Orientation continues...Sydney is amazing

Woke up today at 5am feeling good and well rested.  It was a clear blue day and around 80 degrees already by 9am.  Today was day two of orientation with the entire ifsa student group.  The day entailed a trip to the Sydney zoo to see the famous and deadly Australian wildlife.  The highlights included the world’s most deadly snake capable of killing 200,000 mice with a single drop of venom, and the worlds deadliest spider.  I also got to see koalas, kangaroos, dingos, Tasmanian devils and many other popular Australian animals.  As we were walking I also spotted the first extremely large spider, not part of any exhibit, chilling in a tree (look for the photo to appear online hopefully soon).  

Following the zoo, the entire group boarded an extremely large chartered sailboat and proceeded to sail around the entire Sydney harbor for three and a half hours.  Words and pictures cannot explain or give any justice to how beautiful and vast the Sydney harbor was.  It was an extremely relaxing time to just take in the various sights, sounds, and action going around and in the harbor.  Some of the highlights of the tour included seeing the many 30+ million dollar houses lining the harbor and the many white sand beaches.  On a slightly off color and clearly Australian based humor moment, the captain of the sailboat chose the one nude and gay male beach as a good spot to pause and lower the sail halfway through our tour, providing us with some forever shocking images. 

I have gotten to know everyone in the group who is heading to the west side of Australia to Murdoch Uni once orientation is over and I think that it is a real good group and a good fit for what I was looking to accomplish during my time here. I think everyone in the group had at least one part of their body sunburned despite spf 85 sunscreen but overall the tour was absolutely amazing.

 Following the tour we returned to the area along the beach where we are staying, promptly changed into our bathers (swimsuits) and hung out at the beach for the remainder of the day (not that anyone needed any more sun).

 On a separate note, for dinner there was what seemed to be a standard layout of burgers.  The Murdoch Uni boys were fortunate enough to be instructed on how to build a proper Aussie Truckie Burger.  The ingredients to an amazing burger are as follows:

-       Bun

-       Burger patty

-       Bbq sauce, ketchup

-       Cheese

-       One fried egg

-       Couple slices of tomato

-       Couple slices of beets

-       Slice of pineapple

-       Lots of onions

Anyways, that’s all for today…kind of a big post but it was a real exciting and fun day.  Tomorrow should be equally as fun with surfing lessons in the morning.  Until then….Peace