Easter in Sydney

Happy Easter!

To kick off our fall break aka spring break aka Easter holidays, we woke up at the crack of dawn (5:30) to catch a train to Sydney. I think we looked pretty good, considering the hour...

Three hours later, we hopped off at Central station and lugged all of our bags to the Sydney Entertainment Centre for Hillsong’s Good Friday morning service. It was wonderful, of course, and then we made the fifteen minute trek to the X Base Hostel, where we were split up into two rooms. Just in case we forgot anything, there were (literally) 8 outdoor stores up and down the street of X Base. Lindsey, Cameron, and I got lucky enough to share a room with an almost naked 70 year old German man and two 23 year old English guys. We stayed up pretty late talking about where we were traveling, where we have been, and different cultures. It was my first hostel experience and I really liked it! Lindsey had to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to catch her plane to New Zealand and German man had to wake up at 5:00 to catch his flight home, so there wasn’t much sleeping in our room.

That night we all went to see a movie and on our way back, Elyse and I happened to run into our friends Rob and Lauren busking on the street. Confused? That means that they were playing music on the streets. It was so random that we ran into them and along with about fifty other people, we stood around and watched them play all of our favorites: Coldplay, Tom Petty, Oasis... you name it, they played it. What a little fun surprise that was...
We spent Saturday walking around Sydney and going to the Opera House. I could not believe how massive it was! We didn’t get to go in though because they have it all locked up unless you want to pay lots of money. Shocking. Fortunately, we were too preoccupied with the spectacular views of the Harbour Bridge and sweet trees surrounding it to notice too much. But good news, everybody! We got to touch it :) Here are our super excited faces!

Then we hurried back so that Devin, Caitlin, and Cameron could catch the shuttle to the airport for their flight. They are spending all week in New Zealand with Trenton and Chris driving a campervan around and exploring. I’m sure Lindsey will update you when she gets back. In the meantime, Brandi came up to Sydney to hang out with Elyse and I for the rest of the weekend. She and I even got to share a little twin mattress on the top of a bunkbed due to overcrowding at the inn...I mean hostel.

Saturday night, Rob took us to The Shark Hotel for a buffet dinner, which was really awesome. It was followed by the most interesting dessert restaurant I have ever experienced. Imagine an Asian hole-in-the-wall that is up two flights of dark stairs. You sit down, order a game off of a menu (we chose Jenga) and order some sort of ice cream or pie. For entertainment, Asian music videos are playing on tv screens around the place. To anybody who wants to open a business, I recommend doing that. I wish so badly that we had somewhere like that in Clemson! Oh, the hours of endless fun I could have...

For Easter Sunday, we went to Hillsong in the morning. The service was so much different than anything I have ever seen. On a big screen, we saw short little sermons from pastors across the four campuses. It is always good to be with a body of believers and in the Lord’s house. I love how you can travel across the world and still feel at home.We spent the afternoon walking around Sydney some more, and then headed back to Hillsong for the Film and Arts Festival. The art here was captivating…I found myself wandering off and just getting drawn in to different pieces of art that were all in some way related to our faith.

After this, Brandi, Elyse, and I made it back to the train to make our way back home. Several question games, never have I evers, and songs later, we made it back to our home where we crashed pretty fast. What a weekend! Sydney is so much fun. It’s kind of like New York except cleaner and there is less worthless junk sitting around. It easily makes one of my top five favorite cities to visit. Here is our "happy to be in Sydney" faces. Not really, but I had to come up with some excuse for my ridiculously happy face.On the schedule for this week: Blackbutt Reserve for koala and kangaroo sighting/petting/holding. Yay!