Setting Sail on Week 2!!

There is no such thing as 'slowly easing into the semester' here in Australia. By Monday of Week 2, I needed to print off 200 pages of Rooms Division notes, read 2 chapters in my Tourism book, look up "additional readings" for my Human Resources class, and complete terminology for my Front Office class. Noooo problemmm. The general rule of thumb here is, for every hour you spend in class, it is expected you spend 6 hours outside of class doing homework. Again, no problem... I really didn't want to experience Australia anyways.

Enough on academics. World news was bursting at the seems this week. On Tuesday (the 22nd) a 6.3-magnitude Earthquake rocked Christchurch, New Zealand. I'm sure news spread around the world... but it's a little different when it's your neighbor that is getting rocked. Discussions took place in all classes and donation after donation were being collected in efforts to show support to our southeastern neighbs. It was really amazing all the support that took place, not only around campus, but all over Manly and Sydney.

On a lighter note, another history maker, headline-breaker was that both Queen Mary II and Queen Elizabeth were sailing into Sydney at almost the exact same time (coincidence? I think not). They have both been to Sydney, but never at the same time. Together they carried over 5,000 guests and 2,200 crew members. It was expected that tourists were going to spend upwards of $3 million (US dollars) while in town for those few hours (according to the Wall Street Journal).

We became QMII groupies!

The neat part? They were setting sail 5 hours apart from each other. The first at noon (I had class and missed it) and the second at 5pm (done!!). And into Sydney we went! If this was breaking history... we had to be there. It was actually kind of fun! We sat on the hill and watched this massive boat not move an inch for a very long time. Then once it started moving, we followed it for a while... It was headed straight for the Harbour Bridge and lemme tell you - it was NOT fitting under it. But full speed, it went. Silly girls, we were actually getting nervous as this thing was hauling towards Sydney's most famous bridge. But false alarm - they were just posing for a perfect photo opp.

And then the Queen Mary II was off... not sure who was more excited, us or the people on the "city on the water":

Yes, that is thousands of people standing on the back of the boat!!!

The rest of the week came and went. In a nutshell, the weather was still incredible and school wasn't of utmost priority... yet. So we made daily trips to the Corso and to Manly and to any place we could think of as an excuse to be outside. We were here to soak up the culture; not to stare at the walls in the library.
We went to the Wharf:

We took pictures of ourselves:

And we soaked up their way of life:

Afterall, we were going to remember the laughs, the beaches, the historic moments, and the sunsets... not the inside of our textbooks.