Saving the bush and celebrating St. Pat
Trip Start
Feb 15, 2004
1
10
34
Trip End
Dec 18, 2004
Randwick,
Australia
Friday, March 19, 2004
Bush Care Volunteers
.Last Friday night, Kristin and I went out in Kings Cross, which is the seedy prostitute-and-sex-shop-filled area of Sydney. We chose to go out there because a girl from one of Kristin's classes got us on the list for a party at a bar, so we got in for free. Plus there were free drinks, but we only found that out after we had already paid for beer! The bar was super-trendy and filled with oh-so-hip people who were very concerned with how they looked. Not my kinda scene. We were going to then meet up with some people from my class, but after lots of text messages and phone calls that didn't quite work out. We decided to head home, but first made a pit stop at a bar on the way. Turned out to be a gay bar (should have known, since it was on Oxford Street), which worked to our advantage since the ladies room was completely empty. :) The next morning I had to get up bright and early because I had signed up for a volunteer project with the International Student office. I got to be a "Bush Care Volunteer" at a nature reserve not far from where I live, meaning I played in the dirt, planted indigenous plants, did lots o'weeding, and best of all got to wear a sexy gardening tool belt. It was good fun, plus I met some cool people, like short German Armando and fellow-American Christina. Now I'm constantly complaining about how there are so many Americans here and saying I don't want anything to do with them, but Christina is one of the good ones. She's actually from New Jersey (small world!), went to the University of Delaware (like Karen!), and is using a Master's in Art Administration as an excuse to hang out in Australia for a while (sounds familiar!).
That night, Kristin and I went to see Funkstar again, this time at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow pub in posh Paddington. We met up with Christina and her Aussie roomie Annabelle there, since they live nearby. The place was a bit classier than Scruffy's, with an older crowd. So it didn't get as rowdy as usual, but I still had a great time dancing, especially when they played Maroon 5! And I talked to Andre (the lead singer) again, but I still don't quite understand what the deal is with the movies he wrote songs for, but Colin Ferrill is apparently in one of them.
After a fun-filled 4-day weekend, it was back to the classwork I like to pretend I don't have. My grammar class was wonderful as usual because my prof rocks! He's an expert on cleft sentences (such as "It was my father who wrote the letter." as opposed to just "My father wrote the letter." See, now you've learned something about linguistics!) because he thought it would help with the ladies. And this time he told us a story about when he and the author of our textbook (which he refers to as "The Bible") ended up at a nude beach, in order to illustrate that grammar can be fun! I'm actually starting to make friends in my classes, partly because people keep asking me for help. Either I look friendly or like a nerd, but in any case I helped out 3 of my classmates in one night. And in my ESL teaching class I feel like I'm actually IN an ESL class because most of the students aren't native English speakers. I constantly have to explain the activities we do to everyone sitting around me. I guess it's extra teaching practice for me, but that's now how I expected a postgraduate university class to be!
Yesterday was Saint Patrick's Day, so of course I went out to celebrate my miniscule Irish heritage. I decided to forgo the 9:30 am pub crawl at uni and waited until after class to hit the town. Kristin chose to be studious on one of the biggest party nights of the year, so I engaged in some solo Norwegian "foreplay" (or pre-partying, as we say in English), hopped on a bus full of loud obnoxious drunk Americans, and met up with Christina and some random people she met at uni at a pub in the Rocks (a touristy/historic area of Sydney). The random people included Simon from England (who likes Maroon 5!), a guy from Kentucky, a girl from California who worked in Alaska, the girl's Aussie classmate, and Peter from England. The pub closed about half an hour after I got there (why would you close at 11 pm on St. Pat's Day?!), so we moved on to another pub nearby. While we were sitting at a table outside, I saw this British guy Martin who lives in my apartment complex. It made me feel like I actually know people here! So Martin and his friends and me and my posse all headed to another pub, where I got to pay $7 for a plastic frat-party cup of Guinness. After that, Simon, Peter, Kentucky guy, Christina, and I ended up wandering around the Opera House because all the pubs were closed. We amused ourselves by running down the up escalator and down the up escalator. I had actually never done that before, and it was surprisingly fun! I love Sydney at night, when it's all peaceful and lit-up.
Well I should wrap this up, but just one more thing... My first visitor is coming in May!! Rina is staying with me for 2 weeks, and we're going to hit up all our old haunts and eat lots of Tim Tams (the greatest cookie known to man). We're also gonna go to Melbourne for a long weekend, and hopefully have a better time than the last time we went there.
OH! And Maroon 5 is giving a concert in Sydney next month!!!!!!! Perfect timing - I'm so psyched!
