SYDNEY!!!!!!!

Hi guys!! So I spent yesterday and this morning in Sydney for the 1st time seeing everything and going to a concert! Just my luck- it POURED rain the whole entire day... but that didn't stop us. This blog post is going to be an overload of pictures, I'm sure. It was a really exciting time. Now that I've seen some major Australian icons, I really feel like I'm actually here! My friend Talia and I took the train down to the city and it dropped us off right in the heart of the darling harbour. I was SO excited to see everything that I had my face glued to the train window for about 15 minutes. Lets just say I got some weird looks!

Here's my first glimpse of the Sydney Harbour Bridge!!! It's BEAUTIFUL!!! So much bigger and better and more beautiful than any of the pictures I've seen! I was really happy I finally made it!
Taking it all in...even though I couldn't see the Opera House yet.

I was one happy girl. :)

THE OPERA HOUSE!!!!! AHHHHHH

I cant believe I finally saw it in real life. It was smaller than I had imagined, and also REALLY dirty. Kind of a let down, but still beautiful and cool to see none-the-less.

View of the opera house from our ferry ride around the harbour!

Both Australian icons in the same picture! Double whammy!

Of course, I had to have a jumping picture!

Yeeeeeeeah, not too sure about this. The person taking the picture told me to do it.

View of the Sydney from the ferry!

My cousin Mike studied in Australia, too, and recommended this pub called 3 Wise Monkeys, so we went and checked it out. It was a pretty neat place! We ate dinner here which was... well... not their specialty. Haha!

Having a drink after dinner! After we left the pub, we went and got gelato for dessert! Yummmm... I LOVED having a break from our dining halls food for a night!

One cool thing we saw, was a HUGE temporary play place set up for McDonalds. They brought in all of this massive jungle gym equpment because they were filming a commercial. It was really cool to see how it all worked. The Ronald McDonald I'm standing next to was about 11 feet. It was huge!

The beautiful city lit up at night.

Finally it was time for The Fray concert! It was at the Big top at Luna Park (a permanent carnival stationed on the darling harbour.) You had to walk through the mouth of this huge guy to enter the park. Way cool.

Definitely don't know that Asian girl.The Fray was AMAZING and barely anyone came to the concert!!! This was our view of the stage when we first got there before we moved up to row 6!

We were so close that we could hear him actually singing without the microphone's help! It was incredible!

Right up near the stage. I've never been this close to a huge band before, but I guess that's what you get when they play in a country they're not well known in!

The lead singer.

Standing literally 6 feet away from The Fray is a memory I'll have for a while. INCREDIBLE!

So the concert got out around 11pm and we made a mad dash to the train station. We got on our first train fine, but had to wait for the next one for about 2 and a half hours. It was horrible. And cold. And wet. And I was SO tired. We got back to campus around 5am this morning. The past 24 hours have been wonderful, despite all of the bad weather! I've wanted to study abroad in Australia since I was young, so it was nice to finally be able to experience what I imagined it to be like. I have classes today and tomorrow and then break starts! Fiji next week... I'll never understand why I'm so lucky to be living this life!

Miss you all and love you a ton.
--LP--