week-long overloadddd, pt. 2

Continued from previous post...!


By the time we got back to UniLodge I was exhausted, but barely 30 minutes later we were out the door again to see the Chinese New Year Launch Celebration and Markets at Belmont Park, which is located up the street from Central Station. The entire park was transformed by tents and tents upon market stalls, and a giant stage with performers. Note: the following pictures were taken on Jane's camera, since mine was, uh, without battery since I forgot the battery in my room. Whoops.

The tents and lanterns.

Me, peacin' out my fob signs among other azns.

The crowd in front of the stage.

The little boy that I wanted to kidnap because he was so cute! My friends thought it was too weird (read: creeperific) that I took his picture.

And, of course, there were the lion dances:

Emblazoned with Sydney on the side.

And, a little camera-whoring:



While we're still on the topic of Chinese New Year, I'll recount my CNY feasts. Feast 1: Beijing duck with my friend Kelly on Sunday night (proper CNY). Then Feast 2: pure sumptuousness with the remainder of friends on Monday night (New Years Day).

I'll just share one particularly funny picture:

AHAHAHA. This is a picture of Becky after she ate the WHOLE edamame bean, instead of just the inside. Awww, poor thing.

The whole gang after a splendid dinner.

Anyway, here we regress in the timeline and jump back to Friday night to after the CNY Launch Celebration. So I go back to UniLodge, shower, take a one hour nap, and then it's whoo, out we go again!, this time to drink inconceivable amounts of alcohol on the roof of UniLodge. The glass of riesling + shot of vodka + half of a beer does NOT sit well with me, and the rest of the night was a shitshow of getting downtown, finding a dance club, finding out that the cover charge to the dance club was $20AUD, then finding another bar down the street and finally fulfilling our promise to drunkenly dance. Somewhere along the way I was hit on by an Indian guy (this is new, I am thinking), and eventually I cab it back to UniLodge and end up consoling a friend who made terrible choices and ended up making out with a random creeper while at a hiphop dance club. And phew, what a mess. (Epic fail.)

I am through with those types of Friday nights for a while.

Saturday morning/afternoon I went to Paddy's market in Chinatown to do some souvenir shopping, and later that night we caught an outdoors symphony concert at The Domain, a beautiful city park about 20 minutes away by bus. They played many Australian composers as well as Mozart and Tchaikovsky. As the daylight faded and the night ushered in, hundreds of birds greeted us around the park. Well, that's not entirely accurate. ACTUALLY THEY WERE BATS. Hundreds of bats just chilling out with us on the lawn, listening to Tchaikovsky. It was a great night.

Sunday was possibly even better; having woken up late and making myself a leisurely breakfast, I left the room at around 3PM to meet up with friends to ride the monorail around the city. The monorail, somewhat like the public transporation in Chicago, is above ground and I got some great shots while in the air. It was definitely worth the $4.80AUD. :)

Me in front of the Monorail Station.

After the monorail, we walked through Taronga Park to get back to Darling Harbour and catch the last few hours of the aquarium. Take all the best aspects of the Shedd Aquarium (Chicago), the Aquarium of the Bay (San Francisco), and the national Aquarium (Baltimore), combine them, and you've got the Sydney Aquarium. Really, it was such a delight. (Plus, I really dig aquariums--who knows why.)

Here are some highlights:

Huge sea turtle.

Coral from the Great Barrier Reef.

Dugongs! (Like the pokémon!!!) They are similar to manatees.

This picture is for Andrei, and he is the only one who will likely find the humor in it.

Okay, later this week I'll update about Australia Day-- it's the Australian analog for the 4th of July. Lots more pictures coming up!

Peace, love, and umbrellas,
Xu

week-long overloadddd

Okay, so I thought this might happen. A week has gone by and I have made a dozen eventful excursions, and now I have to recount them as best I can.

Here goes.

Wednesday afternoon, which was the day of my last update, brought around the Obama-mania inauguration party at a local bar called Manning Bar, which is situated on the Sydney Uni campus. Watching the inauguration with so many non-Americans was a great feeling--truly, Obama is going to be the world's president!

Manning Bar

Obama on the Big Screen

Me and Obama, chilling out in Sydney.

Later that night after a grueling three hours of class, we went to trivia night at the Australian Youth Hotel Bar just down the street from UniLodge, and after two hours of drunken trivia answering (and my intense back-to-back duel/standoff with someone from another team), we managed to win 3rd place and $10.

Thursday night we ended up going to Newtown, which is this neighborhood near Sydney Uni to the east of Ultimo and Glebe where we live. Newtown is AMAZING; the entire street is dotted with cafés, restaurants (I think I counted over 10 Thai places in the span of 3 blocks), bars, shops, and cinemas. It is just the venue that BU needs, but unfortunately all we've got is a Noodle Street. LAME!

Friday was such a long and eventful day, and it didn't help that I had slept approx. 5 hours the night before. I should preface this by saying I don't have any class on Fridays, so the weekend begins early and lasts through Monday at 3PM. Friday during the daytime my friends and I traveled to the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House to see the two icons up close and personal. We walked the whole span of the bridge and back, and climbed up all the stairs to the Opera House. The views of the harbour were SPECTACULAR. Here's my poor attempt to share them with you:

Me and friends across the harbour from the Opera House

Me and the Opera House

Peace, love, and umbrellas!

Walking across the bridge

Goofs on the Sydney Harbour Bridge

View of Opera House from the Bridge

Goofs in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge

The Opera House up close

Me, making a sweet embrace with the Sydney Opera House

More continued in next post...

in a sunburned country, indeed

So this morning at 3:30AM Sydney celebrated the inauguration along with the US!! Later this afternoon I am going to a Sydney Uni bar to watch a replay of the inauguration and probably further my path towards being a "sot," as Thao calls it. No doubt there will be plenty of celebration at the bar--for the primaries over 1,000 people showed up at this bar (and here I am thinking, just how BIG is this bar anyway?!). And best of all, after the bar I have CLASS. My Australian Culture and Society class, to be exact. And my professor, knowing that we're going out before class, adamantly said yesterday, "Look, I don't care HOW inebriated you are tomorrow... I want you here in class!"

Side note: the alcohol policy in Australia, or New South Wales (NSW) specifically. Here in NSW they have a very tolerant view of alcohol, with the drinking age at 18. Instead of Americans that have strict taboos against teenage drinking, Australians practice a code of "responsibility." And, by extension, the BU Sydney program encourages us to be responsible for our actions, but wants us to have a good (and drunken) time. Pretty cool that they treat us like adults here.

As I alluded to in the previous post, this weekend I spent in neighborhood marketplaces and surrounding beaches. Saturday morning I awoke to join a bunch of friends to travel to Paddington Market located a short bus ride away from Central Station.

Paddington Market

Me Amongst the Market Stalls

The market was typical to any crafts/arts market you might find in the US, with lots of local artists showing off their wares. There were quite some neat items, particularly children's toys (which I was SO close to buying... for my future children?), beautiful dresses, and intricate jewelry. I bought some gifts for those back home, and then ate some Thai food while sitting outside just beyond the market. It was so lovely.

Afterwards, instead of taking the bus back to UniLodge, we walked all the way home through Paddington and passed the edge of Surry Hills and Kings Cross (both neighborhoods in Sydney). We walked all the way down Oxford St., where the locals say the best "CHIC GRUNGE" nightclubs are. Chic grunge, I love it!

We found this immensely amusing on the way back. Lick her. Liquor. Get it?!

We passed Hyde Park (London knock-off, hah), which was this beautiful green park that we leisurely rested in. Overall a peaceful day followed by a trip to Chinatown in the afternoon for some groceries and then a relaxing beer with dinner.

My friends in Sydney's Hyde Park.

Sydney's Chinatown was not exactly as I was expecting. If you're from Boston and reading this, I'm sure you know what the inside of Super 88 looks like. Well, there is NO Sydney equivalent of a Super 88, just incredibly small grocery stores a lá Midwest Suburbia. And although there are more food courts than you can count (like the type outside Super 88), there are few really nice restaurants. I am almost missing Boston Chinatown :( but at the same time I think I am missing the picture for Sydney's Chinatown... I mean... there MUST be some great stores around here somewhere, right?!

Emblematic of Chinatown.

Oh, sidenote again: Since I have no rice cooker I have no means to make or eat THE STAPLE FOOD OF MY DIET. Augh, does this mean I have to make it in a crappy pot like Americans do? This is really "roughin' it," guys. I sort of joke, but in all seriousness what am I going to eat?

Sunday morning after my disappointing attempt to not drink the previous night, we woke up to take the train to Bondi Beach, Sydney's most well-known and CELEBRITY-POPULATED beach. Apparently people from previous years have seen Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts in some of the nicer beach cafés. NO SUCH LUCK GUYS. No hot Australian celebrities for me, sorry, my humblest apologies, will-try-harder-next-time.

Me, right before a dip in the Pacific.

As you can see, it was BEAUTIFUL. At first I got there and was like, "wtf Puerto Rico was so much better (read: less crowded)," but the crowds kind of grew on me and I had a great time in the waves. The waves down under are seriously HUGE compared to those I've encountered elsewhere. Just jumping up and down in the water with the waves exhausted me after 30 minutes, and I spent the rest of the time lying on the beach, reading, chatting and overall having an incredibly sun-filled time.

A better visual of how crowded it was on the beach.

After bumming around on Bondi Beach, we took an hour-long cliff walk along the beach to end up at another two beaches, the Tamarama Beach and Bronte Beach, both of which were beautiful but had strong undertows and not nearly as soft or fine sand as Bondi Beach. From the cliff walks we took some amazing pictures of the beaches from afar:

View of Bondi

View of the Cliffs to the east of Bondi.

View towards Tamarama Beach.

A very cute couple basking in the sun among the cliffs. This country is an entirely romantic place.

Tamarama Beach. Much smaller and more secluded, but still pretty crowded.

Bronte Beach.

We caught the bus from Bronte Beach back to UniLodge to nurse our sunburned bodies. None of my neck, face, or back really got sunburned, but my arms, legs, and breasts got a shade of pink resembling a radish. (No I was not topless sunbathing, my swimsuit just has less-than-desirable coverage.) Oh, and only AFTER I get back does anyone tell me that Australia lacks the natural protection of... the Ozone. Apparently the ozone is ridiculously thin here, and pretty much 80% of Australians get skin cancer at some point in their lives, with another percentage of that population getting MULTIPLE skin cancers. Ok, cool, I say. Gonna make my roommate check me using the ABCs (asymmetry, border, color).

Long story short, never again am I going to spend six consecutive hours outside in the Australian sun. Ok, who am I kidding? I'm going back this weekend.

I'll stop the post here since I've got to run, but next time I'll be sure to catch you all up on my two classes that just started on Monday: The Australian Wine Industry and Australian Culture and Society.

Love and Sunburns,
Xu

plane rides, orientation, the harbour, oh my!

Hi all,

It's still early in the game but I already feel like I've neglected people back home! Where are Xu's facebook pictures, you rave. Where are Xu's personalized emails that cover her amazing adventures?! Well, all of that is complicated by the fact that installing internet in the room costs approx. $40AUD/month for the most basic service (and goes up to $150AUD/mo. for better service), and that the only other place for free internet is the BU Sydney Centre which is only three blocks away but not open during the weekends. So.
I realize that this is my first real post since I arrived here Wednesday, and I have about five day's worth of events to catch you up on----bear with me.

I left the house at 7:30AM on Monday (central time), but didn't arrive in Sydney until around 3PM on Tuesday (still central time). So more than THIRTY-SIX HOURS in transit from Kansas City to Denver, from Denver to San Fran, from San Fran to Auckland, and finally from Auckland to Sydney.

My Departure from Home

What's more, by the time we got to Sydney it was their Wednesday. Somehow, crossing the International Date Line, we lost an entire day--there it went, sucked into some oblivion regulated by mathematical calculations and cosmic logic beyond me.

The Air New Zealand flight was top-class and there were more than 100 movies to choose from (now that's what I call awesome.) It was around a 12.5 hour flight just to Auckland, and during that time I managed to watch "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (did not like it, would not recommend unless you dig predictable emo wanderings around NYC) and "3:10 to Youma" (loved it, would recommend if you think Westerns kick butt, which they do). I only managed to catch a few hours of sleep on the flight since the flight attendants came around every few hours with rather decent airplane food, and best of all, free alcohol! I did not know that this was the case for many international flights, despite having taken them to China every other summer, but while flying over international waters, everyone can drink! And unlike the crappy American airline variety, there's no five buck charge for alcohol--it's all free and for the taking. There were cocktails, shots, wine (red and white), and New Zealand beers to be had. When I couldn't decide which beer I wanted with my meal, the male flight attendant laughed and pushed both on me, saying, "Try them both, and let me know what you think!!!" From that moment I knew I would like the people here. (Of course, in a display of light-weightedness, I only managed to drink about 1/3 of just one can, leaving the rest to my very eager seatmate.)

There was a short stopover in Auckland before another 3.5 hour flight to Sydney, and once we got there we were all so relieved (and jetlagged). We arrived around lunch time in Sydney, dropped off our stuff, grabbed some food, and headed off to an entire day's worth of orientation activities planned for us for the SOLE PURPOSE of keeping us awake and forcing us to get over our jetlag quicker. Boy, that afternoon there were probably many, many, many important things said about safety measures, school schedules, etc.... but I missed all of them in my DELIRIOUS HAZE of jetlag. Later that night we had a welcome barbecue dinner on the rooftop of our hotel/dorm, and I could barely appreciate the gorgeous views because I was so tired.

The gorgeous view atop the roof. Sorry! The sun was setting so it's dark!

The hotel/dorm we're staying in is called UniLodge, and it is swank. I share a room with one other girl, and we have a small living room, sink, bathroom, desk, sofa, dining table, and TV downstairs, while the two beds and dressers are upstairs. When I say "upstairs/downstairs" you are probably thinking that there are actually stairs. Well, there are stairs, but it's a very very scary, narrow spiral staircase from the bottom floor to the loft sleeping area. I'm not sure that those descriptions make sense, but needless to say it is DIFFICULT getting from upstairs to downstairs without the fear of falling. One of the girls in my program, Marie, insists on walking down the stairs backwards for fear that she's too top-heavy and will fall forward (Marie is v. busty, you know). The digs here are more like a hotel room than a dorm, evidenced by the people who check in downstairs for only a few days at a time. There are kitchens on each floor, and, sidnote: last night me and a group of friends tried to cook without much in the way of pots, pans, etc. Can you say, epic fail?

So, Wednesday passed, and Thursday was met with more orientation sessions and a pizza party at night. After the pizza, a group of friends and I walked a short distance over to University of Sydney, which looks like a mix of Hogwarts and Princeton. It. Was. Gorgeous. So long, Boston University, here I come Sydney Uni! For one thing, they actually have a campus (so unimaginable to BU students). For another thing, it blows any American college campus out of the water. What's more, apparently college is practically FREE for everyone here. Well, there's a nominal charge for tuition, but compared to 40 thou a year I would say nominal is good.

Sydney Uni.

During the daytime on Friday there was more orientation and exploration of our immediate environment. UniLodge and the BU Sydney Centre (from here on out affectionately abbreviated "BUSC") are very close to Broadway Shopping Centre, which is this entirely huge mall/grocery store complex that houses fresh produce on the very bottom floor, and Calvin Klein and fcuk. on the very top floor. Also, there's a Target and a Kmart inside. A little sad that Australia just bent over and let American superstores like that come in. But, it happens.

On the way to downtown Sydney; Broadway Street.

Friday night we walked thirty minutes to Cockle Bay and boarded an afternoon harbour cruise from Darling Harbour as part of the orientation finale for the BU abroad program. On the cruise we saw many of the most famous sights of Sydney, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Rocks, and of course, the Sydney Opera House. I'm not sure how I can explain the magic of the harbour cruise with enough wordage to paint you an accurate picture of the wonder I felt, but I'll try. We watched the sunset against the Sydney Opera House, and it was divine.

Sydney Opera House

From all the pictures, I imagined the Opera House to be this HUMONGOUS piece of architecture, but from the water it looked quite modest. I have yet to see it from land, where I'm sure it will dwarf me, but from the water it appeared entirely humble and tranquil. Only at sunset was I blinded by how intensely magnificent the structure looked. Even though the sun was setting, there were still hundreds upon hundreds of tiny sailboats in the harbour area, and plenty of gulls flying above. Several couples were taking wedding pictures on the garden-laden peninsulas that jutted out into the harbour waters, and from the boat we could see people climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge (quite a feat I am told).

Sydney Harbour Bridge in the distance. This picture does it no justice: it is MASSIVE. My hair sucks in this picture.

After staying up on the top deck for nearly an hour and getting chilly from the ocean breezes, we shivered our way downstairs to gorge ourselves on free food, including these delicious sweet potatoes and very pleasing baguettes. The cruise consisted of entirely students in the BU Sydney Program, which numbers at 125, and I can only imagine how much money the program paid to take all of us on this 3-hour long cruise. Plus, we got FREE DRINKS on the cruise, absolutely making my day (and my next headache-filled morning). I downed around three glasses of champagne, which is more than I have drank in one sitting since probably freshman year of college. Needless to say, by the time I deboarded the ship I was a little woozy in the head. Augh, lightweight!

This is after my FIRST glass of wine. Hence the "one."

It didn't help that afterwards we went bar-hopping around the Darling Harbour area, or that we downed $8AUD shots like we were three times our size. We went to Bungalow 8, The Loft, and Cargo Bar, three of the biggest and rowdiest bars/clubs on the waterfront.

So: explanation for this photo. At The Loft there were these girls who were part of an organization petitioning against stricter bar rules, such as lockouts after 2AM and 10 minute timeouts every hour , etc. You can find out more about it here: DON'T PUNISH US. Anyhow, long story short I took a picture with one of their signs as part of the protest, and eventually I think I'll make it to the photo gallery.

Me and the girls at Bungalow 8.

Me, after second round of drinks. Hence the "two."

My favorite of the bars was Bungalow 8 because it was immensely relaxed and quiet enough for conversation, and my least favorite was Cargo Bar, where a bunch of Americans (myself included) danced awkwardly to INCREDIBLY LOUD pop hits of JT, Britney, and the Australian Kylie Minogue. Of course, all the Australians stood at the sidelines watching us make fools of ourselves, and pretty soon thereafter I joined the sidelines to watch my American buddies CONTINUE make fools of themselves. Somehow we managed to catch a cab home, and believe you me, a crappy twin bed never felt better to me than that night when I got back to my room.

I think I'll leave it at that for now. Saturday and Sunday we went to the markets and Bondi Beach, respectively, but there's too much to say on those trips and probably not enough space left in the post. I'll be sure to write back soon (say, tomorrow or the day after).

Til then, with much love from Down Under,
Xu