The Last Supper

As you may know, I fly out of the Sydney airport at 10 a.m. tomorrow, Sydney time. I will arrive at LAX around 6ish in the morning west coast time, and at PDX at 2:55 in the afternoon! I have had that nervous butterflies in the stomach feeling allll day. I'm sad to leave, but excited to be home and start my official summer break. It's definitely bittersweet.

Basically, the last few days have been spent doing things for the last time. On Wednesday we went into the city one last time. I will NOT miss the train. We took pictures of the city, went to the Opera House, and did some last minute souvenir shopping. T'was grand.

Goodbye, city!

Packing and clearing out my room has been a process...a yet to be completed process...and as I'm writing this I have 12.5 hours until the shuttle picks me up for the airport. I'm really not looking forward to that 13-hour flight...or Customs in LA...or the 7 hours I get to spend in LAX.

Today I had to say goodbye to my friend Sara, who I met on my very first day here. She was in the same study abroad program as me, and we stayed in the same room at the hostel for orientation. I was not too happy about that. This evening, Abby and I went on a dinner date...and it basically actually turned out to be a date. First of all, we ordered the same thing--for dinner and dessert. She poured my water for me and ordered dinner for me. And I ordered dessert for both of us. So yeah, date.

We plan on staying up alllll night so we can sleep on our flights tomorrow and try to beat the horrendous jet lag that I expect to have. Except it is 6:38 p.m. and I feel like I could fall asleep standing up at this point. I don't know what's happening.

It's been an emotional roller coaster the past few days. It's hard to see this, the greatest experience of my life to date, come to an end. I can't believe I almost didn't study abroad. I am so thankful that I was able to and that I took advantage of it. But now it is time to come home to my family and friends, and I can't wait to see alllll of you!

Melbourne!

After staying up all night the night before our departure to Melbourne, we left the Village at about 4:30 a.m., caught a train at 5ish, and our plane left at 7. We arrived at this little tiny airport in the middle of nowhere (there are two airports in Melbourne, one near the city, and Avalon...way far away). We took a bus to the city and that took about an hour. Check-in time at our hotel wasn't until 2 p.m., but luckily when we went there at 10:30 they happened to have one room ready for us.

After dropping off our bags, we went out to explore the city. We went to the art museum, walked along the river and took our first pictures. Because Abby and I stayed up all night, we were ready to go back to the room by like 2. Sara decided to walk around the city more. Abby and I watched some episodes of Boy Meets World on my computer but eventually couldn't keep our eyes open. Soo, we took a nap for about an hour until Sara got back at 4ish. We ended up going to sleep at 8 that night...and woke up at 8 the next day.

And that brings us to our bike tour. We had booked a 4-hour bike tour of Melbourne from 10-2 on Friday. We got there early and sat around, and then all of a sudden this tall, Australian man comes over to us. We thought he was on the tour with us, but it turns out he was our tour guide, and we were the only three on the tour. The beautiful tour guide was named Ross, and we were smitten with him. You know how they say, "It's like riding a bike, you never forget"? Well you don't forget, but if you're me, you really suck at it after being out of practice for a few years. It also hurts the next day.

Me being out of my element.

So back to the important thing:  Ross. We were really curious how old he was...we guessed around 26 or 27. At the lunch part of the tour at Queen Victoria Market, Ross was buying us food, and I was literally saying, "He's soooo beautiful" and then Abby and Sara informed me that he was right behind me. So, he may or may not have heard me. Oh wellz. While we were all eating lunch, he asked how old we were, so we pounced and Abby asked how old he was. "I'm 30." And then 20 seconds of painful awkward silence. Wow. If you know who Ryan Kwanten is, (he's an Australian actor on True Blood and some other things) Ross reminds me of him. After our terribly awkward lingering goodbye from Ross, we walked back to our hotel and got ready.

Friday night was our scheduled go-out-and-get-drunk-in-a-bar night. We ended up leaving for dinner at like 5...we're old ladies, it's fine. We were going to go to a place with tapas, but we got there and they all had weird things in them. Like anchovies and sheep's milk cheese. So we just found a place and got sandwiches, and I started off my drinking with white wine at dinner. After dinner we had to find a bar. There were a bunch of the trendy, young bars that were super packed with the $15 drinks and such...not my scene. We found an Irish pub full of 60-year-old men...apparently more our scene. We found a table and ordered drinks. We got there at about 7. At 9, a band started playing. After their first song, no one was clapping and they said something about it, so of course we couldn't resist. After that, we clapped louder than anyone after every song. At one point they said they were going to give us free drink coupons because we were such a wonderful table. I didn't think they were actually going to, but...

FREE DRINKS YAAAAAAY

They also asked if anyone had any requests, but they specifically asked us first. We told them we had to think about it, and we almost requested Don't Stop Believin', but then I realized there was only one song we could request...DOWN UNDER. I heard it on my first night out in Australia and I figured we should end on the same note. I'm really eloquent though, so here's how I worded our request:  "Down Under...is that what it's called?" I didn't want to be wrong... Anyway, they performed it and it was glorious. And before we left, we got a picture with them.

BFF

Saturday we had free. We went to the home of the Australian Open and walked around, and then we went to the Queen Victoria Market (it reminded me of Pike Place, for all you Seattle-ites) and met a girl named Michelle from our program who was going to uni in Melbourne. After lunch, we shopped for a looong time. I finally found some new sunglasses since I cracked mine a while back. We got dinner near our hotel and then went back for the night.

Sunday was the GREAT OCEAN ROAD day tour! We were hoping we'd have another hot tour guide, so when we were picked up from the hotel and met Brad, we all decided 'we could work with that.' He was no Ross, though. We later found out he smoked and then it was over. He was 29. Enough about that. Our first stop on the Great Ocean Road was Bells Beach. We stopped again in a little town for coffee and biscuits (aka cookies). We went to the Great Ocean Road arch and then THE BEST PART.

OMG BIRDS!

Yeah, basically I'm a crazy bird lady (penguins are my favorite animal, and pelicans are up there too) and this made me so happy. We also saw a wild koala, but that's old news, since Sara and I saw a wild koala that actually wasn't up in a tree sleeping, and it was in an area where it's really rare to see them. Next we went on a rainforest walk, and after that to the Twelve Apostles, which looks like this:

Annnnd then we went to the Gorge (that I don't remember the name of). I do know it was named after a ship that wrecked there. One deckhand survived and he heard a woman screaming so he went back out into the sea and saved her and they went back to the Gorge. Then he had to climb up and get help. That's the short version.

On Monday, our last full day, we went to Old Melbourne Gaol, which is a prison from way back when. It's where Ned Kelly, who is infamous in Australia, was hanged. It was really interesting, and kind of creepy. Then we went on to the Melbourne Museum, which, as we learned from Beautiful Ross, had a really popular attraction...a stuffed racehorse. Phar Lap (which means lightning) was an Australian racehorse. After winning like...7854302 races, he was sent to the States to compete in a race, which he won after being behind most of the race. He mysteriously died shortly after, and it is thought that the American mafia had something to do with it. So some famous New York taxidermists stuffed Phar Lap as a gift to Australia. Their names were the Jonas Brothers. No joke. When Ross told us we thought he was joking...I definitely laughed. There was other stuff in the museum too, obviously...but that was the most interesting story I had.

On our last (short) day, we got breakfast and took the free tram that circles the city to do some last sightseeing. I was happy to get back 'home' to my own bed and all that. I have my only final during finals period tomorrow... Geology. 45% of my grade. I hate everything. BUT 10 days until AMMURICA.

My ears are ringing.

So I've had a pretty busy week this week, all y'all.

Monday I went to a rugby game with my program. It was the Sydney Roosters vs. the Newcastle Bulldogs. I was pretty happy I got to root for (in Australian slang, 'root for' means something inappropriate, but I can't change habit) the wuss mascot. Anyway, in the end they were losing by quite a large margin, which is fine. We left early to beat the crowds and such. I also thought Monday was going to be my last day working at Sumo Salad, but I ended up taking a shift on Friday.

On Tuesday, Abby and I got our hurr did. While we were waiting around for our appointments, Abby asked if we could go look at hair dye for her, and I obviously didn't want to be left out...soo we ended up dyeing our hair later that day. Between haircuts and hair dyeing, we went in to the city for Pancakes on the Rocks (even though we had just been there about a week ago) and then to Vivid Sydney. Vivid Sydney is this festival thing going on where they project 3D images onto the Opera House and the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was cool to see. I would post pictures, but the photo uploader on this blog post is being a bitch, so it won't work. Awesome.

Wednesday was the farewell dinner for our program. We went to a place called La Cita in Darling Harbour. Katie and I shared a pitcher of sangria and I got nice and tipsy while I waited for my food to come out. I GOT FAJITAS. So good. I didn't think I would have those until I was back in the States. There was also a slideshow with pictures from the semester. I sent in the most embarrassing pictures I had of my friends and I.

Thursday I had a presentation, which was 25% of my grade for Aboriginal Studies. I was so annoyed that I had that happening the same week that all of this other stuff was going on, but it gets better (worse). I also had a paper due for Aboriginal Studies on Friday. It was 40% of my grade. 65% of my grade for one class down in two days. Anyway, I'm done with that class now, for good.

Friday was the day I've been waiting for for a month and a half (or 10 years, if we're gonna be real about it). S CLUB IN CONCERT! It was fantastic. It was actually more like S Club 3 (Jo, Bradley, and Paul) than S Club 7, but it was still amazing. The opening act was Big Brovaz, which is some 90s rap-ish group from the UK? Everyone else at the concert seemed to know who they were, but Abby and I had no idea what was going on. OH AND WE ALMOST GOT A PICTURE WITH BRADLEY! We were sooo close to him, and he took a picture with these girls right next to us so we tried to be next...buuut he left. So upsetting. Oh and about the title...my ears are definitely still ringing. We were standing awfully close to where the speakers were...the consequences are not pleasant.

I probably won't blog again for a few weeks because my life is going to switch back to uneventful again, until my trip to Melbourne (June 14th-19th). Cheers!