Sydney

Hope everyone had a fabulous Easter Holiday, I know I did! As I said before I spent my Easter in Sydney. It was really weird because it didn't feel like Easter, it just felt like another weekend. The weirdest part was toasting with my friends "Happy Easter" while we ate pasta at a pizzeria near our hostel. Anyway...

Sydney was great! It's a wonderful city! It was so beautiful especially taking the trip on the ferry around the harbor which let me see all the sites I wanted to see. Like the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the Opera House, some beaches and well just a great view of Sydney itself! The hostel that my friends and I stayed at was very close to Darling Harbor, which is a great area full of stuff to do, like the Maritime Museum, the Sydney Aquarium, and there's plenty of shopping and places to eat and drink. The Aquarium was a wonderful experience, if you ever go to Sydney make a stop there... it was great! There are heaps of fish and sea creatures to look at! The platypus were very interesting creatures to look at. They're adorable!

Day one was great except for not being able to pop my ears on the plane! I had no idea how much that sucks because I've always been able to, but being sick and stuffed up made it more difficult! Anyway Day One in Sydney was Friday, I got there in the afternoon and it was mostly spent checking out Darling Harbor (which I've already explained). A group of us checked out the Chinese Gardens which were really pretty, but we didn't really know what to do with ourselves there. They were still pretty great though. I also made it over to the Maritime Museum which has a bunch of sea stuff. And by that I mean parts of ships and displays about the convict ships and the expeditions made to Australia. I believe this was also the night that we discovered Chinatown which was mass crazy! So much Asian food in one place!!! Blair, Amber and I also enjoyed a movie at the Imax (Robots, which is really funny, and a great cartoon) and watching a street performer afterwards. The next day was the Aquarium which was great, and we also went to the Australia Museum, which was pretty cool, not my most favorite thing, but I enjoyed the exhibit about Aboriginees. I also got to experience The Queen Victoria Building! It's really a lovely building, but we went mostly for the amusement of how expensive everything was in the shops there!! $200 for a Versace tank top?! It was crazy, and we had fun looking at some goregous dresses, but there was just the overall feeling that I did not belong there in my t-shirt and rolled up jeans! This was also the day that our friend Andrew decided we needed to go to Kings Cross. Ha! There is no real need to go there, it's pretty dodgy, but for some reason we walked up to Kings Cross and experienced Sydney's dodgy-ness.

My last full day in Sydney was Sunday which consisted of first finding breakfast which took quite awhile, then missing the Ferry, finally getting on the ferry, taking a ride around Sydney harbor to see the bridge and Opera house, and then walking about in Paddy's Market. Paddy's Market is one HUGE market full of clothes, shoes, souvenirs... heaps of stuff! I bought the ever tourist-y boomerang while there. The place was just crazy full of people, but it was pretty cool. The rest of the day I spent with friends Amber and Blair buying souvenirs. By the way, this I have found is the hardest thing to do. Especially when thinking of friends and family back home. What the heck am I suppose to get for you people?! Whatever I do get, you better like it! :-) The three of us spent the rest of the night together first with a couple cheap drinks at the pub in the hostel where we met some other Americans that were visiting Sydney , but studying in Wollongong (about an hour south of Sydney). We then made our way to find somewhere yummy to eat at for Easter dinner that wasn't too expensive and we ended up at a Pizzeria that was really rather tasty! The rest of the night our large group (which totaled 10) spent at the pub in the hostel hanging out, where we once again got to talk with the Americans we had met earlier. It was an early evening for me because Amber and I had to fly out at 8:20 the next morning. Overall it was a great experience and a lot of fun. Sydney is a really great place and the company I had with me was wonderful also. One random thing about Sydney was that this was the first time that I saw a Starbucks and a 7/11. There were many 7-11's, which was convient because there was one two seconds from our hostel. Anyway that was my trip and it was great. It is now Thursday and I have lots of work to do! I have an essay due tomorrow which will hopefully not be too crappy. I just checked comments from my Easter post though and Cassie and Mandi... you two are terrible! Encouraging me to put off my essays! :-) hahaha. no worries! Mandi I'm glad you like to read these, Adelaide is great, I'm glad I came here! Well I should be off, it's about time for lunch and then lots and lots of "essay" writing to do! I keep getting made fun of for calling them papers, so I'm trying my best to call it an essay not a paper! That and I felt really stupid this morning with the way I pronounce banana. Oh and one more share, I watched Family guy with a bunch of Australians the other night, which was funny cuz I tended to laugh at things that they didn't...that was pretty funny.

cheers!
smuder

Happy Easter!

As I sit here realizing that I still have not accomplished much for homework this evening I find myself wanting to give a quick update of my life for you all.

Of course Uni is starting to kick me in the butt with three essays coming up! It could be better if two weren't due over break, when I'm NOT here! yes I will be traveling for two weeks instead of doing papers for two weeks! So for the two weeks before I will be scrambling ever so quickly and crazily hoping to complete what will hopefully not be three crappy papers! oh what fun!
Besides Uni life has been good, although I am beginning to get sick which is no good for my trip to Sydney this weekend. No worries, I will survive and Sydney and Easter Break will be wonderful despite my sickness and the loads of work that will be waiting for me when I return Monday morning!

A few other things: Frisbee has been great and I love all the people I have been playing with, it has been a great way to meet people which I am so thankful for! Here at Aquinas College things are well too except for everyone getting sick, which finally passed on to me! According to my neighbor he wanted to get rid of his sickness and said he was coughing under my door so he could pass it along to me. What nice thoughts. An interesting conversation that I would like to share with you all is the conversation I had with my friends Shannon and Sunny about peanut butter. This came up because I got reeses in the mail from my grandparents for Easter! YUMM! They find it fairly odd that we would put peanut butter on our fruit like apples and bananas, and that we would eat it with chocolate. I told them that some people like peanut butter and pickle sandwiches which lead into a discussion about what pickles were in the states and what they are here. I guess a dill pickle would be a "gerkin" (spelling?) ,um yeah, weird word. We also discussed some other differences in words after that, most of which I can't remember right now. I did however learn what a capsicum was the other day. It's a pepper, like a red, green or yellow pepper. We talked about the difference between those and ground pepper for quite awhile the other night at tea that the word pepper lost all meaning!

Anyway, this is my life in Adelaide... Just a few more things, Happy Easter to all! I hope everyone has a great holiday whether you celebrate it or not and I'll update as soon as I get back from my trip to Sydney! YAY! much love and safe travels to any of you that might be traveling.

cheers!
smuder

Excitement along with some bumps and bruises

Well this past week hasn't been anything too exciting but here's a quick run down for those few of you who do read this... I've been trying to catch up on sleep all week after that very tiring weekend in Melbourne. Tuesday was my friend Rebecca's birthday, which was also my first night of League Ultimate. After putting a somewhat drunk Rebecca to bed that night I ended up talking to my friend Shannon until 5:30 am! Him and I both only ended up getting three hours of sleep, which did not help my catching up on sleep situation. Wednesday night was pub night, before that though I spent time at frisbee again and then a little time at the pub to watch Rebecca skull a jug of orange juice and vodka. I then planned to do some homework but once I got back from the pub Mel asked if I wanted food, which of course I agreed to so we went to get pizza. Later Shannon and I got to watch a drunk Mel be pretty silly and entertaining while we sat in the hall for awhile. Thursday night was of course St. Patrick's Day and I had no idea that Aussie's actually somewhat celebrated this holiday but I guess they do. My day had been wonderful all day, I was just in a really good mood from deciding plans for the second week of mid semester break with Blair to finding out that Flogging Molly ( an irish punk band I am very fond of) will be playing for free back in MN on my birthday to acting silly at frisbee practice! Anyway the happiness continued as we got ready to go out to the pub. This was probably the first time in about almost two weeks that I had drank anything. The night was entertaining running into other IES friends and just hanging out at the pub and then getting food, coming back and eating ice cream. Friday was not that great of a day because well, I guess I actually drank enough to give me a bit of hangover. Now don't worry all , it's not like I do this that often or anything, and I was still alive and coherent but man was I tired! Anyway I made it through my one class that I had and then spent the rest of the day recovering, I guess is what you could call it. Friday night was entertaining after Tea when a group of us got together to throw the frisbee which turned into a game of 500( you know the game where you stand in a group while someone throws a ball usually a football up in the air and calls points, and whoever catches it gets the points and the first to five hundred becomes the next thrower?) -- this game though did not include winning points and turned into a game of pushing eachother out of the way so they couldn't catch the disc. Really it just gave us a reason to push eachother around which actually was quite a lot of fun. Most of us have bruises and bumps to show for falls and hits. I have a bump on my nose from a frisbee that Sonny blocked and ended up in my face and a bump on the back of my head from mine and Shannons' heads colliding. OUCH! Overall it was pretty funny. After this fun game I spent some time at our "casino night" up in the common room but then decided a shower was needed and spent the rest of the night trying to read until Rebecca came by to watch Love Actually with me. Saturday has been a some what productive day... i was just happy to get ten hours of sleep. Rebecca and I bought a drying rack for clothes, and some other goodies. I have spent most of the evening trying to read for a class because I have a ton of reading left for it. Now it's coming down to what to do with the rest of the night... do more reading or hang out with people? decisions, decisions...

cheers
smuder

Melbourne

Hello all... This weekend I took my first trip besides the one I had to Kangaroo Island at the beginning of my time here in Australia. I went to Melbourne this weekend with the mens and womens ultimate frisbee teams! Most of the men left here on Thursday while all of the women left on Friday around 3pm. The trip to Melbourne was a full 8 hours in the car with a few stops so that we could stretch, pee, grab food and toss the disc a little. I thought I would go crazy being in a car for 8 hours but it actually went pretty quickly. We took six people in the car, five of the girls and then one of the guys who couldn't make it out there on Thursday with the rest of the guys. We were able to entertain ourselves with card games and just talking, with a little bit of sleeping towards the end of the trip. The drive at night was gorgeous away from the lights of the city, because you could see so many stars! It was lovely. Once we finally got to Melbourne we had to find our way around the city and find the hostel that we were staying at. It actually didn't take too long because Claire lived in Melbourne for six months at one point so she knew some of the streets and stuff. How she could know them well enough was beyond because the streets of Melbourne were so crazy confusing! Just a little fact... Adelaide is, I believe, the only planned city in Australia. Melbourne definitely did not have anyone plan out the crazy roads that they have, and on top of the crazy roads they were even more confusing for me because I'm American and I haven't gotten used to the driving on the left hand side of the road!

Anway back to the rest of Melbourne... We finally got to the hostel by 1:30 am and went straight to bed and although I was in bed it seemed like forever before I got to sleep and I only got about 5 hours. In the morning we made our way to the fields and since our women's team only had 5 women we had to pick up a few other girls to play with us to make a full ultimate team. We picked up two girls from the town of Ballarat to play with us (Nikki and Emily). We played the hardest team first but the nice thing was that women from one of the Melbourne teams were nice enough to play with us too so that we would have some subs! We lost all three of our games that day and it was really hot, but overall it was a good ultimate learning experience and I can't wait to actually get a chance to play with our full women's Adelaide team! That evening we all went out to the party that the Melbourne host team was throwing at a pub in town. So both the men's and women's teams piled in two cars and headed over. We all went for food first and then enjoyed a few drinks, some dancing, and a live band and then headed out because we were all pretty tired. Overall the night was really entertaining because I got a chance to chat with not only the girls but with some of the guys. The next morning we, the women, didn't have any games and so we went shopping, looked for socks for our uniforms for when we head out to Perth for Nationals! After shopping and then a very yummy lunch we headed back to the fields and watched the men's team (Karma) win their last game. So I didn't get to see much of the city but I think I will have another chance to see the city over our mid term break. The ride home from Melbourne was another 8 hours of however we could keep ourselves busy which actually was pretty easy when we started playing the game celebrity heads, it was a very entertaining game! Overall the trip was a lot of fun and although I did not see much of Melbourne, from the looks of it, I think I like Adelaide better just because it's a little bit nicer and smaller than Melbourne which was pretty big and kind of dirty looking so I'm glad that I chose to go to Adelaide for the semester instead of Melbourne.

Today, Tuesday is my friend Rebecca's birthday and also the beginning of Tuesday night ultimate league. For league I think I will be playing on two different teams but tonight I'll only be playing on one so that I can get back for part of the BBQ for Bec's birthday and any other shenannigans that are planned for her birthday! She's turning 21 today!

Besides all of that today was a good day at uni, I'm finally understanding what I need to be doing for my Labor Studies class and I think I will enjoy it a lot, and overall classes weren't bad today. it was a little rainy but that didn't dampen my spirits a whole lot, it just made the heat go away a bit which was nice compared to the heat this past weekend. One other thing I should mention is that I played my first game of Futsal last night. Futsal is pretty much soccer but on a smaller scale and we played it on the tennis court here at Aquinas. I played most of the game and it was lots of fun. We only play with five people on each team, four on the field and a keeper and although i used to play soccer those skills were not really showing last night... I don't think I ever really had that great of soccer skills but they might have helped a little! We actually won our game 2-0 i think, which was great! Well that's all that I have for you all. Hope all is well with everyone.
Cheers!
much love,
smuder

Boots

The week has gone by pretty fast...It's already thursday and I'm preparing for a big weekend. This week I have managed to not spend a whole lot of money on food or alcohol or anything really. I have gained self control and have not had tim tams or shapes all week! This weekend will be a little different spending money-wise though. Not only did I spend fifty dollars today to buy new boots (soccer cleats) for frisbee , which are really exciting, but I will be spending the weekend in Melbourne, Australia for a tournament. I'm so excited to be going to my first tournament! YAY. We only could get five girls to go so we'll have to gang up with another team so we have a full one to play but it should still hopefully be fun. I don't know how much of Melbourne I'll get to see but hopefully I'll get to see a little bit! We're leaving Friday at about 3 pm and are packing in a car and driving to Melbourne which is an 8 hour drive...so plenty of time to either sleep or do homework! haha. Hopefully the trip won't be too expensive but I know I'm going to have to take a bunch of cash out for accomodations and food so i can survive!

Along with that Frisbee last night was great again! We had three games going on and I was so pumped to play and just heaps excited. Two guys that live here at Aquinas (Sunny and Gretsy aka Dave) play frisbee, not on the mens team but in the Tuesday night leagues, and so I was able to catch a ride with them. They are great guys and lots of fun, we threw the disc together just the other night too! A couple of IES kids have been playing too so it's lots of fun to go to frisbee and see them! It was a great time minus the crappy wind and the craziness that is new frisbee players!

Besides frisbee everything else is good. School is good, people are good, the whole lot. Last night was pub night but I skipped out on that and just hung out at the college with people who were still around. This was nice and relaxing especially after a night of frisbee. However, I need to learn to go to bed earlier! 2 am should NOT be my bed time! I had a meeting with my study abroad adivsor over here today. It was pretty much a check up to make sure I'm alive and well and am surviving Australia and my living arrangements and stuff. Anyway we were talking and I'm telling her everything is good, but towards the end she looks at me and says "well you look pretty tired today" and well I was... that's what I get for staying up until 2 am most nights.

Well I'm going to leave you all with that and I will give you all an update when I get back from Melbourne. So until then...
much love,
smuder

relaxed weekend

Well it's been awhile since my last post, and I apologize, although I don't really know how many people rely on this to catch up on my life, but whatever...

This past weekend was quite uneventful in the sense that I stayed at college all weekend and didn't go out to the pubs or anything. I think that if I go out too much I will definitely go completely broke! I'm trying to live on a budget which hasn't been working too well yet seeing as it is only the second week of March and I'm down to like $35! EEK! Now this is suppose to be my fun spending money, but some of that was spent on books. UGH. Besides running out of money this weekend was pretty awesome because it was so relaxed and just hanging out turned out to be great. Most of the weekend I just spent the evenings hanging out with people which can give you such a great feeling because I felt like I was sitting around with a group of friends. That may sound weird but I've only known people for a couple weeks so it was nice to have that feeling of acceptance. Although I didn't get much talking in during conversations I did enjoy very much just observing the conversation and the people I was sitting with.

Birthdays have become a very common theme around here and else where. My tutor has his birthday this weekend and my friend Shannon had his birthday also. Both turned 20, which seemed weird because they seem older than that. Rebecca and I went out and bought Shannon a gift for his birthday which was The Princess Bride dvd. Out of all the Australians that we have asked, Rebecca and I have not found one that has seen the movie or read the book The Princess Bride except for Shannon, who loves it as much as we do! This was so very exciting for us because along with the search for those who have heard of it, whenever we've mentioned it, the males mostly, have just been like "oh sounds like a chick flick"! For those of you who have seen it, you quite clearly that it is NOT a chick flick! Anyway to say the least Shannon LOVED the gift, not only that but the wonderful wrapping paper that Rebecca and I made by coloring pictures from my coloring book. How awesome are we?! :-) Sunday was his actual birthday and a group of us ended up going out to dinner and then watching his new DVD. Yay for Rebecca and I introducing the Aussies to a great movie... oh and they all cracked up and loved the movie. It was a fun time! Besides these two birthdays friends back home have birthdays this week and then Rebecca has her 21st here next week! Something about March birthdays I guess!

Other news that I received from the states was that my good friend Kari got engaged this weekend which just made me go crazy!If you know Kari and have not told her congrats! You should,this is such exciting news and what is even better is that I will actually be able to attend her wedding!

now it's on to the second week of classes and I have realized that doing homework would be a good thing to do, but it's so hard when you want to keep being social and meet people especially when things are going on all around you! EEK! needless to say my procrastination needs to drop out and I need to pick up that whole studying bug again! Today (Tuesday) is my longest day but it still doesn't feel that bad..class from 9-3 with an hour break. What was exciting today was the fact that I enjoyed my philosophy lecture, the tutorial was a bit harder, but still good. All in all it was a good day at Uni and was a beautiful to match! I love this weather! One great thing about the weather here is that you can hang your laundry out instead of using the dryer...yay for saving some energy! the downer to this though is that lint collects like mad on your clothes when they hang to dry and the clothes that you have stretched out don't shrink back to their normal form. oh well. Well those are my ramblings for the day hope whoever reads this enjoyed it!
much love,
smuder

Rainy Day

Well the first week of classes are officially over for me! YAY! I had one class today (Friday) and it was hard to pay attention cuz I was sitting farther back than I had wanted and the chairs in the room are really squeaky when people move around. Not only that but my lecturer's Aussie accent can be a little difficult for me to understand sometimes, it all depends on what he's trying to say. The week overall wasn't too bad, my classes seem pretty cool for the most part and it's really weird to not have that much going on yet. Besides classes the week was pretty low key which was nice, although we did have our first official "Pub Night". I also got to play frisbee twice this week and it was super super fun! I was soooo excited for Wednesday night frisbee because a lot of my american friends came out to play which was so awesome and there were just TONS of people. It was great!!

Last night was quite entertaining after I got back from ultimate practice. I ended up in Shannon's room (he's a tutor, like an RA) with a bunch of people hanging out listening to music. Most of these people I had never really hung out with so it was kind of a weird experience, eventhough I felt good being there, like they were people that I always hang out with. Overall it was a good experience... We all ended up staying up way too late listening to music and watching random cartoons online...

Today is a gloomy rainy day and so the plan is to sit inside and chill all afternoon, which I am really looking forward to, and I don't feel that bad staying in because of the bad weather. I was going to go to Cleland Wildlife park with my friends Blair and Will. Will is a frisbee player and used to go to Luther for those of you that don't know ( I don't know if I ever shared that but yeah..). So that's about it for now, there isn't much else to say.

much love,
smuder