Days 15 through 18

Day 15: The Beach and College Life Begins
For the next two weeks the only things we have planned is class from 9am to 1pm and a few optional excursions we paid for before coming, like a rugby game, kayaking in the bay, going to an opera and the opera house, etc. This means we get to really explore Sydney!
Today we went to the beach after a class on bioenergy. Class really tied together all of the different biofuels and bioenergy technologies that we currently use and the future of the technology. This isn’t really my major (it’s more ChemE), but it is still interesting stuff. At the beach we just chilled, listened to music, played beach volleyball, and walked around. It was a really nice day (even though some natives would say it was cold), but this beach was smaller than the ones in Byron Bay and therefore was more crowded.
After getting back to campus, we cooked dinner, which is a great option to have seeing that eating out gets really expensive, then we went out to see the city nightlife. Sydney reminds me a lot of a place like LA just with better public transit. By this, I mean that it is really huge, with stuff all over the place but kind of spread out, but there are buses that can get you most places in less than an hour. It will be interesting to continue to explore this city for the next few weeks.

Day 16: Sydney Opera House and Sydney Roosters vs. the Cronulla Sharks
With a bunch of people having tickets to a show at the Opera house, we all went down to check it out and the rest of town. My friend David and I did not have tickets so we wondered around a lot of downtown and got a good idea of where places are and took some great pictures. Sydney has more tall buildings that any of the other cities we have been in, but not as many interesting little districts, like Melbourne’s alleys, Brisbane’s main street, etc.

View of Sydney Harbor from the Opera House

Tonight we had tickets to the rugby game, which were not too expensive (only $35). We quickly found out that none of us knew the rules of rugby, but slowly but surely figured it out. Once we knew how it worked, it was a lot more fun to watch, but if anything, listening to the passionate little kids screaming behind us was the best part of the game. In this game, the local Sydney Roosters took a 24-0 lead before halftime, then the Sharks started to rally back. With only a minute left the Sharks took the lead at 28-30, then the Roosters pushed their way all the way down only to score (they call it a ‘try’, not a touchdown) with seconds remaining. After the officials reviewed it though, the try was no good, and the crowd was livid. I later found out that the Sharks are the bottom team in the league and the Roosters near the top, so this really was an exciting game!

The kids behind us at the NRL game were great!

Day 17: The 360 Bar
Today we all slept in, which was greatly needed, then went downtown to the shopping center. The stores were way too expensive for us, but we came to the mall specifically because we heard about the 360 Bar, which is a bar at the top of the Sky Tower. Normally it costs $26 to go up but we hear that if we spent $20 at the 360 Bar we could go up free. It was awesome! We went up right around sunset and therefore saw the city during the day, sunset, and at night. We sipped our drinks and ate our appetizers as slow as possible so we could take in the views, and it was amazing! To anyone coming to Sydney, this is one of the first things I would suggest going to!

360 Bar in Sydney! Some of the best views of a city you’ll ever see!

Day 18: Monday, July 7th
Today was a normal Monday, with the normal recovery from staying up late during the weekend, waking up way before you want to for class, and taking a long nap when you get home. Today we covered energy storage, which was really interesting, but this was the first professor we have had that I really disliked. In perspective, that is a good thing, but today’s four hours of class was hard to get through. With that said, we learned about Vanadium batteries, which are really interesting, and the advantages and disadvantages of other batteries. Pretty uneventful day in the end, but a good day to catch up on sleep and homework.