The City-Life

We have only been in Sydney for four days and it feels as though We've been here for weeks. We have been busy seeing all the sights. The highlights are many but I will only talk about a few. First off the Zoo! We saw kangaroos and koala bears!!!!!! So cute. Of course the Opera house was Beautiful, that goes without saying. The Chinese Garden was very beautiful but also very surreal. We are sitting in a beautiful garden sipping tea but you can see the cars driving by on the motor way through the trees. The main interesting thing is that there was not one Chinese person working at the Chinese Garden. But you could pay to dress up in traditional clothing and walk around that garden and take pictures. So while you are enjoying the garden you see women walking around in traditional clothing, but they are all Caucasian. Very strange.


The night life

Shannon has been amazing and brings us along to dinners and outings. I know she doesn't go out this much normally but she is really allowing us to see what Sydney is like. I find It very interesting to 'hang out' with people to really get a feel for the differences in our cultures.

We had $5 steaks at a bar. We met some of Shannon's friends. By the end of the night we were at another bar where everyone was decked out in 80's gear. It looked like it was straight out of RISD. The next night Matthew was tired and called it an early night. On the other hand I went out and bar hopped with Shannon and friends. The strange things was that we first went to a hip hop type bar. This consisted of many Caucasian people wearing backpacks and caps slightly moving to Ausi and American hip hop. I knew hip hop went beyond American, but to see it was very strange. In the US it is very much about east coast- west coast beats. But if you don't have that rivalry what do you have? If you don't have the African American struggle that started it, what do you have? For me I had no context to put it in.

Last night I went to a house party with Shannon. Very much the same as in the US. Drunk people, drunken confrontations, music, conversations, and BBQ.

So yes I'm having fun. Lots of people with different accents!!