Two weeks ago, we had our Easter Holidays and had a few days off of school! On the Saturday, Madison, Emily and I took the train into the city for brunch on The Rocks. The Rocks is an area of Sydney that is located in between the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House. It’s a very trendy part of the city and has streets that are lined with old-fashioned houses that remind me of London. After we had our brunch we went the markets, which take over 3 to 4 streets in The Rocks. There are so many cool venders there who hand makes all of the items they sell. There is everything from clothing to boomerangs! They also have lots of local food venders that serve corn on the cob, burgers, hotdogs and even freshly squeezed lemonade. After we got lost in the shopping for x amount of hours, we walked two blocks to Circular Quay, which is where you can see the Opera House and take ferries all over the Harbor. As you walk along the pier, there are usually musicians of all ages playing music and lots of tourists who have just stepped off their cruise ship.

The following week we started to feel a little more pressure on the academic side. They give students a lot of responsibility here and have very little class time, but make quizzes, tests and presentations weigh a lot more than they do at Ole Miss. Most courses I’ve taken back at Ole Miss will have a multiple quizzes and tests through out the semester. Here they only give you one or two and then your final exam at the end of the semester makes up most of your grade. So this past week we spent a lot of time in the universities library, which is very modern and impressive.

This past Friday, MK and Madison and two other girls from Ole Miss, Emily and Kathryn, and I went for a beach day in Manly. We caught the ferry over in the late morning and were able to enjoy our lunch on the beach. After a couple of hours of soaking up the sun, Emily and Kathryn took us to a restaurant on the board walk that over looked Manly harbor, which hosts lots of moored sailboats. As we crossed back over the harbor, we were greeted with another beautiful sunset.

At the end of this week we finally experienced Day Light Savings, but because were south of the equator, we fell back an hour because it’s their fall. So now we are fourteen hours ahead of the East Coast and fifteen hours ahead of Oxford, Mississippi! Next week starts our “autumn” break, which is roughly two weeks long. I will be flying to Hong Kong to visit family and luckily I’ll make it back in time to experience the famous Rugby Sevens! My dad compared the day to a game day in the Grove so I guess I’ll have to be the judge of that! Lots of my friends are traveling around and exploring new places like Bali and New Zealand, which I should be doing at the end of the semester when my family comes to visit me!