Margaret Jo...Neirman??

Wow, time flies! My time in the land of OZ is beginning to wind down all too quickly. We’re in week 10 of school, and it is the last full week of classes. All of our group projects are due between this week and next week, and finals are looming. It’s been incredibly busy and actually quite stressful, but now I’ve turned in my major facilities management project and my tourism one. On Monday we have our final marketing pitch for the executives of Side Bar. Should be…exciting.

Last week I temporarily changed my surname to Neirman and hung out the entire week with Perri’s parents and sister Paige. We had such a good time, and it was so nice to have a little bit of family time. :) Here are the highlights from our time together: They arrived late on Saturday evening, so on Sunday for breakfast we went out to Pancakes on the Rocks (I had the world’s best Ceasar salad!), and then did a little shopping in the weekend market. We eventually made our way over to Darling Harbour. We went to the PowerHouse Museum…which was really lame. It was supposed to be a really interactive science and design museum, but it ended up being totally boring. The best part was a robot that you could play games against. This thing had attitude! We walked through quick, and then headed over to Paddy’s Market. The first night that they came into Manly, Perri and I took them out to Ribs and Rumps. We had an entrée (which is what you might call an appetizer) of kangaroo, cooked to the recommended medium rare. It was DELICIOUS! Really tender and a little bit sweet.

On Friday, we spent the entire day in the city. I skipped out on my facilities class and Perri and I took an early ferry in and crashed the executive lounge to have a lovely breakfast. We decided to play tourists and went to the Sydney Tower which is the tallest building in Sydney, twice as tall as the Harbour Bridge. After taking a realllly quick elevator up to the top, we had some crazy amazing views. While minding our own business taking pictures, Paige and I realized that this old man was beckoning us towards him. He was a silhouette cutter, and he told us that he’d do ours for a deal. We decided to humour him and as he did his thing, we were all chatting and we discovered that he was born in Detroit! He’s been making silhouettes since he was fifteen (he was born in 1919!) and just loves what he does. Truly a sweet old man. They turned out pretty well, especially Paige’s, but Perri’s kind of looks like she’s four years old!

After we’d soaked in the views, we went back down to do the Oz Trek. The first part is similar to the Carousel of Progress (if you’ve ever been to Disney) and we rotated around a circular theatre to ‘go to’ different areas in Australia: the city, the Outback, the Great Barrier Reef and the rain forest. Then we proceeded into a theatre set up like Universal and did a virtual simulator of going to all of those same places. It was neat but kind of gave us a headache. A little shopping later (who said winter is a bad thing…I bought two bathing suits for a total of $30!), we stopped and had a late lunch at a café along the path by the Opera House. Perri and I said our goodbyes, as her family left on Saturday, and headed back into Manly.

Friday night we had a BBQ at our friend Myles’ house. It was actually a Bandicoot (our school’s rugby team) team BBQ, so it was about twenty guys and then Perri and myself. When I asked one of the guys why we were invited, he looked at me like I was crazy and said “We needed chicks to cook and clean!” Geez Louise…

The 12th, (Saturday) Perri and I were due to go to Hunter Valley to Gallo’s McWilliam’s Vineyards Mt. Pleasant Winery on a level two VIP tour that was arranged through very nice and generous work contacts. Mt. Pleasant was about an hour and a half drive away, but since neither Perri nor myself can actually drive down here, this was our transportation ordeal: We’d have to leave Manly via taxi to get to Central Station, and then ride a train to Newcastle, followed by a bus to somewhere, and another taxi to actually get to the winery. To do all this by 10.00 am, we would have to allow over six hours of travel time…costing well over $120. We decided this simply wasn’t feasible, which was quite disappointing as I had been looking forward to it for quite a long time.

On Sunday, Perri and I decided to continue the fun times in the city by going to the aquarium and to the modern art gallery. When our ferry docked in Sydney it was absolutely pouring down rain. We decided to wait to catch the next ferry over to Darling Harbour rather then walk in the rain. By the time we got there it had pretty much stopped raining. The aquarium was pretty standard…up to the seal and shark tunnels! They were wicked…very very cool. Difficult to get good photographs in, but that’s alright. The modern art gallery was, well, modern. It was quite…interesting. I’m glad it was free. After church at St. Matt’s, I finished up my portion of one of my projects.

This week has been consumed by homework thus far, and will continue to be. But, exciting, I did have real Thai food for the first time yesterday at bible study. Mmm…spicy! I miss spicy food so much!

Speaking of things I miss, these are the order of the trivial things I miss:
1) Ice water (as in water with ICE in it)
2) My car (speaking of which, um, Pops…??)
3) Cooking
4) Spicy food
5) Salads

Silly, I know…

Wish me luck as I continue on through this killer week!
Here is the latest issue of photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2195287&l=0c21a&id=22414798

See you all in five weeks…Cheers!
MJ