ye goode olde tourist sites

i always thought it was really cool how the gappies got to go on the trips and see a whole load of good stuff and now i'm realising just how good it is! I got to go and see 'I Robot' for FREE, yes that's right i had to spend ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on that ticket! then on monday afternoon i got on a minibus with a group of year 12s (U6th) and went off to sydney. it was on this momentous occasion that i saw my first kangaroos! AND not only that, but i've seen roadkill roo as well! now i fell like i'm truly in australia.

anyway off the point...i stayed in a hotel just outside sydney (another first - never stayed in a hotel before), and we went into town the next morning. so of course i had to do all the touristy stuff that comes with being a foreigner in this country. all well and good you might think, but how in hell's name are you supposed to find these places if they're not signposted?! i mean really, is it that hard to put up an itsy bitsy sign saying 'gullible money spending tourists this way please'? still i overcame this hideous barrier to my chances of blowing lots of money on cheap-tacky-never-to-be-looked-at-again-souveniers, and i made my way to the harbor. and true to form, there it was, the harbour bridge in full glory...of the rain. i have to say though, the opera house did look spectacular...by the time it had stopped raining. still, it had cleared up pretty much by the time i got to the quay so i decided that a bit of extravagance was needed, so off i toddled on a harbour cruise. it was fab! i met a really nice welsh girl called liz and we chatted away for the whole time, while trying to dry our bums (as i said, it had been raining, and the seats were a little on the damp side) and not get blown overboard. for the grand total of $22, i got an hour long cruise and a free beer so i thought that was a pretty good bargain personally. so after that i pretty much pottered around the quay and down pitt street (one of the main shopping streets) and then had to make a hasty return to where i was meeting the others. if any of you have ever been on a monorail, you'll know how smooth it is. in fact i think we did something along those lines in physics, so i sat there feeling quietly smug at knowing how it worked, or at least what i could remember of the workings...so i made it back in perfect timing, hadn't had any lunch, though i was brought back from the brink of starvation by the handy snack that is cadbury's chocolate.

[an aside about the choccy here: as you may or may not know (and if you don't i'm not sure how...) chocolate is a very important substance to me. i wouldn't go so far as saying that i'm a chocaholic, but i do appreciate a good slab of the stuff from time to time (maybe every five minutes or so). anyhoo, the chocolate bars in this country are a little on the thin side. now when i say thin, i don't mean that they're smaller, merely flatter than the stuff we get at home. so you don't have the whole mouth-too-full-of-chocolate-that-you-can't-speak scenario, which i happen to enjoy. in most cases the stuff tastes just as good, but you can't quite have the same experience with such anorexic pieces.]

and i'm home. i can now add to the list of things i've seen/done:

continued from the last list...
6. seen not just one, but a whole mob of kangaroos
7. seen (and i have photos to prove it) the harbour bridge, i have in fact now gone across it in a train as well, the next step is to climb it
8. appreciated the structure of the opera house and been inside to test it out
9. travelled on a famous sydney ferry (several times in fact and it was most interesting when i was every so slightly affected by alcamahol)
(on a completely different note...)
10. know and work with a guy called bruce (no shelias yet, but i'm working on it)

that'll do for now

toodles