Coogee!

The view from our hostel in Coogee.

We arrived in Sydney on February 10th, which also happened to be Ash Wednesday. We definitely got a couple comments at the airport about us having dirt on out foreheads. But in all seriousness, it was actually quite depressing knowing that we were back in Sydney, but not going my beloved Mortdale, the land where milk and honey flow. Instead, a three story walk-up hostel was where we would call 'home' for the next few days. Since we (and by we, I mean Lloyd) had found permanent accommodation for us for the duration of our stay in Oz, we had hoped we could cancel 2/3 of our nights booked at the hostel - but no such luck! Once we got settled and had dinner, morale was low, when all of a sudden, out popped a Canadian. And another. And a couple more! There were 7 of us who happened to be sitting in the living room all at once! *sighhhh* A little taste of home. A couple of them were from BC, and they had just arrived in Australia a couple days earlier, so they were going off about all the snowboarding they had been doing the week before. I may have been slightly jealous, but mostly just excited to be hearing about the mountains, the snow and... home. We ended up having a really good chat about the differences in lingo, animals, and culture, as well as epic places they needed to see while in Sydney. Jennine had been hanging with a couple others from Ontario, getting in debates about which hockey team was better (typical Canadians...). After I went for a walk on the boardwalk with my new friends, we went back to the hostel to play random a random dice game and, of course, drink goon. Before we knew it, it was 3am, and the evening had turned out much differently than I had expected.

The next day we headed to the beach with our buddy Mike (Ontario), which was right across the street from our hostel. We had been in the ocean for a while, ducking under and swimming over waves, when all of a sudden I felt a tingling sensation on my hand. A blue bottle jellyfish had wrapped its tentacles around various fingers and my thumb. So we got out of the water right away to discover the beach was blue - just covered in jellyfish. I got some ice and the lifeguard sprayed it with something to help the stinging. Though the tenatacle had vanished, a line of red dots replaced it, While we were heading back to our spot on the beach, we hear in the distance "...it is them! SILKEN!! JENNINE!!" Our friends, Alannah and Marina from summer school came running towards us. We were shocked to see them at Coogee, of all the beaches in Sydney, they were here. Pretty crazy. Was so nice to see familiar faces, they were the first friends we had seen since arriving back in Sydney. What a pleasant surprise, we just basked in their presence for a while, taking in their beautiful selves.

That evening, considering it was the first week of lent, we were invited to a Lenten share group led by a friend of ours from Mortdale. It was so exciting seeing everyone again! We had dinner, then read and discussed the upcoming Sunday's Mass Readings, with Adoration to follow. This event would be every week throughout lent, what a lovely way to come together and share in faith and fellowship. Heading back to our hostel after was so weird, mixing backpackers life with Mortdale life. When we got back to the hostel we played Catan with our buddy Mike, and for lack of a better place, we played on the floor of the patio, trapping cockroaches under beer bottles. Fun times ;)

We ended up leaving the hostel a day early, I was pretty anxious to get settled in our new home, and some of our friends were hosting a welcome back party for us that night, and it would be a lot more convenient to get home if we didn't have to travel an hour and a half back to the hostel. So, finally, we moved to south Sydney, not Mortdale, but close enough to experience all the goodness!