Monday morning some friends and I took a tour of the Opera House.  It was so incredible!  We got to go into three of the five theatres.  When we were in the main concert hall the Sydney Symphony was performing so our guide let us listen to them for awhile.  They were great!  When our tour was beginning I overheard one couple tell another couple that they were from MO.  I chatted with them for a bit.  They are in Australia visiting their son who’s playing pro basketball in Perth.  It was neat meeting other people from MO.  Tuesday I went to Bondi Beach with a couple of friends.  It is a beautiful beach.  Since it was a windy and rainy winter day the beach was practically empty, which is much different from the tens of thousands that are usually there in the summer.  Wednesday I went to the Sydney Aquarium.  It was super neat!  We spent a couple of hours in there and loved it!  Thursday I took a ferry to Manly and spent most of the morning there.  It was beautiful!  There were lots of locals out surfing too.  Oh, Dad, you would’ve HATED that ferry ride!  It was very very very very VERY rough!  After I got back from Manly I did the pylon climb at the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  I had originally thought I might do the actually bridge climb, but I decided to pay 1/10 of the price and not have to be terrified by going to the very top.  The pylon climb was really informative and interesting.  Chance, I reckon you would’ve loved it.  Friday I wandered around at Darling Harbour, another beautiful area of Sydney.  The Hillsong Conference started on Tuesday.  I went to the evening sessions Tuesday-Friday nights.  It was great!  I’m excited to share more about it with people once I get home.

Today was my last day in Australia (for this trip anyway).  Cindy and I went to Paddy’s Market and then had lunch at Pancakes on the Rocks (delicious!).  She left Sydney mid-afternoon so I packed before heading out for my final evening. 

I just got back from a Sydney Symphony performance at the Opera House!!!!!  Monday when I took the tour I decided to check the ticket prices for some of the shows just out of curiosity.  It turned out that I was eligible to get a student ticket for some of the shows.  I decided it would be neat to see the symphony perform so today I stopped by the box office to see if there were any tickets left.  The guy said there were tickets left and since I was alone he could give me a good seat.  When I got there tonight I realized that my seat was right in the middle of the 5th row!!!!  It was a fantastic performance!  They performed a piece by johannes Brahms and one by Richard Strauss.  Talk about incredible!!!!  The person behind me who started snoring halfway through the second piece added a nice touch as well.

Since I had a terrible cold when I came to Australia I suppose it’s only fitting that I take it back home with me.  It cam out of nowhere Wednesday or Thursday, complete with a fever, headache, and cough.  Dad, I think I have sinuses.    Mom, if my phone isn’t working when I get back to the States just listen for my cough.

It’s still hard for me to believe that I’m already heading home.  I’m looking forward to seeing all of you and telling you more about this amazing experience.  If you could, please do me one favor though.  Don’t ask me what my favorite thing about Australia was.  It’s impossible to pick!  I’ve done such a variety of things that I can’t compare them all.  That’s part of what has made this trip great.

Well, I should wind up on here and finish packing.  I’ll be back in the States Sunday morning earlier than I depart from Sydney (ponder that for awhile).  See you all SOON!

Over and out.

Today I spent the 4th of July with some of my friends from Malaysia.  I went and watched The Proposal with a couple of them and then some of us grabbed dinner and ice cream in the city.  It was an absolutely wonderful day.  They waited with me at my bus stop and I gave them all a quick hug goodbye as the bus pulled up.  After waving to them from the bus I sat and reflected on today and the past five months.

This semester has been a wonderful experience for me.  The people I’ve met, places I’ve seen, and things I’ve done have all been incredible.  If you had tried to tell me a year ago that a semester abroad could be this amazing I wouldn’t have believed you.  Let me tell you, it’s been beyond amazing.

People have been asking me if I’m excited to go back to MO or if I’m sad to leave Australia and the answer to both of those is YES.  I am VERY excited to see all of my family and friends again!  My three weeks at home are going to be full of horse therapy, water skiing, and lots and lots of catching up with people.  I’m excited to do all of the little things with each of my friends (like share a giant tub of extra butter popcorn at the movies with Sarah because we can and stay up late chatting with my uni friends, the list goes on and on).  I am really looking forward to meeting my three new cousins and spending some quality time with the fam.

On the flipside, it’s not exactly easy leaving Adelaide.  I’ve met some absolutely wonderful people here whom I am going to miss terribly.  I’ll miss my ES group, playing intense games of spoons with them at our socials, watching movies with the church youth, going to the beach with my uni friends, etc.  When I was walking to my bus stop with my friends tonight one of them said, “So do you see yourself ever coming back to Australia in the future?”  I just smiled and looked at him and said, “It’s a matter of when, not if.”

Enough of the sentimental side.  Tomorrow afternoon I’m heading to Sydney for Hillsong!  I’m pumped!  It’s going to be a really great time!  I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but I’m staying in a hostel room with seven other people I know.  It’s going to be a fabulous last week Down Under!

I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July!  Twirl some extra sparklers for me please!  Love you and see you SOON!!!

Now that I’m done with my third year of uni I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.  Is that a problem?  Actually, I take that back.  I know that I want to serve others in some way and be happy.  It’s just that the list of possibilities is still insanely long.  I guess it’s a good thing I decided not to graduate early!  I still have a bit of time to figure things out.

This week has been crazy!  In a good way.  Thankfully I didn’t have to devote too much time to studying for my exam because I was extremely busy spending quality time with quality people.  Lots of other international students are starting to leave which is getting a bit sad.  I’ve been going to so many going away lunches that I think I’ve gained a pant size!

Tuesday afternoon I went to a seahorse farm with a couple of friends.  I thought it was really interesting!  We watched an educational video about seahorses and then got to look at several tanks of seahorses.  I had never realized there were so many species of seahorses (there’s about 50 I believe).  I guess a thought a seahorse was a seahorse.  We got to see a leafy sea dragon which is very rare.  We also got to pet a shark!  That made the trip worth it for my friends.  It was a juvenile Port Jackson shark.  I thought it was a pretty neat little place!

Today two of my Malaysian friends took me to an authentic Malaysian restaurant.  I’m not exactly what you’d call a brave eater but I actually sort of enjoyed it!  Thankfully my friend helped me order the more mild dishes – I’ve learned that their idea of spicy and my idea of spicy are two very different things!

The weather here has been a bit crazy this week.  We had a really bad wind storm earlier in the week.  I don’t know of any barn doors that went missing, but there was a semi that got blown over onto some cars and a fair amount of other damage.  Nothing that major in our area though.

This is my last weekend in Adelaide.  Sunday I’m going to Sydney for a week.  I’ll be sightseeing with some friends and going to the concerts at the Hillsong Conference with some other friends.  I’m looking forward to seeing Sydney, but it will be sad to leave Adelaide (more on that in another post).  Now that my exams are done I can guiltlessly enjoy hanging out with friends for the next couple of days.

Have a great weekend!

Exams here are a bit way different than exams at home.  I’m used to walking into the same classroom I’ve been in all semester with my classmates I’ve been studying with for every other test, being handed my exam by my professor, and being able to ask him/her questions about the exam.  That’s not how it works down here.  First of all, we don’t even take our exams at uni.  Instead, we go to the Show Grounds just outside the city (sort of the equivalent of the state fairgrounds).  This morning was hectic.  My friend and I weren’t exactly sure which bus to get on, but we just lined up behind the 100 uni students and ended up at the right place.  We checked our bags and then walked into a room with a few hundred other students.  There were four different levels of french exams being given in our room.  (Most of the exam rooms are much bigger, some holding over 1,000 students at a time and you just have to know which clock to look at for your exam.)  My professor had told us that she wouldn’t be at the exam, but she said there would be another lecturer there whom we could ask questions.  What we didn’t realize was that she was only going to be there for 30 minutes.  So, 35 minutes into the exam when I needed to ask a question about how to decipher a typo on the exam I was told that my question could not be answered.  Hmmm.  Ten pages of french, including lots of (hopefully correct) conjugated verbs, and three rough compositions later I was done with my exam.  Chance, I wrote about you in one of my compositions.  I was struggling to reach the word count so you now like to sing with our father and have a dog whom you adore. 

After my exam I went to the museum with Alice.  We figured we should go to it before we leave since we walk by it almost every day.  We didn’t spend quite 2 1/2 hours there, but it was interesting.  When we were in the ancient Egypt exhibit I remembered a story about my museum experience in Tassie that I forgot to share.  When I was there I sort of went through the museum at the same pace as a dad and his two young sons.  When we got to the mummy display the dad explained that it was a mummy and one of the boys, about 6 years old, looked at his father and asked, “How do they know it was a mummy and not a daddy?”  Kids really do say the darndest things.

My tourism exam is on Thursday.  I’ll need to spend a little bit of time organizing my notes and looking over my drafts to the possible exam questions, but it won’t be too stressful.  It helps that I don’t have to pass that exam to pass the class.

I hope things are going well back in hot and humid MO!!!!

This past weekend I went to Broken Hill with Dawn and Richard.  It was great!  Saturday we went on an Outback Mail Run.  Since some of the stations are a bit…isolated…they only get mail once or twice a week.  We left Broken Hill at about 7:00a.m., covered approximately 550 km and visited 20 stations.  I was really looking forward to seeing the stations and comparing them to the farms at home.  They were VERY different!  To help you understand the difference I’ll share this piece of info with you.  A few years ago one family in the area owned 360,000 acres and on that land they raised 150 head of cattle.  For any of you non-ag folks that’s a LOT of land for such a small herd by MO standards.  The average station is over 100,000 acres in size.  That was mind boggling for me.  We saw TONS of kangaroos and emus on the mail run.  We may or may not have brushed a few feathers off of one emu.  We also saw lots of goats (they aren’t technically wild, but they tend to roam from station to station) and sheep and some cattle.  Most people aren’t raising much cattle at the moment because the conditions are too poor, but we did see a few.  We stopped at a station for monring tea and had lunch at another station/outback B&B on the banks of the Darling River.  It was a great day!

Sunday we went to a couple of galleries in Broken Hill.  One of them has the “Big Picture”, which is the alrgest canvas painting in the world if I remember correctly.  It was…big, and really interesting.  We also went up to a lookout point over Broken Hill and to the Sculpture Park outside of Broken Hill. Some of the sculptures were weathered really badly and we had trouble making them out, but they were really neat.

Monday we went to the Daydream Mine outside of Broken Hill.  We took a tour down into the old lead/zinc/silver mine.  It was interesting to see the inside of the mine.  We also saw some of the tiny places they sent the young boys down into.  In the afternoon we went out to Silverton.  Years ago it was a booming town but there isn’t a lot left of it now.

I had a great time at Broken Hill and I really enjoyed getting to see more of the Outback.

Now that I’m back in Adelaide it’s time to focus on french.  I’ve spent the last two days studying and I’ll study more tomorrow before my exam on Saturday.  I have a Saturday morning exam which reminds me of the ACT.  It’s practically as long as the ACT too!  Okay, not really.  My french exam is only two hours long, but still, two hours of french?!  All of my previous tests in that class have only taken 15 minutes each!  I’ll survive though.

I hope you’re all doing well at home.  From what I hear it’s getting quite hot and humid!  Love you and miss you!

I got back from Melbourne on Monday.  It was another great trip!  I’m too lazy to post pictures, but I’ll quickly fill you in on a few of the highlights.

I spent all day Thursday in the CBD of Melbourne.  It is quite a bit larger than Adelaide.  I went to the Queen Victoria Markets in the morning and they were pretty good.  In the afternoon I went up to the Rialto Observation Deck where I could see a 360 degree view of the city.  That was really neat.  Then I went to the Immigration Museum.  I had read in Bill Bryson’s book about Australia (it’s a great book by the way) that it was a museum worth visiting.  He was right!  I spent 2 1/2 hours in it and had to leave because it was closing.  That made FIVE hours of museum time for me in less than a week – very unusual.  The Immigration Museum was really interesting!  Thursday night I went back up to the Rialto Observation Deck (they were running a special where you could enter twice in one day) to see the city all lit up.  It was another great view.

Friday I decided to take a tram to St. Kilda.  It was about a 20-30 minute tram ride.  I spent several hours wondering around St. Kilda and walking along the beach.  It was a cute little area.

Now I need to backtrack just a bit.  A few weeks ago when I was in Alice Spring I met a couple (Simon and M0) from the Melbourne area on my Uluru tour.  We got to chatting and it came up that I was planning to go to Melbourne in a few weeks.  They invited me to go stay with them in Geelong for the weekend so they could show me around that area.  I ended up taking them up on their offer.

Friday afternoon I caught a train from Melbourne to Geelong to stay with Simon and Mo.  They were wonderful hosts!  After I arrived Simon got recruited to be a substitute in a squash grand final so I got my first exposure to squash.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  And, Simon’s team won!  Saturday, Simon and Mo took me to Queenscliff and some other areas just outside of Geelong.  I enjoyed all the scenery!  Simon took me on part of the Great Ocean Road on Sunday.  It was beautiful!

Monday morning I flew back to Adelaide just in time to take my French speaking final.  We haven’t received our marks, but I think I did enough studying on the flight back.

I’ve spent the last couple of days with Alice and Natalie.  Natalie is returning to the States on Tuesday so we crammed in some last-minute activities.  We hung out in the city on Tuesday, went to Mt. Lofty yesterday, and watched a movie today.  It’s sad that people are starting to return home already.  It seems like I just introduced myself to Natalie in our hostel room in Cairns.

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving to go to Broken Hill.  It should be a wonderful trip and I’m really looking forward to seeing more of Australia!

Dad and Grandpa – Happy Father’s Day!!!!

Love you and miss you all!!

I promise I’m giving adequate attention to my schoolwork.  It just so happens that two of my classes are finished now and my schedule has fallen in a way that I’m getting to see more of Australia.  You won’t hear me complaining about that.

I hope you all have a wonderful week/weekend!  Love you and miss you!

On Friday we went to Mt. Field National Park.  Our guide took us on a few walks through the forest.  The weather was overcast and a bit rainy, but we still had a good time.  Here are some pictures from the day:

Romina & Whitney Inside the Trunk of a Swamp Gum

The forest was full of Swamp Gums.  As they get old, the insides of these trees rot and they eventually fall over.  I think this tree is a few hundred years old.

Russell Falls

Our guide took us on a walk to Russell Falls.  Then we walked around the falls to the top.  This was the view from the top of Russell Falls:

Top of Russell Falls

Just beyond Russell Falls was another waterfall called Horseshoe Falls that was equally as beautiful.

In front of Horseshoe Falls

After leaving the falls we went further up Mt. Field and walked around Lake Dobson.  Our guide said there’s usually lots of birds up there, but we didn’t see a single one.  It was extremely quiet and peaceful.

Lake Dobson

After lunch we went on the “Tall Trees Walk” which was appropriately named for the trees in the forest.  These gum trees are the second tallest trees in the world.

In Front of One of the Tallest Trees in Australia

On the way back from Mt. Field we stopped at a wildlife sanctuary where we saw this:

Tasmanian Devil

If you look closely you can see pink scars on the devil’s cheek.  Those scars are from this:

Devils Fighting Over Food

The guy at the sanctuary said these devils weren’t actually trying to hurt each other.  It was just for fun.  That’s not my idea of fun.

Aside from the Tasmanian Devils, most of the wildlife we saw at the sanctuary was the same things I’ve seen other places in Australia.  I won’t post pictures of all of them again.  I would like to show you this cutie though:

Baby Koala

I think this koala is about two years old.  If she’s not adorable I don’t know what is!

Friday Romina and I went on a day tour of Port Arthur.  Port Arthur is where some of the convicts were sent in Tasmania.  It was considered one of the worst places a convict could be sent and it’s full of history.  On the way to Port Arthur we stopped in the historic town of Richmond.  It is a tiny town that was once the second biggest city in Tasmania.  Richmond is full of old buildings and is also home to the oldest bridge in Australia.

Richmond Bridge

We also stopped to see the Tasman Arch and the Devil’s Kitchen on the way to Port Arthur.  Both of those were spectacular.

Tasman Arch

When we arrived at Port Arthur it started raining a lot.  Thus, we got completely soaked while we were looking around at all of the buildings.  Despite the rain, I really enjoyed Port Arthur.  I found it really interesting.  Here are a few pictures from there:

Church at Port Arthur

Isle of the Dead

As the name suggests, the Isle of the Dead was the cemetery at Port Arthur.

Grainery

In Front of the Guard Tower at Port Arthur

I really enjoyed the trip to Port Arthur and I definitely got a great history lesson.

Every Saturday Hobart has the Salamanca Market.  It is huge!  Imagine the Festival of the Leaves at its best times about ten.  There was tons of food, clothes, crafts, and, of course, some junk.  Romina and I spent a couple of hours there and still didn’t see everything.  After the market I spent most of the afternoon walking around Hobart.

Sunday afternoon I decided to go to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.  Despite what my mom tends to think, I do enjoy museums.  However, I would consider myself to be an efficient musem goer.  I like to get in, see the exhibits, and get out without burning too much daylight.  My plan was to kill a few minutes at the museum (maybe a whole hour if it was super interesting) and then walk to the botanical gardens.  A little over 2 1/2 hours later I had to leave the museum because it was about to close.  I didn’t even make it through the whole thing!  In my opinion the Tasmanian Museum ranks right up there with the Holocaust Museum and Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.  I think I spent nearly an hour in the exhibit about the Antarctica explorations.  There was even a 3D video about them!  By the time I left the museum it was too dark to go to the botanical gardens, but I didn’t mind.  So Mom, it is possible for me to enjoy museums your way after all!

One of Australia's Antarctica Exploration Ships

This ship was in the harbour at Hobart.  So I realized I just spelled “harbour” the British/Australian way, but I’m leaving it.  I don’t know what’s right any more.  Do I use Australian spelling because I’m in Australia or American spelling because you all are in America?

Despite the fact that the weather wasn’t exactly ideal for most of my trip I had a wonderful time in Tasmania!  I definitely didn’t get to see all of the state’s treasures, but I got to see a few of the highlights around Hobart.

Tonight I’m having dinner with some friends who are going to be in Sydney when I’m there in July.  We’re all planning to stay at the same hostel which will be nice.  I think tonight we’re going to compare our wish lists of sights we want to see and coordinate some of our touristy activities.  It will be nice to have some class-free time in Sydney with them before finally having to say goodbye.

I should make my french flash cards to study on the plane…I’m missing a test tomorrow and have to make it up next week, oops…and do some more research on Tasmania.  Hope you’re all doing well!!!!

That’s right, nothing but emptiness!  We knew we were going to the middle of Australia, but I’m not sure it really hit us until we broke through the clouds over Alice Springs.  We arrived in Alice Springs Thursday afternoon.  After checking into our hostel we wandered into town to look around and grab some dinner.

Saturday we rose early to get ready for our day trip to Uluru.  Our tour company picked us up at our hostel and we headed for Uluru.  There were about 35 people on our tour and we had two really great guides.  After we were driving for about four hours we were startled by some women in the front who screamed, “Awww, it’s beautiful!”  The bus driver asked them what they were talking about and they pointed off into the distance and said “We see Ayers Rock!  Look, over there!”  This is what they were pointing at:

Mt. Conner

Tickled, the bus driver informed us that what the ladies saw was not Uluru.  It was actually a rock mesa called Mt. Conner.  Apparently, Mt. Conner is commonly mistaken for Uluru, even though up close they are obviously quite different.  While we were admiring Mt. Conner from afar we climbed a sand dune to overlook some salt lakes.

Salt Lakes

After about five hours we made it to Kata Tjuta National Park.  We looked around the visitor center and then went over to admire Kata Tjuta (the Olgas).  They are basically made up of huge boulders that got naturally pushed together.  They were really neat!  Here’s a few pictures of them:

I was amazed by the texture of the Olgas.  It was so rough and interesting.

Alice & Whitney at the Olgas

This is Alice and me in front of the Olgas.  Possibly one of my favorite pictures of the weekend!

After the Olgas we went to see Uluru.  It was an overcast day and our guides were hoping for large amounts of rain so we could see waterfalls on the rock.  They said 2% of the people who visit Uluru get to see the waterfalls.  We did see a water trickle, but it didn’t rain enough for us to see the magnificent waterfalls.  We were glad we were able to stay dry for most of the day.  Here are some pictures of Uluru.  I went a little picture crazy when we were there so I’ll just show you some of my favorites.

This one’s kind of fuzzy because I took it out of the bus window.  Sorry.

People are allowed to climb Uluru if the weather’s nice.  However, it’s pretty dangerous (our guides said 41 people have died on the rock) and the Aboriginals consider it very disrespectful.  The white line on the right side of this picture is the path where people climb it.

Once we got to Uluru our guides took us on two walks around part of the rock.  They told us a lot about the history and some of the different parts of the rock.  Here are some pictures from the walks:

If you look behind the tree in this one you can see a large chunk of rock that has fallen off.  The surface of Uluru is very brittle and big pieces fall off of it occasionally.

This was a water pool near the rock.  If you look really closely (and use some imagination) you can see a tiny trickle of water flowing into the pool.  So technically, we did see a waterfall!

After taking the walks at Uluru our guides took us to a viewing area to watch the sunset and have a barbecue dinner.  It would have been beautiful had there actually been a sun to watch set.  At sunset Uluru is known for being stunning and sort of changing colors.  We didn’t get to experience that but we still enjoyed ourselves.  Here’s some pictures from the evening:

We almost look miserable in this picture, but I promise we were having a good time.  We were just a bit cold.

We made it back to our hostel just before midnight on Friday.  It was a really long day, but definitely worth it!  We were so excited that we actually got to see Uluru!

Originally we had plans to go to Desert Park outside or Alice Springs on Saturday.  It’s supposed to be really good.  However, I woke up at 5:30 Saturday morning to heavy rain, which persisted unitl mid/late-afternoon.  We ended up having to skip desert park which is too bad.  We browsed through the shops in Alice Springs and then went to the School of the Air.  The School of the Air is a school for children who live in the outback.  It is based out of Alice Springs.  When it was created chidlren in the outback would use a radio to communicate with their teacher in Alice Springs.  It is a remarkable way to provide education for those children.  Now with technology they use computers instead of radio.  We got to listen to some lessons and look at the old radios they used to use.  It was really neat!

When the rain finally let up on Saturday we climbed to the top of Anzac Hill.  We could see basically all of Alice Springs from up there.

The Gap at Alice Springs

When you enter Alice Springs you drive through this gap.  This is a view of it from the top of Anzac Hill.  I thought it was pretty neat.

Despite the weather, Alice and I had an excellent weekend!!!!!