Is it really good luck?

Yesterday, Nicole and I were at the beach when the seagulls decided to poop on BOTH of us. I was lying down on my back and all of sudden, I felt a plop and looked down. On my bathing suit bottom, there was a nice small pile of poop that had fallen. Gross. At least it didn't fall on my skin! I went into the ocean to wash it off and when I came back, I looked over at Nicole. She was lying on her stomach and near her bathing suit bottom, there was some strange substance. I asked Nicole if she was possibly excreting some kind of suntan lotion. She had mentioned that she had felt something but was not able to see it. Yes, a bird had pooped on her as well.

They say that it's good luck, but I think people made up that story to make us feel better!

What I failed to write about earlier this week was that David worked from home on Tuesday. Instead of working, we went around the area and was able to find a bar that was playing Monday night football. We had lunch and watched almost every minute of the game. It was great to watch because of a couple of reasons.

1. We miss watching football in general. Since we used to have NFL ticket, we went from watching all the games to watching none.

2. It made me realize how warm/nice the weather is in Australia. I have been complaining that it has been cloudy, but it's nowhere near the terrible weather that was being shown on the telly. It was raining and had been raining to the point that the field was basically a swamp.

3. Now, we have a go to bar that serves great burgers to be able to watch the Monday Night Football game. Next week, the Patriots are playing and I definitely plan on stopping by!

Other than that, I've been playing travel agent for our trip in March and enjoying the sun. Today, I have to make mashed potatoes for 20 people. Hopefully they turn out great!

Australia's interesting fact of the day: 10% surcharge. On Sundays and Public Holidays, there is always an additional surcharge for your meal. This was extrememly annoying to us since we usually go out to eat on Sundays since it's the weekend and it doesn't exist in the US. We mentioned this to some of the locals and they gave a very reasonable explanation. On Sundays and Public Holidays, employees must be paid time and a half, therefore to cover the difference in having staff, they just add the surcharge on those days instead of raising the prices for all the time.

SAC Offsite

This past Thursday & Friday, while you all were enjoying Turkey and football, we had our SAC (Senior Associate Consultant) offsite. Due to budget constraints (more SAC transfers coming in than anticiptated) we couldn't go to a sexy location. So, instead, we went to a nearby suburb of Sydney called Penrith.

Penrith is home to the stereotypical Australian Suburban type called Bogans. The best American equivalent description I've heard is "Redneck meets Jersey". To make the weekend more fun, everyone was encouraged to don their best Bogan outfits. Here are some examples.

Matt and David (one of our trainers!) showing off their mullets:



Lara, Kirsty, Ele, and Agathe ready to take on the town:



Nic, Damian, and Matt:



I didn't really have much to wear so I bought an Ozzie Osbourne shirt and did up my hair in a fo-hawk. What do you think?



The training consisted of 3 manager/partner presentations on previous cases they've done, all with a consumer products theme. After training, we met up for drinks, dinner, and extra-curricular activities. The event was held at the Penrith Panthers World of Entertainment.



The Penrith Panthers are a Rugby team in the National Rugby League. Their facility consisted of a number of bars, restaurants, night clubs, and other forms of entertainment such as tennis courts, a driving range, and of course, slot machines. In fact, I've heard that the Panthers World of Entertainment is host to the largets collection of slot machines (aka Pokies) in the southern hemisphere.

So of course, being the gambler that I am, I had to try my shot at the Pokies. With a bit of luck, I managed to hit the jackpot and won $490 on a nickel machine! Here's me with my winning machine:



The following day, we went to the Penrith Whitewater Stadium, which was built for the whitewater events (kayaking, etc.) in the 2000 Olympics. It's a pretty cool place, with a man-made course of whitewater rapids. Here's a picture of the course after the water had been drained:



We went whitewater rafting for about an hour and a half (unfortunately I don't have any pictures). Because it was a man made course, you could do cool things like get stuck "surfing" in eddys, flip the boat on purpose, and go through the same rapids with different lines, facing backwards, etc. Very different from all the real rivers I've gone rafting on before, and a lot of fun.

We then had a great BBQ afterwards to conclude the offsite.



Overall, it was an AWESOME two days and I'm definitely going to be lobbying Bain to do something similar for the SAC's in Boston.

Blue Mountains!

While the rest of you stuffed your faces with Turkey and other traditional sides over your long weekend, we went to the Blue Mountains and filled our bellies with other kinds of food. The Blue Mountains are about an hour and a half to two hours away from Sydney. They are called the Blue Mountains because sometimes they will look blue due to the gum trees that line the mountains.

We stayed at the Lavendar Manor, which was indeed lavendar. You would be able to spot this house a mile away. It's much brighter in person than this photo gives it justice. It was made to house 12 people.


Since the house was half filled with Americans, we decided to show the non-Americans what a Thanksgiving apple should be decorated with. David was the artist to this piece of work.


We feasted on roast chicken and lamb, potatoes (regular and sweet), squash and apple pie.


A peak of the living space. There were plenty of couches to fit everyone comfortably. This is our post dinner lounging.


The next morning, we tried to take a scenic walk. Unfortunately, it's been overcast and raining the last couple of days. This was the view that we could see. Fog...


Here is our crew hiking to another viewing outlook. The hike was relatively difficult because of the water. Parts of the trail were very saturated and you had to be very careful of where you stepped. All of the Americans were wearing our "trainers" (aka sneakers) so if you accidentally stepped in a puddle, your shoe and sock was suddenly wet.


The crew trying to find something to look at. I'm not too sure what they see.


As the day went on and as we descended further down the mountain, the fog would lift occasionally for us to see glimpses of what we should be seeing. In between the fog, we could see some waterfalls.


By the end of our hike, you could even see across the valley to the other side of the mountains.


After a hearty lunch of gourmet sandwiches, a group decided to try a hike that was supposed to take 3-4 hours. When we got to the parking lot, it began pouring rain and half the group decided to no longer go. Luckily, David was stubborn enough to go and it turned out to be awesome. By the time we started descending the mountain, the rain had stopped. Here's a picture of Jo, Agathe and me heading down into the valley.


When we got to the bottom of the valley, it was very pretty. We were criss crossing a natural stream and found many waterfalls. In one of the places, we were forced to go behind the waterfall to continue our journey. There was even a short tunnel through the mountains at one point. Jo is taking in the environment.

We ended up finishing the hike in only 2 hours. We estimate that we didn't do about a half hour of hiking on the side of the road to get back to the car park area. Since the other half of the group didn't join us, they had taken the car and went into one of the towns. We started walking back to the house because the other group wasn't close enough to pick us up. The weather was startening to worsen and we were all exhausted, so Agathe and Jo convinced David and I to hitchhike our way back to the house. It was kind of silly because we were only a mile or two away. We finally picked up a car after I stuck my thumb out. Apparently I have a friendly face. =)

The next day, the sun had decided to come out. We went to Echo Point to see the Three Sisters, which are the three jagged points to our right.


You could go down a short path and touch the first sister.


After we took many stairs to the bottom of the mountain, we did a short walk and stumbled across some interesting waterfalls.


At one point, the group split into two and half the group headed back to the "Great Staircase" to walk back up to the top. The other half, which included the four of us who hiked yesterday, decided to go to the railway car and ride up to the top of the mountain. After we got to the top, we had to sprint back to the Echo Point to meet up the other group. Along the way, we stopped for a brief moment at Katoomba Falls for a photo op.


After our morning hike, we headed to a nice restaurant for lunch. Luckily, we had booked a table for lunch because within a half hour of sitting down, it was pouring outside. We all had the tasting menu, which was quite delicious, but took a very long time. Finally after our long lunch, which ended around 4:00 PM, we headed back to the city.

On our ferry ride back, the Australian Idol finale was getting ready outside the Opera House. They had an outdoor concert as well as an indoor one. Their finale is way better than the American Idol finale. It includes fireworks over Sydney Harbour and tons of live performances from other musicians. It was a 3 hour finale and we watched every minute of it!


Australian's interesting fact of the day: "Hotels". All around Sydney, you'll see signs for hotels, but over half of them will most likely not have rooms for you to stay in. Over here, a hotel means it's a place where you can drink. It's usually a bar, but sometimes it can also include a dance floor and be more like a club.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Even though Aussies don't have Thanksgiving, we're thinking of home! We hope everyone will have safe travels and enjoy their fair share of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc etc. We'll be celebrating our American Thanksgiving next weekend.

David has gone off to an off-site meeting and will hopefully be taking lots of photos. People were asked to dress up so it should be an entertaining set of photos! I'm meeting him tomorrow up in the Blue Mountains where a bunch of people are spending the weekend. So, there will be no posts until early next week, but at least there will be more photos!

Not much else to report except that the sun has decided to hide again, which means no beach for me. Speaking of the beach, today's fact of the day is that I've seen way too many people at the beach in their UNDERWEAR. I understand that they cover the same parts of the body with the same amount of fabric, but it's still very strange to see a middle-aged woman sitting in her white bra that has some lace on it. Or to see a teenager lying near me in her underwear that has the ribbed scalloped edging at her waistband. The worst was definitely the poor woman who was walking and had obviously put on her underwear inside out. Do they think they are tricking other people that it's a bathing suit or do you think they just don't care?

Visitors!!!

Some more visitors have bought their tickets to come out to visit us! Here's the current schedule.

Cindy Lee is coming from Hong Kong to spend Christmas and New Years with us. We'll be traveling to Melbourne and visiting all the sites there!

Sarah Hershey is making her way to Australia towards the end of January and will be traveling with us to Tasmania over Australia Day weekend. This lucky girl will then head over to Hong Kong to see Cindy and be able to celebrate Chinese New Year over there. She's taking advantage of all those random holidays in other countries!

David's parents are coming early February and will be spending a little over a week in Australia spreading their time between Sydney and Melbourne before all of us head to New Zealand for a week.

A week after we return from New Zealand, Steph and Robin will be landing on bissextile day, which is February 29! Steph didn't want to be traveling and spend her bissextile on a plane, so they are coming in on that day. After a week, Robin will be heading back to the US and I'll get to hang out with Stephanie by myself for another full week.

As soon as Stephanie leaves, Elaine and Jim arrive the next day with Sophia and Eddie heading over the day after that! The 6 of us will be traveling to Cairns and Ayers Rock for a super long weekend of fun. It will be our first reunion as only couples. Though, I guess even with our other reunions, we tend to break away from the group... We'll miss Anita and Josh!

Those are the people confirmed to come visit. Does anyone else want to come??

Australia's interesting fact of the day: The mall closes at 5:30 PM. This means that you can't expect to go to the mall after work. They open late on one weekday, but otherwise it always closes at 5:30 pm. I'm not sure if it's only the particular mall near us, but imagine our surprise when we headed over to the mall around 5:15ish and all the shops were closing down. We ended up leaving the mall 45 min later. So far, the one good thing about this combined with the expensive clothes is that I am not going shopping for anything but groceries!

Scuba Diving.. Here we come!

On Sunday, David and I ventured over to sign up for our Scuba Diving classes that we wanted to take. Good thing we decided to go because the class only had 1 space left! Luckily, they decided to add another instructor so that both of us could do it. The crazy part is that since we need 2 consecutive weekends to complete the course, the only other weekends we could have done it would be in January. After early January, we do not have any more back to back free weekends!

Afterwards, we headed to the beach for the afternoon and just relaxed. Some friends came up to Manly to check it out, which was nice, but unfortunately we couldn't find some other friends since David's email started to act up.

On Monday, I headed over to Paddington to hang out with Nicole while she was dog/house sitting. I was able to watch the beginning half of the Patriots/Bills game and it was just so nice to be able to watch American football again. It was also great to see the Patriots destroy the Bills. =) Afterwards, we wandered around Oxford Street before heading to Bondi Junction.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Calling the US is cheaper than calling other Aussie phone numbers. I am getting a pre-paid monthly plan and my first month was completed. We went to get a new recharge card, but I wanted to know how much it cost to call the US. It only costs $0.28 cents/minute to call the US, but it costs me $0.78 to call an Australian number!

Lawn Bowling

On Saturday, a crew of us decided to try out lawn bowling. Every weekend on the telly, there are professional lawn bowlers competing so we figured we'd give it a shot. The game is like a combination of bocce ball and bowling. Here are the basic rules.

1. Object of the game is to get as many of your team's balls closest to the "jack" (white ball).

2. The jack is at the opposite end of the lawn and we take turns rolling our balls towards it. Rolling the ball is actually quite difficult because the ball is weighted so that one side is heavier. Therefore, you need to aim the ball to the right or left of the target with the heavy side placed correctly. Even after an hour of playing, a couple people would still accidentally roll incorrectly.

3. In the end, the team with the closest balls near the jack gets points. The number of points you receive is the number of balls that is closest to the jack before another team's ball is closer.

We ended up dividing into 6 teams where 3 teams were playing on each field. The ends of the field had benches, but we were in the sun the entire time, which was quite exhausting. Here we are getting ready to start playing.


Casey and Matt are either debating which ball is closest to the jack or they are organizing their balls to start the next game.


Casey showing us how to do it.


Kim's dressed in all white like a professional.


We played for 2 and a half hours and all of us loved it. Too bad they don't have anything like this in the US. It's becoming so popular in Australia, that we had to reserve our booking 3 weeks in advance. I can't wait for our next outing.

On our way to the lawn bowling site, we walked a coastal walk from Bondi to the site. There was an art project along the walkway called "Sculptures by the Sea". I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked, but this was one of my favorites. It's a tree and the leaves are actually peapods.


Australia's interesting fact of the day: "Good Onya". Australians have the most interesting phrases. "Good Onya" is said relatively often and it's the equivalent of good job. They even have the saying on some Australian souvenirs. I haven't been able to ever use the phrase, but maybe one day it'll slip into my vocabulary.

Biathlon Failure

Every Thursday, we have the opportunity to run/swim the biathlon that I've written about. Unfortunately, this Thursday, I didn't finish it. There were a couple of factors going into it. In our previous biathlon experiences, Bain was kind of enough to pay for us as well as the Bain people. This week, the organizer specifically wrote that they were only paying for Bain employees. The race costs $17 to do every week. For me, I'd rather spend that money on yoga, surfing or food. =) So, the first part of the problem was that I didn't get a number so I wouldn't be able to track online how well I did.

The second part of the problem is these yoga classes that I started doing. Ever since the yoga class on Tuesday, my hamstrings and shoulder muscles have been very sore. I don't think it helped that we went to a Pilates class on Thursday morning. By the biathlon time, I was still very sore and it was actually hard to walk around or sit or basically move. Even without an official number, I decided to try running with Dave and Casey. They soon were farther ahead of me and it took all my mental power to finish the run part. Every step I took, my hamstrings were screaming at me. It was not a good sign. The amazing part was that even with my short breaks for walking, I still managed to do the run faster than the previous times.

By the time I got to the pool, I had convinced myself that I wasn't going to swim. I didn't want to hurt myself anymore and if I had to swim, I would have had my arms and legs crying to me in pain. So, instead I watched the rest of the group make their way across the pool lanes.

At the end of the race, we decided to take some photos. Nicole (the superstar) makes the biathlon look effortless, while Casey just looks silly.


David and I after the race. Amazingly, David didn't need as much time to move from one place to the other this time. You can see the pool that we swim in the background.


For once, we decided to check out the free chicken burger and drink that they give you after the race. It was a hotel that was near Harry's Cafe de Wheels. Apparently, this place is famous and a must try when you come.


Basically, they sold meat pies and hot dogs with all different variations of what you can put on top of it. Casey got a Hot Dog de Wheels and was loving it!

It's November and I'm going to the beach!

On Tuesday, I set out to the market to look for some goods for our American Thanksgiving. We are celebrating Thanksgiving the week after the real Thanksgiving with the other Americans in the Sydney office! Unfortunately, turkey is very expensive here. It's about $20/kilo, which is about $9/pound!!

We were asked to bring a side dish. After scouring the supermarket, I was able to find instant mashed potatoes that were in a bag in the canned vegetable section. It was definitely not where I expected to find them, but then again, I can't remember where they are in the US. I looked up and down the aisles and was unable to find any cranberry sauce.

After looking around the market, I met up with Nicole and we got ready for a Yoga class. We signed up with this studio for an introductory offer of 5 classes for $25. $5/class is not a bad deal at all! Unfortunately, we have to squeeze 5 classes in 10 days. Even though it was Nicole's first time, I dragged her to the most "gymnastic" style of yoga. I think she still had fun even though she says that she think she tore her hamstrings from trying to stretch. When we arrived back in the apartment, we were temporarily scared because David was home for work. It was only 1:45 PM!!! The three of us ended up going to the beach for a couple of hours before Nicole went home and David got on a conference call. During this time, I did some research on Melbourne for our trip in December.

On Wednesday (yesterday), I woke up in lots of pain. Apparently, I am not as limber as I used to be. All sorts of muscles were sore from yoga. After finalizing a tentative itinerary for Melbourne, I met up with Nicole and we hit the beach again. Since the sun is finally shining, we wanted to enjoy it since last week was so cloudy. It was very windy and after an hour or two, a big cloud came over the beach and it didn't go away. Afterwards, I headed into the city to meet up with this girl!


Chrissie was in Australia with her family visiting some family and exploring. It was the first time we had met up in a couple of years! It's crazy that we were finally able to do it in Australia! We met up in Chinatown and had dinner in the food court. Honestly, these food courts are pretty amazing. It's all Asian cuisines and every place has pictures for you to look at so that you know what you are ordering.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Chinatown. The gated part of Chinatown is a street that is open with no car lanes, so it'a sll pedestrians walking through the middle of the street. While we were walking in this part of Chinatown, this is what I noticed. There are all these restaurants that have outdoor seating. Each of them have a hostess standing outside on the street. Any non-Asian person, they would instantly start talking to and trying to get them to eat at their restaurant. Even if the person was far away, they would start to get their attention and try to shove menus in front of them as soon as they were close enough. BUT they only did it to non-Asian people. They ignored every Asian person that walked through. Even though we were walking around with David, these ladies still ignored us. Maybe they realize that Asian people would never eat at an Asian restaurant that has to flag people down to fill their seats!

Cricket

For the past week, there has been nothing but Cricket on the telly. So, I figured I'd let all of you know what this funny sport is about.

Cricket is somewhat comparable to baseball, but quite different. Like baseball, the object is to score more runs than the other team. However, instead of 3 outs in an inning, the bowling (pitching) team has to get 10 outs, or "wickets" before they can bat. There are a number of ways to get the batter out, but there are four that are most common:

1. Bowling the stumps: If the bowler (pitcher) throws the ball and is able to knock over the stumps (wooden sticks that sit behind the batter), the batter is out. As a result, the batter's goal is to use his bat to protect the stumps.
2. Leg before wicket: If the batter swings and misses and the ball hits him, stopping it from hitting the stumps, he is out. This rule is meant so that the batters don't protect the stumps with their bodies, only the bat.
3. Fly ball: Like in baseball, if the batter hits a pop fly and it is caught in the air, the batter is out.
4. Throw out: After the batter hits the ball, he can run to the safe zone. If he makes it, he scores a run. If the fielder grabs the ball, throws it at the stumps, and knocks them over before the batter reaches the safe zone, the batter is out.

There are three different ways to score runs:

1. Six: This is the equivalent of a home run. If you hit the ball out of the field of play on the fly, it's worth six runs
2. Four: If you hit the ball out of the field of play on a roll (there aren't walls, it's just a line), you get four runs
3. One: If you hit the ball and run to the safe zone, you get a run. You can run back and forth from safe zone to safe zone as many times as you can while the ball is in play, scoring a run each time.

Because you don't have to run when you hit the ball, getting an out is very difficult. If you hit a little dribbler and don't think you can make it to the safe zone, you don't have to run. This means that games can go on for a very long time.

In Cricket's purest form, the "Test match", the game lasts for 5 days and consists of two innings. In order to win, you not only have to have a higher score than the other team, but you also have to get the 10 outs in each of the innings. If the two innings are not completed by the time the 5 days are up, then the match is declared a draw no matter what the score was at that point. Since obviously no one wants that to happen, there's a bit of strategy involved as to when to stop playing.

For example, in this weekend's match, Australia played Sri Lanka and Australia batted first. In the first 2 days, they had scored 551 runs and only gotten out 4 times. They felt that they had amassed enough of a lead, and conceded their other outs so that Sri Lanka could bat. As it turned out, Australia was able to get Sri Lanka out 10 times in each of the two innings (for a total of 20 outs) before they could get to 551 runs. So, Australia won and didn't even have to bat in their second inning. If Sri Lanka did get more than 551, Australia would have been able to bat again in their second inning to try and retake the lead, but they would never have gotten the 6 outs back that they conceded.

Because the games are so long, there are designated tea breaks and lunch breaks for the players. Plus, because they are in the sun all day, they all wear zinc on their noses and mouths, so they look very funny. Oh, and when they bowl the ball, they're not allowed to bend their arm. So, they get a running start and do a funny windmill motion to throw it.

We're hoping to go see some live cricket while we're here. Apparently it's not as boring to watch as it may sound, especially when there's beer involved.

Sydney Fish Market

Since the sun has come out to play, I've been much more active this week than last week. After a morning run, I caught a ferry to meet Nicole in the early afternoon. We took the train to Chinatown to stop for some bubble tea before walking over to the Sydney Fish Market.

You might have imagined that the Fish Market would have been all these stalls that were outside like we did, but the market was actually very different. Along the sides of the parking lot, there were fish market stores.


Most of these stores looked similar to this one, where most of the fish fillets were contained behind a glass wall, while most of the whole fish were lying on beds of ice for you to look at.


There was also one main building that had many fish market stores. This "mall" also had a bakery, a cheese shop, fruit/vegetable shop and a variety of places to get food. Inside one of the fish market stores, I was startled by this basket of leftover fish heads that was hanging out in the aisle.


After some debate, we decided not to buy any fish because of the trek home, but we thought that we should come back with the intent of eating at the fish market one day.

On our way to the fish market, we saw a zebra crossing. Who knew there were zebras in the middle of the city?


Near the fish market, we also saw the Pyrmont Bridge that reminded me of home.


I was inspired by the Fish Market, so when David came home, we went to one of Manly's Fish Market stores to pick up some fish for dinner. We figured that while we're here, we should experiment with different fish varieties!

Australia's interesting fact: "No Worries". Australians love to use the phrase "no worries". I haven't quite figured out an equivalent phrase usage in the US. For example, I bought my ferry ticket the other day and said "Thank You". The clerk replied with "No Worries". Obviously, when I apologize for anything, they almost always reply "No Worries". I'm sure they use it in other context, but they like to use the phrase a lot!

Even though we've gotten used to not having real cable in our apartment, we still do not get to watch any American sports. That means no American football, baseball, basketball, etc etc. We do get to see the Australian versions of these sports though. Besides Rugby, there is Australian Football, which is combination of soccer/football/rugby (from what I understand). There is lots of cricket. Thee is also netball, which is similar to basketball, but no dribbling and no backboard. The hoop is lower to the ground and very strange to watch! But my favorite thing to watch on the telly is lawn bowling. We're trying it out this Saturday, so we'll have more to report on it over the weekend!

A Productive Sunday!

After a relaxing Saturday, David and I had to wake up early because we had a 9AM tee time at Warringah Golf Club. We took the bus to the golf course, which was a short ride away. The green fees were actually decently priced compared to the US. The strange part was how there was no real starter so after we paid, we just started on the course by ourselves.

The course was very flat and there weren't that many bugs because these fly traps were hanging in the trees near the tees and greens.


It was a beautiful day and even though we had to wait sometimes for the people in front of me, we played very fast.


We found an interesting golf ball washer.


It was interesting because it was branded with "David" all over it.



After golfing, we headed back home. We decided to get some wedges and sit by the beach. They were having a carnival day, where the different beach clubs around the area were competing. All these children were competing in various relays. Afterwards, we wandered around the Corso before we headed back to our apartment. We went to the pool that was in our building and it was the first non salt water pool that I've heard of in Australia!!! It was very exciting and we'll probably hang around the pool some more now.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Cable TV. Very few people in Australia have cable television and it's also very expensive to get. Everyone else lives on the 5 basic channels that are free. The only problem with these 5 channels is that 2 of them usually play random stuff, so it's really only 3 channels. It's very different from the US, but I'm learning to live off of these 3 channels.

SUN!

Yesterday, the sun finally decided to stop hiding behind the clouds and came out to play! WOOHOO! We woke up in Coogee and walked near the beach to have some brunch before heading back to Manly.

Coogee Beach is much smaller than Manly, but the color of the water is beautiful!


It took us only an hour and a half to get back to Manly, which is something that we're getting used to. Since the sun was finally shining consistently, we decided to go to our beach and relax. There weren't too many people on the beach, which was nice. Farther down the beach, we found these blue jellyfish laying all around.


Here's what they looked like up close.


Apparently, they are called "Blue Bottles" and when they sting you, it is supposed to last about a half hour. Their tentacles look pretty long.


After our time in the beach, we made a delicious dinner with some Australia Ocean trout before watching a movie. We had to go to bed early because we were going golfing the next day!

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Phone Numbers. Whenever they describe phone numbers if there is 2 or 3 numbers in a row that are the same. They will describe it as "double x" or "triplex". For example, 617 555 3776 would be called 6-1-7-triple 5-3-double 7-6.

As for a response to some of the comments, the seasoned wedges are potato wedges. I have no photos of me in a French moustache because I ran away from the girl who was giving them. =) The funniest part about these moustaches is that after the party, some of us went to a bar and the girls didn't take off their moustaches before we went. They definitely got a lot of comments!

Agathe's Housewarming Party

Yesterday, Agathe, who is another SAC transfer from Paris, had a housewarming party that was French themed. There were lots of French cheeses, baguettes, crudite, crisps (chips), other munchies and of course wine! Here's some of the displays of food that she had.




She was actually afraid that there wouldn't be enough food. I think by the end of the night there was still over half of the food left. Below, Alex and Nicole are starting up the party.


Kim and I are relaxing on the couch.


We noticed that all the Americans came relatively on time, while all the Europeans came an hour or two late! After they all arrived, it's started to get crowded in the apartment.


Anton, Me and David making sure not to give up the valuable couch seats.


As the party continued, The later the party went, the weirder it started getting. The French theme started getting out of control.

Anton, Ele and Carlo are displaying their French moustaches.


Agathe and Ele were putting on moustaches on everyone, but somehow David ended up with something a little different.


Thanks Agathe for hosting such a fun party! After the party, Alex was kind enough to let us stay at her place even though she had to get up early to go to Ayers Rock! Thanks Alex!!!

Recently, there have been a lot of cruise ships in the dock. They take up a lot of space compared to our ferry that we take every day.


Australia's interesting fact of the day: Their staple condiment choice. In America, we use ketchup on everything. I would call it America's staple condiment. In Australia, they use sweet chili sauce on everything! You can find as many bottles of it in the supermarket as there are for tomato sauce (ketchup). Usually, in America we would only find it in Thai places, but in Australia they'll eat it with any kind of food. The most common and weirdest combination that I've seen is that seasoned wedges are always served with sweet chili and sour cream. Amazingly, it is quite delicious.