Updates and Touristy Shtuff

First and foremost, I'm not homeless anymore! I'm living with Sam in a 4-bedroom unit beneath the house of our "landlord/lady." It's like a duplex, and we just have the bottom area complete with kitchen, living area, bathroom, and washer.
Fun fact: A lot of houses don't have dryers. I don't understand it because this place is so humid. My plan is to either a) not wash my jeans (ew) because they probably won't dry until I'm back home or b) find a laundromat. Luckily, there's one just down the block and around the corner. Option B is looking pretty good.

Our street!

Front of the house. We walk down on the left to get to our place.

Right here! There's Sam.

Back of the house/our entrance

My room! Half of it. The other half has drawers, a wardrobe, and a chair. Decently sized.

Besides the landlady upstairs, we live with 1 American PhD candidate named Casey who's on sabbatical here doing research on the reproduction of cows in the desert (or something along those lines) and 1 French post-grad/I think med student named Marie who I have still yet to meet but will continue to refer to her as Alexa 2 until then.

Here's a map of the general area.

So, A is where I live. It's basically between the school and the city (at least the area of the city we've been going to). Those are the top and bottom boxes if you haven't figured it out. The box to the right of our place is a fake, street beach which we will be frequenting often. And the box to the left is a street choc-full of cafes, bars, and restaurants. It's actually a pretty hipster-y area, but Australian hipsters appear to be a bit older than your average American high school and college hipster. But yeah, we live in the middle of everything, and we're super happy with location.



We went out for the past couple of nights to the Royal Exchange Hotel aka the RE. Apparently, uni students frequent it mostly on Wednesday and Sunday nights. Really random. Friday had a bit of an older scene (compared to, let's say, the 9-0) with people averaging in their mid-20s. Saturday was a bit better, a bit more crowded. Still mixed in terms of age: people celebrating their 20th birthday and other people looking to be in their early 30s.
Another fun fact: it has come to my attention that one of the first questions guys ask you is how old you are. Kinda weird, kinda awkward, I'm just hoping that this isn't a common thing because I am not a fan.

Bridge to the city. We decided to get gelato and walked instead of taking the bus.

The ferris wheel I talked about. Still haven't been on it yet though.

This was in the bathroom at the bar. I want to say that it has to do with Sherlock the TV show on BBC, but I'm not sure.

Finally got sushi the other day for lunch. So good. Super fresh and not too bad in terms of pricing. I got this salmon special thing which had 3 big pieces of nigiri and 3 pieces of a cut salmon avacado roll for $5.50. Hand rolls were pretty standard at $2.50 a piece. I'm probably going to blow most of my money for food (and possibly other things) on sushi, calling it now.

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And today, we went to the KOALA SANCTUARY!! I loved it. We got to pet emus and feed kangaroos and wallabies (I even saw a mama with a joey in her pocket!). We saw the birds of prey show and watched them fly around and devour some (already dead) mice. We also saw snakes, turtles, geckos, lizards, birds, wombats, tasmanian devils (that's a lie, we saw the area but couldn't see the actual little creature. poop.), golden possums (way cuter than the ones at home), crocodiles, a platypus, sheep (that were for sale), guinea pigs, chicks, bats, dingoes, and of course
KOALAS!!

Daisy. You should get this. It's like a hairy, fluffy chicken. Google 'silkie bantam.' You're welcome.

Happiest sheep I've ever seen

Some sort of owl that flew way too close to our heads

This freaking huge bird ripped apart a dead mouse in front of us. Yeah, enjoy that visual. Did I mention he pulled out the intestine and you could hear the bone crunch when he ate the head? You're welcome.

Inland taipan. World's most venomous land snake.

Just chilling with a kangaroo. No big deal.

I was trying to take a picture with the emu, and it started walking away. This is me saying "Dude, really? Where are you going?"

Mama wallaby and her joey!!

Normal.

Most importantly,

I GOT TO CUDDLE A KOALA AND I ALMOST RAN AWAY WITH IT

But yeah, definitely one of the highlights of my life.

The koalas were everywhere around this zoo or whatever you want to call it (obviously. it's not called koala sanctuary for nothing. I'm dumb.). There was the main enclosure and then areas for the "kindy koalas" (up to 1 year old), cubby house koalas (1-2 year olds), boys, mums and babies, bachelors, and the retirement home koalas for the ones getting a little older. There were also just random enclosures with them hanging around in the eucalyptus trees. They were even around one of the eating areas.

Anyway, that's what has been going on for the past couple of days. O-week starts tomorrow, so things may get a little hectic.

Until next time!