Last Few Weeks in Australia

This is the fountain from the famous movie, The Matrix. We realized what it was and had to take a picture!

I spent the last week or so in Australia just hanging out with the friends I made and spending as much time as possible in the city.

We went to the largest IMAX theatre in the world to see Transformers II.

We got there two and a half hours early to wait in line. This is Kristen holding our spot!

We were actually the only people in line for the first hour and a half.

The black wall in the background of this picture is only part of the screen. It was so big that some people felt sick during the movie. I had to turn my head from left to right to see the whole screen, it was awesome!

A bunch of nights everyone brought all of the food in their houses and made these huge, conglomerate meals. Since we were trying to get rid of the food we had accumulated over the past months, we had a little bit of everything.

This is William making some Indonesian sitr-fry.

Jawaan tried to make a huge bowl of noodles in the microwave, but they turned out horribly.

One night, after the big meal, we hosted our own Olympics. This is the three-legged race.

Another night we all decided to go into the city and play some lazer-tag!

It was just like lazer-tag in the states. Our team did pretty well!

We also played some arcade games.

This night we all decided to go into the city and watch the Wallabies rugby game.

Right as we were walking across the bridge to the restaurant, fireworks started going off right over our heads! It was a pretty good ending to one of our last nights in the city.

This is really random, but I thought I should include a picture of my friend Brittany. We were the only two Americans in my extremely hard Physics class so we ended up working together a lot. She was great!

I also realized that I hadn't posted any pictures from where I lived while I was there. This was my house, #55.

This is our kitchen where we cooked every meal.

..and our dining room where we sat around and ate.

This is the living room and back screen door.

And where I spent a lot of my time, my room! I tried to make it look nice even though I only had what I packed in my suitcase. I ended up buying a bunch of poster-boards and taping pictures that I had brought with me up to decorate.

This is my desk.

And, most importantly, this is all of the mail I received while I was over there. I posted it all up on a bulletin board and I looked at it every day! Getting mail was one of the many highlights I had while over there. Thank you so much for sending it!

This is my closet.

.. and finally my bathroom.

Last but definitely not least I decided to sum up my trip with a picture of my housemates who I spent the majority of my time with. From left to right is Erika and Kristen (from New York), Phillip from Germany, Tillie from Colorado, and me! I had a blast living with these people and will never forget them.

All in all my time in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia was an unforgettable 5 months. I learned so much about other cultures and made tons of amazing memories.

And finally, after a very long time, I arrived back in the good old South where my family and friends were waiting for me.

The End =D

Sydney, Museum, Chinese Garden, and Skytower!

Sarah Beth and I headed back into Sydney to finish walking around and seeing more sights. It was a rainy day so we hopped on the monorail that circled the inner city and rode in circles until the rain stopped.

Since it was still kind of dreary outside, we decided to visit the Sydney Maritime Museum. This is us posing outside with the random statues of children.

This museum was actually really boring, so we just walked around and took silly pictures.

Sarah Beth decided to take a nap on one of the exhibits.

Finally we got out of that museum and we stumbled upon my favorite fountain!

Then we stopped along the beautiful Sydney Harbor for a photo shoot.

Sarah Beth had been wanting to go into the Chinese Gardens in Sydney, so we decided to go in them. This is us at the entrance.

The gardens looked like a scene right out of a Chinese book or movie. They were beautiful and we took tons and tons of pictures!

I was in bonsai tree heaven. There were so many of them.

We also stopped to buy a bag of fish food and fed the fish.

I liked this picture. You could see the big Ferris Wheel from the gardens and its reflection in the pond.

Finally, after quite a while of circling the small gardens, we bought our souvenirs and left. It was technically called the Chinese Garden of Friendship, so even though it sounds kind of corny, it was cool to go in it with one of my best friends!

Finally, the last day before Sarah Beth went home, we had lunch at the famous Sydney Sky Tower Restaurant. It was on top of a tall building and it revolved so you got a 360 degree view of the city.

Erika and Kristen, my housemates, went with us. It was $50 per person for the buffet, but with the view and all the good food it was worth it.

The restaurant was beautiful on top and it had tons of art and scenes to take pictures in front of.

You can see how high up we were!

After the lunch we went home and Sarah Beth packed up and left the next day. We had a great trip and, as always, had a lot of fun together.

Featherdale Wildlife Park and Blue Mountains

I had already been to on a bus tour to the Featherdale Wildlife Park and the Blue Mountains, but this time we decided to take the train!

After about an hour or so of travel we arrived at the Wildlife Park.

This park had a great area where we were able to walk through and see the kangaroos.

I bonded with this one.. actually I think he really just liked the food we bought for them.

Close-up!

Sarah Beth was a little bit more timid around the kangaroos..

The zoos in Sydney were not allowed to have exhibits where you can touch the koalas. However, since Featherdale was outside of Sydney, we actually got to walk right up to them and touch them!

Finally we hopped back on the train heading up to the Blue Mountains. After about two hours of travel we jumped off the train and thought we were there.... but found out that we still had another hour to go. That was alright though because we were able to console ourselves with some Australian ice cream while we waited to get back on the train.

Finally we got to the Blue Mountains!

This time there were these random parrots that climbed all over us. Sarah Beth was scared to death of them, it was hilarious. I liked them though!

We also met up with this lovely couple that Sarah Beth is posing with and decided to take the train-ride down the mountain instead of walking down. Everyone looks happy enough to begin with...

... but they soon realized that the ride was a little bit scarier than they thought it would be! I had done it before so I had my camera ready! The one man looks especially concerned.

The mountains still looked blue the second time around!

It was growing dark fast and we didn't realize how long it took us to get there, so we ended up getting back to my house pretty late.

Shark Tank, Wine Tour, and Bondi Beach

One night my program had its Farewell Dinner at the Sydney Aquarium.

There were a bunch of tables and a buffet set up in the private dining room. It had a huge glass wall that backed right up to the shark tank!

These are all the girls in my program, which was AIFS (American Institute for Foreign Study). I was the only one from the South!

We liked the sharks!

The next morning Sarah Beth and I woke up early and headed off for the famous Hunter Valley in wine country.

We booked a wine tour which included a bus tour through the Hunter Valley to 5 different wineries, a gourmet lunch, and a few other stops.

At each place we got to taste the wines.

We saw some wild kangaroos on the way!

This is all the girls from our bus tour, we all became friends!

We also stopped at the Smelly Cheese Shop and got to sample the cheeses. They were actually really good!

I thought the wine-making process was extremely interesting. The wine makers had their vineyards separated according to which types of wines they were making. Certain grapes were used to make certain types of wines.

At our lunch we were served different types of wines. Each wine had a certain number which matched up to the foods that we were supposed to eat with it.

I always like to get a group shot!

Finally, at the end of the tour, our bus driver stopped at a famous gelato place.. which was my personal favorite of course.

The next day Sarah Beth and I headed to the famous Bondi beach (which I have written about numerous times in this blog).

We mainly just walked around and went in the shops because it was really too cold to be on the beach.

We also took the hike around the coastline and saw this man who lives on the rocks. I saw him there every time I went to Bondi.

This is my housemate Kristen and Keara, they went with us and we took jumping pictures.

I have about one hundred pictures from this walk up along the coast.

It was so beautiful.

Finally, at the end of our walk, we stopped and made our marks on the beach... this was Sarah Beth's!

Sarah Beth Comes!

Alright, so even though I have been back in America for a month or two now, I wanted to finish describing my big trip and bid this Blog farewell.

I last left off where Elizabeth had just flown home and my friend, Sarah Beth, was due to arrive in a few days.

Before she arrived, though, it was my housemate Erika's 21st birthday so we made a cake and spaghetti and threw her a little party!

This is the group in our living room.

Finally, the next day, I went and picked up Sarah Beth from the airport and we had a very happy reunion! That night some of my friends were having an "International Dinner" where everyone made food from their homes and brought it to share.

This is Sarah Beth and Jawaan at the dinner!

This is Obed from Guatemala and Sacha from Australia ...

..and Pablo from Columbia..

.. and finally a group shot!

The next day I took Sarah Beth into the big city of Sydney for the first time. On the way she took me to my first sushi restaurant. This particular one was a sushi train and the dishes came by our table on a conveyor belt and we just picked what we wanted, I loved it!

That is my arm and you can see the conveyor belt where the dishes came right by our table.

Then we took the train into the city and saw the Opera House.

We had to stop and listen to some Aboriginal music and pose with this guy!

After more walking around and taking in the sights we stumbled upon a jet-boat. We didn't really know what to expect, but we figured we might as well try it so we hopped on!

It ended up taking us all around the Sydney Harbor at ridiculous speeds and we got soaked, it was awesome!

This was our driver, we liked him and he told us we should definitely come back and do it again (which we did later on).

Finally, after a long day we got on our dinner cruise that we scheduled the night before and set off for a relaxing meal. We also got some beautiful pictures of the sun setting over the harbor from the back of the boat.

We got home that night and were exhausted from all the walking and sightseeing!

Finally, We Made It!

This is the next morning, after we woke up and were about to head out of Greymouth.  We had parked here for the night.

From Greymouth, we planned to go through Arthur's Pass and into Christchurch where we would fly out the next day.  Arthur's Pass is a famous drive in the South island of New Zealand and it goes over a mountain.  When we got to the pass, though, we were told we had to put snow chains on our van if we wanted to continue driving because it was snowing on the top of the mountain.

So Eliz and I parked our van and started putting the snow chains on.  We had a brief demonstration on how to use them when we first picked up our van, but it was still difficult because it was freezing and windy.

Finally, after a slight struggle, we got the chains on!

When we finally got back into our van to continue up the mountain, though, our van wouldn't crank.  We were pretty aggravated at this point because we were on the side of a mountain and not many cars were passing on the two lane road.  We figured we needed to get jumped off, though, so we started flagging people down.

Finally this nice guy came along and jumped our van off, so we started heading up the mountain again.. with our snow chains on this time.

As we drove, though, we noticed that no other cars had snow chains on and we were getting passed by everybody!  Apparently, by the time we had gotten jumped off, it had stopped snowing so we didn't even need the chains anymore... but we couldn't stop driving because we didn't know if the van would crank back or not.

Finally, after about 1/2 an hour of getting passed and angry looks (because you have to drive slow with the chains on), we stopped and took off the chains without turning off the van.

This is further down the road on the way to Christchurch, I don't know what the purpose of this large doughnut was, but I had to get a quick picture with it.

Last time I was in Christchurch it was pouring down rain, and this time was no different.  It down-poured the entire time we were there and it was freezing!

I also tried to get money out of an ATM and a machine ate my card there, so that wasn't good.  Furthermore, at one point we were walking around Christchurch and couldn't find our way back to our van.  So, after an hour or so of walking around in the rain and in the dark, we got a taxi to drive us around to find it for us.

Then, after we found our van, we realized that it wouldn't crank again.  So we went to the police station and fire department, but nobody could help.  Finally we ended up flagging down another couple and they were able to give us a jump start and we made it to the airport.

Rainbow in Christchurch.

This is the Christ Church.  I think it is the only touristy place Elizabeth and I went inside of the whole trip.

Finally, though, after all of the headache, we made it to the airport and spent the night in our camper van there.  The next morning we had to wake up at 4am for our flight, so we turned in our van keys and flew out.

Despite the difficulties we had along the way, I definitely have to say that this was the best trip I have ever had.  It was such an adventure and so much fun! 

Since Elizabeth has been gone I have just mainly been hanging out and finishing up with my classes.  Now I am in the final few weeks of my stay in Australia and I have 3 exams to go until I am finished for good.  My friend Sarah Beth arrives in two days to visit, and after she leaves I will have only a week until I fly home.

Road Trippin'

The next morning we got up early and drove in our pajamas towards Glacier Country.  We stopped in the small town of Fox Glacier and filled up with gas.

We then drove to the Fox Glacier and took a little walk up to the view point.  It was freezing there!

We then got back in our van and drove to the other glacier, the Franz Joseph glacier.  This is me walking towards the view point.

This is the Franz Joseph glacier!

Then we left glacier country and headed on up the road to a town called Hokitika.  It was known for it's Jade, which is a green stone, and there were Jade shops all over.  We walked around this town for a little while and experienced our first Walnut Crumble ever from a small bakery...and it was delicious.

We then found this little beach and decided to have a picnic for lunch.  We had the whole place to ourselves and it was really neat.  Eliz made us some ramen noodles on our little cooker in the back our van and we ate it on the beach!

Finally we pulled ourselves from our cool picnic area and got back on the road.  

I liked how you could see the reflection of the mountains in this picture.

We thought this was funny.  This cow was trying to escape!

Not quite sure what these animals were... but we definitely had to take a closer look at them.

That evening we got to Greymouth and walked around for a while.  This was the biggest town we had come to so far.  After visiting the information center, we decided to take a walk that would lead down to a waterfall.  It was supposed to be a lot like what you would see on Lord of the Rings (it was filmed in New Zealand).

It was getting dark pretty fast so we ended up running back through the trail so we could get to the coast and watch the sunset.  We liked this beach area, so we ended up camping there that night after a good meal of seafood pizza in town.

This is what the back of our campa van looked like when the bed was all made up.  We would just park, button up all the windows, and got to bed every night!  Here we were watching our DVDs from our bungy jump.