Drunk And Trying Not To Get Jumped!

Hahaha, so glad this moment was captured...lets just say Jess and I are laughing at my stupidity...
Laura, me, Stac, Bets and Emma out to dinner with Betsy's mom and step dad during their visit!
Me, Stac and Michelle before our dancing night out at King Street!
Me and Emma owning at beer pong.
Charlie made me laugh...I promise nothing came out of my nose.

Get Some! The Newcastle Way...

Betsy and I doing the infamous thrusting picture...
Me and Stac apparently having a great time at a friend's 21st Bday party.
Me, Pat and Itai getting it in before Customs.
Me and my boy, PaddyWagon...Rack 'em, Rackbar!
Me and my buddy Charlie pregaming at his apartment.

The 'Real' Melbourne

So me, Stac, and Bets went to Melbourne this weekend and it was loads of fun! Once again, I fell in love. This city is amazing!! I like it way more than Sydney...nothing against Sydney cause its amazing as well, but Melbourne is just way way way more chill! We got into the airport late Thursday night and my friend Mark, who actually studied abroad at UF picked us up...I didnt know him beforehand, we had just randomly started talking through facebook right before I came to Australia and he offered us a free place to stay! Most people would find this sketchy, but he seemed totally normal so I figured why not!? 

Anyways, he and his friend Tom (totally adorable), picked us up round 11pm at the airport and drove us back to his house (he lives with his parents and older sister outside the city).  His family was AMAZING! None of them knew me and yet they were so welcoming to me and my friends! The second morning we were there, his mum made us coffee and cookies and brought them to us in bed!!! Wtf...how nice is that!?! And his dad, who was hilar, was my beer pong partner Friday night and wasn't too shabby...everytime I made one hed do a golf clap and say good girl, it was adorable! And his sister was the sweetest person ever and even dropped us off at the station so we could catch our plane on our last day in Melbourne...pretty much I fell in love with Mark and his family right away...it was home sweet home for sure!

Basically, we just walked around the city for a couple days...did some shopping and just took it all in...we definitely could have done some more sightseeing, but i wouldnt trade what we did in for the world...turned out perfectly! Oh and Friday night we decided to do a touristy thing...we went to the Penguin Parade at Phillip Island...gayest shit ever...it took almost 2 hours to get there, it was cold as eff and rainy, and there were asians everywhere, and it cost 20 bucks and you couldnt see shit...basically, the smallest penguins come swimming out of the sea and onto the shore every night at the same time and they walk to their burroughs or whatever...I mean they were definitely cute and all, but it took all of like 5 minutes and then i was like kkkkkkk now what? My advice, dont do it...not worth the money, still a funny story in the end though.

Lets see, the best night of all...Saturday...we got to go to 2 footy games (AFL...its different then rugby league or union). The first one we didnt even plan on going to, but we were waiting to meet up with our buddies David, Alex, and Jason and while we were waiting this random dude was like HEY! you want some free tickets to the game!? so we were like uhhhh yeah! And we did that and I pretty much love AFL now...so intense! Then we went to the casino for a bit with the boys, but then we hit up the night AFL game at the other stadium...Mark works at the bar there sometimes so we got drink the entire time...for free! By the end of the night, there was a 500 dollar bar tab between the 4 of us...can you say ridiculous and yet awesome!? I can. After that, we met up with the boys again and Charlie and Pat as well to go out for the night...I pretty much dont remember anything from here on out...and there are RIDICULOUS videos to prove it...lets just say theres one where Stacy woke me up after I passed out and I talk about Don Henley, Tampons, Helen Keller, a little dude and our friends hooking up...hahahahhaahahahaha I'm embarrassed and disturbed as HELL by most of it, but at the same time I've never seen anything so funny in my entire life!

So yeah, theres a lot more I could probably talk about, but thats all I really feel like typing so just know that Melbourne was amazing (just as much as the one in countdown county, FL) and everyone should go there at some point...miss and love!

Blue Mountains Pictures...

Okay, so you see the little 'castle' on top of the hill there...well, thats where we hiked to from here...loved it!
Me on top of the ruined castle...looking like an idiot.
Pretty waterfall...Katoomba Falls I think
The Three Sisters!
The group: Me, Drew, Betsy, Charlie and Stacy.

Mountain...mountain...UhhOOooo!

So I went to the Blue Mountains with Stac, Bets, Drew and Charlie for the weekend. It was only like a 5 hour train ride or so, not too bad and nice and cheap.  We stayed in a hostel in a small town called Katoomba, almost as small as Airlie Beach, and just like Airlie Beach I fell in love with it! Its winter in Australia now btw, so it was even colder in the mountains (SURPRISE!), but other than that the weather was absolutely amazing, some of the clearest days we've had...we were very lucky! Pretty much everyone was telling us not to go cause apparently the weather would be awful, eff that, turned out perfect.

The first day we just took this small trolley tour thingy around the town and took some pretty pics and went to Echo Point, which is a pretty popular lookout point...it over looks the Three Sisters...pretty cooooool. Oh and if you wanted to know...the Blue Mountains are called that because theres this blue haze over them pretty much all the time, depending on weather, and its caused by the Eucalyptus...there ya go, some trivia for ya.  Anyways, we did that for a couple hours then got something to eat and then posted up with some beer and goon and got our drank on...pretty quiet night though. I know Charlie and I were a little disappointed by the hostel, not because it was gross or anything, but because no one was socializing or hanging out...it was pretty much he and I hanging out in the pool room til like 4...oh well, still good times.

Got up nice and early to check out and go exploring some more the next day. We did 2 crazy high gondola rides over the mountains...it was pretty neat, insanely cool views of waterfalls and the such.  Then we all kinda split ways...Bets and Stac went to a chocolate factory, old toy shop museum and the cascade falls (which i wanted to do as well, but didnt have time) and me, Charlie and Drew went on an 8 mile hike to go see a ruined "castle"...we could see it from far awar at Echo Point and it looked sick so we decided to do the 5 hour hike...it was crazy fun and strenuous and i probably ate shit and died about a million times, but it was totally worth it by the time we got there. The only thing was that it wasnt an ACTUAL castle like we thought, which btw I dont know why we would think it would be an actual castle in the middle of the blue mountains in Australia...doesnt really make sense so dumb on our part, instead it was HUGE rocks on the top of this hill...we definitely climbed to the top of them and I would say from the highest point it was probably like 6 stories to the bottom of the rock...SO incredible! We just chilled there for a good 30 minutes and took it all in.  I wish we could have camped there, but we didnt bring any camping gear with us because we didnt want to deal with it on the train, oh well, maybe another time.  And besides the views being awesome...one of the best parts of the trip was that we were surrounded by Asians and it brought us a lot of laughs...no worries, we werent rude, we just mimicked everything they said and we're getting pretty good at it now...Herrooo...hahaha, k I'm done.

 Either way, it was a freakin awesome weekend and there are some tight pictures, courtesy of Charlie and Betsy because I'm lazy and didnt want to take my camera out.  Anyways, thats all for now...going to the 'real' Melbourne, as Drew says, this weekend...stokageeee, ttyl, love and miss!!!