Sunday, January 18

Quick update:

Today we went to the Australian National Museum and saw the dinosaur exhibit (SO COOL), the Aboriginal exhibit (also SOOO COOL!), and the "How to Survive in Australia" exhibit (SOOO COOL and SOOO CREEPY!). Then we went to Paddington Market, which is basically just an insane maze of booths that sell every kind of crap you can imagine. From there we went to the fruit market and purchased fresh papaya, mango, and peaches for dinner tonight with some swordfish. I'm headed downstairs to the pool to swim laps before dinner on the roof part two!

By the way, I figure I should mention my new friends because they are AMAZING! Mallory went to NCHS, and even though we didn't know each other then, we've become really good friends and have a ton in common. We have almost the exact same aspirations for travel, we both hate downtime, and we are both aiming to fill our heads with as much knowledge as possible while we're here!! She's GREAT!!! We've become really good friends with a couple of the guys in our program, too: Dan, Daniel, and Jeremy. Dan is an R.A. (I mentioned him before), but he admits the position is kind of a joke. He's from Newton, MA, and actually knows of the Heilbron family through St. Johns Church in Wellesley. Daniel is a filmmaker from SanFran. He goes to USF and is an awesome photographer/ filmmaker, and he's hysterical. We had a ton of fun with him and some Aussie locals the other night at Bungalow 8. Jeremy is from Chatanooga and goes to Alpine U. He's so sweet and awesome and also has similar travel plans as we do, so we're coordinating trips all together. Bottom line, they're all great. Everyone on the program is super nice, but for travel it's great to find smaller groups of friends who have more similar interests. Needless to say, we're all psyched to start exploring together!!

With that, I'm off to the pool and then the roof. Classes start tomorrow, but I don't have class until Tuesday at 5:30 pm so we're headed to the beach again. Lots of love!! Haley

PS- photos coming soon I SWEAR!