blue sharks dancing

Its now Thurs at 830a. We wil be leaving for the zoo soon so I don't have enough time to write about our adventures last night, but I will asap. We leave for Perth later this afternoon. I'm so excited! I have LOTS of pictures! beautiful pictures!

Edit (this is long! I guess i don't know how to be concise):

Well Yesterday, Wednesday, was a great awesome day. We had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to get to our destination, the Blue Mountains. We hoped on a train and rode 2 hours NW of Sydney to an area near Katoomba. There we met up with our tour guide, Adam, and went on a wonderful four hour bushwalk.

It started off as a plain walk. Nothing too much different than a hike in some of the park back home. The further we went in the more beautiful it got. We looked at the plants and watched/listened to the birds. All lot of the plants were tea plants that we could rub our hands on and get a wonderful scent in return. The birds were sweet! They had black cockatoos! They are apparently rare to see, but we saw quite a few as they flew right over our heads. Beautiful beards, I wish I was able to get a picture. The white cockatoos were a bit more common,but I couldn’t get a picture of them either.

Throughout the bushwalk, Adam would tell us interesting fact or stories. He was quite funny. Every now and then, we would sit down by a water pool and he would tell us some more stories. Eventually we made it onto the edge of the valley. There was a beautiful waterfall that I kept taking pictures from many different angles around the mountain. It helps show just how far we actually traveled.

When we came to our first lookout, it was uh-mazing! It was the most majestic thing ever! For as far as you can see were just mountains covered in eucalyptus trees. The Blue Mountains get there name, from the bluish vapor that come from the eucalyptus trees and water vapor. They really do look blue!

I really can’t explain how wonderful of an experience it was. It was a beautiful day. It was hot yet there was a nice breeze that kept us fairly cool. I just hope the pictures do some justice.

After the bushwalk we went to a pub in Katoomba while we waited for our train. This pub is where my trip was almost ruined. I grabbed my credit card to pay and I noticed it wasn’t signed like mine was. I turn it around and it was a Black Diamond AmEx card! I then realized that I had got mine swaped at the pub we went to the night before! It was so worried and hopped that he had notice he had the wrong card, unlike me. Brynn was really nice and called up the pub and found that he did indeed catch the mistake and they had my card waiting for me. Thank GOD! So later, when we got back o Sydney, Lauren and I walked back to pub and got my card. Luckily for me, the manager refunded our drinks. Sweet!

On our way back to the YHA, we decided to finally cash a little bit of our travelers checks so we wouldn’t have to keep making tabs. We had a little trouble finding a place, because the banks were closed and one place asked for our passports, which we did not have on us. Eventually we found a place. $40USD yielded about $50AUS. That was sweet.

After we freshened up, we went to get dinner. We went to this place that Brynn and the Hostel manager suggested called the Shark Bar. The shark bar is in a hotel, it was very hip and they had a wonderful deal on a meal. On Wednesdays, they have a special: $2 steak when you get a $4 drink! I spent only $6 for a steak and a drink! And the steak was delicious! It was perfect, little fat, nice and juicy. I don’t know they can keep the prices so low.

After dinner we decided to stick around a bit. I wish we had our cameras, but they both had died on the Blue Mountain trip and were charging. Also on Wednesday s they have $1 pool. All the tables were packed, but I think it was obvious that we wanted to play because a Taiwanese man and his friend asked us if we wanted to join them in some a game. Of course we accepted. There game of pool is a tad different. Instead of different colors with stripes and solids, they have just red and yellow. Same game just only two colors.

Adam, spoke English very well but he had a thick accent. And ya’ll know how hard of hearing I am. With the noise of the bar and his accent I had a terrible time understanding him, but we made it through. I can’t remember his friends name, he couldn’t speak English well, so he often just sat and watched us play.

We had to have played close to 10 games with these blokes, and they paid for each one. At one point, Adam spilled a near empty glass of beer on my lap. He was so upset, he kept bowing and apologizing. It was no big deal, he barely got me. But after that he bought a pitcher to make up for it. By the end of the night HE was drunk. LoL. It was quite funny.

While we were playing the bar had game night in which people could compete to be put into a raffle for a surf board, a trip to the blue mountains ($200AUS) and loads of beer. The first one was sort of like a scavenger hunt. They asked for people to come on stage and they had to retrieve and item that the hostess told them to. The last one back was eliminated. It was quite a show. The things ranged from grab a person and bring them on stage, I got dragged on, to get a $10 note, 10cents and a sock. The money and sock were for the final stage. The last two people had to take the dirty sock and put it over a glass of water and drink it through the sock. Gross but hi-larious! I wish I had participated.

The next game Lauren entered in. They asked for four girls who like chocolate and four blokes who like to be pleasured. Well it’s pretty obvious was being done. Chocolate bar in between legs while girls had to suck as much chocolate of the Crunchie as possible. The guys one by giving the best facial expression. It was the greatest thing to watch, I loved it, it was hilarious. In the end Lauren tied with another girl. She won a pitcher of beer for it.

The last game we saw was partner limbo. The partners had to limbo with arms in hand. If they fell they had the chance to redeem themselves by taking of an article of clothing. A girl in a dress ended up taking off her bra and her knickers. I’m glad I was to the side of her while she limboed. A few guys also ended up taking off their shirts. It was all rather PG-13. Nothing was ever revealed. But it was great fun.

At this point a group of blokes came up to us and asked us to go to another pub with them. Of course we went. I wanted to talk to people who actually spoke English. The guys were all nice, I’m going to say they ranged from mid twenties to about 30. I can’t recall their names, because there were too many of them. They were awesome. We asked them a lot of questions, they asked us a lot of questions. It was nice to hang out with a few Aussies.

We tried to go to an Irish bar called Scruffies but it was full. So we went to the Side Bar which was just up the block from our hostel. It was sweet they had a live band there that was playing covers of American songs. We all went onto the dance floor and had a good ole time. A lot of the songs were American. Quite surprising. I love dancing so much. Well Lauren and I went to the toilet later in the night, and when we came back all the guys had left! How rude. It hurt our feelings a bit. I’m going to assume that they didn’t realized we went to the toilet and just left. Well, after that we went back to our hostel to get a good night sleep before the zoo in the morning.

Pictures will be added when I can.