The Rocks

Yesterday for the ASC class we went on a tour of The Rocks, an area of Sydney where the Europeans first settled. We split up into smaller groups and were given a list of places that we were supposed to find. It was a pretty interesting place to explore and it was so odd because one moment you're in this old looking, antique type area, then all the sudden you're in modern Sydney with all the high rise skyscrapers, busy roads, etc. We went to one place called Observatory Park and the view was AMAZING, I could see so much! There was also several churches that we saw and were able to go in them as well and they were very neat.

After we had finished exploring The Rocks, we were technically done for the day and were free to do what we chose, but a group of 8 of us were going to an ASC family night at Kimberly's (the director) house. There are going to be several family nights throughout the semester, but we were only supposed to sign up for one and I signed up for this weeks. This is just meant to be a time to get to know fellow students better in a smaller setting. We all helped to make tacos for supper, then sat around and talked for a while. For dessert we had ice cream and one of the flavors was called honeycomb something or other, but it was REALLY REALLY good! It had pieces of honeycomb in it. After dessert we played this game called loaded questions. One person would draw a question from a box and read it to the group. For example "if you could smash any one thing, what would that thing be?" Then each person in the group had a piece of paper and they'd write their answer on it and hand it to the person sitting next to the one who just asked the question. Once all the answers are in, the reader reads off each answer and the person who asked the question has to guess who each answer belongs to. Each person gets a chance to ask a question. It was a really fun game and there were some very strange questions.

Today I had my first service project meeting. For those of you who don't remember, my service project is with Hillsong church. Today's meeting was just training, we don't actually start the ministry untill next week. Normally, I will be going to the Hillsong campus in Waterloo, but for the training session, everyone was meeting at the Hillsong campus in the Hills. Yes, there are two Hillsong campuses in the Sydney area. It was quite a pain to get to the Hills campus. First I had to take a train to one station and that took about half hour, from there I had to catch a bus and that took another half hour. Also, the bus/train/ferry pass the school gave me didn't cover that far out so I had to pay for the bus, which kind of sucked, but oh well. Then, after the training was over I went to catch a bus back to the train station and found out they only come once every hour and the one for the current hour had just left, so I had an hour to kill. Me and the other girls from ASC that were also with Hillsong walked to a nearby shopping center and had lunch then caught the bus back.

The plan was to go to Manly beach after Hillsong, but with all the bus and train delays and such that we ran into, we didn't get to the ferry until 3 and the next ferry wasn't leaving till 3:30 maybe 4 and it's a 30 min ride, so we wouldn't have even gotten to the beach until about 4:30. So, a few of the group decided they still wanted to go, just for a little bit, but me and one other girl from ASC, Becca, went back to Becca's homestay and swam in the pool there. It was quite fun! I haven't swam in way too long and I love the water, so it was good.