So I am officially the worst blogger of ALL TIME! I know that it has been ages since I have posted, but once you hear about all the amazing things that have been happening in the last 4 weeks, I think you may understand why this has taken me SO long. Life has been wonderful, happy, beautiful, exciting, new, and every other happy adjective I can possibly think up! Since I last posted, I have finished up Cabaret, started and finished Godzilla, had an amazing 20th birthday, and finished uni in Australia (minus one exam). WOW, right!
I finally got to see the Nutcracker at the Opera House. Abby and I had a great night. She had just gotten back from 2 weeks in the Outback so we had lots to catch up on during our ride to the city and after the show at Pancakes. The show was beautiful. It wasn't the typical Christmas story, but instead an adaptation by Graem Murphey about a ballerina from Melbourne. Since the Nutcracker is so familiar to me it was great to see something completely new using all the same music, plus it was extraordinary to be in the Opera House in our amazing seats. Needless to say it was an amazing evening!
Cabaret was absolutely wonderful. The show was amazing. I was so proud just to be in it. I had more fun than I can possibly explain in words. After closing night we had a massive after party that was super fun - I didn't go to sleep until 5:30 am! We were all having withdrawls from the show after it ended, but....I jumped right into another show!
Godzilla was made up of four different student written shows. My show, Johnny the Sperm's Adventure in the Vajayjay was first, followed by Steff's show, the Wicked Women of Surprisetown, in which she played an angry version of herself, then came The Dirty, a show about love and deceit and tequila, and finally, Loosing the Plot which can only be described as hilarious! We had a great production week and put the show up for preview on Wednesday night before opening on Thursday. We did shows through saturday, but all it really felt like was a giant party. We went on stage for 45 minutes and did our thing before heading backstage to goof off some more. We ran for two weeks and believe it or not, week 2 was even more fun! Someone commented that Steff and I have become the new Maddi and Kate (eternally awesome best friends) of Dramac and suggested that we have an "Epic BFF Off" so we set out to do just that! Steff and I got matching pig tattoos (temps, don't worry), they got matching bff necklaces. We staged massive fights (even though we love eachother). We wore matching outfits one night and had a battle. We changed our names on facebook, Steff and I became Steff-Annie and they swapped surnames. Maddi and Kate swapped hair colors while Steff went curly and I went straight. Basically it was amazing. We totally had people going that we actually hated eachother and were legitimately acting like 4 year-olds. SO FUN! We also had another epic afterparty - I was out until 7:00 am for this one! It was pretty wonderful :-) We also got our director a male stripper as her director's present since our play was about all things sexual, it was totally appropriate!
Halfway in between our Godzilla run, I hit a bit of a sad time...my hard drive completely died. GONE! I lost 3000 pictures from Australia and am left with only what I put on my blog. I have everything backed up from before I came to Oz, but the CDs that I had just gone to buy for my photos did little good after my hard drive melted away to nothing. The good news is that the apple care team was amazing and upgraded my computer for free and did it all within a day. Steff was there to cheer me up when it happened. We had a great day going to several markets around the city (we got up at 5 am to do so!) and eating Yum Cha in ChinaTown.
During Godzilla we also discovered a new and wonderful place nestled in the heart of Epping, a nearby suburb. It is a patisserie called Sweetness and man is it sweet! Steff took me there as a surprise before a show and we indulged in homemade marshmallow (think lavender, rose, vanilla bean, raspberry, chocolate, coconut, peppermint, passion fruit, ect...) and delicious brownies. Our next trip was a close call - we literally ran into the shoppe only to find out that it was open late that night. Everytime we go, we bring a bigger crowd, so they LOVE us! I have bonded with the head chef who is an American, we fondly refer to her as Sweet Alaska since that is her home state.
After I Godzilla ended, I was down to 3 days of uni. Despite the fact that I had far better things to do with my time in the past month, I have had to keep up with my uni work. Spanish tests became my life and I worked like crazy on a child development project. The project turned out really well and I actually really enjoyed doing it. I choreographed a dance for children to watch to Kira Willey's song "Colors." Thankfully I also made it through my spanish oral exam on monday and headed into the city to have a double birthday party at pancakes with my friend Kim who turned 21 on June 1st. We had a group of about 17 at pancakes and enjoyed a wonderful night of laughter and good food. Unfortunately, Steff couldn't come because she was feeling sicky, but when I got home she was ready waiting with my present right at midnight. She made me a photo album/card that follows my time here in Australia as well as T2 mug and some green tea so that I can continue our T2 tradition back in the States.
I woke up on my birthday and headed to T2, after all I was Turning Twenty on a T2 Tuesday! To celebrate this monumental event, Steff bought us high tea to share. We each had a pot of tea and shared a three-tiered platter of happiness. We had scones with jam and cream, tea sandwiches, scones, tortes, turkish delight, eclairs, and macaroons. YUM! We were pretty full by the time our friend Maddi arrived with my lovely present - a liquid sequin baret, she knows me far too well! She also informed me that I share my birthday with a rather excited International Holiday - International Whore Day! I'm pretty psyched to know this now. After tea, Maddi and I went to get some birthday piercings! I got my cartilage done and she got a third hole! This was something that I've been wanting to do since Christmas so it was very exciting to actually have it happen! We shopped around with Kate until Steff got out of class. We ended up in Supre which is fondly referred to as "slut"pre here and tried on some absolutely gorgeous outfits. After, we headed to nearby suburb, Chatswood, we did some shopping where Jane bought me a Pandora bracelet which is a charm bracelet that basically every Aussie girl has. She got a monkey on it since it was through my monkey audition that we all became friends. Then we headed to a Japanese restaurant to get the teriyaki chicken bento box. Steff had described it as "sex" so I decided that I should probably try it. It was a definite win! Even though we were stuffed we had to follow through on our word and go see Sweet Alaska on my birthday. We trained to Epping where we bought some happiness (in pastry form) and I even got a special birthday treat on the house. We couldn't eat any of it then but it was just nice to know that we had some Sweetness for when we needed it. I had to give my poster presentation for Creativity that night so Steff waited for me before we headed to her house where her mum had made a birthday dinner for me. It was the cutest thing ever. We had the most delicious dinner, but the best part was the pavlova that she made for dessert! We also had party hats and goody bags and she got me a present! Cutest ever. I stayed at Steff's that night and even though I had an exam bright and early the next morning, I refused to study until after midnight.
I woke up Wednesday after 2 hours sleep and went to my last day of uni in Australia. I took my last spanish exam and went to my last psych tute and lecture. I was so ready to be done with school and fully enjoy the rest of my time here in Oz, but it was quite bittersweet. The end of uni feels like the beginning of the end of my time here. I'm down to under two months. Where did the time go? Can I get it back? At the end of the day I didn't feel the great sense of relief that I normally do when classes end. I felt a little empty. This part of my journey is over. I am that much closer to reality. I feel as if I have two distinctly different lives now. Yes, there are parts that overlap (aka: all of you wonderful people in my life), but there are parts that exist in only one or the other. How do you choose? Which life is right for me? I feel as if I'm floating between here and there without being quite sure where I'm meant to end up. This trip has been an eye opener in every sense of the phrase. I have learned so much in such a short amount of time. I have put myself out there in ways that would have mortified me before. I have been brave. I have made friends, amazing friends. I have laughed. I have played. I have had the "college life" I've always dreamed of here. I feel as if I've found the missing part of my puzzle here in Australia. It fits, I fit, we fit together.
Since it was my last day, I was feeling a little down, but I got picked right back up again by my wonderful friends. Abby and her friend Anne cooked Steff and me a birthday dinner which was super fun. Afterwards Steff and I went to see a show at Uni called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog which was great. After the show we went to a nearby suburb to grab some dessert. It was a great bunch of people and we spent the night laughing pretty hysterically. After eating we went to Woolworths, a grocery store, to pick up a few things. It was one of the funniest grocery trips I've ever taken. Steff brushed her teeth, we shopped with giant tomato sauce filled trollies, and we laughed a whole lot. It was a GREAT ending day of uni!
Another girl from App who is studying in Sydney was voicing some of the same feelings that I have about leaving Oz and described this experience as a relationship and it made a lot of sense to me...Stage 1, you get aquatinted with this new person/place/experience. You're still unsure. There are a lot of questions to ask and to answer. Stage 2, you get comfortable. You have your likes and your dislikes, but you understand one another. At this point you develop your own routine and this new person/place/experience doesn't feel quite so foreign. Stage 3, you fall in love. This person/place/thing means more to you than you could have ever imagined. They are home to you. You make perfect sense together. It is as if the world would cease to exist without this person/place/experience. Stage 4, the break-up. It might come slowly or it might be abrupt. You might see it coming or you might be in denial. But, at some point the bliss ends. Your happiness is taken away and you have to float back to reality whether you're ready or not. Stage 5, thankfully, just like all those lost loves of the past, we move on. We recognize that change must happen. After all, this person/place/experience would have never been in our lives had it not been for another change. You forever have the memories. You forever have the friends. Just because Stage 4 hits, doesn't mean the world comes to an end like you might think.
So that's where I'm at. I am having the time of my life. I have met these crazy wonderful friends and they make my world a happier place to be. I'm trying to accept the fact that change is coming but at the same time I'm living in a world of denial about the whole thing. I'm coming home on July 30 but I'm leaving another home behind on that same day.
I hope that all is happy and well with all of you. Thanks for all the birthday wishes welcoming me into my twenties!
LOVE YOU ALL!
Anna
