Australia part one

Hey guys, "How you going?!" Well Australia has been nothing like matt and I envisioned it to be but it has been an amazing country nonetheless! We flew into Sydney airport on wednesday morning and found the city to be just that...a huge city. We found a hostel in what we later found was the sleazy prostitute area of town and decided to walk around the whole city. It was actually quite pretty for a metropolis, but still not our style. We did a huge loop around and saw everything from the harbour bridge and the opera house up close and had some gelatto in the harbour. Had a nice steak and mash dinner at Scruffy Murphy's Irish pub and thankfully found this country to be a land of the tasty $5 steaks. Found a nice pub with a bunch of hooligan Rugby fans and cheered on the New South Wales Blues with a few blue beers. The next day had a great intercultural experience by getting our rental car and freaking out as both matt and I tried to get accustomed to driving on the wrong side of the road. Also saw a bunch of local flaura and fauna as we almost hit a cute wallaby on the road. The sky here is so beautiful and huge and easy to remember God as you stare up. We headed up toward Byron Bay, our northernmost goal and saw some neat things along the way including a golf course full of hundreds of kangaroos on (walk backwards when you leave so they don't "jump" you from behind!) a couple of neat walks up to lighthouses interrupted by a cute wallaby in front of us, tasty kebabs, meat pies and more steak! Byron was a cool little hippy town with a gorgeous beach that we stayed at but decided we weren't going to go north from here and started heading back toward Melbourne where our flight is out of. On Sunday we had the amazing experience of going to two church services at the world famous Hillsong Church in Sydney where the people were in the thousands but very very friendly and amazing worship and speaking. We've been starting to blend into the native culture with the aussies quite nicely recently...getting down the lingo, learning that chicken parma (parmesan) and steak sangas (sandwiches) are both awesome to eat and cost half as much if you order in the pub. You also get to hang out with a bunch of fun loving rowdy aussies who will explain the rules of all types of rugby to you, show you how to drink beer like water and cuss out their neighbor. They are hilarious people. We've been especially stoked to be heading down to the country where the accents are thicker and the culture is as well. Matt and I saw one of the coolest things on the trip so far by accident. The blue mountains were so caked in fog that we decided to go further down the road and see what the wentworth falls looked like. No one had mentioned them being anything spectacular so we didn't think much of them. When we got to the lookout, the fog was swirling and thick and it started to rain and our view was non-existent so we decided to walk down to the falls. It turned out to be a gorgeous hike down steps steeper than you can imagine and ladders that go straight down, rope bridges and a lot of mud. It was a multilayer gigantic falls where you can stare at them from the bottom and wonder how God made something so beautiful and powerful! Next stop is the Grampions which are supposed to be some of the highest peaks in Australia, but are relatively low by American standards. We are staying in a little hostel right outside of them tonight and the further we go south the colder it is getting...just put the long underwear on tonight. We also got a chance to try out our headlamps tonight as we went koala hunting in the middle of nowhere and happened upon another huge group of kangaroos staring us down! Hmmm..well internet was not found last night... sitting outside a bar and "using" their wireless internet since our other hostel didn't have it. The Grampions turned out to be gorgeous and I almost died coming down a flight of slippery metal stairs as it was raining. God has everything completely under control because I slipped down the whole thing and came away with just a dirty bum! Well that's about it for down under. We're heading toward Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road for the next few days and then over to New Zealand on the 24th. Miss and love you guys! Cheers mates!