Greece

We are sitting on Ios island in Greece waiting for our ferry back to Athens and then we are off to Venice.

Greece has been absolutely beautiful. We arrived in Athens early in the morning after a long overnight flight from Singapore. We only had one day to see Athens so we dropped our bags at the hostel and headed out to explore. We were a little relieved that the temperatures, although still incredibly hot (36!) were just pure heat, unlike the smog and humidity we had experienced throughout Asia.

Our hostel was really well located by the Acropolis so we got a combined pass and saw almost all there is to see in Athens in one day! We started at the Temple of Zeus then walked all around the Acropolis and up to the Parthenon. The crowds were insane though, and very different to the people we had been touring with in Asia. There were families and massive tour bus groups everywhere. After touring around for a couple hours we stopped for some much needed shade and lunch. We didn't think twice about ordering a Greek Salad. We had been quite fruit/vegetable deprived in the last couple weeks and were very excited for some veggies (and cheese!) In the afternoon we walked around an area called Plaka, hopped on a mini tourist train to see the rest of the stuff on our ticket, and had an early dinner with more veggies! We were exhausted from a long overnight flight and walking around all day. We also had to be up at 3:30 the next morning to catch our incredibly early flight to Santorini so we crashed around 10.

The last 5 days we have been on the islands in Greece with 2 days in Santorini and 3 in Ios. They have been spectacular and a nice rest after a busy few weeks in Asia. The day we arrived in Santorini Laura went on a dive in the afternoon that went through some caves. I rested on the black sand beach in Perissa and then we met up for dinner beside the beach before packing it in for another early night. After all, we had been up since 3:30!

The next day was lots of fun too. We went on a day boat tour to the volcano, hot springs and town of Oia on Santorini. The volcano climb was crazy. It was rather hot (possibly an understatement) but the views were beautiful. Once we got to the top our guide dug a hole about 1 foot down and picked up some of the rocks for us to touch. They were steaming hot! (The volcano is still active) There were also sulphur rocks which were steaming too. We made it back down to the boat, stopped for a quick swim in the hot springs before going to another smaller island, Thirassia, for lunch. The last part of the day we landed back at a port on Santorini near the town of Oia. The climb up to the town was quite long and steep so we opted for the donkey rides up to the top (fulfilling our Greek dreams!) Although quite scary when they just told you to hop on the donkey and it set off up the uneven rocky stairs and felt the need to walk right on the edge so we were nearly hanging off a cliff, it was really fun. We safely made it to the top, walked around the town a little and then settled by the castle to watch the famous sunset. The scenery was breathtaking and exactly like the posters I have had up in my room for the last couple years! The day ended with a bus ride back to our hostel and some much needed showers and rest!

The last couple days we have been on another island, Ios, which seems to have been taken over by backpackers and European students. We haven't done much here other than lie by our hotel pool and soak in the sun. We tried to rent ATVs yesterday to go around the island and see Homer's tomb but we needed a European drivers license so that idea was quickly shot down. The resting time has been wonderful though and a nice break from walking around all day.

We have absolutely loved Greece. The weather has been perfect and we haven't seen a cloud in about 5 days. There has been some gusting wind here though but I guess it makes it slightly cooler! We are off now on our ferry to Athens followed by two flights to get us to Venice tonight. Another long travel day!

Sorry for the lack of blogging but hopefully this makes up for it!

Hope you are all enjoying your summers as much as we are! We will try and make our posts a little bit more frequent!

Love Morgan and Laura

Wrappin' up Asia

Koh Samui
We arrived in Koh Samui in fine form, although the weather was a bit less than ideal. After spending the past few days trekking nonstop in 30+ degree weather, we were all happy for our little 5-day beach vacation. We spent our time in Koh Samui catching up on our reading, sleeping and tanning. The beach itself was pretty commercialized and was crawling with vendors carrying everything from ice cream to bedspreads.

We didn't completely sleep away our time, however. Our second second day on the island, we took a day trip to one of the neighbouring islands where Fiona and Morgan went snorkelling and hiking up to a beautiful viewpoint while I spent the day diving with a French divemaster, very nearly escaping a number of massive triggerfish.

Our last night, we took a boat over to Koh Phagnan island for the infamous full moon party. Covered in fluorescent paint and buckets in hand, we had a great time under the glowing moon. Needless to say, our flight the next morning was not the easiest one we've had.

Chiang Mai
With only two days in Chiang Mai, we decided to make the most of our time. We arrived in the afternoon from Koh Samui and took a nap to recover in time for the next morning. We woke up early for an "Adventure Trek". The day included feeding and riding elephants, hiking through the rainforest to a waterfall swimming point, more hiking and a visit to a nearby Akha village where we had the chance to see how the locals live. That evening, we went to the night market- an overwhelming market held every night that sells almost anything you could imagine.

The next day, we were up early again for our one-day cooking class. We were picked up at the hostel and taken to one of the local markets to pick up fresh ingredients. None of us have ever been able to identify so few fruits and vegetables. The meat section was also enough to make anyone a vegetarian for life. The class itself was fantastic. We were part of a group of about 14, but could each make our own combination of 6 the 24 dishes offered. The teachers were a riot, and the owner of the cooking school had a very dry sense of humour that made the day an absolute pleasure. Of course, it may have helped that we were given time to sit and enjoy each of the dishes we made. Some of the treats we are now all experienced in include spring rolls, pad thai, red curry, sweet and sour veggies, chicken in coconut soup, fried banana and mango with sticky rice. We had to be rolled home.

To walk off our day's activities, we explored the Sunday market that evening. We had spent about 3 hours wandering the market when the sun began to set and we had figured we had seen everything. Little did we know that we had actually not even entered the market itself, and found ourselves wandering a maze of streets lined with vendors and packed with both tourist and local shoppers for the rest of the night. Of course, the joy of markets on that side of the world is after going home thinking you've spent hundreds, you calculate the exchange to discover that you've left with bags of clothing and souveniers only to discover you've spent little over $20. Not a sight for any female to miss!

Kuala Lumpur
The next day, we deviated from the standard backpacker's Southeast Asia route and flew to Kuala Lumpur. Knowing we only had little over a day to explore, there wasn't much that our itinerary would allow, as most worthwhile activities are a little ways outside of the city. Morgan was unfortunately sick in bed for most of our time in KL, leaving Fiona and I to explore the city as a duo. At the advice of the hostel owner, we woke up early to get our tickets for the Petronas Tower bridge, only to discover that tickets for the entire day had been sold out by 8:30am. We made the most of it, however, and took plenty of pictures from terra firma. With horrid weather in the afternoon, the rest of the time in KL was rather uneventful, although we did manage to entertain ourselves around the city enough to still have a pretty great time.

Singapore
Our bus ride to Singapore was bright and early in the morning, and had us in town by the mid afternoon. With little time to finish up this post, I'll be brief in saying this: it's clean. Really clean. I was afraid to even so much as sneeze in public for fear of being fined. It was a tough couple days without gum. Some of the highlights in Singapore would include:

-a half our ride on the Singapore flyer, where we had a great view of the city
-visit to Merlion park to see the city's big... merlion.
-touring a few of the many cultural sections of the city
-Singapore slings at the famous Raffles hotel
-walking around Orchard Rd
-Harry Potter 5 on opening day (how could we not!?)

While our parents may be a little bit relieved to know that we're now back in the Western world, we're definitely missing SE Asia already. The temples, people, scenery, culture and of course the food will all be sorely missed!

Cambodia

A little late now that we are halfway into our adventures in Thailand, but here is the update on Cambodia.

We arrived from Hong Kong into Phnom Penh and made our way to the hotel for the night. It was pouring rain so we decided to just stay at the Guesthouse and have dinner and then relax in the room for awhile.

In the morning we caught a very early bus to Siem Reap. We decided to spend the extra $3 and take the $9 bus instead of the $6 bus, but we still weren't expecting much. To our surprise though, the bus was quite nice, air conditioned and seemed relatively safe. We tried our hardest to stay awake for the 6 hour journey so we could see the scenery. We were mainly going through the rural areas which we later discovered is about 80% rice farming. It was very interesting and different than any of the farming we have ever seen.

We arrived in Siem Reap and got into our first tuk tuk (with all our bags). We were holding on tightly and hoping that we (and our bags) would make it safely to the hotel! The hotel was very nice and clean and we all had our own beds which was nice.

After deciding over lunch what we were going to do, we heading out to Angkor Wat for the first time to see the sunset. We climbed up a mountain to a temple but unfortunately just as a thunderstorm was approaching. We quickly went down the mountain again and got to the tuk tuk just in time to escape the rain.

The next day we were up at 4:30 to meet our tuk tuk driver and guides for the day. We heading to Angkor to see the sunrise, this time right over Angkor Wat. After we walked around the temples (Ankor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm) for about 8 hours. The temples are absolutely amazing. A lot of them are being restored and parts of the walls have crumbled but they were still very interesting. There are carvings on most of them all around and our guide was telling us all the stories. Needless to say we got home in the afternoon and were exhausted so took a little rest before heading out to the main market area for dinner.

The next day we decided to see some more temples (there is no shortage of them!). This time we just had a tuk tuk driver, not a guide so we went exploring ourselves. We saw Preah Khan, Banteay Srey and Banteay Samre. Again, very big and beautiful temples. We headed back to our hotel, got ready for dinner and went on a spending spree at the market where most things were not more than $4 (if that!).

Cambodia was a very interesting and eye opening country. We were frequently called "lady" and asked to buy anything. All around the temples were very young children who would walk ages alongside you insisting that you buy one of their bracelets or magnets or something. Interestingly, they would ask where you were from, then state the capital and continue with "If I tell you the capital, the PM, the population, the provinces and territories, etc., will you buy something from me?" It was quite difficult at times to continue to say no. It was also very interesting to see the difference between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, as Siem Reap has obviously been hit hard with tourism and is flourishing much more than Phnom Penh. Overall, a very interesting, and like Hong Kong, incredibly HOT country.

Back soon with an update on Thailand!

Hong Kong

Well, leg 1 of the travel has been completed. With 12 minutes on a half-thai keyboard in the Bangkok airport, please forgive the brevity of the update.

We left Sydney the morning of the 28th and flew into Singapore for a 5-hour layover enroute to HK. We are now travelling with Fiona, our friend from England. We arrived late at night and checked into the hostel on arrival so we could rest our tired heads. There is really only one word to describe the HK weather: humid. It's also just as muggy at noon as it is at midnight.

Monday we spent touring the mainland. We wandered the markets, walked in Kowloon park and stopped to take pictures outside the innfamous Chung King Mansion. The main thing to do in HK is stick to the malls to avoid the heat, which we managed to do just fine. At night, we stood at Avenue of the Stars to watch the nightly light show.

Tuesday, we ventured out of Kowloon and up to Ngong Ping. After a 30-minute cable card ride that literally took us into the clouds, we spotted the Big Buddha and stopped for a quick lunch at the monestary before heading to the Peak on HK island. We took the tram up (at an 89 degree angle) to watch night fall on the busy city. The view of all the lights was breathtaking. After a much-needed shower, we set out for dinner in LKF. Much to our surprise (and delight), all the clubs were celebrating Canada Day (known as Canada D'Eh in LKF, apparently). It was a welcome taste of home.

To our parents: don't worry. We are safe, happy and well-fed. We miss you lots, but not too much. We'll hopefully have a chance to update you from Siem Reap!

ศฟีพฟ ฟืก ทนพเฟื (Laura and Morgan... sort of)

Well hello there...

Alright, so we admit to being a bit bad with the updates, but what's a few months between friends? So how do we begin to sum up the past three months of our lives... Well, it's been amazing to say the least.

We've done just about everything we could possibly have dreamed of. Starting off early with a helicopter extraction from the Grand Canyon in the Blue Mountains for a broken ankle, we knew Australia would be a wild ride. A weekend at surf camp, adventures downtown, the zoo, day trips to manly, going to AFL games (Aussie Rules Football) and nights out in Coogee were some of our favourite memories from Sydney.

Our trips outside of this great city were also remarkable. Chilly New Zealand over Easter break gave us the chance to see the beautiful mountains, the lush landscape and a fair share of sheep, as well. It was also adventure capital with horseback riding, glacier hiking/helicopter riding, lugeing, hang gliding and bungee jumping.

While our day trip to Canberra only gave us a few hours to explore the "city", we were glad we went and had a great time checking out the memorials and sitting in some important looking chairs at the parliament house.

The stu-vac (student vacation) was spent apart, although we both went on trips to the Whitsunday Islands up in Queensland. General consensus upon return to Sydney: we spent the semester in the wrong state. Beautifully sunny weather every day, perfectly clear waters and amazingly colourful life on the reef made for the ideal place to study for our exams.

Right, and a quick note to Mom and Dad... I never ACTUALLY promised you I wouldn't... well... you might want to scroll down to the bottom...

Alright, so many of you might ask what we're going to miss the most about living down unda. Below is a short list of things that will be hard to adjust to life without back home:
-Tim Tams. The greatest cookies ever made
-Weather forecasts that call for a high of 20 degrees. Every day (even if for only an hour around lunch)
-Footy (AFL) and the gorgeously toned players. Go Swans!
-Living within 20 minutes of 3 different beaches
-The Aussie accent
-Goon and Passion Pop
-Aussie slang
-The exchange mentality that if something goes horribly wrong on an assignment, there's nothing to worry about. After all, "we just have to pass."
-Looking right, then left before crossing the street
-Being asked where our accent is from and being seen as exotic when we answer "Canada"
-Finally, of course, our new friends!

These three months have been unreal, and we wouldn't trade them for anything. We've learned a lot here and had the times of our lives while doing so. Today we said goodbye to our personal effects and officially started living on a backpacker's wardrobe. We head out to Hong Kong early Sunday morning (Aussie time) for the official start of the after-exchange madness. Stay tuned, as we will be making use of tis blog primarily to keep in touch and provide updates on our position. If you're lucky, there may even be a picture or two. Below, we've written out our itinerary. Some small changes have been made since the initial plan, but all the stops are pretty much the same.

Hong Kong- Jun 28
Phnom Penh- Jul 1
Siem Reap- Jul 2
Koh Samui- Jul 5
Chiang Mai- Jul 10
Kuala Lumpur- Jul 13
Singapore- Jul 15
Athens- Jul 17
Santorini- Jul 18
Ios- Jul 20
Venice- Jul 23
Rome- Jul 25
Madrid- Jul 29
Paris- Aug 2
London- Aug 5
Edinburgh- Aug 9
Dublin- Aug 12
Toronto- Aug 15!

We miss you all so much and can't wait to see you in just under 2 short months! Please email us with your addresses if you expect a post card. Keep it real up North!

Surf camp 2 hours North of Sydney

Canyoning up in the Blue Mountains (pre-ankle breakage)

Hang gliding in Queenstown, NZ

Australia's favourite pastime

Beautiful New Zealand

Parliament house in thrilling Canberra

Whitehaven Beach, Whitsunday Islands

A typical Whitsunday sunset

Reef life in the Whitsundays

The Opera House illuminated for the "Vivid" festival

Mom, Dad... I never promised I wouldn't...

Loving life at 14,000 feet above Sydney

Melbourne: Great Ocean Road

So we are going back in time a bit here. School seemed to catch up with us and we forgot about the blog. After O Week, UNSW has "Week 0" which is supposed to be another prep week with a bunch of seminars on how to write essays and cope with stress and incredibly boring and useless things. So, instead of attending the seminars (which were NOT required), we decided to take advantage of the time off and jet down to Melbourne for 5 days. We left Sunday March 1st (yes, we are going way back in time), and came back Thursday March 5th.

On Tuesday we did a 12 hour tour of the Great Ocean Road, which is the coastal road that goes down South and to the West of Melbourne. We got picked up downtown on our super cool bus (which we have now seen everywhere in Australia) and started out on the tour. It took about an hour to get outside of Melbourne until we started to hit all the surf towns where Rip Curl and Billabong started. The tour involved a lot of driving, as the main goal was to see a sunset at the Tweleve Apostles. We stopped at various points along the way though.

The first stop was to see some kangaroos hopping in the wild. This was our first kangaroo spotting since we have been here, and even though they were far away we were very excited. The next couple stops were some scenic lookouts at high points along the drive. The views were absolutely beautiful and I've never seen so many nice shades of blue in the water. The weather was a little weird though, with gusting winds and rain at points. It made travelling at high speeds along cliffs in a little rickety bus a little worrying at times, but we made it alive!

From one of the beautiful lookout points along the coast.

The second major stop was to see some koalas in the wild. Again, our first real koala sightings, so we were on the lookout as soon as we got to the park. We finally spotted some koalas and got out of the bus to take some pictures. They are incredibly lazy animals, and all but 1 of them we saw were sound asleep. One did manage to wake up as we were looking at it, gave us some glares, yawned and then went back to sleeping.

The one koala that was awake and gave us a yawn!

The third stop along the way was the Loch Ard Gorge, a gorge where a ship crashed in 1878. There were only two survivors of the 51 passenger boat who climbed up the large cliffs to get rescued. We walked around the Gorge for awhile, taking some more beautiful shots. Before we went down into the Gorge though we had our first spotting of some of the 12 Apostles and other rock formations just off the coast, which we would be watching the sunset at later in the evening. However, because of the crappy weather, we didn't get to see much of a sunset from the 12 Apostles, but as we were leaving the Gorge the sun was poking through the clouds and we got to see a bit of a sunset.

The island archway, near Loch Ard Gorge.
Beautiful sunset over the Gorge.

We finally made it to the 12 Apostles (there are only 11 left now) just in time to see the sun disappear behind the massive clouds. The sights were still beautiful though and a nice end to the long day before our 3 hour bus ride back to Melbourne.

A couple of the Twelve Apostles

Bundeena

Moving on to the 26th- we've nearly gotten you all caught up! We woke up early to catch the ferry (pronounced furry by our favourite Spaniard) to Bundeena National Park. We first had to take a train to the end of the line at Cronulla, a cute little town that has lots of nice shops and gives of a Stratford-esque vibe. The ferry itself was old and had that old ferry charm to it, if you can imagine that.

Upon arrival at Bundeena, we were told by our guide (one of the exchange coordinators) that we needed to prepare for a bush walk in which we would see large snakes, really big spiders and maybe a few deer (or dear!). She then went on to say that our goal of the day was to avoid being sent home in a wooden box. Lovely.

A little apprehensive, we ventured out on our bush walk. I, for one, was holding my breath for much of the walk because I somehow convinced myself that might just keep those monster spiders at bay. While we didn’t find any of the above mentioned creeplife, we did come across a number of other interesting things (most of which are pictured below). This included national heritage sites, nude bathers, native art pieces and even a real, live cactus!

Our “experienced” guide was highly competent and managed to get us lost about five times in two hours. By the third fumble, she started getting pretty creative with her explanations of why the trails weren’t quite the same as the last time she was there, or why a detour to see more of the bush we had been looking at for the last hour was so necessary. Frustrated, five of us decided to break off from the group to find the others that opted out of the walk to spend some time on the beach. Not to worry, though. Those of you who know me would agree this was a fantastic idea given my razor sharp sense of direction that relies on my never-fail intuition (yes, Mom and Dad this is Laura writing). It had taken us about 4 hours to get to where we were at that point. We were back to the beach in 20 minutes (okay, maybe Morgan had to take over navigating a bit).

The goal of the bush walk was to see some native artwork. There's some pictured below, feel free to share your comments. We reserve all judgement. Joking aside, the scenery was beautiful. There were fantastic views of small cliffs and the water. The bush was great too, though it did lose its lustre after walking in it for hours and collecting many a scratch and scrape (and hive- lucky me).

We caught a quick swim on the beach and then ventured out to catch the ferry home. It was while waiting with our feet dangling from the dock that I managed to accidentally sacrifice my only flip flops to the beautiful blue ocean. Morgan had a good laugh. The day ended with our first party at the Roundhouse, the university bar. It was a great way to party away the loss of my beloved sandals. May they rest in peace.

View from the ferry enroute to Bundeena

This would be a national heritage site (the rocks under the water). We were instructed very sternly not to touch. We were all in such awe that we had to take a picture, though.


Aboriginal artwork. We think this one would be a representation of primitive roadkill.

The bushwalk featured many a green bush.

View of our picnic lunch stop

O Week

From February 23-27, UNSW has “O Week”, or Orientation Week where all the clubs and organizations set up stalls around campus and try and give you a bunch of free stuff to entice you to join their club. During this week we also had some mandatory exchange orientation sessions, as well as unofficial exchange excursions throughout Sydney.

Monday we decided to be super keen and go check out all the stalls around campus to see what clubs there are. We were mainly interested in finding out about the rowing, but it seems as though they aren’t as intense as home. We signed up to be on the email list, but don’t think we’re going to be able to get on the water for another couple weeks, and even then, things seem a little bit confusing! We are quite anxious to get on the water, especially after seeing the crews down the Yarra River in Melbourne this past week. Needless to say we walked away having given our emails to way too many clubs, and a bag full of brochures and information which we quickly threw out.

The main University Mall full of all the clubs stalls

Tuesday was the start of our mandatory exchange orientation which was supposed to start at 9, but ended up being around 9:45. We all gathered in one of the lecture halls to learn about life in Sydney, our health care, courses and various other seemingly useless things we had already read from the several packages we received. After they provided a BBQ lunch for us and then there was supposed to be a scavenger hunt. Team Canada, as we are known, opted out of the scavenger hunt for a day at the beach. It was finally nice and sunny and our previous experiences with beaches had been full of clouds. One of our aussie friends kindly drove us to Curl Curl, a beach North of Sydney and we relaxed there for the day.

Curl Curl Beach

On lifeguarded beaches in Australia you are supposed to swim between the red and yellow flags. When we first went out, we were in between the flags but decided that we wanted to experience some of the really big waves so went to go swim in them. Despite being able to swim and most of us having been a lifeguard at some point, the waves were a little big and the current was a little strong. We were being tossed around, losing bathing suit pieces left, right and centre and finally got whistled in by a lifeguard to come and swim between the flags. Apparently he could tell we were stupid foreigners and didn’t want to have to come save us!

The red and white flags you are supposed to swim between

The waves we wanted to take on

Wednesday morning was another boring morning of mandatory orientation but in the afternoon they had planned another excursion to “The Rocks”, a part of downtown Sydney right at the waterfront. The mission was to do a pub crawl starting around 1 in the afternoon. We decided that was a little bit too early for us to start drinking so we toured around the area. This is where we had our first up close experience with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Needless to say the cameras were out in full force and we were amazed! After walking around for awhile, we stopped for a nice lunch and some gelato and then joined up with the rest of the pub crawl group. The evening ended off at the Opera Bar, the bar between the water and the Opera house.

Harbour Bridge

First sight of the Opera House!

The views from the Opera Bar at night are amazing

Tropfest

Sunday the 22nd (yeah, we’ve gone back in time a bit here) was Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival. We’re not sure if this was in terms of entries or competitors, but either way it was a great day! We met up early with the other exchange students and headed over to the Domain (a big park) in the early afternoon to grab some lawn. The pictures below pretty much sum up the day. Lounging, munching and living it up like the Aussies do best- chillin’.

Once the sun set, the movie screenings began. Each short film was limited to 7 minutes and had to include the year’s theme, spring, in some way or another. This meant a number of the 16 finalists had surprise endings that were “sprung” on the audience. The evening was also scattered with a couple live performances and air guitar competitions.

The winning film was called “Be My Brother” and used a light-hearted approach to addressing prejudice of those with mental disabilities. The main character was played by a man with down syndrome who was needless to say incredibly excited when he went up to receive his awards (also winning best actor). If you’re super keen on learning more about the film festival (there’s a New York version as well) you can check out the following link: http://www.tropfest.com/



Hanging out in the sun awaiting the official Tropfest movie showings to start. Note the number of umbrellas- contrary to what many people think, Aussies are actually very responsible about their sun exposure. There's a very big "stay out of the sun" campaign by the government, and locals are diligent about wearing sunscreen and hats.


The movie screen and the surrounding crowd. The stage was multi-sided with thousands of people sitting in front of each of the 3 screens.

View of downtown at night

NCV and Interesting Food Encounters

So we know many of you are anticipating these posts. We know it’s been awhile since our last update but we have been super busy as you will see with all of the explanations to follow. Some of you don’t even know what kind of place we are living in so we’ll talk about that first now that we have been settled in here for the last two weeks.

We are living in a university residence. It’s called New College Village. It was just finished being built in January, so brand spanking new! It was mainly intended to be for post-grad students but they hadn’t filled it when we went to ask so they were letting in some poor homeless exchange students which is how we managed to get it.

It’s right across the road from the main entrance to the “uni” (as they say here, none of this “campus” or “school” talk) meaning we have no longer than a 10 minute walk to most of our classes! The bus stop is also right outside the entrance with buses that go basically everywhere we would need to go. In terms of location it’s perfect except it’s a 15 minute bus ride to the nearest beach. Although the shark sightings are holding us back on swimming!

The unit we are in has 6 individual rooms and we share a kitchen and living room. There is no tv in the living room, but there is a common room right outside our door that we can use with a massive wide screen tv. We haven’t had much time to watch but are anxiously wanting to see two shows we have heard about. “Border Security” – an actual broadcasted show on problems the customs people encounter with people trying to get in to the country. And “Bondi Rescue” – a Baywatch like show, but with hot Australian male life guards replacing the babes in red swimsuits and detailing the rescuing they do at the beach 20 minutes away, Bondi. Laura and I are in the same unit right across the hall from each other. Each room has their own ensuite bathroom with shower, toilet and sink. The only thing we had to buy was towels. Each room comes with sheets, duvet and pillow and the kitchen is all equipped with plates, cutler, glasses, etc. This may be the best part though. Our rooms and kitchen get cleaned by the housing staff every Monday and our sheets are replaced. It’s more like a hotel than a university residence!

Our own individual bathrooms!

Half of Morgan's room

The shared kitchen/dining table

Most of our roommates seem to want to have nothing to do with us. We are still waiting for the 6^th one to move in, but two of the ones who have moved in haven’t said anything but “hi” to us yet. There is one nice aussie girl who has moved in and she actually speaks and doesn’t hide all the time. I think they are all done their undergrad though, or at least the one we have talked to is!

As for grocery shopping, we have been adding to our list of crazy Australian food that we are contemplating trying, but have to build up some courage, or also stuff that is just crazy! The list includes: kanga bangas and all variations of kangaroo meat, aussie pizza and burgers which seem to have eggs on them, cheese and bacon balls, yo yo and anzac cookies, pies – possibly from a store called pie face and tasty coon cheese. We did get to experience vegemite at orientation and will not be going out anytime soon to get ourselves a jar!

Pies at Pie Face actually have faces on them!

One of the various Kangaroo meats you can buy.

Our experience with vegemite ended with faces like this!

Disspelling Australian Myths in Coogee

So many of you are all wondering a number of things including: how many hours have we logged on the beach? How many cute aussie surfers have we picked up? Do people walk on their feet? and, most importantly, which way DOES the water flow down the toilet? Hopefully this post will answer all those itching and burning questions. If not, you might want to get that itching and burning checked out.

In regards to the beach: sadly, since arriving on Monday morning (Aus Monday morning, that is) it has been cloudy and pissing rain every day. This has been great for avoiding the beach in order to get things done (like finding a place to live or running around campus a la chicken sans head trying to find four courses that fit into one timetable #$@! arts and science), but is quite obviously terrible for our tans. Today we did manage to squeeze in about 40 min before the clouds started forming overhead.

Aussie boys. Enough said. Well, not quite. It should be illegal to have this many bronzed men on one continent. If you've ever wondered where all the cute, tall and charming boys are in the world, they're here. This is only what we've observed from afar, though. Most of the friends we've made are other international students, many of which are Italian. Apparently, as one of them told us, alfredo sauce doesn't actually exist in Italy so they're dying to try it! This is how we've gotten suckered into hosting a dinner before we're even moved into a place with a full kitchen.

People do not walk on their hands here. It is impossible to go down stairs without the gravity and all.

As for the water drainage myth, we've got a 3-part mini documentary thing that answers the question once and for all.

Part 1: Canadian Toilet (Vancouver, BC)

As you can see, the water was in fact flowing counter (or anti) clockwise! Could this be a defect in the BC plumbing?

Part 2: Australian Toilet (Coogee, NSW)

Note the water flow is neither clockwise nor counter clockwise. It is in fact straight downwise.

Part 3: Australian Sink (for verification in Coogee, NSW)

Taken to clear up any potential mishap from part 2. It appears as though part 2 was a valid trial (alright, so we're not following the scientific method exactly)

Shocking, isn't it?!

A dorky friend provided the following links to explain our findings:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/equator/5264326.stm

http://www.discovery.com/area/skinnyon/skinnyon970523/skinny1.html

However, this is the same dorky friend who's trying to convince me that by crossing the date line only once on this trip that we'll arrive home a day younger. Read and decide for yourselves.

Some other fun stuff we've encountered in Aus so far includes:

• Crossing the street (and seeing children get out of the driver's side of a car)
• Teeny tiny spiders the size of your hand
• The flat terrain in Coogee, with hills at a wimpy 80 degree incline
• Little children with accents!
• Locals who wear jeans and sweaters when it's 25 degrees out (and yes, it's very humid too)
• Rubbish bins, the little gent's room and the bubbler (water fountain)

That just about sums up everything you should all know for now, so please enjoy the pictures! I did have far more, but while on the phone I somehow managed to delete all pictures from the first 3 days. Typical.

One of the gates surrounding the UNSW campus

Streets appear to have been designed for tourists. OCASP people would be glad to know that the Australian government is working hard to reduce all potential hazards for Canadians abroad.

Overlooking the Quadrangle Lawn. See? The sun does shine brighter here!

We tried reading a local newspaper, but had to quit when we realized it was written in a foreign language.

We finally arrive at Coogee Beach! Within half an hour of taking this photo, the pictured friendly clouds peaced out to make way for the giant, dark rainclouds.

Accepted into rez by the seat of our pants!

What a crazy two days it has been!

We arrived Monday morning around 9. We sat on the plane for a while for them to come in and spray all the overhead bins so we don't let anything illegal into the country! We managed to squeeze all of our bags into the taxi and were on our way to the hotel apartment with smiles all over our faces! Our hotel room wasn't ready, so we unpacked our bags in the middle of the entrance to find a pair of shorts and flip flops and head to the university. Only a short 15 minute walk away we made our way to the university and headed to the International Student Service Centre where we got a welcome package. We then told them that we were exchange students, so technically not international and the woman was a little bit confused so then we went to the the Exchange office where we picked up another package. The woman there was very nice and gave us our student numbers and showed our classes. My classes were all fine and I managed to get Friday off, possibly another day too if I want to rearrange things! Laura still has to work on her schedule but the exchange lady seems very helpful. We then went to get our student ids where they had to take a picture of us for the card. Keep in mind we have now been awake in Vancouver for about 14 hours, followed by a 14 hour flight and now have been walking for about 3 hours. Needless to say the pictures are a little bit ugly, and we are starting to smell!

After the IDs, we went to the bank on campus and set up an account. We had been looking at the list of available accommodations at the International Centre and realized that it was useless to call people when we didn't have a number they could call us back on. So we headed into the nearest suburb and got set up with phones. However, having worn boots for the last couple months, our feet were not used to sandals and we had a couple blisters and raw feet to deal with. We stopped for a pair of flip flops each at a wonderful $2.50 and were happy for the rest of the day!

After a quick call home with our new phones we grabed a bite and headed back to campus. Here we proceeded to write down every possible available apartment, shared accommodation or house for 2 people and started calling them. We managed to get an appointment with one woman who claimed she had 2 rooms to rent so we thought it would be awesome. We found this apartment, after getting rained on, and knocked on the door. There were cardboard boxes all over the entrance hall stacked as high as the ceiling, so we thought people may be moving out. But no! The boxes were in fact the wall of the "room" that had no door, just a space in the boxes. And there was only this one room, not 2 as she had said. So we quickly left and headed back to our hotel. Our room was ready so we were able to finally shower and change out of our clothes! We made the rest of the calls to the apartments, most of them taken or only available for 1 person. We began looking on websites and everything too without much luck.

Our hotel room balcony faces a dominoes pizza across the street. Being very tired we decided to walk over there and pick up a pizza for dinner. We finally went to sleep around 10, seemingly void of any jet lag and having accomplished a lot more than we thought in less than 24 hours in Australia!

Tuesday was almost just as busy. We headed to the university again and decided to check out the residential colleges to see if they had any vacancies. The first two sort of laughed at us when we asked and said no. We then walked to the "New College" residence and asked if they had space and to our amazement the guy said yes of course. We went on a tour of the building and filled out an application form, hoping to hear back as soon as possible.

We went back to continue to search for places back at the International Centre incase this one didn't work out. We went and saw a place at 3, but it was not great so we decided not to take it. Finally around 4:30, James, now our hero and named St. James, called to offer us a place at this New College. We managed to get into residence! The place we are living is similar to Marine for those of you at UBC. We will share a kitchen and living space with 5 people but have our own separate rooms with individual bathrooms. It is right across from one of the main entrances to the university, on one of the major streets and bus routes. So basically perfect!

We headed back to the hotel very relieved and excited. Tonight we went to see Slumdog Millionaire with a couple other exchange students and then went for dinner at a Thai place with these students as well. We have just arrived back at the hotel and are getting ready for bed. We appear to not have many effects of jet lag. I guess when the time difference is so large it's not much of a problem!

Tomorrow we have an arrival session for international students in the morning and then an Afternoon Tea for any early arrival exchange students in the afternoon. Thursday and Friday we are hoping the weather is nice and we can finally enjoy and explore some of the city and beaches. We will move into the residence sometime on the weekend.

Vancouver

Hi Everyone!

We're just about to spend our last night in North America, waiting to get some take-out with Morgan's old floormates. We arrived yesterday morning around 9am and checked into the Sheraton Wall Centre. After a quick nap, we walked around campus for most of the afternoon. Laura thinks the campus is really pretty. We met some of Morgan's friends on campus and then we went to The Noodle Box for dinner. Amazing! We came home around 7 and managed to stay up until 11 watching Grey's Anatomy. Today we woke up and went for a delicious breakfast at Cafe Crepe. We then rented bikes and biked around Stanley Park for the remainder of the afternoon. The views of the city, mountains and water were absolutely gorgeous. We took a quick tour around the Vancouver Aquarium where we saw some great sea life. Morgan and I took turns holding a cute and cuddly millipede (see pictures below). After a stroll downtown, we went back to the hotel where we find ourselves now. It looks like everyone has arrived, so we'd best be off for dinner! We'll see you in six months, North America! Try not to miss us too much!

The clock tower at UBC

One of the beautiful views on the bike route

Morgan braving the millipede

Laura being... not so brave

A sea lion showing a gull who's boss at the aquarium

Welcome!

Welcome to Morgan and Laura's travel blog!

Be sure to look here for regular updates on our semester on exchange at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and on our journey back home. With only three days left before leaving for Vancouver, we've been squeezing in plenty of shopping, appointments and goodbyes. It's hard to believe that with over a year of planning from the start, we are so close to finally heading down under!

The map below shows the route we'll be taking around the world. We'll be travelling Westward, with New Zealand as a side trip over reading week in April.

Sorry for making you all jealous. A more detailed itinerary will be put up soon, so you'll have an idea where on Earth we'll be finding ourselves each day. For now though, we wish you all the best from Toronto!