onsdag 25. juni 2014

Suzy's Gone Diving.

To combat the post-Sydney blues, I decided to go on a scuba dive trip yesterday. I waited until the evening to book anything, so I was a little worried that I would not be able to go. I was happy when Markus from Joe's Gone Diving responded to my enquiry about an introductory dive, and informed me that they had an instructor that could take me to the USAT Liberty shipwreck. 

I woke up early the next day (surprise, surprise) so I had time to eat breakfast and get ready to be picked up at 7am. I was shuttled to the Joe's Gone Diving headquarters in Sanur, where I met with my instructor, filled out paperwork, and got diving equipment. Once all that was done, we packed up the van and were on our way to the dive site. 

The USAT Liberty is located in Tulamben, a little town in the Northeast of Bali. The Liberty was one of ten ships taken up by the US Army for defense service in World War II. While en route from Australia to the Phillipines with a cargo of railway parts and rubber, the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Lombok Strait. The ship beached on the shore of Bali at Tulamben, and the cargo and fittings were salvaged. The ship stayed beached until 1963 when the tremors associated with the eruption of volcano Mount Agung caused the vessel to slip off the beach. The 125meter/411feet ship now lies on a sand slope in 9.1meters/30feet to 30meters/100feet of water. 

My instructor for the day was a Dutch guy named Roland. He got his diving certification in Thailand in 2007, and been diving ever since. He has been working as an instructor for the past four years. I was a little apprehensive about going scuba diving by myself (i.e. without any friends), but Roland made the experience very fun. After talking for the main duration of the two hour drive to Tulamben, I was more excited than nervous to get in the water. 
The other diving instructor, Imam, and my instructor, Roland. 
The weather could have been much better; it was overcast and raining at the start of the day. As Sydney so eloquently put it (as I texted her about my scuba trip): "We have the curse of hot guides and bad weather". Oh, so true. I'm glad I used the overcast day on something a little more adventurous than just laying in my hotel room watching the movie channels (which was plan B if I couldn't go diving). 

We completed two dives, and had lunch in between. As with the previous dives, I had to demonstrate some skills: taking out the regulator and putting it back in, getting water out of my mask, and show I understood the different hand signals. There was also a new addition to the skills repertoire; I had to take my regulator out, "lose" it, and then find it again. The tought of doing this below 6meters/20feet of water was scary, but luckily it was much easier than expected. 

As oppose to my previous dives, we entered the water via the beach. This meant putting on all the gear (wetsuit, BCD, oxygen tank, etc), and walking in the water. Getting out if the water proved to be quite the challenge (which I miserably failed). After the second dive a huge wave crashed behind me, making me tumble over. I'm sure I looked great as I flailed to get back on my feet. Thank goodness Roland and another random bystander were there to help me up (the tank was quite heavy, and the waves kept crashing in to shore). 

Despite less than ideal diving conditions (the water was a bit murky), both dives were very fun. We were out for about an hour each dive. There was lots of colorful coral and interesting fish swimming around. My favorite things I saw were probably the pin cushion sea star and the blue star fish because I hadn't seen them before. Oh, and we saw a great barracuda, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, no reef sharks or sea turtles. 

After spending the day with Roland and completing another two dives, one thing is for sure: I REALLY want to get my Open Water Certification. After not quite liking my first dive at Manly SeaLife Aquarium, I was coming to terms with the reality that diving wasn't for me. Then we dived at the Great Barrier Reef outside of Cairns, and I actually really enjoyed myself. I'm liking it more and more, and feel more confident under water with each dive. I've started looking into courses back in Sydney, and as long as I can get the medical evaluation in order, I will be completing the certification this coming weekend. I'm sure the water will be cold in Sydney... Brrr! But I definitely think it will be worth it! 

Today there were far fewer clouds in the sky, and the sun has finally been out. I took advantage of the good weather, and laid out for a while by the pool. When I reached my tanning threshold, I decided to walk around the area a bit. I spent the rest of the day walking around aimlessly. It was nice not having a plan or schedule.

Now it's time for bed... It's 12:02am, and waaay past my bedtime. Goodnight from Bali! 

Love, 
Suzy 

tirsdag 24. juni 2014

Aggressive monkeys, early mornings, and so many waves of gratitude.

I've met some pretty fabulous people while studying abroad this semester. One of these great individuals is Sydney. "I met Sydney in Sydney" = Perfect. Sydney and I have spent lots of time together these past months, and I don't think my study abroad experience would have been quite the same without her smiling face and contagious laugh. While hanging out at school and traveling together, we have gotten to know each other very well. There are, however, some things I didn't know about Sydney until our trip to Bali. For example, the random fact that she knows all the lyrics to La Bamba (she sang it for me), her nickname back home is "Squid" (I totally prefer Sydney), and she also really enjoys playing rummy. She was going to teach me... But alas, we never bought cards. 

Though there has been no rummy playing, these past few days in Bali have been spectacular. Sydney greeted me with open arms, a big smile, and a sigh of relief that I hadn't been abducted on my way to Bali when I finally arrived to her hotel at 12:30am. After all the delays, the 6 hour plane ride, and long slow moving line at immigration, I was happy to be reunited with my friend. After some chit chat, we dozed off quickly.    

We woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning. We had breakfast, checked out, and made our way to Legian, where we would check into paradise (also known as the Swiss-Belinn Legian Hotel) for our remaining two nights we had together. We found this spectacular hotel on Groupon (of course), and it included a late check-out, 6 beers at the bar, and breakfast. Everything was clean, the beds were comfy, and the buffet breakfast was to our liking (very important). The Legian location was nice, and the beach was only a short walk away. We didn't spend any time laying on the beach though; we rather lounged by the deep blue infinity pool on the top floor. The view was breathtaking! 
Though we didn't lay out on the beach, we did walk to Legian Beach a few times to eat. The five minute walk was through a quaint alleyway. It was very narrow, but scooters still managed to pass by us every now and then. As we stood there plastered against the wall, I prayed our toes would not be run over.  
We spent our first full day (June 21st) just lounging by our awesome pool, and walking around the area of Legian. We ate dinner at a restaurant by the Legian Beach promonade, and tried out the local cuisine. The nasi goreng (fried rice) was very tasty! We walked along the beach afterwards, and saw a beautiful sunset. 
First sunset over Legian Beach 
Bali is a very lively place. The streets are full of both tourists and locals, and shops selling all sorts of things line the streets. There are quite a few cars here, and scooters zip by quickly between all the cars. The low rumble of traffic and honking can be heard at all hours of the day. It's surprisingly clean here. It reminds me of a toned-down version of certain towns in India. Ordered chaos! 

Supposedly, the nightlife in Bali is very fun and exciting. Not that we would know anything about that; we were typically in our extremely comfortable beds by 8pm. In our defense, we did wake up at 6-7am every morning, too. I was happy that my travel companion shared my love for early bedtimes and mornings. She also didn't seem to mind me obnoxiously proclaiming "Good morning!" loudly at the start of each day. The funny thing is that Sydney responds to me waking up happy in the same way that I respond to her being "hangry" (being so hungry that you become angry, frustrated or both); be as quiet as humanly possible and try not to disturb the beast. 
Lovely Snapchat that Sydney sent. We're so wild! 
On our second day (June 23rd) we decided we should see other things than just the area surrounding our hotel. We did some research and figured out what we wanted to see, and hailed a taxi after eating way too many pancakes at our buffet breakfast. It proved to be a great day for sightseeing; it was overcast for the majority of the day. What is it with me and bad weather on vacation? 

Our taxi driver, Maddi, was very entertaining, and you could tell he enjoyed practicing his English. He asked lots of questions between telling us how beautiful we were (we responded by talking about our made-up boyfriends back home). For the first part of our journey we enjoyed listening to old 90s hits like Uptown Girl by Westlife and Hero by Enrique Englesias. Maddi handed us off to his father, who was also a taxi driver, after a while; he apparently had to go to school. Maddi's dad was a happy fellow who also enjoyed practicing his English. To our annoyance, he also enjoyed honking his horn for every little thing that happened on the road. 
We passed many beautiful rice fields. 
I'm glad we didn't rent scooters here. The traffic isn't too bad (at certain times of the day), but I don't think I would be able to drive here. There's so much indiscriminate honking; they honk when they pass, they honk when they wait for you to pass, they honk to say thank you,  They honk when they're annoyed, they honk all the time. Or maybe it was just Maddi's father who honked all the time... 
Our first stop on our sightseeing trip was to the Sacred Monkey Forest Sancuary in Ubud. Though only approximately 30km/19miles, it took us over an hour to get there. We were very excited about seeing all the long-tailed macaques when we finally got out of the car. 
We were greeted by an interesting sign when we entered the Monkey Forest. We found the advice about not hiding food (the monkey will know) particularly amusing.
Unfortunately, our encounter with the monkeys wasn't ideal... The sign warned us about hiding food; it did not, however, warn us about the fact that the monkeys will bully you into giving them all the food you have by hissing at you and showing their freakishly scary fangs. The six bananas we bought were pretty much gone after being in the park for 2,5 minutes. To be honest, I was actually pretty scared of the monkeys. Many of them were really aggressive! I wonder what would have happened if we hid food... That would have been terrible! 
Hello, lille monkey. Want a banana? 
Ok, sure. Keep the bananas!
There were lots of monkeys in the forest: big monkeys, little monkeys, old monkeys, and baby monkeys. If you held your hand up high with a banana in your hand, monkeys would jump on you to get the food. It took some time getting used to having monkey climb on you. We heard that if you tip the guys that work in the park $5, they will help you with the monkeys. Being too scared to try to get the monkeys on our own, we tipped a nice guy and got some help. 
Sydney's first encounter with the monkeys 
Once Sydney got used to having a living creature jump and climb on her, she relaxed a little. She had a bonding moment with this cute little guy. 
Unfortunately, the monkey wasn't gazing fondly into Sydney's eyes; it was plotting an attack. Not only did the monkey grab her nose, he also bit the side of her face. Notice how unfazed the monkey looks as it does this. 
Bad monkey! 
I was lucky; the worst I got was a tail in my face as a little guy was trying to get the food in my hand. 
This big guy aggressively shooed another little monkey away to get the banana. Once he got the banana, he was pretty calm. 
Not all the monkeys were aggressive and intimidating. My favorite monkey, by far, was this awesome monkey who was just chillin' on the ground. Look at him! AW!
The forest in itself was beautiful. Lots of tall, green trees, creeks, and beautiful stone carvings. When taking a selfie, I decided to do my new signature move: wave. I have noticed that I wave in many of my pictures lately. This started out as something I did when Isabelle and I were in India, walking along the river in Alleppey. Sydney loves it when I wave in pictures. 
"Don't wave! You always wave!"
As there are heaps of beautiful temples all around Bali, we decided we should probably see at least one. After giving away all of our bananas (and being bullied to give away my half-eaten ice cream to a monkey in the parking lot), we decided it was time to get away from there. Our next stop was the Pura Tanah Lot, which literally means the Tanah Lot temple. The temple sits on a large offshore rock which has been shaped continuously over the years by the ocean tide. We were pretty exhausted due to our encounter with the aggressive monkeys, our honk-happy driver, and the heat, but the temple was beautiful. 
Looks can be deceiving. Sydney and I were both very hangry at this point. Thank goodness food was on the way. 
We headed back to the hotel to recuperate a little before heading to the Potato Head Beach Club in Seminyak for dinner. Sydney took me out for a belated birthday celebration, and oh my goodness, I cannot begin tell you how fabulous place this was. People were lounging in daybeds, sipping cocktails by the infinity pool, and enjoying the beautiful day. Potato Head is a popular place; there was a line about half a block long outside. Sydney emailed ahead of time, made reservations, and made sure we got a table with a GREAT view of the sunset. What a sweetheart! 
View of the sunset from our table
The atmosphere, the view, the drinks, the food, and not to mention the company... Everything was perfect! Sydney even had them surprise me with a happy birthday dessert. 
I've previously mentioned how I get these waves of gratitude that come over me, and they make me just want to hug everyone in sight. Well, there have been quite a few of these when in Bali... Especially while watching the sun set over the water at Potato Head. I can't believe how lucky we are to have experienced all the things and places that we have. Poor Sydney, seeing as she was my only travel companion (and thus the only appropriate hug target), she was the only one that had to deal with these waves of gratitude. 

Yesterday, our third and last day together (June 23rd), was a weird day. It was time for Sydney to fly back to Sydney in the evening, leaving me in Bali for another three days on my own. We were both in weird moods the entire day, just avoiding the topic of departure and having to say goodbyes. We laid lazily by the the gorgeous pool the first part of the day. Music was playing loudly, which made having a conversation difficult. I think Sydney and I both appreciated being distracted by the music. I couldn't tell you who was playing for the life of me, but I enjoyed it. The music reminded me of the music my Uncle Will and Aunt Nancee play when they make dinner. They are quite the gourmet chefs, and I have fond memories of observing their techniques with lovely jazz music in the background. For a brief while my mind was not thinking about Sydney's departure. 

We managed to pull ourselves together, and get out of our funk as the day went on. We checked out of the Swiss Belinn Legian, and went to my new hotel, Favehotel Umalas in Seminyak. As we jumped on the bed in my small but nice hotel room, we suddenly realized that Sydney's iPhone was missing. To make a long story short: What happens in Bali, stays in Bali... Especially Sydney's phone. 

Saying goodbye to Sydney was naturally very sad. We had tried avoiding the topic the whole day, but we both knew that our trip together was soon coming to an end. While studying abroad I've been counting down the remaining time I have left, trying to fit in as much as possible. Saying goodbye to Sydney made me realize that my time abroad has almost come to an end, too. I've been able to shove this fact in the back of my head lately, but her leaving marked the beginning of the end. As we sat in the hotel lobby teary eyed and saying our final goodbyes, we both agreed that we had really made the most of our time while abroad. We had no regrets; we did all the things we wanted, visited lots of awesome places, met great people, and ended our time together with a bang in Bali. 

(Insert wave of gratitude here) 

Love, 
Suzy 

fredag 20. juni 2014

Another year older, another year wiser.

It seems like just yesterday I turned 25... 24... 23. Time sure flies by quickly. It was my birthday the other day (June 18th); I turned a whopping 26 years old. That number does not roll off the tip of my tongue, but then again, neither did "25". I'm sure I'll get used to it! Another year older, another year wiser, right? 

My 26th birthday was primarily spent on campus, cramming for a final exam in Psychopathology that I had in the evening and for the Organizational Psychology final exam I had the following day. An exam on my birthday and the day after was definitely not ideal. It was a fairly uneventful day, but there were quite a few things that made my 26th birthday special. 

I woke up to text messages, emails, and phone calls from family and friends. These continued throughout the day, and it was great being distracted every now and then while studying. I bumped into friends on campus, who stopped to have a chat and give me a birthday hug. As many of my classmates in Tromsø know far too well, I love hugs. I made sure to maximize the number of hugs on my birthday. 

I met up with my fellow Norwegians, Anita, Anne, and Isabelle, before our Psychopathology exam. None of us felt as prepared as we had hoped to be, but we were in good spirits. I was especially in good spirits after Anita surprised me with a birthday present. How sweet! 

Anita got me a very cool box that looks like a book, salt and pepper shakers very suitable for a future psychologist, and a Strip-O-Gram. I anxiously awaited a knock at the door from Simon "Sexy Legs" McDonald when I got home after the exam. Alas, Sexy Legs did not show. I was really hoping to see him in the blue Power Ranger costume! Perhaps Anita gave him the wrong address? 
I went to Max Brenner with Devan after finishing the exam. Max Brenner is a café that specializes in chocolate deliciousness. We had the chocolate fondue; melted dark and milk chocolate, strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, banana bread, and a Belgian waffle. As Heidi would say: BEETUS. After getting our sugar fix, I headed back home to start my next cram-session. This time, Organizational Psychology was the focus. 
Isabelle stopped by with some caloric study motivation, a sweet card, and a hug. Bonus points for getting candy with suitable names: Smarties and Lifesavers! 
This whole semester I've been jokingly saying that I refuse to turn 26 in Australia because so many of our friends are so young. I'm talking 20ish year old young; Devan turned 21 the day before me! Oh my gosh. Needless to say, I was happy that Isabelle let me live in my little fantasy world of only turning 24 on my birthday. 
Aside from the cards from the girls, I also got some cards in the mail on my birthday. I LOVE getting mail. There's nothing like opening the mailbox and seeing envelopes with your name on them! 
All in all, I would say it was a pretty good day. Thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy day to wish me a happy birthday! You are wonderful. 

Yesterday (June 19th) was also a very good day. As my birthday was spent primarily studying, we decided to celebrate the following day. We had our Organizational Psychology exam in the afternoon. Crossing my fingers that we all passed! There were quite a few tricky questions, and at times I couldn't help but laugh. 
It felt great to get that final out of the way, so we also wanted to celebrate being done with finals. Well, we're technically not quite done. We have our last final in Health Psychology on the 30th, but that should be a breeze compared to the other ones. It feels marvelous to be done with Organizational Psychology!
Isabelle and Anne took me out to dinner in the evening. We went to a nice Italian restaurant in Surry Hills, and ate delicious pizza and drank red wine. Delicious! Anita joined us for drinks later in the evening at a bar nearby. It was a great night with great friends!

Today (June 20th) I slept in, and got packed for my first adventure as a 26 year old... Bali! I'm really looking forward to spending six days in the sun. Ah, it will be grand! Sydney will be there with me for the first half, and then I'll be on my own for the second half. 
Love, 
Suzy, the 26 year old 

mandag 16. juni 2014

A jam-packed weekend in Sydney

This past weekend I had my first visitor in Sydney. It was my friend, Heidi. She is American, but has lived in Brisbane for the past two years. We had lots of fun when I visited her in Brisbane, and it was my turn to return the favor and show her a good time in Sydney. Seeing as Heidi only had a few days here (she arrived late on Friday and left Sunday evening), we had to cram a lot into a short period of time. This was obviously not a problem; we both enjoy doing tons of stuff in a short amount of time. Best of all was that Heidi wanted to do lots of touristy things, so I got to be all touristy this weekend. Hurray! 

On Saturday, we woke up early and headed to the city. We stopped for breakfast at the Opera Bar before heading to the lush Royal Botanical Gardens. We walked all around, and stopped at Mrs Macquarie's Chair. This is an exposed sandstone rock cut into the shape of a bench, hand carved from sandstone in 1810 for Governor Macquarie's wife, Elizabeth. I'm still not quite sure why Heidi was so keen on seeing this, but I was very happy with the gorgeous views of the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge on the way there. Gorgeous!




Hm. Did this tree just fall over? 
We saw heaps of yellow-crested cockatoos. Number 097 was pretty cute. 


This looks just like the Botanical Gardens in Brisbane. Unfortunately, we did not see any awesome water dragons like we did in Brizzy. 


The castle-esque Government House 

Next on our itinerary was an hour-long guided tour of the Opera House. Ahhh! You can imagine how excited I was. We got to hear all the history, stories, and magic of this iconic building. There were about 10 other people on the tour. Our guide, Bruce, was knowledgable and nice. 

Fun facts about the Opera House:

  • The Danish architect Jørn Utzon was initially rejected by three judges in the 1956 competition to design the Sydney Opera House. Luckily, his entry was picked out by the fourth judge who arrived late. The American architect Eero Saarinen thought Utzon's design was fantastic, and deserved a second look.  
  • Jørn Utzon beat 232 other entrants from 32 different countries.
  • The construction of the Opera House cost $102 million. The original estimate cost was $7 million. Ooops...
  • The Opera House took 14 years to build.
  • There are a total of 1 056 006 ceramic tiles on the sails.
  • The tiles are beige and off-white, not white. If they were white, you'd be blinded when sunlight hit them. 
We worked up an appetite walking around the Opera House. We ate lunch at Eat Love Pizza, which is located smack in the middle of Darling Harbour. The sun was shining, and we were in very good spirits. We also had tons of good food and wine, so that obviously added to the experience. Since I've been in Australia, I've become very fond of Groupon and Scoopon. For those of you who aren't familiar with these sites, they are deal-of-the-day websites that feature discounted gift certificates to different places. We got an appetizer, an entrée, dessert, and a bottle of wine for $49. Such a good deal! (Side note: Australians call the courses different names than what I'm used to. An appetizers is an entrée, and an entrée is a main. Weird.)
Beautiful Darling Harbour
We spent a great deal of time walking around on Saturday. I have no idea how far we walked total, but our feet were getting tired after a while. We were very temped to catch a ride on the Darling Harbour train at one point. 
When I visited Heidi in Brisbane, she made sure I had heaps of awesome culinary experiences. I made sure she got to taste the oh-so-fantastic gelato from Messina. A phrase you can often hear from Heidi is "beetus", which is a slang term for diabetes. Though I understand that diabetes is a serious medical condition and not a laughing matter, hearing Heidi say this in all seriousness after every indulgence is truly hilarious. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: thank goodness I do not have a Messina close to my house as I have no control over myself when it comes to Messina. Messina is truly the best gelato I have ever tasted. I aptly demonstrated my complete lack of self-control by having gelato twice in one day. In my defence, we were in the area (twice). Oh... And it's super delicious. 
BEETUS!
After finishing up our extremely tasty gelato, we made our way to the Shangri-La Hotel. I've been to this hotel once before, and ever since that visit, I have wanted to go back. Having a visitor made this the perfect opportunity! We got there early, patiently waiting for the elevator to open and take us to the Blu Bar on the 36th floor. To our surprise, all the window spots were taken by the time we got up there at 5:02pm. How did they get up there without us seeing? So sneaky! Regardless of our not-so-perfect seats, the champagne and cider we had still tasted excellent. We awkwardly huddled around the lucky people by the windows to get a better glimpse (and some pictures) of the beautiful view. 


The last thing we managed to cram into our jam-packed Saturday was a visit to the Sydney Lyric Theater. We spontaneously booked tickets to see "Strictly Ballroom" while on a sugar-high at Messina. This show is based on the 1992 movie, and tells the story of an Australian ballroom dancer, Scott Hastings, struggling to establish his personal style of dance in his way to win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship. Heidi and I agreed that it was a cross between Footloose, Save the Last Dance, and Dirty Dancing. Though there could have been more dance offs, it was highly entertaining! 


After a good night sleep, we woke up bright and early, and ready for our next exciting day.  We went and saw the cool documentary Great White Shark in 3D at the world's largest IMAX theatre. Seeing this made me even more disappointed that I don't have time to go cage diving with these fascinating creatures in South Australia. I think my Grandma is pretty pleased that I haven't done this; her exact words when I told her I was considering it were "Susanna! Do you want to kill me? I would die!!" No need to worry, Grams. There's not enough time left in Australia for those sorts of adventures! 
Sunday was truly a day filled with aquatic adventures.The other aquatic things we visited were the Australian National Maritime Museum, the Sydney Fish Market, and the SeaLife Aquarium. Aside from going on a whale safari (which is still on my to-do-list), I don't think there were many more aquatic things we could have visited yesterday. 

We were drawn to the Australian National Maritime Museum because of the life-size whale photography exhibition by Bryant Austin. The pictures were very nice, but there was only one full life-size picture of a whale... And it was of a Minke whale, one of the smaller whales! We wanted to see a life-size picture of a Blue whale. We would've settled for a Humpback whale, too. Oh well, it was still fun (and it fit into the aquatic theme of the day). 


The Sydney Fish Market was about a 15 minute walk from Darling Harbour. It was quite the place! Lots of stalls and restaurants selling fresh local seafood.

The SeaLife Aquarium was very similar to other aquariums I've visited, but we did see some really cool things I hadn't seen before. Definitely worth a visit!
We were fascinated
Fluorescent jellyfish 
Coral fish 
I wonder if it's official name is "chainsaw shark". Doubtful. 
All in all, it was a great weekend spent with a very funny and entertaining friend. I was sad to send her off to the airport Sunday evening. On the bus home from the city I realized that Isabelle and I will be on our way home three weeks. How has time flown by so quickly? 

I can hardly believe it is already June 16th! My fantastically awesome friend, Trine Lise, turns 26 today. I don't know what I would do without this wonderful girl in my life. I wouldn't mind being in Norway right now to give her a great big hug. I guess I will have to wait until July 8th... 


Gratulerer med dagen, kjære panda! Jeg gleder meg masse, masse til å se deg om 22 dager! 

Bestefar is a big fan of Trine Lise, too.
Love, 
Suzy