March 1st= 1st day of orientation

I arrived at the hotel and dragged my luggage over the lift (elevator). Met my roommate Sarah once I got into my room and dropped my luggage off and gave her sometime to herself because she had just flown in about 2 hrs earlier. Then I ventured outside to see the beach and to take a couple pictures. On the beach there was an iron man and woman contest about to start up and I was little disappointed we were going to miss it.

Then I went back to the hotel to meet everyone up on the roof. Once I got up there everyone introduced themselves as we waited on Merlin our IES advisor to arrive. Whenever he got there is was a little flustered because one of the guys' planes was delayed and waited on him at the airport to get him back to the hotel. Once Merlin got there we all headed downstairs to board onto the most amazing party bus that was double decker so all of us sat upstairs to see all of the sights. We drove along the coast to Maurbra Bay and then we parked and ate lunch. After lunch we headed into the city of Sydney and saw the Harbour Bridge and Opera house and all of the other great buildings downtown. We got off and walked around and saw the War Memorial, St Marys Cathedral, the Botanical Gardens. In the gardens there were trees just covered in these huge bats that were just chilling. Then we rounded a corner and saw the Opera House. We walked underneathe of it to get to the ferry. The ferry took us all around the harbour and allowed all of us to get some really great shots of Sydney. After our adventure in the city we returned back to the hotel and then Merling took Rob, Sarah and I to Westfield shopping center in Bondi to get mobiles (cell phones). When we got to the mall we were sprinting through like mad men because it was almost 6:00 and about to close. We ended up not making it in time so we weren't able to get phones. Then we came back to the hotel and changed and then went to dinner and chilled at one of the bars in Coogee because we decided not head downtown for the Mardi Gras parade because we didn't want to get stuck with no way back to the hotel and we had to be up early the next morning.