Love Me

WARNING: Beast of a blog ahead….

Characters: Devin, Elyse, Cameron, Caitlin, Lindsey, Patrick (Lindsey’s brother), Ned (Cameron’s surprise) and me…duh

Friday…

…started with a train ride to Sydney to board the 9:50 PM flight to Melbourne. Our flight got in at 11 something and we stumbled off the tiny jet plane into the smallest airport that I have ever seen in my life. A bus drove us the 45 minutes to our hostel, which I mistakenly assumed was from another planet. I guess they call it the Discovery Hostel for a reason because we definitely discovered some new things: rotten smells, yellow and brown stained pillows, fights that you can hear through the walls, and 'men' who cake on the makeup. But at 1:30 in the morning when your day started at 5:15, you just are thankful for a bed.

Saturday…

…We picked up the rental cars in the morning and began our journey through Melbourne to begin our trek down Great Ocean Road and see the sights. Boy, were we in for a drive! Devin had mapped out a few mandatory stops on the way and we drove that coastline like Jeff Gordon on happy pills. We affectionately named our cars Rape Dust (like ruffee) and Bloody Knuckles. Don’t laugh, Lindsey and Cameron are really creative.

This entire day was epic but I’ll try to stick to the good stories…

We stopped for lunch in Lorne and got some amazing smoothies and burgers and such…I almost ate at this place called The Bottle of Milk so I could order things off the menu like “What Everybody Gets,” “Bingo Bango,” ‘Hell Yeah,” or “Italian Stallion.” Creativity gets me every time. Then we happened upon a little park with in ground trampolines. Like a little kid of Christmas, I raced down there, slipped my shoes off, and bounced down the line of 5 trampolines as quick as my little legs would allow. After knocking several children over, (just go with it, it makes the story better) the loudspeaker comes on and a voice from heaven (or hell) says “You’re not supposed to be doing that. You have to pay for these, you know!” So I scampered away, obviously delighted with myself.

We managed to see the lighthouse and met the tour guide who recommended that we drive up Grey River Road and see the koalas that chill out in the trees up there. Supposedly they were full of them. Like the tourists we are, we bee lined for that and weren’t disappointed. Well, not that we saw a bunch of them, but we saw five or six. But the highlight of the trip was unexpected: on our way back to Great Ocean Road from the koalas, we saw a huge flock of parrots all over these four or five people. Of course we stopped and we quickly figured out that all it takes is a few peanuts for these friendly (but greedy) little guys to perch all over you.

We spent a good amount of time here, laughing at Lindsey dancing with birds clinging to her hair and Patrick, who looked like a man of the birds. Go figure, they loved him. Ten minutes later (or an hour…time flew!.....sorry, that was a really corny joke) we were on the road again.

It was really easy to get distracted by all of the places we saw along the way to stop at so we were making slower timing than we had planned. Our main goal was to reach the Twelve Apostles before the sun went down so we pushed for that. Make that Eleven...one of them fell. Wow. That was the best decision we made the entire trip. We made it just in time for sunset and were rewarded with some of the most spectacular displays of God’s glory that I have seen since I was in Greece last summer. It was one of those places that you just stand there and are overwhelmed by how tiny you are. Here is one of our 50 billion amazing pictures of those apostles taken by one of the photographically-gifted girls on our trip...After the Twelve Apostles, we set off for our hostel in the far away city of Port Fairy. We made excellent timing, so we got in around 8 and had a nice early sleep. We actually had a little cottage-like thing with bunk beds and a king bed. It was delightful and we laughed at our pictures and marveled at all of the breathtaking things we had experienced. Caitlin and Elyse provided late night entertainment with their sleep-talking conversations and we awoke ready for another blissful day in paradise.

Sunday…

…Paradise ran away from us. Clouds and rain found us. Luckily, nothing was going to damper our spirits! Well, several things tried to get Devin, but we got back up, wiped off our grubby selves and got right back on adventurer’s avenue. Want to hear about Devin’s misfortunes? Of course you do. Hmm…allergy-stricken eyes in the hostel, toe stubbed open at home, leaf cuts, and THEN….at the Grotto, we were standing on this overpass that looked down into mirror pools of turquoise water. Devin was having fun throwing rocks into them but just decided that rocks weren’t good enough so she decided to send her nice Nikon camera on a little trip. Patrick retrieved it and miraculously enough, the memory card is still fully loaded! Jesus likes to insert beauty into sadness. It’s refreshing. So two seconds of tears later, we were on our way to the Blowhole, Thunder Cave, and Sherbrooke River. Cameron was sweet enough to capture the moment of Devin needing a shoulder to cry on. This is real life...

Umm…yeah. That’s all I can say. I really can’t think of any way to describe the awesomeness. The ocean waves crashed with such an intensity, you could feel it resounding in your soul.

Then we found a little hole in the ground. Devin wanted to know if it was mud, quicksand, or rock so she asked me to test it out for her. Being as brilliant as I am, I jumped on the opportunity to ‘explore.’ I found out pretty quick that it was a puddle of sucky mud. It was actually like ice skating on mud. I like to say that I was just saving Devin from another mishap.

Back in the car we went and finished the drive back to Melbourne. Hours of windy roads, dramamine, and sing-a-longs later we parked it at Victoria Hall Hostel in the heart of the city... seemingly sketchy on the outside but wickedly cool on the inside. The group went to the casinos and skytower while I sat in our room like a good little student and worked on my final paper. Lame, but the end is in sight! Classes finished last week and we are busy turning in our final papers and taking final exams.

Monday…

…rise and shine! Cameron, Caitlin, and Lindsey woke up at the buttcrack of dawn (5:15) to take Elyse to the airport to catch her flight home. She had a final exam in the afternoon so she had to leave early. Then we drove to Brighton Beach to see the colorful little shacks that litter the beach. We took way too many pictures and even found a Clemson one. We took the compulsory Clemson flag picture with it and called it a day. We had to be back to catch the bus to the airport at 1:30 PM so we drove back to the city, grabbed lunch at a little café, turned Rapedust and Bloody Knuckles into the ‘authorities,’ and waved goodbye to the beautiful city of Melbourne. Really, it is such a gorgeous city…Devin is already planning her return trip.

Well, congratulations for powering through that mini-novel! We are now sitting on the train from Sydney back to Newcastle, reflecting on the weekend’s happenings and preparing to make it through one last week of school. Wait, did I say sitting? I mean dancing, singing, and marching through the train to Caitlin's favorite: Justin Bieber. What is this world coming to?

Brandi, our roommate, left for home today and we can’t believe it’s already June. Our group of seven is now six…reality is setting in. Our time here is dwindling …but we can’t wait to see all of you!

For the Curious...

Ok, ok. I know I've been slack on updating this. (thank you, Will Phil) Is being busy a good excuse? I didn't think so either but I thought it would be worth a try because that's the only reason I can think of. Hmmm...where to even begin?

We have been crazy over here with tons of Americans coming to visit. Randi Shamis came and stayed with us and after she left, Rebecca Morris got here with David. Oh yeah, and then Thomas and Rob. It's been so much fun getting to catch up with friends from Clemson and getting to show them a little bit of what life here is like. We took them to some of our favorite restaurants, had family dinner nights, played multiple games of ninja warrior, and stayed up way too late talking and laughing about life.

Last week we had the Rooney family and the Carman family over for dinner as a way to say "thank you" for all of the things they have done for us. If you don't remember, the Rooney's have had our entire clan over for dinner twice and the Carman's lent us their car for the first 3 months that we were here. We loaded up on veggie crates and decided to whip up something mean for these amazing people. Just so you know, this was no little feat. The Rooney's have five kids and the Carman's have four. Four boys, that is. So I'm sure you can understand the level of hype surrounding this feast for 26. It was a loaded day...Devin started in the kitchen at 1:00 PM and as soon as I got off work, I came home to join. Several hours later, the chicken and sauteed veggie skewers, pasta salad, homemade guacamole and salsa, bread, and tomato/cucumber/feta/red wine vinegar salad were done. It was interesting trying to squeeze so many people into our dining area but we managed. After dinner and some of the Sally and Clare Rooney's pavlova (a-ma-zing!) we played Signs and Psychologist. I can't even begin to explain how much we loves games, as I'm sure you may have figured out. Yeah....we love them.

We also managed a day trip to Sydney last week. A few of the group headed to Circular Quay to welcome back Jessica Watson from her 7 month sailing trip. If you didn't hear about it, it was a massive celebration because this 16 year old girl travelled all by herself for that entire time and she was just getting back. They had a highly publicized welcome back party thing that a bunch of our group attended. I didn't actually go. I spent my day wandering around Sydney by myself, which was actually really fun. It was my first time in a big city all by my lonesome getting to do whatever on earth I wanted. I treated myself to some of the best coffee I've ever had and tried really hard not to get lost. It was hard since I had forgotten my map. But news for everyone: I think **fingers crossed** that I know my way around Sydney. It's a big claim, I know. But really...I'm feeling pretty proud of myself right now. :)

In other big news, I just did my last speech for communications! And...drumroll, please...it was a success! God has been doing amazing things in my life and I can't help but share with the world how great He is. I can't imagine that I would have learned all of the difficult, wonderful, miraculous, important life lessons that I have learned if I would not have come halfway across the world. Not that He couldn't have taught me all these things over there. It's just that I think I needed to be moved so that I could pay better attention. So anyways....score one more for the Lord and I just thought I'd give you another reason to praise Him. :)

Lindsey is going to kill me for writing this...but she's pretty good at dancing. You should probably ask her to shadow dance for you sometime. Just throwing that out there...

The weather is definitely cooling off to where we have to wear jeans and jackets pretty much everyday. My window is stuck open in my room, so I spend a lot of time shivering at night. So one day, Lindsey and I got the brilliant idea to do a little rearranging. We moved my bed into Cameron and Caitlin's room, and then hers. So now we have our own little Madeleine room. Four little beds, all in a row. And Elyse (Miss Clavelle) comes and tucks us in at night. Just kidding. Devin sneaks in there with us sometimes and we all just share. Oh, and then we threw Reba in there too. 6 girls in 4 twin beds? Oh yes, the giggling goes on all night.

So I'm sure I'm missing about a million things that are worth hearing about but I'm just a little too scatterbrained right now to cover it all. We are leaving for Melbourne on Friday for the weekend. I'm sure we will actually blog about it and you will hear about all of the grand adventures of the girls of 62 Church Street, plus Patrick. Oh yeah, Lindsey's brother is visiting right now. So yep, Devin, Lindsey, Cameron, Caitlin, Elyse, me, and Patrick. He's a lucky guy haha....

Talk to you later!

Whirlwind Weekend in Sydney...

Well helllllllooo everybody! (There was a very specific way I just said that…wish you could have heard it J) It’s been a while since I have endeavored to whip up some fantastically- spun narrative of our lives… you have now been updated on Lindsey’s trip to New Zealand so I’m going to entertain (or bore) you with my latest trip to Sydney. Hmm, where to begin…

Brandi and I caught the morning train to Sydney for $3.90. Yes, that’s right. We paid $7.80 total to go to Sydney. Beat that! So we had a lovely 2.5 hour train ride and of course took the opportunity to hit up Paddy’s Market and some other little places because like usual, we brought the rain with us. It kindly cleared up as soon as we were ready to quit shopping and we checked into the X Base Hostel and met our grumpy roommate. Well sort of…she didn’t actually say anything to us but I could tell she loved that we said hi to her.

We always manage to meet the most interesting people in Sydney. This trip was no exception. As the directionally impaired person I am, I immediately whipped out my map to find where we were and were bombarded by this man begging to help us find wherever it is we wanted to go. After wiping the apple off our clothes that he had spewed all over us in his excitement, we hightailed it away from him as quickly as our little overloaded stems could handle. We also found ourselves an older man who wanted to know who the authority gods were of the city. He didn't know because he was from the planet Terrafina. We graciously explained that we didn't know, we were foreigners too. Then he wanted to know if something was funny because Brandi was smirking. I told him that no, nothing was funny. She was just happy. That made him angry because he informed us that he was unhappy. When we finally asked him to leave us alone so we could eat our breakfast, he muttered to us how we should enjoy our marriages because he was unhappily single. Yeah, made a lot of sense to us too. Ooohh the personalities you meet....

Sydney is overflowing with the coolest little streets and alleys and views. Every time we go we find another little hole in the wall or something that should be featured on Australia’s Best Kept Secrets. That probably doesn’t even exist, but it should. I volunteer to write it. Anyways, we soaked it all in on Friday and then happily ran into our friends who were busking on the street corner again. Needless to say, every time we run into buskers we end up spending hours getting caught up in the music. It was a lively Friday night, so there was a lot of people getting involved and somehow Brandi and I found ourselves on the street corner of George and Liverpool being swung around by some very drunk Nepalese guys. I think they had fun. (For anyone who is concerned, we weren’t two girls unattended in the big city…we had Rob with us J) He cheerfully redirected them to some Asian girls who ‘looked like they wanted to dance.’ They clearly didn’t but it did the trick. At least it did for about forty-five seconds or so. Even with their antics, we had the most fun night that we have ever had in Sydney. It was like one big giant sing-a-long. Rob got recruited to play a few songs with them on the drums and Brandi and I took advantage of the chance to record a little clip. I tried to embed it on this blog but it didn't work out for me. Oh and I even had my busking debut…I played the drumsticks (yep, just the sticks) and was the unmicrophoned back-up singer. Clearly I brought a lot to the table with that one…

The next day, I managed to go see the world’s highest grossing film of all time on the world’s largest IMAX screen!! (Avatar)….I went by myself because I had bought my ticket ahead of time and it sold out since it was the last showing ever at that IMAX. That was such an experience. Especially with the lady next to me holding her crying daughter, texting, overlapping my arm with hers, and talking: YES, talking on her mobile the entire time. It was obnoxious, but I managed to love the movie anyhow. Brandi finished our souvenir shopping for her family and friends and we met back up at Darling Harbour to continue our adventures. I went to the massive Apple store so they could finally check out my broken microphone on my laptop. It’s still broken. Looks like I’m still on silent Skype mode…

We headed to the train station at around 6:15 Saturday night and realized that the train didn’t come until 7:15 so we headed back down the streets to find ourselves a little snack. How unsurprising that we ended up back at the busking site. Taking the 7:15 turned into the 8:15, which turned into the 9:15, which ended up with us taking the 11:15. Luckily, (heavy sarcasm) the footy game had just finished so we were on a packed train, which causes some delays. Our train arrived in Newcastle at 2:30 in the morning and we stumbled back home and crashed into our not-so-comfy beds that managed to feel like heaven for once. As exhausted as we are/were (we’re still recovering) that whirlwind weekend in Sydney was ridiculously amazing! J