Walking around Danville, I've started to notice a number of things I hadn't before: the number of trees abound, the friendliness of everyone from shopkeepers to baristas to passerby, the cleanliness of the streets (and the number of trash cans! Sydney seems to have maybe two in the whole city) and just how good that sun feels when I'm reading on a lounge chair in my backyard.

I've spent the past week catching up with as many people as I can at family parties, lunch dates, nightly hang outs, going to the beach, shopping excursions, and over the occasional beer at Pete's Brass Rail (I am in the Connoisseurs 100 Club, but I have about 94 to go!), and even though I miss everyone back in Sydney a lot, it's hard not to enjoy this.

It's good to be home.

Back to Reality remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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On Thursday night, a few of us met up and headed to World Bar in Kings Cross, where I spent one of my first memorable nights out back in July '08. Usually the bar features three floors with different types of music on each, but tonight only the techno floor was open, so my small party of friends and I ordered our beers and teapots (actual porcelain teapots filled with cocktails, which are then poured into little plastic shot glasses) and enjoyed them on the patio.

On Friday, my flatmate Shellie and I traveled across the harbor to check out Luna Park, the old amusement park I'd been meaning to go to since...well, a year ago. (It's the one with the big clown's mouth as an entrance.) Turns out the rides are all SUPER expensive - even one ride on the Ferris wheel cost a whopping $10 - so we just took in the sights, then walked back across the Harbour Bridge to Circular Quay. I'd done this a couple times already with Megan and Paddy, but since Shellie had never walked across, it was cool to show her the awesome view!

That night, a huge group of uni-mates and I walked over to Purple Sneakers, my favorite indie club just down the street from UTS (and thus an easy walk from Geegal), where we drank and danced into the morning hours.

On Saturday, I met Shinny for brunch in Kings Cross. We went to a little cafe that was run by a friendly old Italian man, who entertained us for hours with his notebook/scrapbook collections: photos from his European travels, magazine cutouts of Prince Harry and Prince William (who he thinks are just lovely, haha), and his favorite actress, Cate Blanchett (whose picture was displayed on the cafe windows.) To walk off our food, we meandered through an organic farmers' market, then separated so I could collect some last minute souvenirs from The Rocks market.

That night, Paddy and I went to dinner at a little Italian place near Darling Harbour - the same place we had one of our first dates. It was cute: the place is called Mamma's and it's pretty chill, but we still dressed up to impress each other.

After dinner, we walked home to change, then caught a cab to the Sydney Swans vs. St. Kilda Saints AFL game (I've started to enjoy the sport at this point.) Greg (from the last Saints game) was there to cheer his still undefeated team on, while Paddy, Dylan and our friend Herrick clapped for the Swans. The game was a nail-biter, and the Saints ended up defending their undefeated status with an 85-84 win.

On Sunday, Paddy and Dylan - being the marine biologists - headed to the Sydney Fish Markets to gather ingredients for the stupendous Last Supper they prepared for me and several other Geegal friends: shrimp tempura (okay, so it wasn't on the barbie), grilled calamari, salad, and bread with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and dukkah (dipping spices). But first, a group of us headed to my favorite beach, Coogee, for one last swim in the ocean. The girls, Shellie and Anja, refused to go swimming in the cold water, but James, Dylan, Paddy and Pedini all joined me. I didn't have a choice anyway - I was thrown into the waves.

After dinner, we sat around chatting into the night, but I made sure to thank everyone for the incredible year over what I called "The American Send-off": a shot of champagne served in red plastic cups.

Monday was pretty much all packing and tearful goodbyes before my stuff was loaded into Rob's car, Paddy climbed in the back seat, and we drove away from Geegal. Although Rob had to take off just after I checked my bags, Paddy sat with me at the airport coffee shop for a good 45 minutes as we rehashed all the good times from the past 12 months and made lists of our most memorable times.

The walk through customs and into the waiting area felt like the longest trek of my life as tears streamed down my face. Clutching the heartfelt letters I'd received from various friends before I left, I boarded the plane, settled into my narrow economy seat (no upgrade for me this time - and this seat, being just in front of the cabin kitchen, didn't even recline), and let my farewell to Sydney and all the wonderful people who had shaped my year there flow as silent tears down my cheeks. It had been the best year of my life, but I was ready to return to the familiarity of the US, of California, of San Francisco, and of home.

The Last Supper remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The festival took place over two days in Byron Bay, located a solid 12 hour drive from Sydney just below the NSW/Queensland border. The little beachside Berkeley-esque tourist town is quite sweet, with its yummy wraps and coffee stands next to boho boutiques and open air bars that pump with music at midday.

On Thursday morning, Paddy and I packed the car (his younger brother, bless his heart, had loaned us his car for the weekend), then started the grueling drive up the coast. I've done this drive a couple times - on the Greyhound bus back from Brisbane in October, and up towards the Gold Coast with Bonnie and her family in November - so I was relatively acquainted with the scenery: turnoffs to the beach, crowded cities bustling with activity, other sleepy towns with not much more than a few restaurants and a petrol station, and of course, The Big Banana at Coffs Harbour (the banana plantations town.)

One unique stop we did make was in Frederickson just outside Kempsey at Fredo's Pies. The roadside sign advertised its 50 pie variations, including kangaroo, chili and pasta, ostrich, and its "famous" crocodile pie, so we turned off to sample the reptilian pastry. It wasn't bad, actually - the skin was about as tough as chicken, but I thought it tasted like fish.

We had a 10-person house waiting for us just outside Byron, but a few of Paddy's friends go to uni in Lismore (30 minutes west of Byron), so we stopped to hang out with them at their uni bar for the night.

The next morning, being that it was Friday, we lazed around the residences for a bit, then hopped back in the car and drove to Lennox Heads, where a yummy fish and chips shop overlooking the beach caught our attention for the next couple hours. The water was freezing, being that it is winter here, but the weather was absolutely beautiful.

The night was pretty uneventful: a few drinks and some munchies with the folks staying at the house (it was basically a Batemans Bay reunion) as we prepared for what was going to be a hectic next couple days.

The festival featured a mix of national and overseas talents, ranging from the Aussie hip-hop and hard rock to dance, acoustic, electronic and DJ sets over five stages on a massive muddy field:
- Hilltop Hoods (who put on a fantastic show Sunday night)
- Bloc Party (fun English dance music)
- Gutter Twins (Aussie acoustic guys; I’d never heard them, but we popped in for a few songs and they’re great)
- the Beautiful Girls (laid-back, reggae-style; awesome)
- Brooklyn duo MGMT (who was actually pretty crap – much too quiet and they seemed to have stage fright)
- Friendly Fires (a great electro party on the dance floor)
- Sarah Blasko (I actually didn’t see her, but apparently she’s amazing on stage)
- Grinspoon (Aussie rock, reminded me of AC/DC)
- Flaming Lips (didn’t see them either, but they’re headlining a tour on Treasure Island in October with MGMT)
- White Lies (young Aussie rock)
- Dananananakroyd (from Glasgow, Scotland – their name combines the Batman theme song with actor Dan Akroyd’s name, haha. I missed their set, but I heard on the radio that they’d split the crowd down the middle, then had everyone hug as many people as they could during the song.)

Since there was a decent size group of us, we set up a meeting spot at the big shows (Hilltop, Bloc Party, Friendly Fires, etc.) at the front left pillar, and then just wandered to check out the different stages. It was a great festival and I really enjoyed a lot of the music, but

Monday was recovery day at the beach just near our Suffolk Park (Byron) house, and then we grabbed lunch in downtown Byron before starting the long trek home. On the way, we stopped at The Entrance on the Central Coast (where the channel enters the Tuggerah Lakes) and chilled out for a bit before continuing back to Sydney.

Now that I’m in my last week in Australia, I’m planning to spend my time at the beach (the weather’s on my side at the moment), at weekend markets with friends, going to one last AFL game, surfing (yeah, I’ve been here for over a year and STILL have not been on a surfboard. Lame) and hopefully having a shrimp on the barbie before I depart my year on holiday and return to my busy American life.

It’s been quite an adventure.

Splendour Bender Weekender remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The Sydney Fish Markets are the world's second "best" fish market in the world; the title belongs to Tokyo, Japan. The comparison is mind boggling: Sydney sells 100 crates of seafood every hour, but the amount they sell in two weeks is about equivalent to what Tokyo sells in ONE DAY. That's a lot of sushi! The Japanese are quite particular too: a good tuna, fitting specific length and quality guidelines, can go for as much as $40,000 per fish, so it's usually flown in by helicopter immediately after it's caught. Holy cow.

The tour was quite cool: our guide, Greg, took us out onto the auction floor, where we were able to see wholesalers bidding on the crates of fish via a keypad and a Dutch-made auction clock. They could purchase several kilos of fish with the simple push of a button - no yelling necessary - so it was much less noisy than I was expecting. It was also much better smelling: because they're so careful when it comes to caring for the fish they're looking to sell, they made sure the fishes' bad bacteria (aka, the icky fish smell) was kept at a minimum. Makes me wonder why other fish markets don't smell as nice....

The market prides itself on its sustainability. Bycatch - unwanted fish that get caught in the nets when they're fishing - are sent off to be made into fertilizer and other products. Since my Sustainable Enterprise business class spent weeks working on slideshows and holding debates about the future of sustainable fishing in Australia, I was much more engaged in what Greg was talking about (and I've learned a lot from Paddy and Dylan, who are both studying marine biology.) What a great education I've gotten here.

Sydney Fish Market remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We left Kingston bright and early to discover a fun surprise at the petrol station: Larry the Lobster! There are tons of huge creatures scattered all over Australia (the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour, Uluru at a rest stop in the central coast, etc.) Grabbing a coffee (for me), we hit the road for Adelaide.

It rained for a good portion of the drive, but luckily Paddy had burned 11 cds for the journey, so we just rocked out through the small towns, over the Murray Bridge, and into Adelaide. I had toured the city on a bus with Miriam during our train's two hour stopover on our way to Perth, but hadn't had much time to walk around it at all. The city is lovely: it's only about a mile wide, but packs in enough bars, cafes and churches to satisfy its million residents. The layout, as I mentioned before, is ideal: all grids and right angles, but what's annoying is how often the street names change: halfway through the city, Franklin St. disappears and turns into Flinders St., and suddenly you have no idea where you are. Other than that, it's fairly easy to get around.

We arrived int he city with time to spare, so we checked into a hostel called My Place (the first backpackers accomo I've seen that has a sauna!) and dumped our stuff so we could clean out the van and take it back to the depot. A pair of English girls staying at the hostel with us has just done the ocean road in a Wicked van too, so they went with us. I must admit, I was happy to get rid of that leaky, expensive gas guzzler by this point.

Since we were starving, Paddy and I walked into town to explore the Central Markets: another maze of food stalls selling produce, fresh bread, coffee, etc. We grabbed cheap loaves of bread and a container of yummy basil-parmesan yogurt sauce and almost devoured the entire thing before grabbing a few fruits and veggies to last us the few days we'd be in the hostel.

Being that it was Friday, we spent that night checking out the bar scene, starting with the Grace Emily just across from our hostel for schooners of Cooper's beer (South Australia's signature beer; each state has one) and to listen to a folksy guy sing with an acoustic guitar. We then proceeded to Rundle and Henley streets where the action was just heating up, but when exhaustion kicked in early, we returned to the hostel after just a few beers.

Sunday, 12 July

A chalkboard near the hostel's reception suggested renting free bikes from a shop on Franklin St., so Paddy and I decided to take advantage of the sunny day and this awesome opportunity. We pedaled around the city, through some of the parks, and make our way out into a nice suburb called Belair, where the town was very Danville-like and the houses were straight out of Diablo. We pedaled across the city, through the Rundle Street Market to smell the handmade soaps and sample the kettle corn, then into the Botanical Gardens before returning our wheels and hopping on the tram to Glenelg.

Adelaide's only a few kilometers from the water, and Glenelg is its prime seaside town. We walked out on the jetty to watch the waves roll in (at this point Paddy was craving a surf, but he said the Southern Ocean is full of great white sharks, so he wasn't going to be doing it here!), hit up a bar for schooners of James Squire's new Sundown lager (it actually tastes lie sunshine, mmm), then split a couple scoops of ice cream at Baskin Robbins (to which Paddy had never been) before grabbing the tram back to Adelaide.

Monday, 13 July

Movies seemed to be a couple bucks cheaper in Adelaide, so we caught an 11:30 screening of Sacha Baron Cohen's latest, Bruno. I had expected it to be pretty dumb with some good laughs, but I watched most of the movie through my fingers: some scenes were ridiculously outrageous and uncomfortable, and others, (particularly the one involving the baby photo shoot in LA), I pray were scripted. It wasn't really worth the $12.

Yesterday, we'd biked past the National Wine Centre of Australia in a corner of the Botanical Gardens, and I was keen to get back (since we were out of time and money to check out the prime wine regions: Clare Valley, Barossa Valley, and McLaren Vale), so that was our next stop. We walked through the different rooms to learn about the different grapes, where they grew best and what they usually smelled like as a wine, then had the opportunity to blend our own computerized wines. it was tough: we had to choose the temperature we'd keep our wine at, the type of barrel we'd use, how long we'd keep the wine in those barrels, when we'd ferment it, etc. etc. I ended up with "average" and "terrible" blends, while Paddy's won silver medals. Hrmmph.

After grabbing a couple sandwiches, we headed back to the hostel to grab our bags and wait for the bus to come pick us up and take us to the airport. It had been a fantastic trip, but I wish we'd thought to grab blankets for the oceanside portion!

City of Parks and Churches remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Monday, 6 July

After breakfast, we headed off to pick up our Wicked camper van, where we'd be eating and sleeping on the road for the next five days. There, we hit a hurdle: since neither Paddy nor I are too confident driving manual (I've never left Park n' Ride and and we figured trying to learn over the phone with friends would prove fruitless), we had to pay a bit extra for an automatic off-roader. It looked cool - the sides were painted with Southpark-style Kiss musicians (Wicked's known for its bizarre, often inappropriately painted vans.)

On our way to Torquay, a little surf town at the beginning of the Great Ocean Road, we stopped to walk around Deakin University. Paddy had applied to this uni, and had I not chosen to attend UTS, Deakin also has a bilateral exchange with SF State. The campus was HUGE and even had its own little "lake" (pond) and a lakehouse restaurant.

Back on the road, we stopped for dinner at a little Italian place in Torquay, then drove around the town to find the perfect sleep spot for our first night. The result? A lookout over the beach and rolling waves. Perfect.

Tuesday, 7 July

We awoke early (well, early-ish - this far south, the sun doesn't rise until about 7:30) to watch the sun rise over the ocean, capturing every stage of the colorful sky while running around the parking lot in attempt to stay warm in the four degree cold.

After a quick stop to buy groceries (the van was equipped with cooking supplies, a gas stove and a pump sink), we drove to check out the Surfworld Museum. There, we saw the first surfboard ridden into Australia's coast (a wooden door - from a shipwreck I think?), the Bells Beach surf competition trophy, bits of surf documentaries in the movie room, and several pros' old boards (I got a photo with Kelly Slater's from 1996) in different rooms spanning the different decades of surfing all over the world.

Afterwards, we hit up the surf shops: Quiksilver, Roxy, Rusty (whose headquarters, I believe, are in Torquay), and Ripcurl all had stores next to the museum. As we drove out, we stopped by the famed Bells Beach to dip our toes in the ocean, but it was much too cold out to go surfing.

Driving along the Great Ocean Road is in an experience within itself: you can literally see the ocean the entire time, and every cliffside rest stop offers even more spectacular views than the last. We stopped for a bit in Lorne, a little town just a couple hours' drive in, to check out the shops and look out over the windy road from Teddy's Lookout before setting off for Apollo Bay, a small fishing village where we stopped for fish n' chips and some sleep.

Wednesday, 8 July

By now it had been two days since our last shower, so after watching another sunrise in the chilly morning, we stopped by the nearby YHA (youth hostel) to get clean and defrost our toes (I had to start sleeping in my Ugg boots.) It was one of the longest, most luxurious showers I've ever taken.

With a quick bowl of cereal, we drove to explore Mait's Rest, a trail that weaves through the rainforest. All around were myrtle beech trees and humongous ferns, but unfortunately (or fortunately), I haven't really seen any feared Aussie snakes or spiders yet.

Next up was the Cape Otway Lighthouse, but on our way there, the road was blocked by...cows! There must have been 30 of them just wandering across the road. Quite funny, but I was petrified that I was going to hit one, so I crept by at 10 k/hr. At Cape Otway, we walked around the old lightkeeper's house/shipwreck museum (we'd left the Surf Coast and entered the Shipwreck Coast sector of the ocean road) and took in the view from the lighthouse deck. To the left was Bass Strait (which separates Australia from Tasmania), and to the right, the Southern Ocean. We really lucked out with daytime weather - it was absolutely clear out. Wish we could've seen some whales though!

Even though we're both afraid of heights, we decided to go to the Otway Fly Tree Top Walk. It was similar to the one I did with Miriam in Western Australia, but this one overlooked myrtle beech trees (which seem shorter and less impressive than the tingle and karri trees we saw at the other tree top walk) and had a very high lookout tower that swayed in the wind. It was terrifying, but we both made it to the top!

Continuing along the road, we stopped in a tiny hilltop town called Princetown and would have like to stay overnight on their waterfront campgrounds, but because our van was a petrol-guzzling machine that required diesel fuel and Princetown was too small to have a diesel pump, we had to continue to Pt. Campbell.

We watched a breathtaking sunset over the Twelve Apostles that night.

Thursday, 9 July

Today we drove, but stopped to see tons of lookout points along the way:

- Loch Ard, the site of an American bound shipwreck where the only two survivors were two 18 year olds.
- London Bridge, which partially collapsed between January 14-15, 1990.
- The Arch, which looked like an intact London Bridge.
- The Grotto, a beautiful lookout where we saw...HUMPBACK WHALES!! Paddy reckons it was a mom and her calf, as we saw two whales berth together every so often.
- Bay of Islands Coastal Park, a series of rock islands and a gorgeous sapphire-blue bay.
- Gibson Steps, atop a cliff with stairs leading to the beach.
- Logan's Beach, a whale nursery where we saw a whale tail!

We stopped for food in Warnnambool, a decent-size town that marks the end of the Great Ocean Road, and perused the shops to stretch our legs before setting off for a town called Portland, where we parked on a quiet residential street and watched The Castle (a classic Aussie flick) before falling asleep.

Friday, 10 July

Today we awoke to overcast skies, so we drove into the Cape Nelson National Park to have breakfast before setting off for South Australia, specifically Mt. Gambier. Despite the on-and-off rain, we took in the beautiful lookouts:

- Blue Lake, a crater-made lake containing enough water to fill 8,500 Olympic-size swimming pools. Too bad it was cloudy, as the water is supposed to appear sapphire-like.
- Valley Lake, which isn't nearly as blue, funnily enough.
- Centenary Tower, located up a slippery, gargantuan hill but that provided incredible views that reminded us both of the English countryside.

We left as the rain worsened, but since Adelaide was still 450 or so kilometers away, we drove to Kingston instead and settled into a caravan park. There, we discovered an inconvenient problem: because our sunroof hadn't been secured properly (something we discovered later was actually done by the guy who rented us the van - no wonder we couldn't get the sunroof open during the trip!), water began dripping through the ceiling, soaking one of our mattresses. With 300 kilometers to tackle in the morning (our van was due at the Adelaide depot by noon the following day), we placed our esky under the leak, and rented a trailer room for the night. Finally, a real bed and a heater! It felt like a five star hotel next to what we'd been sleeping in for the week.

The Great Ocean Road(trip) remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Upon hearing that Melbourne was going to be around 16 degrees Celsius during the day and near three at night (keep in mind zero is freezing), Paddy and I packed two duffel bags and my monstrous suitcase full of jackets, Uggs, trackies, thermals and scarves in hopes we'd be able to cover every inch of our skin in at least three layers.

Thursday, 2 July

The early morning flight was pretty uneventful until we boarded. As we were settling into our seats, I noticed a group of well-built guys wearing identical polo shirts walking down the aisle. Frat boys? Nope - they were rugby league players from the Balmain Tigers. And no one was even looking up as they made their way to the back of the plane. Astonished, I fired questions at Paddy: Why didn't they have their own airplane, or at least seats in first class? Why didn't anyone on board make a fuss about their presence? Were they really the same athletes I'd seen running across the TV screen? All I got was an eye rolling and a smiley "You're so American" response from Paddy before he fell asleep for the duration of the hour and a half long flight. Had those been 49ers boarding the plane in San Francisco, I believe the reaction would have been quite different.

After landing and collecting our luggage, we caught a Skybus to the waterside Docklands to catch a train to our hostel, and I was immediately stoked to discover that, FINALLY, I'd found a ticket system just like San Francisco's (where your ticket is good for two or so hours with unlimited train rides, rather than Sydney's inconvenient system of buying a ticket every time you board.) Our place, the the Greenhouse Backpackers on Flinders Lane, was one of the nicest backpackers I'd ever seen: situated just off busy Swanston Street, the hostel was above a travel office and had four levels, an elevator, free towels, and great music playing at all hours in the common areas. Oh, and free toast in the morning and pancakes on Sundays. Can't get much better! It's won backpacker awards for being awesome, and I know a student who lived there for a month.

First stop was breakfast. Since Paddy had put us on a $40 a day budget, we headed down one of Melbourne's famous laneways (which are literally the alleyways between buildings - they're chock full of cafes! A very cool sight to behold, and so convenient since there were a couple laneways right next to our hostel.) He had to drag me away from a delicious looking eggs florentine at one place, but we settled on yummy chicken wraps and coffee from another place.

Next up was the Sofitel Hotel on Collins Street, where their 35th level restaurant, Cafe La, offers spectacular (and free!) views of the city through its floor-to-ceiling windows. My guidebook, the 2007 Let's Go Australia, has been my travel bible for supplying advice such as this.

After grabbing mochas to warm our hands against the cold and rain (Paddy hated coffee until he met me, haha), we wandered past the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) and Ron Laver Arena (Australian Open tennis) and then stumbled upon the coolest graffiti art I'd ever seen. The street, Hosier Lane, was absolutely covered in block writing and pictures - even the trash bins. The street wrapped its way around a square building, and upon closer inspection, we found a small art gallery at the top of the stairs. This is a prime example of the beauty of Melbourne: by simply walking around with no map or sense of direction (on my part), you can find incredible hidden gems. This was further proven by our next find: a great lounge called the Purple Emerald, where we stopped for glasses of wine and a rest on one of the comfy couches.

We returned back to the hostel to shower and change for...Wicked! For our three month anniversary, after my incessant hints at how much I wanted to see the pre-Wizard of Oz musical, Paddy had sweetly bought us tickets (the funniest part though, was that he didn't realize it was a musical until we got there. Hehe.) It was absolutely fantastic, and I was particularly taken by Elphaba (the green wicked witch of the west). She was the misunderstood but actually kindhearted character with an incredible voice, and she made Glinda the Good Witch just seem dim and fake. What a different take! I'm curious to watch the Wizard of Oz again.

We left the Regent Theatre starving, but since everything we walked past was already closed, we ended up walking clear across the city to Carlton, aka "Little Italy", for a takeaway pizza.

Friday, 3 July

We started the morning early at the Victoria Markets - a maze of stalls selling everything from clothing and shoes to fresh produce, incense, wine and...pigeons. We picked up some cheese, crackers and a bottle of Sav Blanc to have for lunch, then made our way up the street to check out the University of Melbourne. The buildings were quite cool - the economics department was housed in an art deco-style, while the law building was all stone and heavy wooden doors. Walking back across the city to the water, we found a bench at the Docklands and settled down to enjoy our lunch and good conversation overlooking the Yarra River. We ducked into a nearby cafe (with a fireplace! Such a rarity in this country) for hot chocolate once it started raining, then headed back to the hostel for a quick nap before dinner.

My family and I had stumbled upon this British pub, the Elephant & Wheelbarrow on Exhibition Street, back in December, so we decided to head there for their fantastic shepherd's pie and pints of Old Speckled Hen. After dinner, we met up with our friend Albert, who was taking a year hiatus from UTS to complete a yearlong architecture apprenticeship (similar to an internship) in Melbourne. We met him at a bar called Ondegrounds just around the corner from our hostel, then proceeded to pub crawl our way around the city. Every bar was different: the Lounge was like a trendy version of our Lansdowne Hotel pub, and Albert's favorite, a tiny place tucked behind a couple laneways, looked like we'd stumbled into someone's living room. It was very San Francisco-esque with its vintage wallpaper and laid back atmosphere, and when I asked for a cocktail list, I thought the grungy bartender was going to throw me out, so I quickly changed my request to a Melbourne Bitter, one of the four bottled beers (nothing on tap) they served.

Halfway through the night, we stopped into a Japanese restaurant for a quick bite, and I knocked the boys' socks off by introducing them to sake bombing (something we do constantly in SF). Essentially, you fill a glass 1/3 full of beer (choose a Japanese one - Asahi is good), balance a shot of warm sake on two chopsticks over the top of the glass, say the chant (Sake bomb! Ichi bomb! 1, 2, 3!), then hit the table with your fists so that the chopsticks fly off and your shot falls in, then chug. Repeat as necessary.

Saturday, 4 July

Happy Independence Day, America! I figured no one would recognize this holiday in UK-controlled Australia, but I was mistaken: just near Federation Square, a line of American flags flew along the street (Paddy had a hilarious hissy fit over it.) A store near our hostel was also having a sale on all American products.

Paddy's friend Greg and Greg's siblings Jeff and Mel arrived in the a.m. for a weekend of AFL (Australian Football League - it's more like rugby than our NFL) and shopping, but first on the list was food. Paddy and Greg had been in town for the AFL season kickoff in late March and had been talking about Grill'd, this burger place in bohemian St. Kilda ever since, so we boarded a tram and made our way towards the water. A round of Tuscan burgers and herbed chips (fries) later, we walked down the main strip to find dessert at one of the many desirable cake shops that line Acland street, then walked along the Esplanade to grab a tram back to the city.

The boys headed off to catch an afternoon footy game, so Mel and I hopped on a tram to go shopping on Bridge Street. It was a mix of Australian boutiques and vintage stores, cheap spots and a Body Shop outlet, and we happily spent a couple hours browsing the sale racks.

We all reunited at night to hit a pub called Waterside for a few jugs (pitchers) of beer before making our way to the footy stadium to watch the Western Bulldogs vs. Hawthorne Hawks (who I saw vs. the Sydney Swans with Paddy a couple months ago. By now, I have a decent understanding of the game.) Our seats were up in the nosebleed section, but it was fun to watch the game in the midst of thousands of Aussie Rules footy fans. Victoria is the footy state, and Melbourne is the sport's epicenter. (NSW and Queensland are more rugby league-oriented and there are three State of Origin games held between the two states three times during the season.)

Sunday, 5 July

Paddy and I awoke early, so we hit a bakery in a nearby laneway for muffins and coffee before returning to the hostel for a lazy morning of pancakes and emails. Once Greg and his crew were awake, we prepped for the big game that afternoon: the Geelong Cats vs. St. Kilda Saints. Both teams were undefeated, and being that today was the 14th game of the season, this was a first in AFL history. Greg's family are all diehard Saints fans, so this was a BFD.

We settled into jugs of beer to get pumped for the game, then made our way back to the stadium. Somehow, for $35, Mel had scored us SIXTH ROW SEATS, so we were right in the action. The crowd was largely made up of Saints fans and the Saints team dominated most of the game, but everyone was biting their nails in the final minutes when the score was tied. In the end, the Saints made victorious history with a 91-85 win, making Melbourne's bars overcrowded with happy fans for the rest of the night.

The next day was a big one - we were off to pick up our camper van just outside the city and begin our Great Ocean Roadtrip! Of course, things don't always (as in they rarely) go as planned...

Australia's AFL Capital remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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After taking a gondola up to the entrance from the ferry dock, we grabbed a map and made our way towards the "Wild Australian" area to check out the wombat, platypus, snakes, lizards, birds, and of course, the 'roos and koalas (which, amazingly enough, don't thrill me the way they used to. Perhaps I've gotten used to these silly creatures after living a year in their country.) Paddy used to watch a lot of animal documentaries when he was a kid, so he acted as my tour guide, sharing many interesting (and some not so much) facts about the differences between Asian and African elephants (round head/small ears, square head/big ears), why snow leopards have small ears (to conserve warmth, apparently) and how far red kangaroos can travel in a single jump (seven meters! But the longest distance ever recorded is 12.5 meters) Plus he was much better at navigating with the map as we weaved a twisted path around the Australian, African and Asian animal enclosures.

The zoo was much nicer than San Francisco's, where the gloomy Sunset District weather makes the animals always look depressed (I don't blame them.) And the location was unbeatable! A picture is worth a thousand words, and these pretty much sum up a wordy description:

We were just heading over to see the hippo when, out of the blue, MY CAMERA STOPPED WORKING. Just stopped. I tried to turn it on, and it made this horrible grinding sound when the lens moved, and the screen shouted "LENS ERROR" in red. Well, obviously.

Since I'm leaving for Melbourne on Thursday, this is going to present a serious problem if the camera store can't fix it...ahhhhh!

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The week breakdown was as follows...

Monday: I spent the morning compiling possible story ideas from news pieces and features I cut out of The Australian, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sydney Morning Herald weekend sections, tagging them as one of the magazine's six feature categories: fitness & health, money & career, mind & wellbeing, sex & relationships, food & nutrition, and beauty & style. This was a great way to start each morning.

Afterwards Hanna, a writer, sent me on an errand: for a pricing piece she was working on, I had to run over to the IGA supermarket and buy two types of muesli (the Black & Gold home brand and more expensive Carmens) and batteries (home brand for a whopping $1.60), which she tested along with high and low-priced toothpaste, chocolate, etc. to figure out if the extra money is worth it. (For the record, IGA batteries last for only two hours in a flashlight, and skimping on pricier muesli means you're also skimping on flavor.)

After lunch the beauty editor, Nicole, asked me to put away several bags of products she'd been sent to test: Chanel makeup, Benefit face scrubs, Dermalogica day creams, lotions from the Body Shop, and more shampoo and conditioner, serums, eye creams and nail polishes than I could use in a year. Everything's kept in what resembles a narrow walk-in closet, and I had quite a lot of fun checking out the products as I crammed them onto the overfilled shelves. I became increasingly envious every time I went downstairs to pick up the mail and ended up picking up two or three bags for Nicole, each elegantly wrapped and ribbon-ed like glamorous little presents.

Tuesday: After perusing the papers for story ideas, I retyped a couple stories from previous US Men's Health issues for an upcoming issue (much of the men's and women's Australian version reuses content from the US publications), then spent the rest of the day transcribing an interview about internet vs. digital radios for Alice, the men's and women's magazine editorial coordinator, and part of an interview features editor Tara conducted with Helen Fisher, an author from the US who wrote a book about match.com and how couples come together based on their biological personality types. Needless to say, my fingers were very sore when I left the office.

Wednesday: Today I finished transcribing Tara's interview, then Alice set me up with an organizing project: taking a towering pile of folders filled with every article's rough draft, notes, and research from the July issue, and sorting it into three plastic-sleeve filled binders. In numerical page order. That task took me close to three hours to complete.

Thursday: Today was a day of research for Alice and Bessie, a writer and associate editor. The topics? Everything from how music affects your health and fitness (upbeat music makes you run 15% faster!), to recent breakthrough research about sex and relationships, fitness, and...coffee. Apparently there's a caffeinated sunscreen being developed.

Friday: The staff decided to have a bake-off today, so everyone brought in an array of cupcakes, cookies and sweet bread - plus avocado salad and a tower made of carrot sticks. This is a health magazine, after all. Michael Jackson songs played all morning in memory of the King of Pop, whose death I still can't believe. "Beat It" was my favorite song of his, and I remember playing it nonstop on my way to gymnastics class, refusing to get out of the car until the song finished.

Between cookies, I also helped Bessie research for an upcoming article about bouldering (essentially rock climbing, but without the ropes, harness, or height above about six meters.) I called various climbing gyms and companies to find out safety tips from the experts, compiled a list of "climbing terms," and called an additional list of stores around NSW to see if they could send us climbing shoes, crash mats, chalk buckets, and other bouldering gear for an accompanying photo shoot. Considering I had no idea what bouldering was before I started researching, I now feel like an expert on the subject.

So there you have it! Another internship to grace my resume, and I didn't even have to get anyone coffee.

A Week with the Gym Rats remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Wednesday, 14 January

Justin had intended to take us surfing this morning, but he called and said the swell was pretty shit. Hmm, what to do? The five of us trooped to the front desk (at this point it was probably almost 10 a.m.) to check out the wall of brochures for another idea, and after some consideration, we settled on...wine tasting! I'd looked into Wine for Dudes earlier (it's a tour designed for young folks who enjoy wine but don't understand much about it; one of the guys we'd met the previous night had also recommended it), and after the girl at the front desk had called up the company, we had twenty minutes to get ready before the van would come to pick us up. I'm starting to feel really spoiled by the spontaneous nature of Australia at this point!

Our driver was also the company's founder - a cool, laid back guy named Dave who chatted with us as he drove to pick up a couple other twosomes (both were probably just under 30, so we were certainly a young group of dudes). Our first stop was the Juniper estate, nestled next to a cheery little spot I could picture enjoying a picnic at. Such a picnic was on my mind when we tasted the first wine, a fruity semillion sauvignon blanc, that I nicknamed it "the picnic wine" and snapped up a bottle to take home. Dave, having visited Juniper countless times, took us behind the tasting room to the fermenting area (where we were able to taste unfermented wine - ick) and the barrel room, where Miriam tested his winemaking knowledge for a good 15 minutes. He definitely passed the test, though.

From there, we visited Hayshed - another estate located in a picturesque picnic spot. This time, we actually had lunch on the lawn - a delicious spread of different breads, meats and cheeses, plus dips, spreads and olives. Yum.

Back in the winery, we were led to a back room to apply our tasting skills: with a 100 mL beaker, we had to come up with our ideal blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot. It was like a chemistry class the way everyone was carefully measuring out the wines and tasting their creations. I ended up satisfied with my blend: 30% merlot, 70% cabernet. (Apparently my parents did this at a wine party years ago and ended up creating the top voted blend and bottling it. Funnily enough, their ratio was exactly the opposite of mine: 30% cab and 70% merlot.)

Boarding the van, we set off for a quick visit to the chocolate factory. Picture a bunch of people walking around with handfuls of white, milk, and dark chocolate chip samples as they circled the displays of boxed chocolates and nougats - it was absolutely bustling.

The last winery we went to was called Saracen, and it was actually half wine tasting, half brewery - the perfect way to end a day of drinking. Haha. Unfortunately, my wine tasting notes (yes, I took notes) got lost while I was traveling, so I can't quite remember which wines I specifically liked...but I do know they had a cab/merlot blend with the same ratio that my creation was! (Plus, we got to meet Dave's girlfriend, who poured our tastings.)

Since we were Dave's last stop on the way back, he stopped by the beach so we could all take photos of the crashing waves and lowering sun before returning to the hostel.

Thursday, January 15

After breakfast and some shopping in downtown Margaret River (which was basically just one street lined with surf shops and organic cafes), M and I said goodbye to the departing German girls, grabbed the car (which was nicknamed "Baby" by the way) and drove through the tree groves to Hamilton Beach. There were flies galore, but that didn't stop the beach from being absolutely stunning. The white sand and clear turquoise water made me feel as though I were staring at the Mediterranean Sea, and it was a perfect sunny day. Ahhhh.

We swam and napped for a few hours, then M left to go find water and and ice cream. She was gone for quite a while, and when she returned all excited and beckoned me to follow her, I knew she must have found something neat. We walked across the sand towards the pier, where a few fishermen and their families were gathered. A couple little boys were feeding bits of fish to something in the water, and when I looked to see what they were feeding, I nearly screamed: gliding under the small waves were a family of stingrays - and they were massive. The biggest, which had to be at least four feet wide, was missing a stinger, and it was eating fish bits straight out of the boys' hands. Looking excited, M approached the fishermen and asked if she could join in, while I hung back and watched for a bit before reaching for a piece of fish.

Before heading back to Surfpoint, we drove further south to the Leewin Lighthouse, which we were told was the most southwestern point of Australia. The lighthouse was closed by then, but we hung around and danced to The Best of Foreigner (we only had two cds, that and classic Aussie rock) on the car stereo to pass the time until sunset. Just as the sky was turning bright pink, we relocated to the rocks next to the water, armed with a jar of peanut butter and a box of cookies, to take turns snapping photos of each other attempting to perform yoga moves against the colorful backdrop.

As we drove through town, we decided to stop and grab pints of Little Creatures Bright Ale (I'd recommend their pale ale though) at the Settlers' Tavern and catch the last live set of Neil Preston and the Atheists. The German girls called from the road and said they wanted to meet up with us again, so we made plans to meet up the next day in a town called Denmark.

Friday, 16 January

Today we left Margaret River and drove south to Walpole, where we visited the Tree Top Walk: a long series of ramps 20-40 meters up that run through the tingle tree forests (tingle trees are absolutely massive; in California terms, they remind me of lighter colored sequoias). The ramps were grate-style so you could see straight through to the forest floor, so I was pretty shaky the first time we went around, but by the second round (yeah, we decided to do it again), M and I were racing between platforms and shooting videos on M's camera.

After leaving Walpole, it was a short trek to Denmark, where we arrived at the girls' campsite just as they were preparing a yummy dinner of chicken burgers, potatoes, grilled onions and salad. Mmmm. After helping wash up and running to the hot showers (by this time is was freeeezing down south), the five of us gathered in the tent to swap photos and share my bottle of Juniper estate semillion sb. Figuring we should stick together for the remainder of the trip, we made plans for the last few days before falling asleep in the 3-person tent. I'd be lying if I said I had a good night's sleep, but it was certainly fun.

Saturday, 17 January

The girls had been raving about this beach called Greens Pool, so we squeezed into Baby and headed off to the beach. Unfortunately, we'd left the warm sunny weather further north, so we ended up snorkeling and jumping off the small rocks before the cold sent us into our towels and sweatpants. M and I left to explore the "Elephant Rocks" after lunch and took photos next to the massive boulders, but once we got back to our spot on the beach, we were all ready to head back to the hot showers at the campsite.

Sunday, 18 January

Today we packed up our campsite and drove east to Albany, a small town that looked completely empty under the dreary gray sky. M was driving, so I flipped through the guidebooks (Lonely Planet's was an absolute savior, as was my Let's Go Australia book) for something exciting to do in this town. We settled on something called the Sandalwood Factory. The German girls were too tired to join us, so we booked two places in the gong meditation session and drove out to the factory.

Gong meditation is interesting: we entered a small circular room lined with cushy mats and pillows that surrounded a set of...well, gongs. They looked like those Chinese gongs found in the Disney movie Mulan. There was about 15 of us in the room, and once we were settled on the mats, the instructor handed out silk scarves that had been sprayed with a lot of sandalwood and directed us to lay the scarves over our nose and mouth so we'd inhale the calming scent. While we did this, she tapped out a sort of song with the gongs (I think there were four - one big one and a few smaller ones) that were supposed to bring us into a deeper state of relaxation. After a while, she picked up one of the smaller gongs and stood over each person so they could each receive an individual gong while she murmured something. The session lasted for about 45 minutes, and since I was pretty tired from the trip by then, I allowed myself to be carried away by the soothing sandalwood and take a much-needed nap. A guy laying a few mats down was obviously very affected by the scent and gongs, as five minutes into the session he was heard snoring so loud, the instructor had to kick his foot to shut him up.

We visited the gift shop on our way out to get our fix of sandalwood-scented candles and moisturizer before heading back to the hostel.

That night, we all cooked pasta together before driving to the single movie theater in town to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Maybe it was the fact that the movie was so long, perhaps it was because I didn't buy the relationship between Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's characters, or because I was mystified as to why the movie's "present day" setting was during Hurricane Katrina, but I didn't really enjoy the movie. The company was good though - we actually ran into the Kiwi couple from Margaret River at the theater and again at our hostel. Funny how all our travel itineraries were similar.

Monday, 19 January

Our flight back to Sydney was due to fly out of Perth on Wednesday, so we left Albany that morning to drive back up to the city. While M drove, I called every hostel in our guidebooks to find a place to stay, but for some reason everything was booked out - maybe because Australia Day was the following weekend? This presented a problem until we arrived at Nicole's nanny house and she (bless her heart) invited us to stay with her and Yvonne in the family's guest house. Cool!

Tuesday, 20 January

Since it was our last day in Western Australia, we decided to go do something fun: sandboarding in Lancelin! It's a bit like snowboarding, but instead of cold snow, you have soft white sand dunes; instead of carving your way down the hill, you point the board straight down and cruise; and, rather than boarding a chairlift to the top, you walk. We all pretty much sucked, but M got the hang of it by her third run and proceeded to amaze us by climbing to the highest peak of the hill and coasting flawlessly over the sand. Jerk.

We sat down to dinner with the family that night: two very sweet parents (who'd been college sweethearts) and their three boys aged 4, 6 and 7 (or something like that). The oldest, Maximus, took to me immediately because I allowed him to teach me how to play the Pokemon card game. Man that was confusing to learn - even still I haven't grasped how to use each character's powers. Their dad, who claimed he'd never before met an American, immediately started grilling me about college life and sports (apparently he'd played rugby in college but he follows American football), but he declared I should withdraw my citizenship when I couldn't tell him who was scheduled to play in the upcoming Superbowl. Hell if I cared - I only watch the game for the expensive commercials and the halftime show (and of course, there's the inevitable Superbowl party!)

While everyone else went to bed, I stayed up on the couch to watch Obama's inauguration. With the time difference in Perth, the program started after one in the morning, but I figured this was a piece of history I wasn't about to miss (plus it was the first election I'd been able to vote in.) Alice, the mom, popped in to watch a bit while she prepared for an upcoming dinner party, but I was on my own (besides my mom and friend Beth texting my cell phone while they watched in America) when Biden and Obama recited their oaths. It was really a magical moment (minus the new president's stumble over the words) after such a dramatic campaign, and despite the fact that I only got a few hours of sleep that night, I'm happy to say I kept up with US politics from, what, 10,000 miles away?

Wednesday, 21 January

Since our flight wasn't until later in the afternoon, M and I joined the girls and their "charges" (Kiki nannied for an adorable little girl of about four) at the animal park, where we took the kids to pet the kangaroos, check out the cassowaries, and take photos with the wombat. I think I've now been to four or five animal parks in Australia, but it's hard to get tired of seeing these awesome creatures only found in Australia.

At the airport, M and I grabbed some food and coffee and discussed out trip. The verdict? It was one of the best trips we'd both ever been on. I believe there may be more joint travels in mine and Miriam's future...

Forging Through the [karri and tingle tree] Forests remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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One of my (new) favorite things to do in this sort of weather is escape to one of the many museums around the city, so today, I chose to strike the Powerhouse Museum off my to-do list. Since Rob had already finished exams as well (he studies property economics) and finished work (at a real estate company) at midday, he went with me to explore what I gathered to be "the museum of inventions."

Well, that describes a few galleries.

It was the most random museum I've ever been to: along with the Steam Revolution (trains, power and industry) and outer space/NASA galleries (pretty much everything featured American or Russian astronauts, as the space station in Canberra sends out mostly satellites), we explored...

- Cyberworlds: computers, "Girlgeeks" and robots, which also had a bunch of interactive games that Rob happily tried out while I took photos.
- EcoLogic: sustainable housing appliances and disposable clothing inspired by Japanese fashion. After taking Sustainable Enterprise, I felt much more knowledgeable about the power-saving displays and legislation-producing summits held in Europe from the 1970s.
- Lace Study Centre: 300 types of lace collected over a 100 year period - unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, this was closed.
- Chinese belt toggles: no idea.
- Yinalung Yenu: a gallery filled with Aboriginal artwork and loaned possessions. An interview with Aboriginal Australian academic (at UTS) and writer Larissa Behrendt was played in a corner room next to a glass display of her prized possessions, which ranged from a barrister robe (she was the first Aboriginal Aussie to graduate from Harvard Law School in 1994) to a pair of glittery purple stilettos (apparently she's a fan of shoes.)
- Inspired!: a really cool room featuring funky shoes by Christian Louboutin, a newspaper print evening gown (commissioned by the Weekend Australian newspaper), and a gorgeous amethyst-colored glass piece by Dale Chihuly. Another one of my favorite galleries.

On the way back, I stopped at Bar Broadway (a pub located across the street from UTS; during exam time, it's packed with students once they finish finals) to meet up with my Danish friend Soren, who'd just completed his last IT (info tech) exam. We've been friends since International Business last semester, so we talked for nearly two hours about our experiences in Australia, American politics (he likes to keep up with US affairs and sent me quite a lot of fun-poking sites about Sarah Palin before the election last year), Twitter, and how we wanted to visit each other's countries. Good to know I have somewhere to stay in Aarhus!

• SIDENOTE: According to my mother, I've been to the Powerhouse before - when I was four. Evidence of me, Katie and my cousin Jason is below...

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Passing by a particularly colorful booth, I paused to take a closer look at the artwork displayed on the table. They were magnificent: painstakingly detailed sketches of the Sydney skyline was etched on bookmarks and greeting cards, while the Harbour Bridge was portrayed across a canvas, dotted with paint in all sorts of colors. I stopped to examine a greeting card more closely when the woman running the booth approached me. She pointed at the card in my hand and said, "My son painted that when he was 11." I was gobsmacked. We chatted for several minutes and she (Sarah) told me more about her son, Ping Lian: he'd been diagnosed with savant syndrome (a developmental disorder similar to autism, allowing him to really shine in at least one area of expertise) at a young age, and as a form of "art therapy," Sarah had taught him how to trace and color. Ping Lian quickly caught on and was soon sketching all sorts of cartoonish figures (which she showed me through the laminated pages of the book on the table). By the time he was eight, he was sketching animals and architectural structures around his home city, Kuala Lumpur (yup, we talked a bit about Malaysia too!) and his work appeared in several solo and group art exhibitions. When they moved to Sydney in 2006, he began painting Australian icons such as the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

Sarah told me she's working on a book about Ping Lian's life and how art has given him an outlet to express himself. Fascinated with his story, I purchased a few cards with his Sydney images printed on them and exchanged contact information with Sarah so she could keep me posted on the book (which she's working on with autism researcher Rosa C. Martinez in New York.)

Check out more of Ping Lian's work: http://www.pinglian.com/

On my way down Oxford St, I stopped in the Australian Centre for Photography to check out the galleries. There were two: once featured photos that depicted an artistic take on outer space, and the other had photos of somber-looking Nigerian people. Interesting, but I didn't spend too much time looking around.

The rest of my walk down Oxford St was pleasant: window shopping past the boutiques, poking around knick-knack stores, and popping into Fringe Bar, which had magically turned into a vintage clothes and handmade jewelry market that afternoon. Gotta love those little surprises.

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Last week was my final week of classes, meaning Sustainable Enterprise was canceled on Monday for "revision time" and Wednesday's Australian History & Politics class consisted of a 30 minute wrap-up lecture and a trip to the Museum of Sydney, which was actually quite awesome. I spent the week finishing my final papers (for Malaysia, a 10-pager on Australian wine exportation to The US and Malaysia; for politics, another 10-pager about the assimilation of Aborigines into white Australia between 1940-1970), reviewing lectures and assigned chapters for business, and holding study sessions with my friend John, who took the same business class.

Saturday was the first day of a three-week finals period. Fortunately, my business exam was scheduled for 2 p.m. that first Saturday, so I was pretty lucky. The exam went well - 20 multiple choice questions, which were ridiculously hard but I think I did okay, and two short essays based on subjects I'd studied for hours (life cycle thinking, and sustainable fishing in Australia). Hopefully the marks reflect my confidence!

When I get back to SF State, I'll have four classes to finish up before graduating in December. It's a little nerve-wracking to think about, particularly because many of my friends graduated last month and several have since moved back to their respective hometowns, but I'm getting pretty tired of school at this point (regardless of the continent) and am looking forward to a new challenge!

Ending My UTS Education remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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That's about to change: I've just landed an internship at Women's Health Australia! The way it happened was kinda funny.

Two weeks ago, I received an email from a UTS journalism lecturer stating that Women's Health was looking to fill two weeklong internship spots - one in late June, the other in late July. I've been reading the magazine for years in the States (and I always stole my dad's Men's Health because the articles are hilarious), so I was stoked to discover this magazine existed in Australia too. I excitedly amended my resume, wrote up a cover letter to the editing coordinator, and sent it all to my lecturer.

A week went by and I'd heard heard absolutely nothing. I emailed my lecturer a quick note to let her know I was quite keen on the internship and if there was someone at WH I could contact. The response was less than appreciative: in short, I was told I was up against forty or so other students and that she was swamped with letters to read. Fine, I figured, I'll wait it out.

When I had still heard nothing by the beginning of the following week, I phoned my lecturer: "I'll call you back in five; I'm on the line with another student," she said. All right, I'll take five minutes.

Thirty-five minutes later, with no callback, I called the magazine myself, had a chat with the coordinating editor...and scored the June internship myself. Wahoo! I was due to start on the 22nd, where I'd act as an assistant to the editors and writers: researching, filing, that sort of thing. Alice, the editor I spoke to, said the office is relatively laid back and that I could jump between departments. Sweet!

The following day, I received an email from the UTS lecturer asking if I was free for one of the internships. "Already set it up" I replied. The phone rang - it was the lecturer. Apparently I wasn't supposed to do that, but fortunately she was calling to offer me one of the positions, so it worked out okay.

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After parting ways with my uncle, Paddy and I grabbed our bags and boarded the train to Paddy's hometown, Batemans Bay (a little beach town located a couple hours south of Canberra). I'd been once before back in January when a group of us from Sydney went down to visit Paddy and Dylan (from Geegal), so I'd already met most of his family. It was like living in the Schratz household for a weekend - Paddy's the oldest of six kids.

On Saturday, Paddy had an AFL (Aussie Rules Football) game to play, so I spent most of the day at the footy ground. I'd been to a Sydney Swans AFL game with him and he talks nonstop about how he used to play in high school, so it was awesome to see him in his element. At 6'4, he was easily the tallest on the team, making him "the ruck" (the player who hits the ball to his teammates at the start of each quarter - kind of like in basketball.) Everyone around the field seemed like they'd known each other for years as they chatted around the field, and the atmosphere reminded me of a kids' soccer game back home.

That night, we had dinner at his house for his mom's birthday, then headed out to meet up with some friends at the usual bars - Mariner's and the Bayview Hotel. Ahhh, always a good time at the Bayview. It's about as cool as bar hopping through Danville.

Morning dawned early as Paddy - being the sweet older brother he is - took his brother Dominic (age 14) and eight-year-old cousin Louis surfing, then we quickly drove back to get ready for his brother Joseph's (age 12) confirmation. I've never been to Mass before, so sitting in the pews with Paddy's whole family and listening to everyone sing along with the music during the ceremony was a surreal experience. It was nice though, sitting in that church, overlooking the cloudy sky and choppy ocean, while I listened to Paddy (Joseph's "sponsor") promise to protect his youngest brother.

We had to speed to the station to make the train home, but we made it just in time to get to the concert that night in Sydney: Van She, Architecture in Helsinki and The Presets, the latter of whom we danced to for their entire 1.5 hour set. It was the best way to end a very special weekend.

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On Saturday, four Italian students (Francesca, Eleonora, Lara and Alice - they ALL live in Geegal and our birthdays are within 2 weeks of each other's!) and I had a big BBQ party in the Geegal courtyard. It was awesome: in addition to all our friends from Geegal and the other two residences (Bulga and Gumal), there were tons of people from my Malaysia trip and other UTS students milling around, chatting in all sorts of languages (there were actually quite a few Italian students, so I heard a lot of "Buon Compleano!" (Happy Birthday.) Since everyone's been pretty overwhelmed with uni work over the past couple months, this was a great opportunity to get everyone out of their flats and reunite them all in the name of...well, my (our) birthday. Haha. Mother Nature was on my side that weekend - the only time it rained was Saturday afternoon! (Mind you, northern New South Wales has been flooding, so that says something.)

My friend Vikash (who's from Holland, but I actually thought he was American when I first met him - his accent is ridiculously similar to ours) gave me the ultimate birthday present - red party cups! so difficult to find in Australia - so a group of us immediately set up a game of Flip Cup in my apartment. (Basically, you line up red cups filled a quarter of the way with beer on either side of a table and team up, then it's a race to chug and flip your cup over before your opponent. Good fun, but we've experimented with several other types of plastic cups and they just don't flip like the American style ones.)

That night, a bunch of us from the BBQ caught the train out to The Rocks for some bar-hopping fun. Sydney bars can be a bit annoying when it comes to dress codes so it was tough to get everyone into the same places, but I ended up having a blast with Paddy, Vikash and my friend Luke from my old restaurant job.

Monday was my real birthday, and I woke up to Miriam and Anja's crepe paper streamers covering my door and Paddy's idea of an "American" breakfast: pop-tarts, with a small bunch of daffodils. Awa brought me coffee from a little cafe across the street, then I headed out to Manly to visit my friend Elise (who happened to be visiting from SF - she used to lifeguard with me at SF State and had a couple journo classes with me before transferring to CU Boulder last semester.) We shopped around and had this great (cheap) Thai lunch overlooking the crashing waves (under a cloudy grey sky, but it wasn't too chilly), then made our way over to the beach house she was staying at with a friend's family.

I almost missed the ferry back home (had to run in my sundress and sandals!), but I was able to quickly get ready for my birthday dinner - Thai again, but this time at a fabulous place in Newtown - with a bunch of Geegal friends: Paddy, Rob, Anja, Miriam, Awa, Shellie, Will, Devini (my Sri Lankan friend), Sanyukta (my newer Indian flatmate - the only other non-Aussie), and Francesca. Before we left, I was nearly drowned in generous gifts - silver earrings, scarves (that's become my signature accessory, along with bracelets), the HOTTEST black peep toe pumps from my flatmate Will (most impressive is the fact that he guessed my shoe size by comparing a shoe in my closet to his forearm), a James Squire t-shirt (shout out to my favorite Australian beer), a photo album of mine and Miriam's epic trip to the Southwest (complete with her witty comments) and a signed photo collage of a bunch of my Aussie friends and silly things we've said over the semester, put together by my flatmate Shellie. It was pretty overwhelming and I was beyond touched by all their efforts.

After dinner, most of us headed across the street to Kuleto's, a cocktail bar that serves up some of the most ridiculously tasty drinks I've ever had. I ordered a Red Corvette and a Japanese Slipper before Paddy and I left to grab amber ales down the street at Marly Bar.

I'm truly lucky to have such incredible friends on both sides of the Pacific.

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This year, approximately 30 UTS journalists were going to be pre-reporting on various forums and publishing their articles in City Hub, a free, monthly, independent publication I've seen lying around cafes and gyms. We weren't writing for money or course credit; we were working for bylines. I met with Jenna Price, the professor coordinating the UTS students, and together we picked two stories: Blogging vs. Journalism, a hot topic to be debated on Sunday, 24 May by a panel of five successful reporters-turned-bloggers, and a little feature piece about a new book coming out about the Opera House.

Abandoning my other assignments, I immediately went to work on my stories: emailing panelists, calling up bloggers whose sites I enjoyed reading (check out www.stilgherrian.com - I spoke to Stil for a good 30 minutes and he's fabulous. Christian Landers' site www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com is also worth a browse), interviewing tourists outside the Opera House about their reactions when they first saw it, and the ultimate: a sit-down breakfast interview with Katarina Stuebe, the photographer behind the book Joern Utzon's Sydney Opera House.

I met Kat at a little cafe in Kings Cross about a week and a half ago to discuss the book and how she came to be involved in the project, and her story was utterly fascinating. In a nutshell, she came to Australia from Germany to study architecture at UTS (!!) in 2001 and made frequent trips to Circular Quay to pursue her on-the-side passion: photographing the Opera House. She was fascinated with the Danish-designed icon, but it wasn't until 2006 that she tried to get in touch with the Utzon family (through Jan, Joern's oldest son.) With Jan's blessing, she trekked out to Joern's home just north of Copenhagen, where she was, expectantly, welcomed into the architect's home. A friendship blossomed with the family, and after several meetings where Joern and Jan pored over Kat's gorgeous Opera House photographs, Jan encouraged her to publish them. Thus, the book was born. (After Joern's death late last year, she decided to make it a tribute to his legacy.) In addition to her photographs, the heavy coffee table book is filled with stories from Jan about the family, Joern's work in Australia, and his life after leaving the country.

Our meeting went so well, she ended up inviting me to the official book launch in the Utzon Room at the Opera House! It was pretty intimidating to be in a room with several of Kat's friends and family, along with the writers' festival coordinator and other Australian head honchos, but it was an incredible experience. Check out the photos I got with Kat and Jan: (in one of them, Jan's sketching the Opera House on Kat's shoulder)

Aaaand the Opera House article: http://www.altmedia.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/city-hub-june-2009.pdf (pgs. 16-17)

(Will post the bloggers vs. journos link once I find it...)

I attended a couple seminars at the festival over the week:

- "And He Shall Be Called Barack Obama: The Makings of a Mythic Presidency": Named after a t-shirt the Washington-based BBC reporter/panel moderator saw someone wearing after Obama's swearing in, ABC's John Barron and the Sydney Morning Herald political correspondent Peter Hartcher (who I still think is one of the most incredible writers) discussed why the world made such a big deal over Obama's successful presidential bid. Highlights from their hour-long discussion:
John (while reporting from Iowa): "It's like the set of Bonanza populated by contestants from The Biggest Loser.
Peter (candidate reporting vs. what people actually focused on): "Journalists focused on Obama's blackness, yet 2/3 of voters chose him to 'fix the economy'." Interesting.

- "The Road to a Bestseller": Learned a bit about the publishing industry and about a few bestsellers they either turned down or took on but never expected such success from - Amy Einhorn, Charlie Conrad (who turned down The Lovely Bones) and Nita Taubib.

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Since the HV was hosting the Lovedale Long Lunch (a weekend-long party of food and wine tasting = super crowded accommodation), Megan, Paddy and I caught a three hour train to Newcastle to stay in the Cambridge Hotel Backpackers (luckily, the TexTours wine tour we'd booked was based in Newcastle, so we could easily be picked up and driven the 50 minutes to the valley.)

Upon arriving around 7 p.m., we checked in at the hostel, then walked clear across the town to Darby Street to find pasta. The street was lined with restaurants and bars, so after dinner we crossed the road to an Irish bar and enjoyed a pretty decent cover band with our beers before catching a cab back to the Cambridge. Being that the downstairs portion of the place was a bar and club, we got back in time to catch the last of four acoustic sets. The performer, a 28-year-old, shaggy haired guy from Canberra (?) named Michael Peter, was obviously very talented and into his songs, so after the show, Megan and I went up to him and chatted for a few minutes. Continuing mine and my parents' tradition of buying new artists' cds at their shows, I snapped his up and had him sign them. A DJ had taken Michael's place on stage and a group of girls were dancing all crazy in front of him, so the three of us kicked off our shoes and joined in before heading upstairs to try and sleep through the music.

The next morning, Tex picked us up outside the hotel just before nine. His nickname was quite fitting: had he not told us he was a Canberra boy, I'd have been convinced he'd moved to Australia straight from Texas. Before hitting the road, we stopped at the YHA across town to pick up a group of seven other people - all who were over 60. Oh man, this was going to be a good day.

A breakdown of the wineries we visited:

- First Creek, where the Semillion SB (I believe it was a blend) was the only one I really liked. This was also the day's first taste of Shiraz, which the HV is most famous for (it's good, just a a little heavy to drink without a big meal...)

- The Hunter Olive Centre, where we filled up on samples of oils, chutneys and sauces. (Brilliant, as we had run out of time to grab breakfast!)

- Pepper Tree, a sweet winery nestled in a forest. The 2008 varietal Verdelho rocked the house, as did the unwooded Chardonnay (I've decided I'm just not a big fan of the taste of oak. Don't tell Danville.)

- McGuigan Cellars, where I snapped up a bottle of the full-bodied Merlot.

- Kevin Sobels, the smalled winery we visited. I didn't like most of these wines either (the verdelho was too fruity, the semillion was too tangy, and the merlot was sour), but Megan and I split a bottle of the champagne to drink on her last night. I was pure sparkling heaven in a bottle.

- Rosemount, one of the biggest wineries in the area. Funny enough, the only wines I liked here were the dessert ones (which I don't usually enjoy at all. They all taste like syrup-y brandy to me - ick.)

After a brief stop at The Brewery (again) for burgers and Coronas, we boarded the train back to Sydney.

Roadtrippin' Round II remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Based off a similar company in the States, Oz Harvest sends out four refrigerated vans to specific restaurants, cafes and businesses each day to collect unsold/extra food items and drop them at various charities and homeless shelters around Sydney, Canberra and Wollongong (about an hour south of Sydney.) This, I thought, was exactly the kind of company I was looking for: while working at the restaurant last semester, I was irked by the fact that the portions were often much too big and left unfinished, yet rather than composting the leftover food, we were told to just scrape it into the trash bins. Such a waste! Of course I knew we couldn't sell the food from the plates, but my guilty feeling resonated with me through the rest of my plate-scraping time there.

The article included an email address for those interested in helping out, so I sent them a message. I was soon informed about the "van experience" opportunity: basically, volunteers ride along with the driver, who might have two or three weekly routes all over the city and Wollongong, and help pick up and drop off the food. Sounded great! I pitched the idea to my flatmate Shellie, who'd been keen on doing a little volunteering too, and we went for it last Thursday.

Since only one volunteer can ride with each driver, Shellie was paired with an older guy named Bob (whose brother happens to run Harry's de Wheels pie stand - an Australian institution since 1945 that my friend Aussie friend Brendan took me to when I first moved to Sydney) and I went with Matt, who'd been with the company since it started. His Thursday route took us over the bridge into the northern beaches and western suburbs, so not only was I helping out hundreds of people, I was also getting a tour of the parts of the city I'd never been.

We picked up food from all sorts of places: pies from Harry's, bread and pastries from several bakeries, homemade gnocchi and leftover lamb from the TAFE university cooking school, fruit and eggs from Woolworths' grocery store, organic vegetables and biscuits from a sweet little store, and soup/sandwiches from the Westpac bank's building cafes. Oz Harvest smartly leaves plastic containers at each site, so most of what we pick up is usually packed and ready to go. The vans are also on-call to pick up from other sites along their route, so we ended up stopping by an office to pick up 14 crates of boxed lunches left over from a corporate meeting.

Drop-offs were the fun part: Matt had good connections with many of the people we delivered to, so we stopped to chat with some people outside a battered womens' shelter and Matthew Talbot's, Sydney's largest mens' homeless shelter.

It was a great day (long, too - 10-6!), but I wish we'd had more interaction with the people we were helping. Shel and I decided our next volunteer endeavor might be at a soup kitchen in the city...

http://www.ozharvest.org/

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Paddy, a well-traveled Aussie (and a rare breed of the sort: he lived in Canada for four months after high school and has extensively traveled the Caribbean, Europe and Australia. Quite impressive), suggested we head north to the central coast (also known as the "holiday coast"). The three of us skimmed through guidebooks and googled different towns along the way, but after a few unsuccessful hostel bookings and a car rental bust, figured we'd just wing it.

Megan and I picked up a "no birds" Bayswater Corolla on Friday afternoon, and with a car full of snorkels and snacks, made our way (through traffic) out of the city towards Newcastle (about 1.5 hours north).

We had a map, but since we were on no time schedule, it lay forgotten on the floor as we stopped for random explorations: a gravel quarry at Peats Ridge (that's pretty much all we found there; I was curious to see it because I'd heard about a music festival that'd been held there over the summer), past The Entrance (that's actually what it's called) and to a random beach at sunset, then on to the Newcastle YHA. The town seemed pretty dead for a Friday night, but we had a great steak dinner and a few beers on the Hawksbury River at The Brewery, where we were serenaded by a young acoustic singer.

The following morning, we checked out of the hostel and headed further north towards Port Stephens. The road ran along the cliffs overlooking the beach, and since it was a beautiful day, we stopped for fish n' chips and brought them to Jimmy's Beach. The water was quite warm, but only Paddy went swimming (typical Aussie).

After lunch, we checked out the sand dunes further down the road and the beach at a place called Hole in the Wall. We tried to find a place called Seal Rocks, but ended up at a secluded beach where we found...a pelican! We poked around the rock pools for a while before heading back to the car.

By now it was getting dark, and with Paddy snoozing in the backseat, Megan and I made an executive decision: we were going to continue driving out of Port Stephens and head 100 km north to Port Macquarie. We figured it'd be funny if he woke up in an entirely different town.

After several minutes of winding roads, we finally found the YHA and proceeded to make a simple (free) pasta dinner before heading out to the Irish pub, Finnians, down the road with some of our fellow hostel-mates. We met some hilarious people: two English guys who'd had many bad experiences with their GPS system on their travels, and a nice guy from Toronto, Canada, who I talked to about places to see in Sydney. The nightlife was about as (un)exciting as Newcastle, but at least we were in good company.

The next day, we stopped at a bakery down the road for breakfast, then drove to the Billabong Koala Breeding Center (which was basically another wildlife sanctuary) to give Megan her first glimpse of Australia's wild animals. This may have been my fifth sanctuary visit (!!!), but somehow I still always get excited when I see the kangaroos.

With a long drive ahead of us (four hours without traffic, but since it was Sunday afternoon...), we left straight after the sanctuary. The three of us, along with several other friends from Geegal and UTS, were going to see Danny Bhoy, a Scottish comedian who was performing as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival. The gig, which was held at the Enmore Theatre in Newtown, was hilarious: Danny kept "taking the piss" (making fun of) several people in the audience and Aussie lingo (I never realized Aussies say "literally" so often...), as well as the Irish accent. I recommend You-tubing him.

Great weekend!

Roadtrippin' With My 2 Favorite Allies remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Deciding to be super touristy, we took the train to Milsons' Point in North Sydney and took in the gorgeous view of the harbor and Luna Park before climbing to a platform that led across...the Harbour Bridge! The view was incredible as we walked across the water, ships cutting across the glassy surface towards Circular Quay and out towards the northern beaches. At the end of the bridge, we paid $9.50 to climb 200 steps up in one of the pylons for an ever more spectacular view, which can only be described with photos:

The afternoon ended with a couple pints at the Australian Heritage Hotel in The Rocks before I had to catch a train back to UTS for a six o'clock class.

Meg's in town until mid-May, so the next few weeks should be fun!

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- A wet market, similar to an indoor farmers market-type setup where we could watch the locals grocery shop...and see the butchers chop up poultry right in front of us. Sick.

- A homestay house, where we got the chance to walk through a small Malaysian house and take in the big front sitting area, tiny kitchen, and harbour-like river running through the backyard. The family even prepared a few traditional dishes for us to enjoy before boarding the bus.

- A butterfly farm. It was a little frightening to have these spotted butterflies batting their wings in my face, but the habitat was nice and I got some great photos.

- A fruit farm, which required an uphill trek through groves of trees in the HOT weather. Not the most pleasant, but we were able to pick and taste waterapples (very sour) and chili cherries (funky concept, but they're pretty tasty) before reaching to top, where a fruit buffet had been set up. We filled our plates with fresh starfruit, jackfruit, coconut, papaya, mango, durian (which smells awful, kind of putting off the taste), pineapple and watermelon, but the best part was when we were each handed a drink voucher for a free glass of freshly made fruit juice. I had a delicious mango-pineapple concoction, but my friend ordered the recommended pineapple-nutmeg combo and that was most impressive.

After we got home, everyone decided to soak up the last rays of sunshine by the pool before we had to leave the next day (since it was likely going to be raining in Sydney. Boo.) My friend Carol ran up from the beach and asked if anyone wanted to join her and a few others on a banana boat (essentially a fruit-shaped inflatable raft that's pulled across the water behind a speedboat), and since I hadn't taken advantage of any of the cheap water sports yet (parasailing = RM50, banana boating = RM13, etc.), I said yes.

Big mistake.

Seven of us climbed aboard the banana boat - I right behind this guy Toby, who was in front) - and waited for the speedboat to come pick us up. One of the boating staff held our boat in place in the water and splashed us to keep us entertained, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the water: across the surface was everything from potato chip bags to dead fish and condoms. Even the beach was strewn with trash. Hmm, why hadn't I noticed these details before I'd hopped on the banana boat?

When we were finally hooked up to the speedboat and started making our way down the beach, I decided to take this as an opportunity to see more of the Penang coast. At first the ride was flat and pleasant, but after a minute and a half of this, the boat drivers decided to mix it up a bit. They started swaying the boat left and right, making the banana boat bump lightly over the small waves as my fellow riders laughed with glee. Deciding to step it up a bit, the drivers went for a particularly wide turn, making a much bigger wave. Rather than just coasting over this one though, the wave caught the bottom of the banana boat, and despite our efforts to lean collectively to the right and balance it out, the boat overturned to the right, causing us to spill into the murky water.

Somehow, I ended up flying backwards at a weird angle and hitting Ko, a guy sitting two spaces behind me, with the back of my head. Somersaulting through the water, I could feel a painful sensation in my head and numbness overtaking through my nerves as I surfaced, spluttering. I put one hand to my head to ward off the oncoming headache, feeling dazed and tingly. What was going on?

The boat guys called to me to board the banana boat with the others, but as I removed my hand from my scalp, I noticed a stream of blood making its way down my arm. Feeling alarmed, I touched my head again, and this time saw that blood was actually streaming through my hair and onto my left shoulder. I looked up at the speedboat drivers and demanded they immediately take me back to the beach.

We reached the Holiday Inn Resort in no time, which was fortunate because by now, I was fully panicked: my head was throbbing, my face felt numb, blood was continuing to stream through my hair onto my bathing suit, and these things combined were causing me to begin hyperventilating. Carol walked me to the hotel restaurant, and my friends - bless their hearts - immediately began covering my shaking self with towels and their t-shirts, bringing glasses of cordial and water from the bar while I waited for a nearby doctor to arrive.

I was driven to a nearby clinic down the street with my friend Ravi and one of the trip advisers, Stella, where I received EIGHT stitches on my two-inch long laceration before being taken to the Adventist hospital (which is actually an American hospital) for x-rays. At the hospital, the nurses further cleaned my cut and had to shave about 1/2 an inch around it in order to apply a bandage. Good thing I have thick hair - you could hardly notice it with my hair down. I made friends with the nurse, a fiftysomething man called Ooi, who talked to me about his grandkids in Manchester, England and the importance of living a happy life while I waited for my x-rays.

Fortunately, there was no damage other than a nice sized bump on my head, so I picked up my antibiotics and headed back to the hotel to order room service and get some much needed sleep before flying out the next day.

Now I just have two papers - one research, one reflection - and I'll have earned my six credits. Can't say it wasn't memorable...

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Dell sends computers all over the world, but of their three US branches (Austin TX, Nashville TN and Winston Salem, NC), only Nashville has a manufacturing company. They run on 16-hour days (two 8 hour shifts) and the Penang factory employs about 2,000 staff (1,400 are manufacturers), so the warehouse was pretty crowded...and LOUD. Still, their efficiency is impressive: depending on the demand, they can turn out 40,000 units PER DAY.

Walking between the work stations, I noticed something interesting: most of the manufacturers appeared to be women. When questioned about this, our presenter said this was because a woman's hands are much more dainty, therefore making it easier for them to hold the tiny screws that hold the products together. The men, on the other hand, were mainly responsible for more strength-related work, such as handling the component deliveries that are dropped off at the factory every two hours.

Once we arrived back at the hotel, many students headed straight for the water, but Aimee, Carol and I decided to head into Georgetown (the main "downtown" area in Penang, about an hour's bus ride from the hotel). Originally we'd figured we would join a group of others' plan to rent motorbikes, but given the speed most folks go on the one narrow, windy road that leads into town, we thought better of it. Instead, we boarded a 2.50RM creaky old bus with wooden floors and a door that didn't close properly. Awesome.

After about 30 minutes on the bus we had no idea how far we'd come, but since we'd just passed a few market stalls on the side of the road, decided to disembark and explore. We stopped an old Englishman to find out if we'd reached Georgetown and he just laughed: apparently we'd gotten off much too early. No bother, we figured, and started walking.

Turning down one busy street, we came to Buddhism Central: on one side was a Thai Buddhist temple decked out with flaming dragon statues and featuring a giant resting Buddha inside, and on the other, a Burmese Buddhist temple that resembled a Chinese-style mansion. We stopped in the Thai temple to meditate for a few minutes before continuing down the street.

We must have walked for 45 more minutes, popping into Asian bakeries and admiring the architecture, until we finally reached our destination: Penang Road! This, I was told, was the main strip through Georgetown, and boy was it a market mecca! The three of us immediately beelined for the stalls, losing ourselves among the pashminas, t-shirts, trinkets and traditional dresses.

Before heading off, I stopped by a little drinks stall for some "cendol," [an iced coconut drink made with gummy bits]. An old friend from SF State, who'd been born in Penang, had highly suggested I try this on Penang Road. It kinda tasted like those Asian bubble teas with the tapioca balls at the bottom, but it wasn't something I'd order again. Good experience though!

We caught the bus back in time to see the sun set over the hills, but by the time we reached Batu Ferringhi (where the hotel was located), it was dark - and time for the night markets! These were the number one tourist trap: everywhere you looked were fake watches, Louis Vuitton and Prada bags, sunglasses; wooden statues and vases; traditional Asian paintings and clothing...and pirated dvds. Hundreds and hundreds of movies and tv show box sets were set up on stalls hidden from the road by tarps, yet no one seemed concerned about getting busted. I'll leave it up to your imagination to figure out what I did in this situation.

Before heading to the hotel, Aimee, Carol and I stopped in a food court behind the markets to grab some noodles and soup. The total cost of my meal? Six ringgits. How was I ever going to face paying more for a meal when I got back to Sydney?!

Day Nine: All Sorts of Adventures remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Upon reaching the Holiday Inn Resort at the end of a long, windy road (the only main road through Penang), most students immediately changed into their suits and hit the water (out hotel was quite conveniently located right on the beach, but the ocean water was actually pretty dirty. Luckily, the hotel featured a gorgeous oceanside pool and nearby bar, so everyone settled in comfortably.) I checked out my room - again, I was hooked up with a solo, this time overlooking the ocean from the 21st floor! Sweet!

Feeling hungry, I tagged along with a small group to an Indian restaurant just down the street, where we tucked into plates of curry, butter chicken and noodles with plenty of garlic naan, before rejoining everyone by the pool.

We stayed by the water for the rest of the afternoon, ordering plates of nasi goering (spicy fried rice, in this case served with chicken skewers and prawns) and cocktails until sunset, when we dashed out to the beach and watched as the most incredible display of fiery color lit up the sky. I have never seen so much red in a sunset, and I have to say this was probably the most beautiful I've ever seen (no offense, Hawaii.)

The lot of us headed down the beach to grab a bite to eat at a nearby outdoor restaurant, chatting over 6RM bottles of Jaz beer (not as good as Tiger, but the price was right) about how lucky we were to be earning course credit for this experience. I mean really...I was getting six credits to sit by the beach and hang out with 38 awesome students? We joked about collectively failing so we could repeat the class together. Haha.

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On our way to the Australian High Commission for our next tour, we stopped by a beautiful Buddhist temple. I'm not particularly swayed by any one religion and didn't grow up practicing anything, but the Buddhist values have always appealed to me. I like the fact that it encourages you to better yourself and be your own Supreme Being, and I left the temple with a stack of free books and brochures to further read up on its teachings.

Perhaps my favorite educational tour was next, at the Australian High Commission, where we listened to the presentation about Australia’s trade relations with Malaysia and how to be successful in business in Southeast Asia. Malaysia’s economy is only a fifth of the size of Australia’s, but 50 percent of their GDP comes from their exports (particularly rubber and timber) and they maintain their status as one of Australia’s top 10 trading partners (3,500 Australian companies export to Malaysia annually as well). Our presenter, Gareth, highlighted that the most important skill a Malaysian businessman (or women) had to possess was a strong command of the English language; without it, he said, you were “the lowest in the Malaysian economy.” This explained why everyone I’d spoken to in shops and restaurants spoke English so well: their careers depended on it. I’d expected to face a much bigger culture shock because of the language barrier, but I’d been happily surprised to find I could easily carry on a conversation with just about everyone I’d met.

What I also found fascinating about Gareth’s presentation was how divided the Malays, Malay-Chinese and Malay-Indian were, and particularly how evident the degradation and hostility towards each other was in the media. I was shocked to hear that a non-Malay businessperson’s promotion is often printed in the newspaper, as to draw attention to the idea that they’re treated fairly and have the ability to move up the job ladder just like their full Malay co-workers. Still, since 14 of the top 20 wealthiest businesspeople in Malaysia are Chinese or Indian, it sounds like they’re doing quite well for themselves.

The rest of the night was a lot of fun: chips and salsa at Chili's (haha), last minute shopping at KLCC, then heading out to Luna Bar, a gorgeous spot with a pool and a rooftop bar overlooking the city and Petronas Towers, and finally...Reggae Bar, for the last time. We ended up scoring t-shirts from the bar to wear around for the rest of our trip.

Day Seven: Our Last Day in KL remains copyright of the author Alykat, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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