#scubar

[beariber-blog]

LOS OLIVOS

[nique-ai]

💀 i honestly do not remember anything after this photo was taken 💀 #hangs #pubcrawl #thereef #scubar #hoelloween

[croatoan-the-line]

So thefandomwench and I are at crab racing and we're betting on a crab and we have named it Crabstiel. Send your angel prayers for us to win.

[texts-from-boys-blog]

Sorry!

[aussieyoulater]

I really had kangaroo pizza today though

[mollyelena23]

only 90s kids could pull this off..

We found a 90s party. Shout out to my new Aussie friend Sarah who gave us the scoop. None of us packed appropriately but a good chunk of us pulled off some form of 90s clothing, reference, hairstyle, look, etc. with what little clothes we brought with us. I have to say my hair was a masterpiece. Look out Qbar. American weirdos are coming to take over. As you can imagine we were the only people 'dressed up' but it was a blast. Lion King was played, boy band routines were danced and that is all that needs to be said.

  That was also the same night that I found myself in the WIDEST TREE IN THE WORLD (actually just the widest tree I have ever seen). On the walk home, which I must thank Steven aka Harton, for being such a trooper, we found this tree and climbed it. We were in the tree for a good hour I would say and then we found swings. Needless to say on the visit back to my childhood, we lost our surroundings. It took us another solid hour to make our way back home. It was an adventure and I don't regret a single minute of it. Until I needed more sleep the next day but it was a weekend so it wasn't horrible!

 I am not sure if I have mentioned Scubar yet. If I haven't I feel as my new friends would murder me. Scubar is a grungy backpacker bar that is two blocks away from one of the buildings a number of us stay at. It is the goal of many people (boys) to be known as 'regulars' there. So no matter what the plan is for the night/weekend it is always requested that Scubar be a stop at the end of the night. Needless to say some of us are less than thrilled to become regulars at the World Famous Scubar but we seem to bring fun where ever we go. There are so many of us that it's impossible not to have fun at a place. Even if it is completely dead. For example we made a stop at a place called SideBar the other night with a crowd of two whole people and it was a blast. Terrible music that night but nonetheless we made it fun. This is something I have come to appreciate about my new friends. 

We had a research project meeting with our advisers to help us figure out what we were going to be writing about for our final project. My work place has given me the issues of aircraft noise to research, but for my final project I am much more interested in looking at the different voting systems and party involvement between the United States and Australia. So essentially I will be doing two research projects but I am expecting to learn a lot from both. If anyone has insight they would like to offer I will gladly take it and I will probably be doing some Skype/email interviews starting in a couple weeks so if you have something you really want to say feel free to contact me :) I will be asking for help from some of you anyway.

After our research meeting we had a tennis day. Let me give you some context: I have played tennis once in my life for about 5 minutes, I know the rules of the game, but I also played softball my entire life. Unless you know techniques and how to play tennis, softball skills are not a friend to you. For the first half hour I kept hitting the ball way too high, hard and over the fence. I finally got it through my brain that you need to hit it softer and a different way then one would hit with a bat. I picked it up a little more and my friend Alana (who played in high school) and I were Kings of the Court in all four courts. Let's just say that she was more of a contributor to the team then I was. But I was getting there. Tennis was fun but I think I am going to stick to basketball as my go to sport.

I got to go to Parliament yesterday. It was very interesting and exciting. Well as exciting as a foreign government to an ignorant American can be. But I am a huge nerd about governments so it was AWESOME. I got a tour of the building, and met some of the other Green Party MPs. The Upper House of Parliament has five Green party MPs and the lower house has only one (who I work for). 

While the lower house debates were slow moving when I was observing, it got rather heated in the upper house. When I first walked in I must have sat on the wrong side because one of the MPs I had just met said "no no Molly. You will want to sit over here on this side." They were debating the issue of hunting on national parks. The greens you can imagine were very against this issue. While an MP of the opposition was making a speech, the Green MPs were very talkative and passionate. It was actually really funny. And some of them were red faced and angry while others were making snide comments and joking. It wasn't just the Greens that were upset about this issue because there were other people involved in the jesting. It was very entertaining. I had a great time and learned a lot from my short visit to Parliament and am very grateful for the experience. 

That night my friends and I had a 'family dinner.' Rina made us a kosher dinner and I think it is the most food I have had in one sitting in a looooong time. I had three helpings of pasta, salad, numerous pieces of garlic and cheesy bread, and a chunk of chocolate cake. I had to break out the fat pants after that one. After that I went and celebrated Tamara's, one of my roommates, 21st birthday! We played buck hunter, penny slots, and listened to this awesome acoustic guitar player at a pub called Landsdown. It is a college student pub because the food is so cheap there. I also met to blokes named Davy and Josh who I played pool with. The pool balls are just two colors (red and yellow) with one black ball (the eight ball) and they were smaller then the ones I'm used to. Lauren and I however lost three times to them... sad day. After that we found a karaoke place which we will definitely go back to. The guy in charge of the songs named us the 'hot off the grill girls'. Absolutely no idea where that came from or how he came up with it but it was awesome. An older gentlemen sang 'my life would suck with out you' by Kelly Clarkson and he knew every single word. I was thoroughly impressed. We ended the night with some MORE cake back in our room. 

Also blackberry jam isn't that bad.. actually it tastes a lot like grape jelly.   

[mollyelena23]

Slippery Sydney

We made it to Sydney! 

We split up according to the place we are living in and go check in the apartments. My room was not ready in Medina Chippendale (again this was the 2nd time that happened) so we went to the nearby shopping center. We got an Aussie phone and looked around a bit. The Australian burner phone is very liberating in a way. I am so used to the iPhone and everything it has to ofter that it was kind of nice not to worry about the outside world and relax and enjoy myself for once. Although I did have to reteach myself to use t9 texting because it was the cheapest phone I could find.

I didnt have time to check into my apartment before our scheduled tour of the city so I ended up buying $10 kmart shoes so I didnt have to walk around in flip flops. To date that is the best purchase I have made so far in Sydney. It was pouring rain outside. I got soaked from head to ankle. Because my kmart shoes kept my feet so toasty warm they didn't get soaked. Well worth their price.

We finished the sopping wet tour with a bar at the Opera House. We tried some appetizers. Mom you would be so proud. I tried everything and found it all to be interesting, some things very tasty, other things not really that great. I eneded up going to the lady's room to dry my hair in one of those hand dryers. I must say it was kind of hard but I got it done

.

Steve (not Stephen) also was soaked to the bone without an umbrella. He however had some mysterious dry spots on the back of his shirt that to this day we are still not able to explain. Although he would like to think its his huge muscles, I say its almost impossible that happened so it was clearly sorcery. I however was the only one with dry feet :) THANKS K-MART. I was kind of in a sour mood because of everything with the hotel and the rain but once the down pour started there was nothing else to do but embrace it and jump in puddles. 

It still hasn't stopped raining since we have been here. But you just learn that you have to take an umbrella wherever you go and hope for the sun to come out :) 

I finally settled in my room. I also learned how to play the card game hearts! It is an awesome strategy based card game. Thanks to Weston for teaching us. 

The next day was our first day of class. It was supposed to be a 15 minute walk from our apartment. So we all met up and started walking. Somewhere along the line we made a wrong turn and started getting lost. The reason I say started getting lost is because we got lost about 4 times after that. We were turning in circles trying to find this building on the University of Sydney's campus. We even met up with the group from the other apartment complex. Their group split up because they disagreed on which way to go and they were lost. We wanted to go one way and they wanted to go another. Long story short, we got dizzy from how many circles we walked in. Eric finally took charge and somehow lead us to class. Almost an hour late. Needless to say whether he wanted the job or not, Eric became the guy we follow when it comes to getting around Sydney. 

Class was very interesting. The teacher, Mick as we call him, is extremely knowledgeable and funny. He makes the 5 hour class not seem so long. This class is all about Australian culture. So we have outings we go to like film festivals, book launches, an AFL game, and public talks. Mick also takes us to local pubs after these events.

Naturally, as college kids do, we wanted to check out the night scene in the place we were going to be living in for the next month and half. We found this dance bar called Scubar about two blocks from Medina Executive (not my apartment complex unfortunately) and it was so fun. Some of the guys in this bar were... I think 'friendly' is a good way to put it. However, Dillon and Eric were very excellent and keeping the area clear from creeps and for that they are awesome. We all ended up having a great time. It set the bar pretty high for the rest of our time here but I am not to worried. IT'S SYDNEY MATE!