Alright Australia, calm down.

I can't believe I get to call this place my home.

I swear every day I fall more and more in love with Australia. Yet another week for the books. This week I was able to dive deeper into the Australian culture through my internship and by meeting locals. I had the pleasure of attending multiple meetings for the rebranding of the Sydney Opera House (SOH) and even a marketing team bonding outing at the zoo. My co-workers have really taken me under their wing and have been showing me around local eateries and travel recommendations. However, there are a few language barriers. Yes, we all speak English - but the dialects are certainly confusing. One funny example is my co-worker complaining "I have a blister where my thong sits." As you can imagine, I was very thrown off! She then explained that a thong was another name for a flipflop. This wasn't that big of a miscommunication but when asked to do tasks at work, I almost always need to clarify what I need to do because of the different slang terms. My advice to those who will be working in another country is ask as many questions as you can! No question is a dumb questions. In my experience, people are happy to help. 

Classes are getting busier and busier. I had my first essay due this week, as you can imagine that was painful to write on an 80-degree day. I've been going to a lot of internet cafes and parks with wifi to do my homework so I am out of my flat as much as possible. 

This weekend my roommates and I went to Port Stephens, and I had one of the best weekends of my life. It was about a 4 hour commute via train and bus, which was well worth the trip. We arrived at our hostel Friday at around 1 pm (after being stranded for about an hour in the middle of a highway - but everything's fine). The hostel was bungalow style so it was almost like camping in the rainforest. The host and her husband were two of the nicest people I've ever met in my entire life. They gave us all the key places to visit that aren't as touristy as we found online. We went cliff jumping near Kingsley Beach, which sounds dangerous but it wasn't as bad as you'd think (that means your Grandma). A local showed us where the cliff was, after all, seven of us seemed to Google Maps the wrong location.
He gave us all the pro tips of when it's safe to jump and when it's not which was helpful. We all made it with only a few cuts and bruises...Then we went camel back riding at sunset, because well, Australia. That was absolutely beautiful, I love a good sunset and riding a camel was awesome!

As for Saturday, the girls and I booked a dolphin cruise where we were able to see dolphins and jump off the boat and swim. I thought it was funny how the Aussies were so lax about us jumping off the boat because in America that just screams "liability". Then came paddleboarding, it's a lot harder than it looks. Lastly for the day, we went hiking up Mt. Tomaree! This view was incredible, well worth the blood, sweat and tears on the way up (ok maybe not blood...or tears). The next day we went to One Mile Beach in the morning to enjoy our Valentine's Day together and then made our journey home. We made it home in time to go to the world's largest short film festival, Tropfest! The films had a lot of Australian culture references in them and I actually understood most of them!

Safe to say, this week/weekend was one for the books. I need to start posting more so I don't always have to write these long winded posts - I'll do my best. Stay tuned for more updates from the Australian Eastern Time Zone.