Jayne Hablos the Espanol!

7 weeks in and I'm only 4 weeks behind! Go me!

2010-05-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

Apparently I’m not the only one here still obsessed with the big A!

Hola chicos! Another week has come and gone!

Sunday April 18

After the horrendous ordeal known as crashing in the mountains I decided to lay low on Sunday! I found an LDS church right by my school and thought it started at 9, I got to sacrament a little bit late (weird right?) and they were singing a song so I thought perfect, it's the opening song I'm right on time, as soon as it ended they said a prayer and I walked in and sat down as the bishop was making a few comments I didn't understand and I felt like all eyes were on me, I thought it was because I was the only whitey in the place but when the bishop finished and everyone got up and walked out because sacrament was over I knew why all the staring! haha

Later in the afternoon I met Lauren and Tiago and we went to this place called Molinos, it's the Peruvian black market. They have tons of electronics and boot leg DVD's and just about anything else you could possibly want including but not limited too.....

Yep my friends that's a real life cooked guinea pig on skewer with a pepper in it's mouth, I think his name was Ted.... Yum!

My favorite part about Molinos was the big high def TV's playing high def movies!!! Seriously, it's like a joke sometimes how nerdy I am but I don't even care I loved it! :) They also have tons of knock off clothes and shoes and purses and things it's way sweet! They love to barter here as well! Almost as much as the chinese, and that's saying something!

This picture is not blurry, it's you..... In the background you can kind of see the market, but me Lauren and Tiago stopped and got some fresh made juice! You just tell them what you want and they blend it up fresh right there! And it's only 2 soles a glass! That's like 70 cents, I seriously could live on the stuff it's so amazing!

In school on Monday my new profesora was Marybel, she's really sweet and motherly! I also had another student, James, with me. He's a science teacher from New Orleans and seriously fit the bill of an awkward science teacher in every way shape and form, and he had the worst coffee breath every morning! :) Needless to say it made for an interesting week!

Yes my friends the mullet is alive and well in the great state of Louisiana!

Tuesday was such a beautiful day, I met my friend Vicky, from England at the school and after some confusion and a little broken Spanish we found the right bus stop and took a cambi up to the Cristo Blanco that overlooks Cusco. The cambis are these van like things that they shove people in to the point of no return, I didn’t realize until now but there is actually always room for one more! You get to know your neighbor real quick, whether you want to or not! It’s only 60 centimos which is like 35 cents and you’re not a real Cusquenian until you experience one of these, so I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s official, I am now one of the collective, you can call me 1 of 200,000 (and anyone laughing right now, you’ve just been exposed as the ST:TNG fan that I always knew you were)!

Oh it’s fine, I just met a real life Peruvian rock star, even got to star in her real life high budget music video! :)

It is such a beautiful view from up top and while we there this band came and set up all their instruments, I’m talking keyboards, guitars, saxophones the whole shebang! And made us move out of their way so they could shoot a real life music video, no joke! It was super classy, they had a hand held video camera to record it all and a portable tape player to supply the music! It was so funny! They recorded a couple songs and then the lady asked me and Vicky if we liked to dance and if we would be in here video. We both felt way dumb but pretty much they just played the song and she was just singing along and we were dancing right by her, luckily I naturally look so good I didn't even need to get in to costume and make up! So funny slash awkward slash I better get some royalty when that video goes straight to #1!

This day I finally realized my life long dream of.... standing next to a lady wearing a dress of sparkling jewels brighter than the sun!

I'm gonna be honest, I think this first little taste of stardom brought out the true star in me because Thursday night I went out dancing with a bunch of the students that are leaving Cusco. We were just club hopping and there were about 12 of us and we ended up in this club called Mamma Afrika that was playing lots of hip hop so of course I loved it! While we were there the song Soulja Boy Tell Em came on, it's kind of an old song but it has this whole dance that goes to it, and this one kid from Belgium is 19 and he's crazy, they all call him El Nino because he's so young but our group kind of cleared the floor and he went in the middle like he knew the dance and I was like hey I know it too, so I went out there with him and we tore it up! Literally everyone in the entire club stopped and made a circle around us to watch and it was awesome! After that, I'm not even kidding you I was a legend! Everyone was nice to me before but after I did that, they were all like, "That was amazing, I love you" this one girl just kept saying "You're so cool, I want to dance with you, you're so crazy!" hahaha I'm not even kidding you I was in my glory! Even at school the next day, a couple of the girls live with the head teacher Maike and, Maike came up to me and was like, I hear you are quite the dancer! So much fun! I'm back on cloud 9 just thinkin about it! I'm pretty sure if everyone had known I didn't even have any alcohol they would have died!

This was a big performance week for me.....

Friday April 23 is apparently El Dia De Idioma (day of language) so for the second half of the day we did all these different activities. My friend David from Texas is an awesome guitar player and he played a couple songs for everyone and I think he must have spotted how in tune I am with music because he asked me to accompany him on the maracas. Now, most of you probably aren't aware but I've actually had many extensive years of training with the maracas so I was well qualified for this job, and I mean his guitar playing was good but really I think you can guess what made the performance! :)

Sorry if you can't pick my face out of this picture, I really got in to character as Molino #3 in the back!

Also in case you didn't already figure out from the above picture I was also able to finally land my dream role in the theater that day as Molino #3 in the schools reproduction of Don Quijote for the Day of Language..... Oh yeah Molino in spanish is windmill! Hahaha It was so cheesy slash nerdy! The play was short and all I did was stand there waving my arms like a windmill, I mean it took a lot preparation on my part and without me the whole thing probably would have fallen apart but it was a pretty eventful day!

After the performances, they had us split in to 4 different teams and we had to come up with a team cheer and then we did all these competitions in Spanish. I wasn't much good at any of the Spanish stuff but I did come up with our team cheer! I may or may not have gotten the idea from a little known place called the Spectrum..... Bringing a little piece of Logan to my friends in Peru! We did the I believe that we can win chant in Spanish it was awesome!

Sunday we had a rooftop picnic at Katrine and Arianne's hostel! They have this amazing view overlooking the plaza! It was awesome, we got a bunch of bread and cheese and veggies and the avocados here are so amazing! And then we watched the sunset and Katrine jammed a little while we all sang along! Such an amazing night!

Sunday morning I went to church and found some other white people! And they were from Logan! I love that place so naturally life was good! It was a couple who worked for the church and had been living in Lima for 4 years and all there kids and some of the spouses were out visiting so they were doing so traveling! They were way nice and they loved that I lived in Logan almost as much as I loved that they weren't BYU fans! :)

After church Isabelle was sick so I was just planning on eating something in town, but she called me in to her room and apparently her nephew had gotten this take out and she wanted to share it with me.....

I'm not 100% sure about all the contents on this plate, but the dark meat is cuy aka guinea pig (surprisingly tasted nothing like chicken), I think the white things were some kind of fish egg and the green stuff tasted a lot like seaweed! Also don't be fooled, that is definitely not a hot dog! :) And on the upside the popcorn kernel looking things were amazing! And I loved getting to try so many different kinds of food and now I don't even have to waste a whole meal on Cuy!

Adventures in Mountain Biking!

2010-04-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

Yeah I kicked this mountains trash! Mount Ben Lomond I'm coming after you next!

Week 3
Holy smokes my time is seriously going way to fast! I'm having such a good time and meeting so many cool people I don't want it to end!

For the third week I finally got someone else in my class, I was kind of nervous to see how it would be with someone else, but it was awesome! I was with a girl named Shannon who is a doctor in San Diego, she is just finishing up her residency in Pedatrics! Even though she had only been there 2 weeks she was definitely keeping me on my toes! I felt like it was really good to kind of have some competition because I think it was really pushing us both! My teacher this week was Elvira and she was really great as well! Everyday in class we all kept talking about different kinds of food and it would make us hungry so on Friday we had a sharing day and we each brought in different kinds of food, naturally that was my favorite thing of the week! :) haha

Food day! These are Alfajores and they are the most amazing things ever filled with dulce de leche and strangely enough, from what I can understand from the label they're really healthy too! :)

Tuesday April 13
Isabelle made Spaghetti for lunch and was so excited to give it to me because she still thinks Italian is the most common type of food in Utah.... Oops! Went running after lunch and there's this kind of park thing that doesn't really have any grass but it has cement benches and some plants and different things, anyway after running I go there and do a few exercises lunges and tricep presses and things but it's kind of becoming a ritual that anyone within eye sight of the park just seems to stare at me as I workout, haha I'm sure to them a white girl running in the pollution is just plain weird!

Later that night I met up with the girls from Puno and we had a picture exchange party! That's sort of like a Bar Mitzvah without the whole coming of age thing....

Wednesday April 14
Wednesday night I attended a salsa class with Lauren and her host brother Tiago, he's from Brazil and is such a nice kid! The one thing I took away from Salsa lessons, I dance like a white girl!

"Hey Jayne, are you in giant land, because that corn looks ginormous?!"

Later that night we ate at Chez Maggy (I think I've been to that place 4 times in the last 8 days it's so delicious!)! They always have a traditional Peruvian band come in and play live music and it was so good! I even bought the CD and the band loved us, we were just chattin it up like it was old home week!

Oh it's fine, we're just a couple groupies hangin with the band!

Thursday April 15
Isabelle volunteers at a hospital on Thursday so she was gone in the morning and when she got home she brought us as a snack Jello in a plastic cup, it's really weird but they sell it all over the place here, and it was actually way delicious!

Went to dinner at Chez Maggy again, awkward when the band personally knows me.... It was the last night with Shannon and a couple other doctors who were here studying for a couple weeks! Afterwards went and played so more soccer, there were two americans from my school there this week too so it was pretty fun! Some of the guys didn't get the memo that it wasn't the World Cup though so there were a few fights that were pretty lame! haha

Friday April 16
For lunch I had the most amazing homemade fettucine alfredo and it was divine! Later that night I met a bunch of people for dinner! We ate at this Israeli place and it was really good! There were like 20 of us and we kind of overran the place, but it was a really good time!

Oh yeah, we're a rowdy bunch!

After dinner a few of us decided to go salsa dancing..... Although I have the grace of a swan when I walk (no?) somehow that doesn’t seem to translate in to my salsa moves! Weird! Later on we met up with a few American students who are here with their University and it was way fun

Me Lauren Tiago and Hank dancing!

I'm anticipating an invite to Dancing With the Stars in the near future so I just thought I'd brush up on my Salsa skills a little bit!

Saturday April 17

Woke up early and got to school where we were picked up by a van with 3 mountain bikes on top at 7:30! Our guide was way cool, his name was Edy and he works at a hotel but competes professionally in downhill mountain biking competitions! We got dropped off about an hour outside of Cusco in what felt like the middle of nowhere!

This is the hard core crew before we got started! You don't wanna mess with this!

This is the kind of terrain we were on for the first part of the day, maybe you think this looks soft, trust me it's not....

We rode for about an hour in the country through fields where people were working the land manually with a horse and plow, it was so cool to see! And the backdrop was these amazing mountains!

This is Moray, they're some Incan ruins they used as an experiment to grow different kinds of food, they would plant something different on each layer because the lower down you get the hotter it is! Naturally when I was standing at the bottom, it felt like the place was on fire!

We finally rode up to Moray, weird how we didn't see anyone else doing it on bikes but I sure saw a lot of tourists on buses, I guess I didn't get the memo that riding up to Moray involves a lot of up! :)

These are the big Incan steps that you have to climb down in Moray

Me and Edy the Italian stallion, did we actually call him that? Nope just made it up right now!

Behind me you can see a really steep hill that drops in to a river and then we had to climb back up, tough ride and I even passed a couple cows on my way up!

Look mom I'm flying!

So we ate our sack lunch at Moray and then headed on our way! The biking path we took in the 2nd half of the day had been part of a down hill mountain biking race trail the week before and our guide, who is a professional biker, had competed in it and was showing us all the jumps and things, he even showed off on a couple jumps for us!

Edy the Eagle (that's another new nickname I just came up with, although the only people that will get that will be my mom and any other Olympic enthusiasts, although I doubt there are many enthusiasts out there like me!)

So as we were following Edy down the steepest part of the mountain, it was some pretty gnarly terrain! Edy kept off on little tangents that were really tricky to get down but there was always a little bit easier trail for us to follow. After riding for a while I of course decided it was time to show off my mad skills, the problem with this was that I don't actually have any mad skills to properly show off..... I tried to follow Edy down one of his crazy shutes and things got ugly!

This picture does not do this monster hill justice.... Yep somehow I managed to do an endo coming down this....

Polite pain, that is the expression you're reading on my face in this picture!

Oh it's fine, I just wanted to bring a little Peru home with me in the form of a massive scar!

Somehow my ankle got tangled up in the mess that was me and the mountain and my bike!

Yep I look good, all the Peruvians want me now! I seriously have bruises up and down my body! I had some coins in my pocket and I hit so hard that they left a circular scar in my skin that is still here and it's been 3 weeks!

The worse part about this situation was not the bruises, or the blood, or the blacking out when I stood up, it was the bike pinning me down like a helpless child as I laid there in pain while Edy and Tiago looked on in horror! Tiago was so nice though and helped clean out as much of the dirt as he could! When I told him thank you so much he said, "It's ok, you are my sister!" It was so sweet! I was really glad he was there to save me!

You can kind of see the salt mines behind my giant muscles!

Needless to say the rest of the ride in to town, I was slightly more hesitant! It was still really cool though, we passed the salt mines, where there are over 400 pools of salt, and rode through this cute town and finally took a bus home! I was so exhausted and a shower never felt so good in my life! Went out for dinner that night and then fell asleep at 9 and slept almost 12 hours!

The moral of this story is, if you're going to crash in the mountains in Peru try to let someone know ahead of time so they can at least get it on video so that you don't have to keep wondering what the heck went wrong! :)

We're on a boat!

2010-04-16T16:05:00.000-07:00

All you have to do is follow the signs on the highest largest navigable lake in the world and you should be fine!

Saturday April 10
We woke up and ate a stimulatingly free breakfast courtesy of our 27.5 soles a night for a private room hostel. It consisted of bread, jam, tea, little cubes of butter and coffee! Yum!

We headed down to the dock to try and find a tour, everyone was more than willing to help us, so much in fact that I think they were actually more so trying to help themselves! :) We found a good tour that included 3 meals and a nights stay with a host family on one of the islands as well as travel to 3 different islands!

They call this the platano (for those of you non espanol speakers that also means banana) of the sea, because you peel down the sides and eat it raw, although it tasted like a whole lot of nothing to me!

We first visited the floating islands, it's pretty crazy they've figured out how to turn all the seaweed or whatever the heck you wanna call it into islands, it's kind of weird to explain but basically they get big chunks of earth and tie them together and over time they grow together and then they take these reeds or straw or whatever it is that grows there and put layer after layer on top of the earth and that's what makes it steady enough to walk on, and then over time they have to add more layers as the bottom ones decay and die away!

Welcome to an island made purely our of straw, please watch your step!

Oh it's fine, they brought out the big guns with a welcoming party singing and dancing when we got to the island, apparently I'm not just a big deal in Utah! :)

They gave us this whole demonstration and then let us walk around look at all the dwellings and then we decided to go for a boat ride on one of these canoe looking boats made out of the straw! It was pretty cool especially when 8,000 children jumped on board with us to sing! It was really cute!

We're on a little boat!

These are just 3 of the 8,000 that jumped on with us!

Happy faces, at least face.... I paid this little girl to be in my picture and she still couldn't even pretend to be having a good time? Seriously I must be losing my touch! :)

In theory this was a good idea, but more recently they've received lots of complaints from the villagers who feel like it's a waste of a dry set of clothes every time they have to swim out and buy something!

After that we had a 3 hour boat ride to the island of Armantani, it was pretty cool, we sat on top of the boat and enjoyed the sun!

Don't even worry we just made ourselves comfortable on top of the boat in the agonizing heat, while all the smart people stayed down below in the shade!

Viva El Peru! 'Nough said!

Once we got to the island Armantani, we were picked up by our host mom for the night and had to take a 20 minute hike seriously straight up the mountain! It felt like a billion degrees and we were packin.... our clothes that is!

Twenty yards into our hike up the mountain, I found an LDS church, is it weird that such a simple building should constitute stopping the whole group to get a picture? I sure didn't think so! :)

If we wanted to know what we were having for lunch we just needed to look at what was cooking slash smoldering in the heat of the sun, yep this is their version of a stove.... No joke!

When we got to our house it was very simple, it was set up kind of with a little courtyard in the middle and then a bunch of doors around it that led to different rooms, I'm still not all the way sure but I think there were at least two families that shared the area! They have no electricity on the island at all and when it got dark we had our meals and the lights in our rooms by candlelight!

This is the kitchen....

Our beds were made of half thin mattress and half straw

After eating our simple lunch of soup with Potatoes followed by Potatoes and fried cheese, the dad told us we were going to Pachatata (some of the ruins on the island) and that we need to make sure and stick with Cynthia Illia and Royer, what he didn't mention was that they were 5 and 7..... Only on an island with no electricity would it be kosher to send your children off on a long hike with strangers from another country!

These were our tour guides, somehow they convinced me into buying them an Alpaca kebab off the street when we walked in to town, despite the lack of communication between us, they still knew how to play me like a fiddle! :) It was so cute watching them share this, especially when Royer dropped it on the ground a couple times and he just picked it up, brushed it off on his pants and kept going to town! I don't think they get to eat meat very often here because the whole way home after this they kept saying "We got meat, we got meat" talk about breaking your heart!

The hike to Pachatata was so pretty the higher we got, we could see more of the island and the surrounding islands! The pictures could never do it justice!

Oh yeah, the shirt I'm wearing is from Australia thanks for asking! Also did I mention how rough this hike was on my recently surgered knees? It's fine you don't have to tell me how tough I am, I already know! :)

Julia (Germany), Me (Utah, in the USA, maybe you've heard of it?), and Caroline (Alberta, Canada) and the kids at the top of Pachatata!

Across from Pachatata was Pachamama we kept asking the kids if we were going to it as well and they were acting really strange, saying things like "No, we'll go tomorrow" (even though we were leaving first thing) "Tourists aren't allowed" "We have to go home...." So finally this Italian girl who was with us and I decided we didn't care we were there and we wanted to go so we made plans to meet the others at the bottom. While we were gone the kids finally told Julia and Caroline that they just hadn't wanted to hike to the other side! haha

There wasn't much to see at Pachamama, but the view of Pachatata was amazing!

It always amazes me how timeless the peace sign is, I mean seriously you would probably think no way could it work in a picture with a humble lunch such as this one, but then you see this and BAM, it definitely has a presence that would be missed had it not been there!

I'm gonna go ahead and loosely refer to this as tea, because I don't know that sticking a plant you pulled off the side of the road in to hot water can truly be called tea.... We had this "tea" with every meal, the plant is called Muno and it's supposed to be really good for you, it's sorta like the Windex thing from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, they use it to cure everything!

This was the path to our luxurious outhouse, you had to have a bucket of water on hand to flush anything down, another bonus was that it was located right next to the pig sty so you were actually relieved to get in and close the door, you got the terrible smell coming out!

They had us check out all their homemade goods, they had some really sweet hats and scarfs but they were asking way too much and I didn't have the heart to barter! I tried to find a sweet beanie for my dad but apparently they've never had a head that big in Peru! :)

After dinner there was a fiesta that they put on for the tourists and you're supposed to get dressed up in traditional garb and dance around but for some reason our mom didn't dress us up, we still went for a little while and it was pretty fun!

This is Marieke, Katrine, and Ariana, the other girls we went with, all dressed up in their traditional outfits! Marieke and Ariana are from Holland and Katrine is from Denmark, they're way fun girls and they call themselves the old mamas because they're all over 28 haha (yep I know, I practically fit the bill) and so many of the students at the school are way young!

Sunday April 11

We woke up and had breakfast at 6:30 (apparently when you don't have electricity you rise with the sun) we ate these almost scone type things with sugar and it was way good! And of course another dose of plant in hot water, I feel healthier already!

Right before we were leaving the kids all came in our room playing these flutes and singing, they just wanted us to give them money but it was still really cute!

After heading back down to the boat and saying our goodbyes, we sailed away and on to the Island of Taquile, it's a smaller island but has more people. Apparently we were there on the day of some big event because everywhere we went people were dressed in these bright clothes with giant bells all over, so every time they took a step they sounded like a human cowbell, and yes there is always room for some more cowbell in my life!

Picture of said Human Cowbells....

There should have been a sign that read, "Welcome to Taquile, once you hike straight up this mountain for 20 minutes and you're exhausted to the core we're going to charge you a 5 soles entrance fee, sort of like a gym does we just don't have the fancy machines!"

Taquile was so beautiful and seemed almost Greek Islandish only without all the Abba songs!

We ate lunch on the island, if you were about to guess if it involved rice OR potatoes, then you would be wrong because it involved rice AND potatoes, I don't know why I thought they didn't go together before, I mean starch and starch, hello!

We had to climb down the mountain to get to our boat and of course we were the last ones on, and because it's such a long hike down we all kind of came in at different times, so we're just chillin on top of the boat waiting to go and as it starts to pull out we all kind of realize Julia is not there, so we look at the dock and she is running at us with this petrified look on her face! We all start yelling "Uno mos, uno mos" she literally had to jump the gap between the boat and the dock to get on, it was so funny! Luckily she made it and we were good to go, had she gotten there 5 seconds later it would have been a different story!

Once we got back in to Puno we had about 4 hours until our bus left so we went and got some ice cream and then just kind of hung out in the main square for a little while. There was this group of hippie slash musician people from Columbia selling jewelry and singing, they lived off the money they made from that and just kind of bummed around, they were way cool and had we been interested in finding drugs slash sharing any drugs we might have they were more than willing to help out!

I wish the light was better in this picture! This is in the Plaza De Armas in Puno, chillin with the groupies!

Katrine asked to borrow the guys guitar and busted out a few songs herself! She's way good!

We took a night bus back to Cusco and didn't arrive until 4 in the morning! Maybe you're worried about how cold it would be on the bus, like I was, but don't worry I actually sat on top of the heater for the entire bus! If I hadn't been sitting next to a strange man who kept sticking his elbow in my face, stripping down may not have been out of the question.... Instead I had to settle for pressing my face against the cold glass every time it got unbearable!

Chillin on the plaza steps like its our job! This time I'm not even alone in my unemployedness! :)

Coming next, adventures in crashing on a mountain bike! Stay tuned!

I'm practically halfway to 30 already!

2010-04-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

We walked out of our hostel Saturday morning to find this market had popped up out of nowhere, it lasted forever and there were tons of fresh fruit and veggies!

Wednesday April 7
Nothing too exciting happened on Wednesday other than the fact that it was another challenging day at school trying to understand my profersora, and that actually wasn't so much exciting as it was a new outlook on Peru for me.... Ya know the part where it's hard for me to understand them is something new and different! :)

Also went back to Chez Maggy for more chips and guac, I seriously feel like I've died and gone to heaven when I eat at that place! :)

Thursday April 8
Had the usual for breakfast today, oatmeal and bread, however I will note the addition of a few friendly ants crawling on my bread.... It's amazing all the new friends I've made here! :) You just gotta laugh to yourself and say, "Only in Peru!" and then brush the ants off and finish your breakfast!

After lunch Isabelle stepped out to feed the dogs, but I guess she was expecting an important phone call because she asked me to answer the phone if it rang.... Say what? Yeah, I was sweatin bullets for the 10 minutes she was gone, I don't think I've ever prayed so hard in my life for the phone not to ring! The only dialogue I could come up with if it did ring was, "Alo?" "Whatever they were gonna say back" and "Isabelle no en la casa, lo siento, ella regresa en diez minutos" click.... That roughly translates to me sounding like a big dumb moron! hahahaha I really dodged a bullet with that one!

This is us playing soccer in the rain nonstop for 2 hours! Now if only I could figure out a way to make this happen every night of the week I would feel right at home.... :)

Later on I was at the school working on my blog when my professor from the first week Jose came and asked me if I was gonna play soccer (he had told me they play every Thursday but I hadn't seen anything posted about a time) and I said I hadn't heard anything about it, so he told me to be at the school by 7:40! I seriously could have kissed him I was so pumped that he had remembered to tell me! So I went home and got my stuff just as it started raining like nobody's business! I got soaked as it took me 10 minutes to get a cab to stop and right when the taxi pulled up everyone was getting in taxi's to go play, I like to play it close! There were 3 girls and 4 boys from our school and we went to this outdoor soccer place that is cement fields, there were a bunch of other Spanish students from other schools as well! It was way fun but the rain made it pretty slick! I'll be honest, I got lucky and scored a couple goals and all the guys were like, wow a chica that knows how to play! I was eating it up!

Friday April 9

Go shorty it's your birthday, we're gonna party like it's your birthday! All I wanted was for someone to sing me this song that day, but nobody would oblige, so instead I sang it to myself in my head all day long!

How cute is my host mom? I woke up and she had been hard at work getting things ready for me! She even sang a special rendition of Happy Birthday in English! She even made me a bag or goodies for the trip!

Today was the day we were heading to Puno and Lake Titticaca so after school we grabbed some lunch (the flattest hamburger you've ever seen with some homemade papas fritas, don't worry I definitely introduced the group to fry sauce while I was at it!) then we headed to the bus station which is crazy! There's live chickens chilling in sacks on the backs of strong Peruvian women, you have to pay .5 soles to use the most disgusting smelly bathroom you've seen in your life and to top things off I didn't even get special treatment because it was my birthday.... :)

It was an 8 hour bus ride in seriously first class conditions! The chair laid all the way and we had full on leg rests as well! I felt like a million bucks, especially when they even gave me a buttered crossiant with saltine crackers and a light mint, that right there was when I knew I had it made in S. America! :)

This was what we wandered into Friday night after we checked in to our hostel! Clearly they were throwing this massive even because they heard I was turning the big 2 5!

After checking in to our hostel, we could hear a loud ruckus in the form of a band and followed our ears to a big party in the street, there were so many people, but we were seriously the only white people in sight and everyone kept staring at us like it was there job! Also had to make a mental note to self, don't walk in the back of the group you will get grabbed.... We wandered around for a minute and then stopped to listen to the music and chillin, it was very latino and they never stopped, I'm not quite sure if it was one long song or they just loved playing so much they didn't want to transition from song to song so they just never stopped playing! After a few minutes of hangin out we couldn't help but notice we had a lurker who was staring and slowly trying to inch his way in to our cirlce, all the while dancing and acting like it was normal. Finally one of the girls in our group Julia (she's from Germany and you pronounce it you-lee-a) started dancing with him and I thought I was gonna die it was so funny!

This was at the dock Saturday morning when we found the boat to take us to the islands, the scenery was so beautiful even without us in it!

I love you Grandpa!

2010-04-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

Tuesday when I got home from class I had a text from my mom telling me that my grandpa had passed away.... There's nothing worse than hearing that kind of news while you're in a different country. My grandpa was one of the most kind generous and loving people I've ever known! I will miss him so much, but know that we will be together again one day! Most of you who see this know him and know how much he truly loved everyone around him! My little sister wrote an amazing tribute and I just wanted to post it for everyone to see!

Laughter is forever, life is eternal, and love is unending.

Grandpa always had a joke ready to go to brighten any situation he might be in.
He knew just how to get a smile out of just about anyone. His life was never his own.
He served all who needed his help no matter how inconvenient it was for him.
He always had an amazing outlook on life and knew just how to help find the light in dark situations.
He sincerely loved all around him and was immediately loved by all who met him.
Grandpa loved his children and grandchildren more than life, and would do anything for them.
He adored his wonderful wife and wanted only happiness for her.
His illustrations of laughter, life and love will serve as an example to all of us as we go about our days remembering him and his charitable legacy.
We will love and miss him until that beautiful day we are together again.

- Jill Smalley in behalf of All Bill’s Children and Grandchildren

So I put my hands up they're playing my song..... It's a party in the Peru way!

2010-04-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hola amigos! I'm back for some more action, unfortunately it's just in the form of blogging my life in Peru! :)

Don't worry this isn't a trick, I didn't actually take this picture in Peru! These 3 moose were chillin in our front yard in Mtn. Green about two weeks before I left! Pretty sweet ehh?

Saturday Arpil 3

Woke up to two men speaking in a language I didn't understand, then remembered I was still in Peru. Ceasars childhood friend Carlos was here for the day, they grew up together somewhere in the mountains in a different part of Peru and Carlos still lives there and is actually a doctor! He ate breakfast with us and had brought these cornbread type things, they were wrapped in corn husks or whatever it is that tamales are wrapped in, it was pretty dry but other than that the flavor was good, we also had what they told me was some kind of hot bean drink, and hot dogs..... Yep things just got crazy! It was good but made me laugh that is was for breakfast!

This is the kitchen.... and there's not even another half decorated like a discotec!

Decided to try and walk up to the school without really knowing where I was going.... I wouldn't say I was lost so much as I was exploring parts of Cusco that had been previously unexplored.... I finally gave in and got a taxi and of course I was like 3 blocks away! haha

This is just a random plaza that we found wandering around on Saturday, it's way pretty and the main plaza is surrounded by other smaller plazas like this! Maybe your thinking I know the girl in my picture, nope I think she thought I was someone famous so she just tried to jump in at the last minute! :)

Because it was a 4 day break most of the other students had planned out of town trips for the weekend but since Lauren and I had just arrived we hung out a lot! haha We met up and just walked around a bunch of the different markets, there are lots of handmade type stuff that is way pretty! Lots of alpacca sweaters and handmade scarfs and gloves and socks and most importantly lots of soccer jerseys! Everything is way cheap and I'm a danger to my budget when I walk around these places! haha The people are so nice too and I always want to buy something from all of them, also they love to barter down here!

This is where the magic happens, magic as in all the eating of the meals! :) I love this room! I also love how good of a cook Isabelle is, I'm starting to get used to having all my meals prepared for me it's going to be a little rough when I get home and no one is willing to fill that position!

I went home for lunch and had more soup as usual, but for the main course we had omelets with onions and spinach and tomatoes and some other veggies with rice! It was way good and just to recap the day, yes I ate hot dogs for breakfast and an omelet for lunch!

Later that night Isabelle told me they were going somewhere and I should come, I didn't really know what was going on but after following her down the street a couple blocks Ceasar was waiting for us by their truck (which I didn't even know they had) and they took me to what is the closest equivalent to the grocery store. It was nice to see an actual clean building that resembled something you would see in the states! :) It was very similar to our grocery stores but it was crazy how cheap everything was!

While we were checking out they didn't have enough cash or something so they told me to wait with the cashier and while they were getting money out of the atm. While standing there I spotted some LDS missionaries (I've been trying to figure out where the church is around here and have been struggling....) and I got so excited it was a joke! I couldn't move cause I didn't want to leave our stuff so I just kept staring creepily until they finally came back and I ran up to the missionaries and one of them looked like an American so I was like, "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?" (Yep those caps were on purpose because I was probably yelling haha) "I NEED TO KNOW WHERE THE CHURCH IS!" They were way nice and explained it and gave me a Spanish Book of Mormon so I can work on my Spanish!

This is what the front of the house looks like, it doesn't seem like much, but I'm pretty sure the family I'm with is very well off by Peruvian standards!

After shopping they were so sweet and took me out to dinner at this place called Etapoy I guess it's a popular Peruvian chain, they just ordered for me and it was way good! We got a salad with a really good Italian dressing and then a plate of fries and grilled chicked with really good seasoning! It was awesome!

The funny thing I noticed about the grocery and when we were at the restaurant was at the grocery store they had a kid out there directing traffic so people could park their cars and pull out and just navigate in the madness! I mean there's not even a real parking lot so there's just cars everywhere and it's messy. Also at the restaurant there was a guard sitting outside watching all the cars parked down the street because again there was no parking lot! Anyway Ceasar tipped them both as we were leaving it was kind of funny to see, that would definitely be an interesting way to earn a living!

This is another picture from horseback riding on Thursday! Obviously I'm the hot one on the right! :) Seriously though, see sunburned picture from previous post....

Sunday April 4
Sunday was a crazy busy day, it was awesome! I went to Mass with the family at 7 am (take that all you nay sayers who didn't think I could handle the morning life after no job for a year!) It was way crazy crowded I think a lot because it was Easter! We had to stand through the whole thing! The cathedral is so beautiful though and it was way cool to be able to experience that! About halfway through I felt something brush my leg and I looked down to see a dog running through the crowd, I had to laugh because hey there's a dog in the church! :)

After that we went home and had breakfast and then I caught a cab to the LDS church on the other side of town to watch General Conference in English with 4 other elders! When I walked in everyone was so nice and greeting me and when I went in the room with the 4 American elders they were all surprised to see an American! 3 of the elders were from Utah and 1 was from Idaho. The one from Idaho had only been out a few months and he was a huge Aggie basketball fan and I was getting so happy talking about them! haha

Oh it's fine I'm just a mega fan in my original Ciensiano jersey cheering for my team! :) Notice the barbed wire fence up all the way around the stadium and in the bottom right corner you can kinda see the fully armed guards that were everywhere in the stadium as well! Apparently these games can get out of hand!

I had to leave conference 15 minutes early to meet Lauren and go to the Ciensiano soccer game! We met a bunch of other students from the school there as well most of them are from England and it was way fun! Ciensiano is Cuzcos professional team, I was way pumped and had even bought a jersey for the game at the market the day before! Apparently they used to be way good and won the South American Soccer Cup or something in 2004, but now they aren't very good and there weren't a lot of people there! I guess the games can get pretty out of hand though so they have to have tons of guards, people were throwing stuff like bottles and food on the field throughout the whole game too it was crazy!

This is the little kid they send around to sell suckers to the suckers at the games, how do you say no to a face like that? :)

They got down 1-0 halfway through the first half and then got a red card at the beginning of the 2nd half, despite playing down a player though they came back and won 2-1! I was kind of surprised at the quality of soccer though, it wasn't very good.... They were pretty good individually but were terrible as a team!

Hey it's Superman, you can tell by the shirt.... This is Estaban, he was my buddy and sat by me for part of the game! Strangely there was something about him that reminded me of my old boss TJ.... haha

This was my 2 freakin sole lunch at the stadium! That's like 70 cents and it was seriously way good! They were cooking fresh

Monday April 5
Woke up at 5 am to someone pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell, I just ignored it at first but they wouldn't go away and then I got a little nervous at who it was... Finally I went out in the hall and Isabelle was answering the door, I guess it was Caesars nephew! Woke up to more pounding and ringing at 6:30, this time it was Isabelles brother, apparently they heard a really cool American was staying at the house and they wanted to see me for themselves, so they thought it was best to arrive in the wee hours of the morning so I didn't get any sleep! :)

Got a new teacher at school, her name is Rebecca and I'm still alone in the class! Last week I was sad cause I wanted to get to know other students but now I realize I'm pretty lucky to be alone cause I think you can go at a much faster pace if the teacher pushes you!

This is the really safe clean open oven that the pizzas are cooked in!

Went for another run after lunch still got exhausted, but it was nice! Went to the school after another cold shower to get on the internet. Saw Kate from Australia who I had met the week before and we decided to go to dinner! Kate is way cool, naturally I would think that just because she is from Australia, but she's way nice and I try not to act to creepy when I tell her how much I love Australia! We met up with a girl that is living in the host family with Kate this was her first day, her name is Ilia and she's from Holland! We ate at this pizza place that was way good!

Dinner with Kate and Ilia at the amazing pizza place! Don't worry I didn't even order my own large pizza !

Tuesday Arpil 6

School was so frustrating today! Apparently my teachers are not supposed to talk in English to me at all, but last week and on Monday they've been explaining what things are when I don't understand, but today my teacher decided she wasn't going to speak in English, I'm sure eventually that is how you are supposed to learn better, but I feel like I didn't hardly learn a thing! I know language is supposed to be hard but today sucked! haha

After lunch Isabelle took me to feed the dogs, I didn't really understand what she way saying but, they have 7 puppies and they are seriously the cutest things ever!

Isabelle and the cute puppies.... I might be coming home with a plus 1.... :)

After feeding the dogs I met some girls from school in town and we went and bought bus tickets to Puno which is near Lake Titticaca, we're going there for the weekend Friday after school! I'm way pumped! Then we had some drinks (don't worry it was just coke for me) and went to dinner at this really good place off the main Plaza called Chez Maggy, I had the most amazing homemade chips and guacamole I almost died and went to heaven!

This is another picture of the cute puppies! Mom don't you think we need one of these? :) Holly I'm sure you're in the market as well right?

The beginning of the beginning!

2010-04-05T15:07:00.000-07:00

Hola mi amigos! Tu comprende Espanol? No? Yo tambien! :)

Holy smokes, the time has come and I am here in Cusco, it still doesn’t seem quite real! I will be here for the next 11 weeks trying to blend in with my pasty skin and hopefully learn how to say more than I want a quesadilla, gracias! Here’s what has happened the first couple days!

Oh yeah, sorry this post is pretty long because it's my first week!

Sunday and Monday March 28 and 29:
I flew out of Salt Lake Sunday morning at 8:30 to LA where I had the privilege of sharing half of my seat with a rather large man, he didn’t ask if he could have part of my seat but I figured it was the right thing to do.... :) Once in LA I made my way to the international terminal, which if any of you have been to the international terminal you know that means hordes and hordes of Asians! Luckily I was 5 hours early so there was no line and I checked right in. I decided to check out the food joints and walked around for a bit when I decided to go through security I reached for my passport only to find an empty pocket! Panic set in and as I started to frantically retrace my steps I hear over the loud intercom “Natalie Jane Smalley, please come to the information desk” oops! I ran to the information desk and asked the man if someone had turned in my passport, he looked at me with skeptical eyes and then down at the passport, “Name?” “Jayne Smalley” I said, he finally handed it to me and said “You’re a very lucky girl.” Ya think? :)

This is one of the main cathedrals in Le Plaza Del Armas, they have cathedrals and churches everywhere and they are so beautiful!

The flight from LA to Lima is about 9 hours, ya know a little longer than the average person would call a work day, I say average person because I am most definitely not average. :) Got in to Lima at midnight and my flight to Cusco wasn’t until 5:30 the next morning. Luckily I had sat by a kid on the way over from Oregon whose flight didn’t leave until 6, so we watched each others stuff and tried to get some sleep in the airport.

This is only one side of my bedroom.... The other side has the feel and look of a discotec, maybe you're thinking Jayne discotec was so 1980, not in Peru that kind of thing is modern art!

I finally got to Cusco at 6:50 in the morning after almost 24 hours of straight travel! The airport in Cusco is pretty dilapidated with only two tiny baggage claim areas and maybe 20 carts total. I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door to see the sweetest looking lady with a big smile on her face holding a sign with my name on it! Her name is Isabelle and she hugged me and I assume told me to follow her, I say assume because she speaks no English and as previously mentioned my Spanish is slightly above that of a house trained goldfish living in Peru! As I was following her out of the airport parking area she was just a chattin away and smiling and nodding, to which I could only look at her dumbfounded thinking, what did I get myself into?! Taxis kept coming up and she would ask how much and they were apparently way too much because she made us walk away from the airport a ways before one finally told her an acceptable amount (I think they had been saying 20-30 soles and it should have been around 5 soles! There are a little less than 3 soles to $1). We took the taxi home where I met Caesar my host dad and ate breakfast consisting of hard bread and jam, some type of almost lemonade type juice and hot water with coca de matte. Which is a common tea type drink down here that looks and smells like ground up wet green hay! It wasn’t too bad….. with the 6 spoonfuls of sugar I added to it! :) As we left the house Isabelle gave me a set of keys and tried to explain how to use them. There’s a lock on the door and then a built in lock on the gate and then another manual hard lock you have to undo on the gate!

Do you think that I maybe have an irrational fear of going hungry?

She came with me to school where a lady put me in a classroom and gave me a test to see what level I was at. 10 minutes later my teacher walked in to the room and the only answer I had known was my name, and I was even a little unsure of that at this point... :) My teacher this week was Jose, he’s really great and helped me learn so much, my head just kind of permanently feels like it’s going to explode right now! We have a 30 minute break in the middle of the day where I met a bunch of the other students. They have a teaching program and a volunteer program at the school the majority of the students are learning but there are quite a few volunteering as well and almost everybody here is traveling alone. It’s crazy to meet all the different kinds of people! After class got over I had to quickly learn how to catch a cab and even though I had printed off the address of my host family when the taxi asked me which street the house was down I had no idea! Luckily he was really nice and I told him the house number and we drove around a couple blocks until we found the right one. When I finally figured out how to unlock everything and get in the house Isabelle greeted me and had lunch all ready. Lunch is their big meal here because it’s at 11,300 ft in elevation apparently it slows their digestion down, so lunch is big and dinner is just a light snack. We had a delicious creamy cheese potato onion soup and then grilled chicken on the bone with carrots and onions, it was very delicious. She talked to me all the way through lunch and I just smiled and ate. After that I headed back to school for a city tour which was also in Spanish (are you seeing a pattern yet?) with a girl from New Jersey and a kid from the UK.

This isn't the best picture cause it's dark but this was during the Procession on Monday night. They have a statue of Christ that they march around and I think everyone comes out to hopefully receive his blessings, it was pretty cool but so slow and so many people!

Later that night I was supposed to meet a girl to go watch the Procession, but of course was late! :) I talked to these two other boys from the school, one is from California and the other is from Denmark, and they were going to get a view of everything from above the city so I tagged along! Afterwards we headed down in to the thick of things and I’m pretty sure every single person in Cusco was there! It was nuts there were so many people everywhere and it lasted forever! By the time it was finally over it took another hour to get out of the main square because there were so many people you had to follow the crowd whether you wanted to or not! By the time things cleared up a little bit I had to try to catch a taxi home but of course everyone else was trying to catch a taxi as well! I started to panic after 15 minutes of no luck with a taxi, and I was thinking, I’m never gonna make it back and I’ll probably die right here! Haha I did finally get one (he charged me double, but I didn’t even care) and got home about 10:30 at night! Needless to say I slept like a log!

Isn't this hot? Oh yeah and the La viva Peru is pretty cool too! The house I live in is right below this!

Tuesday March 30
Woke up at the butt crack of dawn aka 6:30, and felt quite refreshed! Breakfast consisted of manzanas (apples) and platanos (bananas) in yogur (I bet you can’t guess what that one is) with this oatmeal type drink in a coffee cup. Es bueno! Finished my homework in the taxi on the way to school (some things never do change) and for the first time in my life was 10 minutes early to class! Class was great again, but also like information overload! After the break we were playing a game with all the new phrases I learned and I was forgetting simple things because my brain felt like it was going to explode! I hope it gets better! Went to dinner with a bunch of the other students at this vegetarian restaurant, where apparently all the intellect slash tree huggers meet and by intellects yes I mean I saw lots of dreads and chacos, however sadly there were no subarus! :)

At dinner I was telling a few people about the ginormous Hispanic population in Utah and they were all way surprised, one girl even said, “I thought the only thing in Utah was mormons!” I almost died laughing!

This is what the plaza looks like during the day, it was completely packed during the procession and so we were all the streets where it started!

Wednesday March 31
Another espanol filled day of school! My teacher Jose was asking me if I liked to dance and what type of music I liked to dance to, I told him hip hop. He wasn’t sure what hip hop was so he asked me to write down my favorite hip hop song to dance to so he could look it up. Naturally I wrote down Low by Flo Rida and he asked me to sing part of it. For those of you not familiar with the song it goes:
“She had them apple bottom jeans (jeans), boots with fur (with the fur) the whole club was lookin at her
She hit the flo (she hit the floor) next thing you know shorty got low low low low low”

So after my incredible music performance the first thing he says is, (in this accent) “Wot ar apple ba-ttom jeans?” And then the rest of the day he just kept saying apple bottom jeans over and over! It was so funny!

On the way home the taxi driver tried to charge me 3 soles instead of 2.50 soles, don’t even worry I told him what was up and he won’t try to pull that business again!

Thursday April 1
First off can I just say I didn’t even realize it was April Fools until 6 o’clock at night which means I didn’t pull a single prank! I mean can you imagine the fun I could have had with my host family? Seran(how the heck do you spell that?) wrap on the toilet, short sheeting their bed, replace salt for sugar, oh man did I miss the boat on that one!

This is Ceasar and Isabelle, I seriously can't get over how sweet they are! This is their garden and they are so proud of it!

Oh yeah and did I mention we didn’t have school Thursday or Friday because of Easter weekend? They call it Semana de Santos (week of saints) and it’s a huge deal! We’ve been eating special food and desserts and everyone has work and school off on Thursday and Friday!

After breakfast I met this girl Lauren from Oregon in town to explore! As we were at the top of the church of san cristobal, this guy came and asked us if we wanted to do a horse back ride to a couple different places, so we bartered for a fair price and then followed him 20 minutes uphill to his ranch it was brutal, but so much fun!

If you think that maybe this picture looks familiar like maybe you saw it in the last action western movie, well then you would be wrong because it's just me!

Como se llama? Llama! I thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever thought of in my life, but apparently nobody else did!

So apparently it’s not just a rumor that you burn more easily at a higher elevation... This is from a couple hours on the horses!

Friday April 2
Wanted to go for a run after breakfast and when I asked Isabelle if it was safe, and by asked her yes I did it in Spanish! Who’s impressed? :) She told me it was safe and if I just went down a couple blocks there was a grande parque, now my Spanish isn’t the best yet but I think I knew what this meant without having to look it up! As I went running pumped to find the place where I could potentially chillax and play soccer and read outside this is what I found:
Picture of the park

Running felt great, except for the part where it was lots harder to breathe, but there are stray dogs everywhere here! They’ve all been really nice so far and pretty much just leave you alone and do whatever the heck they want! But I went running past these guys just sitting on the sidewalk and there were about 3 or 4 dogs by them, one of the little yappy dogs came running at me and started barking but as soon as I turned toward it, it stopped and ran away. I thought ok no big deal, I’m fine. Not 5 seconds later I hear this dog barking like it’s ready to tear something apart, I looked back and this big dog is running straight at me! I tried to play it cool, because I'm pretty sure the guys thought it would be funny to sick the dog on me, but inside I flipped a brick! I think I lost 10 years off my life in that instance! Luckily it was all bark and no bite and left me alone after a minute!

After that I went in to Cuzco to meet Lauren and we met up with this lady Caroline, she in her 30's and from the UK, she's way nice and we just kind of tagged along with her to check out some of the churches and stuff!

I have not been homesick this entire trip until I found this park and watched these guys play a pickup soccer! It seriously made me miss soccer so much! haha

I don't know why I love it so much, but all the streets are paved in cobblestone like this and they're all either going up or down!

This is the only 5 star hotel in Cusco, it used to be a monastery and it very beautiful, but it's a couple hundred bucks a night to stay, when you can find a cheap hostel for $4!

Awkward dancing video

2009-03-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

In Betweeny Day!

2008-09-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

So here I am, I've been home for a whole month now, and it's like the novelty of my presence has worn off for all my friends and family..... Weird!

Here are a few more pics from my trip! After we went to Melbourne we had a day in Australia until we left for New Zealand. I was so sad the whole day and kept saying things like, "This is my last time riding the 317" (That was our favorite bus route) "This is my last time seeing a homeless man in Bronte" "This is my last time seeing the Rainbow flags flaunted down Oxford Street (that gayest street in Sydney)" ya know things like that. Brighton and Wendy didn't quite understand, because they still had a few more weeks in Australia after NZ, so I think they were ready to beat me from all my comments! :) haha

This is the Teeter Totter we walked past everyday and although we never actually sat on it until this picture was taken, we pretty much talked about it every time we walked past it!

Our friend Jess took us to this way rad place called Govindas cause it was my last night! It's a buffet style dinner, but it's all vegetarian Indian food! There was some crazy stuff but it was so delicious! And after that you watch a movie and instead of having chairs you lay down on these couch things with lots of pillows and stuff! It was way rad! Jess is way great and we're gonna miss her times a billion!

Melbourne (the r is silent)!

2008-08-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time again for me to put aside the procrastination and push forward with this! :) After the Gold Coast we flew straight into the freezing cold of Melbourne! Luckily I was prepared with my red racing stripe spandex to stave off the cold, the two of us have been through some cold times, and I was not let down as usual! :)

We flew in super late on Friday night and didn't get in to our hotel until about 2 in the morning, luckily there were huge pictures of Mick Jagger plastered all over the walls so we felt very safe getting to our room! Our friend Laura who is from Texas and graduated from BYU but is living in Sydney for work, flew down to meet us and got there first thing Saturday morning! It was way great to change things up a bit with someone new, but she may or may not have been ready to pull her hair out by the end cause she couldn't quite handle us and by handle us I mean we might be a little overwhelming for most people at times, like anytime we're awake! :) I mean I can't speak for everyone but I know I'm pretty pleasant and fun to be around always, so maybe I'm just being paranoid! :) haha

This was our hotel, I think it says "Classy, yet moderately priced with a mean continental breakfast" how about you?

Saturday we just spent the day exploring the city and we were there on a weekend of some big design thing that was going on throughout the whole city, so there was different stuff set up and on display. It's a cool city, very European compared to Sydney and just beautiful! This was also the big day we got to see Wicked, which was pretty much the whole reason we came! It was the Australian premiere of the most amazing musical of all time! Not too many people had heard about it and I just sat through the whole thing thinking, "These people don't even know what kind of a treat they're in for!" :) The cast was phenomenal and it was just as good as ever. That night we ate some authentic Greek that stays open all night and then went clubbing at a place called Qbar, that was recommended by our receptionist..... It was as good a time as you can have as far as bi-clubs go..... :) haha Needless to say we were getting looks from both sides.... awkward!

Here's our yummy Greek, I would also like to mention Brighton's sweet vest, she searched high and low for this, just so she could take a little piece of Australia home with her!

On Sunday we went searching for a ward to go to church. Brighton and Wendy had a friend who had just gotten home from Melbourne and told them where to go, so we set off on a 2 hour long adventure and ended up only missing sacrament, yay for us! We also chose the perfect week because it was soup Sunday and the ward just welcomed us into their fold and we were fed mighty fine! We even had a few offers to come over for Sunday dinner, but we still had some exploring we wanted to do! After that we went back into town where they had an open house with alot of the famous buildings for free and we got to see the Regency Theatre Ballroom, St. Peters Cathedral, Capitol Theatre it was all very cool and the architecture was incredible!! Later on we ate dinner at a place called the Pancake factory cause we had a coupon for buy one get one free short stack. We didn't know if that would if that would fill us up so we decided to get a side of potato skins to share, there was a regular for like $8 and a large for $12 when we asked the waitress if a large would be enough to share she just said, well it depends on how hungry you are, we should have taken that as a sign..... So we ordered the large and this is what we got....

Needless to say, we all got our fill and then some, we actually almost couldn't finish and thought about taking it down the street to help the less fortunate :) haha

Don't worry though, we found our midget twins in that very restaurant, they were so funny and short!

Wendy loves this street, and for anyone who knows Wendy the reason why should be very clear!

Monday was our last day in Melbourne and we decided to hit up the botanical gardens right by our hotel, they were very pretty, but let's be honest a bunch of plants can only capture my attention for a brief time period and it was long before we were trampsing through the bushes making up stories as though this were our native bush!

This bird thinks just because its got a long droopy neck it's better than me, but I'm here to tell you that's not the case, so what if my neck is vertical and unstretchy, I'm still a person!

Later on we headed down to St. Kilda's which is right by the coast and where we heard they have some really good food! We ended up eating at this Italian place that was really good. Then we took a walk along the beach, the beaches aren't near as nice as the ones in Sydney and it was freezing cold!

So we're at the restaurant getting ready to order and they have pizza which sounds so delicious but they only have a small and a large. Small doesn't sound near big enough to be filling but I'm not quite sure if I can handle the large, but price wise it's not that much more. So I ask our cute little ole' Italian waitress about the sizes and she says, "oh yeah for sure a small will be plenty for you, there are 4 big pieces, the large is too big there are 8 pieces, small is fine", so naturally I hesitate for a minute and then order the large all to my self. Well later on she comes out with everyones food, Wendy and Laura ordered pasta and Brighton had a small pizza and then makes her own special trip for my massive family size pizza all to myself, sets it in front of me and says, "Here's for the hungry girl!" haha That was the big joke the rest of the time!

I had a midget in my pocket I was planning on sharing with....

I guess I thought we were playing thumbs up 7 up!

That night we went up Eureka tower, you go 99 levels in 38 seconds! It was crazy fast and made your ears pop like crazy! Then of course we had to check out the casino in Melbourne we heard its the best one around, but to my dismay they only had 1 craps table, what a joke, and it was a $10 min, I know I come across as a high roller, especially the way I'm wearing the same clothes in all my pics, but at this point I was running out of my money and as much as I wanted to win big I didn't want to lose big either! :)

This was on top of the skytower, people were just wanting to snap our pics like crazy, who were we to say no?

This was our $14 big deal movie theatre where we had the place all to ourselves and we couldn't help but wonder in what era our awkward chairs had been the "it" thing!

Too much fun?

2008-08-09T01:16:00.000-07:00

This is one of the sweet beaches at Byron Bay! Finally a background that will do these girls justice! :)

This is the most popular beach in the Gold Coast... Surfer's Paradise the possibilities sounded endless!! Oh, and I'm sure there were some cool beaches and stuff too...

Ok, so I'm not really sure if anyone is still going to read this or not, but I feel as though it's a half done project, and I'm no quitter.....

Saturday July 12
This was the day we were supposed to fly to the Gold Coast! It was pretty much my last day in Sydney and we had been planning all along to wake up and watch the sunrise one day.... Never happened surprise surprise, so this day we made a special effort and despite only getting a few hours sleep we still woke up and got to see it! It was so beautiful, looking back it seems surreal, like I'm not really sure it even happened! After that we took a long nap and then started our fun task of packing! When we decided we were gonna travel to the Gold Coast and Melbourne, all we really thought was, hey let's by the cheapest tickets possible because we're all poor... Those cheap tickets just included bringing a carry on and no checked luggage which meant only our backpacks. This would have been fine except for the fact that we were gonna be gone 10 days and the Gold Coast climate is super warm and the Melbourne climate is super cold!

This is our finished product, somehow we managed, I mean it's not that abnormal to wear the same shirt for 5 days straight right?.... Maybe part of our success at this kind of thing contributed to part of the reason all of us came home single?.... :)

We got into the Gold Coast by the time it was dark and rented a car and set off on our way to a friends Uncle..... The only issue is that they drive on the wrong side of the road.... I drove and kept thinking I wish I had bought more insurance on the rental car... :) It was quite exciting and very rewarding when we made it safely!

This is just one of your typical, "Hey, mom look I'm driving on the wrong side of the road" shots... No big deal!

Sunday July 13
We stayed with Gary and Pauline from South Africa! The Gold Coast is set up with a lot of man made canals that run through out the city and eventually go out into the ocean. Gary and Pauline house was right on one of the canals, and it was awesome! They are the greatest and took the best care of us ever! They showed us all around the Gold Coast Sunday morning and took us out to breakfast! Later that day we just spent some time laying out at the beach and soaking in the rays!

Monday July 14
Even though we had quite a few days in the GC we knew we had to get down to business quick! That's why naturally we decided to go to Warner Bro.s Movie World! It's a theme park set up similar to Univeral where you experience a movie through a ride! It was pretty cool minus the fact that it closed it 5, apparently all Australians have somehow genetically altered themselves to where no one needs anything after 5 o'clock, because nothing is ever open :) haha

This was the actual batman boat used in Batman forever!!

This is in front of the Superman ride! It was a way sweet roller coaster that helped us beat the laws of physics as we flew every which way??.... :)

Strangely enough, we actually ran into the real batman whilst he was promoting not only his batman signal but also the chicken strips available for purchase at any participating food stands!

Badda Bing Badda Boom!

Later that night I got to play soccer with the boys! It was so awesome! One of the first things I did when I got to Sydney was buy a soccer ball, and even though Wendy was so great about passing it around with me, I just don't think it was that fun for her haha!! So Gary invited me to play with their mens indoor team, it was 4 on 4 and rather than having walls it was just big nets around the whole field so it never went out and the goalie had an arc he had to stay in and we couldn't enter that arc. It was very fast paced, but ya know I showed a few of them what was, and by that I just mean I think they were afraid to hurt me so they backed down :) haha I still scored though and we won, so it was like what more could I ask for?!!

This was a sweet action shot Brighton captured during the heat of the battle! :)

Put me in coach, I'm ready to play, today!!

Tuesday July 15
We spent most of the day at the beach while the weather was nice! We ate lunch at this cute Italian place called Mama Roma's. All the restaurants in the GC are half price at lunch cause most people just come out for dinner so naturally we loved that! I ordered a sweet shrimp pasta dish and the thing I love most about the seafood here, is that you actually get seafood... A lot of places are super skimpy on the shrimp but hey loaded me up and it was delicious!

That night Gary and Pauline took us out for a cruise around the canal in the party pontoon! It was way fun, but the weather was terrible and it rained like crazy! It was still awesome to see all the incredible million dollar houses!

Wednesday July 16
Found us at the outlet malls cause the weather was still bad, we shopped til we dropped and later went to lunch at some old friends of my parents! They had a beautiful house in the country and fed us an awesome home cooked meal of roast and veggies! They were awesome and we ended up staying and chatting with them all night and left only after we promised if we came again we would stay with them next time! I can't get over how amazing everyone has been to us!

Thursday July 17
We went to Byron Bay! Total hippie town, it was awesome! I've never seen so many hippie love vans congregated together in one place! The beaches were beautiful and we laid out all day and then got to watch the sunset from the light house which is the eastern most point in all of Australia!

Although this picture looks like Wendy tried to catch us unawares (impossible to happen to me....) she's actually really trying to get a good pic of the two men in the background, they proceeded to hit on us using what I felt like we very unorthodox methods, but maybe thats just me I mean maybe lots of girls fall for the old, I just got outta prison and I'm really lonely line?
That night we got to see Batman the Dark Knight it came out 3 days earlier than in the states so we felt like pretty big deals after getting to see it before anyone else!!

Friday July 18
For our last day in the GC we went up a building called Q1 it's the tallest residential building in the world and gave an amazing view of the endless beaches along the Gold Coast and at all the intricate man made canals that clutter the city! When it was finally time to leave, we were all super sad 1) Because it was the first time we had legitmately been able to layout in the sun 2)We saw lots of hot surfers without wet suits and 3) Gary and Pauline were so great we felt like we were home!

This was just part of the incredible view from Q1, somebody really good must have taken that shot.... :)

2008-07-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

After the Blue Mountains adventure, the three of us tried to lay low for a little while and by lay low I mean I don't think any of us walked normal for at least a week we were so sore! :) haha The rest of that week we just spent getting ready to read off on our 3 week long traveling expedition and I tried to squeeze in all the things I hadn't done in Sydney yet! I'm so super sad my time there is done, but we had lots of adventures still to come!! We flew to the Gold Coast for a week and then flew straight down to Melbourne for a few days and then out to New Zealand!! We haven't had the best internet for a while so here are just a few pictures until I can really get down to business!

Also I posted about the Blue Mountains below as well, make sure you're sitting down for that one because it's a nail biting tail of mystery and suspense..... :)

This is at a place called Chinta Ria our friend Jess took us to, it's an awesome Malaysian Restaurant and it means Temple of Love.... Apparently we didn't get the memo about that earlier because we just went with a group of girls! :)

After dinner at Chinta Ria we went to this place called Max Brenner's Chocolate by the Bald Man! I think you gain weight just by standing in the place! They had chocolate everything and it was delicious! Brighton and I shared a Belgium waffle covered in chocolate with strawberries bananas ice cream and of course an extra dipping vat of chocolate!

These are our favorite candy makers slash rock stars doing their thing!! Yeah, I am well connected in Sydney what can I say!! :)

This was my last morning in Sydney, everyday since I got there we just kept talking about waking up early to watch the sunrise and this was our last chance to do it all together! It was incredible despite the mad dash we had to make to the beach because we slept in and were afraid we were gonna miss it, just ignore the bed head and morning breath!

These are the cute birds that would come and visit Wendy and I as we did the dishes in our flat! They're called Lorakeets and one day we decided to get some bread out to see if they would take it. As soon as they saw the bread outside the window they started freaking out pecking at each other and at the window because they were so excited, it was awesome and I even got them to eat out of my hand!!

This is my men's indoor soccer team I got to play on in the Gold Coast! I was the only girl out there and it was super intimidating, but I loved it times a billion! We won and I even scored!! Boo yaa!! This was my favorite thing I got to do so far!

Blue Mountains, ughh!!

2008-07-23T03:06:00.000-07:00

These are the Three Sisters, oh sure they look pretty now, but try getting lost in the bush and having to see them grow smaller and smaller the further out and more lost you got....

This is the calm before the storm, and by calm before the storm I mean yes we did make friends with the sausage slash emu slash kangaroo man!

On a happier note, I did finally get revenge on the Emu who thought it was cool to make the American girls scream! Look who's laughing now!! (Yes this is real Emu meat and it tasted just like chicken!)

Yeah I did jump over the child proof fence to pose for this.... Who's the tough guy now?

So Monday July 7 we finally made it to the Blue Mountains, yay! It's about two hours outside of Sydney by train and it's tons of rainforests in this massive ravine (I'm talking like Bryce Canyon or bigger wide if you can imagine that big of a space) and way high crazy cliffs and stuff. Anyway everyone that we talked to about the Blue Mountains would just always say be careful you don't get lost in the bush it can be crazy dangerous out there and people get lost and stranded all the time blah blah blah....

Well to even start hiking in the Blue Mountains we took the worlds steepest train! It was way sweet and steep and takes you deep down in. Once there we could choose 10, 30 or 50 minute hikes. We decided on the 50 minute and as we were marching along we just kept going up these different paths and messing around and taking fun pictures. Just a side note, hikes that would take a normal person a half hour turn into hours with us, probably cause the camera can't stop taking our picture at every nook, tree and cranny along the way! Eventually, a couple hours later we decided we needed to get serious about finishing the trail and start hiking so we could get back and finish exploring everything else, well after about an hour and a half and still nothing we started to wonder what was going on. I just kept saying oh its gonna curve around and we'll start heading out, don't worry guys it's fine. PS Wendy hates hiking anyway and was already a little panicky that we were even going.

Don't worry we were just wondering around lost down here somewhere, for so long...

So we had been hiking since 12 and it was 3 and it gets dark here at 5 and all the buses and ways to get up and out and back to town shut down at 5. Finally at 330 we come across this sign that says Mount Isolation 3 hours Ruined Castle 2 hours Scenic World 2 hours (that was where we had started) or behind was a sign that said Golden Stairs 1 hour so we were like ok, we've must have taken a wrong turn but it's gonna be the same whether we head back or just keep going this way we might as well keep going and see the rest of it. But we knew we were in a hurry and had to be super fast so we set a pretty good jogging pace through mountain trails and rocks and all that kind of stuff for about 30 minutes. We were getting so tired, but we figured we had to be there soon and we were running out of light, when we come across a new sign that said Ruined Castle 1 hour and Mount Isolation 2 hours if we kept going the same way but Scenic World was 3 hours back the other way. Apparently we had all read the sign wrong and we were going in completely the wrong direction. At this point it was 4 o'clock and the sun was really starting to fade! I've never been so scared in my life, really truly scared about what was going to happen and what we were going to do! We all kind of freaked, Wendy started to cry and Brighton dropped her veil of playing it cool for Wendy's sake,. So the first thing we did when we panicked was said a prayer which helped for about 30 seconds until I let a few choice words slip out... but it did clear my mind so I could think better, and I just had to walk away to make sure if the path said anything else and so I could freak out alone! We decided at that point all we could was head back as fast as we could. Also, we had not seen a single person on the trail the whole day, we even said probably four times why haven't we seen anyone else on this trail? So now we were already tired from hiking for 4 straight hours plus we had just been running for the past half hour, but we took off running back the other way. The whole time I have flashes in my head of us ending up on the six o'clock news stranded and lost and having to sleep there overnight, and mind you it's winter over here and we were in the mountains, I had to wear my spandex and jeans and a long sleeve shirt and sweatshirt it was so cold! Finally after about 10 minutes miraculously we see 3 boys coming toward us, we probably looked so dumb running down this trail with these terrified looks on our face, and I stop and ask them if they know where they're going, they were like, "Duh who hikes clear out here without knowing where they're going!?!" So we asked them how to get back and they said, "Not the way you came you'll just get more lost out there, we're camping and our tents are still another 10k away. You need to go back and go up the Golden Stairs and that will put you on a road and you can follow that road back into town. We finally made it to the Golden Stairs and it was still an hour to the top, straight up! We were all beyond the point of exhaustion and our water was gone we stopped and said another prayer and somehow we made it up, but we were literally shaking up the stairs and breathing so hard it was crazy! Plus Wendy has asthma and was going crazy with her inhaler, so that made it even harder on her!

These are not the faces of happy campers....

Apparently the Australian Division of Transportation didn't get the memo that there are still dirt roads out here.... maybe that's because we were still in the middle of nowhere?

We finally made it to the top and it was just this dirt road with no signs of life on it, I think we had all been imagining a paved road with a few houses by it, but we were still in the middle of nowhere! So we just walked and walked and walked. A car passed us that we tried to hitch hike a ride but the guy looked at us like "what?" and just kept going. Luckily right as we came to the actual road the only other person we saw was this friendly man who helped get us on the right road to Katoomba. So then we walked some more and it was like 6km into town but we finally made it by 630, which doesn't even really make sense that we did it so fast! I know I'm usually so dramatic, but I really can't even be dramatic enough for how scary this was. It was so crazy too, it had been really good weather even though it was supposed to rain, and literally the minute we got inside right by the train station it started raining! Seriously, it was such a miracle and I can't even believe how blessed we are! Really it was scary, but very cool to see how we were so blessed and still being looked after even though we weren't doing what we needed to, like paying better attention to the map!

2008-07-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

Hey Hey! Look at me, two posts so close together! I think this is a new record! Well we are getting ready to head off to the Gold Coast tomorrow (Saturday night)! We'll be staying with two different contacts and we're super pumped! The weather should a little warmer and there's supposed to be some awesome beaches! Anyway I just wanted to get caught up until at least this point so I just figured I'd throw up a bunch of pics and call it good! I'm not even sure if anyone reads this anymore, but I miss you all and sadly slash happily enough I'll be home in four short weeks! Well here's a rundown of how things have been in the last week!

Wednesday the 2nd we went to beach! I was so happy to be there with my friends I drew a heart in the sand with our initials, some people might be worried about the meaning of this.... :)

I was the only one who wore shorts that day, so I made Brighton get on my back and trust me to walk out in the water! A wave came up and surprised us and I had to sacrifice myself and get so wet but I didn't even drop her, if that's not friendship I don't know what is!

How amazing is this? Yeah, I live right by here!!

This picture doesn't even make sense, but these cliffs are sweet!

I'm like a kid in a candy store! I love it (and by it I mean candy) times a billion! Thursday was another special day we stopped by the candy store and got so much free candy!

Friday was the 4th of July and we were so sad that none of the Australians wanted to celebrate American Independence? I don't get it? :) But so many great things happened, but first and foremost one of my great friends Lindsey Anderson qualified for the Beijing Olympics in the 3000 meter steeplechase!! I was so excited to hear the news, we bought these sweet plastics medals in her honor! Then we lit these sweet sparkly sparklers in honor of lady liberty! It was a good night!

I was getting so nervous to find out about Lindsey all I could do is hold my trusty soccer ball and clutch HP in desperation as I searched for the results!

We were even feeling so patriotic we made red, white, and blue shakes!... Yes those are Australian flags on top, strangely enough we couldn't find any American flags, but not for lack of asking every barmaid and bouncer from here to the Opera House!

This is Paddy's Market where we went Saturday again. They have all the cheap fruit and veggies and tons of trinket and souvenir shops!

We love to go clubbin in pink shirts with the coolest characters from our favorite Disney Channel original TV show.... and by we I mean just me!! I really do!
We went to a place called Home Night Club, it's right in Darling Harbour and it's like 3 level high and looks right out over the water into the wharf! We met some people there we had met the week before. Australians favorite kind of music is House, which pretty much just reminds me of Techno music, so when we first got there that's all they played! It's way hard to dance to... But by the end of the night they were playing some fun R&B and Hip-Hop, so it was way great! Just super hot inside, and so many creepy guys just wanted to be our best friend! The best was this Indian guy (dot not feather) who kept trying to get Wendy to dance with him so we just tried to move somewhere else and he grabs her arm and says, "Please I just need to know your name" so she told him it was Wendy and then Brighton was able to just drag her away. But after a few minutes he came and found her again and just as we were running away he says, "Wendy, dance with me" in his Indian accent, it was totally classic :) haha Seriously hilarious!

We love ice cream with Chocolate and Peanut Butter mixed in! Their Ice Cream is so airy and fluffy, it's easy to mix everything like a shake because it's so airy it just melts down and blends super fast! Also apparently over here they take the phrase Milk Shake to heart because everywhere I've ordered a shake it is literally a little bit of ice cream with whatever flavor and then the rest is milk, so it's not thick at all! And usually ends up tasting like strawberry milk or whatever flavor!

This is just one picture of the Blue Mountains, they are beautiful! I will blog about that experience the next time I get on, but I just want to make sure all of you were aware that I almost died and now you should feel doubly lucky to still have me around!

Week 3!

2008-07-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

Hey hey!! I'm just trying to stay a little more on top of things.... I started writing that last week when I was gonna update my blog and that's as far as I got! :) haha

I feel like this should be the new poster for Australian tourism? Any thoughts?

Well down to the good stuff here's what we've been up to! Sorry again if it's kind of a marathon read, I'm pretty much doing this instead of a journal so don't feel like you need to read the whole thing.... Although I'm not really sure who would want to miss the opportunity for my brilliant intellect and charming slash witty banter? No? Ok. :)

Tuesday June 24
We have really been having an awesome string of weather, super sunny and no rain! This is not normal, because it’s supposed to be very rainy during the winter! Naturally we’ve been trying to soak up as many rays as possible, so Wendy and I spent the day down at the beach! The waves were huge and there were so many surfers! We must have just gone at the right time today, because normally there are only a few surfers. It was fun watching them and made me want to learn how to surf like crazy!

Later that night we took our flat mates Ely and Jorge out to dinner. I don’t think I’ve said too much about them but they have been here since February, Jorge is going to school to get his Masters in something with Computer IT and Ely is just working at a place called Harvey Norman (it’s like Best Buy) to support them, even though she has her degree in graphic design it’s super hard to find a job out here for that! They are both super cute and so sweet! School just got finished for the semester for Jorge so he was going back to Ecuador to surprise his mom and I’m going to be gone before he comes back, so we wanted to all get together one last time! They wanted to try Thai so we took them to our favorite Thai place! Later that night we made them Peach Cobbler and they loved it, but probably not as much as I loved it, because I love it a lot!

This is Ely and Jorge they really like Tim Tams.... Really Really!

This is Brighton, Wendy and Jayne, they really like Peach Cobbler....really really!

These are all the residents of 5/34 Brown Street, they really like each other... and that sweet Thai waitress that took their picture and made sure the spring rolls were made with a little extra TLC!

Wednesday June 25
After having a lazy afternoon updating our blogs and chillaxin Wendy and I went to meet Brighton for lunch but we didn’t get there until 3 and discovered that everywhere shuts down their kitchens for lunch right at 3! Poor Brighton was starving and we had to wander around all over to finally find somewhere that was open! Haha

After that Wendy and I went and hung out in this cool park and read. There was Basketball and Tennis and lots of stuff going on and so many people had their dogs running around everywhere! So we’re just laying there minding our own business and this dog comes toward us and starts smelling Wendy, when all of a sudden it lifts its leg to pee on her! I started screaming and luckily she sat up but he still peed on her bag right where her head had been, who does he think he is, seriously! It was so funny!! We both couldn’t stop laughing but at the same time we were disgusted! We went back to Brightons work to clean up and I’m pretty sure her boss thought we were crazy! So Brighton was pooped on by a bird and now Wendy was peed on by a dog, I think we’ve angered the animal gods somehow and I probably need to be careful!  haha

Wendy was so sad slash confused at why a dog would mistake her for a fire hydrant!

This is the culprit to the aforementioned heinous crime!

Thursday June 26
We met Brighton after work down at Circular Quay, which is where the Opera House and Sydney Bridge are! It’s so beautiful to see the Opera House lit up at night! Randomly, as we were walking around the Opera House a security guard started talking to us and asking us where we were from. We told him Utah in the States and asked if he had ever heard of it. He was like “Yeah, I know it. I’m going there soon.” So we were kinda like oh sure but asking him if he already had the trip planned or if he knew where exactly he was going and he was like, “Yeah I’m going to Provo to the MTC.” We were like, “What!?!” Apparently he’s obviously a member of the church and got his mission call to the Philippines and is leaving at the beginning of August! It really is such a small world, we were laughing so hard!

For some reason since coming to Sydney I have become prone to pigeon hunting, this is not one of my stealthier approaches, but if we had tried to get a picture during my actual approach I would have been invisible to the naked eye..... That's how good I am!

Sometimes Brighton will pretend to be reading a magazine during the hunt, it's all just part of the routine.... However, in this picture I don't think she's fooling anyone

This is a sweet picture of the Opera House from the bridge!

Apparently this swing was not meant for big kids... Don't worry I made it work, it just took the removal of one shoe and the swing riding up places it shouldn't have been riding....

Friday June 27
Friday night we met Brighton after she got off work and went to an activity for our ward. The sister missionaries taught us some cooking stuff and about food storage, the best part to this was that they cooked some way sweet food! Chili, homemade bread, granola, cinnamon rolls!! Probably some of the best food we’ve had since we’ve been here, and you would have thought we hadn’t eaten in years the way we attacked that food like 3 starved cubs after a long winter!  haha

Later that night our friend from the ward Jess, who is so great, took us around to some of the really cool lookout points around Sydney Harbour! So gorgeous!! After that we hung out with Jess’s boyfriend and his flat mates. They are all from New Zealand and a lot of fun! For some reason though when the three of us get together boys tend to get a little overwhelmed, I’m not really sure why…  haha But we didn’t really even do anything but still managed to stay up until 3. And by we I mean Brighton and I stayed up talking, and by talking I mean squealing and being dramatic like we do, while everyone else including Wendy, who was not feeling like the million bucks that she really is, slept like angels! I just don’t think they’ll be inviting us to hang out the next time they want to actually get a good nights rest! haha

This is our friend Jess! She's way cool and even has a real Australian accent, some people have all the luck! And for some reason she even puts up with us! Way sweet view of the Opera House and Bridge!

This is Jess's car and even though it looks like Wendy is driving, this is an authentic Australian car and the driver actually sits on the right side! :)

Saturday June 28
Well once again the plan for Saturday was to head to the Blue Mountains, but this time Wendy was not feeling good at all, she had a major ear infection and we hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before, so we figured what’s the big deal putting it off one more week… 

Instead we decided to check out Paddy’s Market in China town, which is sort of like being in downtown Beijing without all the excitement of the Olympics coming, but there are still lots of Asians! It’s supposed to be some of the cheapest shopping in Sydney, it reminded me a lot of some type of expo, it’s just in this huge warehouse type thing and there are tons of clothes and hat and trinket shops in one part of it and the other part is all cheap fruit and veggies! It’s a really cool experience! The shopkeepers in the food side of things were just yelling stuff and saying things like, “Oh you beautiful girls, you want come buy fruit?” “Pretty lady, where you from” Just different things like that, it was funny and don’t even worry we did get free oranges from one of them after turning on the old charm…. And by charm I mean we walked past and they said here have this... :)

This is just an example of the plethora of goods they had available for purchase at Paddy's Market

That night Wendy was still feeling way sick so Brighton and I, with Wendy still in our hearts, decided to go clubbing! They had heard from some boys they had met before I was there, that they should try a place called Pump House, which is right by Darling Harbor. So we went there only to discover that not only did the girls outnumber the boys 3 to 1 but we were pretty much the only white people in the whole place! Everywhere you looked you saw, Asians or Indians or Polynesians but none of our fair skinned friends!  haha It was way great though and the ratio of guys to girls did get significantly more balanced! It was a Hip-Hop club, and the way people dance over here is hilarious, it’s like they forget they actually have hips and that they can move them when they start dancing! Haha So needless to say we danced way different than everyone else and stood out just a little bit, which for anyone who knows me or Brighton knows that’s probably not a good thing, cause we usually stand out too much as it is! haha Also it’s interesting here, people don’t grind or freak dance, it was nice not having to worry about guys getting up in your grille! :) After dancing we went to McDonalds for a 30 cent cone, which has quickly risen to the top of my must do when you’re in Australia list, because everything else is so dang expensive! We met some boys from Turkey who were way funny but said in not so many words but in pretty much the same breath how much they hated America but all their favorite TV shows and movies were, strangely enough, American, explain that one to me chief?

"You can find me in the club bottle full of bud" or apple juice! On our way clubbin!

We took the bus home because the trains were down. On the bus there wasn't room for Brighton and I to sit next to each other so we were kiddie corner and this 50 year old drunk man gets on the bus on for some reason just starts talking to me, I didn't say anything and I couldn't even really understand what he was saying but he was just talking so much and telling me how much he loved his wife and that they loved each other so much they didn’t know what to do but he had met this girl and they were staying together but she would just beat the crap out of him then he started asking me about all these shops in America like Ross and TJ Maxx and if I knew what Jack in the Box was and I said Yes so he gave me knuckles and then said "God bless you" and kissed me on the forehead, I just froze I didn't know what to do! It was so funny Brighton and so many other people on the bus were just laughing so hard at me! Finally the seat next to Brighton opened up and there was a kid from Chicago in front of us that started talking to us to save us from the drunken kissing crazy man!!  Needless to say I washed my forehead with disinfectant that very night! Haha

Sunday June 29
Wendy’s ear was still hurting really bad and it had been leaking and oozing out and we just wanted to help make her better but didn’t know how! So after church we went to the clinic and she got some antibiotics and stuff, they have some type of socialized medicine over here, so it was pretty crazy how cheap the medicine was! It was cool to see how the doctor’s offices are set up over here and it was funny, none of the doctors wear lab coats, they’re just in their normal clothes and they think it’s weird that our doctors do wear lab coats!

This is waiting at the clinic, and even though Wendy still looks as pretty as always, she was not happy she had to come here and be sick!!

Monday June 30
This was the day that Brighton started her spell of this dang sickness we all had to catch! Wendy was still pretty sick too and I was finally all the way better, so needless to say I was a little restless and decided to go for a run to Bondi beach! It was perfect weather and I wished I had brought my swimming suit! But I just don’t think I’ll ever get over how pretty that run really is! And that really is such a beautiful beach!

Tuesday July 1
Wendy and Brighton were still sick, but Brighton tried work and only did a half day, so I decided to go for another run the other direction and got to see Coogee Beach and Waverly cemetery which is the huge cemetery with all these fancy headstones that overlook the ocean! It was very pretty! I didn’t bring a camera, but I’ll go back one day and get lots of pictures to post! Later on that night, we decided to splurge with our internet and got to watch another episode of So You Think You Can Dance! Although, I haven’t developed a connection with the dancers the way I did last year it still makes me giddy like a school girl every time I hear that intro music!

This was also the day I found my car's long lost twin, I've been searching the world over! Presley (my car) and Chester (the other car) were separated at birth, Chester seems to be in pretty good shape other than he got his fathers genes for driving on the left hand side of the road! I'm just happy to be a part of the special reunion that will soon take place!

Who says all Subaru owners are tree huggers?

2008-06-30T07:16:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah one last thing! Brighton and Wendy have finally caught up to the good part aka to when I arrived! :) haha I'm joking of course! If you want to check out their blogs though you can click on the link right from my page! Oh and sorry that last one was kind of long, I would say I just like to hear myself talk, but I can't actually hear my own voice when I type so I don't really know what my excuse is!!

The Weekend!

2008-06-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

This is us feeding a kangaroo! Who took this sweet picture anyway? Oh yeah, that was me! :) haha

Oh yeah, it's that time again! The weekend was here and we were ready to get our P-A-R-T-Y on!

Friday June 20
Friday was awesome! We met Brighton for lunch and tried out this delicious bakery that had all kinds of homemade stuff like quiche, meat pies, croissants, breads, dessert pies etc. Everything was awesome and I love it that there really are so many different little bakeries on every corner!

Later that night we were going to watch a band play. Wendy and I on one of my first days here had been walking around Bondi Junction (the ginormous mall thing by us) and we saw this way sweet candy shop where they make the candy right in front of you, so we stopped and watched and the two workers started talking to us one of them was older and the other was probably around 25ish had gage earrings, tattoos on his arms, lip rings, and a wife beater (and yes I was strangely attracted to him :) haha) his name was Ben, but he was super nice and gave us lots of samples! And it was the most divine candy I've ever had and pretty much we go there every week now cause we eat the bags of candy so fast! Anyway, in talking to him we found out he was in a band and had a gig coming up, that naturally he begged us to come check out! So we got the address and decided it could be cool! So Friday night we took a taxi to this totally dodgy looking bar called The Bald Face Stag that's far enough away from the closest train that it cost us $25.00, I haven't quite figured that out in miles but it was enough! I just don't know why we keep getting ourselves into these awkward anxiety filled situations! :) haha So we walk into the bar and it looks pretty deserted, we ask the bouncer if there was supposed to be a band playing and he had no idea so we started to get a little nervous. Don't worry though we found them, the stage was just in a back low lit room full of Goths, no not people dressed as Goths these were actual Goths, I don't even really know what that means but they looked like they meant business! Ben had told us his music was Pop Rocky and that their groupies were 14, but apparently he meant Goth Rock because that's what it was and I couldn't validate the 14 year olds because we were at a bar, maybe they were out back waiting for the after party?... :) The music was actually pretty good minus a few parts where it turned screamo. Their name is Mz Ann Thropik and they just started recording their first real album to be released. The lead singer was a chick and she had a way strong voice when she wasn't yelling! At the end the guy on bass decided to take his shirt off, so the girl was like, "Why do guys get to have all the fun?" and then proceeded to take her shirt off and did the whole last song just in her bra! haha After the show we even got to hang out with the band, I've never gotten so many dirty looks from people wearing eyeliner (aka The Goths) it's like they didn't think we belonged.... Weird! Overall it was a really fun night, we got invited to the after party at some Goth club and had to respectfully decline, but we still visit Ben at the Candy shop all the time and I'm sure we'll remain lifelong Australia friends!

This is the band minus the singer! The drummer is next to me, the bassist is hiding behind him, then it's some random lady, then, Ben and of course Wendy and Brighton! Yes Brighton and I did wear our Bon Jovi and Pink Floyd shirts to show that we really do know how to "get crazy and rock with the best of them"!

Saturday June 21

This was the day the train gods were apparently not pleased with us! The train to the zoo only came every half hour and we literally ran on to the platform as the train doors were closing and they wouldn't open for us! :) haha Later on we just kept taking the wrong train that wouldn't stop at the stop we needed, it was a rough day! So we decided to make the most of it and play a little cards!

Well Saturday was supposed to be our big day at the Blue Mountains. We had gotten home super late and didn't actually get to bed until about 3 after making all our plans. We all set our alarms for 5 so we could get up and get going because it is a 2 hour train ride out there! Next thing we know it's 8 am! None of us had heard any of our alarms go off once! haha I guess that's what we get for staying out so late! So we decided to make the most of it and do the Blue Mountains another day. Wendy was getting so mad at Brighton and me for not waking up! When we finally did get up we made a delicious breakfast of crepes (one of our staple foods here for sure) with yogurt and raspberry jam, and nutella and bananas! Mmmmmm!! Afterwords we headed off to Featherdale petting zoo! It's supposed to be for little kids, but we had heard lots of good things so we decided to check it out!

This is the entrance to Featherdale! It's located right in the middle of a neighborhood!

The zoo was awesome, they had lots of different areas that were fenced in that you would just walk around with the Kangaroos and Wallabies and Emus and feed them and pet them! It was crazy! There were lots of momma Kangaroos with their Joeys sitting in their pouches! We acted like little kids we were so excited every time one of them jumped around! The Emu's were a little scary though (Emus are huge birds that are as tall as me), they were in with the Kangaroos and they had food you could buy and fill with food and then feed it to the Kangaroos but the Emus loved it too so they would randomly just come at you to get your food. One time we were all standing there trying to get this Kangaroo to jump for us when this Emu starts charging Wendy for no reason! Naturally she screams and tries to run so Brighton and I scream and run too! Everyone was laughing so hard and just staring at us it was so funny, I'm pretty sure a few of them got it on tape and kept watching it over and over! :) We looked like squeamish Americans who had never been around animals before in our lives! haha It did make for a good laugh though! In there we also got to see a huge Crocodile, Dingos, Penguins, Tasmanian Devil, Wombat, Cassawari and so many other birds! It was way cool cause it was just lots of animals that are native to Australia!

This is a real life Koala we got to pet! Normally you get to hold them, but he was taking a nap so we missed out on that.

Don't even worry this is just a 20 ft long Croc waiting for his dinner, we're brave!

This picture doesn't even do the Emu justice, when it's head is up it's way bigger and scarier looking, really!

I don't even get why Brighton is making this face? I feel like she's saying "Jayne it's not ok for you to hold my hand on a public bench, even if it's only for a picture".... How rude!

After the Zoo we headed to Newtown, it's kind of the trendy part of Sydney where you can buy lots of vintage stuff (the only thing different I could see about vintage was that they seemed put a higher price tag on it) and a lot of the new and upcoming styles! We ate at this African restaurant that was awesome! Everything was served on wooden plates and we had flatbread and lamb and veggies and chicken and cous cous with all sorts of different sauces! It was very tasty and we are starting to feel like quite the worldly eaters trying a little bit of everything! :) haha

This is the African restaurant, strangely enough we only had Indian servers? Explain that one?....

Sunday June 22, 2008
Well, Sunday we were back to business as usual and by business as usual I mean yes we were late to church.... :) haha So we stayed after and went to the Chinese ward for Sacrament, you think Sacrament in English is boring? Try not speaking the language... After church we went home and made yummy tin foil dinners (I'm pretty sure I eat way better here than I do at home)! Later that night there was a party for this American that was leaving the ward. It was pot luck and we decided to go at the last minute so we had to throw something together and ended up making a semi peach cobbler type of dish that was amazing even if no one else thought so! One of our friends from the ward, Jess, took pity on us and gave us a ride to the party! It was way fun, just at some random girl in the wards apartment and so many people showed up! It was way cool just to see how close their ward really is! We even got everyone to play this hand tapping game, it was hilarious!

Monday June 23
Monday started out as just another day in the land down under, but after Wendy and I had made our plans for the day we knew it was gonna be so much more! We met Brighton for lunch after she was stuck in her office all day alone! We had authentic Turkish Kebabs and they were pretty great! After that, the real fun began! On Saturday night in Newtown we had discovered this coffee place called Gloria Jeans that had free wi-fi with a purchase. As some of you may or may not know our internet at our flat is limited, so we are stuck missing our favorite show So You Think You Can Dance every week! This sadly enough is all three of our biggest regret (and by regret I just mean the thing we're saddest about) about coming to Australia, that's how much we love it! So when we saw this we knew this meant big things for us and the show! So Wendy and I had packed our lap tops with us and we headed to GJ's! We bought our delicious shakes, mine was Tim Tam flavored hers was coconut, and went to town downloading all the dances from the first episode! We even made a spreadsheet to keep track of what we did and didn't have! :) haha We're freaks but we saved them and that night it was pure bliss as we all sat down and enjoyed! It was like a weight was lifted from my heart!

These are the beloved chairs where the magic happened!

Sunday 6/15- Thursday 6/19

2008-06-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

We love Tin Foil Dinners, I just want to eat them everyday, but apparently that's not normal to do....? :)

Yummy Thai Food! Yes I am wearing a Corona shirt.... Awkward! :)

Am I already a week and a half behind? Uh oh I'm in major trouble, because I think I'm actually getting lazier! :) haha This past week has been great I've pretty much been sick all week :( but, here are a few highlights or just random things that make you go haha (ya know it's like play on words, things that make you go hmm....? No? Ok)

Sunday
We went to church, and it's just in this random big building right in the middle of town the first floor is where the missionaries stay and the second floor is the actual church. It's so small, there's a chapel which is tiny and then maybe only four other small rooms. In the chapel there's a piano and an organ and then the relief society room has like an electric keyboard and I think those are the only pianos in the whole place, that has to be a church record or something! :) haha Our ward is a Young Single Adult ward and there are a few Australians but for the most part it's just a lot of Asians and then a few Americans! It's weird having to ride the bus and the train in to church, it makes it feel not real! :)

After church we came home and Brighton was so tired she just wanted to take a nap,
but I was very hyper and didn't think that sounded like a lot of fun so I decided to crawl on the top bunk with her and try to change her mind! :) Needless to say there was not a lot of sleep that happened this day! haha

Wendy was thankfully able to capture this sublime moment, you can really see how much fun we were having!

Monday
There's an awesome running path that runs from Bronte Beach, which is the beach right by us, up to Bondi Beach that's a little over 2 miles. It's right along the ocean and seriously the most amazing view! I don't love to run, but if I do run I wanna do it along the ocean from now on! :) It was kinda rainy when we ran and also after as we walked to Bondi Junction. Along the way we found a Dominos that had a lunch pizza special and we were so excited to eat our Hawaiian Pizza at a bus stop outside we just couldn't even contain ourselves! With the weather being rainy and cold and then walking around in it all day, I got a little sick and fell asleep super early that night. But Brighton and Wendy were up and apparently I kept drifting in and out of consciousness saying random things to them that didn't make sense because I was so confused at what was happening!

This is Bronte Beach and the run goes up along the rocks and around to another cove!

Tuesday
I had developed a little cough from the day before so Wendy and I went to the pharmacy to get some cough medecine, once we got outside we couln't remember how much I supposed to take because it was only listed in mL which doesn't mean a thing to either of us and we couldn't remember if it was 3 or 4 teaspoons or 3 or 4 tablespoons. I was in a lot pain so I decided the latter sounded like a better option and took a couple big swigs right there on the street. It was nasty stuff of course but after I felt like I was on cloud nine! Upon closer examination and figuring out, we realized I was only supposed to take 3 teaspoons and instead I had downed half the bottle! :) So needless to say, I walked around the rest of the day feeling a little tipsy! :) haha I'm also ashamed to say, that this day we gave in and ate subway for lunch, we've been so brave trying new food everyday but we just couldn't hold back! For dinner we also got all the stuff and made Tin Foil dinners! It was so delicious and so just like sitting around a campfire singing 'koom bai ya'!

Tuesday we also invaded Brighton's work!

Wednesday
We decided to go on a little trek around our neighborhood to see what we could find and we came across this way great park (there are parks everywhere here) that had a rugby field and lots of space and we think it was some kind of cricket batting cage or something and then all these basketball courts only the baskets didn't have backboards just hoops and they don't dribble the ball they just pass it around like ultimate frisbee where you can't run when you have the ball, it was weird. All these little kids were playing everywhere, and they were so cute especially the little 8 year olds that were playing tackle rugby and they loved it so much! Wendy and I also played a little frisbee and then got some reading in!

I love Dragon books!

Thursday
We tried Thai for the first time on Thursday, it was so cheap and so delicious! And apparently the official food of Australia! We tried Pad Thai and a couple other things it was way great! One thing that is weird to get used to, is that all the prices you see anywhere are after sales tax and you pretty much don't tip anywhere, so if a menu says it's $7.20 that's all you pay, no tax no tip nothing! It's kinda nice not having to worry about that stuff and Australians think it's so weird that when we go to the store and stuff we never know exactly how much we're going to pay because of tax!

Saturday June 14

2008-06-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

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Hott isn't it? Oh wait, were you talking about the opera house? :)

This is the cafe we ate at with the ocean behind us! Across the street is also where a bird pooped on Brighton, everyone keeps telling her it's good luck, but I just don't see how that can be true!

Holy cow time flies! I can't believe I've already been here a week and a half! This weekend was awesome! On Saturday we decided to take the ferry from Circular Quay (which is where the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge are) to Manly. Manly is the cutest little town across the bay from Sydney! It looks to me a lot more like a tourist destination slash somewhere that people really live, just the way the condos and hotels were setup, as opposed to a commercial area like in downtown Sydney. It has the most amazing beach and tons of different shops, just like everywhere else. The weather was a bit windy and rainy, but that of course didn't stop us or the many crazy surfers that were out in the water. It was fun watching them and you could tell how much they must have just loved it because first of all it was freezing outside and second they all just stayed out in the water as long as they could even when it got dark you could tell they just wanted to stay a little longer! We ate at one of the many cafes that just looked out over the ocean right at sunset, it was beautiful!

This is Manly Beach at sunset, all those blacks dots in the water are surfers!

This is the other side of Manly Beach!

Wendy and I don't need actual waves to surf, we're pretty good just the way we are!

After dinner we took a stroll along the beach and just wanted to talk to some hot surfers, but sadly enough they were all on the run once they got out of the water. Don't worry though we just pretended like they were too nervous to approach 3 cute american girls and then we felt better about ourselves! :) haha Later that night we heard some ruckus and loud cheering coming from one of the hotel bars so naturally we went to ch-ch-ch-check it out and everyone was watching a rugby game England vs. The All Blacks (New Zealand), we really had no idea what was going on, which frustrated Wendy that she couldn't answer a sports question, but it was kind of exciting and everyone was getting so into it and there were some really cute rugby players! I'm pretty sure The All Blacks ended up winning!

We love bread, yes we do! We love bread, how bout you?

After that we headed to our favorite shopping destination in Sydney, Cole's aka the grocery store! :) Pretty much all the breads they make here are fresh, it's like Europe in that people buy bread almost everyday so it's not as common to have like a Grandma Sycamore or Wonder Bread. Along with that the bread obviously goes bad faster, well we've discovered if you show up at just the right times at night and especially on Saturday nights they mark the bread and pastries down really cheap! We have fondly come to call this dollar days! Whole loaves of bread, full size baguette's, 12 medium sized donuts, ginormous cheese and bacon rolls all for only $1.00!! You'd think we were a band of starving ruffians the way we attack that aisle when those dollar stickers are up! :)

Friday June 13

2008-06-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

This isn't the best picture but this is Bronte Beach behind us, it just doesn't even do it justice of how beautiful this place really is!

This was on our way to party it up in the big city!

Sorry this is kind of a long post, but really it was just a crazy night and there was no way to really condense it down! :)

Friday was another great day spent at the beach! The weather was not as good as Thursday but we just couldn't resist it! After Brighton got home we were supposed to meet up with a friend of a friend named Sean at this bar called Le Chifley in downtown Sydney. If the taxi had been any indication of what kind of night it was going to be we should have known this would be one to remember! After riding the train into downtown we had to take a taxi to get the rest of the way, as soon as we stepped into the taxi we knew it was a mistake! It stunk of strong BO and Indian food, two things that should never be mixed in a cramped space! I could have looked past that, but I'm pretty sure the driver was on drugs! When we told him we were from Utah he said, "Oh yeah I know it, it's right by Tennessee" and then tried to argue with us that the 2002 Olympics were in Los Angeles! After arriving we tried to call Sean, who conveniently or not didn't have his phone turned on, and we didn't know what he looked like so we didn't have any idea who we were looking for. So there we are three young innocent Mormon girls standing in the middle of this dodgy bar trying to figure out what to do next. This was not a big bar and not overly crowded so everyone in the room was for sure aware of our presence and not quite staring just questioning. We just decided to make the most of it since we had already paid for the taxi so we headed for the front to order some drinks (in our heads we were just praying that they had something other than alcohol) when these two guys start hitting on us. One of them was late 20's semi cute and sorta looked like Harry Potter the other one was probably 45 and looked like Uncle Fester! Their initial pickup line was horrendous and had we known where to run to we probably would have, as it was we didn't really have any better options or options at all! After playing the state game and finally figuring out we were from Utah and Mormon they asked us how many husbands we had back home and what it was like to live with no electricity! For some reason everyone over here gets the Mormons and the Amish mixed up! It carried on like that until finally 40 minutes later Sean called and came to our rescue! We then met all his friends who were from all over, France, India, Iran, South Africa, New Zealand etc. (it's amazing how many people in Sydney are not from Sydney) but his friends were way nice and kept offering us wine, but we told them no it's ok we don't drink and they were like no really just have some and went and got glasses and even poured some for me and we just kept saying no really we don't drink over and over and they wouldn't believe us so finally I was like, "No really, we can't have any we're recovering alcoholics" and they were like "oh, ok that's fine" and dropped it as if that really could be the only possible explanation for why someone wouldn't drink! :) haha it was seriously funny! We still had a really great time, the problem is we're just as crazy without alcohol as most people are with because we just don't even have any normal inhibitions to begin with! :)

It was about 1 when we decided to head home and we just took a taxi, this one was much better and BO free! He drove us down Oxford St. which is like gay central! Apparently Sydney is like the San Francisco of Australia! They had rainbow flags flying all over up and down the streets and there were flocks of guys together everywhere, holding hands walking down the street, hugging waiting to get in clubs, standing in groups smoking, it was seriously the strangest thing I've ever seen, but I just couldn't help but laugh!

All in all it was a way great night, but when we told our flatmate Jorge about it, he said he wasn't going to let us go out again on our own! :) haha

2008-06-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

Yep, this is really real! Oh yeah and can everyone comment on how pretty Brighton looks, she's feeling really left out that this is the first picture of her I've put up! :)

So one day I was telling Wendy that I thought it was weird there were so many adult book stores everywhere we went, when she casually replied, "Oh I know I only go into them when I'm not with Brighton and I can spend so long there!" I was like "What?!?" and then she was like "Wait what did you say?" :) haha She only heard the book store part! So we naturally had to take a picture of Wendy with her new favorite past time!

Thursday June 12

2008-06-15T01:15:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, it's been a few days, I'm sure some of you were starting to get worried but never fear, I haven't forgotten all my friends! :) Thursday was way great Wendy and I decided to check out the beach since it's so close! The weather was awesome, I still don't get how they could possibly call this winter, and there were so many old men in Speedos so it was like a double bonus! :) We packed a lunch and ended up spending pretty much the whole day there taking naps people watching etc. The setup is so cool, they have a massive grassy area with picnic tables and just open space and then there's a big path that runs along the shore that goes from our beach (Bronte) to Bondi beach a couple miles down the way and then there's still plenty of beach to just layout and chill, maybe play some beach soccer! There was some surfing going on, but I think the waves are not the best.

This is my new friend Rufus we met at the beach! Holly this is for you!

After that, the missionaries had asked us to go to a discussion with a girl from Korea who had been raised not believing in the idea of a god at all. It was so crazy to imagine coming from that kind of background and having to try to grasp the idea of Christianity! When the missionaries asked her if she had any questions she just kept saying, "I could believe it but I can't, I want to believe but I just can't". It was very interesting!

We met Brighton for dinner and ate at an authentic Noodle House, no really that was the name Noodle House! :) It was similar to our Chinese food and very tasty!

2008-06-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

This is a park Wendy and I spent an unacceptably long time acting childish and having so much fun! Look at my sweet air!! :)

I know what you're thinking, this is too good to be true! Seriously who is lucky enough to get to go to Australia for two months and develop hives? Well let's just say I'm one of a kind!

Yesterday we had such a great day! After getting ready we went and played frisbee in the park and then walked around this place called Bondi Junction, it's huge!! There was an endless amount of stores and shops! My favorite part was there were two electronic stores kind of like Best Buy, one was called Harvey Norman and the other one is JB Hi-Fi, I just made Wendy walk around them with me for so long! I think she officially thinks I'm a freak but it's ok I didn't even care! Prices were crazy though, and only my friends at Best Buy would probably understand this but there was a 1000 series monster 3 foot HDMI cable that was $400, which is ridiculous! Also they have so many cool cell phone shops everywhere! I just love looking at all the cool phones that don't get released in the US! The thing that amazes me so much about being over here is that there are not food chains here like in the US, pretty much all the food places are locally owned minus that there are McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner! Anyway I hope that everyone is surviving without me!

Syndey here I come

2008-06-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! I'm finally here, can you believe it? I still don't even feel like it's real, it's so amazing though! The flight was awesome and by awesome I mean really I loved it! On the way from LA to Sydney it was a huge plane with our own screens which is pretty normal, but the part that was so great was there were so many good movies to choose from I didn't even want to sleep and I ended up watching four movies and the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds concert! I couldn't have been happier! I left on Sunday night and got to Sydney at 9:30 in the morning on Tuesday, so Monday didn't even exist for me and I'm just glad it wasn't my birthday or something important like that! My friend Wendy and our flatmate Jorge came to get me and we took a bus to our flat, on the bus we met a funny old man who just kept saying "God bless America" after he found out we were from the US, I felt just like a celebrity! :)

This is the cute little cafe we went to right by Brightons work for lunch! Don't worry at this point I still hadn't showered or brushed my teeth, I look good :)

After this Wendy and I just wandered around Sydney, we went to Darling harbour which is so cute and there's tons of restaurants over looking it and lots of shops and stuff! It really is just the coolest city, we found China town and I swear there's just shops everywhere you go it never ends! After Brighton got off work we went shopping for food stuff, everything is so expensive I really can't even believe it! Potatoes were $4 for 4 lbs and a jar of the cheap peanut butter was $5! I guess it's good that their minimum wage is $16.70 because I really don't know how anyone would survive!

It was way rough staying awake with the jet lag but I pushed through the pain and we made it home so I could finally fall asleep around 9:00 (where I slept for 11 hours), but not before I noticed somes sore red little treat all over my legs that burned and itched and by little treat I mean yes I developed hives! I'm so cool, what else is there to say! Pictures to come later! :)

2008-06-08T00:37:00.000-07:00

What time is it?.... Summer time!

2008-06-08T00:33:00.000-07:00

This is him! Notice how his girlfriend is staring me down with that vicious glare. Don't worry I played it off really cool after I took this, pretending to take a picture of some benches right by us!

2008-06-07T23:58:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone (and by everyone I mean, hopefully someone other than my mom looks at this)! Well my trip has officially started, even though LA is not quite as exciting as AUS and NZ I think I have some pretty exciting things to share. First and foremost I saw my first real life celebrity, well unless you count Jeff Hornacek but that's beside the point. We went to California Adventure on Friday and there I was minding my own business, running around like a little kid in a candy shop when who should I behold?.... Jorge Garcia aka Hugo "Hurley" Reyes for all the LOST fans out there! As most people know I'm usually pretty calm and collected, but the sight of this person I get to watch every Thursday at 8/7 c on abc was almost too much to handle. I followed him around like a creepy stalker/lovesick puppy dog, minus the lovesick part, trying to get a picture! Maybe I didn't get one of his face, but I know it was him!! Second, I got to see the High School Musical 2 parade where I got to dance and sing along to all my favorite tunes from the movie!! Seriously what more could a girl ask for from one theme park? Nothing, I say! Today was also way great, we went to Disneyland, and after seeing all the cute little girls in princess dresses, I decided I wanted to relive my childhood and spend all my days in a tiara with a sparkly wand and a frilly dress, I think that really would have gotten me somewhere! The countdown is officially on and I leave in less the 24 hours! I'm getting so nervous and exited I can hardly stand it, and really I think my mom might throw me out the window if I remind her one more time when I leave! :) Hope this post find everyone well!