Sydney Harbour Cruise and a show at the Sydney Opera House

Last Sunday Campus East (where I live) sponsored a cruise on the Sydney Harbour. It rained all day so we were all wondering how this evening was going to turn out. Luckily, the weather cleared up as soon as we boarded the ship - err yacht. Yep, the boat was not at all what I expected with its 3 stories. We departed in time to see the sun set over the Opera House. We then cruised around the harbour for spectacular views of Luna Park (think Navy Pier or Coney Island), the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and eventually the Sydney skyline in all its nightime splendor. After an incredible dinner of pizza and Heineken beer was served, the bottom story was turned into a dance club. Thankfully the trip ended without any incidents since it was open bar all night. Afterwards four friends and myself decided to try out the Sydney night life. We found an Irish Pub featuring a cover band playing Irish tunes. The pub was 95% Irish people and we had a blast. There were no jigs, but plenty of dancing and singing along to the songs.

Tuesday night our study abroad program sponsored a trip to see The Narcissist at the Sydney Opera House. When we got to the train station we inserted our tickets so we could go through the gates but the machine took them. It turns out, they are programmed to know that round trip tickets can only be inserted into these machines twice before they are disposed. When we switched trains, though, we stopped to get a bit of food so that through off the sensors. We ended up having to find an employee to come open up the machines so we could search through the bins for our tickets since we needed them for the ride home. Unfortunately English was not his native language so communication was a definite issue. We finally got to the Opera House right as they started to ring the bells to signal everyone needed to get seated so unfortunately we missed out on a chance to explore and take pictures. The Theatre was not at all what I expected. It turns out there are 5 different performing centers and ours seated roughly 800 - a lot smaller than I would have expected. The study abroad program hooked us up, though, as we had front row seats! In fact, at one point in the play the actor spit out his pretzel and it hit my friend. The play turned out to be hilarious. The premise was an older man and woman, still single well into adulthood, made a bet who could find a partner first. The man was gay, though, and they both ended up going after the same man along with several other twists. One ironic part was when they revealed that one of the characters was histrionic (simply put: a drama queen) which was one of the personality disorders I just happened to have been tested on earlier that day in my abnormality of psychology class. Each time I go back to Sydney the shock and awe diminishes a little bit, but I know one day I will look back and really marvel at these incredible experiences.