A Hui Hou Aotearoa

Yesterday was my last night in New Zealand, and now I am back in Honolulu sitting comfortably in my sister's living room where I recorded the first video for this blog. Weird... It almost feels like I never left, and the last nine months were just a dream, nek minnit, back in Hawai'i.

Thursday night, the few of us left in Orchard Park tried to give Hamilton City one last chance, hoping desperately to run into our favorite (and the only) band in town to hear them play 500 miles, but no dice, we couldn't find them anywhere that night.

The last day in Orchard Park was just strange, it was a far cry from the last days of last semester where no one was talking and we were all fighting back tears. The last few days this time around it didn't feel at all like I or anyone else was leaving. I didn't have to rush, having packed all of my stuff a few days before, and once I was done with my exam on Thursday morning, there was nothing left to do but wait for the bus to take me away from Hamilton forever.

I couldn't leave Orchard Park without one last drink on the dick at cottage 16 with Ove, and what better drink than the last glass of Glenmorangie that Niels bought for Ove on his last night in OP, saved for our last day.

We took a bus to Auckland City and decided to spend my last night in New Zealand at Father Ted's. When we got there, we met up with my friend Shelby and had a great night drinking Guiness and whiskey. I ended up staying up that night until I had to catch my bus to the airport in the morning at around 7am.

I expected to be overwhelmed with emotion at the airport, but I felt nothing. Maybe it was because I was still a little bit drunk from the night before, or maybe it was just because it hasn't hit me yet.

It was a great run in New Zealand, and a great adventure in my life, however brief. I will never forget the people that I've met in my time abroad and all of the great memories that we've shared together. I hope to meet some of you again in the near future and hope that we can stay in touch for the rest of our lives.

A hui hou Aotearoa, it's been an amazing adventure =)

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

To be honest, I had never heard of this hike until some of the other international students did it during Easter break. I saw the pictures and heard about how long it took to do and thought that I would never be able to complete such a strenuous hike. I was in Wellington at the time, and having just hiked Mount Victoria for all of 20 minutes and was completely exhausted by that, I thought there was no way, so even though the pictures they shared were so amazing, I just settled on the belief that this was one site in New Zealand that I would never get to see.

Feeling like I needed something more in my B-semester, I started talking to some friends about going hiking, and toyed around with the idea of working up to the Tongariro Crossing, but still in the back of my mind, it was a bit of a pipe dream. As the semester rolled away, my self doubt turned into excuses and I convinced myself that I wouldn't have time to do the hike, but then when my childhood best friend Tanya planned a trip to visit me before I left New Zealand, this was at the top of my list of things to do, so I planned a trip to Tongariro and invited some friends to join.

Our group consisted of me, Tanya, Silje, Linn, and Hannes. Ashley was supposed to join us, but ended up spraining her ankle a week before the trip, and had to cancel. We also picked up a group of guys, but being stereotypical Norwegian outdoorsmen ;) their hiking pace and desire to climb mountains covered in snow exceeded the rest of us, and they went off on their own to climb Maunga Ngauruhoe aka Mount Doom.

*Side note, never show up to a hike in jeans when with Norwegian people (it's not a big deal in Hawai'i okay)

Our day went a little something like this - and the times are just a guesstimation

2:45am: wake up
3:30am: girls and Hannes ready to leave

Now before we go on, I have to mention that we were planning on leaving Hamilton at around 4am, but the guys thought that it would be a better idea to leave at 3am, so we made a compromise to leave at 3:30

4am: GUYS are still not ready to go
4:15am: after much discussion figuring out their GPS, the guys are finally ready, but need to fill up on petrol. Finally we were off, the guys with their GPS insisting on leading the way. On the drive we ended up taking some random side roads in the middle of the night, barely making turns, missing turns and pulling U-ies, etc. etc. I should have lead the way using the maps on my phone.
6:55am: we actually get to the shuttle station almost on time, only about 5minutes late! On the way the driver gave us his little speech, "today is about having fun, if at any point it stops being fun, if you haven't reached the red crater, it's best to turn around and come back, if you've passed the red crater, it's best to just keep going."
7:30am: start hike
7:32am: Silje already sick of her hiking stick
7:35am: too hot, time to remove a layer, first fika (Linn's acclaimed most important Sweedish term meaning, well anything really, but in this case meaning a rest bit)
7:40am: guys (except Hannes) are gone

After this, I kinda lost all sense of time until the very end.

The first part of the hike was nice and gradual, most of it on a boardwalk alongside a stream.

We decided to fika because the backdrop was amazing and we had a great view of Mount Doom in the background. Begin jumping pictures in front of Mount Doom.

This was before we knew what was in store for us up ahead.

The first difficult part of the hike was dubbed the "Devil's Staircase" quite appropriately. At the start of this leg of the hike was a sign reading something to the effect of, "STOP! Are you sure you want to continue?" I really wish I took a picture of it, it was not the most encouraging sign.

The Devil's Staircase was pretty tiring, and we had to stop and take a few fika on the way to catch our breath. When we finally got to the top, we knew that the hard part was still to come. An older man overheard us and offered "do you want to hear the truth or good news?" I wanted the truth. He told us that there were two really hard parts on the hike, and that (as he points down toward the Devil's Staircase) was one of them. Okay, cool. That's manageable.

After a little bit of an incline for a while, we approached what we assumed to be the second hard part. This uphill climb to Red Crater peak of the crossing was a tough one and super sketchy in some places, especially with so many people on the trail one right behind the other. If you fell, you would most likely take out a bunch of people with you, and lucky me, I was up in front with all my friends behind me. I kept thinking about how terrible I would feel if I rolled back on all of them.

Just to give you a visual, the Devil's Staircase is that first really steep incline between the Soda Springs and South Crater, and the second rough part is the one up to the Red Crater.

The Red Crater was really cool, and once you got to the top, you got a stunning view of the Emerald Lakes below.

As you can see, part of the lakes were still frozen over as New Zealand is currently in the Spring season heading into Summer. It was actually kind of a bonus for me to see the mountains a little bit snow covered, it was like getting to experience Tongariro in two seasons.

The next part of the hike way more of an attempt not to lose your footing as you practically slid down the ashen mountain. I found that it was easier to just walk it sideways and let it be. The more I tried to control my footing on this part, the worse it seemed to be, so I just slid my way down step by step, trying to keep a steady pace. This way yet again another really sketchy part of the crossing.

When we got to the bottom at the Emerald Lakes, we took our lunch break and sat by the glittering water. I was so tempted to jump in, it looked so enticing, but jumping into a lake of sulphuric acid is not the best idea, so I had to be satisfied with the view.

The next part of the hike was the most hilarious, we had to trek though quite a long way though snow that was semi melted because of the summer sun, did I mention that we had unbelievable fantastic weather that day? Seriously, it couldn't have been any better. As we were walking through the snow Hannes commented that "this must be what it's like to walk around when you are drunk" which he was totally spot on about. What made the whole situation harder was that once he made that comment I couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous I must have looked. And of course, because I was laughing so hard, I wasn't making the best footing choices, which would make me stumble through the snow even more, which would make me laugh even more, all the while running out of breath from laughter and general exhaustion.

Once this stretch was done, it was over yet another hill, and then we had to walk along the steepest hill of snow on the narrowest pathway of melting snow, now that was by far the most sketchy part of the whole trek. I took a picture, but it doesn't really give you any perspective on the steepness, and I was too sketched out to take another pic and hold up the people behind me.

When we finally got to the Blue Lake, which was still completely frozen over, it was all downhill from there, sort of. As I had heard before, the last part of this hike is the worst. It didn't seem so bad at first getting from the Blue Lake to the Ketetahi Hut across the site of the most recent eruption on August 6th. We often passed signs reading, "WARNING" something about an active volcanic site, "walk quickly, avoid taking breaks." Sure it was long and full of switch backs, but it was nice to know that we wouldn't be climbing up any more steep mountains. Just when the downhills were starting to get to my knees, we reached the hut and had another fika. Good opportunity to empty the shoes and socks of all the accumulated debris.

Side note, I wore the WORST socks ever for this hike. I was thinking that it would be a good idea to wear some high knee socks in order to keep the debris from getting in between my toes and what not. Too bad the socks I chose to wear are made out of the worst material ever and all the dust and tiny rocks went THROUGH the material to settle in between my toes anyway. In addition to that mess, every time we walked though snowI would get bits of ice in my shoes and it would melt to make a nice little soup.

After the fika at the hut, we continued our descent thinking, it must be almost over. WRONG. THIS was the worst part of the entire hike, it seemed to never end, and this time the scenery wasn't all that much to look at. We hiked forever through dry bush, and not much else with no promise of an end in sight. THEN, another set of stairs going UP!? What? I thought we were only going down from here!

FINALLY, the bush turned into a jungle, which was a welcome change of scenery for me and really reminded me of home.

The rest of the hike went a little something like this:

The part where we were in the jungle. 

The part where the jungle ran alongside a stream.

The part where we had to take a detour through the jungle because of the recent lahar mudflows.

By this point we were starting to feel like we were so close, and yet so far! Every time we thought it was over, we would run into something new.

The part where the stream and the pathway became one.

We hiked through a bit more of this jungle, and I could feel the blisters about to form on my feet, and my knees being really angry with me. There was a rock pressing against the bottom of my foot, but I was so determined to finish this hike and felt like stopping at this point would make it so much harder to continue.

I looked at my watch, if we got out of this jungle in the next 10 minutes, we will have finished the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in just about 7 hours. That's two hours less than I was expecting, and right now I was feeling like I could not do another two hours of this.

7 hours and about 15 minutes later, WE MADE IT!!!!! and no one had enough energy to take a picture of our success, haha.

Northland - Kerikeri, Cape Reinga, Hokianga, Bay of Islands

Leg two of Tanya's trip to Aus-NZ began in Northland. We rented a car for the week and I was the designated driver, Tanya the navigator. From my mini get away with Shelby the week before I was already anticipating getting a bit lost, especially trying to get out of Auckland without a GPS and no wifi to use the maps on my iPhone. Here we go. Note to future travelers, New Zealand has TERRIBLE road signage, no offense, but it does.

We started off our road trip by getting stuck in Auckland unable to find our way from the airport to the 1 going north for about an hour, awesome. At least I was able to keep my cool behind the wheel and didn't get too anxious like I did my first time drivingintherightsideofthecarontheleftsideoftheroad. When we were finally north bound on the 1 it was smooth sailing for the rest of the drive, until we accidentally took the scenic route to Kerikeri via the Bay of Islands. By the time we got to our final destination, it was already about 9pm (i think) and we had been on the road since 4.

We stayed with a friend of my sister's that I was meeting for the first time. It was very gracious of her to let us stay for a few days in her home. Kristina was the best hostess and even prepared dinner and breakfast for us before we were off on our daily adventures in Northland.

By Kristina's recommendation, our first stop on Sunday was to visit the Stone Store, one of the first Western settlements in New Zealand, and one of Kerikeri's most historical sites.

This also happened to be the site for Rewa Village, a replica of a traditional Māori village.

After visiting the Stone Store and Rewa Village, we headed all the way up North to Cape Reinga. On the way we couldn't resist stopping at Cable Bay on this beautiful beach covered in shells, my favorite!

On the drive to Cape Reinga we passed some pretty bad weather, but once we got through to the tip of New Zealand, we broke through the rain clouds and had some pretty decent weather.

The next day we booked a horse trek in Hokianga, my first time riding a horse EVER!!! I was soooo excited, I had been waiting for this for so long, but for some reason, it never seemed to work out.

The horse I was riding was called Mavrick, and Tanya's was called Kiki. I have to be honest, it was a bit nerve wrecking being on a horse for the first time. It didn't seem as high off the ground as I thought it would be, but still, high enough that it would suck if I fell. I was also surprised that it didn't feel as secure in the saddle as I imagined it would be.

We took the horses from the stable, along the Waimamaku river to the beach. There were some pretty sketchy parts of the trek where we went along a really steep hill on the most narrow trail, and for some reason, Mavrick really liked to walk as close as possible to the edges. When we finally got to the beach, this was the only picture I could manage, not wanting to drop my iPhone and having no easy access pockets that I could store it in.

This is also about the time that Mavrick decided to do some trotting to catch up with the others as his walking pace was a bit slower than the other horses. That took a bit getting used to, but by the end, I think I got a little more comfortable with it.

On the way back, Mavrick did a few things that were a bit crazy. He was a bit of a trailblazer that one. There was one point where he took me over a hill and I thought he was going to jump over a piece of driftwood, but thankfully he went around at the last minute. On the really steep part on the way back he also tried to make his own trail, but I had to pull him back on course. It was really funny when the horses would try to stop to get a snack, but we had to pull them up to stay on course. I swear Mavrick was communicating with me the whole time. He would look back at me like "are you seriously going to make me walk through this mud right now?" and "really? You're not going to let me eat this grass, but you expect me to carry your ass around?" and you could tell that Kiki had hierarchy over him, because at times when he would trot to keep up, she would shoot him a look not to go in front of her and he would stop. I was a bit sad because throughout the Northland trip, I was hoping to find a paua shell, and I actually did see one on the horse trek, but because I was so high up and couldn't stop to get off, I didn't get to pick it up =/ oh well, it wasn't meant to be. Anyway, the horse trekking was AWESOME, I loved it!

We were done by around 1pm, and planned to check out the sand dunes and surf down them, but by the time we got back to Opononi, the last boat to the dunes was finished and we missed it. Since we still had the whole afternoon, we decided to go to the kauri forest and see Tane Mahuta, the largest kauri tree.

It was pretty funny because when we started walking through the forest path, neither Tanya nor I knew what a kauri tree looked like, so as we passed by some really small trees of various species along the way we exchanged a "maybe it's this one" "maybe it's that one" until we turned a corner and saw this giant. You can't really tell the scale from this photo, but this tree was massive, and we had to laugh at ourselves thinking that these puny trees might be the kauris.














That night, we turned it in early and spent some time visiting with Kristina. It was really nice to hear her perspective on the Māori culture. The next morning we woke up early to catch the whanau and say goodbye before they left for school and work. Before heading down to Auckland to visit with our friend Shelby, we took a detour to the Bay of Islands. We wanted to take a boat around the area, but it was a bit pricey and the weather wasn't the greatest that day, so we passed on the boat and walked around the town for a bit. We also took some time to chill out on the beach and look for more shells. When we had our fill of the Bay of Islands, we returned to find a parking ticket on the car, New Zealand has awful signage, I did not see a no parking sign or a parking meter anywhere =/

It was a really nice trip to Northland, but I was ready to head back down toward Hamilton for more adventures.

Bondi, Australia

Tanya and I decided to spend our last two nights at Bondi Beach. She booked us a room at the Swiss Grand Resort and Spa, but warned me on the cab ride there that she didn't think it was going to be a very nice hotel based on the ratings she read of it. For me, I'm used to staying at Uncle Billy's with about 6 people in a 2 person room, so I was thinking it was probably going to be just fine, nice even. Lets just be real, I'm not the fanciest person in the world, so I was actually thinking that this place was probably gonna be really nice for my standards. We even joked that it might end up being super nice, and the joke will be on us. We pull up to the hotel and see that it has a huge lobby that was pretty fancy looking, and all I can do is laugh.

We arrived at the hotel pretty early, so we couldn't check in right away, but as soon as we walked through the doors, the concierge was there to take our bags from us so we could walk around the town while we waited for our room to open up. As we checked in, we were surprised to find out that they had given us a free upgrade to an ocean view king suite, awesome!

At this point I'm thinking, one way or another, whether the room is really nice or ends up being really shabby, I am in for a good laugh. This is the room we ended up with.

Bondi was another beautiful part of Sydney, full of the stereotypical blonde surfer types that you would assume to find in Australia. We spent some time at the beach relaxing and soaking up the sun, checked out some of the shops, and chilled out in the hotel room on the deck.

On our last full day in Bondi, we took a walk from Bondi to Bronte. All along the walk, there were installations of Sculptures by the Sea, which was really fun to see.

I didn't take too many pictures on the art walk, but these were some of my favorites =) and geometric pieces in mustard are some of Tanya's favorite things.

That night, we went out for tapas and sangria, which was great. I also saw a bat in the trees across the street, my first time seeing a bat in the wild, which was pretty cool. And that concluded our trip to Sydney.

True Blue Mountain Tours / Featherdale Wildlife Park

If there was one thing that I could afford spending money to do while in Sydney, this was it. I saw a brochure for the tour in the lobby of the hotel while I was waiting for the room to be available, and really, the selling point for me was the admission for the Featherdale Wildlife Park which advertised cuddling a koala and feeding and patting kangaroos. Shelby recommended to me to go to Blue Mountain if I could, so I knew this was something I had to do. The animals were just a bonus!

The tour started when the bus came to pick us up at our hotel at 7:20am. We had a few more pickups to do before we headed out to our first stop on the tour, Olympic Park. At first, I was just thinking that we were going to some park that was just in an area called Olympic, or whatever. It actually didn't even cross my mind that we were going to the actual park where the 2000 Summer Olympics were held. Cool, more stuff I didn't realize I was paying for. It was neat to be on the Olympic grounds, but nothing too special without the vibe and energy of the games.

The Olympic Torch and just one of the stadiums. When we got there, there was some kind of world firefighter games going on as well which was pretty cool and interesting, but we didn't have too much time to check it out.




After the stop at the Olympic Park, we were off to the Blue Mountains. We spent way too long in traffic on what our tour guide Vincent said was the worst road for traffic in Sydney, and was in an ugly industrial part of the city, so not very visually stimulating, but at least we had air conditioning in the van.

Once we finally got our of the traffic, we had a little bit of a stop in a town called Leura where Vincent wouldn't stop talking about this sweet shop, so we had to check it out. It was cute, but nothing special. The town itself was also a pretty cute place to visit with a few cafes and shops.

Peek-a-boo! ====>

Leura was also our first natural scenic stop on the trip. These are the Leura Cascades, which I was actually expecting to be a lot bigger from the advertisements, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Reminded me of home =)










After our stop at Leura, we were finally headed to the Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains were really beautiful and it was nice to get to see some of the nature in Australia. First, we took the Skyway cable which took us across the mountains to the Scenic World vistor center, passing by the Katoomba Falls to the start of the walks through the old mining sites.

Next we rode the Scenic Railway, claimed to be the steepest railway in the world. It used to be for coal mining, but has since been changed into a tourist attraction. At the bottom of the railway, there are several paths through the eucalyptus forests and the old coal mining sites.














Unfortunately, with so much booked into the tour, we didn't have very much time to explore or walk through some of the longer paths. That was the main downside of this guided tour for me. I would have liked to spend some time hiking through some of the many trails that were in and around this Natural Heritage site, but we had to rush to our less than satisfying lunch in order to stay on schedule.

Here's a picture of Tanya and I with the famous Three Sisters in the background.

After lunch we headed to what for me was anticipated to be the highlight of the tour, the Featherdale Wildlife Park! Yay, koalas and kangaroos! I'm so excited!!!

We got to the wildlife park, and I was giddy like a child, as per usual when it comes to me and animals, especially with the promise of getting to snuggle them or pet and feed them. Seriously, I need to work at a petting zoo or something. It was already afternoon when we got to the park, and as soon as we entered, there were little kangaroos lounging around pretty much loose within the property. I thought it was pretty cool that they were just amongst the people instead of within an enclosure. As we continued though the park, it was really cool to see the wombats, tasmanian devils, kangaroos, koalas, and kookaburras, all native to Australia. I loved how up close and personal you could interact with the animals, as seen with Mr. Kookaburra below =)

Taking this picture was hilarious because I was so close to the bird, but not sure if it was going to bite my hand or my camera, so as I was cracking up, I was still trying to keep at a distance from the little guy.

Unfortunately, as we continued through the park and got to take our photo with the koala, I was noticing how unhappy and tired the animals all looked. It was really sad =( The animals all looked really stressed out and the enclosures were really small, and even though I love the interactivity with all the animals, I found that I wasn't really enjoying myself. I think the saddest part for me was seeing the wallabies fenced into such a small space that didn't feel like a natural habitat at all, especially after seeing how happy and free the wallabies were at the Paradise Springs in Rotorua. Plus you got to pet those ones and they seemed to like it and the food. The way that these wallabies were caged made them look mean and angry, not cute and cuddly like I remembered them. I left the Featherdale Wildlife Park feeling a bit sad and dissatisfied with my experience, but it was still fun to see some animals that I dont think I have ever seen before.

After the wildlife park, we had one more stop to take a ferry back to Circular Quay, the main harbor in Sydney. Originally we thought we would just be taking a short ferry from one harbor to the next, but we ended up taking the River Cat for a good 30-45min ride, which was nice despite the cold wind and my summery outfit. We also met a really nice older couple from the UK, and had some nice conversation with them. When we finally rode in under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and docked at Circular Quay, the tour was officially over. It was a nice way to end the long day, and I was feeling pretty tired and ready for some dinner. All in all, I'd say it was a great day.

Wandering Around Sydney with my Bestie Testie ;)

Tanya FINALLY arrived, and the first thing on the agenda was to crack open a bottle of wine and catch up. The next morning I woke up to a tiny headache, but nothing too serious, and we had some lost time to make up for, so we got started on our day pretty early.

I knew that Tanya would obviously want to see the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, so we made our way though the Royal Botanical Gardens and down to the water. The weather was fantastic, so we just decided to explore the whole day. After spending some time at the harbor, we decided to take a ferry to Manly by Tanya's Aussie co-worker's recommendation. The ferry trip was very nice, and when we got to Manly, we took a walk to the main beach and along the water to another smaller cove called Shelly Beach where we spent a good hour or so relaxing. As indicated by the name, it was a nice spot to find some shells =)

Still wanting to take a walk across the Harbour Bridge, we walked back to the wharf and took the ferry back to Circular Quay (pronounced key apparently - glad I didn't say that one out loud before learning better). Not really sure how to get to the bridge, we just decided to walk along the water toward The Rocks until we happened upon a pedestrian access to the bridge. We kept seeing signs pointing to The Rocks, but for some reason, it felt like we weren't quite there. Finally we realized that The Rocks must be the whole area that we were in, and proceeded to find the bridge access.

The walk across the bridge had a nice view of the harbor, but felt a bit caged in. It's been a few years since I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, but I don't remember it being so caged in like this one was. I guess the Aussies want to take extra precautions to prevent jumpers. They even had a security guard, who I was tempted to take a photo with in honor of my volunteer bridge marshall work, haha.

When we got to the other end of the bridge we took the train back to the city to get some dinner at Darling Harbour. When we got off the train, we didn't really know where we were going, so we just started walking toward the water and ended up in Chinatown. Using the maps app on my phone, we followed the general direction toward the water, but ended up getting a little bit lost in the industrial area and eventually ended up at Darling Harbour. By this time, we were pretty hungry, and there were lots of restaurants along the harbor to choose from. We ended up eating at a place called Olivio's, which was really yummy, and a pretty good deal as well $35 for an appetizer, main, and a glass of wine.

When dinner was over, we walked across a little bridge at Darling and discovered that it was pretty much a straight shot to our hotel, which funny enough was only a couple of blocks away from the place where we got off the train before getting lost.

Here's a map of the route we took, a total of about 8.75 miles walked. Good way to make up for lost time =)

View Wandering Around Sydney in a larger map

Solo in Sydney

So, this trip did not start out as smoothly as we would hope... first, the woman attending the check in at Auckland Airport couldn't find my flight reservation, then I ended up having to pay an extra $75 to check in my luggage =/ That's one less thing I get to do in Sydney.

I arrive in Sydney and was a little bit worried about how or where I was going to meet up with Tanya, since I wasn't expecting to be completely off the grid with my wifi, we hadn't set any solid plans. The only thing we discussed was that she would most likely be meeting me at my gate, but when I got off the plane I didn't see her. I figured I should just proceed through to customs to see if she was waiting at baggage claim. Still no sign of Tanya, so my next step was to get out of the terminal and find the nearest wifi hotspot, which was at a coffee shop right outside. I finally checked my e-mail and facebook after only three days, and it was like I had gone missing for three weeks.

Most of the messages were from Tanya, her flight got delayed and then cancelled because of fog in San Francisco and she would be missing the connecting flight to Sydney, so she wouldn't be able to make it until the next morning =( I could tell that she had been in a bit of a panic, not hearing from me or being able to contact me, but she just so happened to be online when I finally connected, and was about to leave for the airport in Seattle for her second attempt to catch a flight to Sydney. She sent me all the information to the hotel that she booked, so I took the train into the city and checked in. I wasn't really feeling too in the mood to explore and figured that she was getting in the next morning and that we would want to see the major sights together anyway, so I took the delay as a sign that I should probably try to get in some studying that day.

Later that night, I went downstairs to a cafe to check on Tanya's status and what not. Bad news, another delay with her flight to Sydney, but now she was in LA, so she was on her way at least, but then another message that her flight was cancelled yet again! The earliest she would be getting to Sydney was 9pm on Monday night. UGH!

I had already made plans to meet up with a friend from AMDA that I hadn't seen since we graduated in 2008, so that was nice. Caitlin and I met up for coffee/tea at the cafe downstairs and it was really nice to catch up with an old friend and talk about our careers and what not before she had to go to work. I couldn't spend another day sitting in the hotel room, so I decided to take a walk down to the harbor the next day and do the solo tourist thing.

I ended up walking around the Royal Botanical Gardens and along the water till I reached the Sydney Opera House.

Despite the crazy wind, and the bad choice to wear a flowy dress, I decided to sit at the harbor for a while and take it all in. I love sitting and watching the water, thinking about life and the next adventure, whatever that may be. I guess I've always been one to wonder how far the sea could take me.

When it started getting too cold to hang out for much longer, I made my way back to the hotel. I went to the McDonalds on the corner to steal their internet to get an update on Tanya's status, and saw another bunch of messages and updates of more delays, luckily she was finally on a plane, but then the next message was that there were more delays on the plane, and that they were just sitting there waiting for another couple of hours and that she probably wouldn't arrive until about 10pm.

So I went back to the room, unsure of what time Tanya would actually be getting in and hoping that she would make it that night. On the way back, I decided to pick up a couple bottles of wine, some chocolate, strawberries, and some breakfast, thinking she (and I) would need at least one of those when she finally arrived. At about 11pm, I started getting pretty sleepy, and still unsure of whether she would be getting in that night or in the morning, I just told myself I would stay up until at least midnight. About 15min later, I heard a knock on the door, and Tanya was finally here =) Thus our adventure began.