It's Sunday night and I'm taking a quick study break.  It's extremely hot here, the fall is holding on to summer for all its worth.  It reached 34 degrees today, so around 95ish.  The night doesn't cool down much either, so it should be a sticky night sleep.
This week I made a couple of good trips.  Friday night, I went with a group of friends to a footy game, which is rugby.  There are two types, Union and League, we saw League or the NRL.  So we traveled by train over to ANZ Stadium or Olympic Stadium, which was built for the 2000 Olympics.  It was a beautiful stadium and the area that surrounded it was even better.  A marble brick walkway meanders its way through different areas of the entire park, where the aquatic center or ice arena are placed in between huge pieces of art.  On the way into ANZ, towering geometric light poles cast a blue glow in the air, that gives the night a more relaxed feeling.  Once into the stadium, it feels like any other American football or baseball arena, with beer, ice cream, and hot dog stands scattered around.  The difference is the price of those goods.  Although Sydney is so expensive for a tourist, these prices are so cheap.  A beer was $6 which is usually the price of a beer at most Happy Hours in any Sydney bar.  The tickets to the game are only $20, I luckily got mine for free from a friend.  Another thing, the Australian sport culture is not like the American sport culture.  There were 10,000 in attendance, which is pretty good.  But, it was a home game for a a Sydney team and a Friday night.  The place was empty.  We could sit wherever we wanted. NRL is huge too, but the hype and obsession is just not the same.  So I took advantage of it and made my way down the opposite end zone and enjoyed the front row.
The game; the Rabbitohs versus the Titans.  The Rabbitohs are Australia's oldest team and can probably hold the title of Australia's worst name as well.  It was a great game and we rooted hard for the Rabbits, who are from Redfern, which is basically right next to Usyd.  They came back to tie it up 18-18, but lost in overtime 19-18.  Although they lost, I loved it.  My roomate filled me in on a ton of rules the weekend before as we watched 3-4 games throughout the weekend.  So I followed the game pretty well.
Yesterday, I hiked through the Blue Mountains in Sydney.  I took this trip with about twenty other kids in my Outdoor Education class.  The Blue Mountains is an extremely misleading name, because the area is far from anything mountainous.  There are definitely a lot of cliffs a person can abssail or boulder, but not anything like a mountain a person would think of.  We did a pretty basic walk along the cliffs and coast, which was gorgeous, especially with the sun out.  We ended at one of the coolest places I have ever seen.  It was a swimming hole, placed on the edge of a cliff in a forest.  It looked like something from Jurassic Park and the pictures I took really don't do it justice.  The forest was endless and rolled up and down, with thick and jungly looking vines and trees tangled amongst each other.  Through it cut streams and small waterfalls and here and there, red cliffs stuck their peaks out.  An added bonus was the fresh water stream that fed the pool, which most of us dipped our hands into and drank out of.
So another great weekend here.  I've got a bunch of Uni work but I can't really frustrated with any school work when I have such a good setting to live in.
Cheers