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.