The Trip Back Home...

The trip started off normally enough… Emma and Josh dropped me, Bex and Bex’s mum off at the train station at 4:00 am ish.. They hung around until the train departed at 4:42 am. Josh yelled at me for having a bubble. I was a bit upset about leaving them. Bex and I (and her mum and all our luggage) made it on the train and began our journey to Sydney.

I was a mess on the way down.. An absolute mess. I kept crying and it was just generally not good. But we made it to Central with enough time for me to hobble to our connecting train. Bex and her mum were spending the next couple weeks traveling around Australia so they got off at the Domestic Airport stop. I kept going to the International Airport all by my lonesome..

I did however make it to the airport around 7:30 am, and it only took me thirty minutes to get from the train station up to the check-in counter. That’s where I started having difficulties. One of my bags was 4 kilos overweight.. and it was going to cost me $176 dollars to pay for it. I only had $113 AUD in cash, and they wouldn’t take my dad’s credit card. I have no idea why, something about it not being in my name, blah blah blah.. It has his last name on it, they have my passport with my last name on it. How many Piedl’s do they think are in the States?? Anyway, I had to unpack a couple things from my larger bag. I took out three books, a towel, and a blanket. I managed to squeeze two of the books into one of my carry-ons, and I went to re-check-in. At this point, I would like to point out that I managed to make the bag at or just over (like 0.5 lbs) the weight limit. One of the guys working the counter, or maybe it was the head person or something, but he started giving me a speech about how I should have pre-weighed my stuff before I left. Yeah, like college students conveniently have scales in their bathrooms.. And I saw the weight when it was reweighed. It was spot on. There was no reason for him to start telling me that I needed to pack less, and be more prepared. I’m quite proud of the fact that I managed to fit 5 months of my life into two carry-on’s, a medium duffel and a large duffel.

Anyway, after I checked my bags, I ran to the Post Office to send myself the blanket, towel and book. It only cost me $58 AUD… which is quite a lot, but less than if I had an overweight bag. As you can imagine, I’m running really late at this point. It literally took me about 25 minutes to get to the terminal. Granted I wasn’t walking at my top speed due to my rather bum knee, but it literally felt like I was walking forever to get to the terminal. I finally made it, and I was one of the last people to get on the plane. The guy who checked my ticket was also the guy who checked my bags (oddly enough). As I was walking through he said “Ah, so you made it!” Me, being out of breath and slightly in pain due to two extremely heavy carry-on’s came up with the brilliant response of “Yeah… Just…” haha..I’m so smart sometimes..

The flight from Sydney to LAX wasn’t that bad.. It was as good as a 14 hour flight can be. Otherwise known as, I began to lose feeling in various places in my body (my butt mainly).. I did manage to watch what felt like 8.5 million movies and take a two hour nap. I watched “When In Rome,” “Post Grad,” “A Bug’s Life,” and half of “The Aristocats.” I think that’s all. I don’t really remember.. They did give us dinner (I had pasta and spinach I believe), and a snack (it was basically a mini sandwhich), and breakfast (blueberry pancakes..). The food was okay. Not bad for airline food, but still left a lot to be desired :/ There’s not much to tell about the flight other than I barely made it, watched lots of movies, took a nap and then got off.

We got to LAX at 6:30 am. By the time I picked up my bags, went through customs, re-checked my bags and went through security, it was 9:30am. It took me three hours to do that! The line for security was ridiculously long. LAX has essentially a line to get in line for security. The upstairs zigzag area was completely full, the downstairs zigzag area was completely full, the line then went along a wall for awhile, and then continued outside for about 100 meters. That’s how long the line was!! At that point, I was just glad that I had a flight that left later. I got some chips and a large iced caramel coffee from Mackers before my flight. I think that’s part of the reason I’m still awake. I’ve had too much caffeine to not be..

The flight to Charlotte finally left, although by the time everyone got on the plane and we managed to taxi out, we were about an hour late. I was really worried that I was going to miss my connection in Charlotte. But it was okay.. We managed to make up a lot of time during the flight and we were actually scheduled to land early/on time in Atlanta. This changed however, when we ran into some weather issues. We were held about 65 miles outside of Atlanta for about 20/25 minutes and then we finally got the clear to land. I was quite excited about that. The only issue was that it took us another 20 minutes to taxi to the gate! I don’t think I’ve ever taxied in a plane that long before! It was ridiculous…. By the time I got off the plane it was 9:38pm. My flight to Charlotte was scheduled for 9:42 pm. You can imagine my panic.

It was okay though, because my flight to Charlotte was also delayed. It was delayed two hours. I’m currently waiting for the flight to Fort Myers, FL to board, so the flight from Chicago can get in, so my flight to Charlotte will leave! I have been traveling for 33 hours, I’ve been awake (not counting my three naps: 1 hour on the train, 2 hours from Sydney to LAX, 2 hours LAX to Atlanta) for 53 hours, I haven’t had a shower in almost 48 hours. I desperately need real food, a shower and some actual sleep, and I’m currently stuck in the Atlanta airport. My sleep schedule is currently really screwed. I’m wide awake. It’s 10:55 pm (Friday night) in Atlanta, and12:55 pm (Saturday afternoon) in Newcastle. I’ve had way too much caffeine to go to sleep at the moment, I’m just hoping that by the time I get to Walker’s house I’ll be tired and need some sleep. But I don’t think that’s going to happen that way. It never really does.

The current plane is to board the plane and leave for the Charlotte airport at 11:50pm. I should land in Charlotte around 12:50am. I’ll need about 30 minutes to get off the plane/pick up all my shit. Hopefully Texas will be there to help me with bags. I have too many to comfortably walk with. I then plan to get to his house, shower, go to sleep, wake up, talk to Walker about what furniture we have for our townhouse next semester and what we need. Dad will then pick me up around 1:00 from Walker’s house. We will go IKEA shopping and then drive home. I will once again fall asleep after saying “Hello” to Giles. I will wake up at some point on Sunday, say “Hello” to mum and Allie, and then probably go back to sleep. I will hopefully be able to overcome my jet lag in a week.

I’m so ready to be done traveling right now...

Adventures with Josh and Emma :]

Jock drove me and Josh and Emma to the Broadmeadow Train Station to catch the train to Sydney. We however, arrived about three minutes late for the train, so we got to wait a whole nother hour for the train to take us to the Central train station. We however managed to catch the train and we were off on our grand adventure to Sydney!

Josh and Emma and I just napped and talked on our way down to the station. Once at Central, we switched trains to get to the Kings Cross station. Our hotel was just down the street from there. We got to the hotel, checked in, and dropped off our stuff and then walked back to Kings Cross to catch a train to Circular Quay (pronounced “key”) via Central.
The first thing we did once we got to Circular Quay was to see the Sydney Opera House. That thing is AMAZING! I got a fair amount of pictures but it was just heaps of fun to actually be able to SEE the thing up close. I always see it in pictures or in Finding Nemo, but to actually be next to it, to actually TOUCH it myself.. That was an experience :]
We then left the Opera House and walked (about 15 seconds) to the Royal Botanic Gardens. It wasn’t what I was expecting, I thought it was going to be like the Gardens in DC, but this was more like a HUGE park, with trees and flowers and stuff everywhere. I got to see some pretty cool trees though. There was a Bird of Paradise tree, a Dragons Blood Tree, and a tree that looked like it belonged in Jurassic Park/The Lion King/etc. It was an epic tree. We didn’t walk all the way through the gardens, but we did walk through a fair bit of them. Josh found a big rock with a hole in it so he climbed in it. Yes. He climbed in the hole. Haha.. but that’s Joshua for you :]
After the Gardens, we took a ferry from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour. Oh my god. Darling Harbour is SUCH a pretty place! Especially at night, you can see the reflection of the lights and everything in the water. Oh, it’s absolutely gorgeous :] ..
At the moment, they’re hosting an “Internation FIFA Fan Fest” there for the World Cup. (By the way.. Spain played Portugal and I REALLY want to know how that game turned out. It should have ended about 30 min ago..) But the Fan Fest area was pretty cool. They had put soccer ball covers over all the lights and there was a HUGE floating TV out in the harbour. They were just doing stupid stuff on it when we were there.

In Darling Harbour, there is an IMAX theater, and guess what we did? We went to see Shrek 4 in 3D IMAX. Yes. That actually happened :] A bunch of 20 yr olds paid $25 to see Shrek 4. But it was okay, it was a decent movie.. maybe not worth $25, but hey, I was with two of my best friends in Sydney. It was amazing just to be there :] Next to the IMAX theater is a three floor shopping center where we went to just look around and grab dinner. Me and Josh ended up getting Chinese food for dinner and Emma got herself a hamburger. After that we walked around the shopping center and me and Emma bought some DELIIOUS fudge… I got mint flavored and she got Jaffer flavored. After that we took the ferry back to Circular Quay. It was quite amazing to take the ferry at night. We sat outside this time and at the back of the ferry so we got to see basically everything. I was quite excited when I saw the two pirate ships that are at the National Maritime Museum. Let me say this again, there were PIRATE ships there!! I was extremely excited about that.
Once we got back to Circular Quay, we took the train back to Central and then to Kings Cross to get to our hotel. Our room was probably the smallest room of my life. Actually that’s a lie.. It was roughly the same size as my room at uni.. maybe a bit smaller.. and while there was no desk or wardrobe to take up room, there was a double bed with a bunk on top to take up basically all of the room. There was room for the double, a small walkway and a TV and that was the room widthwise. Lengthwise, it was a VERY small walkway, the double, the width of a single and then the wall. Like I said, tiny. Anyway, once we got back we all showered and I’m pretty sure I went to sleep first. I’m sorry.. walking around on a broken knee really tires me out apparently. I’m not going to apologize for that. Except for what I already said..

I was the first to wake up though. Woke myself up at quarter to 8:00.. I guess old habits die hard? I just laid in bed for a while, people stalked from my window, read for a bit, and then finally woke Josh and Emma up around 9:00. We got ready for the day and then went to the “buffet” brekky offered by the hotel. There wasn’t much to it :/ They were out of cups so we couldn’t make tea or coffee, there was no butter or jam to put on the toast, and there was no milk or spoons for the cereal. Thank god, none of us like to eat a big brekky or we would all have been screwed..

After we ate “breakfast” we took the train back to Circular Quay and then took the ferry over to Taronga Zoo.. And because we decided to spend the morning outside, it of course had to rain all morning. Not just a light spattering of rain either, no. it POURED on us. I cannot describe how wet we all were by the time we got out of the zoo. It literally looked like I had just stepped out of the shower. That’s how wet my hair was.
At the zoo we basically saw all of the animals. No joke, we saw freaking EVERYTHING.. It was heaps of walking for someone with a bum knee. I kept falling behind and Josh kept calling me ‘Limpaloticus’. It’s okay though, he was Snuffelumpagus because he had a bit of a cold and kept snuffling. We saw kangaroos, emus, koalas, komodo dragons, peacocks, basilisks, snakes, lizards, turtles, lions, tigers, elephants, otters, the list goes on and on and on. It really was quite an amazing experience, and I’m so glad that we decided to go.

After we were done with the zoo, we took the ferry back to Circular Quay and then the train to Central. We were a bit early for our next train (30 min early) so we decided to go to Paddy’s market while we waited. This was basically like all of the street vendors from New York crammed together under one roof selling stuff at you. It would have been heaps of fun, but we literally got there and then had to turn around so we could catch what we thought was the 3:15 train back to Broadmeadow. As it turned out, we didn’t need to rush that much because it was the 3:45 train that we needed, not 3:15. But it was okay. We had a nice and exiting run in the rain. You know. Got our exercise in for the day :]

Emma slept most of the way back, Josh and I just talked about random shit. He tells some of the best stories of my life. I know I’m really going to miss that over the next semester. But it’s okay.. We had heaps of fun in Sydney, and I’m really glad that we decided to go. It was kind of funny. We were still in the early planning stages when I called Josh to see if he wanted to go with us. (He said yes.) And then Emma called the hotel to ask them a question and she ended up booking the hotel. It was almost a spur of the moment thing haha.. But I’m so glad they took me down to Sydney. It was so cool to just explore the city with them. I’m really going to miss them next semester.. *tear tear*… (we had a knee party on the way back... see below)
But Sydney was amazing. A once in a lifetime experience :]

Portugal vs. Korea

Wow..

Wow..

That's all I have to say..

WOW...

Portugal vs. Korea... EPIC butt-kicking..

7-0 final score Portugal winning..

7-0.. IN THE WORLD CUP!!! SEVEN - NIL!!

Three goals in SIX minutes!! SIX!!

Makes the Germany/Australia game not look so bad.. haha... and we thought THAT was a bad game..

Even with that ass-kicking.. Portugal is STILL somehow behind Brazil.. hahaha.. wow.. but yeah.. probably THE BEST game of the World Cup right there.. damn.. haha

(For the record, that is NOT Portugal/Korea playing...it's just my only picture of the World Cup on my computer..)

To Allworth We Go!!

The basic idea was that because me and Emma and Josh were done with exams, and because Bex needed a study break, we decided to go up to Josh's house for Friday night. We left right after Emma finished her last exam which was about noonish Friday afternoon..

It takes about 40 minutes to get to his house from Uni. Emma and I were having an epic sing-a-long together in the back seat. It was pretty darn amazing if I do say so myself :]

When we got to Josh's we met his little kitty, named Scout. It's actually his sister's cat, but it's really all the same. And ohmygod that cat is SO adorable. No joke. (See above picture)

She provided HOURS of entertainment for us. We all wanted to take her back to the unit. That's how much fun she was haha..

After we dropped off our stuff, Josh suggested going for a canoe trip up the river for a bit and around an island. It was actually really fun. We left his property on foot and walked down to his grandmothers. Along the way we passed a playground, and being the enthusiastic person that I am, I declared that I needed to swing. I forgot how amazing it was to swing haha.. We played on the playground for a bit before deciding that we really did need to get a bit of a move on. There was a short fence around the playground, no higher than my knee. I didn't see a problem with standing on it and jumping down from it. I've hopped down from higher things before.

It didn't go so well this time. I hopped down, landed wrong on my foot or something, and the bottom half of my leg popped out of and back into socket again. Not cool. It hurt like a mother.. and now it's all puffy and swollen again :( bleh...

Anyway.. I sat on the ground for a little bit, then sucked it up and hobbled down the road to his grandmothers. She is a pretty cool grandmother. Josh was really happy to see her I think. I think he misses his family sometimes :/ ...

Anyway, she has this orange tree in her backyard and lucky for us it was actually ripe. So we got to pick oranges off the tree and eat them. And let me tell you, they were some of the best tasting oranges I've ever had. They were slightly tarter (is that a word?? As in "more tart") than store bought oranges. They were pretty darn good.. mm..

We went on a bit of an adventure to try and find the canoes.. they weren't where Josh thought they'd be, so we went back up to his grandmothers and took the quads out (the four-wheelers) and I got to drive one :D.. Yes.. you read that right. I drove a quad. And it was AMAZING!! :D We drove them up the road to Josh's cousins house where the canoes actually were, and then loaded the canoes onto the back of the quads and Josh somehow maneuvered them down to the river. It wasn't really that far..

We then got into our canoes.. Bex and Emma in one, me and Josh in the other and we paddled up the river and we went on a bit of a tour around the river area and this island. I didn't bring the camera because I didn't want to chance it falling into the river. That would have been awful.. so I don't have any pictures.. but this was honestly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. At times the river was so flat you could see a perfect reflection of the river banks and oh.. I just wanted to die at points.

Josh kept complaining because I'd accidentally (on purpose) throw water on him. And yeah.. the water was a bit cold.. but I honestly don't think it was that bad... but then again, mom did call me a polar bear when I was little.. Once we'd finished our canoe trip, we took the quads back to Josh's grandmother and then headed back to his house. We took turns taking showers and playing with Scout (did I mention how cute the cat is?)..

Meanwhile, Josh's mom was cooking for us. She is amazing. Let me just put that out there. Over dinner, it somehow came up that I had next to nothing in my food cupboard (which was true) and she put together a bag of food for me and stuck it in Josh's car as a "surprise" for me. How awesome is that? I seriously love her. But I like my mommy better :] haha.. But for dinner she made potatoes, and cauliflower and broccoli, and lamb roast. It was really good... especailly compared to what the dining hall generally serves up.. And for desert.. oh I almost died.

They made waffles.. which were pretty awesome on their own.. but they way it was done, was that the waffles were in the shape of several hearts joined together.. this massive flower looking shape was broken into separate hearts. Over this was scooped vanilla ice cream and over the ice cream was spread basically liquid toffee. It was the most amazing thing I've ever tasted...

After dinner and desert, Josh, Emma, Bex and I decided to play a board game.. so we played Jumanji.. which was a pretty fun game.. and (when I was little at least) a pretty scary movie haha.. and then after the board game we all (Josh's little brother Dominic and little sister Imogene included) watched "The Black Balloon" together. It's a pretty intense movie, a bit sad (yes I cried) but it was really good.

We then watched the US vs. Slovenia game.. and Dr. Who, simultaneously.. but seriously.. what the hell was with the call on the last US goal? It was fair by all accounts. Yeah there was a bit of pushing on the US side, but did he miss the Slovenian guy that had the US player in a freaking headlock?? Obviously.. Bit frustrated about that one :/

In the morning, Josh was supposed to cook brekky, but all he managed to come up with was cereal and toast. Still, since I'm not a big fan of breakfast, that was more than enough for me :] ..And then guess what we did? If you said shot a bow and arrow you'd be right!! It was pretty awesome, I'm not gonna lie. My should is still a bit sore though... I did manage to pull both the 40 lb. bow and the 65 lb. bow. I was proud of myself. The 65 is Josh's and we made him demonstrate for us before we shot. He just pulled back on it like it was nothing. And then I tried, and I literally was struggling QUITE a bit haha.. But I manged to shoot Josh's bow twice and then I stayed with Dom's bow (the 40 lb.). It was a bit easier.. although they all kept freaking out because they thought I was going to take off my finger as the arrow flew through. FOR the record, I still have all nine.. I mean ten of my fingers haha..

We then left Josh's and on the way back his car began to overheat heaps so we had to turn the heat ALL the way up and open the windows. That was actually really fun because hair was going everywhere haha.. We then went to watch Josh's soccer game which was pretty good actually. His team actually won this time, 2-1 against this really annoying red team. Seriously, there was this lady on the side lines with the HIGHEST voice of my life and she was saying THE most annoying things too. I seriously wanted to slap her. Multiple times. Josh's little sister wanted to fight her after the game. We think she would have won too... And then we came back to uni.. and that was our trip to Allworth :]

My EPIC dream last night...

Okay.. so just a quick note on the EPICNESS of my dream.. because I seriously had the MOST epic dream of my life last night.

I woke myself up in the middle of it and I'm quite upset about that.. Quite upset...

Basically there were heaps of people that were divided into teams but we were all in the middle ages. And we were sword fighting. But not like the fake sword fighting in "Role Models.." actual sword fighting with sharp swords and armor and such. And we were fighting wild beasts and dragons and you got points for what you hit and knocked over a took out.

For example: If you knocked over or took out a wild beast you got the Beast Points, and if you took out the dragons wings you got the Flight Points, and if you did something to the dragon's fire breath you got the Fire Points. Yeah.. it was a bit of an elaborate dream..

I don't remember WHY we were batteling everything, but I can CLEARLY remember what I'm assuming was my team captain saying "Take out that beast we need the points!" So obviously the points were rather important...

Anyway... It was an epic dream.. :]

The Epic Redecoration of Josh's Room...

Let me first tell you that Bex and I love Josh and would never do anything that would intentionally piss him off. That being said, we decorated his room in post-it notes. We covered EVERYTHING..

It all started Monday night, Bex and I were taking a study break, Josh had gone to bed early. We covered his door in balloons and streamers and post-it notes. He didn't seem to mind too much, in fact he was laughing when he came out of his room the next morning...


Josh has soccer training on Tuesday evenings. From 7:30 - about 9:00 ish. Josh, being the silly person that he is, left his door open and the light on. The door wasn't just unlocked, it was wide open. How could we not take that opportunity? He practically DARED us to do something..

So I ran down to Bex's unit, grabbed her stack of Post-It notes and we went to town covering EVERYthing with them. We even placed them in odd spots, like a story inside the dictionary on random pages, on his calendar, behind his curtains, in a party hat, in his jumper sleeve, under the fitted sheet on his bed.. and of course the surface area of his desk, closet, fridge, window and mirror were covered. And we even went so far as to WRITE stuff on them! How thoughtful are we? :D

It only took us two hours (yes, I know, two hours).. but we finished and left the room the way we found it, minus the light and the post-it notes. Josh walks in, does his normal after-soccer stuff and goes to walk in his room.. However, he stops to play with the streamers that are still across his door.. He attempts (and fails) to karate chop them down.. and then he turns on the light. Me, Bex and Emma are sitting out in the kitchen waiting for this moment.

As the light turns on we hear "What the F***!... WHAT THE F***?!?!?" and then he comes out smiling... We're all in the kitchen dying from laughing.. I'm glad he was a good sport about it though.. I mean, we did go into his room, but we didn't actually touch or move anything.. Which I think is the important part.

He said he was going to find a scrapbook and put ALL of the post-it notes in the scrapbook so he could remember them. That's how we know we didn't cross a line. And yes, his room looks HEAPS better now!! haha... It's all colorful and pretty :]

I Wish That All the Ladies...

Australian Bus Riding Song :]

"I Wish That All the Ladies..."

Oh I wish that all the ladies (repeat)
Were waves in the ocean (repeat)
And I were a surfer (repeat)
I'd ride 'em with me motion (repeat)
Singing hey babarooba (repeat)
Hey babarooba (repeat)

I wish that all the ladies
Were holes in the road
And I were a dumptruck
I'd fill 'em with me load
Hey babarooba
Hey babarooba

I wish that all the ladies
Were bells in the tower
And I were the bell boy
I'd ring 'em every hour

I wish that all the ladies
Were free roaming deer
And I was a hunter
I'd jab 'em with me spear

Repeatable with anything that rhymes :]