Only 8 days left :(

After most of Clemson’s group returned home after their Australia course, the five remaining girls and our two teachers spent the weekend in Sydney with thirteen students from ECU. The five of us stayed in a 6-bed room at a really nice hostel right in the middle of Sydney, while the other students stayed a few blocks away. It’s Saturday night and we leave tomorrow morning for Fiji! I’m sad to be leaving Australia but I know Fiji will be just as beautiful (and much better exchange rates!) I can’t believe we only have eight days left!! The course begins tomorrow when we arrive, and we will be squeezing a three hour course into a little over one week.
I’m sitting in our room right now, exhausted from the long day of running from one side of Sydney to the next, trying to fit as much in as we could! All five of us left our hostel at 8am, met up with our teaching assistant, and navigated our way to downtown Sydney. It started our being really chilly but warmed up later on when the sun decided to come out. We hopped on a ferry that took us across Sydney harbor, under the Sydney harbor bridge, and right past the opera house….SO PRETTY! We got off at the opera house, walked through the city, shopped, and had brunch at a world famous restaurant called Pancakes on The Rocks. It was luckily so much easier to find Americanized food in a big town like Sydney. We shopped around for the afternoon, trying to get the last of our Australian souvenirs. Tonight, Brittany, Jamie, and I looked up the address, found a map, and walked a countless amount of blocks through parts of town that we probably shouldn’t have been in to attend Hillsong Church’s Saturday night service. This church is the largest church in Australia, containing about five different branches throughout the country, and we were more than excited when we realized we would be able to attend a service while in town. A band that originated from this church has produced countless amounts of worship music that is played in churches all across the United States and many other countries. The service was AMAZING!!!! There was a ridiculous amount of genuine enthusiasm to be praising God and it was one of the most moving church services I’ve ever attended. This weekend, Jerry Savelle, a pastor from the United States, was visiting and preached an awesome message. We stayed and talked to a lot of really cool people afterwards and caught a free bus back to our hostel. I must admit, we did a impressive job of navigating our way through Sydney, efficiently finding the places we were looking for and figuring out the cheapest transportation possible. Give us one more day here and we would know Sydney like the back of our hand! Australia has been such an amazing experience and I’m so sad to be leaving tomorrow. I would love to come back one day, but if I don’t, I will at least know that I have gotten a true taste of the Australian culture, and I have visited some places that I will never be able to forget or outdo. This is truly a dream and nothing will ever compare!