ANZAC Day, Darling Harbour's 21st birthday and the Queen's birthday!

For this blog I figured I should write about some "Australian" celebrations that have happened since I've been here. I'm pretty sure I already wrote about Mardi Gras, so here are a few more that have happened more recently.

According to a very reliable source (Wikipedia), ANZAC day is: a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, and is commemorated by both countries on April 25th every year to honour members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who fought in WWI.

It also happens to be the only day of the year that a gambling game called "two up" is legal to play in pubs all over the country. So, of course, being the good Austrailans we are, a bunch of my friends and I started drinking around lunch time and then went to a bar down the street to check out what all the hype was about. The game itself is actually kind of complicated to understand unless you watch it, but it's basically just like a game of heads or tails with two coins. There's one person who stands on a square of carpet, probably 10x10 feet and holds a paddle that has two spots for 50 cent coins to fit in. The people watching then bet each other on whether it's going to be both heads or both tails. If one of each falls, the "spinner" has to toss the coins again. If the spinner gets three heads in a row, they can either takeall the money that has been thrown in the middle of the carpet and leave or take half and continue playing. If the spinner gets two tails though, they lose and the money in the pot is distributed out to those who threw money in.

We sat in the bar and played/watched for a few hours and it was actually a lot of fun. One guy who was the spinner won something like $300 at one point. I think I only won like $15 :)
Here are a few pictures: 1. the MC and the girl in the background holding the paddle is the spinner. 2. The money on the carpet. 3. Justin holding the beer that I bet him and won :)

Next, Darling Harbour's 21st birthday. So, apparently Darling Harbour is only 21 years old, hard to believe, but I really have no reason to believe otherwise, so whatever! They had a huge celebration all day the first Saturday in May and had festivals all down by the water, concerts, etc. Then, at night they had a really cool fireworks show from the middle of the harbour (mom, you would have loved it) and they had fireworks again every Friday and Saturday night throughout May. I only went the first night and we got to watch them from Becca's friends' apartment which has 3 awesome balconies and looks out over the harbour, so we had a great view. Unfortunately, the show only lasted about 15 minutes, but it was still pretty cool to see.

Finally, today happens to be the Queen's of England's birthday and they celebrate it in Australia. Apparently everything is closed because of this holiday which has had both negative and positive effects on my day. So, I've compiled a little pros and cons list:

Pros:

My paper that was supposed to be due today is now actually due tomorrow because technically they aren't allowed to assign anything on holidays. Also, it has FINALLY stopped raining and happens to be a gorgeous day, so because my paper is not due until tomorrow, I went outside and played frisbee for an hour or so with Justin and Lauren which we've had to start doing in the basement of unilodge because the weather has been so terrible! Also, went to the mall and bought a cute dress because everything is on sale :)

Cons:

When I say that everything is closed, I really mean everything, including the library. Normally this would not effect me because I hate going to the library and never get work done. However, Kate's computer doesn't have microsoft word so I have to write everything on wordpad and then open it with word at the library and finish and edit it there. BUT since the library is closed, I can't do that, or print it out, so I'm having Emily do it for me since I leave for the Whitsundays tomorrow morning at 7am.

So, in conclusion, I could really care less about celebrating the queen's birthday and it really isn't a big deal, just felt like I should probably write about it because it's probably a big deal to someone!

Tomorrow I'm heading the Whitsundays (google it, it's gorgeous) with 7 other people. Becca's parents are paying for all of us to stay in a hotel together and it should be absolutely amazing! Hopefully I'll get my tan back :) We will be there until Saturday and then Becca and I are flying to Melbourne and staying there from Sunday-Tuesday, so I'll obviously update about those trips once I get back.

Love and miss you all!

SORRY EVERYONE!!

I know, I know, It's been too long. Much has happened since New Zealand, but I guess most of you have no way of knowing that :)

I've come up with a few reasons for why I have not blogged in so long:

1. Since spring break, I have been completely swamped with work. WORK? what's that? I had no idea until a few weeks ago when I had 10,000+ words worth of papers due in one week. This also included a presentation and making a poster. All got done, but for that week I pretty much did nothing but write, practice presenting and cut & glue pieces of magazine onto a giant red poster board.

2. In the past month or so I've gotten so comfortable living here and being here that the things I do every day don't seem so exciting or new to me, even though if I wrote about them, you'd all probably still read. It really has just been the same old over the past few weeks. Go to class (sometimes), do homework (sometimes), go out at night (pretty much every night), go broke (from going out every night), repeat. So, I figure I'd save you all from the typical drunk college stories and not write about the bars we go to every night :)

3. Probably most relevant is that my computer COMPLETELY died a couple weeks ago. One minute I was using it and everything was fine and the next, nothing. Blue screened twice, wouldn't turn on, etc. So, I tried calling the gateway support number in Australia--turns out that is no longer available and called the gateway support number in the US. After taking me through a series of tests, they came to the conclusion that there was nothing I could do about it and I was going to have to ship it to TEXAS from AUSTRALIA. That clearly was not happening, so I took it to the campus computer place, waited a few days to hear from them, and here is the actual transcript from our conversation:
"Hi, this is Laura Simons, calling about the gateway laptop that I brought in"
"OOOOHHHH....the gateway? Oh yeah, that one was really bad..."
GREAT. So, now I have a dead computer that is completely useless to me until I get back home and see if they can fix it there. It's really not so bad not having a computer. One of the worst things is probably not being able to watch movies on it which we do on a regular basis with a blockbuster right down the street. Also, I really hope I didn't lose all my pictures because that would be really terrible. Although, most of my friends have my pictures on their computers and I could get all theirs as well, it would just be annoying.


SO, those are my excuses, take 'em or leave 'em. I will follow this blog with a few others consisting of some cool stuff that has happened in the past month or so including:
1. ANZAC Day
2. Darling Harbour's 21st Birthday
3. Trivia nights
4. The Whitsundays and Melbourne
5. Any other random stuff I can think of between now and then

Stay tuned! Get excited!
xoxox