The Shooks Come to Coogee!

After a long journey, the Shooks finally arrive in Coogee! Staring over my balcony and onto the street, I could see their taxi pull in and three tired faces appear from the cab. I ran downstairs to greet them and they could not be happier to see my new living conditions and me. It was comical, this whole thing…having my own apartment, cooking and fending for myself in a foreign land.

To my surprise, my parents brought some American goodies for my roommates and me to share. Two suitcases filled with our favorite sweets and snacks, we were in for a real treat, and surely some more time at the gym! I handed Rachael a pack of Skittles to curb her excitement. After giving them the grand tour of our seventh floor apartment, they met Marc and Patrick. My mom puzzlingly told me, “Lauren, they speak English just fine, what were you talking about?” I guess our blog exaggerated things quite a bit…

Thinking that my new digs were top notch accommodations, after arriving at the Shangri-La hotel, I soon realized the meaning of five stars. I mean, the Coogee View Apartments don't offer water by my bedside daily, someone to turn down my sheets at night, the luxury of comfy slippers at my service, and boy, they surely don't have room service!

Picture of the Week

Coogee Coast Walks

Partying, Partying, Yeah!

After a long day first day of school, the Party Bus awaited us at 6 PM. Because we had booked our spring break trip, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, we received a free ticket to a Pub Crawl on a party bus tonight. This was exactly what we needed to kick off the new school year and meet other international students.

After meeting at Coogee Palace, we got our colored wristband, which assigned us to a bus. Once the busses arrived, our first stop was Strike Bowling and Karaoke Bar on Darling Harbour. If you remember correctly, Darling Harbour is our main stomping ground, because it is where Cargo Bar is located!!! With this mind, we were in for a treat!

How ‘bout a $20 strawberry mojito?? What if it was in a mason jar?? HELL TO THE YEAH! Not only did Strike Bowling and Karaoke Bar have incredible (and incredibly expensive) drinks, but the karaoke rooms were to die for! We quickly kicked out two Spanish lovers serenading each other in the best karaoke room, and took control! Rachael and Charlotte stole the stage, singing songs like Barbie Girl, Thrift Shop, Single Ladies, Baby, and Just Give Me a Reason. After singing our hearts out for an hour, we were shuffled back onto the bus to Scary Canary.

I think the name says it all, don’t you? This place was interesting to say the least. The DJ from our bus, DJ Dean, joined the party and started playing music at this new place. We got our free drink here. Of course, Lauren chose champagne, and by this time, it didn’t even matter what Rachael was drinking, since that strawberry mojito had already did her in. DJ Dean was literally like Rachael’s personal DJ, since he took all of her requests, even the Dougie. Watching in amazement and awe, Lauren and Charlotte stood in front of the stage with all eyes on Rachael. That girl was dancing like there was no tomorrow and the crowd was lovin’ it.

On to the next one. Side Bar was the third stop on this bar crawl. We really liked this place a lot because it had a more relaxed atmosphere. The bar was situated in the center of the room, with pool tables and seating all around. Even though it was not even midnight yet, we were exhausted from the night’s festivities. We didn’t even have it in us to make it to the next bar! We decided to cab it back to our apartment.

…Quick change of plans. Once in the cab, we realized we were starving. In a moment of weakness, we made the cab stop at Domino’s. Um stop judging. You know you’ve had a night like this too, you hypocrite. Besides, swimsuit season is like 3 weeks away so we have time to work all that cheesy bread off obvi. Anways, as we were saying, we made the cab stop at Domino’s, which THANKFULLY happens to be open 24 hours a day and is a comfortable 15ish minute walk back to our apartment. After getting in line between a dude named Max Rogers, a drunken couple, and a cab driver named Ted, we finally put our order in: large cheese pizza. Sidenote: Rachael is lactose intolerant and gluten intolerant…but the heart wants what the heart wants.

We were notified that the cheese pizza for “Lurean” would be a 20-minute wait. What to do for 20 minutes? First, laugh for 10 minutes straight that the reader board said “Lurean” not Lauren. Second, drunkenly make friends with every single other weirdo that also decided to come to Domino’s at midnight on a Tuesday (seriously, only the weirdest people go to Domino’s sober on a weeknight). After 20 minutes of waiting for “Lurean’s” cheese pizza and hanging out with Ted (60 year old cab driver from China), our pizza was in our hands and we walked back to our apartment.

After destroying the pizza (and destroying our pristine white sheets with red marinara pizza sauce) and skyping Jeffrey Jay drunk, we felt that our night was finally complete. Time for bed. Deuc3$!

First Day of School

It was as if the words “rise and shine” echoed in our ears, as we awoke on our first day of school. Popping out of bed like toast out of a toaster, we were ready to take on the day.  Squeaky clean, our moms would be proud of how polished and put together we looked on our first day. As we left our apartment and boarded the red M50 bus, we knew that there was no turning back. Grabbing a seat on the bus, we sighed in relief. I mean…we were halfway there right? Getting on the correct bus was crucial, and we fearlessly conquered it. Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at Gate 7 on High Street.

First stop, picture in front of the UNSW sign. Now that we got that out of our system, we searched for our first class. Let’s be honest here, it took us quite some time to find the correct building and floor for this class. However, it was worth the wait since Business, Ethics, and the Law with Professor Frank Zumbo was our favorite class! How do I sum this up? The man is an absolute legend. When you walk into class, he makes sure you have added him on Facebook, so that he can get his friend count up. Legend. He lightheartedly poked fun at a Chinese boy who came to class late by asking him if he was looking for the Physics lab. He continued to tell him that he would someday win a Nobel Peace Prize. Legend. What was supposed to be a three-hour class was turned into an hour class, since he dismissed us early. Legend. He also told us that he would never be early to class. Do we even need to say it again? LEGEND.

Our next class was much more uneventful as we were the only two white girls in our Managing Organizations and People class. We felt like minorities, as we were girls and we were white. Our teacher was from Singapore and while English is the national language in Singapore, he still needed some work. Rachael and I looked at each other quite often and asked, “What did he just say???” Needless to say, I dropped the class later that day because I just knew that I could not bear to play translator while on vacation, I mean studying, here in Australia. Sadly, my other half Rachael stayed in the class, so we had to part ways every Tuesday. Having three out of four of the same classes was still batting a thousand in my book.

WE SURVIVED OUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!! TIME TO CELEBRATE WITH SOME COCKTAILS!! All jokes aside, we only had lectures this week and not tutorials, so our class days were much shorter than usual. Still, we survived. Guiding our way through the 56,000 students and large unknown campus, we were one with Columbus, who underwent the same hardships when he navigated through the waters to find America. 

V.I.P.

Ya, that’s right. VIP.  After getting settled into our new, comfortable apartment, these ladies were finally ready to take on the town. And what better way to start off our 4 months of partying in Sydney than hanging out at Cargo bar’s posh VIP lounge?

Before Lauren arrived in Sydney, Rachael and Charlotte had been to a couple of bars outside of Sydney. These bars included Scubar, where they watched hermit crabs race (literally more boring than watching paint dry), and the Golden Sheaf, a chill little bar with a cute outside and stylish inside.  I mean, these bars were fine, but these chicks wanted to be able to party without constantly gagging on the smell of backpacker B.O. Now that Lauren had arrived, we knew that we needed to celebrate the right way, and in style!

Thanks to some sweet connections, we headed out to Cargo Bar to meet a couple of Australian guys that also attended UNSW. As soon as the cab pulled up we saw the incredible Darling Harbour lit up by the surrounding restaurants and bars, and we knew that we were in for a good time. We walked up to the bar and noticed that there were two lines: a long line that led to the downstairs and another shorter line that led upstairs. Luckily, we were met outside the bar by Lauren’s Australian connection, jumped the shorter line, got our stamp, and headed upstairs.

GOOD GAWD. We entered the upstairs and took in a dimly lit area with chic little couches and tables.  Cargo Bar was exactly what we needed at exactly the right time.  We had just moved into a great apartment and wanted to kick our semester and time in Australia off with our greatest friends. We could not have imagined a better place to do so! This place reminded us of New York: the constant flow of cocktails and rounds of shots, the remixes of popular American songs playing, the sleek attire of the men and women that surrounded us, and the amazing view on the water of the Harbour. Having only been in Sydney for under a week, we really felt like the coolest chicks in town now. Feeling like social elitists with our freshly stamped hands, the ladies on Sex and the City had nothing on us.

We began to notice the people around us…Seriously the most beautiful people we had seen since arriving in Sydney. Not only were the males at least 6’3 and gorgeous, but they smelled amazing and were dressed impeccably. Don’t even get us started on the girls! We were checking out the girls just as much as we were checking out the guys! Every babe around us was skinny, tall, elegantly dressed and GORGEOUS. JESUS! What was this place?? There was even a guy walking around playing the saxophone to set the scene! After exploring the top floor, we wondered if the bottom floor was just as exciting as the top floor. We headed down the stairs, showed our stamp to the bouncer, and entered the bottom floor…

EW. The bottom floor was a completely different scene than on the top floor. Most shocking was the fact that people on the bottom floor were significantly shorter and significantly less visually pleasing (and that is putting it nicely).  The floors were like two different worlds, separated by a staircase and a big scary bouncer. We realized that not just anyone could escape this hell and enter into heaven above. We had different stamps to prove the difference: we were the elite who could travel between worlds, but these peeps of the bottom floor didn’t have a chance of seeing the glory that was above them. We quickly left the bottom floor and entered the VIP lounge to once again bask in the beauty of the Australian gods and goddesses of the top floor.

We had finally made it. We started from da bottom and now we here. Here in the shwanky VIP lounge overlooking Darling Harbour. Things were looking up.

Highs 'n Lows Part II

...While Lauren and Charlotte were enjoying their romantic beachside walk to Bondi, Rachael put on her comfiest pair of sneakers and set out on the hike towards Randwick. 30 minutes of mountain climbing later, Rachael had finally made it to Randwick, a little city outside of Sydney. She shamelessly entered numerous grocery stores and EZ Marts, desperately asking for any kind of wifi device. Finally, a kind Indian man working at Rumour shoe store pointed her in the direction of Dick Smith.

Who the hell is Dick Smith you ask? Not who, but what. Dick Smith is one of the few tech stores in the area, which also happens to be located in the Randwick Shopping Center. Filled with confidence, Rachael continued on her journey and made her way to Dick's. She perused all of the internet devices and realized that she was useless: she was technologically challenged (in a big way) and had no idea what would work in the apartment. After waiting to be helped for 20 minutes, she finally snagged one of the two employees working at the busy tech store. Let's call him "Gary."

Now Gary was a Uni student (a university student in Australian lingo) with an attitude, and Rachael was clearly his last priority at the time. After explaining the situation and the fact that the apartment had no phone-jack to even install internet, he told Rachael that she might as well give up....GIVE UP? Lauren and Rachael had friends and Jeffrey Jay to Skype. Gary, still not giving a single flying ^&*%, said that the only possibility would be a portable wifi, and OH WAIT. That it would be too expensive: $580 for 4 months for one person. GEE THANKS FOR THE HELP GARY!

At this instant, Rachael felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. It was instantaneous. She started BAWLING in the middle of Dick Smith, surrounded by gadget geeks and friends from Vanderbilt. Every single person was listening to her sobs, and she was beginning to create quite a scene. Suddenly, an angel appeared--an angel by the name of Sandy.

Now Sandy was not your average angel. In reality, she was a ball-busting, 40-something-year-old, short-haired local woman who happened to be purchasing a tech device at Dick Smith during Rachael's mental breakdown. This woman clearly had to have kids because she fearlessly marched over to Rachael. This woman meant business. Sandy took Rachael's hand and led her up to good-for-nothing Gary. She demanded that Gary find her the best wifi and most affordable deal for her 4 person apartment. Sandy spent an HOUR AND 45 MINUTES in that tech store with Rachael, as if she were her own daughter.

After securing Rachael with the best internet deal possible, Sandy handed Rachael her card and disappeared into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again.

So this is where we are at! We finally have our VIVIDWIRELESS installed and can blog our pants off! SO excited after the big victory, these biddies felt ready to take on the town and headed over to Cargo Bar!