SPECIAL EDITION: Megan's Adventures in...Sydney, Australia!

This past week I travelled to Sydney Australia for a mini-vacation back to the developed world. I travelled with a PC friend named Vania, who lives on North Efate. Sydney...was...AMAZING! Sydney is such a beautiful city. Very clean and there's so much to do. Speaking of having so much to do, you may be wondering: Megan what did you do there? I will tell you:

The first day, Thursday, we headed to the Opera House, took the basic tour, which was really neat, and afterwards took a bus tour of the downtown area. We jumped off the tour for lunch in Chinatown and then jumped back on the tour bus to finish the tour. After the tour we went to a large department store so that I could buy some jeans because it was around 55-60 degrees and all I had were shorts and flip-flops.

The second day, Friday, we headed out to Blue Mountains. Blue Mountains is a national park where you can get a look of the Three Sisters and some other rock formations. It's really beautiful and it was so nice to be able to walk around a forest, not bush, again. We took the CityRail train out to Katooba, a small town where you can find transport out to Echo Point, a look out point of Blue Mountains. Katooba was also a very nice and charming little town. I finally managed to buy shoes in the town. They were men's shoes because apparently my feet are too big for that country, but hey at least my feet were warm and I didn't have to walk around in flip-flops.

On Saturday we went down to The Rocks. The Rocks is a great street market where people sell clothes, home decor, jewelery, and the like. I can't get enough of street markets so this was right up my alley. Plus at the market there was a booth selling real corn on the cob!! Yummy!! After the market we walked across the Harbor Bridge. We did not climb the bridge or pay to go up to a look out point because it was on the expensive side. We did walk the whole way across the bridge, which took much longer than we thought it was going to, and went down to see Luna Park before heading back across, by bus. That night we met up with some of Vania's family, whom she had never met before, for dinner. They were really great. Very funny and so kind! It was not nearly as awkward as we thought it was going to be and so much fun! After dinner we decided to go to a gay bar (Vania is gay and needed some gay time). Unfortunately, the bar played terrible music and we didn't stay for very long. We tried to find an alternative club/bar but we didn't have much luck.

Sunday we decided to chill out and just sit around in book stores in the morning and then that afternoon a couple of Vania's cousins took us out to North Sydney to go to  Manly Beach and to a HUGE mall. That evening we went to the cinema to see the new X-Men movie (really good). It was a very nice relaxing day.

Monday we went to Taronga Zoo aka Sydney Zoo. Very expensive but very cool. They had a ton of animals (very funny, I know that's part of the definition of  a zoo, but I've been to zoos that had very few animals) and all of the shows, like the seal and bird shows, were free so that helped to balance out how expensive it was. After the Zoo we went to see the new Pirates movie (OK) at the IMAX theatre.

Tuesday was our last day. For our last day we went to the Australian Museum which was really neat. They have a great exhibit all about the history of the Aboriginal people of Australia. After the museum we decided to head back to a book store for a few hours (hey, don't judge, we don't have ANY book stores in Vanuatu!). For dinner that night we walked practically all over the city looking for an affordable Italian restaurant, FINALLY finding one at Circular Quay. After dinner we then went to "The Chocolate Room"  (I know!!) a great little dessert place. Vania got a slice of Mississippi Mud cake and I got Tiramisu. So good! After all the wonderful food we went back to the hostel and packed-up all of our bags to hit the road the next day around 4:30am (7am flight).

Oh and a note about the hostel, called Base Backpackers: it was hands down the nicest hostel I've ever stayed in! We got  free bedding, a key card to our room/front door/bathroom, and our own lockers under the bed. They also had washer and drier machines to do laundry and a massive kitchen. It was very very nice! We even got free towels, but that was because the guy was feeling nice when we asked for them!

It was an absolutely fabulous trip and a fantastic vacation. Am I broke? Oh yeah! Was it worth it? I think so.

Long Time No...Post?

It has been quite a while since the last time I have written a new post. As you my know. Or not. Anyways, I have a few things to report, not too much. First up I don't have much to report because I pretty much do the same thing everyday at site. I get up, head to school, do a library class or two, and then hang out in the library until five in case one of the teachers needs help planning or anything. Saturdays are laundry days and Sundays are church days, unfortunately. And that's my basic day to day, not much going on. However, a couple of weeks ago I attended a TOT, aka Training of Trainers, in order to hold my own camp G.L.O.W. (Girls Leading Our World). The training took place on Ambae, an island not too far away from my own. In fact myself and some other people took a speed boat from my village/island to Ambae. In my case that was a 9 hour boat ride and I have now seen the entire west coast of Pentecost island. I would not recommend doing this all in one day unless you had a covering over the boat. Luckily the training, which was a week long, was well worth it and I can't wait to hold a G.L.O.W. for the girls of my village.

After the TOT I then headed right back to Port Vila so that I could head out to Sydney the next week. This was quite a process. The plan was to take the Efate Queen (a passenger ship) from Ambae to Port Vila in order to save some money. This had the potential of working out really well and it would get me to Vila with just under a week to get all of my paper work in order. However, the ship decided to run early that week and I missed it. So my last resort was to take a plane. I called Air Vanuatu and basically there were no flights to Vila at any time due to all of the students and teachers trying to get back to school after the short vacation. But eventually I managed to get a booking. So I head down to a booking agent in town to pay for my ticket and I find out I, in fact, do not have an actual confirmation but I am on the waiting list. So I may get on a flight, but then again I may not. Then next two days consists of me frantically calling all the people I could, explaining to them that I have an international flight the next Wednesday that I absolutely cannot miss! At this point I'm worried out of my mind, wondering if I had wasted approximately $400 to go to Sydney. This is Tuesday and the next afternoon I get a text from the booking agent saying that he can get me on a flight the next day! I need to but that man a pony!!

In any case I manage to get to Vila, get everything straightened out, and I was ready to go.