America Photos, Part 4

After Knotts Berry Farm, the next day we performed at Disneyland!

Here's the sign announcing our performance. We thought we had made it when we saw this!

A close-up:


We were the only dance group to perform that day, so we felt pretty awesome!

We got to tour the backlot, as we had to get ready literally "behind the scenes". Our dressing room (waaaay better than the one at Knotts Berry Farm, but that wouldn't have been hard!) was part of the backlot. We felt pretty cool getting lead behind the scenes. I would've taken pictures, but we were told that there was strictly no photos.

We saw "characters" getting into costumes, and cast members rehearsing. Even behind the scenes, it was still very "Disney". Lots of energy and fun, but always very professional.

We got changed and had a quick photo session with a photographer before getting whisked around to our dressing room off to the side of the stage.

Here's Claryse & I in our "stage makeup"





And then it was show time!

This photo is from our finale... we danced to "I Still Call Australia Home" and the little kids came on at the end, waving Australian flags!

Most of the time, this was our audience:

(all Sally K- Dance parents or family members, haha! But our audiences did get bigger once the music came on and we started dancing.)

After our perfomance (which was in the morning), we were free to explore the park.

This is Haylee, Claryse & I right out the front of Disneyland after our performance.

Here we are outside the castle.

Disneyland was really SO.MUCH.FUN. There's no other word for it; it was just FUN!!!

Because there were so many of us, we tended to hang out in groups of 3 or 4, but occasionally we'd see another group and go on rides together.

Here are a few of us dancers having just been on the big carousel:

Here's us on the Teacup ride.

and me in the pink teacup! (Of course)

We would stay at the park until dark. That's when the lines for the rides got shorter! Here I am on the Dumbo ride at night:

Why the Dumbo ride, you might ask?

This is why:

Oh yes. My favourite fiddle player, Martie from the Dixie Chicks, went on the exact same ride with her daughters. When I first got to Disneyland, this was the one ride I knew I must go on. Having seen the photos, I was sure she went on the blue Dumbo. So, naturally, I went on the blue dumbo too.

But have a closer look at the photo:


She's not on the blue one, although that features in the photo. She's riding in the orange Dumbo! And I didn't realise until I got home and looked through the photos. Actually, my friend Claryse pointed it out after I posted these photos on Facebook. Whoops.

Anyway, Disneyland was just plain awesome. Our first night there was on a Friday, and we stayed to watch the fireworks somewhere between Adventureland and Frontierland. We thought we had a pretty good view, but that spot was nothing compared to where we watched them the next night! The entire group gathered in front of the Disney castle an hour early to secure a good vantage spot, and it was so worth the wait!

The Disneyland fireworks were spectacular. These photos don't even do them justice. I've never seen anything like it, even though Sydney is renowned for having the best New Year's Eve fireworks in the world.

The fireworks show went for nearly an hour. I took millions of photos.
Here are some of the best shots:

Mickey with Tinkerbell flying over the castle!

The Disney castle lit up


Every 5 minutes or so, the castle would change to a different colour and a new theme. They had music to go with each firework 'theme'. This is the "Spooky Mansion" theme:

Our Disneyland tickets allowed us entry into both the Disneyland and the California Adventure parks for 5 consecutive days, so we could come and go as much as we wanted.

Here's Jordan & I on the "It's a Small World" ride... we went twice in a row!

Claryse & I at the "It's a Bug's Life" show



and me in line for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride



We watched the parades

and of course we got our own "Mickey ears"

and generally had a good time enjoying America (and it's weird foods)!
Here we are with a churro each... like a long cinnamon donut!








One morning, we had breakfast with Minnie & friends






and we took photos with all the characters




Another afternoon, we had lunch with the Disney princesses to celebrate Ally's 15th birthday. Snow White, Belle, Sleeping Beauty & Cinderella all joined us.

We all dressed up for the day as our favourite princess!

Here's the little girls...

and the big girls (right before we got told to get changed by Disney staff because we were confusing the little kids with our look-a-like costumes!)

Claryse (Doc from the Seven Dwarfs) & Me (Sleeping Beauty... see?)

Zachary (who I babysit regularly) went as Woody from Toy Story! So cute!

I can't say how awesome Disneyland was. Everyone just had fun, no matter how old they were. It was magical. We had great weather, and apart from a little illness that spread through the group, everyone had a fantastic time.

America Photos, Part 3

After San Diego, we travelled to Anaheim. I can't say that I remember much about the bus ride from San Diego to Anaheim, because pretty much the whole bus conked out for the entire 2 hour trip! I guess the jet lag kinda caught up on us.


Once we got to Anaheim, the first thing I remember seeing is the Disneyland sign. Disneyland has it's own road signs! Finally we pulled up to our hotel, and it was literally across the road from Disneyland! That night, Haylee, Claryse & I went across to Downtown Disneyland, which is basically the place you go when you want to shop Disney-style. It's still in the park complex, but not actually in Disneyland park, so you can go in and out as much as you want without your ticket.






The next day was a free day in Anaheim. We spent the afternoon at Build-a-Bear in Downtown Disney, celebrating two of the little girls' birthdays.

Here's me with my build-a-bear (I only acquired it because Jordan, one of the birthday girls, chose it and stuffed it with fluff before rejecting it and picking another one! Hence it's name, "The Jordy Reject"! )



That night, we had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe, also in Downtown Disney.



The next day was our first performance. We performed at Knott's Berry Farm at 11.30am.

That performance was particularly interesting. Our backstage "area" consisted of a dusty backstage area with a concrete path outside that had a drain right in the middle of it. It was dirty. Literally. There was dirt everywhere, since it was wide open with no roof.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Apparently moments before we came on stage, the parents in the audience were asking the staff if they could please hammer in those nails sticking out of the stage so we didn't get caught on them! How professional.


After our performance, we were free to explore the park. I have to say, I wasn't particularly impressed by it, but I guess that's because I'm not much of a "scary rides" person and they were the main kind of rides that KBF had.

I was also going to post some photos of us from our performance, but I can't find any good ones. We're all collating our photos onto one CD, so I'll post some when I get that.

America Photos, Part 2

More photos from California...



The best thing about San Diego was the shopping!
We went to Macy's, Bloomingdales, Bergdorfs, Nordstrom, H&M... if there was a department store nearby, we were there!

Here we are in the hat department at Macy's:



Then we discovered The Gap! LOVE The Gap. And we found Old Navy.



Here's Claryse, Haylee & I at Old Navy, pretending to be mannequins:




It was also really easy to travel around. Our hotel was right near a train station, and the public transport system was really good and easy to use.

Here we are on the train to Fashion Valley (a shopping centre that had it's own train station!)



On our last night in San Diego, Claryse, Haylee & I found The Cheesecake Factory near a shopping centre we were at. I LOVE cheesecake. So I was adamant that we get some to take back to our hotel with us. Well, we walked in and there was a line out the door! Finally we asked if they did takeaway orders, and they said yes, so we got to push to the front of the queue!

To celebrate, we had a cheesecake party!




Our last day in San Diego was spent at San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park.
The thing I remember most about this day was how cold it was! It may look sunny, but it was freezing!!

There weren't many rides, but Claryse & I took Felicia on the carousel:

Photos from a family wedding

Two weekends ago (I know, I've been very slack on the update-my-blog front) we went to a family friend's wedding.

Carwyn & Phillipa (Pip) got married at a church in North Rocks (Parramatta) and had their reception at this beautiful restaurant near Rhodes.

It was my first time being invited to a wedding, and it had been a stressful week with uni, so Mum & I decided to treat ourselves to getting our hair and makeup done for the occasion.

It took me a while to decide which dress I was going to wear (even down to the wire in that after I had my hair done, I still hadn't made a decision!) but I eventually chose this red dress I bought for $40 at TJ Maxx in LA while I was in America recently. Does that ruin it, telling you it was only $40? Well, it was $40 American, so that's more like $60 here! Haha. The shoes were only $40 too, I got them at the same place. Turns out the bad economy is good for international travellers!

Anyway, here are some photos. I've had a lot of fun playing around and editing them to make them look pretty.

Photos from America!!!

At long last, here are some photos from The America Trip.

If you kept up with out Coast to Coast Girls blog, hopefully you would have seen some of the photos I uploaded to Twitter so you will have some idea of what we were up to.

Did I mention I had a really great time? I think you can tell from my happy face in the photos...




Our first day was spent exploring Hollywood. We literally got off the plane, got on our coach for the day and drove to the Walk of Fame. We only had an hour to explore, and there was so much to see! It didn't help that we were all a little jet-lagged and groggy from the 14 hour flight!

Here we are waiting for our coach to arrive (it was an hour late, and LA was not the sunny California we had pictured, so we're tired, cold and a little grumpy in this photo!)




My first impressions of Hollywood were that it was actually really dirty, and I couldn't believe this is where they hold the Oscars! There were lots of dodgy looking t-shirt shops, and a few nicer looking shopping centres. We spent a while in Hollywood & Highland Shopping Centre, which was nice, but a bit out of our price range.

We also walked along the street (again, so disgusting!) but there was a lot of construction and so it wasn't very nice or particularly scenic. I was quite disappointed.

Mann's Chinese Theater & the Walk of Fame itself were pretty cool to see though.


Marilyn Monroe's star


Rod Stewart's star

Somehow, the group of girls I was with got so caught up in shopping and taking photos that we missed the Hollywood sign! We did see it as the coach drove further past the street!

The rest of the day was spent driving through LA, on our way to San Diego.

We finally got to San Diego around dinner time. For dinner that night, we went to International House of Pancakes (IHOP) which is pretty iconic in America. This is all I remember eating when I went to America as a kid! So I was pretty excited to eat there again after so long (and they still have the Funny Face pancakes I had when I was younger!)

First dinner in America (at IHOP!)



Dinner was interesting... it was our first introduction to American food. We found out you can't just order 1 pancake, all meals come with a minimum of 4.

Here's Brooke with both her and my meal. Ridiculous!





IHOP was just down the road from our hotel, so after dinner it was a quick trip to the hotel. We found our rooms and settled in for the night. Well, that was after we ran around to the others' rooms going "Which room have you got? Who's in here with you?" It was a little like school camp, really!





The next day we went to Sea World, our first theme park of the trip. It was so cold that day! We really thought we'd get "sunny California" weather.


We spent the day going around the park, looking at the exhibits, seeing shows and going on the few rides that were there.

The group at Sea World

The shows were the best part of Sea World.




We got absolutely drenched at the first one we went to because we had seats in the front row and the whales like to splash!



Some of our group paid extra to get closer to the animals, which is how I got these great close up shots!





The Shamu Rocks show was at night, and had lots of neon lights, music, and fireworks at the end!



That night, we got to have dinner with one of the stars, Quirky!


He swam around in the huge pool while we had a banquet style dinner. Luckily we weren't sitting too close, unlike others, who got splashed when he decided to show off!

The next day we went to Legoland...



Some of the teenagers weren't sure they wanted to go here, but it was actually really cool! They had heaps of rides, and different "lands" that all had different exhibits.


Unfortunately I got sick this day, so my group spent the first few hours looking after me while I sprawled myself out on whatever table or bench was available. Eventually we found a pharmacy at Legoland (who knew?) but it still wasn't very fun for me for the first part of the day.

Legoland... us with the "mini-land" of NYC.

This one speaks for itself...

There were so many things to look at:

President Obama's inauguration


They even got the First Lady's outfit right!



This was life-size!


A little piece of Aus, in Legoland

I had to take a photo of this, it was so cool! It moved to the music!


I'll blog with some more photos later...

It's my birthday soon...

I've been a bit neglectful of this blog lately- between the jetlag and now having the flu, I've been trying to rest! If you know me at all, you will know this is pretty hard for me to do... I don't do the whole "sitting still" thing very well!

But this week, I haven't been to dancing, haven't been to violin, haven't been to PAC and haven't been to uni. I'm just trying to get well, because there's only 2 weeks of this uni semester left and then after a bit of a break, I have exams.
How much does it suck that I have exams scattered throughout the week of my birthday (which is in a month)? My 21st birthday, as a matter of fact. I have my Abnormal Psych exam on the 15th June, my birthday on the 17th, Developmental Psych exam on the 19th (starting at 5.30pm- what the?!!) and then my final exam, Stats, on the 23rd.

It kinda sucks because I'm not the only one with such a sucky exam schedule. Most of my friends have their uni exams at the same time, so I'm postponing any birthday celebrations until the weekend of the 27th June. It's only 10 days later, so I figure it's not too long to wait.

It took me a while to decide what I'm going to do for my birthday this year. I guess I felt a bit of pressure to have a big "party" seeing as it's my 21st, but the thing is... I don't really like partying and drinking and clubbing and all that. I'd much rather just hang out with my friends and do something much more low key.

So, with that in mind, I am celebrating my birthday here: https://www.thetearoom.com.au/
I'm having a tea party! Or a high tea. Whatever you'd like to call it.

The Tea Room is in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney's CBD, and it's one of Sydney's oldest buildings. I've always loved the QVB (one year at school I did a Design & Technology research project on the architecture!) and so I'm pretty excited to have my birthday there. I'm going to take all my girlfriends, and we'll all get dressed up in our pretty frocks and have a very elegant afternoon tea. Because we're classy like that!

I'm Baaaack!

OK, so I technically got back on Friday, but with jetlag and the time change, I'm pretty sure I was just on autopilot this weekend. I'm not doing too badly with the jetlag, I just wake up really early in the morning here (when it's the middle of the day in NYC) and fall asleep really early at night (when it's in the wee hours in NYC)!

Let me just say it once: New York was A - MAZING!!!
LA was really great, but NYC was fantastic. So want to go back.


Unfortunately, life gets in the way. I get back home and think, I should probably check my uni email etc etc and find that for some reason, I totally missed the fact that I had Part 2 of an assignment due on 1st May (the day that I got back).
How I missed it I have no idea because I'm usually so on top of things like that. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I've been working frantically to get it done by Monday. That's the earliest I'll be able to hand it in, so I'll get 30% deducted off my mark (10% lost per day, and Saturdays and Sundays count). At least it's not a total disaster. (I only realised that after the crying).

Oh yeah, and the manager from hell is back at JW. And this time, she's OUR store manager. Seriously, the woman is evil. She's already made the girls cry. One of them resigned and when she received her resignation letter, Manager said "Woo Hoo!" to her face. Some people have no people skills. Seriously. I'm kinda scared to go back to work. But apparently she's taken care of that for me, because neither I nor the other girl who goes to uni have any shifts for the next whole fortnight! It's like she's trying to punish us for not having as flexible a schedule as she'd like. A few of the girls are already talking about transferring to other stores, and I'm entertaining the thought too, I must admit. I love working at JW and I love the store and the customers but I don't know if it's worth the stress having her as my manager.