August 10

This morning I had only one class. After that I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon alternating being lazy and being productive, cleaning my room and packing my bag for the trip to Sydney. At 5:00pm I met Melissa and Amanda in the hall and we took our stuff and headed for the bus stop. It took about five minutes to walk to the bus stop, then another five minutes for the bus to come. We took the bus to the city exchange in canberra then walked three blocks to the travel center. It only took us about five minutes of waiting before they began boarding the bus, and about fifteen minutes later (6:00pm) we had departed en route to Sydney.

The ride to Sydney was very dark (it's still winter, so it still gets dark early here) and lasted about three hours and fifteen minutes. Melissa, Amanda, and I managed to make the time pass relatively quickly by talking most of the time, including what to do after we got to Sydney. We unloaded the bus around 9:20 pm at Central Station and then made our way to the hostel where we had reservations, about a five-minute walk.

The hostel was co-ed, so we asked the guy working the desk if we could all be put into the same room. Two of us had already been placed into the same room, so it was no big deal for him to move the third (Amanda) into the room. When we arrived at our room, we found that we already had two roommates in our 6-bed room. The one guy was sleeping (to catch an early plane) and the other guy wasn't in the room at that time. We decided to make our beds and then go out and explore the city a little.

We explored several streets in the vicinity of the hostel, making note of a grocery store, and also stopping to eat some food for supper. Apparently I was the only one that ate supper before we left (can't let my metabolism go without food! ;)). Here in Australia they have a lot of McCafe's in McDonalds, selling a variety of baked goods and coffee beverages. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a big piece of carrot cake at McDonalds, so that's what I got for supper/dessert. The girls decided on burgers at Hungry Jacks. Hungry Jacks is Burger King in every aspect besides the name. Even the logo is BK's buger, but with the words Hungry Jacks in the middle instead of Burger King. Apparently when BK came over to Australia there was already another store called Burger King, so they changed the name for stores in this country. Inside there were lots of American licence plates, pictures of classic American cars, and oldschool American celebrities (Marilyn Monroe, for example). It was kinda weird to see so much American stuff in Australia, even though it was an American restaurant.

After eating we went to Starbucks where Melissa was able to receive her employee discount for a cup of coffee. We then sat in Starbucks until it closed at 11:30 and try to figure out what to do tomorrow. We tenatively decided on going to Paddy's market in the morning, followed by the Powerhouse Museum and then perhaps the Sydney Aquarium.