screw you, EAP

Today has been interesting....to say the least. Mallory and I got up early to go the Sydney Wildlife Park which was right by our hotel. It was soooo cool! Australia has the weirdest/biggest bugs ever. They have bugs that climb and swim and jump and....it's kind of creepy. There were spiders bigger than my hand. I dislike that. But once we got through the weird insect part, it was the snake part, which was super-cool since I love snakes. Australia has something like 10 of the top 30 most venomous snakes in the world? Great. Just wonderful. So Mallory and I went on a mission to find the koalas, and when we did, we were disappointed to know that you couldn't hold them (lame), and that they were all sleeping (more lame). Whatever, I took pictures of them anyway, and my time shall come...

OH MAN. When we made it to the wallaby enclosure, I nearly died of estrogen rush. Those are the cutest animals on the PLANET. There wasn't really a fence or anything, so they would come up SO close to you, and I hand-fed one some leaves and got to scratch it's head! I nearly died from cuteness-overload. It was seriously the best moment of my life. I want a wallaby for a pet. SO BADLY.

So while I was coming down from the wallaby-high, we went into this butterfly exhibit where you could just hold your hands out and all these butterflies would come land on you and just chill. We stayed there for a good hour just letting them land on us, and looking at how pretty they were, it was great.

After that though, we had to head over to our new hotel for EAP, which is seriously in the boonies. We're near King's Cross, which for those of you who don't know, is the sketchy former drug/prostitute part of Sydney, so that's fun. There was NOTHING around the hotel, so the concierge told us to hike to this random train station and take a train to Bondi to go to a mall? I was skeptical, but overall it was actually a pretty nice mall. It just wasn't exactly what I wanted given that my time in Sydney is limited. However, I did some nice shopping (it feels so good and so bad to spend money. *DOH* I made Build-A-Bears for Michelle, V, and Melanie though. They're hilarious, and say "SSSPPPBBAAHOOO!" when you squeeze them. Wow I'm such a nerd.

Anways, after spending WAY too long at the mall and being on our feet all day, Mallory and I decided to head back here, at which point I met my temporary roommate, who is also going to Melbourne and seems pretty cool, same with Mallory's roommate. It's awkward b/c the EAP kids are scattered everywhere and don't really know what's going on, but hopefully tomorrow's orientation will be better? *sigh*. I probably won't be able to update much due to being broke and not wanting to PAY for internet anymore. Anyways, hopefully, pictures to come, and more stories of Sydney awkwardness! YAY!