AUSTRALIA
February 21, 2005 - Kristen

So basically life in Australia is…AMAZING!!

A lot of awesome stuff has happened. On Friday a big group of us adventured over to Manly Beach. We took a bus to Circular Quay (which is down town Sydney, right on the harbor with the Opera House!!) and then took a FERRY to get to the beach! We passed by the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge, 2 of Australia’s most famous architectural icons.

We all felt SO GOOD on that boat with the Pacific sun and ocean breeze…aaah life is good! The waves were so much fun to jump around in… no surfing yet. There were tons of bad jelly fish all over the place but that didn’t stop me. I did get sun burned really bad even though I wore tons of sunscreen...my skin is not used to the hole in the ozone layer yet! My nose is all blistered and funky. We also climbed on these huge rocks on the shore..it was so beautiful.

On Saturday we all toured Sydney and went up the Centerpoint Tower and saw THE WHOLE CITY from up there. Got lost on the bus in the evening with my friends..and it was raining..so we had tons of fun!

Sunday was church and I went to Hillsong (maybe you have heard of their worship cds?). Well, it took like 4 hours total waiting for busses and a long service and everything, so I think I might start walking to the one on the corner of my block. But church was awesome, a really diverse setting with lots of Asians and Aussies all loving the same God…pretty cool.

We go on some sweet field trips for that class – Outback, Blue Mountains, caving in the Jenolan Caves, Canberra capital city tour, Koala Park…and we also do ministry work in downtown Sydney – should all be very interesting experiences.

My Aussie mates are so much fun too! Everyone here is so nice and relaxed and just enjoy life and make the most of what they have…I’m really learning a lot. The accents and abbreviated words are still REALLY hard for me to understand sometimes, and I have to ask for clarification, but its fun learning the language and trying to talk semi-aussie style with some of them Hopefully you are able to check out some of the pictures I’ve attached!

Hope everyone is doing well! Write me back because that would really make me smile a lot!!!!