.Fairy Floss.

Well hello again. I don’t even want to say I’m sorry because well we know I will try my best the next time to write sooner but time is just getting the best of me and I haven’t been able to write as much as I would have liked. Let me take you to where I have been starting today and possibly moving backwards?

Well I just got back from spending a day at Sydney Park, St. Peter’s. It’s only a train ride away. Today was Earthdance, which is a festival celebrating the need for peace in the world. This festival takes place all over the world in 60 different countries and it’s apart of the U.N. The venue was in a park with rolling hills so you would be in front of some market stalls and then you would look to your left, your right, and right in front of you and there would be Tibetan prayer flags blowing in the wind and just beneath them would be heaps of people on each hill. We just took it all in for those few hours because unfortunately... I had a paper waiting for me to complete at home. :-/ As much as you think that I have been having heaps of fun... I have work to do as well.

At the end of this week I am off on an adventure because it is the start of Spring break! Dan and I have rented a van (Wicked- the name of the company) and we have it for 7 days. It has a sink a bed and well all the amenities you need for the time you have on the road and sleep... except the loo... I’ll get back to you on that oh and a shower...once again I’ll get back to you on that one! We booked a flight for October 1st in Hervey Bay soooo we drop off the van in Brisbane and somehow have to find our way from a to b. I think this is a pattern because well I will get back to you on that one too. Dan and I are driving the coast and stopping at many places along the way. I am so excited. I am currently looking on line, dropping in at bookstores and flipping through traveling books and creating tons of cds for the road. I’ve always wanted to have a major road trip so this should be good fun. I will be out of Sydney for 10 days so not that I keep this blog up to date anyways, but I will certainly try to keep in touch with you all while I am on the road. I will be bringing my journal with me so hopefully I can just type it over onto my blog so you can get the gist of it all. :-) I’ll try my best anyways because that’s all I can do.

Let’s see... Classes are wonderful. I am in Anthropology, History of Australia, and a Literature and Cinema course. I enjoy all of them. History isn’t really my forte but it’s nice to be learning about their culture and their history even though there isn’t too much of one. I have never taken a anthropology course and thanks to my love, Abi Stirling, I have been intrigued to see what its all about. I love it and have met some great people in my classes. Some of the best! My lit course is also something different because it has engaged me with dialogue and analysis that I have never been evoked into before. The films we are watching are quite mad too. I like them though! That paper that pulled me away from Earthdance is actually one for that class and its all about the adaptation of literature to film and I am currently doing a piece on Clockwork Orange. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or that creeper on the cover of the movie drove you away... surprisingly beneath the nitty gritty of it what the movie is about its actually very thought provoking and by reading and analyzing the text I have started to like it. Don’t judge me. :-P haha

University of Sydney is fantastic. I love it. It is a lot different from what I am used to, but that is the best part about it. The fashion over here is so different on so many levels. It’s honestly anything goes. I feel as if I am in the 60s because the fashion and the sunnies (sunglasses) they wear are so outrageous... I am eating up every minute of it, if I do say so myself. My luggage is certainly going to be a bit heavier but anyways enough about the fashion... The school! My history course actually touched upon the history of the school and it’s just a beautiful university. Despite what we have back home no one really lives on campus so there isn't much of a lifestyle like there is back home at Uni, but despite the quantity of students (40,000) you actually do run into people you know. While you aren't running into people you know you just have to people watch because its so good.I love it. I think that’s about it really. I love my Uni. Enough said. :-)

The weekends we have traveled a little bit. My roommates and I went to wine country and had quite a tour. We went to four wineries and before the day even started in the valley we went to a wild park to feed kangaroos, see deadly snakes/spiders, and cuddle I mean pet a koala. Our tour guide was a bit mad so it made it that much more entertaining. The day after that Dan and I ran in a race City 2 Surf which is a 14k race that takes you from the city’s’ center to Bondi beach. It was certainly a sense of accomplishment and I absolutely loved the adrenaline rush of running down the steep hill to the finish line and people cheering you on and this huge Australian flag just blowing in the wind. It all hit me at once of how much love I have for this country and how I am in love with life. About two weeks ago Dan and I ventured down to Wollongong, about 2 hours south of Sydney, to see the town, the beach and well I really wanted to see the biggest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere. It was just gorgeous. We got to the temple sometime before sunset and when it did it was just glorious! I do yoga every other day so with the beliefs behind that and just all that is yoga (which I can’t get enough of!) I wanted to see a Buddhist temple. It was really interesting for me too to see Dan in a place such as this because he isn’t affiliated with a particular religion so I liked his feedback. So that was worth the whole trip. Last weekend there was a spring festival on Saturday in Cronulla, which is about an hour and 20 mins. train ride South of Sydney. There was just a bunch of markets with food, clothing and music. It’s just really comforting to see the Australians with their families just enjoying themselves. Then the following day was Wind Festival at Bondi Beach. It was spectacular. Wind festival aka. Fly massive, tiny, intricately made kites in the air. So in a nut shell a massive kite festival. It was a sight to see with heaps and heaps of kites everywhere and people everywhere. My camera lost its battery life so unfortunately I only took two pictures but you get a sense of it. Once again there was food, music and kites galore. I love going to the festivals here and the markets here. OH MY GOODNESS> no more shopping in malls or stores, stalls at these markets are awesome and so worth it. You get pieces that you could never find anywhere else. Its nice because you save your money too because you aren’t tempted to go shopping because you know what awaits you at these markets.. or so you hope!

I hate to do this because you know how frequently I post BUT I need to get to it.. this paper, but trust me there will be plenty of procrastination between here and the next two papers so I’m sure I will be updating you on the events that have happened and so on and so forth, but you have to start somewhere.

I love you all very much and think of you on a daily basis. You have to know even though you are far away you are still very near and dear to my heart. Keep smiling, as I will do the same. Live in love. xoxoxo

P.S. Fairy floss here is cotton candy. How imaginative. I love it! So this post was a bit of fairy floss because it was quite fluffy but the others will be a bit more.. I hope. I'll be giving you more... more than Britney Spears did at the VMA's but we won't go there. N.orth C.arolina. (cough Sean cough) ;-)