Rain rain go away

No blog for two weeks! Shame on me. Nothing hugely exciting has happened, but my time here is really running out, so things are not going to stay that way. Mostly for the last couple weeks it’s been raining. Last weekend it poured so we only went out once on Friday night to Liberty’s homestay to watch Avatar, which I hadn’t seen before then. The rain continued on and off for the rest of the week. On Tuesday I fell sick with some kind of stomach bug and spent the day Wednesday in bed feeling very nauseous. The rain was torrential all day Wednesday as well, with high winds. I guess I was glad I was in bed. On Thursday I felt well enough to get to classes all day. Thursdays are the days I can’t afford to miss because I have class from 9 to 4.

By Friday I felt better and the weather cleared up, so a group of us went into the city to see Vivid Sydney and walk across the Harbour Bridge at night. Vivid Sydney is a citywide event that runs until June when they light up many of the public buildings with colored lights and put on art events. The Opera House was lit up with different artists’ works and was absolutely stunning from the Harbour Bridge. It proved to be well worth our while to go and the city was beautiful at night. I got some gorgeous night shots from the bridge. When we got to the other side we popped in at Luna Park and then took a ferry back across the harbour and got ice cream.

Yesterday Hannah had her 20th birthday party at Max Brenner (a coffee cafe) on George Street so we joined a group of ASCers and a few Australians there for hot chocolate. Afterwards we all walked the length of Macquarie Street to see the rest of the lights at St. Mary’s, the Mint, and the Conservatorium of Music and ended up at the Opera House.

Here’s a quick little Australian economics lesson for you: In Australia, GST or sales tax is included in the sticker price for anything you buy and you never have to pay tips. They also don’t have a 1 cent coin. So what do they do when they charge you, say, $4.06 for a candy bar? They round up the price! Where that extra money goes and what they do with is, I have no idea, but I would really like to know.

I’ve been thinking lately about how I have changed since I’ve been here and a lot of funny little things have popped into my head. For example, we watch a lot of American TV here and every once and a while they’ll show a shot of a car driving down the right (as in the direction) side of the road. A couple times I’ve had an almost visceral reaction because something doesn’t look right to me. I can’t believe that I’ve gotten that used to cars driving on the left side. I think when I go back that driving will be easy to pick back up since I haven’t driven at all since I’ve been here, but it’ll be weird to walk around American streets. It’s probably lots safer though because in New South Wales pedestrians don’t have the right of way and I often feel like that’s the case.

Another funny thing is the words I’ve picked up, like calling dinner tea. I’ve had to stop myself several times from mentioning tea instead of dinner to other American friends, or even Australian friends who don’t call it that. I also say “ages” now, “I haven’t been there in ages!” instead of forever, and I say Maccas instead of MacDonalds. I’m also pretty sure my inflection has changed dramatically but I won’t be sure until I go home and listen to myself talk to other Americans. I think all of us here have picked that up – the kind of lilting up of your voice at the end of your sentences.