Half Way Point :(

     Today marks the midpoint of my time here in Australia.  I arrived just under 3 months ago and am leaving in just under 3 months.  It is a sad moment thinking about leaving.  Yes, I miss home and I miss my family (I stalked my own pictures looking at our great fam vacations and times just to enjoy those good family moments), of course I do.  Yet my time here has been fabulous and I can't imagine leaving.  Sydney has become a place of comfort for me and I'm doing things frequently enough that I'm known as a loyal customer in some places- mainly just the place I play pool twice a week.  A lot of the people here are taking next semester off and staying in Sydney because they love it here so much.  If I didn't have to graduate in May, I definitely would stay on longer.  Anyone who ever gets a chance to go to Sydney, take up the offer because its one of the best cities in the world.  I've met some great great people in my house and friends of people in my house.  Even with 27 people, we have never even had more than five minutes of drama in the last 2.5 months.  I can't even say that about my house the last few years with 10 girls for even a weeks time let alone a few months.  The people are stellar here and everyone in the city is nice as well.  I would move back here any day fo sho (fo sho= for sure for those of you who are trying to learn the lingo and be hip again **cough**Dad**cough**).
     Now had I actually said that out loud, most likely the coughs would have been in there unintentionally because unfortunately I still have this dreadful cough.  It's been two months now since I got it and it hasn't really gotten better.  I cough less but when I do cough it is worse.  I still wake up due to coughing, the kid in the room below me hears me coughing through the night (sorry Daniel!!).  I cough so much sometimes that I can't breathe and sometimes I even throw up because I'm coughing so hard.  I know my classmates and housemates are completely sick of hearing me cough.  In fact, I'm even sick of hearing me cough and I'm even more tired of people saying "You should probably get that cough checked out."  You think?!  I only go on to inform them that I've taken two antibiotics, one lab test, one steroid, and had one chest x-ray.  With everything including cough medicines and such this stupid cough has cost me about $250.  The good slash bad news is that I think I know what it is.  I got tested for whooping cough and was negative but after doing some of my own research after seeing that whooping cough is the most active its been in 55 years, I learned that the tests normally only work within the first three weeks of getting it.  My test was done in week five which would explain it.  Also, the antibiotics I took for the whooping cough actually don't do anything for the cough itself or any other symptoms it only just makes you not contagious.  The uplifting but again tragic part is that it seems that I am in stage two out of the tree stages.  Each stage is three to four weeks long which means that hopefully I only have about a month left.  Maybe I'll be better by the time Christmas roles around!  Oh dear.  Well please pray that it goes away quickly.
     Since I've been so coughy (yes I did make up that word) lately, I haven't been able to really go to church because I have coughing fits that sometimes last five minutes and end in me ralphing (a much cooler word for vomiting).  However today I woke up and felt much better than I normally do so I went to Hillsong Church which is associated with the big Christian band Hillsong United.  I've seen them play twice- once at Wave Church and a few times at the Passion Conference that I went to in Atlanta in January of last year.  The church is huge but I was able to stay afterward and talk to some people and I signed up to be in a Bible study that actually meets on my uni (what everyone here calls university) campus.  It meets on Tuesdays so I plan on going to that; I also want to attend the college-aged group that meets on Wednesdays in attempts to meet more Christians my age.  It was great to be in community with other Christians today and have worship again in addition to my own daily devotions.

     I was so caught up in all my Fiji stuff that last week I forgot to mention one of my favorite things I've done so far here in Sydney.  I went and saw a man/group named Bare Soundz (Savion Glover) which is the best tap dancer in the world.  It was literally one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.  This man could move his feet so so so very fast.  At one point, one of the guys did what I call "quick feet" like the drill in basketball that you do where you squat a little and move back and forth on your toes as quickly as you can.  This is basically what it looked like but it also looked like he was being electrocuted.  His whole body moved and his feet were moving so fast it sounded like someone was rolling Rs on their tongue.  This sounds cliche but I found my jaw dropped so many times and I got goosebumps throughout the whole 1.5 hour of straight tap dancing.  Also it was a fun night because it was a nice chance to get dressed up and be out at the Harbour at nighttime (picture above) with one of my dear friends from England, Katie (best friends with the English girl Ellena in my house who I have mentioned before).  I encourage you all to watch a short portion of this video (watch from 30 seconds to 2:40 seconds).  Trust me when I say it was even better in person if that is even possible.
      Well I hope all of you are enjoying your time back at school with a whole semester left ahead of you.  Ha I am five weeks away from SUMMER BREAK!!!!! Be jealous.  And then its almost two months of me traveling through Australia and New Zealand.  And so the saga continues.....

My Fijian Experience

     So it has been forever since I've posted anything but it was really crazy the week before I left for spring break and then I was gone for a week and couldn't post anything.  However, since it was so busy, there wasn't much I did before I left for spring break so I'm going to begin with my time in Fiji.  Yes, I went to Fiji for Spring Break and yes, it is spring break because our seasons are opposite and Spring started on September 1st.  I went with 9 other housemates.  We left 4 September (the Australian way to write dates or rather just the non-American way) through 11 September.  It was a 4-5 hour flight (view from my seat in picture to the right) and although we left our  house at 10 am in Australia, we did not get to our hotel til 10 pm that night.  Our hotel was a 3 hour drive away from the airport but it was worth it because where we went- Pacific Harbour- is the adventure capital of Fiji.  Our hotel was a four star hotel and it was absolutely beautiful.  We could see two other islands from the hotel and they have a swimming pool and a beach right there (picture at the very top is from the deck of the hotel). 

     On Monday we went Ziplining which was really cool because you could do tricks and stuff on the ropes.  I went completely upside down and also did a few spins on the ropes.  It consisted of 7 different ropes that led over rivers, rain forest, tree canopies, etc.  It was a spectacular view.  The other days were really cloudy so we couldn't do any of the water sports really but we were able to go kayaking.  We kayaked down the river on which the movie Anaconda was filmed.  I learned that I am a beast kayaker.  We raced everyone and we beat even the guys.  Being a very friendly and fun group, we met many of the hotel staff and other guests.  One of the hotel guys Ratu really liked me and so helped us plan some cool things.  Ratu showed us how to climb a coconut tree (picture to the left), husk a coconut to drink from, and took us on a boat ride to another island.  We climbed the coconut tree kind of like Mulan climbs that pole in the movie.  Ratu climbed all the way to the top of the coconut tree which was probably 30 ft high and got coconuts for us.  He took a machete and started slicing the coconut and we drank directly from it.  Another cool thing we learned how to do was to make a fan out of the leaves from a coconut tree (picture below to the right).  We weren't able to take it home with us since it is a plant but it was really really cool and hopefully I can find a way to make one again. 

     Another awesome adventure that Ratu set up for us was a bike ride to a waterfall.  Ellena (the one girl in m house that is not from America and is from England and one of my closest friends here) and I really wanted to ride bikes and we really wanted to see a waterfall so we asked him if someone could take us.  Apparently the hotel used to do trips to this waterfall  but hadn't done it in 4 months.  We were the first to do it so that was really exciting.  We biked 5 miles just to get there on an all rock road.  Also it poured the day before so some parts of the road were knee deep in water.  We took off our shoes and just had to walk through the mud with the bike.  Pretty nasty because then we had to bike the rest of the 2 miles barefoot and muddy.  But we then hiked up a hill to a huge huge huge waterfall.  We passed that and went on to 7 more waterfalls that were all connected by swimming holes.  We sat under the waterfalls, climbed through the waterfalls, and swam.  It was so so so pretty and the water felt amazing after biking for so long.  The ride home was much less enjoyable because I was so sore from the first 5 miles and the rocks did not make my butt feel very good so getting back on the bike was less than comfortable to say the least.  But we made it back and it was some of the prettiest sights I had seen yet.  That is until.....

     Ellena and I went white water rafting.  No one else wanted to come because it was kind of expensive and they had already spent $700 USD each on drinks and food that week but since Ellena and I did not spend that much, we had enough for the adventure.  And yes Dad, to prove how well I am doing at spending money, I only spent $30 the entire week at the hotel not counting adventure trips.  So we had to be ready by 6:45 in the morning and we drove 2 hours to get to the river.  The rapids were very small, only class 2 and 3 but seemed more like 1 and 2, nothing compared to what my family did in West Virginia.  But, it was the most amazing views I have ever seen.  To describe how low key the rapids were, I took my non-waterproof camera on the trip and had no problems with it getting wet.  So fortunately I have tons and tons of pictures and they are all amazing.  There was one waterfall that was called the Massage Waterfall and we got to stand under it as it massaged our backs.  All the guides were from the local village in which they have no cars, no electricity, eat wild boar, bathe in the river, etc.  We were able to  hear many stories about village life.  Our guide also taught us how to count to ten in Fiji.  So now I know to count to ten in 5 languages (English, Spanish, French, Bambara- the language spoken in Mali, Africa, and Fiji).  For my own purposes of remembering them they are or at least sound like dua, rua, tolu, va, lima, oro, vatu, walu, viuwa, tinni.
     Now I'm back at 172 Coogee Bay Road with all my housemates and its back to reality and school work.  It was a fabulous week but Sydney feels like home and I missed it.  I had so many new experiences in Fiji and it was the greenest place I've ever seen in my life.