Dearest blog and readers, I apologize for being MIA for almost three weeks. So much has happened and I just couldn't be bothered to write it all down. "Couldn't be bothered" is a fun Australian expression I noticed today ... or maybe it was just the person I was talking to. Anyway, I'll do my best to catch you up on the past threeish weeks, they've been fantastic!

Oh, and to any faithful blog readers: don't worry. I know that all of the other bloggers are starting to wrap things up in Europe, but I'll still be chugging along here for quite a bit longer!

So I left off on April 30. (Yes, it was actually posted as April 29 because a lot of the time Bucknell time is a day behind Sydney time). May 1, I went on another archaeology field trip, this time to the Hyde Park Barracks and other buildings on Macquarie Street and then through the botanic gardens and the domain. In front of the State Library, there is a statue of Matthew Flinders. Behind him, on the ledge around one of the library's windows is a statue of a cat, Trim. At the base of the statue of Flinders is a plaque commemorating Trim. Flinders sailed all over the world and circumnavigated Australia, and Trim was his faithful companion through it all. I'm always up for a warm and fuzzy cat story.

Statue of Trim looking at the statue of Matthew Flinders.

On Friday, I went with my friend Chris (who I met in the outback) on another coastal walk, this time within the harbour ... middle head. We began in Balmoral (area on the north shore) and walked down to the beach. We walked along the coast all day going around Middle Head, Georges Heights, Chowder Head, Bradleys Head, and ending at the Taronga Zoo.

The day was gorgeous and we had some breathtaking views of the harbour, particularly from Georges Heights, which was the location of an old fort. There were a bunch of forts/gun stations at different points in the harbour to protect Sydney from any enemy ships that might try to get to Sydney. It was really cool to look down the harbour and see where I walked on my North Head and South Head walks. During the walk we spotted a bunch of interesting critters, including a large lizard.

At Balmoral beach.

Looking at the mouth of the harbour. North Head is on the left, and South Head is on the right.

The park/old fort site at Georges Heights.

Looking towards the city from Georges Heights.

Kookaburra at Georges Heights.

Looking back at the city again, the kookaburra is still in the tree.

Chowder Bay.

Taylors Bay.

Our scaly friend. He was actually pretty big.

Ferry ride back to the city.

When we reached the zoo, we headed back to the city on a ferry and then went to the Sydney Wildlife World with Chris's girlfriend. We got to see a bunch of different animals including the oh-so-cute bilby. On a side note, there is a group that wants to replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Bilby in Australia since rabbits are non-native and their introduction has destroyed the landscape. Apparently, around Easter you can buy little chocolate bilbies!

By this point I am exhausted, but get a call from some other friends saying they are going to a Mexican place for food, so I decide to check it out. Because I clearly hadn't walked enough that day, I decide to walk across the city to the restaurant. I was rewarded with a fantastic burrito from a place very similar to a Chipotle.

Saturday morning I was up with the dawn patrol to head to the Hunter Valley. The valley was gorgeous and it was nice to get out of the city for a day. We hit a few wineries and had a sausage BBQ in a park.

Park where we had the BBQ.

Cool, funny-looking trees in the park.

On Sunday, Becca and I took a stroll through The Rocks, an older part of the city, and visited an environmentally-friendly building for one of my classes.

The next week I don't think anything too terribly happened the next week. On Friday I did a lot of shopping and walked around the city all day. On Saturday, Becca and I were up early and hit the Glebe Market. Definitely my favourite market in the area. Afterwards we went up the Sydney Tower to catch some great views of the city. It was really cool and you could see all the places in the city that I've been. You could see the football stadium where I saw the rugby game, the places where I've gone on coastal walks, Sydney Uni, John's, where I did sailing, and all sorts of other places. The ticket to the top of the tower included some multi-media show about Australia that was ... something.

Glebe market.

View down the harbour.

Looking east. In the bottom left hand corner is the corner of St. Mary's Cathedral, in the bottom right you can see part of the shadow of the tower in Hyde Park, and in the upper right hand corner you can see the football stadium (that white oval thing).

Becca and I thought it was funny that they had one of those penny press machines...even though they don't have pennies! The machine even had a picture of a penny on it. Inside the machine were "blank pennies" waiting to be pressed.

Highest working mailbox in the southern hemisphere. Coming soon: the largest ball of twine in the southern hemisphere.

On Monday, I went to an Elton John concert which was obviously fantastic! Yet another reason why Sydney is fantastic: I was able to walk to the place where he was performing in about half an hour. The concert was the 41st time he had performed in the Sydney Entertainment Centre and is the venue he has performed at most, behind Madison Square Gardens and Caesar's Palace.

This past week, I also booked my trip up to Cairns and the Whitsunday Islands. I plan on going up with Bucknellian Lisa Rosende. In Cairns I plan on going to Cape Tribulation and out on the reef. In the Whitsundays we will be sailing for four days around the islands and exploring the islands and the reef.

Yesterday, I set out on a two-day mini holiday to the northern beaches and Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park. I woke up ridiculously early and took a bus to Palm Beach (about an hour and 40 minutes north of the city). I walked around the beach and the Barrenjoey headland. I climbed up to the light house at the end of the peninsula and had a spectacular view of the peninsula and the Ku-Ring-Gai area that I would be heading to the next day. When I had first arrived in Palm Beach, it had been rainy and cloudy and a little miserable. By the time I reached the top of the lighthouse it had "fined up really nicely" and the view was amazing. ("Fine" is the description used for clear and nice.)

Palm Beach and the Barrenjoey headland. You can kind of see the light house on the top.

View looking south from up around the lighthouse. You can see how skinny the peninsula gets before it widens out on the elevated part where the lighthouse is. Look at a map, the peninsula kind of looks like a hammerhead. The land in the background is where I went the next day.

Looking south again. At the area towards the bottom of the picture I saw a pod of whales, which were actually pretty close to shore.

The lighthouse.

Looking west towards Ku-Ring-Gai (where I'd go the next day) as I climb down from the lighthouse.

Palm Beach.

After exploring the beach and headland a little more, I caught the bus down the peninsula to Avalon. Because in the southern hemisphere Florida is north of New Jersey. In Avalon I spent some time on the beach and watched some surfers. After a while, I walked to the inland side of the peninsula through the town and a residential area. The residential area had a bunch of signs up warning drivers that Koalas cross the street and that there could be wildlife other wildlife on the road.

Avalon Beach.

Avalon Beach.

Slightly cuter than a deer crossing sign.

After a few hours in Avalon I made the trek down to Collaroy. I spent some time on the beach there and then walked up along a coastal walk around Long Reef. Again, spectacular views looking up and down the coast of the peninsula. In the middle of the Long Reef peninsula was a golf course and a park where families were all out playing with their dogs. On the other side of Long Reef I walked to the Dee Why Lagoon and spent some time there and at another park before checking into my hostel.

Looking back north towards the pool at Collaroy Beach.

These pelicans are massive.

The view looking down the Long Reef Peninsula. You can see a bit of the Dee Why Lagoon on the left ... a little inland from the ocean.

In one area, just a thin strip of land seperates the lagoon from the ocean.

After a morning stroll on the beach, my Australian friend, Tom, picked me up and we headed west to Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park. We first walked down the Flint and Steet Track to the beach on the inland side of West Head. We walked along the beach checking out the tidal pools along the way. Our two most exciting finds were iridescent snail/slug things and an octopus. The octopus had made itself tiny and was hiding against the wall of the rock pool. Try as we might, we couldn't get him to come out and swim through the pool. We waved a few long blades of grass in front of him and even splashed the water just above him, but he would only shoot out a tentacle and swat at the grass or our hands. His arms were surprisingly long for how tiny he appeared to be.

Morning stoll on Collaroy Beach.

The beach of Flint and Steel Bay.

Awesome little guy.

We then journeyed over to the West Head lookout and looked up the coast towards Lion Island and east towards Barrenjoey and Palm Beach where I had been yesterday. We sat up there for a while eating lunch, which included Tom's first peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

That morning Tom sent me a text asking if we would need a lunch for the day and I texted him back saying that I had "2 pbj sandwiches, 2 yogurt granola bars, and 2 packs of cookies" and added that I would meet him in the "car park" for the beach. When I was getting out the food he asked "does pbj stand for what I think it does?" And I asked "do you mean peanut butter and jelly?" and he told me that it would be his first one. I think I mentioned before that Australians don't eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I told him that I had thought about it when I wrote the text, but it was the morning and I was too lazy to write the words out...I figured that he had watched TV and seen movies and would probably know what it was...he said that he did figure it out, but that it had taken him a while.

So I then said that I knew that they don't call granola bars granola bars, but I couldn't remember what they called them. (They call them muesli bars.) He said that he had been a little unsure about that too. Then we discussed whether the cookies I had brought would be called cookies or biscuits, and he decided that they could be called either. I did point out that I put the effort in and called the place where he was to pick me up a "car park" instead of a "parking lot."

As I mentioned before, Australians call jelly something completely different from what we call it. After several minutes of dialogue we finally concluded that what they call jelly is Jell-O. They don't use the word Jell-O, Tom just happens to know the word for whatever reason. No wonder everyone thinks we are weird if they think we're eating Jell-O and peanut butter on a sandwich.

Looking east at the Barrenjoey headland. You can really see the change in elevation. I walked down that long skinny part, and then climbed up to the lighthouse at the top of the elevated part.

Looking north. The land on the far left is Lion Island.

Eventually we made our way past some Aboriginal rock engravings (like the one from the Blue Mountains) and down to the Basin, a place where boats were moored and where there was a flat grassy area for people to go camping. While at the West Head lookout we saw a very friendly wallaby but couldn't find the goanna that Tom says usually hangs out at the lookout. On the walk down to the Basin and at the Basin itself we saw many more wallabies.

The view eastish from the Basin. You can see another one of those massive pelicans in the foreground.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I plan on doing a lot of work, so don't expect anything too exciting to happen, but on Monday night a group of us are going to the observatory.