SKYDIVING!!!

On Friday, May 18th I did something I never thought I would do. SKYDIVE!

I never even had the intention of skydiving until I arrived in Australia. My roommate Dana and Katie went on the pre-semester trip and went skydiving in Cairns and after watching their videos I kew that I could not pass up this adventure. Skydiving is a super popular activity in Australia, especially among study abroad students. 

We headed to Wollongong, which is about a two-hour train ride away where the company, Skydive The Beach, is located. In addition to the usual crowd of MK, Morgan and the twins, Morgan's friend Shandi had landed in Sydney on the 17th and decided to join us for this ridiculousness. Welcome to Sydney, right? 

Once arriving in Wollongong the next couple of hours are practically a blue. The company picked us up from the train station and took us to their location. Within minutes we had signed the waiver, put on the pants, geared up and were taught how to JUMP OUT OF THE PLANE correctly. I could not even comprehend what was going on because it was all happening so fast. All I remember is when I signed that paper I was shaking like I never have before. We also got to meet our tandem jumper/videographer and he videoed me a bit, even though I'm not even sure how I was forming words at this point. Then we were hurried on to a bus. The airport was about a 15-20 minute drive away but we were signing MORE paperwork the entire time. Next thing I knew we were hopping off the bus and walking on to the plane. 

The six of us and our tandem divers along with two random boys and their divers (they must have thought we were crazy) jammed into the plane. Next thing I knew we were taking off... flying backwards, might I add. As we flew higher and higher and higher I was trying to take in all of the beautiful views. Our skydive was right over the Wollongong beaches which are absolutely breathtaking, as are all the beaches I have seen in this country. We flew around for probably about 20 minutes and then all of a sudden we hear  a 5 minute warning. The way we were seated Morgan happened to be up first. Our guys all begin securing us to them, which is actually pretty awkward. You pretty much have to sit on their lap throughout this process but if it meant I'd be safe, I was willing to do anything. 

Out of nowhere the door of the plane opens up and I think we all begin to freak out just a bit. Morgan and her dude are about to jump and she is literally FREAKING OUT and in turn the rest of us are also freaking out. Next thing I know I see Morgan tumblr right out of the plane. WHAT!?! Guess who's second? ME. 

I approach the door of the plane and at this point I'm not sure what I did and didn't do. We were supposed to hook our feet under the plane, arch our backs and rest our head on our guy's shoulder. Did this actually happen? I couldn't tell ya. Next thing you know I'm falling from a plane 14,000 feet high. This is actually the weirdest feeling ever. Your stomach doesn't drop at all. You just feel like you're tumbling so fast. Every last drop of saliva exits your mouther and it's actually pretty difficult to breath. This whole process also really hurts your ears which is something that never even crossed my mind before. 

The free fall lasts for 60 seconds and then my guy, Kevin, who was absolutely fantastic, pulled our parachute. Woo-hoo! No problems! We glided around for a few and then he even let me steer the parachute. It took ALL my arm strength to pull this thing, ahaha. After he took the reigns back he pointed up in the sky and there I could see the rest of my friends and their parachutes popping up. It was truly an incredible site. I couldn't believe the views. The water was the most beautiful of blues and the grass the greenest of greens. I'm not even sure what was going through my mind except 'I can't believe I just jumped out of a plane,' 'I'm so incredibly happy,' 'This place is beautiful,' and 'I love Australia.' 

I was honestly pretty nervous to land but we ended smoothly. If I could have I would have jumped again straight away. I was literally so happy and I think I was on an adrenaline rush till about 2 am (meanwhile this happened at around 3 pm). While we waited for our DVDs and photos to be ready we walked along the beach which was almost as beautiful from land as it was from the sky. 

Once I was on the plane I wasn't all that scared.. hard to believe I bet. There is just so much happening and everything is moving so quickly. You really don't have time to freak out except for those few seconds right before your body leaves the plane. This was probably the coolest thing I have done in my entire life and it sort of makes me feel invincible. It's hard to put this experience in to words. Incredible... amazing... those don't even begin to describe it. I'm really proud of myself for actually doing it and now I can say that i went SKYDIVING. I think this whole thing sort of shocked all my friends and family since I barely told anyone I was doing it (in case I did back out last minute). 

My advice to you... GO SKYDIVING. For all you New Englanders reading, one of the workers where we jumped goes to Maine every 6 months to skydive. It's his favorite place in the world to skydive. OH YEAH, he's jumped 1,300 times. WHAT!?!

This has probably been one of the neatest things about my entire study abroad journey thus far. Yes the traveling has been amazing and exploring Sydney has been fantastic, but jumping from a plane 14,000 feet high is something you can't put words too. Simply incredible. 

Contemplating what I'm about to do...

Kev... my life savior and BFF. 

The beautiful views

A great distraction

Slightly freaking out

In the door of the plane... 

FALLING. 

Ow, my ears

Controlling the parachute... note Morgan flying along in the background!

Actually the neatest thing

In awe of myself

In shock

Simply lovin' life

This was so neat and I hope this blog does the experience justice. My DVD is actually the funniest and most embarrassing thing ever so if you're lucky MAYBE i'll let you watch it!

Back on the ground,

Allie

Symphony, Rugby and Row Boating

So if you've been keeping up with my blog you know that I went to the Opera House for a play a couple months ago. This time TEAN provided us with tickets to see a symphony at the Sydney Opera House. The tickets that MK and I received were for Tchaikovsky at the Ballet and the symphony took place in the main concert hall of the opera house. I couldn't believe where I was and what I was doing. It's been a dream of mine to see a symphony at the opera house since I think I knew the opera house existed. This group of musicians were SO TALENTED. Watching them truly made me miss playing my clarinet and pushing it away with the start of college. Oh well. I would never be as great as these people anyways. They're INCREDIBLE. The symphony was about two hours long but I probably could have sat there for longer just listening and listening. It really annoyed me that other kids from our program left during intermission, didn't go at all, or were just behaving immaturely throughout the entire performance. I hope they look back on this experience one day and regret their options. Maybe it's just me but I think having the opportunity to see a symphony performed at the Opera House is a great one.

TEAN also provided us with tickets for a rugby game on ANZAC day. ANZAC day stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand. It occurs on April 25 every year. Work and school is cancelled for everyone and the morning is full of remembrance services while the afternoon is rugby and drinking. It was so neat going to a rugby game! The match was between the Sydney Swans and the Illawarra Dragons. One team was red and white and the other was red, white and blue so we decided that we would keep switching sides throughout the game, ahahaha. One thing I noticed that I totally hadn't thought about was that OBVIOUSLY they don't play the American national anthem before the game; they play their anthem. It was neat hearing it and watching all the Aussies. It was also pretty exciting to drink a beer during the game (well, I had cider because I still think beer is disgusting) and fit in with the rest of the crowd. We had such a fantastic day! 

A while back we bought a groupon for a boat hire at this place called Audley Boat Shed... I think. A couple weeks ago we decided to use it since we weren't sure how much longer the nice weather would last! What an adventure this day was. Oh man. So we took the train to an area called Sutherland. It was about an hour away. When we arrived we easily found a taxi who then drove us to the actual boat shed. The boat shed was located in the Royal National Park and wasn't a far cab ride from the train. We rented two row boats: one for Jenna and Chelsea and one for Morgan and I. Me being me I fall right into the water while climbing in the boat. Starting out the day soaking wet, I took my dress off and let it air dry while I soaked up the sun. It was actually a really great weather day. We rowed around for hours, obviously singing 'just around the river bend....' the entire time. This area was sooo beautiful and once we got the hang of rowing it was a really relaxing afternoon. We "parked" our boats and ate our lunches while listening to music and dancing in the boat. Note to self: dancing in a row boat could end badly. Luckily, the camera survived the afternoon without falling into the water. Our other hilarious adventure of the afternoon, which I will spare the details on, was the urge to pee while out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, that was interesting. The end of that story. Hahahaha. After about 5 hours out on the water we decided to call it a day. We asked the man working on the boat shed if he could call us a cab and he told us that cabs don't like coming down here and that it was only about a half hour walk to the train station so off we went. Half hour walk... yeah right. An hour later and we're still walking on this narrow hilly road with NO SIDEWALK. Seriously was scared for us. A man pulled over and asked if we wanted a ride. While tempting, my familiarity with Criminal Minds convinced me to turn him down so we continued on our trek. Eventually this narrow road ended and OH, look where we are... a HIGHWAY. So we pretty much had to stop traffic while we crossed this major highway. People were looking at us like we were crazy and rolling down their windows to see if we needed help. One lady even asked us if we wanted her to call the police. FINALLY we reached Loftus... the train station and I had never been happier to see public transportation. Eventually we arrived home safe and sound and capped off the day with a visit to the hot tub. 

Trying to get home -_- 

Walking on water

The boat shed

Where I fell in the water... 

Well, I think that's all for now!

Another post will be up shortly. I PROMISE. 

I can't wait to tell you all about my crazy adventure of JUMPING OUT OF A PLANE!

Love from Aussie land <3 

Melbourne!

Sorry that every post is so behind. I guess it's a good thing that I've been too busy to write on here every week!

This post will be all about our weekend trip to Melbourne! On Thursday April 19, after only two days of being back in Sydney to recover from New Zealand, MK, Morgan, Jenna, Chelsea, and myself were headed back to the airport to catch a night time flight to Melbourne!

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria.Yes, Australia has states. Six I think. It's the second most populous city in Australia. It located South West of city and the flight was only about an hour and I obviously passed out. I was sitting in the very last row of the plane. Random fact but they're very big on making you walk out to the plane to get on instead of using one of those connector things from the plane to the airport.

We landed pretty late and luckily caught one of the last shuttles from the airport to the city. Somehow our hostel was literally 3 blocks from the city drop off point so that was pretty sweet. This hostel was definitely not as new and nice looking as our Auckland hostel but it was obviously good enough for the amount of time we would be there. It was also good because there was 24/7 reception and the staff was really helpful with giving us information.

Our first day in Melbourne we decided to do a Great Ocean Road tour. The Great Ocean Road is 243-kilometre stretch of road along the south-eastern coast. The road was built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932 and is the world's largest war memorial. The entire road is along the most beautiful water I have ever seen. This tour was a full day activity and so worth the money.

Our first stop was just a calm little area where we had morning tea and some cookies. So Aussie of us. From here we then went to the Memorial Arch which is the start of the Great Ocean Road. We walked along the beach a bit and even though it was overcast this water was still so blue and absolutely breathtaking! We drove for a bit alongside the road and got to pass through some super cute seaside resort towns like Lorne and Anglesea. After this we hopped out at the Kennett River where we saw wild koalas and a ton of birds! These birds were so beautiful and would land all over your arms and even on your head. There were parrots and lorikeets. We have some hilarious photos of us getting attacked by these birds. Next we went to lunch which was delicious AND included. Obviously I ate fish and chips which is just 1000 times better in Australia then it is in America. We ate lunch in Apollo Bay at a restaurant called Iluka. So delicious. Rainforest time! Our next stop was at Otway's Rainforest (Mait's Rest). Here we took a guided bushwalk through this cool temperate rainforest. Some of these trees were gigantic! It was such a neat atmosphere and it was just so cool looking. At our next stop we were able to get some amazing views of the 12 Apostles. The 12 Apostles are these limestone stacks.... kind of hard to explain. They're just rock and stones but they are SO neat looking. Then came Loch Ard Gorge. This area has AMAZING views. We went down into this area that was like a gorge. There were huge limestone cliffs all around us. It was just so neat. Our last stop was at the London Bridge. Which, coincidentally, has actually fallen down. We had a great day overall and loved the tour. We obviously didn't see the entire Great Ocean Road. I think if I ever come back to Australia I would definitely want to do a few days on the Great Ocean Road and stay over night in some of the seaside towns.

Loch Ard Gorge

Gorge

London Bridge

Wild koala

Bird!

Delicious lunch

Rainforest

12 Apostles

12 Apostles

12 Apostles

12 Apostles

The next day we headed out and hopped on the trolley tram thing that Melbourne has. I can't remember the name of the area that we went to but we were all super hungry so we stopped to get lunch at a pizza place. My pizza was SO GOOD. After we ate we walked around a bit and headed to a craft fair that was near by. This fair has the coolest jewelry and other stuff. It was all so unique and it was so hard to not buy EVERYTHING. We became best friends with this one jeweler. I ended up buying a ring and earrings for myself and a few souvenirs for some people back home! After we left here we walked around a bit stopping in different little shops and we also got gelato. We headed back to the more downtown like area and got to see some of the awesome graffiti that Melbourne is covered with. We ate at this amazing fish and chips shop in this neat alley way. It was delicious. Yes, a very fish and chips filled weekend!

Go to Melbourne and EAT THIS PIZZA

The craft fair we went to

This was this really neat wall with water and you could put leaves on it to write things and make pictures!

The next morning we had to wake up bright and early and head back to the airport to go back to Sydney. Melbourne was AMAZING and I regret not being able to be there for longer. It was such a short weekend. WHEN I come back to Australia I definitely want to spend at least a week in this area. It's much more European-like than Sydney is and has a really neat artistic vibe that fills the street. The Great Ocean Road is also one of the most breathtaking sights in all of Australia. 

Moral of the story: GO TO MELBOURNE.