Becky & Becca in Australia: It's June Already?

HELLO BLOG WORLD!!!

It's Becky here to update you on the fabulous lives of Becky & Becca (or "B squared" as some Aussies like to call us). May flew by and it's hard to believe that we leave in a little over 2 weeks! We are really looking forward to seeing all you fun people and eating some good Mexican food (Chipotle in particular), but it's definitely going to be hard to leave all our new friends and this amazing city. We've been doing our best to pack as much fun as possible into our last Sydney days. What have we been doing exactly? Well...

May 16: Baking up a storm! We had planned to bake some cakeballs at our friends' apartment, but as luck would have it their apartment flooded the day we were set to bake! Luckily some of our other American friends took pity on us and let us use their kitchen. Making cake balls in Australia was quite an experience. Their chocolate melts weird...the oven is in celsius degrees...we struggled. Based off of our other cooking failures (quesadillas that were either burned or covered in butter, mac n cheese that took forever to make because the water wouldn't boil, "hot dogs" that weren't actually hot dogs...to name a few) I have decided that it's just harder to cook in this country. Despite difficulties, we soldiered on and made our cake balls. The prettiness factor wasn't there, but they tasted DELICIOUS. And they were gone within 2 days. We introduced Australia to puppy chow a few days later, too. Oh the amazingness of puppy chow...and we can make it in our dorm since we have access to microwaves! Jackpot!

May 17: Movie night! For my first ever movie experience in Australia we went to see "Letters to Juliet" with some American friends. Fun fact about Australian movie theaters: they have assigned seating. Who would have thought? The movie was cute. One of those that is super predictable and cheesy but still charming. We all died laughing about the last line. The sparknotes version: Boy falls from balcony. Girl rushes to his side and says "Can you move?" Boys response: "Only my lips." They kiss. Credits roll. The cheesiness of it is STILL killing me.

May 22: We tried to go out for a fun night in the city. It rained. We ran in heels. It was not a success. We did play Bananagrams, though. And no night is a complete failure when Bananagrams is involved!

May 23: We were supposed to go to a rugby match with our study abroad group, but it was going to take us 3 hours of public transportation time to get to a game that would probably only last a little more than an hour. Plus it was raining, and our seats were in an uncovered "picnic area." There was a mutual decision that we should nix the rugby game and treat ourselves to a pizza feast instead. We each demolished our own pizza while watching New Moon. Success! These pizza nights have become a regularity when we don't like what's on the dinner menu. We had one last week on our last day of classes to celebrate. We sure do love food. Mmmmm.

May 28: I got an Australian driving lesson from Josh, one of my fav Australians. Don't worry, I only drove around campus and came across very few stoplights but I successfully drove on the LEFT (aka wrong) side of the street on the RIGHT (aka wrong) side of the car and didn't hit any curbs, people, or trees. And I did a right turn at an intersection (which is the equivalent of a left turn in the States) without freaking out! It was an incredibly entertaining/terrifying experience.

May 29: We have a list of things we want to do before we leave Sydney. On this list: find all the random art sculptures on our school's campus and take pictures with them. We ventured out on a rainy Saturday afternoon to accomplish this task. How many sculptures did we come across? 59!!!! Yes, f-i-f-t-y-n-i-n-e. It took us way longer than expected to find them all (and I think we STILL missed some) but we were quite pleased with ourselves and our art finding skills. Why Macquarie University has so much random art on campus is still unclear, but it does provide hours of entertainment!

May 30: Fun day at Luna Park and the Rocks! We took the train to Luna Park where Becca rode a ferris wheel for the first time EVER! At the top of the ferris wheel we had the most lovely view of the Harbor Bridge, Opera House, sailboats, and the city. It was just lovely. We enjoyed our ride (Becca is a natural ferris wheel pro) then walked across the Harbor Bridge to get to the Rocks. It was Becca's first time to walk across and my first time to be walking rather than running (the last time I crossed while a random monsoon decided to downpour gallons of water on me, Emma, and Sophie). While we were walking across, we both had a moment where we just had to pause and say "Wow. We live here." This city really is the most beautiful place. Once we made it to the Rocks, we wandered around taking pictures of some of our favorite places and did some shopping at the Rocks market. With all that walking we had to get some fresh squeezed lemonade to give ourselves a sugar boost to hold us over til dinner. The boost wore off, though, so we ended up sitting on a bench outside a pub with live music playing while we waited for the restaurants to open for dinner. We got to watch the sunset then wandered over to the cutest little Italian restaurant for some grub. We had always passed it and wanted to go in, so we decided tonight was the night! We both had a yummy pasta dish and treated ourselves to the most delicious piece of strawberry cheesecake at the restaurant next door before heading back to DLC. More "Sydney to do's" checked off our list!

June 4: A more successful night out in the city! We went out to celebrate our friend Sarah's 21st birthday. We played Twister, danced the night away to classics like "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and "Let's Hear It For The Boys" and had a great time with our DLC friends. The best part? The bar we were at was handing out FREE GLOWSTICKS AND LOLLIPOPS! We were very excited about this news. Next we headed off to say goodbye to our Aussie friend Sean who's leaving for a 5 month European backpacking adventure. It's so weird that the goodbyes are starting already! After giving Sean lots of hugs, we headed back to DLC and played in the dark with our glowsticks for the rest of the night. It's the simple things in life, ya know?

Other things we've been keeping busy with: Finishing our final paper for Intercultural Relations class, creating an original piece of art for our Contemporary Australian Arts final, practicing NON-STOP with our music theater groups for our 5 minute performance that is our final (video of that coming soon), sending hate vibes toward two of our really mean teachers, sending nicer vibes to our Australian teachers that we really like, eating lots of food, going to work out classes (fat burner with Liesl is our favorite), and other shenanigans.

What's next: our first AFL (Australian Football League) game tomorrow with Josh (He worked some magic and got us free tickets! Yes!), music theater performances on Monday, celebrating the end of music theater with puppy chow and Sex and the City 2 on Monday night, first (and only) final on Thursday afternoon, PATTI LONG ARRIVES ON THURSDAY MORNING!!!, fun with Patti Long in Sydney from June 10-15, then lots of fun and tearful goodbyes before we leave on June 21. Ahhhhh! I'm just so confused as to where the time has gone...?

We love you. We miss you. We can't wait to see you!