wednesday may 24th
After frantically packing last minute, on Monday, May 22nd, Mommy finally dropped me off at 830 pm and we shared our farewells at SFO. Before long, I was on that plane to see FOPC, and since I hate planes, I forced myself to drift in and out of sleep for the entire 14 hour flight. GO ME. My body felt all awkward and sore and contorted and I think I freaked my elderly seatmate out with all my fidgeting, but I was so uncomfortable I didn't care. We finally landed Wednesday, May 24th, 615 am (this is all Australia time now), and I proceeded through Customs and Quarantine for about the next half hour. As I carted my luggage down the rail and into the sea of awaiting friends and relatives, that craygee, familiar, Chesire cat-inspired face beamed directly into my direction- FOPC!!! I rushed over to her and we happily taxied it over to her place, a very cool apartment, and I met her roommates, native Australians Ryan and Tim. We caught up excitedly for a spell, and then proceed onward to a day at Justine's school, the University of New South Wales. Justine's got this craygee half hour route she walks to and fro everyday, and I was astonished by the amount of walking she has to do everyday (little did I know at this time that I'd be experiencing the same within the next few days). I kept my eyes and ears peeled the whole time and concluded that it's not entirely different at all from a big US city... cities seem to be the same everywhere! I did notice, however, that the driver's wheel of all cars here are where the passenger seat of a US automobile would be... I thought that was only found in Europe (or Coldplay music videos). When the light turns green for pedestrians to walk, they make a bird chirp and then a prolonged "woodpecking noise" as you cross. Also, the crows here are outta control! They're HUGE and they sound like HUMANS. Half baby cry, half cell phone ringtone, it's totally bizarre. The finches here are gorgeous though, black and perfectly speckled with bright yellow on their feet and around their eyes. I know this all sounds kinda minute, but I found it all to be pretty interesting! Anyway, I was with her in school pretty much all that day, but surprisingly I wasn't too jet lagged as I did sleep for a long ass time on that plane. Her campus is medium sized and there are food courts galore (and little snack stores too, and I actually saw Turkish Delight for the first time in person, though it looks nothing like it does in the Narnia movie), and we shared a bowl of spaghetti and a fruity muffin and it was just like our good ol' American feasting times all over again. There are also TONS of Asians too, the majority of the school is Asian actually. Justine says it's because Asia is right above Australia, and Australia is even dubbed "Australasia" by some folk. Imagine that, another Cupertino at the other end of the world! Anyway, at around 4 pm, we walked it back over to her place, where she introduced me to the Sopranos and I got hooked. There's also home-delivered Thai food here so I naturally went craygee and we ordered in Pad Thai and salad. After some digesting, we bussed it out into downtown Sydney, where we hit a bar called The Friend in Hand to observe contests in crab racing, hula hooping, and "sexy dancing." Justine introduced me to her Canadian friend Alex and one of her favorite drinks, a Midori with half Sprite and half soda. We shared QUITE a few of those, not to mention a jaunty good time, especially watching these girls from California attempting to "sexy dance" aka take off as many clothes as possible before being classified as borderline hobag. Justine and I eventually walked back to her place where we finally called it a night on Justine's floor. She doesn't have a mattress, hell, she hasn't had one for like a year and a half even in the US, but I'm hoping that this will fix my posture right quick, son! Also, big ass purple zit is developing like a mother effin bindi dot on my forehead... As the pictures progress, try your best to ignore it.

thursday may 25th
We woke up very early and rode the bus a bit to downtown Sydney. Justine forces me to stay perpetually active during my stay here, hence, it should've come no surprise to me when we freakin walked across practically the entire city.



Being the obnoxious American I am (this persona whips back into action a few days later), I whined and bitched and complained, but stopped dead in my tracks when I eventually saw a massive body of glittering water before my eyes, and over yonder, they feasted upon THE Sydney Opera House. I was totally floored to actually be seeing it in person and not just the books and pictures. It was surreal to say the very least. Justine's relentless urging to walk deemed entirely necessary as we parked our asses in this place called Pancakes on the Rocks.



HOLYFUCK is all I have to say. These were the bombest ASS pancakes I'd ever ingested. I got something called Hot Troppo-- buttermilk pancakes, fried bananas, walnuts, and hot chocolate drizzled all over. Justine's short stack had the word "Devil's" in the name, and lusciously Satanic it WAS-- fluffy CHOCOLATE pancakes with strawberries and chocolate drizzled all over. There were also scoops of chocolate ice cream on both.



After we stuffed our asses to the brim we walked into the heart of the Sydney Harbour, where we saw the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge from afar. We took tons of pics at the Circular Quay (pronounced "key"-- strange huh?),





watched a craygee street performer (he was up like 20 feet in the air on a bike ON A POLE and was juggling like three different things, one of them being a torch on fire and one of the other items was an apple which he took bites out of as he was juggling, and then he hopped down the pole on the bike after his show was done... CRAYGEE!!!) and neighboring performers,



and, through a beautiful boatride, went to Toranga Zoo across the bay (where we saw cute ass koala bears and kangaroos!).


 
(KANGAROO!!!)



(WOMBAT!!! ... I THINK?!)





(TWEAK DAT NIPPO!)



We stayed at the zoo till the last boat was able to run, and sat out on the front as it delivered people to designated locations all across the quay. The sun was setting and the lights from the city were sparkling-- it was really quite an infinite moment.



(freaky ASS amusement park entrance, I'm trying to imitate it)



We had dinner at some hoity toity place called the East Bank Restaurant, where we sat out by the heated patio by the bay and had some orgasmic pizza (all the pizzas in Australia are thin crust and chock ful of delicious topping, the pizza here is BOMB!) and the crispiest, fluffy-interiorest potato wedges EVER. Perfectly seasoned, and came along with sour cream and sweet n' sour dipping sauces. It was SO TASTY, and reflecting back, worth the ripoff 12 dollars for the little bowl o' em. We then bought some gelato from a gelato stand (it's more common here than ice cream!) and savored it by the Opera House, just sitting there, watching the boats and city by the bay. We called it a night when we finally walked all the mother effin way back to Central Station, while dropping by the Dirt Cheap $10 CD Store along the way. We watched some more Sopranos once we got back and we went to sleep.

friday may 26th
Woke up with craygee blisters on feet but that wasn't going to stop me from having another wonderful day! I went to school in the morning with Justine and watched her very sad looking TA teach class. We walked to the neighboring Coogee Beach and played with the sand by the shore, all the while marveling at the boundless, beautiful ocean. This place was so damn ass gorgeous!!! We walked and explored the area a bit, and then teetered over to the Coogee Bay Hotel where we pissed our moolah away on drinks.






We got pretty buzzed, went to the bottle shop a couple stores down and bought a bottle of vodka in a fervid attempt to "save money" hahahha. We then walked over to the Woolworth's (drugstore that I'd only heard in oldtime jazz songs, it was cool to actually be in one!)  for some OJ chaser and chips and TIMTAMS (which are chocolate covered chocolate biscuits... YEAH). We trek our way back to Justine's place, and for the next hour, I "update" Justine on all the r&b and rap music she's been missing out on in the States... hehehe, she surely had a field day for that full hour as I "took her to the candy shop." HAHHAAH anyway, we finally get to Justine's place, where we watch some more Sopranos as we snacked on potato salt chips and timtams. Well, that was mostly Justine anyway. I passed out upstairs till 7pm, where Justine mercilessly forced my ass up and we took care of that bottle and the OJ we bought earlier, while America's favorite Supernanny was chiding children on the tellie (lots of American shows here, even American soap operas invade daytime TV). We got pretty plastered and hit downtown, where I bought me a mean order of mashed taters and gravy from KFC for dinner. We finally met up with Justine's friends at this bar called The Colombian, and it didn't take too long for us to realize that this was actually a gay bar. Nevertheless, nothing but the GREATEST of fun, I got to know Justine's friends (most of her American friends are from UCs, one of them even has a brother that went to UOP!) and we all shared a jaunty good time till freakin 5 in the morning, when the busses started up again so we could avoid getting gypped by taxis. We witnessed the ultimate of CRAYGEES at this hour too, as an Australian maniac tried to start shit with us, and some Jamaican dude hit on me, asked if I was from China, and attempted to redeem himself by yelling a hopeful "KONICHIWA!"as I skittered fearfully away from him. Pretty craygee! We eventually passed the hell out at 530 in the morning and wokeup at...

saturday may 27th
...1230 pm, where we showered and met Justine's friend Sam (who hung out with us last night) in the Chinatown of Sydney. He took us to this bombass Japanese restaurant and we crossed the street to tour the cheap Asian stands at Paddy's Market.



I bought souveniers for friends and cheap, delicious grapes and persimmons at the market. We bid goodbyes to Sam, got back to Justine's place mid afternoon, and feasted on fruits while watching the Sopranos. We watched the Sopranos for quite some time and we were STILL hungry so we ordered from this Italian place called Red Star Cafe, where they too do free home deliveries. We feasted upon some delicious "rocket" (rocket is a type of green in Australia, very zingy and flavorful!) salad and thin crust pizza, lounged around like a couple of oafs, finished Season 3 of the Sopranos, watched Iron Chef, got even more hungry as the chefs competed using "tilefish" oriented dishes, eventually finished the mother lode of grapes (they were supposed to last us for the whole week!!!), and went to sleep. it was a pretty mellow night, which was really great, since we had the hike of our lifetimes awaiting us the next day. Plus my allergies were goin out of control. Little did I know later that this was deeply exacerbated, possibly CAUSED, by Justine's dirty ass Giants blanket (aka "Bill"), which she sheepishly confessed later is LADEN with cat dander. But I digress.

sunday may 28th
We woke up at 630 in morning, and it was here I discovered that I had very stupidly screwed my contact lense cap right over my right contact lense the night before, thus ripping it right in half. This was already my emergency stash that I'd brought with me (my other lenses ripped on the plane flight, how stupid is this shit!), so I didn't have any extra sets... so, blind as a bat, I showered, busted out my eyeglasses, and met up at Central Station with Justine's friends: these two Swedish dudes Martin and Jonas, Alex the Canadian, and her friend Paul from Indiana. Note that these are all men. Justine's majorly pimpin it over hurr, BA DA BING!!! HAHHAAH anyway, we took a two hour train ride to the Blue Mountains National Park. It was really effing craygee because Paul was running late and Martin and Jonas were already on the train. By the time Paul got to the station, there were literally TWO MINUTES left till the train departed. After some momentary confusion of which area the train was leaving, we found it and saw that IT WAS MOTHER EFFIN LEAVING!!! We ran helplessly after it, and the attendant saw us... AND THE TRAIN STOPPED for us. It was like a movie moment! We were extremely grateful!  There's also something very interesting about the bathrooms here at the train/ferry stations-- the toilet zones are all illuminated by blue-violet light. When I asked why this was, Canadian Alex explained that it's there to make it difficult for the druggies to see their blue veins and thus they won't inject shit into themselves-- ISN'T THAT OUTTA CONTROL? Anyway, back to the trainride itself-- We found the Swedes (they were already on board) and enjoyed the ride... well I tried to, but it was a mite hard to when I had that horrible, itching, immabout-to-sneeze feeling goin on in my poor ass nose. But we finally got to Katoomba, home of the Blue Mtns, and golly, it was SUCH bootyful ass scenery, just mountains and canyons galore.





We also experienced the hike of our mother effing LIVES. We climbed down the stairs of Hell itself, and Justine nervously joked that these were leading us into Satan's lair-- we pretty much hit the bottom of the canyon from the freakin TOP.



And of course, what comes down, MUST GO UP, and mother effer, Jenny Craig surely got a run for HER money, I thought I was gonna die!! This was also Obnoxious American Persona's cue to make her reappearance, but everyone was still very nice about taking lots of breaks and stuff so it was all G THANG.



When we hit the top again Justine and I were goin postively craygee. We felt so damned accomplished!!!



We had hiked for 3 hours straight, and we then made our way toward a pedestrian UNfriendly hill going upward to a quaint town called Leura. When we got there, my mouth engorged on a delicious chicken wrap, and Justine got eggplant lasagna and we had a mother effin field day with the baked goods from local bakery. We then all lounged around like lazy flies on the absolutely GORGEOUS autumn day and we eventually took the train back to Sydney. We got back at 730ish and had a $6 steak dinner at the Regent's Hotel right across from U of South Wales. I'm talkin seriously BOMBASS steak, it's hard for me to believe that it was so cheap when there was such a generous portion o' that succulent, perfectly marinated, mushroom gravy-laden slab o' cow and fries! Right when we were about to feel postively guilty for all those calories we'd ingested at once, Justine and I walked back to the apartment (YES! More walking! I felt like I could do anything since the Hike from Hell) and lounged around in her room with her roomies. It was here that the allergies started up again and it was here that Justine told me about her cat dandered blankie. We got that mother out o' the room and I prayed that it did the trick.

monday may 29th

I woke up and wasn't entirely too congested, praise Allah for that!!! We trekked our way to campus again, this time, I parked myself in the computer lab in the library and wrote out half of this journal in the lab until Justine was done with class. At around 4 pm ish, we made our way back to her home where we got ready for dinner with Justine's study abroad group at this BOMBASS restauraunt called Thai Pothong. It was in this really "boho" area of Sydney called Newtown, and we walked for about an hour to get there. I've forgotten to note so far that Justine and I commit a lot of "jay-walking" when we walk, and in the apex of our journey to the restaurant, we almost got killed as we plum forgot to check for cars coming at the other direction... WOW. I have to say though that it could've been pretty cool to have been found mutilated next to your best friend. But I thank my lucky stars that we're alive! We hurried it over to the place and we ate one of the most orgasmic meals of our lives. Hands down, the best Thai food I've EVER had!!! Justine and I each had a cocktail too, mine being the green "Phuket Fantasy" hahah.



They also brought out this seafood dish very intricately wrapped and presented in foil, and when they brought it out it was literally on fire. It was one of the craygee-est dishes I'd ever seen! I had a chicken and cashew nut stir fry dish and Justine ordered the bombest of assest yellow curry... MMM ME WANT MO JUST THINKING ABOUT IT!!!! The whole meal totaled to be $600, OUTTA CONTROL, but well feasted upon if I do say so myself. I got a massive gutache during dessert though so I watched Justine helplessly force mine down along with her own (sorry about that heh heh...). We digested our meals at the local indie movie theatre (OH and along the way, we passed by some bedroom store called "Holy Sheet!" and I really wanted to take a picture of it but Justine thought I was being weird so we didn't), where we watched crackhead Heath Ledger in "Candy." That movie was outta control. What was more outta control was walking back to Justine's place around the midnight hour, right through some REALLY shady ass streets that one may classify as "ghettos." YOWZA. I was pretty freaked but the night ended well overall and we went to sleep cuz Justine had 9 am class the next morning.

 

tuesday may 30th