Cheers mates!

This is a little late, I know, but at least I’m doing a final entry this time, right?

I had a pretty sad farewell dinner on my last night in Canberra with all of my “family”. I also received a little Aussie care package from Stacey and Michael which included some Tim Tams, some of the “new” vegemite, and a few wheat bix to participate in the wheat bix challenge. The wheat bix challenge is similar to the Saltine challenge here in America, and it is supposedly impossible to eat one wheat bic in one minute. I’m pretty good at eating Saltines quickly, but it took me about two minutes to finish one wheat bic…

I left Canberra early the next morning to travel to Sydney. I met up with my friends as I walked across Sydney with my new Louis Vuitton bag, and for some reason I decided to do the City to Surf the next day.

Not a good idea.

I have to say that the 14 km “fun” run wasn’t so bad, but it did quite a number on my knees, mainly my left one. I think it was around four years ago when I went snowboarding one time and I got into a nasty wipeout. Well, I was actually just getting off a chairlift, but I fell down and my foot attached to the snowboard went in a different direction as my body, causing my leg to twist and something popped. I sat down for a while and was able to continue snowboarding for the day, but ever since then my left knee gives me trouble on the odd occasion. I’ve never gotten it checked out, but maybe I should one of these days…

I completed the city to surf in less than two hours (I don’t know my exact time yet, but hopefully I will soon), but I couldn’t really walk for a couple days after that. It felt good completing something of that magnitude, especially since I hadn’t been training, and I wore my medal proudly on my last day down under.

The next day I hopped on a plane and headed to the land of the Kiwi for my last remaining days outside of America. The first thing I noticed as I was flying over New Zealand was the cliffs along the ocean. I've never been to Europe, but it made me think of something I might see around Northern Europe or something. It was so GREEN too. The best way I can describe New Zealand is, imagine that Ireland and Hawaii had an illegitimate child which was raised by Australia. There are probably a lot of things wrong with that statement, but it was my first impression. It was relatively painless finding a bus into Auckland, but I wish I would have had more time to explore other places of New Zealand.

I met up with Sara and we went took a ferry to an island called Waihiki. We hadn’t had breakfast and thought it would be cool to have lunch somewhere on the island, so we waited until we got there to find a place to eat. We arrived sometime around 2 in the afternoon. There wasn’t any restaurants where we arrived, so we decided to explore a little. Being who I am, I had a coupon for a free wine tasting at a local winery, so we decided to see what kind of food we could get at the winery. We arrived around a half hour later and went to the restaurant, which unsurprisingly turned out to be way out of our budget range. We were starving but broke, so we ordered a $12 appetizer of a tiny bread roll for each of us accompanied by a small dish of olives. It was the most expensive/smallest lunch of my life. I was still really hungry when we left, but it was a funny experience altogether.

We then hopped on the returning ferry to Auckland and made our way to the sushi class. We were the youngest people there by far, but our sushi skills didn’t disappoint. It kind of felt like being in the audience of a cooking show (which I guess it kind of was, it just wasn’t being filmed), and the chef showcased all of his gear and cooking skills. Cooking classes are such a great way to cook, mainly because everything is already portioned out for you and you don’t have to worry about cleaning up.

Unfortunately the weather in New Zealand was apparently unsuitable for paragliding, so we couldn’t go… This kind of threw a wrench in our plans and we scrambled to find something else to do. We eventually decided to go to the Auckland Sky Tower, which is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere and do what was called the Sky Walk. The Sky Walk is basically a walk you do along a meter wide walkway around the perimeter of the top of the tower. Once you slap on the jumpsuit and arrive up at the top, looking down on the city of Auckland during sunset, you realize how high it really is. I think it is a bit higher than the Eiffel Tower, but the walkway you’re on has literally nothing below it (well, except the street way down below, obviously). You couldn’t take a camera up there and the pictures they provided were way overpriced, so you’re just going to have to take my word that it was beautiful/terrifying.

It felt like it went by too fast, and a ten hour flight and a bottle of Shiraz later I was back in the USA. I didn’t really sleep on the plane, and I didn’t sleep at all the first day I got back to try and adjust to the time change, and it actually worked surprisingly well. I’m moving into my new house and getting ready to help out with Orientation one last time. I’m not quite sure when I’ll write in this blog next, but I suppose a lot of it depends on what I decide to do after I graduate…

Thanks for following me, and if you’re reading this right now please leave some sort of a comment! It’s always nice to know I write for an audience greater than 3.

Cheers!

Goodbye Canberra

Well, it’s officially my last day here in Canberra. I said goodbye to everybody at work, I’m saying goodbye to my “family” here, and then I hop on the 7:45 am bus to Sydney bright and early tomorrow morning. Or as it is referred to in Australia, “stupid o’clock in the morning”.

I’ve done a fair amount of things here in my final weeks of Canberra. I went to a couple of footy games (rugby) and got to see the Canberra Raiders demolish the Brisbane Broncos with a score of 56 to 0. After every home game, the team players actually go to this one bar so that all the fans can meet them and take pictures and things. I guess I don’t go to many professional sports games in the states, but I’ve never heard of anything like that before. It was definitely fun.

I also caved in and went to the zoo… I hadn’t seen a koala since coming to Australia, and I couldn’t very well come home without seeing a koala. It just wouldn’t be right. I also completed another goal on my list before leaving Australia. I can successfully throw a boomerang properly. I felt like a big tourist taking my boomerang to a park to throw, but that concern quickly left me as I realized just how FUN it is to throw one! You get tons of satisfaction when it starts returning to you. It’s like a game of catch you can play with yourself (for those of you with few friends…).

Inevitably I’m taking more stuff back with me than I came with. Consequently, I had to get some other form of suitcase to fit everything. I was going to go buy a duffel bag at a sports store, but I found out the when one of my host mom’s daughters, Stacey, went to Indonesia recently, she bought a duffel bag there to carry things back with her. I talked to her and she said that she’d just give me her bag to use. I thought it was a great deal! Well, she brought it to our house, and it turns out that it’s a really big Louis Vuitton bag. Well… beggars can’t be choosers. It’s the right size and the right price, so it’s going to have to do. All that this means is that tomorrow I’ll be walking a few kilometers through Sydney carrying my backpacker’s backpack, little rolling suitcase, small backpack, and my newly acquired large feminine bag. You gotta do what you gotta do.

I’ve been recently semi-pressured into doing the “city to surf” run on my last day in Sydney, which is a 14 km run through the city to Bondi beach. Well, I’ve run once in the past 3 months and I’ve never run more than 4 miles at a time in my life, so it should be interesting. It’s apparently a HUGE run, with thousands and thousands of people, and some even dress up. I don’t mean they throw on a tux, I mean I’ve heard that people do the run wearing giant gorilla suits and stuff. Somebody at work told me some people dressed as salmon and ran the race from the finish to the start, doing the whole “upstream” thing. I thought it was clever…

After a few short days, I’m off to New Zealand. Unfortunately I’m only there for two full days, so I don’t get to venture too far out of Auckland, but I still think it’s going to be fun. I’m going to try and go paragliding, which is essentially parasailing without the boat, and you’re in control of where you go (assuming you know how to work the contraption). That will be my “extreme sport” down there. I also booked a sushi/tempura class at the Auckland fish market. It’s not a typical thing to do, but it’s sushi, so it’s ok.

Hopefully I’ll have some sort of internet there so I can do one final update before heading back to sunny California. But, unlike Semester at Sea, I do plan on doing some kind of final update regardless of where I am. Well, that’s the plan at least…