G'day Mate!

It has officially been one week since I touched down in Sydney, Australia. It has been  quite overwhelming, but still absolutely beautiful. Although I'm not used being in such a big city, I do love how much there is to do.

The first day I arrived for orientation was pretty relaxing. We moved into our hotel, The Meriton World Tower (a five star "serviced apartment"), and then had dinner on Darling Harbor. Although I hate to admit it, I did try some kangaroo. Apparently they are like Wisconsin's deer--extremely overpopulated--so I didn't feel so bad about it after I learned that. The following morning we had a brief walking tour of the area of Sydney we were staying in. For lunch we had meat pies from Harry's, which is like an icon in Australia. I got a veggie pie that was stuffed with potatoes, carrots, and gravy and topped off with mashed potatoes and peas. Even though it was 80 degrees out and the pie was extremely hot, it was still so delicous. After that we walked to the Sydney Harbour Bridge and prepared for our bridge climb. They start you out in a full body suit, then give you a belt with a safety harness, and finish it up with a rain jacket and walkie talkies. The climb was about 3 1/2 hours and consisted of 4 ladders and 1 ,332 steps. It sounds really difficult but there were a few stops to take in the view and give our climb leader time to share some facts with us that gave us time to catch our breath. Hearing about the architecture and the building process was pretty crazy. One guy even fell off and survived. When they pulled him out of the water, though, his boots were all the way up to his knees from the impact. He had 3 broken ribs, but still went back to work building the bridge two weeks later!! Not me!! Good thing is is that it is basically impossible to fall off now despite the height and wind(So mom, you could probably do it). So I now have one thing crossed off my Australia bucket list!!











Friday afternoon we took a bus to a Wildlife zoo outside of Sydney. There were a lot of birds and wallabies just running around right when we got in. Then there was a koala sanctuary with a lot of sleeping koalas. It must be all they do because there were probably 100 koalas there and I only saw 1 or 2 move, and that was only after there was eucalytpus put in front of them! Although it is illegal to "cuddle a koala" in New South Wales, we did get to pet it and take a picture. We then got to play with some kangaroos. I bought kangaroo food for $1, which was alphala and carrots in an ice cream cone. They would come right up to you and eat out of your hands. So cute!! I saw one with a really big looking belly/pouch, so I literally waited for 30 minutes to see if there was a baby! Literally two seconds before I was about to leave a baby kangaroo popped it's head out--too cute!

After the zoo we did the bronte to bondi beach walk. It was absolutely beautiful, but we were super rushed to make a swimmer/beach/surfer safety session, so we didn't have much time to take it all in and take pictures. I definitely plan on doing it again. On Saturday we were supposed to do an amazing race all over the city, but it got cancelled due to heavy rain and storms. Thankfully we did get to do our harbour cruise that night. It left from Darling Harbour, which was a few blocks from the hotel, went went all the way through the Sydney Harbour. Although it did rain for part of it, it was still super awesome. Our orientation group of about 30 had the whole front room to ourselves. We were served fish (I got vegetables, but the fish was really tasty actually) and a free glass of champagne. My table also bought two bottles of australian wine to try, which was really good! In between the rain we got to go out on the front deck of the boat and view the city at night. Seeing the harbour bridge and opera house lit up from the water was really something. Looking out those two icons was the moment when I realized "holy cow, I'm in Sydney, Australia!!!!"