I did it!

So, due to a crazy mix-up, I'm having to fully move out of my place during the two weeks I'm home for the holidays and then either move back in or move into another one of their apartments. And I only found this out on Monday, so it has been my huge burden of the week ("shoot, I wouldn't have bought that huge box of cereal a few days ago if I'd known I'd have to either throw it away or stuff it in a bag!") There are a lot of things that I know I will ultimately end up throwing away before I move back to Bermuda, but that I still need while I'm here, and I am pretty opposed to the idea of throwing something away only to buy the exact same thing two weeks later, so it's been tough squeezing everything - the apartment place is storing stuff for me (and I asked "is it OK if stuff is in random plastic bags and stuff instead of packed away neatly in suitcases?") and I've managed to get everything I'm leaving behind into one ginormous-busting-at-the-seams suitcase, a backpack, and three shopping bags. I did it! With a little over half an hour to spare, wooo!

And I think this was a pretty good test for how my packing will go when I head back for good: as long as I don't go on a major shopping spree between now and then, totally doable, if I consider the stuff I will throw away and also the fact that my suitcase I'm taking home for Christmas will likely come back mostly empty once I leave all the Christmas presents and winter clothes at home!

I'm on my way, folks. See most of you soon!

To make up for not posting in awhile, here are some cute, fuzzy animals

OK, well I was on the phone with my parents earlier, and my dad called me out for not blogging in forever, and I have been thinking about this and how I never did the rest of my parents’ visit here including the zoo visit with fun pictures, so here I am, even though I’m back on my MBA study schedule and I should be writing a homework assignment if I'm writing anything!

Also, I don’t have too many stories to report from the last few weeks, so it’s pretty fitting that my return post is about stuff from about a month ago.

So, once we were back from New Zealand, we did two day trips before my parents had to go back home: one to Hunter Valley wine country, and one to Blue Mountains, which had the stop at the zoo. I have pretty pictures from Blue Mountains, but this will focus on the zoo because animals are fun and cute. Except for crocodiles, so I won’t be posting that picture. He was more scary than cute. And maybe you’ll get the Blue Mountains photos next month if I finally get around to another blog post!

Also: I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve had photos of me here instead of just scenery, and all I have to say about that is: I’ve been complaining that it’s been raining too much for me to get my reverse-summer-tan, but looking back at me a month ago, I think I'm noticeably darker now, wooo!

Koala:

He was the most active koala we saw, sitting eating eucalyptus. The rest were just very sleepy:

And check out this dude! I love him:

And this one's like "Hey. 'Sup? Got an ice cream cone for me?"

And here's me feeding a little one. I'm not sure why the left half of the photo (the half that's actually cute and munching away at an ice cream cone) is a bit blurry, but it's the best one I had. I blame my mom's picture taking skills ;)

And me and a koala. My dad said the koala looks like he's sitting up straight in surprise going "Did she touch my bum?" but I swear he was sitting in that same pose before I got there. And I didn't touch his bum. I actually patted his head but then the zoo-worker standing there said "keep away from his head - he might bite." So I hesitantly touched his back and then got scared and didn't touch him anymore. And behind this frozen smile I'm thinking "Please take the photo quick so I can back away from the crazy bear who might bite me."

And that's it for now.

I'm heading home for Christmas this weekend, with a little stopover in New York! I can't believe it's come so soon. It's gotten really hot here the last week or so, so I think I'll enjoy the little winter break.

And lastly: this week I made the discovery that the band Journey never journeyed to Australia. They haven't heard of them. They don't know "Don't Stop Believin'!" Or if they do, it's only because of Glee. Way to go, Glee, for expanding their horizons, but it's sad that it was necessary! Journey's legendary!

And back to homework...

Finally the New Zealand post!

Well, it’s been a shockingly lovely weekend considering the weather lately and the forecasts, but I don’t quite have the energy to head out to Bondi today to catch some sun and make sure I come home with that Christmas-time tan to make you all jealous, and I do have to get this blog post done before I forget what all of my New Zealand photos are, so I’ve taken my laptop out to the nice, sunny, harbour-side park that’s just a few minutes walk from my place. It’s a bit hard to see the screen in the sun like this, but I’ll try my best. I take these moments when I can get them! Blogging with the sounds of people at Luna Park screaming their heads off in the distant background.

Before I get into the photos – and guys, I have about 200 I just realized, so you’re not going to see all of them here but it'll still be a long one – just a little bit about the New Zealand accent: it’s quite similar to Aussie, but still different and there are some more distinct changes in vowel sounds. Like they say the “e” sound in “left” like I would say an “i”. And they say the “a” sound in “map” like I would pronounce an “e”. And this wasn’t all over, but there was one region where the “i” in “pint” sounded more like an “oi”/”oy” – I figured that one out before my parents did and was trying to translate the bartender for them. Anyway, I imagine it would be very difficult to navigate if you were lost with a New Zealander: “Chick the mep – we go roight, not lift!”

But anyway, onto the pretty pictures. So, we saw lots of pretty mountains and pretty lakes, and sometimes pretty mountains right by pretty lakes, like so:

And from inside the church by that same lake, looking out to the same view:

Pretty reflections:

Impressive cloudy peaks (Mount Cook):

Sheep!

Fancy castle grounds! (Lanarch Castle at Dunedin):

Dunedin, don’tcha know, is apparently Gaelic for Edinburgh and this was a bit like a poser imitation Scottish town, and they had a haggis ceremony and read some Burns and made my dad dress up in a silly wig and cap (and I think a kilt over pants? My memory is bad) and hold up a sword until his arms were tired, but I unfortunately don’t have a photo because my mom and I both forgot our cameras that evening.

But anyway, seals!

There were a bunch of them hanging out on the rocks down there which I couldn’t see at the time without binoculars and just took a photo in the hopes that I’d see them on the full-size version, and I do! Also, this little guy climbed up from the rocks, waddled up this green slope and took a nap. I have a video of his journey which I don’t have the patience to upload, but here he is part of the way up:

And after he made it all the way up there and the rest of us on this tour were like “look at him go!” ten minutes later, my dad goes “Hey, there’s a seal up there on the grass!” And he always calls me out for being unobservant….

Penguins! This was on a penguin tour, which was where we also saw the seals above:

Here I’m not going to bother uploading the photos, but we also went on to see Baldwin Street – the steepest street in the world which we were supposed to be very impressed by, and also stopped in a little town called Gore which is apparently filled with fans of country music and giant fish. And stopped at Lake Manapouri which was pretty but no prettier than the lake up above.

And then we went up this crazy narrow winding mountain road, and saw more pretty mountains:

Waterfalls:

A few funny, friendly, clever, devious mountain parrots known as “Kea”s:

Went down a crazy, crazy mountain tunnel that is not worth showing photos of because it’s just dark, and then got to THE CHASM! This thing was epic, I can’t even tell you. I tried describing it to one of the guys from work and all I could do was make large arm gestures and facial expressions of fascination. I don’t think the pictures will fully capture it:

Milford Sound, where we went on a boat trip and saw lots of pretty even though the weather was pretty awful, and also more seals, and then when it was raining too much I decided to get some “artsy/impressionistic” photos from inside through the rain-splattered windows.

And then we went to Queenstown, and on our first night there (the only place we stayed for more than two nights), we went up on the gondola and ate at the Skyline Restaurant on the top of the mountain:

There was also a mixup at the hotel at Queenstown which I will not go into here because it will only make my parents bitter again!

And we went to a little bird museum where we saw kiwis (no photos – they’re nocturnal) and OMG, family of baby ducks, awwwww!

And Queenstown was the only place where we (“we” meaning my dad and I – mum skipped out on this one) did anything remotely New Zealand Adventure Adrenaline Rush, which was the jetboat through Shotover River and you think it’s just a boat? No this thing goes zooming down through the canyons, and the driver glides right up against the walls just to mess with you or he’ll be heading straight for a wall at full speed and then turn away at the last possible second and I was like “dude, I’d be having fun without you almost literally killing me every five seconds, you can cool it now!” but I survived.

And then we went to Fox Glacier which was a bit of a lame town, but you know, there was this big ol’ glacier…

And this seems like a good time to mention how the road signs and warning signs and stuff are a bit different in New Zealand and sometimes hard to interpret – like I still have no idea what “guy walking with a white block for a hand” is supposed to mean, but I got a kick out of the warning signs at the glacier, and I think the meanings are fairly obvious:

Beware: Rocks will fall on your head

Beware: you might encounter swimmers flailing around because they were dumb and didn’t realize how cold it would be until they got in

Although, also! I refilled my water bottle up at the glacier directly from a pure mountain spring flowing down from a waterfall, and I drank it and didn’t get sick. Wonderful, and quite refreshing.

Dad and I also took a walk that night to go see the glo-worms and again, no photos because glo-worms are really damn difficult to catch on film. My dad got one where you can see a few distinct glowy dots, but I just got blackness. And we were just told “go when it’s dark” with no mention of flashlights and had we not run into a nice group of people with flashlights right away, we would not have made it. Pitchblack, honestly. I don’t think we would have been killed, but we probably would have walked head-first into some trees or twisted our ankles. Although, yeah, maybe we would have been killed. Dad compared the feeling of walking through that path to the Blair Witch Project, and I totally saw where he was coming from. But as I said, we found a friendly bunch of people with flashlights and instead of encountering an axe murderer in the woods, we were the scary people lurking in the dark going “Can we follow you?”

And I mentioned on my initial “back from NZ” post that West is lame compared to East, and the reason for that was that up until Fox Glacier, we were in the East. Fox Glacier was alright but the weather was lame and the people who wanted to go on a helicopter trip to the glacier couldn’t, and then the rest of the time we were in the West, the weather was lame, and when we were doing our train ride back from West to East back to Christchurch to go home, I kid you not the weather was appalling and then we went through this magical tunnel and came out further East where the weather was gorgeous.

Then back to Christchurch, felt a little earthquake, headed back to Sydney the next day – two more days of touring which I may get to in another post (I have pictures of me with koalas and kangaroos, I guess I can’t not share that!)

OK, I think I now have to go back to my apartment so I can actually see the pictures before I post them and make sure I’ve chosen the right ones and not missed anything fabulous. I’ve just checked my tan lines to make sure I’ve been out here long enough, and while there isn’t much significant change on my top half, I do have a bit of a weird line forming from my shorts, so off I go. Also, bugs have just started attacking me. I’m no longer welcome here.

Back from NZ!

So we arrived back from NZ this evening, and it has been quite exhausting! Early mornings every day, long days of bus travel, but overall it was good and I have lots of pretty pictures which I will be putting up not tonight because of the whole exhausted thing, and possibly not until after my parents are on their way back to Bermuda because we still have busy days of mountains and wine country, but hopefully by this weekend!

My overall impression of NZ can be summed up like so: much like another country I know (not Bermuda, of course!) – East coast rules, West coast drools ;-P

Ooh, and we felt an earthquake yesterday evening as we were sitting down for pre-dinner drinks! A 4.9, I’ve been told, and my first ever. It wasn’t a huge thing – the whole table was moving, but not enough to spill our drinks or anything. There was also one our first night we arrived, but I slept right through it!

A weekend of journeying!

So today my dad and I climbed the pylon on the Harbour bridge, so I have new-angle photos of the bridge, including some bridge-walkers...

And off to New Zealand tomorrow!!

Once Were Wild was once number one but then…

So today was Melbourne Cup day! Surprisingly quite exciting, considering it’s a horse race and I don’t generally find horse races very interesting. But it’s a huge thing here and everyone gets very excited and regular old pubs charge for entry and people get all dressed up and the office throws a little mid-afternoon fest with chips and hummus and wine and stuff. I was determined to get into the spirit, so I bet a whole five dollars on a horse! And for the first three quarters of the race, my horse, named Once Were Wild, was leading by a mile! But obviously that was a bad strategy because she used up all her energy and then all the other horses came up and took all her glory. Didn’t even place. *sigh* I swear, there were a handful of signs telling me my horse was fate, but fate let me down.

Anyway, my parents have also been here since Saturday! And we got a lot accomplished that day! So eager to see everything, we walked pretty much the entire city of Sydney till there was nothing left to see, my mom volunteered to participate in a contortionist’s street show, and then when we still had hours left in the day we decided to head down to Melbourne and made it back on the last flight by about 3 am! …. No, not really. I just said that because my mom has said a) she will be reading this and b) she was so jetlagged on Saturday that she doesn’t remember any of it, so I figured I could make anything up and she might just believe it. We did see a contortionist show, though! The girl squeezed herself into a box. However, I saw the same girl doing the same show with all the same jokes a few weeks ago at the Crow’s Nest festival, so I was less impressed.

We actually took a stroll around the neighborhood a bit, across the bridge, through the market at The Rocks where we also stopped for lunch, walked over to the Opera house (and bought tickets for a show tomorrow night!), a little bit more through the city and then headed back by train. Sunday involved a bit of shopping and a walk over to Darling Harbour, which I had actually not seen yet apart from a brief glimpse after dark last week Friday. It was very nice, very impressive. Got tapas for a late lunch, and my dad peer pressured me and mom into ordering a whole litre of sangria even though we each only wanted a glass…

In the last couple days they’ve been enjoying the city on their own while I go to work – today they went to the zoo and saw lots of horrible creatures but also koalas and kangaroos and stuff, which I haven’t seen yet – I have a feeling by the time they go, they’ll have seen a lot I haven’t.

You may also recall my last post of about a week and a half ago mentioned me getting caught in a crazy downpour – I think that was the cause of me waking up a few days later with a pretty bad cold, which I’ve been suffering through since. Yesterday I got sent home from work early because I “sounded like crap”. But I think I’m on the mend now, thankfully. I’ve been running out of tissues!

Summer's here! Oh wait, no, not so much

So today started out bright and sunshiney and super warm - got to go out in a tank top, skirt and flip flops, and I was so excited at the change. Met up with a couple of new girl friends for lunch, got a table outside, it was really nice. But then the clouds started rolling in. And then when we were done with lunch, it started POURING. And I suddenly became very grateful that I was still uber-prepared and had a sweater and umbrella in my bag. But I still got quite soaked. And then the trains were held up because the lightning had knocked out the power in one of the stations, and when I finally made it home, I was shivering/coughing/sneezing/generally miserable and damp. Oh well. The coughing/sneezing stopped after an hour or so, so I don't think the experience did me any lasting damage.

Then once I'd changed into warm, dry clothes and had a cup of tea to recover, I headed back out - to the city to try to find a Halloween costume. Didn't find one, but I did find a shop that had non-costume, regular clothes on mega-sale and ended up getting two dresses and two shirts for about 30 Aussie dollars! That's even less in USD/BMD! Sweet as!

Developing a fear of kettles is not convenient for someone who likes tea as much as I do...

So I've already mentioned this to a few of you by email, but: last week I burnt myself from the steam from the spout of my tea kettle when I carelessly was reaching across the counter and let my arm get too close, and while the burn wasn't too bad, it wasn't great, and it's actually feeling more sensitive now that most of the wound has cleared up and it's just fresh scar tissue, so I'm finding myself a little jumpy around kettles. And since I'm a tea addict, I'm making myself jumpy several times a day. Developing thrills for danger!

And on a completely different subject: regional slang. You know whenever you go to a new place, there are all sorts of different idioms and slang you can pick up. Now, I will never pick up this "How're you going?" business in place of "How're you doing" or "How's it going?" but one thing I am determined to pick up is the addition of "as" to adjectives, which is apparently more of an NZ thing but some Australians use it too. Apparently it comes from adding "as" to an adjective as an incomplete comparison. For example, as an exclamation of delight, instead of "Sweet!" you go "Sweet as!" like you were maybe gonna say "Sweet as candy!" but got lazy and figured people know what you meant (I figure people know what I mean when I just say "Sweet!", but I'm trying to pick up some crazy slang here). "Sweet as" is apparently the most commonly used one, but you could also go "I'm hungry as!" or "My feet are tired as!" or "That kettle steam's hot as!" or "That dog's rabid as!" You get the picture.

So when I come home Christmas-time all "I'm starving as! Where's my turkey?" - shut it with your "starving as what?" reactions - I'm getting culture here!

Rock-step, push-and-step!

So this evening, in an effort to get out and do different things, I attended a swing dance class! For beginners, about a ten minute walk from my place (you know - jus' don de road and rond de corner!)

When I walked in, the instructors were doing stuff that looked crazy complicated, and I was thinking "never!" but I think by the end we were doing stuff that might look crazy complicated to someone who had just walked in. I think if you put me on a dance floor with swing music and a partner who knew the EXACT routine we did tonight, no surprises, I could impress some people. :-D

I may go back next week, but it's at a time that makes it kind of difficult for me to eat dinner at a normal time, and dinner is a pretty high priority for me!

Progress! And nostalgia.

Funny how fast these things can turn around if you just ask. I have to learn to be more assertive, obviously. Anyway, I now have faster internet in my apartment and HR will cancel my previous service and reimburse me. Which meant I had to sign up for a local bank account in order to receive reimbursements, which was kind of a hassle, but oh well. No more trips downtown for show downloads! Although downloading here will not be as fast as it was there, it will be much more tolerable.

And I can try Skype chats again and possibly sound like I'm speaking English!

I asked my coworkers for advice about what bank to choose, but in the end I decided it didn't really matter much since I won't be using it too much and ended up just doing HSBC since I'm already HSBC, although everything is separate and new anyway, so I might as well have just done the bank closer to me. And HSBC Australia has this weird little device you have to put on your keychain so you can press a button and generate a new code everytime you want to log into online banking. What's wrong with a memorable music artist?? All this high-tech mumbo jumbo.

I have been thinking of the list of things I miss about Bermuda right now, and besides of course all you wonderful people, I have:
1) Red pepper hummus. Or, you know, any hummus flavor other than hummus.
2) Special K with red berries.
3) My lil blue car and my lil blue bike.
4) Driving my lil blue car or bike
5) My kitties from both homes! - this should come above transportation, actually. Maybe above Special K, even.
6) Acceptable speeds of internet at home - oh, hey!
7) I think my bed, although my bed here is pretty good. My bed at home is softer.

I have to think of actual small little things we can get there but not here so I can ask my parents to bring me some in a few weeks! I guess I'm doing OK if I can't think of any.

I saw more speedos today than I would have liked, but otherwise: A+ day!

I have experienced Bondi! This will be a picture-heavy post.

Took the train to Town Hall, then connected to go to Bondi Junction. Overall, not a long train trip - including connecting time, probably about 20 minutes. And: OK, I have a train ticket that I can use for a week straight for any distances within 10km, supposedly. And I used the fare calculator on the Cityrail's site and they told me that it was 9km from my stop to the Bondi Junction stop and thus subject to the 10km fare system - brilliant! Well, except that I guess it wasn't. And you have to use your ticket to get out, and the stupid turnstiles wouldn't let me out "Invalid - see an attendant." No attendants around! Another girl was having the same problem and then she jumped the turnstiles, so I followed along. And I had to buy a new one-way ticket on the way back. I had to transfer to a bus, and I found the bus terminal part of the station a little confusing, but I was quickly on my way.

Got to the beach, did the coastal walk that passed three beaches: Bondi, Tamarama, and Bronte (I took photos of the signs, because I knew I wouldn't remember that Tamarama thing), and then back. There were some cool breezes, but overall it had been a pretty sunny day, so I found a bathroom and changed into my bathing suit, bought myself an oh-so-touristy Bondi beach towel, and settled down to catch some sun. Unfortunately clouds shortly started rolling in and I only got about a half hour before it got too cold for me to stand it anymore, so no tan yet. I'll go back. So, pictures:

Bondi beach!

This guy was fishing and getting very damp below the knees - dedication!

Tamarama beach from a distance

Surfers!

There were a couple of these along the coastal walk - pools that were ocean water and there were waves crashing into them and their water was flowing back into the ocean - weird! I'd assume this is a little safer to swim in, but I wouldn't be surprised if some evil sea creature managed to slip in.

After I passed the third beach, Bronte, I figured I'd been walking long enough but I'd just see what was around the next bend - and it was the end of the walk anyway. Well timed!

This is what beachfront property looks like here

Actually, it's Sunday.

Crazy surfers getting wetter than the fisherman!

There were a few of these along the walk that reminded me of Korea, random little workout stations off to the side.  I haven't seen them anywhere else though.

When I was on Bondi!