The Gold Coast

Yes, I'm still alive. For the past 3 weeks we've been traveling, therefore leaving us with no computers or time to blog. (I'll be honest, I already wasn't very good at this whole blogging-on-time thing and this just made it a lot worse) So now that I have some time, hopefully there will be A LOT of blogging being done the next week or two. Sorry for the length.

We started our trip by going up to the Gold Coast in Australia. It's about an hour south of Brisbane and is an hour and a half flight from Sydney. We of course were trying to do everything the cheapest way so we didn't pay the extra money to check in baggage. And we were flying straight from the Gold Coast down to Melbourne (again trying to save money), which is at the bottom of Australia. This meant 2 different climates because the Gold Coast is hot and Melbourne is freezing this time of year! The point of all this is to explain that we fit 10 days worth of clothes for 2 different climates all into our own little backpacks that we could use as our carry-on. So the picture is showing all that 3 girls had for this 10 day trip. Pretty impressive?

On the airplane with our books, ready to go. We're big nerds and always have our books. Okay, so Brighton always has hers, but has never read it since we've been here. She has something against reading right now since that's all Jayne and I do any time we're sitting.
Our first car experience on the wrong side of the road. Jayne drove everytime we had a rental car for the whole 3 weeks. We only almost crashed a few times! Just kidding, it really would be so hard and Jayne did an amazing job at it. She's a natural!
Jayne knows a family in the Gold Coast that we stayed with so we drove right to their house. They're the greatest family ever and have such a nice house. We stayed there for 6 days and loved every second of it. This is Pauline Scallan in the picture with us.
All the theme parks are in the Gold Coast so we decided to go to one on Monday. We went to Warner Brothers Movie World. Loved it! It closed at 5 though (just like everything else does in Australia) so we got there right when it opened and stayed right till it closed. This is Brighton and Jayne posing in front of the Superman ride, which was definitely my favorite.
Is that Batman Jayne's eating lunch with? I think so...
Scared for the Batman ride.
One great thing about the Scallan family is they are obsessed with sports. Their favorite's of course are soccer, cricket, and rugby though, definitely not my most knowledgeable sports. Jayne was sure happy about it when she found out the family plays on an indoor soccer league every Monday night. So of course she played even when we found out she was the only girl for both teams. She did amazing though and even scored! She's our little soccer player :)

This is looking off the patio at the Scallan's home. Yes, that is a river in their backyard. It was so beautiful I could sit there and stare at it all day.

We had planned to take the boat (in their backyard) out one night and it ended up raining just at that time so they put the cover on it and we still went. We stayed completely dry and had a fun ride looking at all the million dollar homes surrounding us while eating biscuits and wine (water for us 3 of course)!

We made dinner and dessert for them on Tuesday night since they were feeding us so much. Our broccoli, chicken dish with crepes for dessert were a hit, but after the 5 or 6 hours of cooking and cleaning in the kitchen, we were ready to never do it again. It was actully pretty humorous!

This is Jayne in our room at the Scallan home. She's falling through the cracks of life? I'm not sure what that means either so you'll have to ask her. Just thought I'd throw in a few random pictures.

Ssurfers Paradise. This is the beach by their house.

What the IGA? All of you who lived in Strawberry Loop 12 years ago should appreciate this!

Thursday we drove to Byron Bay. No words or picture's can even describe it. We happened to be up on this hill by the lighthouse right at sunset. So pretty.

Byron Bay. We were completely surrounded by water and even saw a few whales out there.

Byron Bay also has the greatest little shopping area where we ate lunch and walked around. This town is full of hippie's, in real life! Peace.

The new Batman movie came out the night before so of course we had to go see it once we got home from Byron Bay. It came out a couple days earlier in Australia so we felt pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie.

Friday, the last day we were there, we spent the day at the beach again and also went to the top of the Q1 building. It's one of the tallest buildings in the world, or something like that. This picture kind of gives you an idea of what the Gold Coast is like. It's just never-ending beaches!

Random

You're probably wondering what Jayne and Wendy do everyday while Brighton's at work. Here's some pictures to get an idea of an average day of no school slash no work in Sydney, Australia.

We love to go running, usually along our favorite path from Bronte Beach to Bondi Beach, which is one of the most popular beaches in Sydney. It's so amazing to look out at the beaches, ocean, and all the pretty rock along the whole path. In the picture we're holding the "floppy flyer" that we love to throw around at the park and beach too after a nice run!

We go meet Brighton for lunch a few times a week. (Yet again, we love pictures on benches). In this picture we're eating quiche from a little bakery by her work. We usually go pick something up then eat it at the park right by her work. We all love that park!

This is our new favorite place, Gloria Jeans Coffees. The internet in Australia is horrible so we don't have unlimited internet at our apartment. This means no Youtube or downloading anything. And if you really know us then you know why this is such a struggle. Because that's the only way we can watch So You Think You Can Dance! We suffered without it for the first couple of weeks until we found our greatest discovery of free Wi-fi at Gloria Jeans. Jayne and I go and load all the dances from Youtube, then just shut our computers and bring them home so we can watch them with Brighton. Our lives are complete now!

One of our favorite stops is the candy shop called "Sticky" at Bondi Junction. We watch them make the candy and it's so amazing! Jayne might be a little obsessed? I can't tell if it's with the candy or the guy that works there :) There will be more pictures to come of the candy store.

Right by the candy store and Gloria Jeans is the pet store. I love all the little puppies! I fell in love with this little puppy in the corner that looks just like Chester did when he was a puppy. I was so sad when we walked passed the other day and he was gone. I get attached so easily!

That's all for now on the adventures of mine and Jayne's day. This is a way random picture, but it made me happy. We went into our kitchen one night and Jorge had set up this recycling system. I love recycling!

One Tuesday afternoon Brighton was by herself at work so Jayne and I went and hung out in the office with her!

After that, we thought we'd go see a movie since it was Tuesday, (movies are only $9 on Tuesday instead of $13, ridiculous!) but we still decided it wasn't worth the money. We took this picture before we left because we feel a special connection with Kung Fu Panda or something since we saw Jack Black at the premiere! We decided to go to our favorite place instead, which is Coles, and buy stuff to make tinfoil dinners. Side note- Coles is easily our favorite place in Sydney. We always make sure to make it there at night with all the sweet deals on bread!

Enjoying our tinfoil dinners. It's one of our new favorite meals!

We ended that week with going to a concert of our fellow candy making friend Ben, (the one standing next to me) who Jayne may be strangly attracted too! He's really so cool and gives Jayne lot's of free candy! This is us hanging out with the band after their show.

Manly!

On Saturday June 14th, we ventured over to the cutest little area called Manly. You have to take a 30 minute-ish ferry ride over to get there from the harbour. I seriously loved it. It was really windy and rainy that day, but we still had a lot of fun.

This is a cool surfboard bench. It's probably the closest I'll ever get to surfing so I thought I'd get a picture of it!

We ate this cool little restaurant across the street from the beach. The ocean was a really pretty sea green color and the waves were huge! It was so pretty.

Brighton hurried over to take these pictures of the beach with these pretty colors and the rainbow while Jayne and I stayed at the restaurant to pay.
This shows how cute of a town it is. I wouldn't mind living there! I really did love it.

When Brighton came back from taking the pictures, she had had a little accident. Or I guess the bird flying above her had the accident. Yes, she got pooped on by a bird. Luckily with some water, napkins, and a tide pen, we were able to clean her up.

I wish this showed how pretty it really was. Use your imagination!

No we did not plan on matching this day. But since we did, we thought we'd act like little girls and get a cute picture out of it! These were some way cool benches in the middle of a bunch of shops. We found ourselves hanging out and taking lot's of pictures in this area for quite some time. I think we have an obsession with benches.

It was Jayne's first time at circular quay so when we got off the ferry we stayed and walked around there for a bit. It was my first time there at night. Then we had to get home so Brighton and I could write our talks that we gave in church the next day!

Jayne and I spent the next few days at the beach. We met some nice old men to take this picture for us. They were high on something and just chatted away with us forever. Always a good time. It was such a nice day!

On our walk to and from Bronte Beach, we pass a little playground and this bad boy shown above. We like to call it the "Flying V" aka the "Velocitron" aka "The big green monster". You just sit on it and pedal away and it spins you in circles. It really is the coolest thing ever. West Jordan Park needs to invest in one of these too!

There are Adult Book stores everywhere here! Just to clear up any confusion for all those who have read Brighton or Jayne's blog, I DO NOT enjoy these kind of stores. I like bookstores for kids!

It's a good thing I'm not here during their summer because I think I would die with all the bugs. Luckily we haven't seen many since we moved in. However, just before we were about to leave one night, I innocently went into our kitchen and saw a huge cockroach in our sink. After screaming and quickly excusing myself from the situation, Jayne and Brighton took care of it. I don't know what they did, I just know there was a lot of screaming involved and the cockroach was no longer in the sink. What brave little souls.

Then we headed out for what we now know as one of our most adventurous nights. Unfortunately this is the only picture we captured that night. One of Jayne's friends from home has family out here so we went and met him (Sean) and his friends at Le Chifley. This is a really high-class bar with TONS of people in it...or the exact opposite of that. So after a very interesting taxi driver, we finally found this bar and stood there awkwardly for about 30 minutes while all these creepy old men kept talking to us. That was an adventure. Luckily Sean eventually found us and it ended up being a really fun night.

Jayne's here!

(Yes, Jayne has really been here for 2 and a half weeks, but just pretend this is up to date.) So Jayne flew in on a Tuesday morning. Jorge and I rode the bus down to the airport to meet her. After getting to our flat and Jayne taking a little nap, we went to Brighton's work to meet her for lunch. What a reunion that was! This is us eating lunch at the cafe right across from Brighton's work. Brighton and I got the chicken and pumpkin wrap. They put pumpkin in everything here and I love it!

Jayne and I then went to Darling Harbour to wait for Brighton to get off work. We walked around and played on this amazing playground. I think we had a little too much fun and maybe got a few weird looks! PS- This was the coolest toy. West Jordan Park definitely needs to invest in one.

We think we're so cute because almost everynight we make a fun little dinner with our cheap foods. And for some reason we love to always take a picture of our 3 matching plates.

On Monday June 9, it was a holiday here in Australia. It's when they celebrate the queen's birthday I guess. All we knew is that Brighton didn't have to go to work so we ventured around Sydney. This is Darling Harbour, which is in the city and has tons of shops, restaurants, parks, and everthing! It was raining, of course, but it was still really fun and pretty. They even had a bunch of jazz bands playing around the harbour because of the holiday.

Brighton was playing around with the settings on her camera and my yellow umbrella. But it shows how pretty it is there!

I was so happy to see this snowman! I know I'm weird.

Yes, this is Jack Black. That night, we went and walked and shopped a little around Martin Place. We were walking passed a theater and noticed that all the tv stations and a small crowd were starting to form around some red carpet. So of course we decided to wait around and see what was going on. We found out it was the premiere for the movie Kung Fu Panda and Jack Black was coming. When he got there, he came right over to all the fans and was just taking pictures and such. He was so close that we even touched him! He was way chill. I was expecting him to be in a suit or something, but nope, he was wearing sweats, a t-shirt with a panda on it, and this yellow jacket. Does that surprise you?

We got lot's of picture's and video's of him. That was a great ending to our day!