New Years Shenanigans

G'Day Lovelies!

First off, we'd like to apologize for slacking on our posting; it's been quite crazy!
Second, HAPPY NEW YEAR!! We hope you all had a wonderful and safe New Year.
Speaking of New Years, on New Years Eve we had a small group scavenger hunt.  Sadly, we were not in the same group.  That means we were separated for more than four hours! yikes...  This scavenger hunt was all across Sydney and it's surrounding areas. The scavenger hunt consisted us navigating Sydney all in our group during New Years Eve...Which turned into a nightmare. Crickey, it was a horrible situation; so many people and so many roads were cut off where we had to go.
After the long hot scavenger hunt, we went out with some of our friends to go watch the fireworks.  We got to the Sydney Harbour around 4 pm; found the perfect spot and realized we now have to wait for 8 hours until midnight.  And that is exactly what we did. We started out the long wait with me doing many of the girls hair while we also made some new English friends.  They were Ben, who was from Europe and recently moved to Australia, and his cousin, Tom, who is also from Europe.  They were extremely nice and entertaining.  We learned a lot of interesting facts from them.
As it slowly approached to midnight, there were actually "family" fireworks at 9:00pm, and they were lovely.  After those fireworks, everyone slowly got sleepier and sleepier,  We still had 3 more hours to wait! Finally, the 10 second count down began.. and then boom boom boom! Fireworks galore! They were the most breathtaking fireworks we've ever seen.  However, they were only 12 minutes long; but all in all it was worth the wait.
Though the amount of people we had to weave through was a little crazy.  It took us about an hour to get back to our hostel because of so many people and usually it only takes us 15 minutes! Due to the huge crowds we were all forced to take the escalator. Some of you may already know, but Zoë has a fear of escalators; aka esclatophobia. The first time she had to go one, she cried before; poor chica! However, I discovered telling her stories helps her not think of it.  So when we went on the escalator on New Years Eve, I told her a wonderful story about Christmas and snow. And guess what, she survived the survived the ride! YAHOOO! Unfortunately, this is when I really started to feel sick; so when we got back; I went to bed straightaway.
The next day, Zoë and I

both didn't feel good.  She had a bad sore throat and ear ache and I had a bad chest cough and body aches..Happy New Years to us.. :/ Though the only thing that kept us through the day is the fact we went to the Koala Park! The Koala P1ing! We saw so many awesome animals like; Koalas, kangaroos, dingos, wallabies, and so much more! We even got to pet a koala and kangaroo! They were soo soft and the cutest things ever!
Then, we came back and had to write our blogs for class.  And of course I took my sweet, long time on mine; so Zoë decided to take a little cat nap in the cafeteria where we were writing...Oh Zoë.
That concluded our New Years Shenanigans, once again we apologize for our delay. We couldn't be more blessed to ring in the New Year in Australia. We hope you all had a wonderful and safe New Years!
Cherrio!
Much Love,
Hallie & Zoë