From Coogee to Glebe

The past two days have been PACKED.

First, yesterday morning I got my internship!! Jenna, my adviser, called Justina and me into her office and told us that she has placed us! It turns out these two guys, Bret and Tim share a studio.  Bret is currently focused more on culinary type photography, and Tim works more with people.  Jenna decided that Bret and Justina would be a good match, and I will be working with Tim.  He is also a teacher, with classes on Tuesday nights, which means that I may possibly help out in his classes sometimes (as well as learn in them I'm sure), but also means that since I am less experienced, working with someone who is a teacher he may help me out more.  Both try to keep their hours 9-5, but as they contract it depends on the job they have, so we will both have to be flexible.  They also do not always work in the studio, and we may end up meeting them anywhere in the city (although separately since, as I said, they do not work together, they just share the space).  I looked up both of their websites and they look great so I cannot wait and am so ecstatic that I actually got a photography internship.  It turns out the first week both will be (separately) on different vacations, so they will give Justina and me assignments and at some point when we have down time they'll critique them, which sounds like such a great learning opportunity.  Anyway, in case you can't tell or I haven't said it enough, I cannot wait.

On to more good future news, I am officially going to Cairns (pronounced Cans) for spring break! (Yes, it is winter here so when we have break the first week of October it will be spring).  It's a great place to go to the Great Barrier Reef and the jungle. I just booked with Lindsay, Brianna, Rachel C., and Chris.  They were great about it and decided they wouldn't mind working around my travel times (which are complicated because of course spring break has to be Sukkot).  But I won't talk about that now since it'll be much more interesting for you to read about once I've actually done it all.  However, you should be excited for those posts because our trip sounds super exciting!

So what I've been doing aside from planning for the future (Isn't there some saying about while you plan life passes you by? So I'm trying hard not to spend all my time planning and to also do things now).

Yesterday, I did a coastal walk from Bondi (bond-eye) Beach to Coogee with Kate and Jessica.  It's an almost 2 hour walk around the coast near us.  The busride over was actually quite fun, with a little boy (we decided he was around 4 years old) telling us all about his new Super Mario Brothers game and his sister (probably 2 and a half years old) trying to talk to us too.  He was very into Mario dressed as a penguin and all of the colors on the case.  We had to transfer buses though, and sad thing about Sydney (maybe all of Australia? I don't know), they don't have free transfers! So that's unfortunate and takes up a lot of bus passes.

We finally made it though, and the rocks by the coast are amazing.  For those of you who have been to Israel it's like some of those crazy ravine type rocks in the Negev at points.  It was pretty windy and cloudy, but we warmed up as we went along.  We climbed on some of the rocks which was a lot of fun, and then the views were just amazing.  There were lots of signs about the water being too dangerous though, so not so many people were on the beaches, but there were some people just hanging out, or playing beach volleyball.  We also saw a group doing a photo shoot, it looked like for a clothing company since the girl kept changing and there was a suitcase full of clothes.  We saw some cool birds on our walk (unfortunately they were super quick and I couldn't get pictures of the prettiest ones)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Superb_blue_Wren1.jpg (I think that's the one we saw)

There were lots of steps involved as well, but it was a very nice time.

Me and Kate

Kate climbing the rocks

Kate and Jess rock lifting?

Buddha by the coast

Cool tree!

Tired pup.  I don't generally like bull dogs but who can resist that face?

The stairway from Hell (although they were thoughtful enough to put a few benches along the way which we sadly declined)

Cool stairs (which we thankfully did NOT have to climb)

We got back with just enough time to shovel down some food and head to class.

Fun facts: 1. When the convicts were starting to settle Australia the people in charge were the Rum Corps (technically the New South Whales (NSW) Corps but their other name is cooler).
2. British are (but more often used to be) called poms- Mark (our teacher) grew up with the story that it stood for "prisoners of mother England", but it turns out it was because when they first came they were so white they burned quickly and looked like pomegranates
3.  "Mate" was used first by gold diggers during the Australian gold rush- it did not just mean any person, as it does now, but it was the person who protected you no matter what from any harm and would take a bullet for you.

Last night I went with Hanna, Justina, Alex, and Julia (M.) to a karaoke place just up the street.  We met this older couple who seem to be regulars there.  The woman, Kelly K, as she goes by at karaoke, befriended us since her husband wouldn't sing Justin Bieber with her, so we all joined.  They told us we should come back Saturday night when it's more packed.  It was fun though, since it was pretty empty we got to do a lot of singing.

On to today, I went with Hanna to the Queen Victoria Building.  The top floor has so many cute stores! First, there's the toy store, Hobby Co, (kind of like a small FAO Schwarz) that was awesome.  There was also an Aboriginal Art store, a collectible toy soldier store, a store with some antiques (like a type writer and an old bike) but also just some really cute journals and cards and mugs... I don't know what to call it.  On another floor we found this cool store with funny household items (like a garbage can that looked like a fish with the opening as the mouth, a frog tape dispenser (which oddly enough I own and my parents bought me somewhere), and other cool things).  Basically browsing there was exciting (despite my dislike of shopping).

Everything on this floor was cars and planes... how did the Marilyn Monroe and Kate Middleton barbies get there? Weird advertising...

I then met up with Kate and Jess again and the three of us went to lunch in Glebe (like a 10 minute walk away).  The street has tons of cute restaurants and we found a great Japanese one that wasn't too pricey, though we had gone for Mexican but learned they're only open for dinner.  I now know of many more places to eat though for the future.

Observations:

1. Star fruit is super cheap so I bought one and it was delicious! (Kiwi is crazy cheap too!)

2. Women here wear the craziest leggings.  They all have patterns, ex. the anatomy of the leg.  It was so odd.  A lot are starry night types or the galaxy.

Also Kate's great at cooking veggies (she can't eat wheat and eats vegan, also doesn't tend to eat much oil or salt)- anyway she's helping me learn to cook vegetables, and by that I mean she mostly just cooks them and I eat some.  Tonight she made kale and it's great!

Ok it's just about class time!  PS there are more pictures on my photo blog I just didn't want to overwhelm you here. (But I do take longer putting those up) http://ldlangerphotos.wordpress.com/

Tamarillo

So I've had lots of class the past two days (like every Monday/Tuesday coming up)

I found these really good microwavable vegetarian soups that I can now have during out 20 minute dinner break on Monday nights, so that will be much simpler than shoving a sandwich down my throat as quickly as possible.

In wine class we've been learning about different types of grapes and what wines to pair with what foods (we basically learned it mostly is about personal preference, with a few hints here and there- we were told to learn the rules and then break them).  For example, one rule is pair by region, aka an Italian food with an Italian wine, but that was mostly done at first because that was just convenient, it does not always make for the best tastes.  Also, fun fact, your wine should be sweeter than your food (even for desserts).  We were told we should be drinking wine 3-4 nights a week so this should get interesting (as well as expensive, but I'll obviously share bottles with kids from my class).  We have also learned that our very cheap wine (which tastes surprisingly good) does not have all the criteria we need in order to write about it, so unfortunately it won't cut it for our wine journals for class.

This morning we had wine tasting at 10 am (till 1 pm).  It was pretty cool despite how early it was for drinking.  The first thing we had was not wine, but water with sugar, acid, and alcohol, in order to figure out how they each feel on our mouth so that we can later taste them in the wines.  Then we had 3 whites and 3 reds.  I found the whites much easier to distinguish the aromas and flavors.  It's fun learning all the terminology, and realizing that I need to start smelling foods more often to really know how they smell, which will make it easier to smell them in the wine.  We got a bunch of charts to help us know how other people describe wines.
Here are some of the weirdest descriptions we found: cat urine, gun powder, sweaty, wet dog...

Between classes I went to the Food Co-op, which I think I'm going to join and volunteer at, which will allow me to get cheaper food! For now, I got a box of fruits and veggies and a loaf of bread for my apartment.  The food looks good but I think in the future we might need more for all 4 of us.  I'll probably be ordering weekly, so I figure I might as well volunteer and get the discount!

Then in Australian culture class we continued with Australia's history.  There was a cool documentary more from the Aboriginal point of view about the British convicts colonizing.  Small Pox wiped out tons of Aboriginals, and apparently in the British journals they were shocked and saddened.  Fun fact, toward the beginning of the colonization, one of the first nights the Aboriginal people and the British all danced together.
I also learned that the platypus is one of 5 monotremes, or animals that are between mammals and marsupials, having an external birth.  Most of those 5 animals live in Australia.

I tried a new fruit! There are these cool fruits called tamarillos that I saw in the supermarket and they're inexpensive, so I bought one and Kate and I tried.  Here's a whole website (it's pretty short and easy to read) about them http://www.tamarillo.com/

Sorry this post doesn't flow too well.  More adventures coming up soon!

Pancakes on the Rocks

Friday night Ariella had me over to her room for Shabbat dinner.  It was spaghetti and a delicious salad, and it felt so nice to do Shabbat with someone.  We explained all of the blessings to her roommates, Jackie, Rachel, and Nicole, who were also eating around the same time.  They were curious about about our customs so we got into many religious discussions throughout the evening.  While we were eating, one of her roommates, Jackie, started washing the dishes, and Ariella yelled at her to stop.  Jackie thought she had ruined Shabbat, but Ariella explained that she just felt bad that Jackie was washing our dishes.  They were such great hostesses, though, and wouldn't even let me clean up even though I ate! I felt awful because (except in my own house of course) I feel horrible not helping!  Anyway it was a lot of fun hanging out with all of them for the evening.  Hillary and George also joined, although George was scared off by all of the girl talk (ex. Project Runway).

When I then returned to my room, I found Alex with Sean and Rachel (yes, there are 3 Rachels who I've mentioned so far.  The one in previous posts is Rachel C. who lives in the room below me, Rachel N. is Ariella's roommate, and this one is Rachel B.).  Anyway, I hung out with the three of them until they went out, read for a bit, and then went to sleep nice and early (considering how often I stay up late it was pretty nice).

Saturday I ended up reading a lot.  I found out on my Kindle that most classics are free, so I got a lot of them.  However, I prefer reading paper books that I can hold and flip pages, so I brought a few with me, but have decided that reading classics is probably a good thing to do, so I spent my day reading Wuthering Heights, which I am finding intriguing.

After the full day in, I had to get out, so I went with Hanna, Justina, the room below mine (Rachel, Pam, Lindsay and Brianna (Rachel and Brianna took very little convincing after saying they were not joining us), Chris, Julia, and Pam's boyfriend Tim (yes, there were ten of us).  After a while of deciding between Kings Cross and the Rocks, the deciding factor was pancakes.  We went to Argyle, which is a really fun club in the Rocks, and ran into many other people on our program there.  We picked up Taylor (who I sat next to on the plane), Elizabeth, Victoria, Julia, and Melissa, and lost a few, and headed to Pancakes on the Rocks, a pancake place open 24/7.  Lindsay and I split the Vanilla and Choc (yeah that's what it was called) Surprise.  It was a chocolate pancake with vanilla ice cream and a plain pancake with chocolate ice cream.  It was delicious, although I've learned that chocolate pancakes may be a bit heavy for me, so in the future I'll stick with classic plain.  The ice cream was also surprisingly great.  It was the perfect meal.  Victoria and Julia licked the delicious plates clean for most of us (some by bets, which paid for part of their meal).  Basically it was a lot of fun and I'm so glad I got out.

Today not much happened except while I was in the mall, this little girl ran up to me and put her hand in
mine, and I didn't close my hand since it was sort of awkward, and she tried three times to hold my hand, until she really looked up at me and realized I was not, in fact, her mother.  It reminded me of the time when I was little and I thought I saw my grandmother and ran up and gave a woman a hug until I looked up and realized it wasn't my Grandma Anne, it was a stranger.  Anyway I apologized to her father, but I don't think he spoke English and he was laughing and I think apologized to me as well, and then went off and I believe told the girl's mother what happened.

That's most of my excitement for now! Class again tomorrow, but I think I'm set on food for a while so that's convenient.  Oh and Hanna made me a sign for my door so now anyone coming into the apartment will know which room is mine (if the door happens to be closed which it rarely is).  We also got a dish drying rack because I personally hate drying dishes and it was cheap so yay! No more drying dishes!

Alright it's half 11 (that means 11:30 I just learned) so bedtime!

Cockatoo Island

It has been another crazy fun packed two days. Sydney is full of free stuff... score!

Yesterday we had a tour for our Australian culture class with Mark, the program director and teacher of that class.  On our way over to meet the group, Lindsay, Chris, Alex, Hanna, Justina and I stopped by Taste Orange in Martin Place (the place where they filmed the Matrix and many other movies. to make it look American they clear it out and bring in yellow taxis)  So basically there was this street festival with different wine tasting tables and we went for the free wine.  My favorite was actually the pear cider.  Delicious.  There were also free apples which turned out to be heavenly and I wish I had taken more than one.

Taste Orange

On our tour we started at Hyde Park Barracks and learned about the convicts who came over and their living conditions.  Apparently the youngest person there was a 9 year old boy.  Poor kid.  And they convinced young women to come over as free people to make a "good life" for themselves.  Guess they had no idea that no life existed yet in Sydney but hey it worked, and there was certainly no shortage of jobs.  I wonder if they got paid in rum the same way the convicts did.

The museum was obsessed with rats.  It turns out that the reason so much was preserved was because convicts would put their stuff in the floorboards to keep it safe since there was nowhere to store any personal items, but the rats lived there so they would steal everything, and the convicts then blamed each other and got into fights but never found their stuff.  Anyway so lots of stuff was lost down there but between the floorboards is perfect for preserving things since wind and rain don't get in and it's a pretty constant temperature, so the museum basically owes its existence to these rats and they do a good job of recognizing that with pictures and weird rat stuff in the gift shop.

Convict clothing

Last night I went out with Rachel, Pam, Tim (Pam's boyfriend who is also studying in Sydney) and his friends to karaoke on King St.  Sydney has 2 King Streets, one to each direction of us.  Unfortunately we took a bus to the wrong one, and couldn't find a bus the other way, so we ended up cabbing.  Oops.  However, when we finally got there, I'd say we did the Spice Girls proud.

Then this morning Hanna, Justina, Belinda, and Julie got an early start and went to Cockatoo Island! It's the 18th Biennale of Sydney, which is apparently done worldwide and it's an every other year thing (hence the name) and international artists show their work.  The theme is "all our relations" which has to do with relationships between different cultures and between people and the world.  So at Cockatoo Island, which was a prison and now is a museum about the convicts who began Sydney, they had some of the art set up.  We started trying to go on a free tour but it was pretty boring so we gave up and just wandered, a much better plan.  There were some really awesome exhibits.  One kinda weird one was you walk into a small room, with all these signs about no photography and please be quiet, and inside the walls were white and in the middle there was a sort of teepee hanging from the ceiling down to the floor and it was all white (it sort of looked like one of those curtains that princesses in movies have hanging over/around their bed), but it was a confusing string like material.  Then inside on the floor sat a beautiful Asian woman with long straight black hair wearing a white dress and surrounded by the same material as the curtain.  She didn't look up once as she cut paper.  She cut it in the shape of the paper, in tiny strips, around and around but generally not breaking it at the end, instead turning the scissors and continuing around the corner.  It was impressive how straight she could cut cuz she kept up for quite a long time.  Anyway after seeing that I realized that's what the teepee was made out of! (with some strings for support of course)  After reading about her, she cuts as she thinks about the day, and apparently if something bothers her she tends to cut more quickly and if a thought is over then she cuts off that piece and starts a new strand.  It was sort of oddly fascinating.  Most of the other art wasn't that confusing but was still very interesting.  And the ferry was fun! (Especially the free one on the ride back- I'm a huge fan of free things)

Justina and Belinda on the windy ferry ride

Belinda in artwork

Hanna in art

The sign says "Bookings Here. 2:30-3:00. Animals only, Pairs preferred"

Justina

So as I'm sitting here writing this my roommate Kate and I are sitting in our common area and outside the window on a building across the way there's a cockatoo holding onto the brick and sticking its head into a little vent like thing and screaming.  We think there must be something in there he wants. Oh and now he's gone so maybe he got it! Or gave up. Who knows. Do cockatoos eat small animals?

Toucan and the Jungle Giants

In wine class Tuesday we did a tour of the local places that sell wine.  We had to look at where they are located, who we thing their target market is, how it's organized, how they market, and where they get their wine from.  You probably don't care about all that info for all of them so I'll give a summary.  The first place was Sydney Cellars.  It's on a busy street without parking so you have to walk there and you only notice it if you know where you're going.  They have good deals but they're also pretty nice and easy to browse.  Liquorland is in the mall, has super cheap deals ($5 wines) and is easily accessible and you can stop on your way from grocery shopping. Perfect for students! The Wine Society was super fancy and classy.  It's cheaper for members, but we were told if we say we're from Boston University we count as members! Yay! I'll probably be sticking with Liquorland for the most part, because the $5 wines actually taste good so it's kind of worth it, but at some point we'll splurge and split a nicer bottle. (probably as we get further into the course)  Every week we have to do a wine journal (hence buying all the wine) about tasting a wine and the characteristics of it (look, smell, taste, savour (aftertaste)).  We also have to say if we had it with food and if they went well together.  In addition, every week we need to write about an article we read that has to do with the wine industry.  Yes, school has officially begun.

Tuesday evening we had our first Australian Culture class.  We learned bits and pieces about the beginnings of Australia (as in when it broke away from Pangaea and all that fun stuff.  Aboriginal people have dreaming stories, which are their origin stories, about how they were always a part of the land and never came there.  So basically we'll be covering a lot about Australia, and we'll have small modules in which we focus in on one thing.  Ideally I'd love to be in the one about aboriginals, but I'm sure all of them will be really interesting so I'll be fine with any of them.  We have lots of field trips for class so that'll be a lot of fun.

Wednesdays during the day are free, so yesterday I went with Hanna, Brianna, and Rachel to get free milkshakes.  This week is healthy bone week, so a few places have free milkshakes or smoothies.  Turns out one of the places is where we went the first night for dinner, around the corner.  Thankfully it was free and close, because that was quite a funny milkshake.  It tasted like cold milk with sugar mixed in and maybe some vanilla syrup (they only offered vanilla).  Anyway I'm very glad I did not pay for it but it wasn't the worst thing.  I was going to get one every day for the rest of the week but now that I know what it is I think I'll skip out.

Brianna, Rachel, and I went on to the Chinese Gardens.  We tried to go to the Powerhouse Museum but it had an entry fee and we weren't positive what the museum was so we thought it would be silly to pay to see something we might not be interested in.  The Chinese Gardens also had a small entrance fee but I think I could splurge on $6, and we knew what we were getting so it seemed worth it.  It was absolutely beautiful.  There were all these windows of different shapes, and flowers, and trees, and coy of course.  The openings and gateways and open buildings were amazing.  It really reminded me of some of my eastern religion classes and the movie Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring.

Chinese Gardens with the city backdrop

A cool opening

L-R Rachel and Brianna

It didn't take as long as we expected to walk around, so we continued on to the Observatory, climbing lots of steps to get there.  I'm pretty sure we took the most difficult path we could have.  By staying down by the water, we then had to climb I believe three flights of stairs (of varying heights) to get to the highest point which holds the observatory.  Thankfully, it was free!  So we walked around a bit and observed.

The Observatory

The Time Ball- used to tell time.  At 1 pm it is raised and dropped.

Rachel observing.

The view seen upside down through the telescope.

Needless to say after all that walking we took the free bus back (thankfully making one of the last ones).

Then, last night (Wednesday) we went to a free concert! There were about thirteen of us who went.  It was in North Bondi (pronounced bond-eye).  I finally took a real bus! They don't have transfer passes so that's a bit of a ripoff but I'll live.  Anyway the concert was a band called The Jungle Giants.  The first band wasn't so good, but the second, Toucan, was really good, and then The Jungle Giants were also.  Fortunately, part of our group was exhausted and left soon after the Jungle Giants started playing, because they discovered that the last bus before 3:30 am was at 11:27 pm.  So UNfortunately, we all ended up having to leave early in order to make it back.  Then, when we got to the junction to switch buses, we learned that we'd missed the last bus back to us, so we had to take the train.  It seems that you may not have to pay for the train past a certain time, because all of the gates were open and there was no one checking, so we all just went through and got out on the other end just as easily.  That's something we'll have to find out about for sure.


Oh just fyi I have a website where I'm putting up more pictures: http://ldlangerphotos.wordpress.com/
This way I don't overwhelm you with pictures here.

Also, some of my friends are making videos so if you'd like to check that out here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvsDN0kSzL0&noredirect=1
I'm not in it yet (although I do have filming credit), but I'm sure at some point I will be so check it out!

Intro to the Wine Industry

We started classes! (Yes, that means I now know what I'm taking)  I'm taking a class on the Australian Wine Industry.  We have class 3:30-8:30 on Mondays and 10-1 on Tuesdays.  It's a lot of class time Monday, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.  It's also only for 4 weeks that we'll actually be using those times so that's not a big deal. Kate and Gaynor, who teach the class, seem very nice and knowledgeable (good thing for teachers to be).  Although today was all about history (which is not my thing), they did put in many interesting facts.  We have 18 people in class, and I'm hoping this will help me get to know more people and names.  Because class is so long, we get a break for dinner.  However, it's a half hour (today was 20 min) and so we just kind of run upstairs and grab a bite and go back down.  As much as I love nutella and peanut butter sandwiches, they are not very good when scarfed down.  Now I know for the future to either reverse my meals on Mondays, so that I have a relaxed lunch and quick dinner, or to prepare something ahead of time.  It'll be a good time for leftovers too.

Our old world/ new world Haiku (by Sarah, Lindsay, and me):

Old world done by hand.
Oxygen affects the taste.
New world has less rules.

Interesting facts from Kate and Gaynor:

1. A cellar door means a place you do wine tasting and buy wine.
2. The first coffee bars in Australia were opened in Melbourne by Hungarian Jews.
3. Australia is made up of 6 states and 2 territories- they're not quite sure what the difference is.
4. They spell the word 'tons' 'tonnes'.

Oh funny story from this morning.  I went to put more money on my phone, and I paid and signed the receipt and the woman at the register looked at the back of my credit card to compare signatures, but I hadn't signed apparently.  So she asked me to sign so she could compare, I figured she meant in the future.  I signed the credit card and gave it back to her and she checked one signature against the other! I just signed both in front of you lady, of course the signatures are the same! If you really want to check then ask for my ID to see that the name matches.  It made me think of my psych class, about how we do things automatically without thinking.  She did what she always does, just not very smartly.

Exploring Sydney

I know I just blogged last night, but today was quite exciting, and I'm exhausted so I'm just hanging out in my apartment anyway.

This morning I woke up and my roommates were out running and a bunch of people were shopping, since they had all spent yesterday on the scavenger hunt to see the city.  I was jealous and everyone was busy so I decided to just go explore on my own.  I still have a lot to learn but I'm starting to figure out where I am in relation to various other places.

So we live on Regent Street, and the corner is Broadway, but if you walk down Broadway you hit George Street, which leads to the harbour.  I decided to walk down that way and just look around.  I found Chinatown and Darling Harbour, where we had our cruise, except from a different direction.  It was beautiful perfect weather, so I got a lot of nice pictures and tons of people were out and about.

Golden Water Mouth- in Chinatown. It is made from a dead tree trunk and is supposed to be good luck (this information came from Wikipedia since I couldn't find a plaque, so believe what you want)

Random street in Chinatown. Thought it was interesting.

A statue for those who helped being the Australian Industrial Revolution

An Ibis (Toby I'm starting to take bird pictures! They're hard to catch because the pretty little ones fly too much and stay in the tops of trees)

I got back to the apartment and at 2 I went with my roommate Hanna, and Justina and Belinda went on a free walking tour.  This woman, Justine, decided that tours of Sydney were too expensive, and has started giving 3 hour long walking tours for free, asking for tips at the end, but not begging.  Anyway, she was great at giving history as we went and giving us fun stories as we walked along.

Town Hall- used to be the site of a cemetery but the people were buried too close to the surface and started smelling up the place so they were all moved, and the town hall was built there.  Recently, they were renovating and found one last body and moved it to the rest.

Queen Victoria's favorite dog.  When he was moved here he was given an Australian accent and now speaks if you give money.

The tallest building in Sydney (5th tallest in Australia according to Wikipedia)

What used to be the tallest building in Sydney that you could see from the water.

Australia's coat of arms- The kangaroo and emu were chosen because they seemed to be the most civilized animals since they both walk on two legs (I guess no one tried getting near them to learn that they're both also pretty mean).  They also supposedly could not walk backwards, symbolizing the future of Australia (again no one checked).  It is also the only county's coat of arms which has two animals both of which are eaten within the country.

People rub his nose and make wishes.  The hospital behind him was built from people paid in rum.

Forgotten Songs: These bird cages were part of a festival, but have been kept up ever since.  They make noises of birds and on the ground are the names of all the species that were forced to leave due to the city being built up.

L-R: Me, Belinda, Hanna, Justina

More Fun facts:

1. While many call Sydney "Eora", 'eora' in fact means 'here'.  When people asked Aboriginal people where they were from, they would say 'eora' the same way we would say 'here', but people thought it was just what they called Sydney.

2. Cockatoos have one mate for life, and if they don't like any of them they have a divorce ceremony.  However, we were told we could find this online and haven't, so I'm starting to doubt it.

3.  The first Australian Olympic gold medalist won by mistake.  He made it to the finals, knew he could not win, and decided to stay behind the pack.  However, everyone in front of him fell, so he came in first.

4. There was a super secure APEC conference with leaders from all over the world, but these pranksters got through security.  Watch the video from 1:30 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SypnEO9wMtI

That's all I can think of right now.  Tonight Hanna and I made dinner in our apartment which was great after such a long day!