June 13th 2011

At first, I wasn't sure about traveling without my family because I knew I'd be given more responsibility than I knew to handle. I only figured I'd learn to handle having room mates and to be more responsible with time and packing, but It's so much more than that. I realized that big parts in traveling like going over luggage, getting tickets and going through airports, checking into hotels, and most of all is finding what to see and where to go on your trip are all much simpler than they seam. I could already assume what packing up and going through airport security were like and I'm still not sure about getting airplane tickets and checking into hotels but at least I have a better understanding of all this. Like I said, to me personally experiencing your trip and realizing how to experience it is the primary concern you should have. Now I know I should be on the lookout for popular hot spots and activities there are to explore in a certain culture.

To summarize the day, it started out a little disappointing but it picked up again soon. The reason for disappointment was because we were supposed to do our Sydney excursions today, some did the Blue Mountain tour and others did the Sydney Bridge climb. There was supposed to be Whale Watching as a third excursion, but because of unpredictable wind in Sydney, it was canceled. So me and everyone else who wanted to go whale watching had to walk around some failing dead-end malls and outdoor markets for a couple hours until it was time to go bridge climbing. All in all, the market wasn't as bad as the mall, I managed to get a couple pictures and food in before we left. Finally, we left for the bridge climb, and this was one of my biggest highlights of the trip. Although some people choked at the last minute and were to afraid to conquer the bridge, but I had no dought in my mind that this wouldn't be amazing and exiting. When we finished, we went back to the harbor a third time to watch a light show on the Sydney Opera house (which was the last of the year, lucky for us). It was fun to watch, we got to take pictures and reminisce about how our days went and what we did. From what I heard, the Blue Mountain hikers got rained on, and the weather was easier to take for us. Later that night, we split up into groups again back at the hotel so we could have more of a choice on where we wanted to eat. Our group had nothing planed, we just walked around Sydney until we found a cozy Chinese noodle restaurant to eat at. The dinner was great and I realized that night, if some things planned don't go your way, just make stuff happen as you go along and it should work out.