Techno times...and other adventures

Hey everyone!
Wow, it’s hard to believe another week has come and gone. Before I know it, August is going to be over, and then the traveling around Australia and New Zealand will begin! Anyway, the obvious highlight of my life right now is that Larissa is here!!!! She came this past Wednesday really early in the morning, and being the ridiculously experienced traveler that she is, actually found her way to my room via public transport. (NOT easy to do in Sydney especially if you have never been here before…I would have been terrified!) So we have been having the most amazing time catching up and doing all sorts of things around the city. On Wednesday, I took her down to the Conversvatory since I had my viola lesson, and after that we went and looked at the Opera House and had dinner at a little café on the Rocks that my mom and Nick and I had gone to. (It’s really cool because since they’ve been here I know the Darling Harbour, Circular Quay, and Central Business District areas SOOOO much better.)

On Thursday I had this Materials lab in the afternoon but I was free all morning which was great, so we had this nice late breakfast/brunch, and then it started raining so we went back to my room and got back into bed and talked more. SO GOOD. I love being in bed when it’s raining. :) Unfortunately, I had class so I eventually had to get out of bed, but then we met up again after class and had dinner with my friends here, and went out to our usual happy hours on Thursday night.

Friday I had a sucky day of class, which was too bad, so it’s good Larissa was here to cheer me up. Luckily enough, I have practically no work while she is actually here (except for another semi-scary Mechanical Design project due this coming Friday), but the week after she leaves is going to be a nightmare and I am already kind of dreading it. We got an assignment in my space engineering class that is apparently supposed to take the average student FIFTY HOURS to complete. I was like, are you KIDDING me? Apparently not. Because obviously it takes time to figure out how to get a computer program to simulate an orbit around the moon using data from an actual launch system. AAAHHH. Again, on one hand it is very cool that I am doing something so real, but on the other hand…*whine* I don’t want to, I just want to explore Australia more. :( Anyway, once I got back from class, though, I got to catch up with people on Skype which made me really happy, and then Larissa and I walked all the way to Chinatown because it was beautiful out! So we had this amazing really late lunch and then went to Paddy’s Market and got the BEST cheap produce and the BEST snacks. I can not even describe to you guys how good these Asian snacks of dried fruit and crunchy things are. They are so addictive it’s not even funny. (We are going back there again today to get more I think.) And I have also gotten Larissa completely addicted to Friends (Nick was amazing and brought me seasons 6 through 10, so I am completely re-obsessed), so we have definitely gone through half a season already in our downtime (all the while eating Asian snacks, obviously). We also got to explore Glebe Road, which is this area west of the university that I haven’t gotten to see yet, and my friend JJ showed us around. There are a ton of cute coffee shops there and I like how it’s a little quieter than King Street so maybe I’ll try to take work there some afternoon. I am so enchanted with the idea of sitting in coffee shops all afternoon reading and working. It’s just the cutest little picture in my head. :)

Anyway, Friday night, a bunch of the girls and Larissa and I decided to go to the Opera House Studio Theatre for this experimental type show about genetically engineering humans…it sounded a lot cooler on paper than it actually was, unfortunately. The idea was that the audience had to choose different characteristics to add to our human being creation, but the human being thing on the screen was so ugly and scary looking and plain weird that I kind of wanted to get rid of it, not give it more power of thought…haha. I suppose if you try out all those shows you will like some and not like some, though, and I definitely liked the idea of it, so it was worth going, and now Larissa can say she’s seen a show at the Opera House. Afterward we went to the Establishment Bar, which I read up on and desperately wanted to go to because it’s apparently one of the classiest bars in Sydney with some of the snobbiest people and rudest bouncers. YAY! But I totally got in without even being IDed, which was exciting. It is a beautiful place too - with this 130 foot long pure marble bar and really high celings (and probably heinously expensive drinks; we elected to not find that out, haha). So that was fun but the evening was kind of dampened (literally) by the fact that it was raining, and it’s much harder to go out and have a good time when it is WET AND COLD.

Yesterday, we got to sleep in (it’s been glorious sleeping till like eleven…feels like back home or Duke on the weekends now!), and then Larissa wanted to go to the Sydney Fish Markets, which I wouldn’t have thought of, but I’m SO glad she suggested it because it was AMAZING. One of my absolute favorite things about this city is the number of speciality markets they have EVERYWHERE. This fish market is huge and obviously right on the water, so you know the fish was literally caught that morning and they are now selling it to you. Fresh seafood is just so amazing - we had barramundi (this special Australian fish) and shrimp and sushi…YUM. I also LOVE fish and chips. It is such a British/Australian thing and I wouldn’t have them anywhere else now. Then we went SHOPPING (again, awesome because I haven’t looked in clothese stores since like June!) at this huge department store called David Jones which is right by the Sydney Tower and has ridiculous numbers of incredibly expensive designers. I definitely tried on a pair of 600 dollar Prada shoes just because I felt like it.

Then at night we went to this club called Tank, which is run by the same people who run the Establishment, actually. It is apparently one of the three most famous and hardest to get into clubs in Sydney on a Saturday night. But because my friend Andrew knows a friend who has a friend (etc etc) we got on the guest list and got in AND got a discount, so that was really exciting because the line was HUUUUUGE. Now let me try to explain the Australian clubbing experience. (And according to Larissa, the way every club in the whole WORLD works except for the US.) There is only one kind of music: TECHNO. There are no words. Just BUM ba BUM ba BUM ba BUM looped OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. After I realized with a sinking feeling that this was not going to change, I decided that I would have to attempt to enjoy dancing to this? Hahahaha. But with Larissa it made it much better since she actually likes clubbing like that and has experience with it before. But seriously, I wish I could describe this techno experience better. There are crazy strobe lights everywhere that make people look like they are in some nightmarish sort of slow motion, and in between “songs” (i.e. changing of one beat to another, similar beat), they have this SCREEEEEEEEEEE sound looping over and over and the lights flash crazily or sometimes go all the way or all the way off and then the next beat starts and everyone cheers and puts their hands up and it all starts all over again. Wow. I don’t even know what else to say - it was an experience for sure. (Dad, you should know that I’ve decided that club is actually your own personal hell. For real.)

Anyway Larissa has just woken up so we’re going to go decide what to do with our day - I think we’re going to maybe have tea and then go to Bondi Beach! Hope everyone is doing well and congratulations if you actually read all that…

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