Kiwi Paradise : Revival, Exploration, and Trek

I woke up to a beautiful sunset popping up right behind the city. It was so picturesque! Nicole had meetings and then a special sisterhood event she was supposed to help with so I ended up tagging along. Her campus is basically just one big building a few blocks from her apartment building. We stopped by the grocery store (Coles) on the way to pick up some fruit for breakfast. When we arrived at her meeting I had the chance to meet other girls from Korea, Sweden, Norway, Chicago, and Germany. One of Nicole's responsibilities is to oversee the university students and make sure that they are adjusting well- especially because most of them are from overseas. This meeting was to talk about how they could do a better job of taking care of the students.

Next came the sisterhood meeting. Let me preface this by saying that this was a religious meeting for all of the girls attending the university (think of it kind of like a relief society meeting). It was cool because they had a great speaker that talked about staying on the path no matter how hard things get. But they also had a christian rock band and lots of praying. It was a good experience to understand more of their beliefs. It just made me more grateful for the quiet relationship our churches teaches us to develop with Heavenly Father. Before the meeting there was a lot of mingling and I got to met even more of Nicole's friends from everywhere. Random- one of her friends is from Twin Falls Idaho and he knew some of my roommates even though he is a few years younger. It was cool because everyone was super nice but it was definitely a unique experience :).

Afterwards we stopped by the store again and bought the ingredients to make some soup for lunch. It was yum! Nicole had some classes to go to for the rest of the afternoon so I took the liberty of exploring the city! It was about an hour walk from Nicole's apartment to the opera house- not a bad walk. It was amazing!! I walked past the Sydney hospital, parliament building, New South Wales library, plus tons of museums. I also walked through Hyde Park (probably a relation way down the line) and finally arrived at the beautiful opera house! It's funny but my first thought when I saw it was "wow it's actually real!"

I walked all the way around it before walking over to the royal botanical gardens and just chilling on a hillside enjoying the view of the gardens, the harbor, the bridge, and the opera house. It was beautiful! Finally, I had to turn around and start walking back. I met Nicole back at her place and we had a dinner of spaghetti before she dropped me off at the bus station. This is where the real adventure begins- I had to ride a bus, two trains, and then walk about an hour with my wonderful suitcases of stuff (only because the buses stopped after 9)... Never have I been more excited to see an apartment complex in my life! It's actually wonderful because we are staying in temple housing only about a15 minute walk from the temple- there's a giant kitchen, internet and a giant room full of bunk beds for all of us. Plus I had a friend that hooked us up with this place and she had pizzas waiting for us. Oh it was the best!