Sydney Opera House

While classes technically started on Monday, I honestly can't really call much of what we did class, but more of just exploring this amazing city.

Monday morning, we headed to "The Australian" Museum, featuring the history, life, and culture of the Aboriginal People.  

After spending a couple hours exploring, we headed back to our hostel to get ready for our dinner at the Opera House.  Every Stanford abroad program has one really nice Bing Dinner (the Bing Family is a major donor to all the stanford overseas programs), and ours included a fancy dinner and then ballet at the Opera House.

We got all dressed up and started an amazing night (best explained through showing a TON of pictures, starting before we even left the hostel)

Liz, Jocelyn, KL, Ryan, Elaina, Me, Lisa, Coop

we're trying to make this photo happen at as many events as possible :)

then we boarded the bus and headed off to the harbor.

Before dinner, we had time for a major photo shoot in front of the Opera House and Harbor Bridge

all the girls

 The "manly men" (aka the only 12 boys in a group of 48)

 

The usual group of girls with the boys, ANeil, Ilan, and Will

Larkin Love (we were all in Larkin, and representing the Larkin 'L')

 

we got a little bored with the posed photos, so we had to mix it up a little, James Bond style...

Then we headed off to dinner at this gorgeous restaurant right next to the Opera House called Aria.  The food was delicious!

 

Our delicious menu...

 

and amazing appetizer!

 

My lovely table

and the Bings were even nice enough to provide us with wine...

...so of course we did a popcorn toast!

After we finished dinner, it was raining, so we decided to run (it wasn't very far) to the Opera House 

WE MADE IT!!! Coop and I led the run from dinner to the Opera House!

 Coop, Me, and Shara

All wet, but still in a great mood since were at the Opera House!

We actually ended up missing the first (of 3) acts, but this was actually a good thing, since we were able to explore the opera house and of course take more pictures both inside the Opera House

and outside!

This is the ballet we saw

We finally made it inside

this is the view from our seats

during intermission

All in all it was one incredible night I'll never forget :)

Sydney Harbor Bridge

Opera House at night

Stradbroke Island

After we finished celebrating our Australian-style Halloween, we began our Coastal Resource Management (CRM) course on Stradbroke.  For this course, we learned a lot about “adaptive management” through a case study.  Basically, we were all assigned to groups and had to prepare a 30 minute presentation regarding a hypothetic proposed resort at a site on Stradbroke.  In addition to a lecture series, our class also consisted of traveling around the island, exploring the different parts to Straddie that would be effected by the building of the “Super Snappy Marina and Resort.”

Here’s the site, Amity, of the proposed development:

Our activities included...


...a tour the CRL mining site:

Since Straddie is a huge sand island, CRL mines the land for rutile and other elements, then revegetates the land after.  The tour was actually really neat and we got to wear these awesome vests!

...a bush walk with Matt, a native aboriginal of Stradbroke.  He took us around the island, explaining a lot of the Bush Tucker, or natural foods and remedies the aboriginal people discovered.  A couple people in my class did research on Bush Tucker for our projects, and there actually a lot of chemicals found in popular Bush Tucker that is currently being researched with promising pharmaceutical potential, even for diesease such as cancer and AIDS.

Matt also showed up some traditional weapons and instruments,

along with how to make aboriginal body paint from rocks on the beach.

and start a fire!

and of course taught us how to throw a returning boomerang...lets just say not all us actually got our boomerang to come back to us.

...a beach tour.  Yes, of course we had to check out the local beaches as part of our class.  We weren’t allowed to swim here because of dangerous currents, but the deserted beach was gorgeous!

...a look at an already industrialized (and GORGEOUS) tourist area, Point Lookout.

We walked along this gorge, with an amazing view!!

The water was so clear! We saw tons of turtles and dolphins in the water!

KL and I climbed down and sat on the rocks to get a better view, pretty far back from the water, and got SOAKED by one huge wave!

While waiting for the bus, we had to take a picture in this perfect climbing tree :)

...a “mock town hall meeting” where each group was assigned a different role in the Stradebroke community, and had to dress up and role play about potential reactions to the resort

some of the costumes were AWESOME!

...a close up view of the local water system.  This is Brown Lake - the water is actually brown!! It looks like tea, but its a completely healthy lake!

During our free days on Stradbroke, we spent one beach day at Point Lookout and another day we went scuba diving and sandboarding.  Both of these experiences were incredible.

Our scuba boat launched from the beach, and since there was a decent amount of wind, the waves were HUGE.  Our little boat sped off straight into the waves, and the ride out was an experience in itself - the staff told us to hold on tight and stand on the boat kinda like we were surfing and thats what we had to do to not fall overboard!  It was soo much fun! After about a 30 minute ride out, we arrived at our first site where 4 of our group of 8 were sea sick!  (a least I wasn’t one of them)

We saw some cool finish and coral on our first dive, but the highlight of the day was the shark we saw at our second site!  We were able to get really close and pet it!  only in australia....

overall, great dive, since we pretty much got an adventure speed boat trip free along with our 2 dives!

In the afternoon, we meet up with about 20 others and went sandboarding.  This was so much fun!!

Between every dive we waxed our boards,

then slid down the (pretty big) hill.

We could go down sitting sled-style,

laying down,

and of course standing up!

Ready,

,

 Set,

GOO!!

Yay I made it!

 not all of our trips ended this successfully tho :(

After sandboarding we all had sand EVERYWHERE!!! and so much sand in my mouth!!! there gotta be some nutritional value right?

Group dogpile!

After a great time scuba diving and sandboarding, the day wasn’t over...it was my friend Coop’s birthday, so we headed out to celebrate.  The Straddie Sports Bar was nice enough to stay open late for us - they stayed open til....(drum roll please) 10 PM!!!

We left Stradbroke, off to board our fight to Sydney! :)

Brisbane Free Days and Halloween on Stradbroke Island

Leaving Heron Island, we boarded a bus and drove 6 hours to Brisbane.  Civilization!!! It was so weird to be in a place with big building and so many more people.  We could go to the grocery store, walk around for more than a mile in a circle, and actually feel clean for once (clean laundry!!!).  Heron Island was amazing, but it was really nice to be back in Brisbane.  We only really had a day and a half free, but we had one big goal we wanted to accomplish - halloween costumes.  Halloween (along with Thanksgiving) really isn't celebrated down under, but we definitely weren't gonna let that stop us.  For Halloween, we decided to create a costume with an Australian theme…

In order to understand our costume, I need to give you a little background information (including a couple pictures from the storybook).

 

 

 While in the outback, our professor introduced us to a famous Australia children's book, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs. 

This book was all about "gum nut babies".  They are tiny (and cute) little babies that make their hats out of eucalyptus seed cases and are scared of big bad banksia men.


A group of 9 of us decided that we would be the gumnut babies and set off in search of costumes in Brisbane.  Obviously there are no costume stores, but we made use of a variety of christmas decorations, creating skirts our of tinksel, then using these organic soilish pots for hats!  We ended up safety pinning headbands to our hats so they would stay on our head.  I'd say a pretty cheap and creative costume!  :)  

Here is all but one of the gumnut babes

 Lisa, Jocelyn, Me, KL, Ryan, Coop, Liz, and Elaina (were missing Helen :( ) 

Gumnut babies always have cute names, and mine was "Bugga Boo"

Bugga Boo and Crackle Pot 

New Zealand Crew - Liz was Snuggle Boo (we had fun coming up with names!) 

There really isn't much nightlife on Stradebroke Island, but Ron took us to this little bar (i guess) called the Little Ships Club.  There was a group of 20-30 people older than 40, and we spend Halloween dancing the night away to some good old music (Grease and the maracena definitely made an appearance). 

Overall, we all had a great time, and by the end of the night, they annouced our group were all "club member" and that Little Ship was our "home club."  They even gave me a (really nice) Little Ship polo shirt and made me give a little speech.  Another girl in our group also got a little book about the history about the Little Ship Club!

Here's a picture of all the gumnut babies and "a man with a handlebar mustache" aka Will,

and a picture with our prof Ron Johnstone.











 


We all bought a lot of candy to share, and even brought it with us to do "candy toasts" :)

My favorite candy on this trip so far has been hokey pokies.  We had them for the first time in New Zealand, and they are sooo good!  Its pretty much a square honey malt covered in chocolate.  Amazingness!!! :)

We have a week of classes on Stradebroke Island, then 3 free days before we head to Sydney.