bye bye kangaroos, hello kiwis

I'm headed back to NZ tomorrow morning. My time in Australia (more specifically, Sydney) was great. I think that in some ways I like it better here than NZ, although I can't really say that since I was only in one city for a week. :D But it seemed like the people over here were much friendlier and easy to get to know, which was nice since I was traveling on my own. But I'm still happy to go back to NZ; either way, I can't complain.

The other highlights of this week were getting to see Lara lots, which was awesome. I also met some sorta cool enough to hang out with people from my hostel and went out drinking with them on Thursday night...which I don't remember at all. Oops. On Friday, I went to a wildlife exhibition here in Sydney and I got to see kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, and got to pet a koala! I know, it wasn't in the wild so it wasn't all that cool, but I knew it was my only chance while I was here so I just took it. They are very soft and cute. :) Over the weekend I went to my friend Shannon's house, who I met in Vietnam, and went out to a great lesbian bar with her friends on Friday night, then spent the rest of the weekend walking around Newtown, the gay and lesbian district of Sydney. On Sunday we went to Bondi Beach with another friend we met in Vietnam, Emma, and that was great. It's one of the most famous beaches in Australia (although I'm not sure why). It was raining off and on but we walked around, got great food, and watched cute surfers. Today I finally got out of the city and went on a tour of the Blue Mountains, about an hour outside of Sydney. It was a really small group and we had a hilarious, dread locked, high hippie tour guide, so it ruled. We walked around a bit, smelled tea tree leaves, smooshed eucalyptus, and rode on the steepest railway in the world. I met some sweet girls, ate my first meat pie (even though mine was veggie), and got to see a little bit of Australia that isn't covered in pavement. And luckily enough, we had awesome weather today, which is lucky since it's been raining all week. So, yay!

I'm not sure what I'll do when I head back to NZ. I might stick around in Auckland a couple days, and if I can I'd like to head to Raglan and Waitomo..but I need to WWOOF soon cause I'm broke so I might do that farther south. I hope to be in the South Island by around August, which seems really soon! There's still lots I want to do and no time to do it...which is amazing since I've been here three months now. :P