A Place to Live
Trip Start
Dec 31, 2008
1
13
40
Trip End
Mar 27, 2009
Sydney,
New South Wales,
Australia
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
After having been living in Sydney for about two weeks now, I have a few more observations. First, that sun is really strong. They are not lying when they say the ozone is thinner here. Despite wearing 30 sunscreen at Coogee Beach the other day, and despite not going until late afternoon, I have a huge sunburn in a circle on my back, where I apparently didn't put enough sunscreen on, as well as on my stomach. This will not stop me from going to the beach, however.
Secondly, the girls in Sydney dress incredibly scandalously. The only other place I can compare the way they dress here (on a nightly basis) is to Vegas. But I think it is even more so here, especially amongst the younger set, since you only have to be 18 to drink and go out here. The girls from my program that I went out with last night were saying that they would have to go shopping because they feel like they are dressed way too conservatively at the clubs here. Frankly, I'd rather be going to neighborhood bars here rather than the clubs, and I feel that some of the others feel that way as well, but thus far we've been hitting the rather touristy Darling Harbour area quite a bit, which I'd compare perhaps to Navy Pier, although it isn't quite THAT touristy. They are fairly big jerks around here about dress codes- you basically can't get anywhere nicer than a pub in a pair of flip flops, and most places you'd better have dressy shoes on to get in. We were denied admittance at a club last weekend because one of the guys we were with had on athletic shoes.
Something I am loving about Sydney life is Oporto. Oporto is a fast food chicken chain that serves Portuguese-style chicken (think Rotisserie chicken) that is, in a word, delicious. Plus it is cheap and fast and is everywhere. I might go through about a couple dozen quarter chickens here over the next 2.5 months. Other food here is great as well- Italian is especially common around here and I've been eating that quite a bit. Asian food is everywhere, and other than native Australians, Asians are by far the most common ethnicity living here, mostly Chinese, which isn't too hard to believe since there are 3 or 4 cities in China that have more people than the entire nation of Australia.
As for other activities, I've been trying to plan some trips. I've been trying to decide with Courtney and Andy where to go when they get here (and would still like Beed to come with them, if he can). I may go with two girls from school to Tasmania next weekend, but that would probably involve missing the Super Bowl, which wouldn't please me. We've found a bar here that shows NFL games (probably not-so-ironically named Cheers), so I went with three guys to watch the AFC & NFC championships this past weekend, and our friends Dale and Lenny are planning on having a Super Bowl party. However, Tasmania sounds cool, the flight is cheap ($150), and the girls I would go with have basically planned everything out for us- we'd rent a car and drive all around for the 5-6 days we are there. We're also considering a trip to Melbourne in two weeks and driving the Great Ocean Road after we hit the city for a couple days, which I think would be fun. It helps that domestic flights are really cheap. You can fly pretty much anywhere for under $200. Anyways, that's the bulk of my activity from the past few days. I'm looking forward to 5:00 tomorrow when I'll be done with class for the next five days again!
