Seeing Sydney, Well Kind of

Lindsay and I have spent the past two weeks in Sydney and have been having a fantastic time and much of that is due to the fact we have had very gracious hosts. We have been staying with my friend Khadija, from Connecticut College who is studying abroad, and her three roommates. I think they were all under the impression we would be staying for a few days, as we were, but two weeks later we are just now getting ready to leave.
The apartment we are staying in is in Coogee so its actually like a 30 min bus ride (sometimes longer) to do see the touristy sights. The frist week we were here we didn't do that many touristy things, we did a little shopping, joined a gym for a week trial, and ate a lot, and we saw a pretty funny improv comedy show.
The second week we were in Sydney we went to the Sydney Opera house and saw a musical theater production called Poppea. It was an adaptation of the Opera the Coronation of Poppea. It combined the original songs of the opera translated into to German with songs by Cole Porter. It was interesting to say the least and gave us a lot to talk about after the show.
We also stayed to celebrate Khadija's 21st B-day which was a lot of fun. Lindsay and I were in charge of decorating the cupcakes and everyone was so impressed they thought they were store bought. Lots of Khadija's friends came over for cake and ice cream. We ended up staying in the whole night, a decision everyone was happy with.
The next day was our last day in Sydney and we were actually leaving at 9 pm for a 12 hr bus ride to Melbourne. I would not recommend a 12 hr bus ride to anyone especially since it's cheaper to fly, but we had bus passes we needed to use up, but if you do for some reason have to take a 12 hr bus ride absolutely do an overnight. It is certainly not the best conditions for sleeping, but we both slept most of the way and it made the time pass much quicker. Granted we woke up with immense neck pain and freezing cold (the bus driver had the AC blasting). It was 8 am on Saturday when we arrived in Melbourne and had the task of finding Adriane's (a friend from school who offered to let us sleep on her floor) apartment in a city we have never been to and with hundreds of pounds of luggage.

Cheers,
Laura