we met up with 7 others at the Woodduck Inn. Well, it was a hostel and we were prepared to stay there, after all , a hostel at $27 a night is right in a students price range. Unfortunatly, it was beyond gross. First off, it was just a few blocks away from the Red Light District, and my favorite…cockroaches! Everywhere! After all of us brainstormed what to do, we threw out the idea of if anyone has points on a credit card or hotel. Luckly! Colleen and Kyle’s parents both did! Amazingly they were able to get us 3 rooms for 3 nights at the Marriot outside the city.  WE WERE IN HEAVEN. All 10 of us were like 5 year olds, since we were all used to sleeping in terrible hostels and always being weary of other in the room, a hotel was seriously heaven.  Anyways, so yes, we were blessed and were able to stay in a hotel for the weekend, so by Friday afternoon we were all ready to explore.

Friday afternoon began our journey and all of the girls decided that the best thing to do to see all the city at once would be the hop on hop off bus tour with the ticket that was good for 24 hours. We stayed on the bus for the full 90 minute tour, and then decided that the next morning we would stop off at all the locations that we wanted. Overall Friday was a relaxing day, since all morning we had to figure out the hotels and actually getting there. That evening we headed back to Darling Harbor to Sydneys Ice Bar, Minus 5. All 10 of us went and we had a blast! It was very cold and the drinks that we got with our entrance ticket were great. Since of course its in the negatives, we could only stay in there for a little over a half an hour. After we came out, most of us just headed back to the hotel and called in an early night so we could have a full day ahead of us.

Saturday was a busy day! I love being on the go all day! We were up and out by 8:30 and we got on the Hop on Hop off Bus first thing. This morning there were 7 of us and we started out journey around the city. Our first stop was a surprise, there was a little market going on right off of Kings Cross so we stopped and had a look around. It was great since we didn’t have breakfast yet! They were selling the usually fruits and veggies, but they also had a crepe stand and believe it or not a breakfast sandwich stand. Melissa and I split a HUGE bacon and egg sandwich for $6, and it was worth it, it was so good and made right on the spot! Our next stop? The one and only Sydney Opera House!!! We were so excited, we took full advantage of being tourists and taking a million pictures. I think after going through my pictures I have every angle possible of the Opera House. I was so excited, it was one of my goals to see the opera house in the next two years and I was so happy to finally be there. We ended up staying there for over an hour, which was a little ridiculous because there is nothing around but the Opera House.  Our third stop, Darling Harbor. It was so beautiful. We had a great weekend of sun so I feel that the good weather defiantly made everything better.  The Harbor was full of ships,boats, restaurants, bars, and of course the world’s largest IMAX theatre at 7 stories high. We walked around there for a while, which reminded me of the Baltimore Harbor.  After the harbor, we hopped on another bus that took us straight to Manly Beach right outside the city. The beach was huge! Tons of surfers and even though its considered to be Autumn here, there were hundreds of people still on the beach and in the really cold water! (so cold it was like New England water!)  

For that evening since we weren’t all together with the entire group for most of the day, all of us decided that it would be nice to go to a nice dinner on the harbor for the night. There was numerous restaurants varying in very different price ranges, but we found an Italian restaurant that overlooked the harbor. Somehow, we managed to get a reservation for 12 people overlooking the water! The best part that we didn’t know about until we got the reservation? They were having fireworks on the harbor at 8:30! There was no reason for them that I could find, but they were doing 3 installments in the next month of fireworks, and we were able to see the first display! After dinner, we headed to a bar called the Scary Canary that was supposed to have Karaoke was it was cancelled. Melissa, Kelly, Julie and I didn’t want to stay so we ended up just leaving and walking around until we headed back at around 11pm…we didn’t much of a night life because we wanted full days of everything and we really loved our hotel room and TV!

Sunday we slept in until about 9am and headed into the city. It was the official ANZAC day, so everything was closed until that afternoon. When we got off at Town Hall Station we heard bagpipes and drums, and to our surprise the ANZAC parade was still going on. I was bummed at first because I watched it on TV in the hotel, assuming I missed it since it started at 8am and it was now 11. But it was still going! I was so excited to see these parade, its similar to Veterans Day in the US but this parade was the largest parade I’ve ever seen.  Each division had a flag, and the each division’s infantry had a flag. It was pretty much broken down into so many different sections so everyone was able to be rightfully seen. It was an amazing thing to watch, it was so weird because the uniforms are different and I had  only had a slight idea who was in the air force, marines or army. My favorite part? After about every 10 minutes there was a band of bagpipers playing. It was so wonderful. We stayed for almost an hour and it still wasn’t over. This parade was going on 5 hours long! Once we left we met up with Megan and Katelyn to head back to Darling Harbor. They all went into the aquarium but I ended up people watching. I didn’t want to spend money to go to the Aquarium because the day before I lost my $50 train pass and had to buy a new one. :-( . 

But I loved people watching! It was a great day to do it, because all of the Sailors were around the harbor and families were with their loved ones on their solemn day. I swear I could have sat on that bench all afternoon.  For lunch, they took and break and I met up with them to head to a delicious burger bar. I had the best cheeseburger since I’ve been in Australia and it was cheep! Only $9.90 with fries! It filled all of us up and then since the Aquarium wasn’t really checking tickets, I was able to sneak back in with the girls, which was very nice of them. 

After we were finished at the Sydney Aquarium, we headed over to the Lindt Chocolate Café. I was in heaven..actually all of us girls were. I ended up getting a chocolate milkshake and some type of chocolate lava cake. Note to self:  never do that again. I was on chocolate overload. That evening most of us ended up staying in and watching tv. Yes, we watched tv, but some of you may not realize…I have not seen television since February 11^th. I don’t have a TV here! So what did we watch? Nickelodeon and the movie Stick It. I’d say overall it was a successful night in!

Monday was a relaxing day. We stayed in  our hotel room until we had to check out…at 12. We pretty much just wondered around the city, we took the ferry from one side to the other so we could see the opera house and bridge at another view! We were able to see Luna Park, a permanent amusement park right on the water, and we went back to the cheep burger place on the Harbor. Can you tell the Harbor was our favorite place?  After lunch we ended up go to Paddy’s Markets in Chinatown. Overall it was a glorified Flea Market, so it was fun to look around and it was a great place to pick up touristy t-shirts and souvenirs. Later that evening, a few of us headed to a bookstore to just relax, which was really nice and very unexpected. After relaxing, I was finally able to get a cupcake! After drooling over Cupcakes on Pitt, the final day we all went! They were really delicious but pricy for the size. But to make up for it, they did put it in a cute little lunch box, which I tore right open.  Like I said Monday was relaxing, and that evening we caught our 9pm VirginBlue plane back to Brisbane.