No Job? No Worries!

Last night in the Harbour hostel... what a view!

Fairy Floss and Twister

Halloween! So Australians don’t really celebrate Halloween, and claim to not like the holiday much at all, but I’m not convinced.  All the international people dress up and take to the streets, and the Aussies join in on the fun…. Just not in costume.  We made Jen’s twister costume last minute by borrowing a bowl from the hostel kitchen to draw circles (she wanted to give up after drawing one circle) and it turned out pretty cute.  I was cotton candy (or as they call it here, fairy floss) and I realized after I started constructing it, that using the restroom might be an issue… I would just have to deal with that when the time came!  It turned out pretty cute too, but I felt huge with all that fabric!  We headed to sidebar for the IEP party and met some great people.  Strangest thing of the night was that once people realized what I was dressed as, they decided it was appropriate to lick me.  Yes… random people actually tried to lick me, and some were successful! Eek!

Moved into our 4share room at the Glebe Rooftop on Monday… first thing I noticed is that the sheets on my bed have Winnie the Pooh on them.  Everyone else has plain sheets but me which I think is funny.  There are two other girls in the room from Ireland and England who have been here for 3 months already, which unfortunately for us that means there are VERY settled and their stuff is everywhere!  So I’m still living out of a suitcase, but we are a bit more settled in than when we were in the hostel.  It has been rainy which kind of puts a damper on things, but since it was pouring outside we didn’t want to venture far from the Rooftop and went across the street to the Ancient Briton pub for dinner.  Turns out I was trivia night! Jen and I were team “Apple Pie” and we did pretty well for the first few rounds… that went downhill quickly but we had a blast!  Since our name called us out as American all the other USers in the pub swarmed us after the game was over which was pretty fun.



The "Charlotte" Ferry... not the one that took us to Manly,
but my personal favorite

Still rainy, but during a break in the weather we met up with Julie and Steve for a trip to Manly Beach.  We took a ferry ride out to the North Sydney and it was hard to imagine that the criminals and army men who originally settled in Sydney sailed on boats this same size all the way from England!  Another random interesting fact: when the British government realized it was all men on the island, they decided to correct it by sending more women 'criminals' over.... but since there were not many in their prisons at the time, women were being banished to Australia for infractions as small as walking on the wrong side of the street.

We walked almost half of the 10km coastal scenic walk that twisted, turned and disappeared in some places which definitely kept the walk interesting.  We saw a huge kookaburra and Steve go so close that he actually touched its wing!  The water was freezing but there were still tons of surfers out in wetsuits, which kind of made them look like seals bobbing in the water… I see why sharks get confused sometimes!  We finished the coastal walk just minutes after the Melbourne Cup finished and Americain pulled a huge upset for the win.  Everyone was all dressed up with big fancy hats on so we definitely stuck out in our hiking garb.  All in all I’d say it was a wonderfully successful day.

Julie, Me, Jen and Steve on Manly Beach

Steve about to touch the Kookaburra

STILL raining so we decided to make the best of it and went to the Sydney Aquarium and Wildlife World.  Did you know that the animatronic shark that was used in Jaws is actually smaller than the largest great white on record?  We stood next to a replica of the largest shark ever (7.5m) and let me tell ya, I would freak out if I saw something like that coming at me under water!!  The tail was taller than me and I could hula hoop with the actual jaw they had on display.  Unfortunately, even though they have a great white on their logo, they don’t actually have any in the aquarium… false advertizing!  We did get to see the little penguins (there is a colony on Manly Beach as well), a manatee (which they call Dugongs) and the platypus has always been a personal favorite of mine (the best of all different animals all smashed into one little package).  I liked Wildlife World even better! All of the animals were indigenous to Australia, and the insects and reptiles were first…. I was happy to go through that section quickly and get to the koalas.  They are so cute they look fake, and it was raining but it didn’t seem to bother them one bit…. You can’t hold the koalas in New South Wales so can’t check that off my list yet, but we were so close I could have reached out and touched one! 

The kangaroos weren’t fans of the rain at all… they were all huddled under the awning together, but luckily the rain let up and they hopped around a bit for us.  Surprised not to see any dingoes or wombats (or we could have just missed them) but the wallabies were there representing Rocco’s Modern Life beautifully.  “Garbage day is a very dangerous day.”  Still one of my favorites is the Kookaburra.  We finally hear it laugh but I’m fairly certain my jokes had nothing to do with it!  The Kookaburra has become an unofficial mascot for my Australian adventure… they are just so darn cute and their laugh is contagious!  Jen and I both applied for jobs here and it would be so cool to work here…. Trying not to get our hopes up but crossing our fingers and thinking ‘how cool would it be to work here’ the entire time we were walking through!  Its kind of nice to not have any ties so we can get up and do whatever, whenever… of course money helps to do more things… details!

Dun-nu Dun-nu

Jen likes fish :)

Random view of the SOH

Another random view of the SOH