Nic - The Down Under Chronicles

Sydney

2009-04-26T14:29:00.004+10:00

Justin and I spent Easter weekend in Sydney. It felt good to get out of Melbourne for a few days and see something new. We stayed in Kings Cross which is known for being a very eccentric and lively part of the city. We arrived Friday afternoon and headed down to Bondi Beach. Bondi Beach is the most popular and therefore crowded beach in Oz. If you don't believe me Paris Hilton visited a few months ago and created a mob. They film a reality tv show about lifeguards there as well. There's a 6 mile walk along the coast starting at Bondi but the sun was starting to go down fast and we didn't get too far. Instead we walked along the main street and got greasy fish and chips finished off by icecream - yum. Saturday we spent all day downtown. We walked from our hostel along Sydney Harbour and got our first great view of the Opera House with Sydney Bridge in the background. We kept walking and next to the Opera House was the full Sydney skyline. To say the least it was a great way to get our first sight of the city. We then caught a ferry that took us across Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach. Manly Beach was nothing special but it was nice to see the full city from the boat. We continued on to the Rocks. The Rocks are where Australia's first European settlers, British convicts and their overseers claimed the land and built their camp. The Rocks eventually grew from an open-air market into a vibrant port community. Its colourful history is filled with tales of ‘shanghaied' sailors, rough gangs, and gritty life that can still be traced in the many surviving buildings from the last two centuries. But today the renovated former warehouses, sailors' homes, and dens of iniquity house a unique mixture of fine restaurants, shops, and galleries showcasing both established and emerging talent. After walking around the neighborhood we then continued on to the Sydney Observatory which sits upon a hill behind Sydney Bridge and overlooking the Harbour. We sat there overlooking the city and enjoying the multiple weddings that were going on at churches around us. We then headed back towards the Opera House and through the Botanical Gardens where we sat on a hillside overlooking the Sydney Opera House and Harbour - I know sounds cheesy but we were actually just tired of walking.

Sunday we spent the whole day in the Blue Mountains. We booked a canyoning tour. The first part of the day consisted of 5 abseils. In case you don't know what abseiling is. You basically get harnessed in and then have to repel down the side of a cliff walking backwards. The first abseil was 15 feet, the second was 50 feet and the third abseil was 100 feet. Although abseiling is extremely safe (at least the way we were doing it) it still got my heart beating fast. We got breathtaking views of the mountains as well. After lunch we headed for the canyoning part of the day. We took a short hike to a river bed that cut through the mountains. We put on wet suits, harness and helmet and waded and swam down the river. We had to jump off rocks into pools of water and slide down embankments. At one point we saw a small brown poisonous snake in the water that we were told to avoid. At the end of the hike the river turned into a waterfall and cascaded down a 100-150 foot cliff and this is what were going to abseil down. I know, sounds intense but I had no clue what I was getting myself into. All I could see was that the water just went rushing over the edge and I couldn't see how big the waterfall was or how far down it went. So I hopped up to the ledge, attached myself to the rope and started walking backward over the edge. About 10 seconds into my descent I was bombarded with tons of water directly in my face (remember we weren't abseiling down next to the waterfall we were abseiling through the waterfall). Unable to breathe and losing my grip on the rocks I started to freak out. I slowly started to descend but quickly lost my footing and swung into the rocks with my body. I was basically just sitting in my harness, slamming into the rocks and getting pelted by the waterfall directly in the face. I tried my best to get my footing back as I was gasping for breath. I quickly made my decent. Eyes half closed, ears filled with the rush of water and mind racing. To make a long story short I finally made it to the small pond below and swam to safety. It was one of the biggest rushes of my life. I stood at the bottom of the waterfall not able to comprehend what I had just accomplished. It was a great trip.

Quarter Century

2009-04-04T16:43:00.005+11:00

Things have been busy lately, so here's a quick March update...

I got a job working at a call centre. Now don't think 100 people smashed into a hot room in India type call centre - it's more of a big office, cubical, business attire type atmosphere. The company is a share registry. We handle calls from shareholders of companies listed on the ASX (the Australian Stock Exchange). I know - little ol me answering phone calls about stocks, shares and dividend payments - who knew!!?? It's actually been really interesting. We had a week of training so I was able to learn a lot about all the stock market terminology. I gotta say I found it really interesting and it's definetly something I want to learn more about and hopefully start to invest in when I have more money. There's 8 of us in our little group - 3 Americans and 5 British. Our boss is only 22 years old and really laid back so we usually just sit around and make fun of eachother in between calls and talk about completely inappropriate topics. That's the advantage of working with travelers who don't care about the job and just need to earn a buck. For the most part callers are really nice - most of them are completely clueless about the stock market - I had one lady call me saying she hadn't received any correspondence from us since 1990 and she wanted to know how her shares were doing. I also get the irrate people who just need to yell at someone - like the woman who called up complaining about her ex-husband who was screwing her over and changing all the details on her account and stealing her money - I got so stressed out I started to shake a little bit and turned bright red. I wanted to tell her to go to the police like any person with half a brain would do, but alas that is "giving advice" and that's against company policy. Haha - can you tell how worked up I am getting just talking about it. Enough about work, it's Saturday and I should be enjoying my weekend.

I also celebrated my birthday last week. It was a great weekend. I went out for margaritas on Saturday night and then went over to a friends house. They had all bought me a cake and signed a card for me. We had a few beers and went out to a bar called The Night Cat. They have a live 9 piece band that plays oldies funk music (aka James Brown) so we got our grove on. Sunday night Justin took me out for a nice dinner. We walked down to the Docklands (which if you can't guess by the name is right on the harbour and is where all the rich people dock their expensive yachts. We went to BlueFire Grill in Waterfront City. It is famous for it's churrascaria. Which is a Brazilian style way of cooking meats over an open flame. It's $50 a person and you get an appetizer, roasted veggies and all you can eat from a menu of 7 different meats. We tried them all and absolutely gorged ourselves.

Next weekend I'll be traveling to Sydney for a long weekend. It should be nice to get out of Melbourne for awhile and see something new. Sometimes I forget that I'm in another country on the otherside of the world and I think this will remind me - in a good way!! I'm also going on a 2 month roadtrip around Oz at the end of May. So many things to look forward to.

Well, thank you all for the birthday wishes. Miss you!!

I am not on fire

2009-02-21T11:32:00.005+11:00

So, many of you have probably heard about the fires in Melbourne. The fires are all contained to the state of Victoria with a lot of them being in the suburbs right outside of Melbourne. The residents of these towns had no warning. The Saturday that it started (they are now calling it "Black Saturday") the temperature was 120 degrees, vegetation was very dry and the wind was blowing at 90 km an hour. The fire moved at a rate of 60 km/hour which translates to over 1 mile every 2 minutes - try to outrun that!!! A lot of people died in the fires and whole communities were destroyed. A lot of people don't have insurance down here also, for their car or house - so many people lost everything. Even today there are still a few fires that are not under control. The city of Melbourne was not affected at all - which is good - so I'm in the clear.

Not much has been happening. Watched the SuperBowl. It was on at 10 in the morning on Monday - so there was only three of us Americans watching it. They didn't show any of the American ads either which was a bummer, but luckily we got to listen to the American sportscasters. Although before and after commercials and during timeouts they would switch to the Australian sportscasters and they had no clue what they were talking about - haha.

The Irish and Americans also started going to a pub quiz every Tuesday night - we're rubbish and have only gotten as high as 4th place, but it's a good excuse to have a few beers.

The job is going well. I work Sunday-Wednesday and never have to work past 4pm - which is kinda nice. My manager pays me under the table in cash - so technically I'm not supposed to ever say that I worked there! Oops!

I finally got to see a kangaroo - okay I saw it at the zoo - so it was it an enclosure, but it counts!!

Heat Wave

2009-01-30T12:15:00.004+11:00

So, it's been awhile since I wrote last and since I've gotten back from traveling things have been slow. We're going through a heat wave here. It's the hottest week in Australia in a hundred years. Yesterday it got up to 112 degrees and today (the coldest day this week) it is 110!!!

I also finally found an apartment. I still live in St. Kilda, but I live up on Chapel Street now. It's a short tram ride to the beach and to the downtown area. Chapel Street is also famous for it's restaurants, bars and shopping so I'm in a really good area.Oh, I also went to the Australian Open Tennis Tournament last weekend. It was only $15 to get in, but we couldn't see any of the main court action. We still managed to see Serena and Venus Williams play a doubles match though. With being unemployed I've been watching a lot of the tennis tournament and have started to really get into it and enjoy watching the games.

I also am employed now. I got a waitressing job at a restaurant in the cbd (downtown) called Rosati's. Supposedly it's famous in Melbourne. It's a huge open restaurant that seats 360 people with 4 outdoor seating areas. I already had 2 days of trials. Down here instead of going through a short interview and then either being hired or not, like at home, they do a trial period. You basically come in for 1 or 2 days for a few hours each day and you go through training to see if you will work out. It's basically me working for them for free (and you don't always get the job - so sometimes it can be a huge waste of time). Anyway, I start next week. It's a really nice and expensive restaurant. You can probably google it to see the menu and some pics.

Stay warm everyone!!! xxx

X-Mas Aussie Style

2008-12-30T15:56:00.007+11:00

I'm living with 4 Irish people I met at the hostel. They have a small house in St. Kilda (a south neighborhood right along the beach). We bought a christmas tree and decorated it with lights and ornaments and I bought stockings and wrote everyone's name on them so we could fill them with presents for the Secrect Santa we were doing. We had about 20 people over for X-mas. All people we met at the hostel. This was almost everyone's first christmas away from their family so we were in the same boat.

We had a huge brunch Christmas morning composed of eggs, apple pancakes, fruit and bacon. Afterwards we all headed down to the beach. Surprisingly the beach was packed. It was so odd to be at the beach in 90 degree weather with a santa hat celebrating X-mas, but when in Rome.

We then went back to the house and had a banquet of food. Two turkeys, a ham, vegetables, stuffing, bacon rolled things, two kinds of potatoes, and tons of deserts. All in all it was an amazing Christmas. Throughout the day we also incorporated Christmas traditions from each of our familys. I contributed tequila shots - which I might add made everyone reealllly happy. It was a Christmas to remember.

Great Ocean Road

2008-12-30T15:24:00.007+11:00

So, I'm back in Melbourne - my home away from home. It felt so good to come back here. To come back to something familiar with people who know me. I stayed in the hostel for a night and then the weekend I was back a group of us went on the Great Ocean Road. It's one of the most scenic road trips in all of Oz. There was a group of 10 of us, so we had to rent 2 cars. We drove the non scenic part of the trip on Saturday morning. It only took a few hours and we arrived to our hostel early. It was one of the guy's birthdays so we found a bbq along the beach and grilled out and had a few drinks. We also found a huge maze to run around in. We took turns blind folding one another and then yelling directions from the watch tower telling them which way to turn. Sounds immature, but it was a lot of fun.

The next day we drove the Great Ocean Road. If you drove it straight through it would probably only take a few hours, but we were stopping every 10 minutes to view the sights. The views were absolutely amazing. Huge cliffs and gorgeous rock formations in the waters, rocks creating natural bridges and waves crashing against the shore.

We also saw koalas in the wild - we got close enough to almost reach out and touch them.

New Zealand - The South Side

2008-12-15T16:46:00.003+11:00

So, I'm on the last leg of my New Zealand trip. Thought I might update you with the first few weeks we spent in the south island. I will try and keep it short and simple since it's sometimes boring to hear about vacations to places you've never been - and plus I don't want to make you all jealous and more miserable in that cold Chicago winter of yours.

Well, to start... New Zealand is by far one of the most gorgeous places I have ever seen - and that is not an exageration. As they say down here - the trip was epic.

We started out in Christchurch and picked up our campervan. Fully equipped with two benches and a kitchen table that converted into a double bed, microwave, fridge, sink and stovetop.

We drove down the east coast first:

Highlights - we walked along the beach on Otago Peninsula and it was littered with sea lions. We got within 10 feet of one and were chased down the beach. Penguins are also "common" down here. Depending on the time of year you can see anywhere from 5 to 150 of the buggars. They usually come back from hunting in the sea around dusk. I saw about 5 of them hopping around from rock to rock.

The west coast - Drove to Milford Sound. It's a 2 hour drive from the nearest city. There are no restaurants, motels, gas stations or cell phone service. The 2 hour trip is the most scenic and beautiful thing I've ever seen. It started with fields full of purple flowers and lakes reflecting the snow capped mountains in the background. Eventually we started driving through those mountains and saw waterfalls. We randomly stayed one night in a gravel lot on the side of the road that turned out to be right on a lake with the mountains in the background. We went out at night and layed underneath the stars. I've never seen so many of the freaking things!!! I named a couple myself since they all are different constellations down here. I found the "Joshua Tree" and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". The only down side is that we were eaten alive by bugs - I counted 40 bites on my left foot alone. The next day we took a 4 hour kayak tour through Milford Sound. The sound - which technically is a fiord - was carved by glaciers through the mountains to create an inlet from the sea. We kayaked 5 km up it and then put our kayaks side by side - our guide gave us a tarp and we created our own home made sail boat - I'll have to send pics! We then moved on to Queenstown and that's were I went skydiving. Jumped out of a plane at 12,000 feet over the southern alps. 45 seconds of free fall that got us up to speeds of 150mph in 8 secs. Basically, I almost pissed myself. I was the last to go out of 10 people (of course) and got to see everyone disappear one by one as the sky sucked them out of the plane. It was the greasted rush of my life and a story I need to tell in person (or over the phone). We then went up to Franz Josef Glacier. We ignored all signs of warning that it was dangerous to traverse the terrain and ended up meeting a couple that took us up through the mountains on a path that you had to use a rope tied to trees to get up. We were able to walk right up to the glacier and even climb up it a bit. We then headed to Abel Tasman National Park. Only accessible by kayak, hiking or boat. We took a water taxi up the coast to Tonga Bay and then took the next two days to walk back to town - walked about 30 kilometers in total. The whole walk was along a cliff over looking the coastline and beaches down below. We stayed overnight at a campsite and met up with a group of kayakers that took us to glow worm caves on the end of the beach. The glow worm caves were so cool - I guess it's the shit from the worms that glows - a greenish tint. But it looks like a million stars on the sides and top of the cave.

I guess these are the highlights, but I have many more stories. We are now in the north island staying in hostels. It's nice to be able to pee in toilets once again and take showers on a regular basis - oh the luxuries!!!! I miss you all and will write more about the north island when I get back to Melbourne!!! Ta ta

Movember

2008-11-21T13:11:00.002+11:00

So I just discovered that the month of November is called 'Movember' here. Basically, the month of November is "Men's Health Awareness Month". It's supposed to raise awareness for prostate cancer and depression in men (and something else that I can't remember). So men here grow mustaches throughout the month to raise awareness for these diseases and then they can go into certain sponsoring restaurants and receive free meals. All you have to show is a mustache and you get anything on the menu for free. The restaurants then donate the price of the meal to research.

We walked into a burger joint the other day for lunch at one of these sponsoring restaurants (Micah grew a creepy looking 1980's dad type mustache). I was the only woman in the restaurant and there were about 30 guys in line with huge bushy mustaches - haha. Some even went above and beyond and grew the "handlebar" type mustache. We're going back again today so I'll try and take a picture.

As many of you know I'm leaving for New Zealand tomorrow. Micah and I rented a camper van for $6 a day (bed, sheets, fridge, stove top and sink included). We fly into Christchurch in the south island. We're going to spend about 18 days on the south island and then take a ferry to the north island, drop off the camper van and pick up a car and drive around the north island for another 7 days. Chad and Justin went a couple months ago and said they had an amazing time. They didn't see any hobbits but they did see some breathtaking views.

Well, Happy early Thanksgiving to everyone. Miss you all!!

Out and About

2008-11-15T01:22:00.006+11:00

So, I've been in Melbourne for a little over a week now. This past weekend I went down to St. Kilda. It's a vibrant neighborhood of Melbourne that's on the Bay. We sat along the beach eating ice cream and hanging out. That's me, Chad and Micah.

We also visited the Queen Victoria Market. It's an open air market with produce, cheese, meats and clothes. On weekends it's fun to sit back and watch the vendors yell back and forth at eachother trying to woo customers with their low prices. I actually managed to pick up dinner for four for under $7 US dollars. I also think this is where I'll do all my Christmas shopping. Sorry family - but they do have cheap authentic Uggs - hint hint at presents.

They're starting to celebrate Christmas down here, just like I'm sure they are in the States. They still have the image of Santa at the North Pole with snow and reindeer. However there seems to be a tradition of spending Christmas at the beach bbq-ing.

The weather seems to be similar to Chicago. A couple days ago it was sunny and 95 degrees and today it was overcast, rainy and in the 60's. You never really know what to expect.

Sushi and thai food are huge down here. It's makes sense because there's a lot of Asians living in the city. The only fast food I've been able to find are Subway and, of course, Starbucks and McDonalds (because they are taking over the world).

Well, Happy Thanksgiving everyone ... keep the emails coming - it's always nice to get a message from back home. Miss you all!!

Off to the Horse Races

2008-11-09T11:00:00.002+11:00

I went to the Melbourne Cup Carnival Horse Races yesterday. This was the last day of the races. They are pretty popular here, more so than the Kentucky Derby is back in the States. They actually get a day off work to watch them. I went with this guy Dan I know and a group of his friends. I've never been to the Kentucky Derby so I had nothing to compare this to, but it seems like it's normal to not even go into the track. We had a VIP tent in this area just outside the track. We spent most of the time in the tent (because there was free food and booze) and then we would step outside before each race to watch it on the big screen.

I bet on most of the races. The guys were trying to teach me what the numbers all meant and what horses were good, but despite their best efforts and because I'm an extremely unlucky person (at least when it comes to winning anything) I lost every single race (by a lot). And any race I put my two cents in on for my Aussie friends I lost for them too. Oh well.

We also walked down to "The Nursery". This was the non-VIP tent section. It was a large area where everyone could set up their own tent and bbq and drink. It was fun to see everyone dressed up in suits and formal dresses and crazy hats. I heard that I just missed Snoop Dogg. He canceled his flight home to go to the races and afterward he got 27 hotel rooms and was inviting people back. I will try and upload some pics I took later.

I've Arrived

2008-11-09T10:44:00.002+11:00

So, after 30 hours of traveling, 4 flights, 5 airports and Obama winning the election, I've arrived in Melbourne. The hostel we're staying at is pretty nice. Most of the people staying there are Brits and Europeans. It feels good to be around people my age who are doing the same thing as me. Back in Chicago I felt like the odd man out. Everyone I knew back home seemed to be comfortable with their lives and jobs or maybe they weren't and were just pretending to be. Either way, I was the one quitting my job, subleasing my apartment, selling my car and moving half way around the world. Some people thought I was crazy or thought there was something wrong. It's nice to be around lots of people my age who are traveling the world and hopping around from city to city. It makes me feel that what I'm doing is actually pretty normal and it's something I should be doing. Anyway...

I like the city so far. It has more of a European feel to it. It's fairly slow paced (as opposed to the hustle and bustle of downtown Chicago where everyone is running into each other). The streets are narrow and filled mainly by cabs and trams. Narrow alleys have been converted into walkways for fancy boutiques and quaint restaurants.

Melbourne is a very international city. There's a lot of different ethnicities and languages spoken down here. Unlike most foreign cities I've traveled to, I feel very comfortable here and fit right in.

And as far as Australia may be from America it's still very similar. I had lunch at Subway, bought a cell phone, shopped at Ikea and peed at McDonalds :)