Tuesday Feb 26th:
This morning was rough! We both were feeling a little rusty. Luckily we just tools ferry to Hamilton island and flew to Sydney. At night we walked around Darling Harbour which is gorgeous and lined with really nice restaurants. Since I'm alive and well now I'd like to share the full Monday night story. As I said, we drank from the goonsack in the afternoon before hitting the bar 'Down Under' for our dinner. We each got $10 steak and fries and beer (a discounted rate since we just got off our Whitsunday Islands boat adventure.) Midway through our dinner we were joined by Ben. We all had a great time chatting away and then decided to do some karaoke. As I finished my beer I was feeling fantastic! Aaron was feeling pretty great too. I started dancing out I front of the people who were so singing their songs. I thought a Scottish style of jig was the appropriate dance to do.... In my lonesome.... On the empty dance floor.... Without a care in the world. By the time we went to sing our Celine Dion song I had recruited a girl to come up with us. At the time I thought she was being kind of lame and shy on stage, but now I know there was no way she could have kept up to me! I definitely got drugged. At this point at the night I didn't realize it. I had only had a couple beers; both of which came directly from a female bartender and I never let them out of my sight. We belted out our song and I went nuts with lots of dance moves. After our song the girl who came up with us sang a "that don't impress me much" by Shania Twain. I tried to do the country style grape vine and thought I was doing a flawless job of it. After this I ran around the bar trying to get everyone to clap along with the music. This is what I decided was needed for the bar to come alive with me. I did t understand why people were not getting into the music with me. The song "Titanium" came on and I hit the wall! I was doing all sorts of moves that I didn't think I was capable of. I got pretty hot by this point so the obvious solution was to joyfully whip off my shirt and wave it around, slam it to the ground, and then for the grand finale as Titanium came to an end I finished my performance by jumping onto a log pillar in front of he stage and clinging onto it with koala precision. I thought I jumped up just as the song ended but by watching this portion of the night on video I now know that I was delayed by about 2 seconds. At this point our friend Ben said to Aaron, "is she ok, she seems different than how she was on the boat." This helped the situation click in for Aaron (who was probably under the drugs influence a bit as well). He came over to me and asked how I was doing and my crazy eyes and extreme excitement confirmed that I was intoxicated by more than just alcohol. I thought the best plan of action was to keep dancing and being the hit of the bar as I saw it that night. I agreed when Aaron said that we should probably leave and get to a safer place. So off to McDonalds we went since we couldn't trust the bar to give me clean water. We walked around and talked a whole bunch before I eventually was able to sit still long enough to fall asleep. Looking back, I was dancing like a fool and not the bar star that I thought. I'm perfectly ok with this considering my memory of the night is still a positive one. Also, it must have been a bartender who spiked my drink. If a sleezy guy was trying to prey on a girl he wouldn't go for a girl who is with her boyfriend, and he wouldn't slip her a stimulant that would make her hyper-alert and impossible to catch. Moral of this story, be careful at the bar "Down Under" in Airlie Beach, Australia. I assume they spike some drinks to liven up the place. It sure worked on that Monday night.

Wednesday Feb 27th:
Our first full day in Sydney was spent on a day tour. Our driver was hilariously awful. His favourite words were: Simply, Basically, Actually, Um you know, and Itself. For example: um you know, in Sydney itself, basically the people simply use sunscreen actually. This example may sound extreme but it's pretty close to some of his sentences. The day was fun though. We saw a cute wombat and a huge Galapagos tortoise at our first spot. Then we did a dolphin cruise and we saw so many of them! They were jumping in huge groups all around the boat. Our last stop was to an area of large sand dunes. We got the chance to go sand boarding down the very tall dunes and rode a 4wd vehicle through the dunes. We had a great dinner in the harbour and walked to the opera house. On the way home a nice drunk guy trotted up behind Aaron and said, "don't worry, I'm not stalking you, but your girlfriend has one of the best bottoms I have ever seen." It was a wonderful ego boost to end the night:)