Uni Life

Good News: Almost done with school... just have one huge paper to write, a presentation, and three exams... then all done! Yay!! 

Bad News: All this has to happen in the next three weeks... kill me! How am I supposed to do all that, and finish reading the last book of Twilight, and work over twenty hours per week (totally not allowed), and get back into running (which I haven't done in forever), and blah blah blah...! There's just not enough hours in the day. 

PS- I got my first High Distinction (HD) grade... Amazing-ness!! Apparently those are so hard to get... usually people just try for a Distinction (D). Must be getting smarter these days!! 

More Melbourne

(So behind on my blogging... no excuses!)

So the rest of my Melbourne trip was spent mostly outside the city. We got to see a lot of the country-side and this was probably my favorite part of the trip. We rented a car and drove along the Great Ocean Road outside of Melbourne. It was beautiful... very cold and mostly overcast, but the sights were gorgeous. 

We stopped a lot along the way to see wild koalas and random other things. But the pièce de résistance was the Twelve Apostles- which is an amazing rock formation in the ocean. Of course my picture is crap... but trust me it was awesome and totally worth the very long drive. 

Also amazing was London Bridge, pictured below... but as you can see the weather was hating us that day... and we had to get indoors quickly. 

After a strange night, we spent the next day doing some more country sightseeing. At some point we stopped to see a lighthouse and on our hike there we saw a wild echidna and a wallaby... both Australian natives and both very shy! But somehow we never saw one kangaroo... which was disappointing for me.  

All in all it was a really great trip. We spent our last night living it up in Melbourne and, of course, the next day recovering. I heart this egg-shaped swing! :) 

A Week in Melbourne

I finally got to see a little more of Australia! Traveling with my friends Liv, Bahareh, and Adam, I spent five days of my spring break in the southern state of Victoria. Most of my time was spent in Melbourne, but we also traveled through the country along the Great Ocean Road. Here is a brief recap of my vacation:

Day One:
Our first day was spent walking around the city center, and along the Yarra River which runs through the city. The weather in Melbourne is very different than Sydney and it was a chilly day. So in order to warm up we had an amazing long dinner in the Italian district. Then we went to a Lebanese restaurant to share a hookah pipe (... apparently its also called Shisha).

Day Two:Whenever people describe Melbourne they talk about its art, and I've even heard it called the "Europe" of Australia. So naturally we had to see an art museum, and we chose the National Gallery of Victoria. They had a Dali exhibit called Liquid Dreams which was amazing! After tapas and sangria, for lunch, we went to Brunswick Street which is known for its array of small boutiques and trendy cafes. We ended up spending all night on Brunswick street. We made friends with a server at a brewery we stopped in and ended up going to some cool underground places with him. Very cool!

Day Three:
We had heard of this place, called Philip Island, about an hour and a half outside of Melbourne which was famous for its Penguins- the smallest in the world or something. So we rented a car and hit the road. Along the way stopped a koala sanctuary, where we saw baby koalas and a wild wallaby which was just a few meters away from us. We also stopped at a beach where we saw a dead seal, but I'm still trying to forget that one. The penguins were our last stop, because the penguins only come out of the ocean at sun-set and race across the beach to their burrows. It was actually really sweet, they would only cross the beach in groups for fear that they would get harmed. And occasionally there would be one penguin standing along the surf all confused. It was heart-breaking.

Next we go to the Great Ocean Road... I'll put another post up about that later.

Laugh of the Day

Set-Up: On a venue tour of the Sydney State Theatre, for a class project, with a few classmates and mostly old women who were on the tour for fun.

Old Lady: (talking to another old lady as we were entering a gentleman's lounge area, outside of the men's toilets) I have never seen the inside of so many men's bathrooms in my life!
Me: Oh, you haven't lived then!
Old Lady: ...
Me: (laughing nervously) Just kidding!
Old Lady: (laughing politely)
Jackie: She's American, Texan actually... So...
Old Lady: (relieved) Oh... (laughing like it all made sense now)

Huh? Is that what Australian grandmas think of Texans? Also, why was I making sexual bathroom jokes to old strangers? :)

PS- I just got back from the chilly city of Melbourne. I will blog about it as soon as I upload my pics and get the energy to do anything other than read "Twilight" (... kill me now!).