Sydney Trip

I am now living proof that dreams do come true and prayers are answered. Ever since I was young I have wanted to go to Sydney and visit the Opera House and see the Harbor Bridge and now I can officially say that I have. I am so thankful to my father (both earthly and heavenly) for making this possible. We arrived in the city around 7:30 or 8:00 and went straight to our Hostel where we were staying and unpacked, ate and just watched some TV, relaxing after a long days drive. The next day, however, we walked down to the city to buy our public transportation passes and we are just going down this hill when I turn my head and stop dead in my tracks. I jump up and down, squeal, make a complete fool of myself and almost start crying as The Opera House comes into my view. I could not believe that I was actually seeing it in real life. We were still on the other side of the bay from it but it was just so awesome because you just looked to the left a bit more and there was the Harbor Bridge. We took a bunch of photos from that distance and then proceeded on towards The Opera House so that we could climb the stairs and look around (you aren't actually allowed inside unless you pay a bunch of money for a tour). Standing in front of it was more incredible than I could have imagined it. I was filled with smiles and giggles and just complete awe! It was amazing! After that we went on a ferry ride and ate lunch in the park right by it. We ate lunch under a really large tree and I decided after I ate that I wanted to climb it really badly so we did :). That was a lot of fun and we were all pretty crazy. Saturday we went to the Gleeb Market. (Gleeb was the street that our Hostel was on) They have the market every Saturday and it is a really cool set-up where you can find cool clothes and different things for a lot cheaper than in regular stores. After that we got on 3 different buses that we didn't need to and tried to find our way to Bondi Beach, haha. We eventually got there and just relaxed in the sun for a bit. It was beautiful, of course, and it felt so good to lay out under the sun again. The weather was absolutely perfect the whole week that we were there. Sunday we went to the inner-city Hill song church. It wasn't the massive one because that campus is really far from the city and it would have been very difficult and costly for us to try and get out there to the hills. But the City campus service was really good. The people were super nice and we met some really cool girls that made us feel less out of place. After church we went to another street market thing that happens only once a year. It was so cool because we just happened to be there the Sunday that they were putting it on. It, also, was on Gleeb street and there were just tons of booths up and down the street selling clothes, food, jewelry, gifts, they had bands playing and a few bounce houses set up and stuff. It was really fun and so awesome that we were able to be there for that. Monday was absolutely packed. We went to the Aquarium in the morning, visited the Queen Victoria Shopping Center Building in the mid-morning/early afternoon, ate lunch at The spinning Tower Restaurant in the late afternoon, shopped again after that, walked all through the Royal Botanical Gardens in the evening and then ended the day with a fairy ride at night. It was such an awesome day! The aquarium was really fun and we were able to see lots of cool fishies and sea creatures and the restaurant was really nice and the food was delicious (I actually ate Kangaroo)! The shopping part was so much fun and we had a blast being hyper and taking photos and video in the stores and some really funny events happened in the gardens that really us girls would only find funny because we were there but it was great and then the ferry ride was just so relaxing after the long day. Needless to say, we all slept well that night. I was very very happy because on Tuesday we decided to go to the Blue Mountains. I didn't think that we were going to be able to go but everyone seemed to think it would be a good idea and a bit of a different experience than just the city. Plus the Blue Mountains are really popular here and everyone has said that I needed to go there. So I was very glad when we decided to drive out there. They were about and hour and a half to two hours away from the city so we left fairly early so that we would be able to spend the majority of the day there. There are many different sights that you can go to because they are just so big. We chose to go to two of them. The first one that we went to we chose to walk down two different trails. The first trail was one that led to a small but old aboriginal cave like thing where the aboriginals had left hand prints all over the walls of the caves. It was really cool to see some real genuine Australian History. For those of you that don't know, the Aboriginals were the people that were first in Australia before the Europeans. Then the Europeans came to Aussie and tried to "civilize" the people and it didn't and hasn't gone over well. Anyways, the second trail led us to a gorgeous look out where you overlooked a huge river and hills that were filled with tons and tons of trees! It was beautiful! After we were done with that sight we drove farther and went to another sight that was supposed to have some water falls in it's paths. We probably chose the path that was the most difficult one that we could find and hardly ever traveled on and it took us forever to find the water fall but once we did, oh my word, it was so unbelievably amazing!!! There were other people there but they eventually left and Erin, Amy and I went exploring some and took lots and lots of photos. The rocks were, of course, super slippery, haha and so them mixed with my lack of balance ability led to me slipping (quite hilariously) and falling right into a little crevice of water that was in one of the Waterfalls pools that it ran down into. It was probably one of the funniest moments of the trip because I just looked like an idiot and was half soaked, lol. It was great and I loved it. After that I was tempted to just jump in but the water was SO freezing!!! That ended up being the only trail that we took for that stop but that was alright because the hike back up was SO hard! We were so out of breath and our legs were so ready to be done. We would have been a funny sight to see. So that was Tuesday and then Wednesday we had to pack up and head home. I slept for a bit of the drive in the morning because I was just worn out but after about lunch time we all woke up and were just in crazy hyper moods and we had a blast belting out music and dancing to it in the car. It made the trip seem alot shorter coming back. So all in all it was an amazing indescribable trip that was greater than I could ever have imagined. I was very please and VERY thankful to God for his provision and safety through it all.
It is strange to think that if a few hours all of you will be celebrating Thanksgiving. We were going to celebrate it tomorrow as well but we moved it to Saturday because Mrs. Loftis has to work tomorrow so Saturday would just be easier. So I still get a Thanksgiving :)
It is even more strange to think about the fact that I only have one more month here! I can't believe that it has already been over 2 months! That just doesn't seem possible. Well, I am still tired from my trip and my fingers are starting to hurt from typing so much, hehe, so I am going to go to bed now. I love you all! Thanks so much for all of your prayers!

XOXOXO

More Photos

http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd19/jmktraveler/