Days in Sydney

We spent four days in Sydney, Australia. We stayed at an amazing hostel basically like the Ritz of hostels. Our first night we went to Hillsong City Church. It was pretty good. It was very similar to GCC. I was so tired so it was hard to enjoy it but I still did.

We were about a 40 minute walk to the Sydney Opera House. We walked down every night to see it lit up. It was gorgeous; however, during the day it wasn't as pretty as I thought. It was kinda yellowish...just kinda unexpected. But at night it was gorgeous. I was so excited to see it because it's something I've always wanted to see.

Side note: we [all the girls] decided that the only things we knew about Sydney were what we learned from watching Mary-Kate & Ashley's Our Lips Are Sealed movie.

We spent a day at Manly Beach. We took the ferry there. It was fun. We walked around the town and did some shopping too. The next day was a free day. Janelle Lambert and I just walked around town. I got a Kebab. It's like a taco/wrap but ten times better.

A great experience I had in Sydney was walking around with two other girls. We decided to make sandwiches and set out to talk with homeless people. They each had their own story. Some wanted food and some just wanted to be acknowledged and talked to. We met Joey, Matthew, Doddy, David and Matthew. These five men were extremely nice. We talked to Joey the longest. He was starving but had horrible allergies and could only eat a certain kind of sandwich. He was the only man I gave money too. My heart went out to him and I found myself thinking about him all day. Doddy had two dogs with him. He was the sweetest man. Matthew was a man maybe in his 40s. He didn't have much to say but we offered him a sandwich anyway. He was hard of hearing but loved that we stopped to talk to him. David was the youngest that we met. He didn't want anything to eat but he made a joke about Indiana Jones and he was one that I could tell we made his day just by stopping and talking with him. When we left he had a big smile. And Matthew was starving. He was an older man on the corner of the street. He took three sandwiches and told us where we could find others like him down the street. He was a sincere man and truly thankful for our sandwiches. This all was a great experience for me. I have never set out to only talk with homeless people. I hope to do this again sometime.

Now we are back in New Zealand and we have one more full day then we head to Fiji for a few days then to Hong Kong. And from Hong Kong we take a train to Beijing. I am super excited for our overnight train ride. I think it'll be a fun experience. And the closer it gets for our time to be in China the more i'm getting excited about it!