Jervis Bay

                Wow, the time here is passing faster than ever these days.  When I started this blog post and dated it, I realized 15 days had passed since my last post!  It feels like I just posted yesterday!  With 29 days left in this beautiful country, I’ve been busy with final assignments for school and some last-minute trips with friends.  This weekend, we even went on a sort of impromptu camping trip up to Jervis Bay, home of some of the whitest beaches in the world.

                We rented a car for the weekend (despite past experiences) to fit the 5 of us and take us the three hours up to Jervis Bay to camp, swim, and have a great chill time away from classes and finals.  We stayed at a campsite in Booderee National Park, which was about 200 meters from the beautiful Caves Beach.

                We got there pretty early in the day, thanks to our brave leader Sarah’s planning skills, so we had time to explore the park and hike around the forests and beaches.  Caves Beach was probably the strangest beach I’ve ever seen, simply because of the way the tides work.  The water comes up about 100 meters onto the beach, but remains super shallow the whole time!  It was awesome for wading around and collecting clams. 

                The rocky caves surrounding the beach that gave it its name were really cool and creepy, too.  They didn’t go back very far, but most of us were still too scared to go all the way in, because in Australia, anything dark and wet is probably filled with spiders.

                The National Park is huge and includes protected Botanical Gardens that have beautiful walking trails.  The Australian bush is nothing we haven’t seen before, but we hiked around a pretty lake and along mossy paths for a few hours anyway.  Some of the trees were even labeled with signs, so I finally learned what a eucalyptus tree looks like!

                After the gardens, we still had a good chunk of time before sunset, so we went to check out the world-famous Hyams Beach where we would be spending all of the next day!  On our way there, we passed through a tiny neighborhood nestled in the park called Jervis Village.  There were maybe 20 houses and one “supermarket” that made up this village, but we were grateful for a new source of junk food snacks, no matter how small or overpriced. 

                As we meandered through the windy road of the village, the car suddenly came to a dead stop, followed by 5 shrieking girls.

                There were kangaroos in the road!

                No matter how much time we’ve spent here already, none of us have gotten over the sight of wild kangaroos.  These big fluffy dinosaur-deer can show up anywhere at any time, and they don’t give a damn about people.  Perfect for picture-taking!

                So after the excited screaming died down, we parked the car on the side of the street and crept out, cameras in hand, to get closer to the kangaroos.  These guys seemed a little more wary of people than kangaroos usually are, so they didn’t let us get too close, but it was still fun trying to inch forward and pet them.

                Eventually, the kangaroos got sick of us and all hopped away, so we finally moved on.

                Hyams beach is huge, and kind of looks like it was just set up for tourists to take pictures of, because it honestly doesn’t look real.  The white sands reminded me of some of the more special Florida beaches at home, but the water was like nothing I’d ever seen.

                We waded around in the water for hours, watching little fish and looking for shells.  We ended up walking the whole length of the beach at sunset, which was a beauty all its own.

                Once night fell, there wasn’t much else to do, so we headed back to our campsite (and drove really slowly through the village again to see the kangaroos.)  There, we set out our sleeping bags and got out all the food we’d bought for the trip.  Dinner was basically the typical camping diet—bread and peanut butter, but Sarah and I had gotten a treat for our international friends; none of them had ever had s’mores before! 

                Turns out, Australian’s aren’t too big on s’mores.  At the supermarket, we tried getting graham crackers, jumbo marshmallows and Hersheys, but ended up with “digestive biscuits,” weird tiny sugar-coated marshmallows, and Cadbury chocolate.  Close enough.  It still tasted relatively s’mores-y so we were pretty happy.  It’s also been over a year since I last roasted a marshmallow so it was a good bit of nostalgia that had me missing home a little bit.

                After s’mores, we broke out the cheap wine we’d gotten at the store in the village, and hung out at the picnic table near the fire for awhile talking.  However, at this point, we weren’t alone.  We were watching two shy kangaroos hop around near our tents at the corner of the campsite, and tried to get them to come closer.  They were pretty wary of people, so we were only able to give them a carrot, which they ate adorably, holding it between their little kangaroo paws.  Meanwhile, back at the picnic table, one of the girls screamed and jumped away as a very brave possum tried to take the bread right out of her hands!

                Usually the animals at campsites are pretty brave, but will run away once you yell and wave your arms a lot.  But this guy was just not having it.  While we yelled and tried to shoo him off, he just leisurely went through our bags of food.  After a bit, it came down to literally picking him up like a cat and tossing him off the table.  He didn’t even scratch or anything; just kind of wandered back into the trees.  The animals here are crazy.

                So we spent the rest of the night hiding our food in the tents, talking, and warding off our new possum friend that we named Johnson.  Our campsite was pretty full, with couples and surfers and groups of people hanging out and playing guitars around campfires.  It was a really nice night.

                We decided to go to bed early, and then get up really early to watch the sun rise over Cave Beach, which was like a 3 minute walk from our campsite.  We were all groggy and cold, but it was well worth getting up.  The colorful sunrise reflected off the weird shallow water, making for a really cool scene.

                But after that we were all still tired and cranky, so we went back to bed.

                Next morning was kind of a rude awakening.

                Remember how I said we always have terrible luck with rental cars?  Turns out, you don’t even have to be driving them for them to be damaged!  In the morning, we were woken up by the park rangers, who told us our car was broken into overnight, and the back passenger window was shattered.

                Great!

                Turns out some burglar kid had broken into our near-empty car and stolen one girl’s phone that was mistakenly left in there overnight.  Luckily, it was a terrible phone that she hated, and we had full insurance on the car, so things really could have been worse, but still.  It turns out we can’t have one nice little vacation without something going horribly wrong.  Anyway, the car was still driveable, so the park rangers drove some of us to the police station to file a report, then helped us patch it up with duct tape and garbage bags.  It actually looked pretty good for a shattered window!  I wish I had gotten pictures of our handiwork!

                Once that was all taken care of, we decided ain’t no burglar gonna ruin our vacation, so we packed up and drove back to Hyam’s beach for the day.  It was awesome.  We just played around in the sand like little kids and splashed around the crystal water.  Not a bad day.

                Once it started getting cold and the sun started going down, we made the three hour drive home, singing pop-punk songs from the 2000s the whole way, and confronted the rental car people about what had happened.  Thank god we knew to buy insurance this time!

                So I guess we’re just cursed when it comes to renting cars.  Luckily, I don’t intend to rent another one anytime soon.  But this was still an awesome weekend!  Since then, I’ve just been going to classes and working on final assignments (4 essays due next week, woo!)  It’s gotten colder here, so sadly the beach isn’t a daily option anymore.  But cold weather and finals means basically everyone stays home, so it’s just one big study party all the time at International House, with the occasional movie, game of indoor cricket, or light saber fight to break it up.  Things have been awesome lately.  I’m really going to miss this place.

Little Adventures from April/May

                Hello again!  I know in my last post I promised I would post again sooner rather than later, so here it is!  Over the past month I’ve been doing a lot of lounging in the house TV room watching movies, but I’ve also been on a few fun adventures!  The cool thing about studying abroad for this long is you get a chance to really live here.  As in not just doing touristy things all the time (though those are a lot of fun,) but you get to do pretty regular things that make it really feel like you’re living here.  Other than Tasmania, I haven’t travelled too far out of Sydney, but Sydney is such a cool place, I’m pretty fine staying right here.

Paddy’s Markets

                Apparently Paddy’s Markets are a staple here in Sydney, and they’re super famous for some reason.  I never really knew why, because it seems like it’s just some kind of permanent flea market in a huge building in Sydney’s Chinatown.  But one day I had a lot of time and nothing planned, so I decided to take the bus down to check it out for myself.

                Turns out, Paddy’s Markets are famous not for being a huge flea market, but a really weird flea market.  Next to all the massive souvenir shops you could find regular things like a fully stocked vegetable market, electronics shop, and walls and walls of cell phone cases.  But next to those were also stalls full of costumes, wigs, creepy masks, and weird fetish lingerie. Walking between these huge displays of literally anything you could think of was kind of an awesome experience.  I didn’t take any good pictures, so I found some stock ones on the internet to do the talking here.

                Since the Kosciusko Fiasco, I’ve been trying to save money, of course, but somehow with all these weird and wonderful stalls leaning over me, I couldn’t help but buy a few things for my friends back home.  They’ll have to wait till I get home to see what it is, but I can tell you it isn’t kangaroo testicles.

Holland House

                One of my best friends here, Yvonne, is from the Netherlands, where I assume everything is colorful, everyone wears wooden shoes, and if you take too long of a walk you’ll find yourself in another country.  I think only some of those things are true, but Yvonne found out about a place outside of Sydney that is a pretty authentic representation of what Netherlands is like!  It’s called the Holland House, and it’s just this huge store/restaurant/museum dedicated to everything Dutch.

                So on a boring day, I went with her on the hour bus ride to this place to learn what Dutchness was really all about.  Turns out, it’s a lot of what I thought.

                But really, the stuff here was really cool!  Yvonne gasped at pretty much every food we saw, saying she remembers this stuff from home and her grandma used to cook using this and how did they even get it here?  Some of the stuff looked super good, like schnitzels and huge boxes of chocolate sprinkles, but they’re also apparently obsessed with dark licorice in the Netherlands.  Enough so that there was a whole aisle devoted to licorice candy.

                There was also a tiny restaurant inside Holland House, where they basically sold two things: schnitzel and poffertjes.  I didn’t know what either of these were, but Yvonne insisted we order both.  We were super hungry from the long travel there, so we did!

                As it turns out, I fucking love Dutch food.  Pofffertjes turned out to be mini pancakes doused in sugar and syrup, while schnitzel is basically just a fried sausage on a bun.  They were both hella delicious.

               

                During a conversation on the bus, Yvonne was also shocked to find out I didn’t have a deep fryer in my house.  Apparently it’s just a common thing in the Netherlands to have a fryer in your kitchen next to regular stuff like the stove and microwave, because “frying things at home is so much better!”  I thought Americans were the ones obsessed with fried food, but turns out I was wrong.

Surfing at Maroubra

                Since our surfing lessons, some friends and I have wanted to try out our surfing skills somewhere without an instructor. Because we’re super cool and Australian now and we can just do that here.  So we asked around the house and borrowed two abandoned surfboards that some ex-residents left behind, and grabbed a boogie board that Mizuki apparently found on the side of the road once, and got on the bus to Maroubra beach to try and surf.

                Maroubra is awesome because it’s huge, the waves are great, and it’s pretty much always empty save for a few surfers.  Needless to say, we felt super cool carrying our surfboards down to the sand and into the waves.

                So we didn’t do too well, seeing as it was only our second time surfing ever, but it was still a lot of fun out there.  We learned from each other, and improved a little with each wave. By the end, we had all stood up at least once!  Also we got some cool pictures of us because that’s basically half the reason we went surfing anyway.

                We ended up exhausted and cold and wet and full of sand, but after a hot shower and comfy clothes, we all felt super awesome and accomplished.

AFL Game

                On UNSW’s campus, we’re super close to a lot of cool things outside of Sydney.  One of those things is a huge stadium, used for all kinds of weird sports like cricket and Aussie football.  So because it’s so close, and the tickets are pretty cheap for these games, the people at International House got a huge group together and we all went to an Australian Football League game one Saturday.

                Our team was the Sydney Swans, and I completely forget who we were playing, but I don’t think anyone really knew what was going on anyway.  Australian football is also very misleading name, because it’s nothing at all like soccer or American football.  It’s kind of soccerish in that there’s never timeouts and the players are always running and tripping each other, but it’s also close to rugby because they can’t throw the ball forward at all.  Basically they just threw and kicked the ball and climbed on each other and tackled people with zero pads and when the crowd cheered, so did we.

                I can’t possibly hope to understand the rules even after watching a full game, but it was still really entertaining! 

Catmosphere Cat Café

                I FINALLY MADE IT TO THE CAT CAFÉ.  I’d been wanting to go since one of the first weeks I was here, and I finally got a group and a time to come with me!

                The place is called Catmosphere Cat Café, and it’s all space themed and really adorable.

                For $20 here, you get a hot drink, some cat-shaped cookies, and two hours in the “cat room” with the “catstronauts.”  Honestly, it was kind of an expensive cup of peppermint tea, but it was the experience that counts.

                The cats were so adorable and basically cleansed my soul after being away from my kitties at home for so long.  Also they all had sci-fi themed names like Obi Wan Catobi, Princess Leia, Darth Beauty, Battlestar Galacticat, Mad Max, and Princess Turbocake.  While some people in the group left early, another American girl Erin and I stayed for an extra hour playing with the cats.  It was truly a spiritual experience.

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

                Australia is basically made for outdoor adventures, so of course I go on hiking trips once every few weeks.  Ku-ring-gai Chase is a very oddly named national park about an hour and a half away from us by train, but known for its wealth of micro-ecosystems and Aboriginal rock art found all through the park.  So Sarah and I finally got out here on a day we both don’t have class, and hiked around for the whole day.

                There’s really not much to say that the pictures can’t say themselves.  During the day we walked through the scrub, the mangrove forest, and little patches of rainforest, as well as ancient Aboriginal sites and artworks. 

                The park is beautiful, and also full of yachts for some reason.  There’s a river that runs through the park, but I’m not sure if and where it connects with the ocean or anywhere else.  But I guess it’s a popular place for really rich people to dock their huge ridiculous boats because there were a ton there.  And one of them was for sale.  And I may have made an impulse purchase and surprise I’m dropping out of school and living on a boat next year bye.

Misc. Sydney Places

                Sydney is a big city that’s full of very outdoorsy and usually pretty young people.  So of course, there are a ton of overpriced hipster restaurants, stores, and bars all over the place where white girls flock on the weekends to take Instagram photos and Snapchat videos.  These were some of the places I visited.

                Buffalo Dining Club

                The three American girls that I went to this place with apparently heard about it from a Buzzfeed video, so that gives you the idea of what it’s like. The inside is super tiny, but also rustic and probably Instagrammable I don’t even know. 

                This place was known for their wines and cheeses for a long time, and they do indeed have a lot of weird cheese that we tried and really liked.  But the main attraction for white chicks was that their special pasta dish is served inside a wheel of cheese, where the waiter swirls the pasta around the cheese then dumps it into your bowl. It’s a cute way of serving, if it didn’t involve 5 pink iPhones pointing at the damn cheese wheel the whole time.

                But it was pretty cool anyway.

                Organism

                We found this place when the burger place we were looking for was packed with a line out the door.  It looked cute and was relatively cheap considering the area we were in (everything in Sydney is so overpriced it’s ridiculous,) so we tried it out.

                The inside was also tiny and cute, and the food was really really good.  The only problem was that before we ordered, the waitress told us that the only thing we were going to order out of the 6 things on the menu was a “seasonal” item and only served in summer.  (It was some kind of waffle sandwich?  How is that a summer thing???)  Then about 20 minutes after we ordered, the waitress came back to tell us they didn’t have enough ingredients to make one of our dishes.  Hipsters, am I right?

               

                N2 Extreme Gelato

                Continuing on the trend of quirky and overpriced (but still very cool) places in Sydney, this one was probably my favorite.  It’s a gelato shop that cooks up these really funky gelato flavors, then makes them in front of you behind a glass panel while wearing lab coats and goggles.  They need them too, because they use stuff like liquid nitrogen and huge funky mixers to make this stuff.

                They even included a syringe full of hot fudge in some of the flavors, which was honestly my favorite thing I’ve ever seen.

                Morning Glory

                There’s not much to say about this place other than it’s an Asian imports store in the middle of Chinatown (where everything cool is,) and there were minions everywhere.

                We were drawn in when one of the girls in our group heard her favorite K-pop band playing from inside, and we walked out with some awesome Japanese mud face masks!

                The Argyle

                Anyone who knows me knows I’m a pretty introverted person.  The term “going out” makes me cringe and want to wrap myself tighter in all my blankets.  But here there’s a group of my friends going out to bars and/or clubs every weekend, and I never join them beyond hanging out at the house before they leave.  However, this one time, Sarah convinced me to come be sober with her when a bunch of our friends went to this fancy nightclub in the trendy Rocks neighborhood in Sydney.

                We got in for free because one of us knew a promoter for the club, and we also got $10 vouchers for drinks, which were honestly kind of shitty.  But the venue was super cool, and we felt like rockstars hanging out at this club in the middle of Sydney on a Friday night.

                I even found out while looking for those stock pictures above that Daft Punk even DJ’d there once!  So that’s pretty cool.

               

           So that’s all I have for right now!  According to the countdown on my phone, I have 43 days left in Australia, and that number is going down at a terrifying rate.  Hopefully I’ll have a lot more adventures to share before my time is up!