Ponderings....

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever get Australia out of my blood. I got home and felt so discontent and even transferred schools and yet, Aussie Aussie Aussie!! Its a good thing though, I'm not floating around with my head stuck on another continent but I really do miss it. So now I'm here in Nashville, Tennessee studying communications and worship arts but I'm still working on adjusting. One way that Australia has really affected me is that when I left for Australia I wanted to study music and communications so that I could work at a music magazine but now I'm being led a different direction. I'm excited because I have been thinking that I want to work for a non-profit organization like Fair Trade or Global Sister Goods. I want to do something with my life that will benefit someone other than myself whether that be leading worship full time at a church or working for a non-profit organization making sure that little children in Africa have water or that people harvesting the coffee beans that I enjoy so much are getting paid fair wages. It's exhilarating! I've been searching for an internship these past couple months and am going to start e-mailing some connections to see if God brings anything my way. An internship at a church leading worship and event planning or working for a non-profit organization are the two places I am really looking at so I'm just having faith that God will lead me as he has been doing the past nine months so faithfully. He laid this verse upon my heart a few months ago and it is still something I cling to:

"The Lord says, I will guide you along the best path for your life. I will advise you and watch over you."
Psalm 32:8

Adventure take two....

So it has been about two months since I got home from the "best semester" of my life, and already so much has changed from when I left. In my head I told myself that I knew when I got home things wouldn't be the same because I had been gone for four months and life moves on! Buuuut I think I still slightly expected things to be how I left. I came home feeling unwilling to go back to Olivet, my best friend moved 20 hours away to start her new life as a "big girl" in the "real world", Bo was moving to North Carolina to become a firefighter, and I felt like I got thrown back into the high spin cycle on the washing machine and I was getting really dizzy. I tried to just plow through and continue as if things were the same as when I left but I knew they weren't. God was poking and prodding me in a new direction and I wasn't having it. I was still in denial that things were going to change radically at the end of the summer and I was going to pretend that we were all going to happily contiune our lives as if nothing had changed. I finally stopped trying to avoid the inevitable and when I shut up long enough to listen to what God was trying to tell me the washing machine feeling finally stopped and I found clarity.
God has always communicated to me through music. It has always been our language to each other and so I wasn't surprised when that was how he started preparing me for changes ahead. I'd be playing guitar and words would come to me about trust, I was in church and we sang a song that said, "You make all things work together for my good", and over and over again he was showing me that he knew the best path for me and that he would lead me. I began wondering if I should consider checking out Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville again because it had been my other serious option other than Olivet my freshman year. The next day my mom asked if I thought I should go visit Trevecca so I was like okay God I get it and I grabbed my dad and that weekend we drove the seven hours down south to visit this school. I got there and I loved Nashville of course but I was still kind of oh, I'll just go back to Olivet for at least a semester and see how it goes. But I just felt more and more drawn to Trevecca and everything began falling into place and before I knew it I was transferring to Trevecca and was going to be in their worship arts program!
It's funny how when I left for Australia six months ago, I thought I would come home and life would just pick up where it left off. That everyone would be in the same place they were when I left even though my life had changed drastically. I think it was good though because God didn't let me come home from Australia the same girl who left. He taught me a lot about listening and trusting when I was there and even more when I got back. I thought he took away my support system so that I would trust in him overseas, but now he's taking it one step further and doing it again even when I'm back in America which I think will be harder! It was easy to be in Australia and just tell myself that in four months when I got home I would see everyone I usually rely on for support. I'm excited to see what God has to show me in Nashville and to see the purpose in him bringing me here. I don't doubt that there is a purpose.
So here I am. At the next phase of my life. Standing on the brink yet again, my fourth time in a new environment not knowing any friends just waiting for him to show me what he wants from me now that I'm being vulnerable.Maybe I'm crazy but I always thought God used the crazy people :)
Adventure, take two!

New Zealand, the land of Kiwis: the birds, the fruit, and the people

My last week in Sydney was absolutely wonderful and filled with all of my favorite aspects of Sydney life. I rode the ferry one last time, went to all my favorite markets, waved goobye to my beloved Gladesville bridge, blew farewell kisses to the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and took pictures of all my favorite places. I realized the night before I left while I was packing how not okay I was with leaving Australia. The only thing that made it a little better was the anticipation that the next morning I would get to experience a whole new country, New Zealand!

I had always heard New Zealand described by Australians as a "wannabe Australia" but I quickly learned that that was so far from the truth. New Zealand is it's own unique and beautiful country. When arrived in Auckland, New Zealand the time difference from Australia made it that we just had time to go to dinner and then either wander around Auckland or play games at the YHA hostel. Auckland itself isn't that exciting, but we did manage to find a random karaoke place to spice up the evening!

Our first full day we went to the Auckland museum and then headed to Whackatane (the wh= f sound, then everything else is just sounded out) where we visited our first Maori Marae called Tangataua. The Maori people are the longest known culture in New Zealand which makes them the indigenous owners even though they migrated there by boat from Thailand hundreds of years ago. A Marae is their sacred meeting place and it's members are all members of the family. A Maori person might belong to four or five Marae's because of both their parents, and both sets of grandparents. They are all related. We had to be welcomed onto the Marae with a ceremony that included the eldest woman singing us on and then a ceremony where we faced opposite the Maori people and did a series of speeches and songs. As visitors we had to go first and since the Maori culture is patriarichal only males were allowed to speak. After our speaker addressed our hosts we all had to stand and sing them a song showing our support for what our speaker said. It was very interesting. Two men from our group spoke and then our hosts did the same. Then we all lined up and did the hangi with each of the Marae family members. The hangi is their greeting which is literally "sharing breath." You press your nose and forehead together with one hand shaking theirs, and the other on their arm. We were all pretty apprehensive about the hangi, especially those of us with personal space bubbles, but it was a really sweet greeing once we did it with them. Once that was over they told us that we were officially part of the Marae and were welcome anytime. We had to arrive before dark because they still held to the old custom that those who come at night are enemies.

We had dinner with them in a house that felt to me like a camp mess-hall. Everyone pitched in and helped serve the food and then we all ate together on these long cafeteria like tables. The kai (food) was so delicious! They made us two different soups, fried bread, roast, two different pastas, salads, and crumble for dessert. After we were all certain that we were going to bust from the amazing kai we cleaned up (as part of the new family we were expected to pitch in and help) and the we all piled into the sacred house to hear stories of their culture. We all slept in there together along with some of the visiting members of the Marae and in Maori tradition slept female-male, then eldest- youngest, with our heads facing the walls. We all piled on our mattresses and settled in to hear stories of their culture. We heard about their supreme deity, stories about their totem, and different customs they adhere to. I slept better that night than I had in a long time. There was something peaceful about all sleeping together sharing mattresses and hearing their stories. Nothing unclean was allowed to enter where we were sleeping so shoes had to be left outside and no food or drink was allowed to enter. They also had their weddings and funerals there. When Patrick (one of the elders) woke us up the next morning (an hour earlier then we had to!!) he woke us up with gentle singing and turning the lights on slowing while we all adjusted to the morning. It was the best way I've ever waken up!

We had breakfast and then Donna (one of the sisters) taught us a Maori song and dance to perform at the farewell ceremony. They were all pleased that we learned one of their songs and it was really special. We did the hangi on last time and then we waved goodbye from our bus and headed to Rotorua home of natural hot springs and the lovely smell of sulfar. In Rotorua we had another Marae experience that was quite different from the first. We went to Mitere Tours with a Maori man and his nephew who do a tour of their Marae, the hot springs surrounded it, and the churches that were founded by missionaries long ago. The Marae is right in the city and tourists kept wandering in not realizing that it was a sacred space and since Mitere Tours gifted the land to the city, they decided to do these tours to maintain their privacy and satisfy curiousity. It was nice to have the customs we had already done at the first marae explained in a tour setting. Once again there was more delicious kai and our corn was cooked right in the hot springs outside. That night we had another tour called Tamaki tour which was actually more of a dinner show showcasing the Maori culture. It started with the traditional haka performed by the warriors and then we were invited in to wander around a recreated ancient Maori village until the show and dinner. The haka is a Maori war dance designed to evoke fear and intimidation into the enemy but also to center the warrior and help them focus. It is actually really neat and the All Blacks New Zealand rugby team still does this before matches. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4LNjNXt1yM&feature=fvst) The show was a performance of some Maori song and dances and then we headed to the dinner where they did on final song with us before we left.

Another part of our visit to New Zealand was to Te Puia to see "Old Faithful's cousin", the largest geiser in the Southern Hemisphere also home to natural hot springs, and natural hot mud baths. We also got a chance to hike an old volcanic mountain, Mangere Mountain. It used to be the home of indigenous Maori tribes and there were still some signs of their presence there where their food would have been stores, shells they laid on paths to prevent the enemy to be able to sneak up during the night, and an old fortress. The view was absolutely breathtaking and it looks right over Sydney. On our way back to Auckland we got to stop in Hobbiton, Matamata, the home of Lord of the Rings!! We all hopped off the bus and took lots of pictures with the "Welcome to Hobbiton" sign with a Gollum statue beside it and in the seat that makes it look like you were wearing Gandolf's hat. It was a fun pit stop.

On our free day a group of girls and I took the ferry across the Auckland harbour to Devonport to explore another volcanic mountain, the oldest in New Zealand at North Head. The mountain had WWII caves and tunnels in it from when New Zealand used it in WWII. The caves were pretty creepy and dark inside but some of the artillery and guns were still on disply and the caves and tunnels were pretty neat. That night we had our farewell dinner and last session together and it hit everyone that we were going home the next morning. We had a 6am flight and had to leave the YHA at 4am and since we didn't finish our final session until midnight most of us took advantage of the opportunity to spend final time together crowded into our rooms or playing games in the lobby. It was a really good last night.The 40 hours travel to get home, not so great, our last night all together was wonderful.

New Zealand is definitely not a miniature Australia. It is beautiful in its own way!

The Final Countdown..

My time in Sydney is drawing to a close and because of that a myriad of people have been bombarding me with questions like, “Has it changed your life?”, “What was the best part?”, “What was the worst part?”, “What have you learned?”, “Have you grown?”. I’m realizing now that I better have an answer for all of these questions when I get home so that I am not completely overwhelmed and give some lame answer like, “Australia was good.” We had a debrief class session just going over everything and processing what we’ve learned and Kimberly said one girl summed it up well by saying how our experience here in Australia wasn’t about all the touristy places we’ve been and seen, it was in the day to day experiences that we had and that is so true. My experience was the beautiful view on the Gladesville Bridge on my way to school every morning of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was “running amuk” in Sydney with my American and new Australian friends. It was figuring out the public transportation system until I can easily say, “Take the 506 to Drummoyne then the 490, 492, or 504 to the school” and knowing that if I want to stay out late to take the 501 to Gladesville because it runs later on weekends than the 506. My experience was LIVING in Sydney, not vacationing in Sydney. I did plenty of touristy things like the museums, art galleries, Bondi Beach, Palm Beach, Paddy’s Market to buy souvenirs, and going to the Gold Coast for project week but the majority of my stay here is summed up in my life in Gladesville. A massive part of my experience was getting close to my three roommates and spending a lot of time with them.


Has it changed my life? Definitely. I am now going home and changing my communications major to journalism possibly because from this I know that I want to have the freedom to travel all over the world. Being in Australia has made traveling a reality for me! I’ve always had a list of places that I wanted to go in the world and now that I’ve been to one of them it makes the other destinations seem so much more possible than I ever would have thought. I’m not ready to go home and stay there; I have so many places to see!! It’s also changed my life because it has shown me how much stronger I am than I had realized. Being in Australia has definitely been lonely at times but it has taught me how independent I am and how much I have to rely on God. Kimberly gave us back a question from our applications that asked how we wanted to be challenged this semester and I said I wanted to be challenged to get outside of my box and learn to rely not on myself, friends, and family back home but totally and completely on God. That totally happened here. I have read my Bible more these four months than I have in a long time. I have been journaling about so many experiences and changes that I see in myself that have come about by my total reliance in God. I found a church that I attended not because I knew anybody there but because I loved the atmosphere and because it challenged me every single Sunday. I have been stretched, pulled, and pushed so many uncomfortable directions these past four months and I think it will be interesting to see how those things will affect me when I go back home.

Going home hasn’t really hit me yet. I don’t feel like I am going to be leaving Australia in 6 days. I have taken in so much information that I’m not quite sure how is going to be used when I get back home. Social justice, land and environment issues, and little things like using reusable shopping bags and water bottles instead of plastic are all things that were really stressed here and I don’t want to forget them when I get back home. Doing volunteer work all semester has shown me the importance of not just volunteering at a church but volunteering for people who don’t know God yet and are in a tough place in their life. I’ve always just volunteered at either my church back home or did worship at the church I attend at Olivet, but I have never really done consistent volunteer work outside the church. I want to find a program that works with kids or youth and really dig in and get involved. I think of how much time I waste sitting in my apartment at school on facebook or watching pointless television shows and think how much better it could be spent for an hour or so a couple nights a week tutoring kids or working at a soup kitchen. I’ve realized what a comfortable and selfish life I’ve gotten used to living. I know a lot of people are probably thinking, “She went to Australia! It’s basically a vacation!” but it really wasn’t. Of course it was wonderful, but I did learn a lot and issues of consumerism and materialism were really pushed this semester until I thought I was going to SCREAM, but it has stuck. I need to make a life change when I get home. I need to find practical ways to implement the things I’ve learned so that my semester here has a lasting impact.

It’s going to be crazy hard to not go back to shopping whenever I want, spending all my money on myself on things I don’t need, not volunteering, using plastic bags, and so on and so forth but I am determined! It’s going to take a lot of accountability from the people I’ve spent my semester with and from my friends back home but I think I’ve gotten a lot stronger this semester and gained a lot of self-control and perspective. While I’m sad to go home I’m really excited about the changes I want to make in my life so it makes it easier.

Here’s what I’m committing to:

• Finding a program to volunteer at that I’m passionate about when I’m at school instead of just being a couch potato!

• Using only reusable shopping bags EVEN if it means not buying something because I forgot my bag

• Using a reusable water bottle instead of buying packs of plastic ones

• Recycle, recycle, recycle!

• Not shopping needlessly... I want to be more generous! If I have extra money it doesn’t mean I have to spend it on myself!!

I am totally aware that this will take effort when I get home and it will be easy to slip back into my habits so feel free to hold me accountable when I get home :)

A weekend of Sydney-ing around

One of my favorite parts of studying abroad in Australia is being able to wander around Sydney. It’s a bit surreal to be able to hop on a bus essentially whenever I want and roam all over Sydney. I always have some fun little adventures around Sydney and this weekend was no exception.


I spent my Saturday running all over Sydney with my roommates Courtney and Natalie. We spent the first half of the day going to a couple different markets in Sydney. The first one is called the Rozelle Markets in Balmain which is right up the road from our school in Drummoyne. We walked around there for a while and then headed onto Paddy’s Market. We never have any trouble spending our money at Paddy’s which is right by China Town near Darling Harbour and has EVERYTHING imaginable. Souvenirs, clothes, and knick-knacks galore!! Courtney and Natalie found some great deals in souvenirs for their families. Paddy’s Market has everything that all the expensive city stores have for a fraction of the price. I love Paddy’s! It’s a tourist’s dream considering the insane Sydney prices.

After we shopped til we dropped we walked back through Darling Harbour where the Blues and Jazz Festival was going on. There was a stage set up literally in the middle of the harbor with live music as we walked by. There were a few stages set up all throughout Darling Harbour with free live music. We took a ferry over to Luna Park when it was dark and the park looked incredible all lit up. There was a wedding going on when we were there and the newlyweds were riding the Ferris wheel. Courtney, Natalie, and I couldn’t resist riding it and it was so worth it. Once we reached the top of the Ferris wheel the night view of the city was gorgeous. The Opera House looked like it was right under the Harbour Bridge, two of my favorite Sydney views.

We eventually wandered over the Harbour Bridge to the Australian Hotel where they serve gourmet kangaroo, crocodile, and emu pizzas. Some other American students met us there and some of the girls and I split a kangaroo pizza. I was a bit hesitant to eat kangaroo especially after being in the outback and seeing them hopping across the bush, but it was really good! It tasted like a chewier version of a beef steak. The sauce was made of native Australian berries so it was a sweet tangy flavor. A couple of the boys got crocodile pizza which is a white meat and they said it was good too.

Sunday morning my four roommates and I had a little mini-road trip with our host dad, Wayne. He took us about an hour up to the north side of Sydney where our favorite Australian television show, Home and Away, is filmed at Palm Beach. Home and Away is a pretty cheesy Australian soap opera but we can’t help ourselves, we love it! Home and Away has been going on for around forty years and almost every famous Australian actor or actress got their start on the show.

Palm Beach is a quiet isolated part of Sydney that had rocks on one side and a cliff with a stunning light house on the other. It was chilly but there were still some die hard surfers out catching some waves including a fifty-year old lady! There was a little café across the street and a little bit down the road the Palm Beach Markets were going on. We stopped and looked around for a bit and the markets were really interesting. There were a lot of homemade clothes, scarves, hats, bags, soaps, and house wares. They had a little playground area set up and vendors selling coffee and food. The vendors were all local and it was a really chill atmosphere. I think if I lived in Australia I would want to live in a more isolated part of the city. Sydney is such a huge sprawling city and every part of it is different.

We walked around Palm Beach pretending to be Martha, Hugo, Romeo, Nicole, and all the Home and Away characters and then after went walked around the market we headed back down the coast. We stopped at a couple other beaches to look around and had our lunch, “banana sangers”, or sandwiches at a beach that Wayne used to surf at when he was younger. On his he put bananas, butter, and sugar. We snuck some peanut butter on ours! We drove down a bit further and stopped at the Hubbard Diggers club and got potato wedges for a snack. The restaurant was right on the water and we watched the AFL game for a bit.

We headed back home after we ate at the club and we were home in time for us girls to go to St. Andrew’s Anglican Church where we’ve been going to the 5:30pm service called Fix Church. I really like Fix because the age group is upper high school, college students, and a couple young married couples. Everyone is very welcome and opening and I really really like the messages every week. They have been both interesting and challenging. It’s been interesting because of the cultural differences and the different teaching style. Challenging because each message makes me leave thinking about a change I need to make it my life.

After the service there is always “supper” for everyone to talk and hang out. Supper is sometimes actual supper like soup and bread or sometimes it’s just doughnuts and cookies with coffee. Last week it was Fix Church’s 9th “birthday” so there was a birthday cake and a little party. There is a strong sense of community and we’re never standing by ourselves for very long before someone from the congregation comes and strikes up a conversation with us. The pastor, Josh, always has some American trivia questions for us which can be pretty humorous. He e-mailed me wanting to talk about the differences between American and Australian churches which could be a really fun conversation!

In case it wasn’t obvious enough, Australia is still completely wonderful and my three weeks left here are going to go by way too quickly.

"Mrs. Boss! Mrs. Boss! I gotta go walkabout!"

Walkabout. Going walkabout was something that Australian Aboriginals did as part of their initiation ceremonies as they grew up in order to be able to marry or be considered “men” and “women” and no longer children. Part of my Indigenous Cultures class here was that we got to go on a walkabout in the Blue Mountains for the day. We had a trail guide named Evan who was an Aboriginal Australian himself so we were very privileged to get this very unique learning experience that put everything we had been learning in a classroom setting out into its original setting. Taking forty people on a hike in areas where there were not trails may have been a daunting task but Evan didn’t seem to mind.

When we first began our hike the area was the typical dry Australian bush but as we went further into the mountain we got to experience the beautiful rainforest atmosphere of the Blue Mountains. Our first stop was at a sacred site where the initiation ceremonies began. Evan told us dreaming stories, which are stories about how the people live, their customs, and their creation story. There was a small pond in the rock where we stopped that they called the Rainbow Serpent and there were carvings in the rock that would help tell the dreaming stories to the young men. By pouring water on them from the pond, the Rainbow Serpent was said to have helped them be able to focus for hours while they were being told the dreaming stories. The point was to focus on the feeling of water running down their outside physical bodies until they felt the same sensation inside and were able to center themselves. One of the dreaming stories Evan told us was illustrated by carvings in the rock. There was a wallaby mother on one side of the rock and a baby wallaby with a snake on the other side. The story was that the mother was not focusing and her mind had wandered until she was not paying attention to her baby who was in grave danger from the snake. The point of the story was to not let your thoughts wander but to remain connected with your senses from help from the Rainbow Serpent.

We hiked some more to a large sandstone cave where we stopped for lunch and Evan taught us how to paint with ocher as the Aboriginals would have. Ocher is natural paint made from charcoal and other natural mineral stones that you grind and mix with water until it makes a paint. He showed us some symbols for water, kangaroos, the rainbow serpent, emu, meeting places, men, women, and how the Aboriginals use these symbols to paint their dreaming stories. We painted our own dreaming stories on rocks, bark, and leaves and at the end we all painted our faces. It was a lot of fun to get to learn in a creative way in the middle of the beautiful Blue Mountains.

Our last stop was at another cave where Evan told us some more about the Aboriginal people’s ceremonies and initiation. He told us about the final stages the men would have to go through in order to be allowed to marry and that men usually didn’t complete their ritual until they were at least 25. Women would finish as early as 14 and would be allowed to marry a lot younger. Throughout the hike Evan had us try different leaves and smell different barks which he explained to us were Bush medicines. Some of the leaves tasted minty and one even tasted a bit like licorice. We also tested out a natural nasal decongestant...

Hiking through the Blue Mountains on a “walkabout” made me notice thing that I would probably not have noticed on my own. I would certainly have not realized that the first sacred site we went to was a site important to the oldest living culture in the world! It was an intense hike but it was really invigorating and I really enjoyed being out in the middle of nowhere without cell phones or iPods and people worrying about schedules. It’s no surprise to me that the Aboriginal peoples of Australia used the Blue Mountains as part of their ceremonies.

Ultimate Tourist Day!!

I have been blessed to make a really nice Aussie friend named Sarah who was gracious enough to take me on what she calls the, “Ultimate Tourist Day.” She said that she and her friends love going on tourist days around Sydney and finding fun new spots to hang out at. She picked me, one of my roommates, Natalie, and one of our friends Greg up at 8am on a Saturday morning and then the adventure began!

The four of us hopped into Sarah’s car and had no idea what was in store for us for the day. Our first stop was Bradley’s Head where we had a picnic breakfast that Sarah packed for us which was delicious. Bradley’s Head looks out across the water at the Sydney skyline and the Harbour Bridge. There is a wharf where a few men were fishing and a footpath that went through a really pretty bush area by the water. We all put on wicked Aussie flag tattoos, because what tourist day is complete without one, and then walked a bit along the path.

After we ate breakfast, we went across the Harbour Bridge into the city and parked and then walked to the Luna Park, which is a bit like Chicago’s Navy Pier. Luna Park is an old fashion retro theme park/carnival that closed for a while but reopened for the public and looks exactly like it did when it first opened. The entrance is a really creepy clown head thing but it’s really fun inside because it all still looks vintage and retro. It’s right on the water and a ferry goes right to it. After we took a bunch of fun and silly pictures we headed to get a pick-me-up at a small café.

After being caffeinated we felt prepared to walk across the Harbour Bridge. I was a bit surprised because the bridge wasn’t quite what I expected. It has a fence that goes up so I felt a bit caged in on the bridge, which I realize is for safety purposes but it did ruin the effect a bit! We went up one of the pylons of the bridge which had an amazing view though. For $9 you can climb a bunch of stairs to walk through up to the top of the pylon where there is a display of information about the bridge and you walk outside and can see all around the bridge. You can literally see almost all of Sydney from atop of the pylon. I could see the Opera House, the Rocks, Circular Quay, Darling Harbour, and even the Gladesville Bridge, the bridge I cross every morning to get to school. It was beautiful!

After the bridge we went through Circular Quay to go to the Royal Botanical gardens where Greg climbed some random trees, I made friends with a duck I named Quizie, and we saw an anti-democracy socialist protest march. We grabbed lunch from a vendor by the garden and had lunch in one of the garden’s pavilions and had to defend our food from some very nosey birds. The Botanical gardens is of course very pretty and overlooks the water right beside the Opera House. When we finished lunch we went to the Sydney YHA because one of Sarah’s friends works there and he let us up to the rooftop where there is yet another amazing view of Sydney. Everywhere you go Sydney is gorgeous!

One of my favorite parts of the day was taking a ferry across to Watson’s Bay. Watson’s Bay is a really chill and relaxed part of Sydney and there is a small beach and a park right across from the wharf. There were two weddings going on so we saw part of a ceremony ending and another newlywed couple taking pictures on the beach. We were getting tired at this point so we relaxed at the park for a while and watched the sunset across the water and it was stunning. It was a nice way to end a super busy day because it was just completely relaxing. We grabbed fish n’ chips at a place called Doyles that was right on the wharf and ate and talked while we waited for our ferry to take us back across to Sydney. It was a long twelve hour day but we got to go to a lot of parts of Sydney that we hadn’t been to yet which is always good!