Wallabies Wallabies Wallabies

My first week here is over and classes have already started.  I guess I should fill you all in a little bit on what I did for the rest of last week.

Thursday it continued to rain.  We decided that it was a good day to go to the movies.  None of the Northeastern girls had seen Harry Potter because we left the day it came out in the U.S.  So we were excited when we realized it was playing at IMAX theater here in Sydney.  Even better, the IMAX theater here is the biggest in the world!  So we took a taxi over in the rain to Darling Harbour to watch the movie.  Two hours later it seemed to have stopped raining so we decided to attempt to enjoy the weather by walking back.  Well it was an adventure.  Of course not five minutes into our walk (after getting directions and walking through a convention center) it starts to pour again.  The girls were troopers though and so we kept walking and eventually made it all the way back to the unilodge.

After drying off and warming up a bit we went back out into the rain.  There was a welcome party for the international students at Manning Bar.  Manning is a bar that is on campus and run by The University of Sydney Union.  The bar it self is actually pretty cool and the welcome party wasn’t bad either.  I’ll have to go back on a regular night and check the place out.

Friday I didn’t do much of anything.  It kept raining so I stayed in.  Plus I needed to save my energy for the rugby game on Saturday!  Luckily the weather cleared up for Saturdays game so at 6:30  a group of us went out for dinner and drinks before meeting up with the international student group to go see the Wallabies (Australia) take on the Springboks (South Africa) at Sydney Olympic Park.

I’ve never seen a rugby game before so it was very cool to watch and try to learn the game at the same time.   It’s very quick and the clock doesn’t stop like with American Football.  This turned out to be a very good thing because we were all freezing by the end.  We stayed until just before the end and then ran out to try to catch the train.  I don’t think I’ll pay to see another game here but if I do happen to be in New Zealand in September for the Rugby World Cup I’ll definitely watch one there.

Sunday proved to be another big day.  We got up early and headed over to Circular Quay (pronounced circular key).  From there we took a ferry across the harbor to Taronga Zoo.  It’s known as “the zoo with a view.”  It’s just like any other zoo but of course it’s got a whole section of Australian animals.  I was looking forward to petting a kangaroo and holding a koala but unfortunately I didn’t get the chance.  There is no koala holding at this zoo and you could only pet the kangaroos and wallabies if they were in a specific area, sadly they weren’t in that area when I was there.  I did get some pretty cool pictures though.  Check them out.