Hi everyone!

Hey! So I've decided it would really be easier for me to have a blog instead of sending you all reallllly long emails. That way, if you want to read this, you can, and if not, you don't have to worry about offending me by being like, "Um, Merri, please don't send me any more emails." Basically, whenever I post, people will be sent a link to the blog (at least I think that's how it works). Feel free to comment whenever you want and I love emailing people so I promise I'll reply even if it's not immediately. :)

Anyway, to get to what's been happening lately...the last time I updated everyone was about a week ago. Things have been awesome here lately, with the exception of a few class related things. :) My mom and brother got here last Friday, so that has made everything extremely busy! It’s not the easiest thing trying to be in class and do all the tourist-y things I want to do at the same time, but I’m learning. If this were Duke, I doubt I’d be able to do it, but even if I do complain about the work here, the fact remains that I probably work as much in one week here as I do in a hard weekend at Duke. The work comes in waves and unfortunately this was my first week where I had some major stuff due. I gave a presentation today for one of my classes and I have this big drawing assignment due Friday, so I was really stressed out last night. But now the presentation is over and the drawing is almost finished so things are looking up, definitely!

This past weekend was amazing, too. My mom and brother are staying in Darling Harbour, one of my favorite areas of the city, so I got to have dinner with them there last Friday night. When I’m with them, it’s like being on vacation (because obviously they are), so it’s a drastically different lifestyle. We basically spent the whole weekend at Darling Harbour and the Circular Quay/Rocks area, which are two of the most expensive and upscale areas of the city…haha. On Saturday we went to Taronga Zoo, which you have to take a ferry to get to, and it’s seriously the best zoo I’ve EVER seen. Now I can finally say I’ve seen koalas and kangaroos! (although the shy platypus eluded us…grrr.) Koalas are cute, but I’m definitely more obsessed with kangaroos. We watched them for like half an hour because they were all interacting with each other and playing games and mock fighting - so much fun. There was also this Australian walkabout area where you went in and walked around a path, and there were just kangaroos and wallabies sitting right there. And then an emu just walked RIGHT PAST US. Emus are pretty funny looking creatures, I must say. And then we were watching a wallaby (looks pretty much just like a kangaroo) and a TINY BABY (it was literally like 5 inches high) poked its head out of the mom’s pouch and it just might have been the cutest thing I have EVER SEEN IN MY WHOLE LIFE. It was awesome!

Saturday night I was fortunate enough to be treated to a performance of the Sydney Symphony at the OPERA HOUSE, thanks to my amazing mother! They played Walton and Elgar, who are two of my favorite composers, so that was wonderful. And the view from the place is just breathtaking. It’s so cool to actually see a performance in such a famous place. Then, on Sunday, Nick and I got a very different view of the opera house - from above! We did the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb, which is this really famous activity that tons of people do, including all these awesome celebrities (they had pictures of famous people who’d climbed it, including Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, etc., so you know how excited I get about that kind of stuff). Obviously, this is not something you would do if you were scared of heights since at the top it’s about 140 meters or so, I think (that’s like 500 feet maybe?). But really it was just breathtaking and exciting and not scary at all. We had to wear special suits with belts that attached us to this wire along the side so there was no danger at all. It was mostly just climbing SO many steps (and a few ladders). I think the total number of steps we climbed was like 1437 or something. The view from the top was just indescribably gorgeous. We unfortunately weren’t allowed to bring up cameras (otherwise how would they make obscene amounts of money by selling photos to you at the bottom?), but our tour guide did get some great photos of both Nick and me. I have my own little montage. :)

And then the beginning of the week was kind of stressful preparing these two major things, but now that that’s over, I’m looking forward to a really amazing and crazy next four days. Tomorrow is a big USyd sponsored party at one of the bars on campus, on Friday we go to the Opera House again for a rap/hip-hop type performance (totally different from the previous one, obviously!), and this weekend we are hoping to go to the Aquarium, the Powerhouse Museum (this really cool exploration museum), and the Blue Mountains! Then I’ll finally feel like I’ve done most of the major things to do in Sydney. (Of course there is so much more cool stuff to do beyond that.) This week I also nailed down travel plans for New Zealand, Tasmania, and Cairns (where the Great Barrier Reef is). So much travel - I’m SO excited!

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