02.23

After a long debate with myself at 1 am the night before, I woke up around 6 am on Saturday to go hiking at the Blue Mountains with Brian, Brenden, Emma, and Nikesh. I packed my lunch for the day and after getting ready with everything went downstairs. Nikesh was running a little bit late due to not waking up to his alarm, so we planned on meeting him at the train station since we had to catch on at 7:20 (the next train won’t be arriving until 10). We arrived at the platform and boarded on the train since the train was ready to leave the station soon. Around 7:18, we saw Nikesh runnin into the platform area, but he was lost and couldnt find us. He was literally 2 platforms away from us, and we could see him across from the windows, but we were not able to get his attention to our direction. The train got shut almost immediately and started moving, leaving the images of Nikesh on the wrong platform — it was quite sad and funny at the same time.

About 2.5 hour train and bus ride later, we arrived at the starting point of the hike. Since Emma and Brenden were both in the group hike to Blue Mountains, we decided to take a different track. We first started with the Grand Canyon hike, which was a 3-4 hour hike (that we ended up finishing in 1.5 hours because Emma and Brenden fly through the mountains – it was crazy!). It was my first hike in about 4 weeks due to all the injuries I acquired in New Zealand. The hike was pretty easy as it was mostly slight uphill and a lot of crossing rivers. It was really beautiful since we were surrounded by canyons most of the times. We took a quick break when we reached the summit. Although it was very cloudy, it still had an amazing view of the mountains.

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Afterwards, we did another hike called Govetts Creek which took another 1.5 hours. This was more rough as it involved a lot of step climbing, which put a lot of pressure on my injured knee. However, it was definitely worth it as the trail was beautiful. Although the morning was full of tiredness from lack of sleep, tragedy with Nikesh, and physical exhaustion, it was still an amazing day at the Blue Mountains, and I was so happy that I decided to go.

02.24

On Sunday, we decided to go to Featherdale Wildlife Park. It was about 1.5 hour train ride to the park. The park was such a cool place as we got to see so many different animals such as koala, kangaroo, quokka (my spirit animal according to Sara Brockmeier), sheep, echidna, crocodile, dingo, etc. I also got to pet a kangaroo, quokka, and sheep! It was the most exciting thing ever haha. Walking around the park was fascinating since you can turn around and see a totally different animal/bird, and a lot of them were roaming around freely outside of their cage/gate.

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Afterwards, I headed to Bondi Beach to relax and get some food. It started raining/storming, but I decided to stay a little longer since I didn’t have anything to do. Áfter about an hour or so, a rainbow started forming at the beach. In about 5 minutes, a full rainbow formed spreading across from the land to the ocean. It was my first time seeing a full rainbow, and it was so pretty.

02.26

On Tuesday, Riddhi, Caroline, and I decided to have a girl’s night out since we haven’t been able to spend as much time together the past couple of weeks since we came to Sydney. We started our night by going to Krispy Kreme’s and getting a donut. They were SO GOOD! Yum haha. Afterwards, we went to The Rocks to have dinner and walk around. We went to a pizza place and chatted the whole time while having dinner and caught up with everyone’s life. It was so nice to spend time with them, as they are one of the closest friends I made during this study abroad experience.

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02.27

On Wednesday afternoon, I went to MAAS Powerhouse Museum to see the Star Wars exhibit with one of my friends from back at Tech, Evan (he is currently studying abroad at UTS). The museum was really cool in that it had a lot of original artifacts from the movies, like C-3PO, R2D2, and Darth Vader. We also got to make our own fictional character while going through the museum which was also neat.

After going around the Star Wars exhibit, we continued to explore the museum. One part of the museum had cool physics/invent your own type of exhibition, which was really awesome because Evan and I were ME2110 competition teammates. With that said (us being MEs haha), he and I decided to do this one task of making a unique pass for a ping pong ball to follow. It took us about 15-20 minutes to get it done, but it was fun making it work, just like the old times.

02.28

On Thursday after classes, I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Sydney with Brian. We first dropped by the Paddy’s market, which is basically a huge souvenir shop. They had so many things varying from props for the upcoming Mardi Gras celebration to all kinds of touristy items. I felt like I was in Aladdin’s cave looking through everything.

Afterwards, we headed to Circular Quay to do Harbour Bridge walk. The walk through the bridge was shorter than I expected, since it only took us about 10 minutes to walk through everything. The view from the bridge was so pretty, as we were able to see everything from up top. It was sad to think that this was my last time getting a view like this at Sydney for a while.

After couple train/bus rides later, we arrived at our last stop, Sydney Fish Market. I wanted to visit here for a while for 2 reasons: 1- I really really love seafood, and 2- it was one of the three recommendations I got (first being Blue Mountains and second being Bondi Beach).

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There were so many different sections, starting with the live/freshly caught fishes/sea animals. There was a huge selection of all different kinds of fishes, and it was really cool to walk around all of them.

Off to tasting! I tried fresh oysters for the first time, and they were so yummy!

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Everything that I tried was so good. Aburi scallop was something that I would’ve never guessed existed – scallop with cheese! It looked really good however, so I decided to get it. The guy cocked it on a grill, and it was ready to eat in about 5 minutes. It was so tasty, and the scallop with cheese and flying fish roe tasted amazing. Surprising mix, but hey whatever works right haha. The marinated octopus skewer was also really good. The octopus was very tender and also seasoned very well. The sushi platter was something that I was looking forward to most, more so because I wanted to taste how good the salmon was (my favorite fish), and it did not disappoint me. I never tasted sushi as good as this one. It was very fresh and also was so soft, that it basically melted in my mouth. I loved it so so so much. Although they were all very yummy, it was on the pricey side (which makes sense but still sad) so I couldn’t try everything that I wanted to.

For the rest of the night, go to Journal 8