January Recap: So. Many. Things!

I started working last month. Yay for the paycheck; but, the training period has been pretty exhausting, so I have been slack on the event blogging, which is a shame because January was full of great excursions. The Sydney Festival is a month-long arts celebration, and we did our best to take advantage. Between that and a few other outings, most of our weekends were chock full.

Since I was diligently taking photos like a good li'l blogger, let me just do a quick recap of a month of delightful, delicious, de-lovely activities.

Our first Sydney Festival event was seeing Mike Birbiglia, who you'll know if you're as big of a This American Life geek as I am. Mimi got a bit of a finger wagging from an overzealous usher for taking a camera phone photo of the stage, so no further photographic evidence exists. It was such a funny show, detailing his history with women. Partner-in-Crime and I are still laughing with recognition about some of the funnier anecdotes. Plus, it's always quite entertaining to see American comics try to translate some of the more specific turns of phrase for an Australian audience. My favorite moment was when Birbiglia said something about being in "7th grade." "That's what you call Grade 7 here." And then realizing that the distinction was probably pretty clear without his translation, he backpedaled with an ironic quip about how everything is so different down here.

Partner-in-Crime and I spent that Saturday afternoon at the Medibank Sydney Tennis Tournament, a pre-Australian Open event. It took place at the beautiful Olympic Park. We got ground seats, which meant that we could wander around all the courts surrounding the big stadium and watch whatever matches were going on.

We saw some excellent tennis, including a very exciting match that went into a tie breaker. I was perturbed by the rude behaviour of a few fans - particularly a small group who were incessantly hollering cheers at one of the Aussie players. I remembered my parents instilling how important it is to be quiet when you're watching tennis, so my inner-Andy Rooney was viciously rearing his head, but otherwise it was a fantastic day.

(I also got such a big kick out of calling it "the tennis" like Australians do. There's something about "the tennis" that just dances off your tongue).

The next weekend, I had a visitor! A friend from home, her mother, and her two sons arrived in Sydney at the end of a cruise of New Zealand and Australia. We met up with another mutual friend who just so happens to work at "The House" (the Sydney Opera House, that is). Opera House Friend was awesome enough to arrange tours for all of us, which was really fun. I'd seen most of the theatres we went into, already, but it was still great to pick up tidbits of fun facts, and our visitors all got a huge kick out of the tour. 

It was very hard not to buy Opera House Barbie in the gift shop:

That night, we rushed off to meet the Garcias and Mimi and Joe for an evening in the Domain seeing Los Lobos do a free concert. The Garcias scored an awesome spot for us under a tree, so we lounged in comfort. We collectively assembled a fajita feast to share, so we were fully in the spirit. The whole show (including a local mariachi band opening) was a grand, festive time. 

The next day, I met up with Cruise Friends and Opera House Friend for a proper Sydney Tour (obviously, Opera House Friend, a real Sydneysider, knows an awful lot more about Sydney than this newbie). She took us up to a park near North Head with a lot of old military installments, including some creepy abandoned bunkers.

We then drove up to the beautiful Palm Beach to get some sand between our toes. I escorted Cruise Friend and her mom back into town on the Manly Ferry, and they were suitably impressed, as I estimated that they should be, since it has the best water view of Sydney that one could ask for.

The next weekend, we and our favorite North American couples got all dressed up for another Sydney Festival event, the Trocadero Dance Palace, an event at Town Hall inspired by the real Trocadero Dance Hall from  the 40s and 50s. Everyone got super decked out and there were swing dance lessons ahead of time. The band was a fabulous all-female big band (just like at the original dance hall), and there was a pretty spectacular show, including some Cirque-inspired aerialists and a group of stellar swing dancing pairs. The floor was opened up for everyone to practice what they'd learned at the dance lessons. My two left feet were on display, but it was still about as much swingin' groovy fun as I could handle.

(This girl's 40s hair was too amazing).

(My ensem.)

The next night, P-i-C and I went much lower key for a symphony concert in the Domain. The theme was Shakespearean, and the music was accented with speeches from Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry V performed by the marvelous John Bell. It was mostly a dreamy, lay back and close your eyes kind of night; though P-i-C and I did get pretty riled up with Bell performed the St. Crispin's Day speech - our geeky favorite. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!," we chanted along giddily. And then, at the end, the symphony concluded with the 1812 Overture and a fireworks/cannon extravaganza. (If you're a regular reader, maybe you're catching on to this whole fireworks theme. It wouldn't be an event in Sydney if it didn't end with fireworks ... and more's the better!).

The next weekend, I hitched a ride with the Garcias to Taralga, a little town about 3 hours from Sydney, for an afternoon at the rodeo. I was pretty taken with the rodeo events, particularly the few bucking bronco and bull riders we saw. There was also a plethora of incredibly adorable children decked out in cowboy outfits and hats as large as their heads. We feasted on steak and white bread sandwiches, and just generally got into the community spirit on display. I suggest checking out my gracious hosts' photos here because they have wildly better cameras than me!

On the way home, we stopped in the little town Golbourn (Australia's first inland city, apparently), because the Garcias felt it was important for me to have my picture taken in front of The Big Merino, a giant roadside sheep.

We all decided that this should be my entre into a collection of tourist photos in front of oversized roadside objects. Australians, it would seem, are just as fascinated with giant roadside things as we Americans are. We may have a giant ball of twine, but in the future, I can look forward to taking photos in front of a giant banana, a giant potato, and a giant shrimp, among other things. 

It's good to know that the excitement promises to rage on, even if my busy January has come to an end.