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!

"Letters To Juliet" with Sarah, Brittany, and Jenny

Stuck in the rain on a not-so-successful night in the city

Treating ourselves to a delicious pizza feast when DLC food just doesn't cut it

ART! on Macquarie's campus. Confused? So are we. This is sculpture #8 that we found

There is no common theme between all the art on campus. It's just...there. Here's Becca modeling #51

Here it is folks: Becca on her first ferris wheel ride EVER!!!

Isn't our city beautiful?

On our walk across the Harbor Bridge

Sugar boost a la lemonade!

Sunset at the Rocks Market

Mmmmm cheesecake

Free Glowsticks!!!! (and also hours of entertainment)

Enjoying Sydney in May

It's been over 3 weeks since our last blog post! We know everyone has been DYING without us, so we are here to give you an update on our aussie lives.

Since our last post we have been very busy making the most of our time left. Currently, we have 43 days left in Sydney. CRAZY!

Recently we have...

-May 4th: Celebrated Star Wars Day- MAY the FORTH be with you...hahaha we had a marathon and watched 3 Star Wars movies, it was a fantastic, nerdy night.

-May 5th: CINCO DE MAYO!! We introduced the holiday to our Australian friends! We grabbed some margaritas at our go to easy mexican food restaurant, Mad Mex. This was the first time Cameron or Spida either had margaritas, and the quickly fell in love with them. The rest of the boys joined in the fun with either Coronas or tequila. I think they will make celebrating an annual tradition :)

-May 6th: Girls Night! Our dorm has a girl's night out in Chatswood at Chelsea bar and we enjoyed a drink out with the girls! We were back at 10:30 exhausted but had a lot of fun enjoying a "passionistic" drink :)

-May 8th: Sydney was having beautiful weather and so we ventured to the city to explore some markets! We started off at Paddy's Market which is a HUGE flea market type place. We then walked around the city and grabbed some Macca's (McDonalds) for a quick and healthy (ha) lunch. Becca experience her first Cupcakes on Pitt Street experience! We caught a train to historic area called The Rocks to explore another market. After that, we walked to Circular Quay to walk around the Opera House. We caught a ferry from one side of the harbour to the other to see Luna Park before heading back to our college. That night, we got all dressed up and made use of our public transport day passes by going back out to the city to help celebrate a friend's birthday. It was a fun night getting to enjoy great company.

-May 10th: May 14th was a PERFECT day. We got up and went to breakfast at our dorm to find out they had made hashbrowns which is a rare but glorious occasion. Becca checked the mail for her highly anticipated package including NEW MOON! The package had arrived and naturally freaked out with Becky about looking forward to watching the movie that night. Becky ended up having a package arrive on the exact same day which shockingly included New Moon as well!! How hilarious is that?! Both of us got packages with New Moon in it the same day?! We had been planning a dinner at Inferno, which is a pizza and pasta place that has an all-you-can-eat deal on Mondays. We had gathered a group together to eat the amazing pizza and pasta with us. The 6 of us ate until we literally couldn't eat anymore. We had created a tally system for how much we had ate and had all marked our amount on our arms through out the 2 hour meal. After stuffing our faces, we went back to our dorm to watch the "Servant Night" performances. Servant Night is a night at our dorm that was created to raise money for the annual ball at our dorm. Groups are formed and perform a routine they created before being auctioned off to people at our dorm. Groups of people pitch in money to buy the groups to be their servants for a day. Lots of money was made and we were definitely looking forward to seeing "Servant Day" on Thursday. We finally got to watch New Moon that night and had smiles on our faces the whole time. It was worth the wait.

May 13th: Servant Day!! So glad we were here to experience this day! The groups had to do all sort of hilarious things during the day but the highlights included guys dressing up as girls to go shopping at the mall, and guys having to jump into the pond at our school. That night, they were all dressed up in costumes that their "masters" picked out for them. The funniest looking were a group of guys who had dyed their bodies with blue dye to look like Avatars.

May 15th: We finally got our highly anticipated "Family Meal" at McDonald's. It included 2 Big Macs, 2 cheeseburgers, 4 small fries, a 6 pack chicken nugget, and 4 drinks. All for $20...which is a great deal here!! We ended up killing the meal in 10 minutes. Thats right, the whole thing in 10 minutes. Not sure if that's something to be proud of but it was on our to do list. We will definitely be working out tomorrow. We got to go watch an AFL (Australian Football League) game that one of our friends was playing in before relaxing and watching Sherlock Holmes.

We've been busy but the time in between all those events was spent sleeping, eating, studying, homework, working out, and watching movies.

We are looking forward to being able to bake tomorrow, and seeing a movie out with some friends on Monday! Somethings on our "to do" list (besides school stuff) is going on the ferris wheel at Luna Park, going on a Pirate Cruise, going to a Rugby game, and going to an AFL game! We have lots of schoolwork and fun in front of us and know these 43 days are going to pass so quickly!!

Shout out to the beautiful PATTI LONG who will be come our way so soon! Excited to see her!!

Hope all is well and look forward to hearing from you all :)

Cinco De Mayo Margaritas!

Aussie friends celebrating Cinco De Mayo...their new favorite holdiay

The 3 "Bec's" at our dorm on Girl's Night with our "Passionistics"

Beautiful day in the city after exploring the markets!

A rare moment! No one behind you in pictures at the Opera House!

Before going to The Argyle to celebrate a birthday!

Becky and Damo exhausted and showing their tallies after the eating contest

Our Avatar friends out on Servant Night

Reuniting with Sydney

Our first week back at school was...tough. It has been really good being back with friends though!

On Monday, we traveled to Coogee to pick up the rest of our dirty clothes and things we had left at Albert's and took him out to dinner as a thank you for being our storage center and place to sleep for a night. We went to Moo Burger where we had some delicious burgers, and get this, TIM TAM MILKSHAKES!! Perfection.

On Tuesday, we went with a few friends we hadn't seen in weeks to glow in the dark bowling in the city! It was a lot of fun and Becky got lots of strikes!

Thursday, was our Aussie friend Cameron's birthday so we went out to the Uni-bar (seriously, University owned bar!!) to help him celebrate. It was fun to be reunited with our DLC friends!

Friday was International Night at our dorm! We were supposed to dress up in a costume that represents our home. However, neither of us brought our cowboy boots, or anything really American (besides Nike shorts) when we thought about it. We had the brilliant idea of getting sombreros, fake mustaches, and wearing seniorita dresses and we would be Tex Mex! It was a phenomenal idea and we got lots of laughs. It was fun to see everyone dressed up and we enjoyed a 3 course meal at our dorm! There were funny games between the courses. One of them was Fear Factor and the people involved were in a contest to win a bottle of liquor. To win it though they had to eat a chicken foot, liver, a 21 day old fertilized egg (yes there had to actually eat a baby chicken ughhhh), and the final round was a jar of Vegemite! It was so horrifying and amusing to watch all at the same time. After the dinner, we were worn out after seeing such shenanigans, and watched a movie.

We have attempted to have a productive Saturday....unfortunately, things like rain really make us want naps rather than being productive.

Reality is sinking in though. We have lots of essays due soon and we are trying to get a head start on those.

We both got our first 2 grades back and are having to face the truth that Australians are harder graders and A's just aren't given. Seriously, the teachers give the grades back and say no one got A's despite the fact that some people did the assignment perfectly. In what world does that make sense? Anyways, we do our best and just accept that this won't be our best semester grade wise.

We had our first workshop for our Music Theatre class which was totally interesting! We now have a 2 hour workshop once a week with one hour focusing on vocals and one hour focusing on our dancing. This week we got to do improv and each one of you reading this knows that you missed out on that good time!!

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day which is a big holiday in Australia! ANZAC Day is about Australians and New Zealander's who have fought for their countries. We are planning on going to a parade in the city for that tomorrow! We look forward to it and also the fact that they cancel school for it meaning that this upcoming week is a 2 day week of school!!

Enjoying our Tim Tam Milkshake!!

Sean got a strike!!

Enjoying our bowling night!

Cameron's birthday festivities!

The Definition of Tex Mex

Part of the Fear Factor Challenge: Eating and entire jar of Vegemite! SICK!!

Hervey Bay & Fraser Island: The Land for Lots of Sleep

Our final blog post about our mid-semester break! It was a long break so it has lots of blog posts!

We awoke from our first night feeling very rested and to a tropical oasis! We looked out the window and were surrounded by green everywhere. We decided to explore the small town on the search for a grocery store so we could continue being economical travelers. We found a small grocery store and did our best to find foods that wouldn't be too much of a challenge for us to cook. We ended up getting spaghetti fixings, cereal, sandwich stuff, snacks, and what we thought were hot dogs. We decided to cook the "hot dogs" for lunch. Becky had the privilege of removing the film layer that wrapped the individual "hot dogs". We realized that these meat substances would not do well if we boiled them, so we busted out a skillet and did our best to work with the questionable meat. Because we are ninjas, we camouflaged the meat with bread and cheese so that our stomachs wouldn't be so mad at us.

After our delicious lunch, we decided to take a walk to the botanic gardens, which according to Becca's calculations weren't that far. They were farther than expected but only about a 45 minute walk. On the way there, we passed by a Woolworth's which we had to of course go into. We ended up getting some fruit because we didn't up getting any earlier that day due to the large amount of bugs and bruising on the fruit. Wooly's did have some delicious looking apples, pears, and bananas for us.

We then made our way to the Botanic Gardens which were very...green. There wasn't a lot of flowers, but more like a mini Ireland with green everywhere. Even the water was green! We decided to go ahead and begin our journey back before the rain came but unfortunately, we were too late. It began to sprinkle during the first few minutes of our walk back, and would go through waves of rain and pouring the whole walk back. Luckily, we had our rain coats which kept us quite dry. We got back to the hostel and decided to treat our stomachs to an actually good meal.

We decided that spaghetti would be perfect for dinner and waited what seemed like hours for the water to boil. The meal turned out delicious and we enjoyed every bite of it. After dinner, we went back to our room to make good use of the TV. We got to watch So You Think You Can Dance before passing out at 9 something.

We woke up bright and early ready for a long day at the beach! We packed some snacks and some sun screen and walked to the beach which was beautiful and remote. It was the perfect beach for Becca because there were no waves, the water was shallow and clear so she could see everything in it and didn't have to worry about drowning! We literally had the beach to ourselves the whole day until the creeper came along.

Suddenly, a 30-something year old man decided to come talk to us and we tried to be as short as possible so he would get the hint to go back to his friends. We were relieved when he left until he came back for a beer for Becca (Becky had already made it very obvious that she thinks it tastes like pee). He said, "Well if you won't come have a beer with me then I'll come have a beer with you!". Lovely. Becky immediately began packing up our things while Becca downed the beer as quickly as she could. We left bummed and decided to get ice creams to make up for the bad ending of the beach day. Becky's however, was horrible, so we ended up having to have Tim Tam slams to make up for that (rough, we know)!

We relaxed for a bit and then some of the guys who live at the hostel and work around the garden taught us how to play a new card game. Once we dominated the game, we decided it was time to start on dinner. Our (Well, Becky's, because she is the grilled cheese queen) cooking was going well until all of a sudden we heard something above our heads and screamed realizing it was a possum climbing up the side of the wall INSIDE the kitchen. The two other people in the room were equally amused. We ate our dinner watching the possum work his way around the beams of the ceiling until all of a sudden as he left through a hole, we heard a large crash. We didn't hear much more from the possum the rest of the night. We did however, make a dutch friend who sat down and had dinner with us. We were very entertained by his love of chick flicks despite his big muscles, and his impression of a crab that was trying to attack him at the beach.

He decided to take advantage of our DVD player with us, and we all watched Alfie together. It is always funny to watch movies with people from other countries. He liked to point out everything that Alfie was doing wrong, and if you haven't seen the movie, there is A LOT that Alfie does wrong. After the movie, it was once again an early night with fingers crossed for another beautiful beach day. This time, without a creeper.

We got lucky with the weather and rushed to the beach to enjoy the day. The forecast had been rain and to our surprise and enjoyment, there was none. We spent hours on the beach before going back to kick back with some Bananagrams before going to see the sunset. We walked to the pier for sunset but unfortunately, got cloud coverage and sprinkles instead. We started walking back to the hostel but got caught in a monsoon. Out of nowhere, it started to literally pour down rain and we had to run as fast as could back to the hostel. When we got back we were dripping wet and Becca's feet got stained by her brown leather shoes as a memory.

We had our reliable mac n cheese for dinner after drying off. We knew we had an early morning the next day, so we showered and laid in bed watching Billy Elliott before crashing at once again, 9-something.

The next day was a long but good one for sure. We had booked a day trip to Fraser Island, the worlds biggest sand island. We got picked up for our tour at 6 am and taken to a drop off where we would catch a ferry to the island. It looked like it was going to be a day filled with rain and that combined with how early it was made us quiet. However, once we got on the ferry, we saw a full rainbow which really woke us up. Neither of us had ever seen a full rainbow and both sides ended in the ocean. It was breathtaking.

We got to Fraser Island and got united with our group and on our way! Since the whole island consists of sand, it is necessary for all the vehicles to be 4 wheel drive. We got on a 4 wheel drive bus and were on our way on a road called the roller coaster to Lake McKenzie. Lake McKenzie was absolutely beautiful even with the sprinkles of rain. The water was beautiful colors and the water is so clean and fresh that they say you come out of it feeling like you have bathed.

From there, we headed to Central Station where we would have a hike in the rainforest. The tour guide told us she would meet us with the bus on the other side of the hike and warned us about how 4 out of the 5 deadliest snakes in Australia are in this rain forest. Perfect! She then proceeded to say that the 3rd person in line would most likely to be bit since the first person wakes the snake up, the second it hisses at and the third gets bit. Becky was third in line, but once again, being a ninja, hiked on. Our hike included seeing a fresh water creek, lots of green, and a 900 year old tree!

After our hike, we were on our way to Kingfisher Bay Resort where we would have a buffet lunch. Being the people we are, we enjoyed two plates of food before getting back on the bus to go drive on the 75 mile beach. This beach is known as a highway to the people of Fraser Island which we thought was so cool. While the beach was beautiful, it also consisted of huge waves, and lots of sharks. We drove along the coast and got to see plenty of dingos! We ended up seeing 9 total, and our tour guides record had been 5!!

We drove up to an area called the Pinnacles which included the Coloured Sands. We took some pictures with the cliffs that had tons of different colors sands in it before going to our favorite sight of the day, the Maheno Shipwreck! We got to the real ship wreck and were in awe. After being a legendary cruise boat, it was sold to the Japanese who removed the propellors from it before towing it back with them. Unfortunately, it got detached and without propellors, there was no way they could control it. It landed on the coast and has been there ever since. After taking lots of pictures, we headed to our last stop of the day which was the fresh waters of Eli Creek. Eli Creek is a creek that you can float down and will take you to meet the Pacific Ocean. While we didn't want to get soaking wet in the freezing water before our journey back, we did take the opportunity to take lots of cute pictures of a dingo who hung out around us!

Our bus ended up breaking down, but not to worry! Plenty of guys from our tour group stood around the mechanic under the bus as male supervision :). They ended up bringing another bus to us and when we finally got back to where I ferry left, we were very worn out from a busy day! Once again, the public transportation ferry didn't let us down and we got to sit outside and the clouds cleared and we got to see a beautiful sunset. Just when we didn't think things could get better, dolphins started jumping out of the water. A perfect ferry ride! The bus ride back to our hostel was long, and when we got there we were exhausted and ready for dinner and bed. However, lots of other people were ready for dinner too and we had a while to wait before we would be getting into the kitchen. We finally got to cook and used up the rest of our groceries by making buttered noodles and grilled cheese. It may not be healthy, but no food went to waste! As you would guess it, we showered and went to bed early.

Sunday was a very low key day. We got all packed up, checked out of the hostel, and just hung out in the hammocks reading until it was time to get a taxi to the airport. We laughed at how small the airport was. The owner of the hostel had said that the airport closes down between flights! Surprisingly, it wasn't the smallest airport we had been to during our traveling in the past few months. We got on the flight and were both happy to be heading back to our home in Sydney after two weeks of traveling!

DLC even had our favorite dessert for dinner that night!! Ice cream sundaes!! WOOO!!!

Becky with our "hot dogs"

The Botanic Gardens! We told you the water was even green!

Loving the beach!

Enjoyed having it all to ourselves!

The rainbow, with a hint of a double! Too bad we couldn't get the entire rainbow in one picture!

Lake McKenzie!

Becca being a tree hugger with the 900 year old tree!

Maheno Shipwreck

We believed a storm was coming in...

Thank goodness there were plenty of men to supervise!

Dingo!!!! How cute is she?!?!

Beautiful sunset on the ferry ride back

This is how we traveled for the majority of the day during our trip to Fraser Island. It was a little bumpy, to say the least.

Brisbane: aka Koala Land

We got to Sydney at 9 pm and caught a taxi to Albert's apartment. After going up a HUGE hill and 3 stories, we took over his apartment throwing on cute outfits and make up so we could go as quickly as possible to grab Albert's birthday dinner. He decided on kebabs, so we met up with Jack (another IES friend) and the four of us went to go get kebabs. (Fact: Kebabs here are more like burritos). We enjoyed some kebabs and went back to Albert's to focus on making sure the birthday boy had a birthday drink. Rob joined us and the 5 of us enjoyed playing some card games before going out to the Coogee Bay Hotel for a round. We got into bed late but enjoyed sleeping in the next day and grabbing some lunch with Albert before packing back up and heading to the airport. The past week had made us realize how much stuff we had really brought, and we now had a week of dirty clothes! Luckily, Albert let us store some of our stuff at his place so that our bags would be dramatically lighter! We caught a cab with a hilarious Asian taxi driver who loved Tina Turner. The flight was quick and we took a train to our hostel. While it was only around 6 pm in Brisbane, we were completely exhausted. We got into our room, which we discovered was more like a dark tunnel. With all the grocery stores closed (they close as 5 pm!), we found a small italian restaurant to split a pizza at. The pizza led to a Tim Tam slam craving so we found a Night Owl Convenience Store to get some Tim Tams and milk at. We ate them and watched some tv in the tv lounge before getting into bed really early.

The next day we decided to head to a market and lagoon! But before we could go, we needed to head to a Woolworth's to get some groceries for our stay in Brisbane. Look at us being economical!!!! We got some food and then enjoyed some fruit loops in a park since we were starving. The market was so fun and we both found cute things to purchase. The market even had both of our favorite snacks! Becky got to have some corn on the cob and Becca got a chocolate covered banana! After exploring the market, we headed to the lagoon where we spent the rest of the day. After lots of hours of enjoying the sun, we headed back to the hostel to cook what we though would be a delicious dinner.

We had planned to make some chicken and cheese quesadillas. Easy right? Wrong. We will go ahead and blame the celsius cook tops for our problems. We started off by trying to cook our chicken. It was going okay until it kept sticking to the skillet despite us trying to use butter as a barrier between chicken and skillet. To make the chicken cook faster, we decided to try and cut the raw chicken with a knife while it was cooking. It helped the cooking time, but not the sticking situation. We then tried to warm the tortillas but then ended up burning before we could add the chicken and cheese on them! Becca tried to fix the situation by cutting the tortillas in half before trying to make the quesadillas but when that failed she got flustered and when to do dishes as therapy. Becky tried turning the burner temperature down so the quesadillas wouldn't cook so fast but it ended up not cooking the quesadillas at all, but instead soaking them in butter. Eventually, we ended up with 1 1/2 burnt quesadillas and 1/2 of a buttered quesadilla mess. Luckily, we also had some mexican style rice and chips and salsa. We were able to laugh about the whole situation once we had sat down and we weren't being stared at anymore. Needless to say, we still finished our meals despite the butter not really sitting well.

Since we were living in a tunnel with no light and bunk beds, we decided to go out and enjoy a drink and see some of Brisbane. We had seen an incredibly cool looking building that we ended up finding out was a bar in our travel book. It's hard to explain the amazingness of this bar. The pictures can't even do it justice. It was voted as the best bar in Queensland but we want to nominate is as the best bar in the world. We walked in and were in awe. Luckily, it was a Sunday night so we were able to explore the whole bar (which is HUGE) and see all the different themed areas (and take pictures) without feeling like complete freaks. Some of the highlights would include:

-a bar made out of crystal balls that could spin and light up to make different patterns

-the amazing bathrooms

-grass on the steps of the stairs

The next day was dedicated to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary!! We had already decided to do EVERYTHING Lone Pine had to offer since we had a whole day to kill. We started off by going to a chick and guinea pig holding session. Then Becca made Becky sit through a Bird of Prey show. Next on the list was a sheep dog show and a sheep shearing show which was amusing!! It was basically a scene out of the movie Babe! After that, we went to a paltypus session and walked through all the different sections of Koalas. Lone Pine has the most Koalas in the world (over 130 of them!) and they are in different living areas according to their age. There is a kindergarten area, mom and baby area, bachelor pad, retirement home and much more! After that it was finally time to HOLD A KOALA!!!!! It was like meeting Santa!! We were about to pee our pants from excitement! We got paired with a koala named Orion who was absolutely precious. Neither of us wanted to let him go and once we had to, all we could focus on was getting the pictures we had ordered. To get our minds off the wait, we went to go hang out with the kangaroos. When we were done our pictures were ready and our faces were glowing with happiness! We ended the day with a lorikeet feeding which was absolutely hilarious. When the lady walked out with their food, the wild birds started flying from all directions to get to the food. When we fed them they were all over our food container and our heads. We couldn't stop laughing but we couldn't even hear each other over all the noise the birds were making!

We caught a bus back to our hostel, and by the time we got back we were STARVING from just eating snacks all day. We had reservations at a restaurant called Garuva. We had read about Garuva in our travel book which called it "the most unique dining experience in Queensland". It talked about how you would sit on cushions on the floor and have curtains around your table for an intimate dining experience. We laughed at the thought of the two of us at this romantic restaurant and decided it would be our nice meal our for the next week. We got all dolled up and started walking to the restaurant. We knew what street it was on, and what two intersecting streets it was in between but somehow we didn't see it. We kept calling the restaurant but it would only transfer to voicemail. Becca saw the restaurants address but it only took us to an architecture firm. After walking the street some more, we finally saw a pathway filled with big plants and waterfalls and realized it was where we needed to be. We got there and enjoyed a drink at the bar before going to our private table. Being the goofy girls we are, we loved having the privacy so we could be our complete selves without being judged. We enjoyed some coconut prawns, chicken and of course got the chocolate cake with ice cream! Everything was delicious and we loved our date. Being really full, we headed back to the hostel and fell asleep with happy bellies.

Our next day was going to be filled mostly with a 7 hour bus ride. We spent the morning relaxing and making mac n cheese (much easier than quesadillas) before heading to the bus station. Our hostel dropped us off and we checked in only to find out that our bus was running an hour late. FANTASTIC! We used the time as an opportunity to write some post cards. We finally got on the bus and relaxed until the dinner stop. We always look forward to the truck stop dinners we get when on our bus rides :). When we got back on the bus, we were not really looking forward to the 3 hours left we had of our bus ride. Our attitudes immediately changed when the bus driver all of a sudden put the movie You've Got Mail on!! We flipped out (of course!) since we are both HUGE fans of the movie. We sat back, relaxed, and laughed as Becky quoted the whole movie.

Since we weren't supposed to get into Hervey Bay until 9 pm, we had talked to our hostel about how we could get there. They had told us we could catch another hostel's bus because the hostel is located across the street. However, with the bus delay, we missed the shuttle but luckily were able to split a cab with two people who were staying in the hostel across the street. We found our key in a box they had told us we would be in, and we thought we would be smooth sailing from this point. However, we ended up having to battle the locked gate. Becca tried using the 2 keys to unlock it and we were really starting to get frustrated when Becky found a pole to pull up and TA DA! The gate opened. We were welcomed by a huge room (especially compared to the tunnel) with two beds, a tv, dvd player and our own bathroom!! We were so excited to even have room to leave our suit cases out instead of always having to store them under our bed.

Time to grab a delicious dinner from our dorm! Next blog post will be our shenanigans in Hervey Bay!!!!

"The Tunnel"

Tasty treats at the market

Brisbane's Lagoon

One of the amazing bathrooms at our favorite bar

We love our Koala friends!!

Becky holding Orion

Waiting for the Sheep Dog Show

Becky at Dinner @ Garuva (When we finally found it!)

Here's a video of us making kangaroo friends for your viewing enjoyment!

Goodbye Cairns!

Hello from Brisbane!

We're a few hours away from our departure. Currently killing time until we can make our lunch. Confession: we've been looking forward to making the boxed mac n cheese we found at Woolworth's since we bought it 3 days ago. It's amazing how much joy a box of processed food can bring into our lives.

Now to continue the update from where we left off in Cairns...we woke up early after our night of karaoke to drive into the rainforest. We were a little bummed that we didn't get to see the Daintree like we were originally supposed to, but the fact that we were going to get to see it at all was super exciting. Just a little bit of trivia for you all: the Daintree is the oldest rainforest in the world. How they know this, I couldn't tell you. But they told us this fact countless times. The Daintree is also unique because it runs all the way to the Great Barrier Reef. 2 very cool natural landscapes all at once! Quite the deal. Unfortunately, you can't swim in any of the beaches around Cairns due to the fact that they have the 2 most poisonous jellyfish in the world as well as your typical sharks and saltwater crocodiles. Yikes! Our tour guide for the day talked constantly about how safe Australia is, then she would put in a video about all the dangerous wildlife that is lurking around every corner. I've come to the conclusion that it is a small miracle neither of us have been stung, bitten, eaten, or killed by some dangerous organism. Keep your fingers crossed this trend continues. Anyway, our day in the Daintree was fun. We saw some cool waterfalls, went on a river cruise where we saw "Scarface" the croc (apparently he weighs something like half a ton) and other cool wildlife, stopped at some cool lookouts, thought about going swimming in some rapids (smartly decided against it), and came across a Cassowary on the side of the road. It's apparently the most dangerous bird in the world because of its huuuuge claws but super beautiful at the same time.

That night, we reunited with all of our IES group for one last dinner. It was delicious, but we both decided that dessert was in order. After some wandering, we came across a Mexican restaurant and were thrilled to discover that it not only looked EXACTLY like a Chili's inside (Texan & Confederate flags, chili peppers, armadillos, and cowboy hats for decoration) but they had the most delicious chocolate mudcake. Just what we were craving. Pure deliciousness! After our tasty treat, we met up with a friend from Macquarie who lives in Cairns. He showed us all the hot spots and we had a fun time introducting him to our IES friends. Everyone was so impressed that we have Australian friends--go us!

On Friday we decided to have a chill day in Cairns. Woke up and got some delicious pancakes from a cute cafe. Big news: Becky finally found new sunglasses!!!! Been looking for 2.5 weeks and was finally successful in Cairns! Way exciting. After finding some cute new goodies at the mall, we wandered over to the lagoon. Since you can't go swimmin in the ocean in Cairns and it's a freaking sauna, there is a huuuuuge man-made pool right next to the ocean for people to escape the heat. It's beautiful! We didn't get in since we were hours away from being on a plane, but we did soak in the overall beauty. After a quick lunch at an Italian restaurant by the lagoon, we decided we needed a nap. But since we had checked out of our hostel where could we sleep? Solution: in one of the lounges in our hostel. It was a little odd at first having random people walk by while we were sprawled out on couches, but we got over it an passed out for a good 1.5 hours. Refreshsed and ready for the next part of our adventure, we headed to the airport and back to Sydney for less than 24 hours of fun to celebrate Albert's birthday.

Internet time is up again, we will continue from Hervey Bay!

Before leaving on our river cruise, we practiced how to react incase our boat got overtaken by a crocodile

Becca on the river cruise

Scar Face--we kept our distance due to the fact that he's MASSIVE and easily agitated

Horned Frogs! Showing our pride at a gorgeous spot where the Daintree Rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef

A Cassowary!

Becca soaking up all the images from home we found at a random Mexican restaurant in Cairns

SUCCESS! After trying on literally 200 pairs of sunglasses, Becky finally finds some cute pink shades that fit her tiny head

Becky and the lagoon

In front of the ocean that you can't swim in due to the fact that it's filled with every form of dangerous aquatic life imaginable