The End is Near

We are fitting in all the last minute things we haven't done yet. Wednesday we went to see a show in the Opera House, we saw "Cabaret Decadanse" it wasn't in the main hall, but in a smaller venue but the show was great. It was a puppet show, but done it a unique way, you could see the humans controlling them and they often interacted with pupets, it was really clever and fun. At first I didn't think I would like it and wondered what I got myself into but after I got over the initial shock of the quirkiness I really enjoyed it! The songs were entertaining and some were really funny and I also enjoyed the how random it was.

Since the winter weather has lightened and it feels like spring we went on the Hunter Valley Wine Tour. Hunter Valley is a wine country about 2 hours out of Sydney, we booked a tour and we got picked up in Sydney and drove out there by our very charismatic bus driver, who talked the whole way there. Oh did I mention that we got picked up at 7:30 am! The tour took us to small boutique wineries where we learned a bit about the wines, got to taste them and see the winery and vineyards. We had lunch in the little town that was really cute and small, we got some home made fudge that was great and we also did some cheese tasting. It was a fun day and we were all exhausted after, not to mention a bit tipsy. Hunter Valley was beautiful, the vineyards were so pretty and perfect and we were lucky to get such a great day!

After learning about some bad news that my grandfather had passed away and seeing the beautiful day outside, I was desperate to get out of the apartment. Brit and I walked down to Bondi Beach and ventured on the Bondi to Coogee Coastal Walk. Its about 2 miles up hill along the coastline looking out to the Tasman Sea. Walking from Bondi Beach we passed Tamarama Beach and sat on the rocks and watched the waves crash in and the surfers catch wave and be crashed by waves. I could have sat there and watched them all day. We then ran into our Spring Break guide Matty Dee, it was good catching up with him. We walked on to Bronte Beach and further trucked our way to Coogee. It was a tough walk with hills and steps and a cemetery detour. We made it to Coogee and were exhausted, we caught the bus home and took long naps! When I woke up my roommates had surprised me with flowers in condolences of the grandfather. It was really touching , I have such great roommates and friends!

First Class Passports

Our flight to New Zealand was nice, the flight was empty and we were able to all have our own rows so we could sleep, and we needed it. We arrive in Christchurch at 12:30 am and we get right into our rental car for a 6 hour drive to Queenstown. We get to our car and it is a clown car! We cant fit all of our luggage in it so we had to put a seat down and pour Brit and Sasha crammed in the back. There are no such things as major highways in NZ just one laned country roads and they are not many of them. While driving through the night we drove up and down many twisty and turny roads in the dark, we came prepared with cds tho! We didn't see another car for hours, but what we did see was 100's rabbits darting into the road. Unfortunately I ran one over....we had a moment of silence for the bunny, it was sad. We finally arrive in Queenstown, and check in to our hotel at 6 am we laid down to take a nap until 10 but we all slept through the alarm and woke up at one.We got up to explore and find some lunch, and its FREEZING! since we still had the car until the end of the night we tried to drive over to Deer Park to do some sightseeing especially some Lord of the Rings spots, even though none of us would have known what we were looking at since we haven't really seen the movies. (sorry Maggie and Erin, hate to break it to you but I not a Lord of the Ring nerd like you two! j.k) But we got the directions wrong and ended up driving the wrong way. But no big we still saw some beautiful sights and drove up to Lake Wanaka and saw a beautiful sunset. That night we ate at Winnies and ran in to JP a friend from our spring break trip.

The next day we rented another car and drove to Milford sound which is about three hours away on a treacherous little road that went to the top of some mountains and through a mountain by a mile long tunnel. It was a pretty drive, although this rental didnt have a cd player, so we were stuck listening to Brit and Sasha singing the whole way. We caught a cruise tour boat that took us around the sound. Most beautiful snow covered mountains everywhere! The boat driver would take us almost right under some waterfalls! Nuts! The high light of this day was seeing the herd of dolphins leading our boat, so cool! Nicole was also in NZ and we kept just missing each other, when we got to our car in the parking lot I made a guess on which camper van was Nicole's because I knew they were there too, I left an note on my subway wrapper and put it on their windshield!
Our last day in Queenstown we just hung out in the town, which is super cute it felt like Aspen or Lake Tahoe. It was a cute wintery ski town right on the lake. We took the gondola up a mountain to get a beautiful view of Queenstown and the lake. There is a old myth about the lake called the Maori Legend, the giant Matau burnt to death while he was curled up sleeping after stealing the chiefs daughter. This is why the lake is "S" shaped and Queenstown sits on his knee. This myth is also used to explain the mystery of the rising and falling of the lake every 5 minutes, this is said to be Matau's heart still beating. Anyways, it was so beautiful, this entire trip we kept gushing over the views and the landscape, we probably said Wow hundreds of times. That night we decided to go out for one drink and ran into our friends again who were on the bar crawl so we ended up tagging along and then made a late night stop at the famous Fergburger.

The next day we packed up and headed towards Christchurch but we decided to stop half way in Lake Tiekapo. This was the smallest whole in the wall town ever, there was 2 hotels and 300 people living there. The reason we stayed there because we herd there were hot springs but they were man made but it was still a pretty nice spa. While in Tiekapo at 3 am Brit realized that we had left our passports in the safe a Queenstown! We frantically tried figure out what to do and what would be most cost effective. Turns out that we ended up getting our passports flown first class to Christchurch so we could pick them up before our flight. So scary and dumb!
We arrive in Christchurch with barely any money left, we drove around got some lunch and tried to kill some time. It was a cool city but not much to do there, so we went and saw a movie The Hangover. It was sooo funny! Since we spent $160 on getting out passports to us we decided to get the cheapest hotel possible...the airport. We slept in the airport since our flight as at 6:30 am it was a very eventful 5 days. This was definitely a trip we wont forget!

Boys are Back in Town

It seems were attached at the hip. Two weeks after spring break we went to Melbourne to visit our friends we meet on our trip, Benny, Chris, Jason, Dubs, & Tyler. Now two weeks after that trip they came to visit us in Sydney. Tuesday we were chatting with them about possibly coming and then all of a sudden they are coming on Wednesday! There is a mad dash to get all of work done so we can be free to play while they are here, clean the apartment, go grocery shopping and figure out what to do with them!

Wednesday they came and we have a family dinner of pasta and some ghetto chicken parm made of frozen patties and American cheese (made by Jason and Dubs) We ate and drank and then headed out to our favorite Wednesday spot, the Eastern. Its only our favorite because its across the street! It was a long night of dancing and drinking and then we all crammed into our apartment trying to find a place to sleep. We have four single beds and one couch, 7 people sleeping here. Next day I had class bright and early and all day. I come home to see everyone still in PJs at 4 o'clock, watching movies. So cute the boys had went out and got us flowers! It was their "rent" we payed had payed them in snickers bars. We spent the long weekend partying and occasionally sight seeing. All the boys had been to Sydney but Chris so we took him down to Bondi Beach, the rocks, the opera house and harbor bridge, all the must sees. One night we ate in the rocks at a cute little Italian place that was out side. We were enjoying our dinner when it started to down pour on us. We were under a covering but with the gusts of wind we were all still getting soaked. Chris ate his dinner under an umbrella. It seemed that every time we stepped out of the house it started to rain. Just our luck. One day it was so yucky we stayed in and watched the Sex and the City Movie, this wasn't the girls pick in movies lol. We went to the rocks market and looked around there, it was my first time there too. Its a cool market with some really unique stuff and some good food too, like the 5 chocolate covered strawberries on a stick! yum!

It was so good seeing the boys but also kinda sad since we wouldn't be seeing the again in Australia. But since most are from Boston and Dubs in Connecticut we made plans to see each other this summer. And of course we still have our long skype conversations, so its not "see you never"