Thus Far in Australia

I know this is late getting up but this trip has been so amazing that I have yet taken the time to post something. Aside from group activities, in Sydney, Brina and I took a walk through the Botanical Gardens, which were quite impressive. We found the wishing tree and walked forward around it three times, then backwards around it three times, which is believed to help make your wish come true. While we were there we heard this awful screeching noise and looked up to find a massive colony of flying fox bats. One even took off in flight for a few moments and then returned to a tree. There must have been close to 1000 of them throughout the gardens, maybe more. We also got to meet a number of sulfur-crested cockatoos, which do not make the most pleasant sound either. We passed a family that looked to be feeding them and a couple of the birds helped themselves to climbing onto a little girl, while others sat on her mother's shoulders. At the lower portion of the gardens was an area where you could essentially walk the length of the Sydney harbor to get probably the best view in Sydney, both the opera house and the harbor bridge. Since Sydney reminded me a lot of New York City, this was really the first time I felt like I was in Australia, aside from driving on the left side of the road. After the gardens, we walked across to circular quay, where Brina participated in a street performance. The man performing placed her and two other men lying down in a line from head to toe and proceeded to do a handstand which he held while walking the entire length of them before turning around and doing it again. He then had the men hold a ladder while he backflipped off the top through a flaming hula hoop. We also saw a large orange mob of people walking the length of circular quay, so Brina and I joined in with them and started clapping to their chant of "Poland". I still don’t know what it was for. After the show we walked back to the hotel and got ready with the entire group for a rugby game, which we all walked to together, got our faces painted and cheered on the victorious Sydney waratahs (a type of flower). After the game, we walked back to the hotel, then headed down to Darling harbor to walk around for a bit, then back to the hotel for sleep.