SCHOOOOOOOOOOOOOL OUT FOR SUMMER! :-D Don't know if you can tell but i'm a LITTLE excited to be done! i gave my presentation and turned in my paper and i'm aaaaaall done. as of tuesday nov 25th @ 4:30pm i officially completed the 1st half of my masters degree! kinda crazy really. on thursday we (most of the americans and a few other students) went to des' house for our thanksgiving day fun. kate (actually lives in arlington now!) had a family tradition of running a mile turkey trot before dinner and thought it would be fun for us to get in on the exercise. her dad was VERY excited to have the run go international and we even got hooked up w/shirts! (see pics) the race went well, however the course was VERY confusing and some people got lost! they eventually found their way back, the 1st group ended up being dq'd cause they took a short cut and the 2nd group finished their mile in ~20mins. i was quite proud of myself for just running a mile (i finished 5th with a time of 9.35). if you know me @ all you know that i hate running, and the last time i had to run the mile in school i just walked. so it was pretty much my goal just to finish w/out walking :) we went back to the house hot a sweaty and drank and ate the day away. we had TONS of food and everyone was completely stuffed, in the typical thanksgiving fashion. it was a beautiful sunny day and we all sat outside on the porch, in a very atypical, but very aussie fashion ;)
on saturday i did some xmas shopping in the rocks. this area of sydney harbor is very famous and every weekend has a whole street lined with vendors. everything is very nice and very austrailan. i won't tell you what i bought because that would give away the xmas surprises!! i brought my roommate, sophie, with me and we had a great time shopping around. after we walked up george street (one of the big main streets in sydney), continued shopping and headed over to china town. she said i HAD to go there before going home. i don't know if it was a must, but it was quite cool. i can see why she would be so amazed with it, coming from france, but i'd def seen shops like that before :) we had dinner @ a taiwanese place and i ordered the beef and veggies noodles, sounds safe right? WRONG!!! it was SUPER spicy :'( i ate it anyway, but my mouth was on fire. on our way back to the bus stop we saw tons of flying foxes over head. i'd seen a few since i'd been here but NOTHING like this. they were all coming form the same area of town (i later heard that they migrate everyday from the botanical gardens to another park in town). it was REALLY cool, check out the video below if you can :)
sunday was a significantly better day (weather wise...one of the 1st in a LOOONG time) and i had a meeting @ bondi beach. i was interested in taking a photography class and met with the french photographer on bondi beach. i'd never been to the world famous bondi before and i was even more excited the weather was nice :) my chat w/marie was only a few mins and so i spent the rest of the morning on the beach. it couldn't have been a better day! around 1pm i got tired of being alone on the beach and headed back to town to meet up with hayley and her friend kat. we ate a quick lunch and headed to maroubra beach to meet up w/other friends. i'd never been to maroubra either and let me tell you, it's DEF worth going to. it's BEAUTIFUL! (see pics)
monday morning i met with christine, amanda, and amanda's friend hassan @ 5am! there is a coastal walk from coogee to bondi and we wanted to go and see the sunrise. let me tell you, that is something i'm GLAD i did before leaving. it was prob one of the best sunrises i've seen and the walk was very nice as well (see pics). after we arrived in bondi we had breky (aka breakfast) and went for a swim. at first we just jumped in the water right in front of our towles...then a local man told us that we couldn't swim there because we weren't between the flags! :-o we had committed the cardinal sin of swimming in oz!!! they're always reminding you to SWIM BETWEEN THE FLAGS!!! after we moved down amanda and i were in search for bigger and better waves to jump over and dive under. we were having tons of fun, and i felt just like a kid again :) after a while we turned around to look back to the beach and realized that all the people were very small! we decided we'd better move back in but all the waves were gone and it was really hard to swim!! eventually the waves helped us out and we made it back to shore, exhausted. here in oz they have a tv show called 'bondi resuce' and it's basically a local, more serious baywatch all abt the rescues on bondi beach. amanda and i joked that we were almost famous, and could have been on bondi rescue! but it wasn't really that serious ;) after we dried off we headed home...well everyone else went home, but i headed back to the beach!! as i'm sure you can tell i'm very excited to have 3 beaches w/in a hour of my house :-D it was another day spent relaxing on the beach.
tuesday and wednesday were STILL nice beach days so i began my quest for a whole week @ the beach :) all this beach time had really taken a tole on my sunscreen so i eventually had to buy a new bottle. apparently the aussies think that since SO many people go to the beach and need sunscreen they can charge whatever they want, which led to me paying $20 for a bottle of sunscreen!!!! wednesday night we went to the city to celebrate julien's birthday and we had a grand old time. thursday, after an afternoon on the beach, i went to my photography class. i've posted the pictures, but they are by request only because the theme of the photo shoot was 'ecole de l'erotique: femmes de casanova', so i'm sure you can understand why i don't think EVERYONE on the internet needs to see them.
today is friday, and it's looking a bit cloudy now but i'm optimistic that the weather will clear up and i'll get to go back to the beach :) now that i have NO school work to do, no one can fuss @ me abt studying and i have NO reason to feel guilty about enjoying the australian sun, sand and water!!! AND since i already mentioned the sunscreen, you don't have to worry abt me getting burned either :-P on a totally unrelated, non-beach note, i have FINALLY fixed my webacam!!!! so feel free to call me on skype sometimes and you can watch me sitting around talking to you, hahaha. miss everyone, and i hope you're enjoying the winter as much as i'm enjoying the beach!
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