walking tour and the zoo

so yesterday was a pretty sick day. we got up at like 9 and started out walking tour of sydney. sadly i dont remember the names of all the places we saw/went to, but they were all amazing. first of all, the weather has been nothing short of amazing since we got here. it was like 28 degrees C yesterday, which is around 85 i think? i dont think clouds exist here... i have yet to see one. so we all started off the tour by walking to a park about 10 minutes from the hotel we are staying at. there were some old buildings and some really cool art/fountains. after that we headed on down to an arcade, clearly not a video game place. here arcades are outdoor type malls. before i forget, sydney is one of the cleanest places ive ever seen. you never see a single piece of trash or cig butts anywhere. they really care about their image and staying clean. so after the arcade we walked to the botanical gardens, full of beautiful trees and flowers. we were walking through a little path and all of a sudden we look up and there are hundreds of bats in the middle of the day flying around! i got some really great pictures of them hanging up side down and flying around. we kept on walking right down the sydney harbor... and the opera house. i was talking to people on the flight, and i figured that it wouldn't really hit me that im actually here until we went to the opera house and i was right. its funny, i didnt realize that the opera house is actually 3 separate buildings. again got some great pics of the skyline and the opera house. after a little time there, we got on a bus and went to a zoo.

the first thing we see when we get there was a little baby kangaroo, aka a joey. a guy came out with it in a little bag and we got to pet it for a second. as we walked into the zoo we could pay like 2$ for a ice cream cone full of food to feed the kangaroos that were just hanging out all throughout the zoo. for the most part they were just walking and hopping around the entire zoo. so you put some of the food in your hand and they walk over, sit up straight and eat right out of your hand. it was really amazing to actually be able to just walk around the pet them. when i was feeding one of the roos he sat straight up, so he was just above my waste, and took a fist full of my shirt and wouldnt let go while he was eating. there was this osterage (sp) that would walk around stealing the food right out of your hand if you werent careful. the kangaroos were pretty soft, but they didnt really have a lot of meat on them, at least on their backs. they were grey ones, red-ish ones (males), and then a few others. pics to come.

of course there were the kuala bears. you cant pick them up but you can for sure pet them. they have very thick, pretty soft fur. they dont really move too fast, but have really really sharp claws. they are very cute little guys.

there were all different animals there, i cant name them all... but i did take pictures of most of them. some really colorful birds, HUGE lizards, a tazmanian devil or two, wallabie, and all sorts of other furry dudes. one of the funnier parts was when me and a billy goat shared a serious moment. there was a petting zoo part with a billy goat, a few sheep, wild turkey, pigs, some birds. i had some extra food left over the the billy goat looked hungry (i have no idea what a hungry billy goat looks like). anyway he came right on over to me, clearly smelling something delicious, got up on his hind legs and put his front ones right on my chest and started eating. at this point i decided to do a little head butt with him. it wasn't really a head butt, but i put my head right on his horns and we chilled, some great pics were taken. anyway this lasted for a shockingly long time (prob about 2 or 3 sessions of head butting for like 30 seconds at a time). we then headed back to the bus and came back to the hotel.

we got back around 3, and had the rest of the day free. im trying to remember exactly what we did when we got back ... oh yea we had to come back and pack up for our pre-semester trips. they are storing all our stuff that we dont take with us so we had to pack everything up. so at about like 7 a group of 13 of us went out to dinner on the water front. i dont remember the name of the place we went to but it was really good. it was across the waterfront from the place we went to for our fisrt dinner in sydney. i got a stake burger with really good bbq sauce and carmelized onions. the beer here is so so good. i got a james squire amber ale, they have pints here! anyway so we all sat down and grubbed real hard. the weather was perfect, prob around 60 or 65 and clear sky. we then all went back and finished packing, met up and got ready to go out. we went to a bar called the 3 monkeys, it was pretty cool. i think it was like 4 floors, but i spent most of my time on the 3rd floor, there was some live band doing american rock cover songs. its nice to get a break from all the same music back home. anyway im having a drink and all of a sudden i see my boys josh berman and jon goldstein from school. it was great to see them, and great timing that they were there.

so this morning comes along and we went to UNSW (university of new south wales) to finalize our classes and get our ID cards. i dont have any class on friday which is great, long weekends and lots of traveling to come. the campus is really nice, plus it cant hurt when its a perfect 75 and sunny.

when we got back me, david feldbaum (friend from IU), and mitch forman (one of my 5 roommates) went to grab some lunch. we went to this place called sushi roll, they have AMAZING sushi here... so fresh. anyway the cool part about this place was that all the sushi is put on different color plate (the colors were the price of the roll) and it came around on a conveyer belt. it was like waiting for your luggage at the airport. you just grab something that looked good and eat. pretty cheap, i got 4 different rolls and a drink for like 21 australian$. and that is where i stand, im now back in my room pretty tired. i think im going to lie down for a bit. we are going on this really nice boat cruise tonight with everyone that is in sydney on our program tonight and we ahve to be all dressed and ready in an hour. we have a 2 hour meeting before, talking about the presemester trips and other things, then we go to the boat. we have dinner on the boat and then when we get off we can go out. i think my flight is at like 6am so i think a bunch of us are just going to go grab a beer or two and then come back and chill.

so i wont have my computer while im in new zealand, but ill keep some notes and take pictures. NEW ZEALAND TOMORROW BABY.

cheers