Friday night in Manly

Cute kids at Shelley Beach for their swim lessons! All of these kids could swim better than me. They are like fish!!



It's currently Saturday night in Manly, but I thought I'd talk about Friday first! Marie went to McGill, and two girls that were headed to Canberra for a semester abroad, also from McGill, were in Sydney for a couple days. Marie is good friends with one of them, and just met the other one. I only knew Marie. Anyway, they came to Manly to spend the day which was awesome! The weather hasn't exactly been lovely since I arrived. In fact it's been pouring almost the entire time except for my first day here! But that's ok...it is needed. Anyway, we were hoping to get a few hours of sunniness so they would enjoy the beach. Thankfully it worked out! The surf was pretty high at Manly Beach and so the surf was closed (surfers can still surf, but swimmers cannot swim) so I brought them to Shelley Beach. It was very weird to be the one in charge of the day's activities! I'd only been there three days! But it was fun. The sun managed to come out for awhile, and they thought Manly was beautiful so it was good. They are both twenty, and definitely seemed young. So it wasn't like conversation flowed amazingly freely, but that is ok. When you only know two people in Australia, you can't be picky!

It started to rain so we went to a cafe, and then back to the apartment to wait out the rain. We found the channel that was showing Olympic specials! It warmed my heart, honestly! It was filmed last year (when there was actually snow) and almost every single person they spoke to was a Canadian athlete or a Canadian coach or a Canadian judge. So much Canada, it was great! And, oh, that accent! How neutral and lovely! Ha ha. I don't hear it much even with Marie, because she's from France so she has a bit of a French accent. So it was nice to hear again. I didn't realize how much I had missed it!
Lifeguards' surfboards at Shelley Beach:

Anyway, we watched a special where this blonde little Aussie reporter went to Whistler and tried all the events and was basically explaining them to Australians to prepare them for the Olympics. I was happy to see that they will be showing the Olympics on four different channels. Too bad I am already in class when they start, but maybe I can catch a few things! Then we went to a pub for dinner, after calling The Aussie for a recommendation. We didn't want to end up at some sketchy place, we just wanted pub fare and a beer. He sent us to the Ivanhoe, and it was yummy! Funny though, as we were the only girls there. Literally. EVERYONE was in their work shirts and black pants, relaxing with their mates after a day at the office. That's the last time I ask for a recommendation for a couple of 20 year old girls from a 33 year old working professional. Ha ha. It was funny, but the food was good and so was the beer so it was ok.

The two Canberra girls were getting quite tired at around 7pm, so I sent them back to the city on the ferry and wandered around the Corso for a bit. There was some live music playing which was nice and I was just standing listening about to head back to the apartment. A girl with a cruiser bike comes up to me and asks "What is this?" And I told her I wasn't sure. We got to talking, and turns out she was a nice Brazilian model/actress who is in Manly for a month visiting her boyfriend, who is studying English here for three months. She was VERY happy to speak with me, because of my accent. She finds it very, very difficult to speak with Australians, and has only been studying English six months before coming to Australia.

Of course her English was great, which I kept telling her, but she wouldn't believe me. Anyway we had nice chats and she invited me to her apartment in Little Manly, which is about a 10 or 15 minute walk on the other side (like, not the beach where I am). I am craving social interaction at this point, so of course I went! She gave me this weird Brazilian tea which was really weird and yummy. We were going to go on a night bike ride to Shelley Beach to see the animals and things that come out at night (fuzzy ones, not scary poisonous ones) and I agreed to meet her back at her place at 9:30pm. I went back to my apartment and then got a wave of exhaustion, and I couldn't head back out. I called her on The Aussie's phone (I didn't have mine yet) and cancelled, and she was gracious so it was all good. I have her number though so will definitely/hopefully hang out with her again. She's here til the end of February, and I am too.
Me and Aline in her apartment after I enjoyed the weird tea:

Wow this is getting long! Maybe I'll post this and then continue on with today!