Platkins: One team, One dream, One blog- Laura rejoins the first world

***Note: For the next month, I will be posting the link to Rachel & Greg's blog (Migrate '08) as we have merged our blogs for convenience's sake:
www.migrate08.wordpress.com. Enjoy!***

Soooo, although we have been trying to be as inconspicuous as possible in an effort to avoid the American stereotype (one day after getting yelled at by an angry Austrian, we even contemplated sewing those silly maple leaf patches onto our backpacks), there finally came a day that we were able to walk down the street, bursting with American pride: Superbowl Monday. After managing to find every other American in Sydney by 10 am at a little known bar called “Cheers” (featuring drunken study abroad students screaming “I miss Americaaaaaaaaa!” every 5 minutes) we watched with pride, Budweisers in hand…until the Patriots lost. We then drowned our sorrows in platefuls of noodles in nearby Chinatown, and went directly back to the hostel to nap off the bitter taste of loss, and too much MSG.

We rose early the next day, determined to forget the blurry, smug look on Eli Manning’s face, and hopped on bus 381 to Bondi Beach. The misery of the day before quickly faded as we spent two glorious days sunning ourselves, and drinking green tea smoothies on the beach. After the sun decided that Greg’s skin wasn’t already charred enough, we made our way back to Sydney to meet Laura, who had just arrived fresh off of the African continent. Worried that the third world may have changed Laura in many ways, it was comforting to see that some things really don’t change, as our first order of business was celebrating with two rounds of roo steaks and sausages. It wasn’t long before the first bottle of South African wine was opened, for there was much catching up to do. After many stories and many laughs, we gave Laura a brief moonlit tour of our favorite Sydney harbour and scoped out where we would be dining the following night- our last night in Sydney. As it turned out, the prices at McDonald’s were unrivaled.

After waking Laura up from her jetlag coma, we were out and about in an attempt to finally see the Harbour Bridge before another rainy day began. We were lucky that the overcast skies held out, and after a nice stroll to the bridge (of course after a delicious and cheap breakfast as Hungry Jacks/Subway—the first of many healthy meals of the day), we were able to walk across the bridge and climb of the Pylon Tower.

The view was spectacular and of course, we took far too many pictures. We then said farewell to the Opera House and the Royal Botanical Gardens. After climbing the 200+ stairs to the bridge, we were in dire need of sustenance, so we reprised our noodle run in Chinatown. We capped off our evening at Scubar, with a small taste of Australian nightlife, and a big pitchers of Victoria Bitter.

In the spirit of recently formed team Platkins, from this point forward there will be a merging of the blogs- Muzungulo will be on hiatus for a month, as all of our experiences will live on Migrate08 (or “Our great 08”??). We are off to N Zed tomorrow to hopefully rent a campervan to aid us in our search for Hobbits. As none of us have ever achieved the trifecta of driving a manual campervan on the opposite of the road, the next two weeks should prove to be quite the adventure!