second day in sydney: sydney aquarium :)

my next activity for the day, after i got back from sydney olympic park, was to walk over to darling harbor and go to the sydney aquarium there.  it was a good rainy day activity (even though i had already planned to go), and i think every other school and family in sydney thought it was a good rainy day activity too!  it was still so fun!

the first exhibit was PLATYPUS!  ooooh yaaaaaaayyyy!!!  i was so so excited!!

by the way platypus is the same singular and plural, like sheep.  who knew.

next, i saw some more little penguins, like i saw at phillips island!

except these were behind glass..
then, some eels...  they are weird...
really weird...
sea urchins..

aand one of my favorites, the sea anemone with all the little nemos swimming around.  i didn't know they actually lived in the anemone.  i thought that was just part of the movie.  how cool!

and a big starfish stuck to the glass..
"many of nemo's friends live in our great barrier reef oceanarium, have you found them?"

this poster cracked me up because the first thing i thought of when we went to sydney the first time was "this is nemo's home!"  and then when i was in the aquarium, before i saw this poster, i was thinking about which ones were in nemo, ha!

neat purple and blue starfish..
and now, into the big walkthrough tank.  lots of sharks...

and big stingrays..

they look at me and say "yummy to my tummy"

and a huuuge manta ray or something like that...

and a sea turtle...hey, that's in nemo too!...

the end.  after the aquarium i headed back to the airport and had a lovely flight home.   oh how i love sydney. :)

second day in sydney: sydney olympic park :)

so. second day in sydney.  i booked my flight back to melbourne for 7:30pm the day after passion, so that i would have a mostly full day to do some more exploring of things i didn't get to do the first time i was in sydney with the tour group!  i headed out about 9am.  for some reason, i've had this obsession of wanting to go see the sydney olympic park ever since i went to sydney back in september.  so, i figured out where it was and took the train to go see it!

chooo choooo...

i was the only one on the entire train.  and this is a really long train, lots of cars.

i guess because it was a week day and rainy, noone felt like going to the park.  oh well.
the firs thing i saw when i walked out of the train station was the big ANZ stadium (or as they pronounce it A-N-Zed).  ANZ is a bank here.  like the RBC center.
cute little detail on the front of the stadium...
there were lots of sculptures in a big open grass area in the park..

this one was sensored to turn into a big fountain when you walked under it!  ahhh!! i almost got really wet!

all around it on the ground were lines and lines of plaques.  each plaque was either gold, silver, or bronze and had the name, sport, and event of each athlete who won a medal in the 2000 olympics.

woohoo swimming!

famous us athletes...

me being a lil' artsy...

aaand a lovely self portrait with the sculpture..

this sculpture was created to represent the 8 women who took part in the carrying of the 2000 olympic torch..

these big crane like sculpture lined a whole street in the olympic park.  up close they each one represented a city that had hosted the olympics in the past.  the name, year, and information was on each one.

up close...

participants and contributors sculpture..

woohoo ian thorpe!  awesome australian swimmer (who just announced he's retiring..sad.)

olympic boulevard...wooo!...

sculpture in front of the aquatic center...

the aquatic center!!  i was super excited to see this one!..

this is the sports center...

aaand the tennis center...

aaand the golf center...

love the train station at olympic park..

a neat little path outside of the train station...

byebye sydney olympic park.

i can't stay away from sydney!

i was actually able to go to sydney again!  i said i would LOVE to go again, but didn't really think i would!

and it was amazing the second time too!

i went for the passion conference.  it is a christian conference for 18-25 year olds and has only been held in the US for the last 8 years.  i went the last 2 years in atlanta!  well they took a huge leap of faith and did a world tour in 16 different cities all around the world!  aaand they came to sydney while i was here!  so i was able to use the money that my parents gave me for my birthday to buy a plane ticket to fly out to sydney for the passion world tour (thank you mom and dad!) !  it was so exciting to see students worshipping God in the same way that our college ministry does back home, but all the way on the other side of the world.

i flew out of melbourne around 1pm on october 21st and got into sydney about 2:30pm.

i figured out all the public transportation and maps before i got there and didn't get lost once...woohoo!

i went and checked into my hotel after getting in and then went out and walked around for a bit before heading to the sydney entertainment center.

i went to darling harbor again just to walk around.

it was rainy when i was here this time, so it wasn't quite as beautiful, but still great!

i noticed some things this time that i didn't notice the first time.  i was alone and able to just look around and take more things in.  all of the trash cans in darling harbor had tops shaped like the sydney opera house.  

and lots of the architecture is obviously designed after sailing and ships
sydney olympic sculpture in darling harbor..

something else i didn't notice the first time...flowers planted from world youth day in a park and darling harbor.  it was a big deal and was going on the first week i was here in australia.  lots of youth pilgrims walking around and the pope was in town.

i only walked around for about an hour and then headed over to the entertainment center to get in line!  i saw this building when i was there the first time, but didn't realize what it was!  i obviously didn't look up enough!

finally inside after waiting for 3 hours, but it was definitely worth the wait, i was on the 6th row!!!  and got to stand at the stage for the singing!

here's chris tomlin...

and singing "God of this City" with chris tomlin and christy nockels.  it is such a powerful song, but was so amazing to be singing it in sydney with 8,000 australians (mostly..i did meet some americans in line!)

woo banjo time for "i saw the light"
and here's the david crowder band
and the good ol' david crowder himself...

SOO glad i went!  it was amazing!  passion is such a great thing and all of the speakers and artists involved are absolutely amazing.  they are all such huge role models to be and have such amazing hearts for God!