$$ Dinner, Sickness Begins

3/28

I woke up and got on the computer. Tracy and Angie came in and said that they were going to go lay out by the pool so I went with them. The sun was pretty intense and we couldn’t get into the pool so after a while I went back to the lodge to clean up my room, finish my laundry and start packing for Sydney. I decided to bring the big suitcase so I could roll it instead of dragging it annoyingly across the ground like I usually do.

I showered and then waited for a bit for JD and Ashley to come to the lodge. But I didn’t know if we were meeting or not so I just started walking to the bus stop...I was also kind of in a bad mood and my throat still hurt. I thought I was going to have to go all the way into town, but after a bit of apprehension, we stayed at the campground and the bus took us to the Ballina airport. A VERY small Ballina airport it was. We checked our bags and sat around for a bit, catching up on the latest celebrity gossip—as per AWal’s obsession.

The flight to Sydney was very short—about an hour and our flight wasn’t full so I got to grab a row and lie down because I wasn’t feeling fantastic.

When we got to Syndey we caught an airport shuttle to Ashley’s parents’ hotel. It was really nice. They were right on the harbor with a view of the Opera House. We hung out in their room for a while and then they took us to dinner. They had asked for a casual dining spot and we were sent to the Sydney Café. We had quite the adventure finding this “café” to begin with, and then when we did…we quickly discovered it wasn’t casual. The men were in suits and women in cocktail dresses while JD and I were both wearing jeans and t-shirts. The menu was not exactly what I was hoping dinner would be, with seafood or fancy duck or something of that nature... and everything was really expensive. I had just met her parents that night and didn’t want them to buy me a $30+ meal so I ordered a side salad and garlic nan. They also gave me a glass of their wine. I didn’t care for the wine that much, but I didn’t want to be rude and wasteful, so I drank it.

While we were waiting for dinner I started to feel worse. I got hot and dizzy and just… weird feeling. But I just tried to act normal because… I wanted to be fine and didn't want to be thought of as some whiney kid. The food came and I didn’t love my vinegar dressed salad …so I ate as much as I could and shoved the rest around to look like I had eaten more. Yeah, I still can use the little kid tactics. The bread was good though and I ate that. I know, you’re all stunned.

We went back to their hotel and got our bags to head to the hostel. During the taxi ride I started breathing kind of shallowly and quickly and freak out. I tried to just talk myself out of it because I thought maybe it was just a mental thing. Who knows what it was. We ran into Angie G when we were getting into the building. and she took us up to their room to put our stuff down. JD took care of getting the room we were in while I laid down for a minute.

When we got to our room we pretty much went straight to bed. I got pretty cold and I guess I was shivering- thus shaking the dirty, cheap metal bunk bed. Luckily someone gave me their sheet even though they froze to death. (Yeah, all they gave us was one sheet and it was not hot.) I guess the fever broke sometime in the night because I started burning up later on.

Welcome to Sydney!!