Sydney Round 2 this weekend! Thanks mom!!

So my mom tells me I need to write more. I'm really only doing it because we are going back to Sydney this weekend (courtesy of my beautiful mom whose birthday happens to be today!) Because we are going to Sydney early tomorrow, we decided not to go out tonight. I have watched every Friends, Seinfeld and Arrested Development DVD we brought, and my mom refuses to send me any more, so I figured I would write more about daily life here. I feel like I've only told stories of adventures and I should write more about regular stuff I see and do. (on a side note: you can see I've changed some stuff here. Obviously I'm bored. I also signed up for google adsense. I don't know much about it but I know I can get paid basically for people reading my blog, so spread the word!! Megan needs money!!)

Chrissy and I went to the beach at around 2 today, and both fell asleep in the sun. Luckily it was so late neither of us burned. We did get some pretty good sun though. When we woke up after an hour and a half, we decided to go for a swim. I made it halfway into the water before i almost lost my entire suit bottom and decided to call it quits. Chrissy trekked out further and actually had a good time in the semi-warm Pacific.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but there are no laws here about wearing shirts or shoes. You can go pretty much anywhere without wearing shoes, and next to anywhere without a shirt on. People go into restaurants, buses, trains, coffee shops, campus, pretty much anywhere without shoes on. I guess sanitary laws don't exist here or something. Personally its a little weird to see the guy in line behind me at McDonalds not wearing shoes, but whatever.

According to our friend Mark, Australians are a lot more laid back than Americans. So far it seems true. The might be a huge generalization about the entire country when I have only seen certain parts of it, but it is definitely true for the city of Newcastle.

Thank God people here don't have the same impressions of Americans as other parts of the world. They don't love us as much as I had heard that they do, but they are a lot nicer to us than people in France ever had been. In my International Media tutorial yesterday, where I am the only American in a tiny class of 25, we talked a lot about the US. My teacher was really nice, and asked me a lot of questions about the US and tried to make sure I understood everything they were talking about. I am not familiar with their newspapers or local celebrities/politicians so that is hard for me in a Media class, but everyone is really helpful. One girl was talking about a theory we were learning about and said something about how "Americans are not at all cultured. They, like, celebrate Thanksgiving." That would have pissed me off if it wasn't so true. She also completely forget there was an American in the class and as soon as the statement was out of her mouth she apologized profusely. Personally I thought it was funny. The more I travel, the more I see that most Americans couldn't care less about the rest of the world and are generally a lot less welcoming than people I have encountered here.

This is a stupid little story, but I forgot to mention it in the post about the boating weekend last weekend. If anyone saw my pictures on Facebook (it was too hard to add them here too) there was a picture of a guy in a hot pink shirt that says "dechebag!" over a picture of him with a mustache wearing the exact same outfit in the picture that he was wearing when I took the picture of him last weekend. His girlfriend Chrissy- who I did add pictures of on here- told me about "Movember." Apparently men here grow mustaches during the month of November to show support for mens diseases like prostate cancer. The girlfriend Chrissy said "basically every woman become lesbians during November." Seriously, mustaches are never a good look, EVER. Chrissy Hamalainen says guys in America do it too. I never have and never want to see it if thats true.

I have also seen some disturbing TV commercials and ad on buses and pretty much everywhere else. One of my favorites is an ad where men and women are shown speeding around town, whipping around curves, and almost hitting people on sidewalks. Then it shows people in the backseat of the car or on the side of the road watching holding up thier pinky fingers. On the bottom of the screen it reads: "speeding- no one thinks big of you." I laugh every time I see that one whether it is on TV or a print ad.

Another good ad I've seen is the binge drinking ads. The first picture is of a guy or girl or a group of people drinking happily. The next picture is of those people falling through a glass table, bleeding and blackout drunk with glass all over them, or 2 girls driving in a convertible with one girls scarf covering the other girls eyes while she drives. Then on the side of the screen it uses a beer or liquor bottle label and instead of saying the name of the alcohol, it says something about not binge drinking. They are completely unrealistic and so absurd they're hilarious. I take pictures every time I see one of them.