I may very well be the ONLY girl on the Australian continent who currently possesses Cool Ranch Doriots, Peach Snapple, Skippy Peanut Butter and Arrowhead Water. How nifty is that? My taste buds have been in a very good mood recently!
My mommy and Aunt Carol came to visit me these past 2 weeks. Now a bunch of you out there talked a good game, but they are the only ones who actually got on a plane and showed up! So three cheers for that indeed. However, the second place prize for being the first person to actually mail me a care package is still a wide open race. If anyone out there wants to obtain that silver medal, then let me know and I’ll give you my mailing address J
The past 2 weeks have been exhausting. I have no idea how the two of them managed to do all the stuff they crammed in without passing out. I’m dead tired, and I had 4 days of work while they were in town to recuperate and sit on my butt all day long. They both impressed me energy-level wise. They got in a LOT of stuff in a short period of time. Let’s recap!
They got here on Monday the 17th, so I met them on my break and we wandered around for a bit. After work we went out for dinner, where we of course had soup dumplings. I wonder how many times thus far I’ve been out for soup dumplings in Sydney? I don’t think I ever set foot in a restaurant here unless they are making me a cheeseburger or my beloved xiao long bao.
Tuesday the 18th was a really nice day, the first warm one we’ve had in a while. I took them down to Bondi Beach, and we spread out the towels and sat for a bit. The water is still a bit nippy to really go swimming, but we went in about calf-length. We walked around the shops for a bit, and then did about half of the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk. I may or may not have forgotten to put on sunblock, and may have gotten a bit crispy by the end of the day. Ooops? Must make more of an effort to keep in mind that the pesky hole in the ozone layer is DIRECTLY above Australia...
I made them cook me dinner that night. Watching the two of them cook in a hostel kitchen was entertaining. They scrubbed down everything before they used it, and seemed a bit lost at times. I guess it is a unique experience, cooking in a giant kitchen filled with backpackers yapping in a dozen different languages. They did well with dinner though, it was basic, but it tasted good, and most importantly, I did not have to cook it. We headed over to the casino later on, just to check it out. I hadn’t been there yet, nor had I been on the light rail, so it was all new for me too. I was pretty impressed with “the Star” as they now call the casino. It was pretty glam, and has lots of nice, upscale shopping and dining. Said hello to Cheryl at the Sports Bar while we were there. It was weird talking down to her. The bar is kind of in a pit, so the bartenders all seem really short.
Wednesday the 19th we went to the Taronga Zoo, which I’d been to already, but it’s a pretty zoo and we actually did hit up some areas that I’d missed the first time around. I also watched a snake eat a baby chick, which was super cool to observe. I took lots of pictures, but I won’t post any of them here because I doubt most of you want to see that… After the zoo, we took the bus to Enmore so that I could show them my little house and neighborhood. The universe was blessedly on my side, because the house was actually EMPTY when we got here – and this place is never empty. Woo Hoo! Awkward introductions to people I don’t even actually speak to were successfully avoided. Walked them through Enmore Park, and then over to Marrickville Metro to see the mall. Did some nice discount shopping at Aldi, then walked up to Newtown to meet Cheryl for dinner at Thai Po-Thong. It was my mom’s first time having thai food, so that was fun too. Put my mother and aunt on a train back to the city, and then Cheryl and I grabbed a quick drink after at a bar I was curious to check out. It was kind of disappointing, but the drink wasn’t too bad.
Thursday the 20th I had a normal Thursday. Work from 8:30 to 5, then gymnastics. They did their own thing, hitting up Wildlife World, the Sydney Aquarium, and the Sydney Tower. Friday the 21st I did my own thing as well, going to work as per usual, and they did the day trip to Canberra. Ironically, they ended up having the exact same driver that Cheryl and I had when we did the tour last month.
Last Saturday we went on a mini-trip out of the city. They took the train by themselves down to Newtown, so that they could store their luggage at my place before we headed to the Blue Mountains. They did get here eventually, but naturally got on the wrong train first and had to double back. That was all well and good though, since I was late getting to the station anyway J After storing the bags, we hopped a train to Blacktown to go to Featherdale Animal Park. Featherdale, as it was last time, was awesome. One of the koalas, who my mother figured out was named Willie (they have the koala pictures and names on a sign outside of their enclosure, and Willie was the only boy so he was easy to spot), was in party animal mode. He was running around like a bat out of hell, doing laps in his enclosure and nearly trampling the lizards living on the floor every time he made his rounds. Willie was an absolute beast! We took tons of picture and videos of him, but because none of them were done on my camera I don’t have anything to post quite yet. I let my mom & aunt take the pics, and I just enjoyed watching Willie go wild! They had a great time at Featherdale. They got to pet the kangaroos and feed them and all that stuff too. There was even a wallaby with a little joey in her pouch. Featherdale really is an awesome little park. After we were done watching Willie and feeding the roos ice cream cones, we got on a train and headed off to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Aunt Carol liked Katoomba right off the bat, since it’s a tiny town like Havasu, although Katoomba does get a bit nippier. We had to make the beds at the hostel when we got there, although naturally I did not make mine. That’s what parents are for!
I think mommy may have thrown that pillow at me right after this was taken...
Sunday the 23rd we went to the Jenolan Caves. We did two cave tours, the River Cave and the Lucas Cave. I hadn’t seen either on my first trip to the caves, since I did the adventure tour, so this was all new for me as well. The tours were both good, but I think I liked the second one better. The second one involved underground rivers, and watching my mother and aunt climb down ladders:
They both did well though, and everyone was all smiles throughout the tour:
Dinner that night was QUITE special. Not only did I convince them to cook for me, but we cooked KANGAROO. They were both all yappy about looking up recipes, and knowing exactly how to cook it, and needing spices and butter and blah blah blah… I live by the theory that you can cook ANYTHING by either throwing it in boiling water or tossing it in a frying pan. Don’t need nothin’ else. So that’s what we did!
The kangaroo was a bit tough – apparently when you overcook it (which they INSISTED on doing, since they both seemed to be convinced that we were all going to die unless they cooked the crap out of it) it gets harder to chew. But it wasn’t too bad. We paired it with a bottle of red wine, and some fresh veggies in cream of mushroom sauce. A good, home-cooked meal that I didn’t have to home-cook myself.
The next day we went for a bushwalk! It was unexpectedly warm on Monday, but since we were always under the trees it wasn’t too bad. We walked for maybe about 4 hours, first along the cliff walk, and then down the giant staircase, which is close to 1,000 steps down:
It leads to a lower trail, but it’s still only about halfway to the valley floor. We then walked along the lower trail until we got to the railway that leads up to a happy little mountain tourist sport called “Scenic World” at the top of the cliff. Once we got back up to the top though, we saw that a fire had started across the valley. It got quite big quite fast, and we had to damn near walk through it to get back to Katoomba:
Tuesday was the only real minor disaster of the trip. We went whale watching. Or rather, we attempted to go whale watching. It was rainy and the seas were rough, and slowly but steadily about 75% of the boat got unwell enough that they could no longer stand upright. I spent the duration of the voyage lying down in the cabin. A couple of times the captain said there was a whale outside, but when I sat upright I immediately felt light-headed, so I gave up on trying to see anything. I’d like to say it was a bonding experience for the three of us, but we all had our own spot and no one really spoke until the boat was out of the rough seas and back in the harbor again. Turns out in the end we didn’t miss much though. We briefly chatted with one of the girls who managed to stay alert and outside the whole trip, and she said all she was able to get was one glimpse of a tail. My aunt eventually called and complained, since they really shouldn’t have gone out in those conditions, and we did get 3 vouchers to go again, but I don’t think I’ll have time to use them before they expire L
Wednesday was a lighter day. We all did laundry in the morning, then checked out the Chinese garden in Darling Harbor in the afternoon:
Thursday and Friday I went back to work. Spent some time with them Thursday night after gym, and then again on Friday during my break. Friday night we had our last dinner, which was, of course, soup dumplings! Then said our goodbyes and back on our separate ways.
Thoughts on their visit:
Great time! They must be exhausted though, they were just go-go-go for nearly 2 weeks. I was impressed with both of them, particularly my mom though. She was killin’ it. She had her own Aussie mobile phone like 5 seconds after the plane landed and figured out the area and the trains and everything pretty quickly. She figured out the Central station exits better than I even have, and I’ve been here 4 months!
Aunt Carol was quite a fan of the new lingo. She liked “no worries” in particular. AND, I promised Aunt Carol that I would NOT mention one of her questions in the blog, and I am not. See?????? I keep my word! I am vaguely alluding to it though, you know which question I’m thinking of J
It was just so much fun to have them both here. Neither one of them does a whole lot of international travelling, so I was excited for them to be here and excited to show them the new little life that I’ve carved out for myself in the past 4 months. I was also really excited about the presents. I can now wash down my cool ranch chips with arrowhead water. All is right in the world again!
It was also neat sharing some first experiences with them, like checking out Star City and seeing a koala actually…..MOVE for the first time ever. We also discovered the joy of Pie Face. It’s a big chain here, they are everywhere. They make pies. With FACES on them! I also finally tried chicken flavored potato chips. I liked them. No one else did though…
I was a bit sad today, I had no family to hang out with anymore. Back to normal I guess, although normal is actually ending soon, because…
Tomorrow is my last day at HSBC! RAS is almost no more. I only took 5 calls today, as we were only on phone duty for an hour and a half all day. I’ve got a nice part time job lined up for next week, and then Saturday I’m out of here! Enmore and HSBC and really living in Sydney is about to become part of the past. Phase 1 of Australia is ending. Weird! But it’s time, between the job being over and the tide of the house changing, the universe is definitely telling me to head out. I still haven’t any plans past the end of my surf camp, but in a few days I hope to have something that at least resembles an outline of a plan.
So that’s all then, folks. Last day of work tomorrow, followed by a Halloween party at Cheryl’s, and then a few days to wrap up my life here and plan the next phase. Yikes!
Thank you again to my mother and aunt for coming to visit me and brining me all those yummy gifts! I look forward to our next vacation. When are we going to Hawaii???
Stay tuned for my Farewell Sydney entry, coming up in a few days…
congrats on finally eating kangaroo. That's sad that you over cooked it. I bet that woulnd't have happend if you had let them look up a recipie
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