Just a Quickie!

G'day y'all! Just a quick update! So today we're moving into our sweet pad with our fabulous roomies, Tim, Jon, and Vicky! We are super excited to be able to spread our stuff out and finally make some good homemade dinners! We're very close to Bondi beach and will hopefully spend a lot of our time soaking up some serious rays! Don't worry, we will be using sun screen xoxo

Fishy Friends!

Today we went to the aquarium to finally get a glimpse of a platypus!! They are incredibly difficult to find in the wild so we leapt at the opportunity to see one. They are considerably smaller than one would expect; only about a foot long.

We saw many different types of shrimp, coral, fishies, sharks, and jellyfish! There were large lego sculptures throughout the aquarium, some of them in the shape of large lego people.

Montana made a little penguin friend who frantically followed her around the tank.

This crustacean was absolutely enormous! It was enough lobster to feed a family for a week!

Yet another picture of me screaming at terrifying animals mere inches above me.

St. Patricks Day

Today was ST PATRICKS DAY! but in Australia only the Irish go crazy. 

We sat around in the morning trying to figure out what to wear because no one had anything green with them, we decided to go to a close by market and buy some cheap green clothing. 

We then decided we should make a communal dinner to celebrate the irish, we made Fajita's and invited our new roommate Erik. Who is from Vancouver Island, another Canadian in the room. They were amazing Fajita's and they only cost about 10$ a person, which has been our cheapest and most filling meal yet! Then we out to a backpacker bar and had a great time, sadly they don't have green beer in Australia :(

We will just have to wait till we get home!

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY EVERYONE!

Surf Camp After Party

After Surf Camp they take you out in Sydney in your brand new Surf Camp t-shrirts and give you free beer and pizza. Its all in all a good time and the instructors come out and party with the students which is all good. 

Party Hard Surfers!

Surfing Australia!

SURF CAMP!!

We spent the last week at surf camp on Seven Mile Beach National Park, there we spent 4 hours a day on the water perfecting our surfing skills. We each had instructors that helped us out a lot once we got to know them. It was a great time and we met tons of people, there were 57 of us in total and they spilt us up into groups where we played games and learned the techniques needed to surf on our own in the future. 

We took a photo with all the Canadians who were there, there were quite a few of them! 

The instructors where constantly showing us up, they had tons of tricks that made us all look bad. Some poor people even attempted to imitate them and hurt themselves! 

We also lucked out and got free t-shirts and trucker hats! 

 Big shout out to Rip Curl Surf Camp Australia! 

They have a great program going and I would do it all over again! 

Pub Crawl

To end our Orientation/Fun Week Real Gap facilitated a pub crawl for us where we went to all of the nearby backpacker bars. Needless to say it was a good time, they arranged for us to play multiple games which involved naming over 30 different countries that correspond to flags hanging in the bars.

All in all it was a great time with some amazing people! 

Bondi Beach!!

It turned out to be a lovely day so what better to do on a sunday then head to the world famous Bondi Beach and have a nice BBQ lunch! 

We jumped on the bus and headed down to the beach, after about 30 minutes of driving we arrived and took a walk to see some of the smaller beaches in the area. 

This was beside the beach, its a salt water pool and it gets filled up by the waves crashing on the side of it. 

It was a great day and we only came back slightly burnt, but it was a hot day. The BBQ was great and we even got to see the filming of Bondi Beach Rescue because a woman had a heart attack on the beach. It was a great day but we left quite early because the sun was taking its toll on us! 

Kangaroo Anyone?

Today we slept in and went to the majestic Sydney TOWER!!!

*much like the Calgary Tower only taller, and in Sydney

There we ate crocodile and kangaroo, it is one of the few places in Australia where they can actually eat their national animals. The view was amazing!! 

Surf day! Oh wait, torrential downpour... just kidding.

So Thursday was supposed to be our surf day, however it was absolutely pouring rain so it was cancelled. We were offered an fantastic discount on 5 day surf lessons so many of us took advantage of it. Since we were all up and ready to go we decided to go to the Sydney Wildlife Center to gawk at all the native creatures. We saw koalas, crocodiles, kangaroos, wallaby, cassowary, emus, tons of birds and various reptiles.

We got to feed these very pretty birds, unfortunately when they eat they flick their food everywhere! Luckily they eat this odd nectar stuff and not bugs.

Second Day In Sydney!

Today we woke up early in the morning to take a bus and go on a Winery Tour. We stopped along the way before and got to see some kangaroo's up close.

We then headed to three different wineries all in the hunter valley, where we sampled some of their red, white and desert wines. It was a lovely time and we had a 2 hour bus ride home through traffic. 

Here is a wonderful photo of some of the wineries we drove by, none of them had picked their grapes yet because of the horrible summer weather and rain they kept getting.