Things Are Heatin' Up

Two-for-one post today! But first, I'll be catching you up on my Sydney life through pictures (For those of you who are my Facebook friends, I apologize for the repeat).

 The roommates: Sam, Julie and Rebekah in front of our favorite city landmarks! So lucky my roommates are so normal and lovely.

My apartment at the Meriton is probably the nicest place I will live for the next ten years of my life, the pictures do not do it justice:

1.17.2013

The morning began with me being incredibly confused. I was very ready to wake up in my bed in Blaine, MN, and not so ready to wake up in my bed in Sydney. It took me far too long to figure out where I was and how I got there!

We headed over to North Sydney in morning, where our school and my internship are located. We took a bus to the train station and then took the train to school. It took around an hour for us to get there, so it is safe to say that I will never complain about the Minneapolis commute again! We also do a lot, lot, lot of walking, so I need to break in my shoes in the very near future.

We spent 2 hours in an orientation, with the highlight being that I got a cell phone! A cell phone straight out of the year 2000, so different than what I’m used to. We get free texting and calling between other students in our program, which will be super nice, but it should be a nice break from being permanently attached to my phone back home.

Also, side note, favorite sign in Sydney so far. I feel oh-so-cool here:

After orientation, we took a little adventure into downtown Sydney. It was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen so far – you can check it out below:

The greatest sign ever on George St.

Downtown George St.

Downtown Sydney

Back alley cafes

 A back road full of bird cages..so cool!

 1.18.13

The high today was supposed to be 99 degrees, but we hit a record-high of 114 degrees today! This is excluding the crazy humidity here - Sydney puts Minnesota summers to shame. I'm going to hate going to work in my nice dress clothes and sweating through them before I even get to the office [Too much information? Sorry!]. Like I said, things are heatin' up here!

We had our internship orientation this morning, and I have an interview at 10 a.m. on Monday morning! I'm really excited to start at Golf Link, so hopefully it goes well.

The crew

We also had a presentation about trips we could take while we're here. My roommates, myself, and a bunch of others are planning to go on a trip to Port Stephens where we will be doing things like dolphin watching, dune surfing, camel riding, wine tasting, and so many more cool things. More details to come, but it's the weekend of February 1st..so soon!

For lunch, the leaders of our program took us to The Australia Hotel for pizzas on the house [Fam: highly recommended when you come]. The place was really cool, and everything was original from when it was built:

Portraits on the walls

The best "chips" I have ever tasted. And that's saying a lot.

So Aussie.

Inside of the restaurant

Also....

Eating crocodile pizza...

...and kangaroo!

After that, we decided to embrace/beat the heat by taking a ferry over to Manly Beach. 

Got a solid start on my tan today! This place is gorgeous, and I am not sure what I did to deserve this life for 3 months. Tomorrow morning we're going to the Olympic Park and the Blue Mountains, so expect pictures with kangaroos and koalas! 

Until next time: Cheers, everyone (look how Australian I am)!