As I pulled onto campus on Monday morning, it suddenly hit me just how fast these four years have gone. It seems unbelievable that in a few short months we will be thrown into the real world (or for most of my friends, into the world of grad school). We'll find new jobs, make new friends, learn new cities, move into new apartments. But not necessarily because we want to... mostly because we have to move out by 5 pm on May 22nd or they will kick us out. I find myself wavering between two groups -- Group A: the people who will be kicking, screaming and crying as their parents drag them off campus and Group B: the people who have accepted that change is inevitable and they should embrace this "exciting" time in our lives. Some days, I would like nothing more than to leave behind the Friday nights full of shrieking girls in stilettos outside my window and the horror that is 8 am classes. But on other days, I can't imagine leaving behind these people, these professors, this campus, in search of my next "thing" (this coming from the girl who never thought she would utter the words, "I really don't want to graduate...").
laughed at the fall "concert" (comedian Demetri Martin), traveled to see the Poet's House in the city with LAS (complete with a performance by Natalie Merchant), organized by our devoted president, Flor, pictured below,
watched the lanterns be launched from the new pedestrian walking bridge over the Hudson with my housemates and best friends,
spent a weekend here with Lauren (including a walk across the pedestrian bridge (well... halfway anyway)), then spent a weekend in Boston with Marisa,
then spent a weekend celebrating my sister's 30th birthday (complete with dancing with the aunties and Grandma Veet at Vapor nightclub at the Racino),
then spent a weekend in Washington, D.C. for the honors conference with Amanda and Flor,
after cramming in my last LAS Spooky Slam.
I went to the dance show, Into the Woods (starring my fabulous housemate Courteney) (the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood are picture below),
African drumming (as Amanda demonstrates below),
and The Tragedy of Harvey Dent (a Shakespearean play written and preformed by the English capping group), starring Alexa, pictured below,
went to a packed house women's basketball game with Amanda,
and closed out the semester with our last LAS meeting, complete with Santa hats and Christmas lights.
Can you really blame me for not wanting to leave this behind? And that's just the "events." I also had fantastic classes taught by some of my favorite professors at Marist (consequently conquering C+ Sue's grading, gaining a new appreciation for film, writing some decent poetry, analyzing mine (and others') personalities, and completing my psych and global studies minors (complete with a mini capping paper/presentation about multiculturalism in Australia) and my honors requirements (minus my senior honors project -- redesigning the Marist Abroad handbook)). I became closer friends with some people and made some new friends, played intramural volleyball, made some serious money at Marist Poll and online proofreading (and had lots of fun doing it), advised future Australia-bound students, got published in The Circle, The Generator, and The Globetrotter and was co-editor of my fourth Mosaic.
- Douglas Noel Adams
Well, this is it. I can't believe this will already be my last post from Australia. As I was waited for the bus at Central after dinner at a Turkish restaurant (complete with belly dancer) tonight for my final bus ride, it hit me.
I hope that I succeeded in taking everyone's advice: enjoy every minute, try new things, be brave, take advantage of every opportunity, keep an open mind, live it up.
From playing Wii with my host family kids, to tending to the chickens, to nights out with the boys, to beautiful beach days, to the New Zealand adventure with my mom and sister, to laughing with Isabel, Petra and Hiroko, to deep frying Mars bars with my flatmates, to grabbing Spanish churros on my last walk down Glebe Point Road, I have loved it all. While it hasn't always been easy, it has always been fulfilling.
“Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts. You have to remember this when you find yourself at the beginning.”
My trip in numbers:
My trip as a Mastercard commerical:
There was a walking tour in my book to follow, which we did for the most part, but we explored on our own too. There were beautiful views of the city and Manly from multiple places along the way, along with impressive views of the ocean.
We explored on the rocks for a while
and then continued the walk along the beach where we met a very friendly dog who we played with for a while.
There were beautiful houses all along the coast -- can't image how much they must cost. We made our way along the coast to Lady Bay Beach - one of the nude beaches in Sydney where we found one nude older man who stared us down.
We continued on to "The Gap" - a popular suicide and proposal spot and then headed back to catch the ferry.
We only made it to Clovelly Beach before we decided to take a bus back into the city.
We attempted to do the entire walk which would have brought us to the "Spit Bridge," but we wouldn't have made it there and back before dark. We grabbed some Copenhagen's icecream (Alex's - honeycomb and butterscotch - is my new favorite) and headed back to the ferry at the perfect timing in order to see the Opera House lit up for the Luminous festival - it's completely dark on one side and then lit with cool designs and colors on the other.
Before catching the bus, we stopped into the Customs House so I could show Alex the huge 3-D map of Sydney that is under the glass floor. On our way home we got off the bus on Glebe Point Road and grabbed a pizza to take home from Lavara Pizza and Pasta - yum.
In the walkabout section, where you walk on a path where kangaroos, wallabies and an emu are roaming "free," we happened to see a joey in its mother's pouch! Our attention was drawn to him because there was a woman clearly going where she was not supposed to be and getting up really close to the kangaroo to get a picture (while the emu attacked her bag). Turned out, she worked at the zoo on their design staff and had been coming to the walkabout every day on her lunch break for weeks to try to get a picture of the joey and this was the first time she had been successful. Talk about good timing for us!
After grabbing some pictures of the joey, Alex decided he must pet a kangaroo and succeeded in luring the softest one I have ever felt in my life toward him - so adorable.
Thursday, June 11
After the symphony, we headed back to the apartment to pack up all of Alex's things, and then walked to Annandale for dinner, again on the recommendation of my guidebook. After walking up and down Booth St. without finding "Zenith," we decided (duh...) to look at the street number as opposed to just looking for the name of the restaurant. When we got to the right address, which we had passed about 10 minutes earlier, it turned out that the name of the restaurant had changed, and was now called Vicini. And it wasn't open for another half an hour. We decided to stick it out and headed back down the street to wander around in a cute bookstore for a while. We headed back to the restaurant and had a very nice dinner (each of eating our entire pizzas which were huge) and then headed home for an attempt at an early night, as Alex had to wake up at 4:20 the next morning. Unfortunately, it was my flatmates last day of uni and so they were having their first and only party. After about 2 hours of sleep for Alex, he woke up, grabbed a taxi and headed off to the airport for his 6 am flight to Melbourne to visit with his sister, her boyfriend and our friend Maxine.
I showed up a few minutes before the 12:30 tour and moseyed around the grounds taking (shocker) pictures of flowers and the house. The tour was fairly interesting, but we really only got to see 3 or 4 rooms of the house, which was kind of disappointing.
By this point, I was starving and decided to go to Lindt Cafe for lunch and (of course) hot chocolate. Super yummy, yet again. Then, I headed to the Art Gallery of NSW and saw everything in it in 2 hours flat. Some pretty cool exhibits, but nothing too memorable.
Turns out, I should have used the hour I had just spent at the cafe getting a spot where I could actually see what was going on. Unfortunately, I hadn't, so I was stuck behind four rows of people, attempting to stand on my tippy-toes to see what was going on. Luckily, I don't think I missed too much. The highlight was the raising from the water, burning, and sinking of this ship. I think it was supposed to be something about refugees, but I completely missed the symbolism.
On Monday, I lazed around all morning and then headed to Circular Quay to meet up with John and Tyler who were doing some souvenir shopping. Since the last thing I had eaten was a panini at Lindt at 1:30 the day before, I was starving and so we stopped at the Australian Hotel in the Rocks and grabbed some wedges and pizza (just missing the happy hour discount on emu wings... fortunately?).
