Sunday October 17, 2010

Sunday I once again got up fairly early because I couldn’t sleep with my morning cough…again, lovely I know. I also still had no voice, which I realized I had lost mostly due to my cold, although I’m sure Oktoberfest didn’t help. Later that morning I had volleyball, so I went to that and spent the entire day playing. It was another gorgeous day out and I couldn’t think of any better way to spend it. I got back from volleyball around 3:30 or 4 at which point I decided to make an early dinner because I was going to go see Eat, Pray, Love at 6 with some friends from volleyball. Before anyone comments, yes Australia is really behind in their movies, so ones that may have come out two months ago for you guys are just coming out for us now. Personally I thought the movie was great, and I can’t wait to read the book, which I heard is even better than the movie. People that had already read the book said that the movie wasn’t nearly as good, which makes me glad that I decided to hold off on reading the book. Once I got home from the movie I just relaxed for a little while before getting to bed pretty early. I still had no voice due to the cold and thought it’d be best for me to get some rest.

Saturday October 16, 2010

Saturday was the first beautiful day we’ve had in weeks. It also happened to be Oktoberfest, so Carrie, Sam, Camilla, Dani and I decided to head to the Brisbane show grounds where they were hosting a huge Oktoberfest Festival. Supposedly it’s one of the biggest Oktoberfest celebrations in the world, although I’m sure it doesn’t compare to Oktoberfest in Munich. We didn’t have any lederhosen so we had to settle for just doing pigtail braids. I’ve honestly never actually celebrated Oktoberfest before, so this was quite the experience for me. Considering the fact that I’m not a huge fan of beer, I was pleasantly surprised by the beers they had at the festival. The whole experience was amazing. There were people dressed in lederhosen with their beer steins everywhere and they had a huge tent with a real German band playing and people doing crazy dances. There were beer stands all over the show grounds along with tons of German food. We only ended up getting beer and huge pretzels, which was enough for us and they were delicious. I don’t remember the last time I had a soft pretzel, or a pretzel at all for that matter. We ended up staying at Oktoberfest until around 9:30 at which point we headed back into the city to go get some “dinner”. We went to Pancake Manor, the most delicious pancake place I’ve ever been to and got some dessert pancakes. Dani, Carrie and I all got pancakes with grilled bananas, walnuts, chocolate ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream on them. Pancakes don’t get much better than that. By the time we left Pancake Manor it was about 11:30, and after a day at Oktoberfest, Dani and I had completely lost our voices. It was actually quite entertaining to hear us try and talk. When we finally got home it was close to 12 and after such a busy day on our feet (there weren’t many places to sit at Oktoberfest), we all just crashed.

Friday October 15, 2010

Friday morning I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep because I kept coughing…lovely I know. Since I couldn’t sleep I just decided to get up and try and get some work done. That ended up being an epic failure because I was so tired, so I decided to try and go back to sleep. I must say at first I felt awful for trying to sleep in the middle of the day, but the weather was not good and I realized that when I used to stay home sick from school, that’s what I was supposed to do. That was slightly comforting to me and I definitely needed to just relax, but I still hate sleeping the day away. On the bright side, when I woke up I felt much better. That night I once again made myself a good dinner, some chicken tikka masala. Interestingly enough I’ve gotten into some very different foods since being here; foods that I will miss when I go home due to Cheshire’s limited international food selection. After dinner Zach, Carrie, Dani and I needed to go to the wine store, so we walked to Hawken Drive (the “downtown” area in our suburb) and ended up also getting some delicious gelato. When we returned home we had some friends over before going to another friends house that night. It was great to finally just get to hang out with people at a house and get to talk to everyone.

Thursday October 14, 2010

Thursday the weather was finally starting to improve, but sadly my cold was getting worse. I had class in the morning and then worked on my math assignment on campus before my class at 12. Mom and Dad before you comment on my procrastinating so much on my assignment, remember that it’s for the class where I’m supposed to do most of the assignment in class with my TA. Anyway, after my class I headed home to get some lunch. After having my usual greek yogurt and granola I headed back to campus to go to the library and get some work done before volleyball at 5. After doing some work I was quite happy because I think I’m finally starting to understand my circuits course, but it will still require a lot of work. Continuing my good mood, volleyball ended up being particularly fun and we got to play 2s for a while, which most of us find more fun that 6s. That’s probably mainly due to the fact that a beach court is smaller than an indoor court, so to have 6 people on one side on a beach court is kind of hectic. After volleyball I decided to make myself a decent dinner, which means that it involved meat because I had pretty much been living off of pasta for the past week. Since I had a cold I decided it would be best for me to have an early night and just get some sleep, which felt amazing.

Wednesday October 13, 2010

Wednesday I had class in the morning from 10-12, and then I sat outside on campus for a little while getting some work done. Once again the weather wasn’t too great so I ended up heading home and more or less just lounging around and hanging out with friends. Upon arriving at home I did my laundry, which was much needed. I also got some work done, which was good, but I don’t have any more assignments due until the end of the semester, which is quickly approaching ☹. While writing this I’m realizing that it sounds like I’m not doing anything, but fairly enough, I think it was needed after the last two weeks of insanity.

Tuesday October 12, 2010

On Tuesday Dani and I were considering going to the beach, but I was getting a cold and it was crappy weather…again. So instead, I took the day to just lounge around for the first time in weeks. I was slightly productive and went to Toowong to get some food and internet, but overall I felt that with the amount of work I had had lately, I deserved a day to just relax. Later that day I went to volleyball, per usual (although with my work I hadn’t been able to go at all the week before). On the down side, it wasn’t great weather so I ended up only staying for a little bit before heading home to get some dinner. That pretty much sums up my day, relaxing, volleyball, dinner and hanging out with friends.

Monday October 11, 2010

Monday morning Sam and Linds had to get up around 6:30, and I got up around 7. They didn’t leave until 8, which was nice that I at least got to spend a little bit more time with them. We discussed the prospect of my staying another semester, and although I think I know what the right decision is, I’m still not entirely certain it’s what I want. On the other hand, there really is no right or wrong decision, this is one of those gray areas that doesn’t really have an answer. Anyway, once they left Dani and I made our grocery list and headed to the store in the pouring rain. Some people thought we were insane for still attempting to host Thanksgiving, but we thought it was well worth it. Upon returning from the store I read over my paper again to make sure it was ok and then proceeded to start preparing stuff for Thanksgiving. Since we’re in Australia and they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, we had to make some substitutions on some stereotypical Thanksgiving foods. For one thing, they don’t sell canned pumpkin, so we couldn’t make pumpkin pie. Instead I just made two apple pies using CLC’s amazing recipe. They also don’t sell anything but frozen turkeys and we didn’t have time to thaw a turkey, nor could anyone spend the day watching it. So instead we substituted premade chicken, which personally, I think chicken and turkey taste pretty similar, so I was ok with it. Besides it took a huge stress off of Dani and I. Around 12:30 I had to go to campus to hand in my paper and go to class, so I was only able to prepare the apples for the apple pie prior to leaving for class. Class itself was fairly interesting, we discussed Native Americans for a little while and related the way we treat our Natives to the way they treat their Aboriginals. Like I said it was actually pretty interesting, and brought to my attention the fact that our schools neglect to really teach us about Native Americans. It made me feel like in America we go with the concept ignorance is bliss. If most citizens don’t know about the wars and history of the Native Americans then we won’t judge them, and hopefully vice versa. Quite frankly, it upset me to realize that we know so little about our natives. It also made me realize how segregated they are from us. I have never really met a Native American, which when you think about it, is really strange. Sometimes it’s pretty scary to think how little we know about things. It was also kind of ironic to have this discussion on the day that we were celebrating Thanksgiving. Speaking of which, once I got out of class, I had to kind of rush to get everything together so that we could actually eat that night. On the bright side Dani and I had a lot of help from some really great friends. We held the actual celebration at our friends Erin and Augie’s house. They live just down the street, but they have a much nicer house and a much bigger/better kitchen. We ended up cooking the pies in their oven because we needed our oven to cook potatoes. At our other friends’ house they cooked the green beans and some potatoes for us, and we made the sweet potatoes and some of the mashed potatoes. I must say, I never realized just how much work cooking all this stuff is. Granted we cheated on a lot of foods due to limited time, but it was fun getting to cook with everyone and just having everyone come together for a big family dinner. We ended up eating around 7:30, which personally I thought was the perfect time. There were 18 people that came and it seemed like everyone had a great time. Dani and I definitely felt proud of ourselves for our estimates on how much food we would need and for just pulling off the whole thing in general. Like I said, it was great night with great friends. It was also a great celebration for me for finally being done with the obscene amount of work I had had the past week. From that point out it’s pretty smooth sailing for me. A bunch of us hung around Erin and Augie’s house until 11 or 12, at which point we were pretty tired and headed home to get some sleep.

Sunday October 10, 2010

Sunday morning we once again had to get up at 7, except today the weather was even crappier. There were torrential downpours and pretty high winds. Needless to say, they called off playoffs, and we ended up just going home early. As much as I wanted to play, this kind of worked out for me because that huge paper that was due on Friday, was now due on Monday, and with Sam and Linds coming back that night, I wanted to be able to hang out with them. Once we got home I got some food and got to work. I don’t know how many hours overall I ended up spending working on that paper, but it was ridiculous and I better get a good mark on it. Anyway, Sam and Linds got to my place around 9:30 so I hung out with them for a while and heard about the rest of their trip. Aside from the whole losing their luggage thing, it sounds like they had a great time. Once they went to bed, I stayed up a little bit longer putting some finishing touches on my paper and then went to bed.

Saturday October 9, 2010

On Saturday we had to get up at around 7 because the tournament started at 8:30. The beach was only 5 minutes away walking distance, which was really nice for obvious reasons. On the down side though, the weather wasn’t great; it was overcast and sort of drizzling. Not raining enough that we couldn’t play but enough to be annoying. Weather aside, the tournament was, as they say in Oz, heaps of fun. It was great to finally play competitively again. My partner, Sonja, and I did pretty well during our first round of pool play, but during the second round we got tired and kind of lost it. Overall I guess that’s pretty good since we’ve never really played in a beach tournament and we haven’t been playing together that long, so I was proud of us. After the tournament we all went out and got some quality Subway for dinner because it was buy one get one free and we’re all cheap college students. We also ended up going out for some drinks because supposedly you “can’t not go out for a drink in Byron Bay”. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, but I’m not too sure how it was much different from anywhere else.

Friday October 8, 2010

Friday morning I got up around 8 because I needed to go to Toowong and get some food. I don’t think I went into this yet, but the reason I couldn’t go with Sam and Linds this weekend was because I had a tournament scheduled in Byron Bay that I had already paid for and couldn’t find a replacement for. So I had to go get some food for the tournament before I had to leave for it at 12. After going shopping I also had to pack and I worked on my paper a little more. The drive to Byron took a little over 2 hours after which we checked into our hostel. We didn’t really have anything planned for that day so we just walked around the town a little bit and checked out the beach, which was beautiful. The town was a cute little stereotypical beach town with a bunch of little shops everywhere. The beach was shaped like a u and interestingly enough, even with being u shaped, the waves always came in perpendicular to the beach. That must be part of the reason why Byron Bay is considered one of the best surf spots in Australia.

Thursday October 7, 2010

Thursday I had class at 9 am and then I went to the center of campus so I could sit outside while I studied more for my test that day. While sitting out there I also had to get my math assignment started before my math tutorial at 12. We have weekly assignments for math that are due at the end of tutorial and you spend the tutorial working on it with your TA. However, if you don’t start it before you go, you won’t finish it. Anyway, after my tutorial at 12 I just kept reviewing my notes for my exam at 2. Overall I’d say the exam was all right except my professor told us specifically that something wasn’t going to be on the exam, and what did he do? Obviously he put it on the exam, so that was really obnoxious to say the least. Once I got out of my exam I needed to go to West End to go shopping because I needed some stuff. That happens to be the cheapest area to go shopping in. Immediately following this I went to volleyball for a little while before I had to meet with some people to work on our huge paper due the next day. Before anyone accuses me of anything, it wasn’t cheating. Our paper was a report from the field trip we went on a few weeks ago to North Stradbroke Island. The information we received was from Aboriginal people and you had to hand write everything they said. Obviously when you do that you tend to miss information, so we were all getting together to collaborate our information to make sure it was all correct, especially since our professor is very close with that particular Aboriginal family and would get really angry if we got something wrong. Anyway, we met for about half an hour and then I went home to finish my paper. I worked on it until 4 am before I decided to give up and ask for an extension. She had given everyone in class an extension until Monday, but if you recall I was picking Sam and Linds up at the airport so I hadn’t gotten the extension. On the bright side our professor is really cool so I knew she’d give me one I just didn’t want to ask for it, hence working until 4 am, but that is definitely where I draw the line and just give up because nothing I write would make sense anyway.

Wednesday October 6, 2010

Wednesday I had class first thing in the morning and then immediately after I headed to my professor’s office to hand in my paper. Once I did that I went to the library to study for an exam I had the next day. In the afternoon I had circuits lab, which went surprisingly well. We’re doing a design project and we’re given 3 lab classes to do it. This was the second class and my lab partner and I finished in the first hour, which was awesome. Although as good as it was to get out of lab early, that just meant that I had to go to the library to study more. I think I ended up getting home around 7 at which point I made some dinner and hung out with my friends for a little bit so we could discuss our Thanksgiving dinner we were going to make on Monday. Soon after this I locked myself in my room to study for my fluid dynamics exam, and that pretty much sums up my day.

Tuesday October 5, 2010

Tuesday Sam, Linds, Dani and I got up around 7 to go to the Gold Coast and have a beach day. When we first got there the weather wasn’t too great, but by the time we got a cup of coffee it had cleared up and we went to the beach. Overall it wasn’t the clearest day but it also wasn’t bad. Randomly it would start drizzling and stop within about 5 or 10 minutes, which was weird, but again it was still a pretty good beach day. Around 3 it started to get windy and the weather got a little worse so we decided to head home at that point. On the way home Dani and I took Sam and Linds through campus so they could get some dinner, which it turned out that the only place open was a pizza place so they were kind of limited in their choices. Sadly, when we got back home Sam and Linds had to pack their stuff up to go to Cairns later that night. They got a cab at 7 after which I got my work together and headed to the library for the night because I had a short paper due the next day and a huge paper due on Friday.

Monday October 4, 2010

On Monday morning I had the pleasure of going to the airport to greet Sam and Linds! It was one of those cute moments where they got out of the terminal and we ran and hugged each other. Once we got all of their luggage we got a cab back to my place so that they could have one of the most glorious showers of their lives. We then went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary where they got to see a good portion of the strange Australian wildlife. We even got to pet some kangaroos and wallabies and hold koalas!! We attempted to pet an emu but it wasn’t too keen on us coming near it. Once we finished going through the Koala Sanctuary we went back to my house for a little bit and then did a tour of my campus. This then led us to the main shopping area near my house, Hawken Drive, where we got some delicious gelato and some take out Italian food for dinner. Upon returning to my house Sam and Linds took naps while I got some work done. I’m rather impressed with how much energy they had after traveling for that long. Once they got up we ate our dinners and then I had them do a timtam explosion, which can’t really be described as anything other than the most delicious thing you will ever eat. After dinner Sam and Linds had enough energy that they still wanted to go out in the city, again rather impressive. So we got ready, hung out for a little while, and then went to Down Under Bar (aka Dunder) with my friends Dani and Carrie. It was definitely interesting going out on a Monday night because the city was rather dead, but still as beautiful as ever. I’m just glad they got to see what the city looks like at night because it’s spectacular! You’ll have to ask them what they thought of Dunder because compared to normal it was absolutely dead there, but even still there were quite a few people there. We didn’t end up staying at the bar too long, but that was probably better because I know Sam and Linds were exhausted.

Sunday October 3, 2010

On Sunday I more or less spent the entire day doing work. It was rainy out so I didn’t have anything to distract me like good weather. I spent some of the day in the library but most of it at home probably procrastinating more than working due to the fact that I was incredibly excited about Sam and Linds arriving the next day. Either way I got a decent amount of work done and spent time hanging out with my roommates.

Saturday October 2, 2010

Saturday morning we had to be up by 4 so we could leave at 4:30 to get to the airport by 5 for our 6 am flight back to Brisbane. This was definitely a morning that we just went through the necessary motions to get ourselves home. We landed in Brisbane at 8 and got a cab home. Our driver actually ended up getting pulled over by a cop so that was my first experience dealing with cops in Australia. It wasn’t intimidating for us since we were just passengers, but it couldn’t have been great for our driver because I’m sure he got penalized for it by his company. He was also pretty moronic because once we started driving again he immediately went back to the speed he had just been driving at. When we finally got back home we settled back in and I went grocery shopping. I then spent most of the day relaxing, which I shouldn’t have done because I had a bunch of work, but I was way too tired to do anything. I did get some work done though, which was good.

Friday October 1, 2010

Friday morning we had another early morning, getting up at 6:30 again for a rainforest tour. Sadly, the weather was not very good today. It rained off and on, but most on. Our day started off in a bus that took us to a wildlife habitat where I got to see my first koala since being here. I also got to pet my first wallaby and crocodile! As excited as I was to pet the crocodile, I felt bad for it because it was a baby with its mouth taped shut. I mean couldn’t they find something better than tape to hold its mouth shut? Anyway, at the wildlife habitat we were given a presentation on koalas, which was followed up by a presentation on snakes and crocodiles. After the presentations we roamed about the place until 10:30 seeing all sorts of cool birds and animals. Just before leaving Nicki and I ran to the grocery store across the street to pick up some snacks for the day because we were certain we’d be hungry come the ride home. I forgot to mention that prior to the habitat we stopped at a lookout point and got to take some cool pictures. This is the place where I have a picture of the instructions that are given on how to cross the street as if people don’t know how to do that. After the habitat we went to a gorge where we were supposed to be able to walk through the rainforest, but most of it was closed off because they needed to reconstruct the bridge that allowed you to get to most of the rainforest. The part that we did get to see was really cool, but it was kind of lame that we weren’t able to see the whole thing. We ended up hanging out there for a while because you were able to go swimming in the river. Only Katie and Carrie actually went swimming, while Dani, Nicki and I just put our feet in. Once we left the rainforest we ate lunch at the place where we were going to go on a crocodile cruise later. The crocodile cruise here wasn’t nearly as cool as the one in Darwin. I think that’s due in part to the fact that our tour guide was not very good and it had started raining again. Rain and boats never mix very well. We did get to see a couple crocodiles though which was cool, but they weren’t nearly as big as the ones in Darwin. The crocodile cruise lasted about an hour, and then we got back on our tour bus and continued up towards Cape Tribulation. The day trippers on our tour (aka us) were supposed to stop at a beach for a little while, while our tour guide dropped off the two-day trippers at their accommodations for the night. However, due to the bad weather she dropped us off at the only place nearby with a roof, which happened to be a bar/restaurant with a grocery store next to it. There was a beach that we were able to walk down to, but we only went down to it for about 10 minutes. The rest of the time we just walked around and contemplated buying some snacks but the grocery store was insanely expensive. Once our tour guide picked us up we headed home, which took about 3 hours. We were pretty lucky about when we left Cape Tribulation because apparently there is only one road to get there and when it rains the road floods. If the road floods enough then no one is allowed to cross it, and once we got across the road our tour guide told us that it was highly unlikely any of the two-day trippers were going to be coming back the next day because the road would probably be too flooded. The prospect of getting stranded was something that the tour group did not inform people about ahead of time, which was kind of obnoxious, but thankfully we didn’t have to deal with it. For the majority of the ride home I just slept; anything to not have to listen to our tour guide who seemed like some rando they found on the street and asked to drive a tour bus. She had no idea what she was talking about most of the time and actually provided us with some wrong information at one point. The bad weather combined with our tour guide’s lack of etiquette and knowledge made this my least favorite tour, but it was still a cool experience. Once we got back to Cairns we met up with our friends from home for some Indian food. This was of course followed up by some gelato and another night walking around the cute downtown area. We once again didn’t stay out too late because we had an early flight the next morning.

Thursday September 30, 2010

On Thursday morning we got up with our roommates around 6:30 because we were leaving for our white water rafting tour at 7:15. As I mentioned before our roommates happened to be on the same tour as us. Our first stop was at a bar associated with the company where we would learn about the rules associated with the tour and get our rafting shoes. The bus ride there took about 2 hours, and once we got there we were able to get some breakfast while listening to the safety regulations. From there we had to ride the bus for another half hour to an hour to get to the river. Upon getting off the bus we were given our helmets and life jackets, and within about 15 minutes we were walking down to the river. Thankfully Dani, Carrie, Katie, our roommates and I were all able to go together on a raft with our awesome guide Freddie. With an oar in hand we all just got into the raft, Katie and I in the front, and began heading down the river, no instruction given yet. That was terrifying because we had no idea what we were doing, and almost immediately had to go over a rapid. Right after our first rapid, which thankfully we made it through, we stopped at a calm spot to have Freddie tell us what we needed to do. He taught us some techniques for going through the rapids such as where you need to sit and what you need to do when he yells out certain commands. We then proceeded to practice those techniques a few times and then just continued down the river. At the first difficult rapid we came to the first raft, which had left a little before us, had flipped and everyone was at a stand still. Not a great way to start off the day. If that didn’t make us nervous enough Freddie proceeded to tell us about all of the incidents that have occurred on the trips. At that point all that was going through my head was what did I get myself into. We were held up at that spot for almost half an hour, but eventually we were able to get through. At the next intense rapid we came to one of the girls on our raft actually ended up falling out. This was terrifying to say the least. Even our instructor was swearing about it. Thankfully she was completely fine, but later he proceeded to tell us how one of his mates died in that exact spot. Once again the only thought running through my head was what did I get myself into, perhaps with a few profanities mixed in. After this the day went very smoothly although Freddie continued to tell us stories of people dying. Apparently the biggest danger in white water rafting is getting your feet caught in a rock underwater. This is why the first thing they taught us was that if you fall out just lift your feet up. As long as your feet are up you won’t drown because the life jackets that are used are meant to allow 250 kilograms (about 550 pounds) to float. We actually got to try this out in a calm, not rocky part of the river and just float down part of it. We also got to flip out of the raft going over a short waterfall, climb a huge boulder and then jump in the river from the top of it, and go through a waterfall. At one point we stopped for about half an hour for some lunch, which was some pretty good burgers. The whole rafting trip lasted about 5 hours, so by the end we were pretty tired, but it was absolutely incredible. It was such an exhilarating experience that I would definitely do many times again. I felt quite accomplished by the end of the trip because they had told us that it was a grade 4 river out of 6. The only down side to the whole trip was that there were an obscene amount of these huge flies that would bite you, which not only would hurt, but itch too. Freddie gave us this lotion that did a pretty good job at keeping the flies from biting you because it had a fairly high concentration of deet in it, but a few days later I learned that I am in fact allergic to high concentrations of deet...that was fun. Oh well it was still well worth it. By the end of the trip I was definitely pretty tired so it was kind of nice to have a long trip home so that we could sleep on the bus. On the way back we once again stopped at the bar to get some fries and to see the pictures that the photographers took along the river. The seven of us ended up buying a disk of the pictures and just split the cost, so I’ll try to post those pictures soon. We hung out at the bar until about 4:30 (and no Mom and Dad we didn’t have any drinks, we were all way too tired) before heading the rest of the way home. The ride to and from the river was gorgeous. The whole area is covered in mountains that rise high enough into the sky that clouds surround the peaks. Once we got back to the hostel we got some food before meeting up with our friends from home for gelato again. We then spent the rest of our night walking around the area, which didn’t last too long because we were tired and wanted to get some sleep after the exhausting day we had. Besides we were going to have another early morning the next day.

Wednesday September 29, 2010

Wednesday morning we got up around 6 because we had to be at our dive boat by 7. Upon arriving at the dive boat we got some lovely, sleepy pictures taken of us (dive boats have on board photographers constantly taking pictures). We then had to fill out some paper work before we were able to leave and head out to the reef. Prior to leaving we were also assigned our guide, who I must note, looked freakishly like Mark with sideburns. He even acted like him; it was quite strange. Anyway, we could not have been luckier with the day we decided to go diving. The currents, winds and weather were so perfect that we got the opportunity to go out to Pellowes Reef, the furthest possible reef we could go to, which they are only able to make it to about once a year. For those of you who don’t know, the further out on the reef you can go, the better because it means it’s been less disturbed by humans. On the trip out to the reef we had to review a few things about diving with our guide and we also got to learn about what makes the Great Barrier Reef so great. Obviously it’s mostly due to the fact that it’s so massive, but I don’t think most people realize just how incredible it is that the reef got to the size it is given how long it actually takes coral to grow. Personally I think that in order to understand what’s so amazing about the Great Barrier Reef you just have to see it. The ride out to Pellowes took around 1.5 to 2 hours, but it was well worth the trip. Immediately after arriving we got into the water and began our guided dive. As it is diving is an incredible experience, let alone diving the Great Barrier Reef. You’re really in a whole new world when you’re diving; everything is so foreign to you and it’s so majestic that the wildlife just seems so undisturbed. Throughout the course of the day we went on three dives. The first two were in the morning at a reef that didn’t even have a name because so few people got to dive there. On those two dives we saw a huge assortment of fish from Nemo’s to Gill’s to Dory’s to parrot fish to barracudas and a shark. I would say at least 95% of the things I saw I have no idea what they’re called, but either way I’ve never seen so many fish before. The coral was also indescribable. There were both soft and hard coral in all colors, and near the surface the sun would reflect off the coral making it sparkle. Like I said, you have to see the GBR to understand why it’s called the GBR. After our second dive we ate the delicious lunch they provided for us while we moved to Thetford reef for our third dive. I don’t think I mentioned this earlier, but one of the nicest things about the trip was that we didn’t have to prepare any of our equipment; they did everything for us, which if you know anything about diving is really nice. Anyway, on our dive at Thetford reef our guide took us through a maze of coral caverns. Before anyone asks, yes the caverns were actually made entirely of coral. I’m not entirely sure how to describe the experience, but I think the best way is to just say that we were surrounded by coral. If we looked left, right or even if we rolled over to look above us we could just see coral. In all of this coral was a huge assortment of fish. In the more open areas we would see fish below us, roll ourselves over and see schools of fish above us. We were just surrounded by underwater wildlife. It was similar to the butterfly colony, but underwater. On this dive we also found three white tip sharks. White tips are just a small reef shark that are pretty scared of humans because we’re bigger than them, so m and d don’t worry, they wouldn’t harm us. Our guide brought an empty water bottle with him that he started crackling to attract the sharks. Apparently the vibrations from the water bottle are so unique to them that they are completely intrigued and will approach you. This allowed us to play with the sharks for a little while, which was unbelievable. I’m not entirely certain which dives we did what on, but throughout all of them we got to play with different underwater life forms. During the course of the day I ended up holding a sea star, different types of sea cucumbers, I played with an anemone, touched all different types of coral, played with giant clams, and played with Christmas tree coral. The whole experience was surreal. After our third dive, they brought us back to shore, and while on the trip back we filled out our dive logs with our guide. Upon returning it was almost dinnertime, so we headed back to our hostel and got some dinner. We also met our hostel roommates who just so happened to be students studying abroad at UQ and going on the same tour as us the next day. What are the odds of that? Later that night we met up with some of our other friends from UQ who also happened to be in Cairns for break and got some gelato/hung out together for a while. Once again we ended up having a fairly early night since we had to be up early again the next day for our whitewater rafting tour.

Tuesday September 28, 2010

Tuesday morning was an early morning, getting up at 3 am to make our 5 am flight. Since we were basically zombies at that point, not much happened. We just went through the necessary motions to get ourselves to the airport and onto our flight so that we could go back to sleep for 3 hours before arriving in Cairns. The only interesting thing about the flight was that apparently Darwin is a typical layover point for people traveling from Singapore, so they claimed we were flying international and we had to go through customs. That was just annoying more than anything. Anyway, once we arrived in Cairns we hung out at the airport for an hour before our friend Dani arrived. She had had another trip at the beginning of break so she decided to meet us in Cairns. Once we got to our hostel in Cairns, we decided to explore the area. Cairns has this really cute downtown area with a ton of shops and restaurants; such a nice change from Darwin. While walking around we found the dive shop that we wanted to take a dive trip through. Thankfully they had availability for the four of us to be able to go diving the next day. Once we booked that we continued to walk around and found that Cairns has a nicely landscaped area with a huge beach pool at it (similar to what I’ve described that Brisbane has, but bigger and nicer). While walking around the area we ended up going down to the harbor for a little while and decided to check out our dive boat, which looked awesome. We continued to walk around a for while and then decided to go to Woolworth’s (a grocery store) to get some breakfast food and snacks for the week. By the time we got back to our hostel it was close to dinnertime, and our hostel provided free dinner for all of its guests, so obviously that’s what we did for most of the week. Granted the dinners weren’t of the highest quality, but free food is free food. Later that night we decided to walk around the town and found some cool night markets. That pretty much sums up our Tuesday. We had been tired from the early morning and we were going to be getting up early the next morning for our dive, so we just went to bed after going to the night markets.

Monday September 27, 2010

Monday morning we had to wake up at 6 in order to pack up our stuff from the campsite, eat breakfast, and make sandwiches for lunch before leaving at 7. Once we got all of that done and got on the road, we made our way to the first gorge we were going to called Twin Falls Gorge. The drive took a couple hours mainly because in Darwin they pretty much only have dirt roads, and once we got to a certain point, we had to legitimately go off-roading. While we were off-roading we actually got to see some wild horses, which I’ve never seen before, so that was pretty cool. Upon arriving at the Twin Falls parking lot the first thing we did was cover ourselves in sunscreen and bug spray because Darwin is a bug filled sauna. We then proceeded to go to a boat, which would take us down a river through the gorge. As we were going down the river these enormous cliff walls surrounded us on either side rising probably close to 400 feet. You’ll have to look at the pictures on facebook to even get an idea of what they looked like because honestly, words can’t describe it. The boat took us as close to the center of the gorge as possible at which point we had to hike the rest of the way. The first part of the hike was through sand trails, but it eventually turned to boulders before we got to the beach at the center of the gorge. Looking at the center of the gorge all you see is white beach leading into water that is surrounded on 3 sides by 400-foot cliffs with a waterfall on one side. Granted the waterfall wasn’t running too much because it was the dry season, but the whole place was absolutely gorgeous. Again you’ll have to see the pictures on facebook to even get an idea of what it looked like. Sadly, no matter how badly we wanted to, we couldn’t go swimming in the water in the gorge because it was filled with crocodiles. Once we left Twin Falls we went off-roading to another waterfall, Jim Jim Falls. Again, since it was the dry season it wasn’t really running too much so they change the name to Jim Jim Drip. To get to this waterfall we had to hike the longest 900m (just over half a mile) I’ve ever seen through sand and boulders. Although the hike was long, we got to experience the most incredible thing. The forest you have to hike through has a huge butterfly colony in it and when you get close to the colony they all start to fly around you. I felt like I was in a movie with thousands of butterflies all around me. I tried to get a picture and video of it, but nothing does it justice. Once we passed the butterfly colony the sand path we were walking along became a boulder path. As it is, the temperature was around 85 to 90 degrees, now try climbing over black boulders to get to the center of the gorge. Needless to say every pore on our bodies was dripping sweat. When we finally got to the center of the gorge, we were in desperate need of a swim. Thankfully at the center of this gorge it was highly unlikely that there would be any crocodiles (aka there aren’t any but since it’s animals, which are unpredictable, they can’t just claim that there aren’t any), which meant that we got to go swimming in the water that was 63 m deep (about 200 feet), surrounded on three sides by 300-400 foot cliffs. This was probably the most refreshing swim I have ever had in my life. It was also the most surreal swim I’ve ever had. Swimming in the middle of a gorge filled with aquamarine water surrounded by 300 foot cliffs? The whole place just looked like something you see in National Geographic, not in real life. What was even more interesting was that as we swam the 100 m to the other side of the water where the “waterfall” was the water temperature kept changing. One minute you’d be in warm water and the next you’d be in cold water; such a strange sensation. When we swam to the other side of the water there were ledges that you could sit on, so our whole tour group stayed over there for a while and just hung out and talked. After a while we started getting hungry and decided to swim back to the other side to eat our sandwiches we had made for lunch. After lunch we hung out a while longer and swam a little bit more before we had to head back to the truck to head home. On the drive home we saw more wild horses and we were actually able to take some pictures of them (on facebook). Aside from seeing the wild horses, the drive home was uneventful. By the time we got back to Darwin it was dinnertime, so we quickly showered and then went to get some food. Our tour guide had recommended we go to the Victory Hotel for dinner if we wanted some cheap, good food. As college students, nothing sounds more appealing so Katie, Carrie and I went there for dinner. After the intense tour we had just had we felt that we deserved a treat, so after dinner we went to get some delicious gelato. The next morning we were going to be having a 5 am flight to Cairns meaning we’d have to be up at around 3, so after gelato we decided to go back to our hostel, pack our stuff up, and attempt to go to bed in our insanely hot room.

Just as a heads up to anyone who is still checking this, I'm working on writing out the details from break, but since we did so much it's a taking me a while. However, I have been keeping up with writing daily blogs, I just want to post everything in order. So once I finish writing the ones from break, I will be able to finally fully update you guys. Love you and miss you!

Britt

Sunday September 26, 2010

Sunday morning we had to wake up around 5 to get all our stuff together for our overnight 4wd tour, which we were getting picked up for at 6. The tour was taking us through Kakadu National Park, which is supposed to be one of the most incredible national parks in Australia. After the tour I definitely understood how it could be labeled as such. The first stop on the tour was to see the Tradition Owners of the park so that they could welcome us to the park. Traditional Owners is a more proper term for Aboriginals and the park is one of their cultural landscapes. As such it is proper/necessary to have them welcome you to the land. The Traditional Owners that welcomed us to Kakadu also taught us a little bit about some of their cultural traditions. That included learning about how didgeridoos are made and what their significance is, how baskets/bags are made and from what materials, and how to make/throw spears. It was very interesting although after taking my Aboriginal Heritage class I kind of felt bad because most Aborigines feel that by us partaking in their traditional activities, such as throwing spears, we are mocking them. Either way the TOs that we met were very kind and welcoming. After welcoming us we went on a crocodile cruise where I learned a lot of interesting information about crocs that kind of gave me a new perspective on them. For instance, crocs can sense heartbeats so well that they can pick out every individual person’s heartbeat on a boat. Also, crocs are pretty smart animals and don’t want to take on a bunch of humans, which is why there are no recorded instances of a crocodile attacking a boat without being instigated. On the croc cruise we did get to see one along with a bunch of different birds including eagles and cranes. We actually got the honor of seeing two sets of male and female cranes together, which is practically unheard of. If you look at my facebook pictures you’ll also see the huge lily pads that we got to pick out of the billabong (where we took the cruise). After the cruise we went to Ubirr where we got to hike up a mountain and see a bunch of Aboriginal rock art. I personally think my pictures will speak better than my words, but I have never seen anything like this. At the top of the mountain looking out over the land seeing wild kangaroos hopping through the grass and groups of cockatoos across the land, it was one of the most majestic places I’ve ever seen. Not to mention the colors; there were shades of green that I never even imagined existed. Oddly enough, the view made me think of what you might stereotypically see in Africa minus the animals. The utter silence combined with the majestic view easily makes it the most serene place I’ve ever been to in my entire life. Once we left Ubirr we headed to our campgrounds where we were going to spend the night. I can honestly say that this was the most luxurious “campground” I’ve ever seen. We had fixed tents with bunk beds in them and the campground had a restaurant, bar, and two pools. Like I said, I’d hardly call it camping, but I didn’t mind because the pool was definitely needed and the bunk beds were a lot better than sleeping on the ground. Upon arriving at the campsite we unloaded, prepared dinner (chicken satay with rice), and then ate as a group. Speaking of which we had a great group of people from France, England, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and America. Everyone was very nice and outgoing making the trip a lot of fun. After dinner a bunch of us went to the pool to cool off because we had been dripping sweat all day including through dinner, so like I said it was much needed. Once we dried off after the pool we decided to go to bed because we had another early morning ahead of us, which would be followed by a long day filled with exciting activities.

Saturday September 25, 2010

Saturday morning I was up pretty early because I was leaving for my spring break trip with Katie and Carrie. We had a 12 pm flight to Darwin and arrived in Darwin around 3. We got a cab to our hostel, checked in and then decided to walk around the “city”. I’d hardly call it a city because it’s in the middle of nowhere and has hardly any restaurants/shops, but since it’s pretty much the only developed area around there, it’s called a city. For those of you reading this that are from Cheshire I would say take West Main Street, squish the buildings together while adding a few 6 story buildings, put it on flat land, throw in a little artistic graffiti and that’s what the streets in Darwin looked like. I must say though, the graffiti in Darwin was really cool. I put up some pictures on facebook of it, but someone actually replicated Van Gogh’s Starry Night; it was quite impressive. Anyway, while we were walking around we were pretty hungry because we hadn’t gotten lunch so we decided to look for a restaurant. You’d think that wouldn’t be too hard, but based on what I said earlier it turned out to be quite the daunting task. Eventually we found a cute little Italian restaurant and got pizza and chips (aka fries), which based on how hungry we were, couldn’t have been more delicious. After dinner the sun was just starting to set so we walked toward a park that overlooked the water and got to see a beautiful sunset that was only slightly ruined by the bugs. I’m not sure what it is about me, but mosquitoes love me and they ate me alive. It was also close to a million degrees outside so even just standing outside we were sweating like crazy, but oh well it was still a good night. After watching the sunset we walked around the city a little more and got some gelato, which has easily become one of my favorite things to eat here. What’s even better is that they have an endless amount of flavors and each night the flavors at gelato places change so you can always try something new. At this point we were pretty tired and went back to our hostel to relax by the pool for a little while before going to bed fairly early because we were leaving for a 4wd tour the next morning at 6.

Monday September 20, 2010 - Friday September 24, 2010

So after how long it's been since I last posted I'm not even sure if any of you will still be checking this, but anyway I'm sorry it took me so long to post again. I've had a pretty hectic last few weeks. Monday I had a lazy morning just kind of lounging around before my 3-hour class at 1. Speaking of which, that class couldn’t have been more boring. Our teacher had a speaker come for half of it and he was one of the most monotone people I have ever met. The rest of the day/night was pretty relaxing. Side note, I wrote that a while ago but never posted it hence the knowledge of details from Monday but since I’ve waited so long to post I don’t really remember the details of the week too well. I do however know that nothing too thrilling happened. It was just another week and it was right before break so none of us really did much because we knew how crazy our next week would be. Tuesday and Thursday I went to volleyball per usual. Thursday the volleyball team went out together to the Vic, which was a lot of fun. Friday I spent packing for my trip and then I went to the movies with my friends Nicole and Adrienne to see Easy A, which was pretty funny. It kind of seems like it might be the next Mean Girls. After the movie I went home and finished packing before attempting to go to bed too excited to sleep. I promise the next several posts will have much more detail because a lot happened over my trip. I love you and miss you!

Britt

Sunday September 19, 2010

Sunday I got up fairly early and just lounged around for a while with Katie. Then at 11:30 I had volleyball training. I can’t remember if I wrote about this before, but one of the people in charge of running the social volleyball team also coaches some competitive teams. A couple weeks ago at volleyball he asked one of my friends and me to join his girls team, who travel around the state of Queensland and play in tournaments. What better way for me to see Australia than travel to beaches around the state playing in tournaments? So anyway, part of what this obviously requires is training with him, which is what I did on Sunday. It started at 11:30 and technically went until 2, but we were having so much fun we ended up playing until 3:30 (we also didn’t want to go home and do work). There were 6 girls there, myself included, four of whom I was pretty good friends with before hand. The boys team was also playing on the court next to us so once we stopped playing we all hung out for a little while before heading home. Once I got back home I showered and then headed over to my friend Erin’s house where her, Carrie, Katie, Dani and I watched Greek and just hung out for the night. All in all, a great day! I am now officially caught up and I will once again attempt to keep up with my blog. I’ll talk to you soon!!

Britt

Saturday September 18, 2010

Saturday I had a field trip to North Stradbroke Island. We left UQ at 7:30 in the morning, drove to the ferry and got to Straddie by about 10 am. The field trip was for my Aboriginal Heritage class, and in that class we are learning a lot about the laws in Australia governing Aboriginals, which I might add, are quite ridiculous. Australia has basically taken everything from these poor people. I honestly feel like I’m back in the 1920’s with the way they treat these people. It’s only within the last 30 years that they were finally qualified as people. This might partially be due to the fact that Australia doesn’t have a bill of rights, and most people think that they don’t need one. Like I said, it’s absolutely ridiculous! Anyway, one of the major issues for Aboriginal people is that the government creates laws that make it sound like they will protect Aboriginal heritage sites that people want to develop on, but in practice it allows the government to go through with those development and therefore destroy places that are incredibly significant to Aboriginal people. Sometimes these areas have resources that help the Aboriginals to survive, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the Australia government. Some of the only people that advocate for the Aboriginal people are anthropologists who evaluate Aboriginal cultural landscapes and then try to convince the government not to develop on that area of land. In essence this is what we as a class had to do on Straddie. We had to go to two areas on North Stradbroke Island and evaluate the significance of those areas. Part of this required us interacting with the Aboriginal people, who were incredibly kind and welcoming. They showed us around the areas and told us stories that explained the major connections they had with the areas. It was absolutely fascinating! The first area that we went to was a creek that led out to the ocean. When we went there it was low tide so we got to walk out onto a mudflat and see all of the resources that the area provides. We also saw these “armies” of crabs travelling together. There were thousands of them walking together all over the mudflat. The second area we went to was called Brown Lake, which was gorgeous. I’ll post pictures of both places on facebook. Overall the whole experience was enlightening. The Aboriginal people that we worked with were so welcoming to us even after the way most other white people treat them. It made it hard to believe that people could actually be mean to them. Anyway, after we visited Brown Lake we headed back to the ferry to head home, and we ended up getting back to UQ around 6. At that point I headed home to make dinner and then went and got ice cream with Katie since all of our roommates were still gone. That night we were both exhausted so we just hung out and watched some movies. That’s all for now and I’ll note that you should all be proud of me because it’s been less than 2 days since my last post!! Love you and miss you!

Britt

Friday September 17, 2010

Friday morning I got up pretty early, got ready and headed to the library to finish editing my paper before handing it in. After that I did a bunch of work and ended up getting back from the library at around 4, at which point I decided to go grocery shopping because I basically only had potatoes left. This weekend my house was really quiet because it was just Katie and I left there: Julia went away for the weekend, Zach went to Darwin, and Dani and Nick went with most of our neighbors to Byron Bay for the weekend. Katie and I would have joined but she had a job interview on Saturday and I had a field trip to North Stradbroke Island. Anyway, since it was just the two of us left we decided to be cute and go get some take out Indian Feast together. We brought it back home and ate it on our deck and got to have some bonding time, which was fun. I then got all of my stuff ready for my field trip to North Stradbroke Island, including making a bag lunch (my first one since I’ve been here). That’s all for now. I’ll write about Straddie soon, but there’s too much detail involved in that for me to write it tonight. Love you and miss you!

Britt

Thursday September 16, 2010

Thursday per usual is my long day of classes, so I went to those and then went to the library to work on my paper. Like I said before, I’m really bad at writing and come up with any/every reason not to do it. On a side note, I forgot to mention that school elections were going on this week. It’s interesting to see how a school in a foreign country runs elections. They actually have political parties on campus and their members all advertise and solicit for their party. The two main parties also had shirts made that they wore all week; one was yellow and one was red. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I had people in these red and yellow shirts come up to me and ask me if I had voted yet. I learned quickly to say I had because otherwise they made you sit through their whole spiel on why you should vote for their party. Like I said, that was just an interesting side note about this week. Anyway, after classes I went to the library to work on my paper and then went to volleyball. I must admit, at first volleyball was pretty slow, but then it got a lot better and I ended up playing doubles until 9 (usually we end at 8). Later some volleyball kids were going out to the Vic so when I got back I made some dinner, got ready and went out with them, which was a lot of fun. All in all it was a good day. I promise to update again soon!

Britt

Wednesday September 15, 2010

Wednesday was just another wonderful day of circuits. I had circuits class from 10-12 and then I had to study for my circuits practical exam in the library until 3 when I had the exam for an hour. Obviously part of the test would be verbal questioning…my favorite and the other part was building/testing a circuit. Hopefully I did all right on that. The paper that was due today that I had been working on was given an extension until Friday so after my prac I worked on that a little bit. Then, later that night I went out with the girls to the typical Wednesday night bar, the Regatta, which was pretty fun, and needed to get my mind off of circuits. That just about sums up Wednesday for me, but I’ll post again soon!

Britt

Tuesday September 14, 2010

Tuesday I got up fairly early to go to Toowong to get some more internet. About 10 minutes after I got back we had an inspector come to make sure we were living in livable conditions. We haven’t heard from him since so I’m assuming we passed. Once he left I headed to the library because I had a paper due on Wednesday. It was only a three page paper, but I despise writing so much (clearly based on how often I post) that it actually takes me all day to do something like that. After the library I hung out for a little while before heading to volleyball, which was fun as always. Then, I just did some work and hung out with some friends. That’s all for now. Love you and miss you!

Britt

Monday September 13, 2010

Today I honestly did a whole lot of nothing. I slept in this morning since I hardly slept last weekend with scuba, and then I went to my class from 1-4. After that I went to the library for a little while to try to get some work done, but I didn’t really end up getting much done…oh well. Later that night Katie, Dani, Carrie and I went to Erin’s house for a girls’ night to watch Greek. Like I said, I didn’t really do anything useful today. I’ll post again soon!

Britt

Saturday September 11, 2010 - Sunday September 12, 2010

Saturday morning I had to be up by 5:30 to get ready and meet up with my friends Claire and Adrian to get a taxi to scuba diving. We had to be there by 7 and we thought it took 45 minutes to get there so we left at 6, but it turns out that it only took 20 minutes so we ended up getting there a little bit early. Once we got there we had to fill out a bunch of paper work and then take a quick review test just to make sure we knew the most important information about diving. We then got all our gear sized up and they drove us to a pool at the Gold Coast. Once at the pool we had to take our swimming test, which consisted of swimming 200 m without stopping (there and back twice in an Olympic sized pool), and treading water for 10 minutes. The hardest part was probably the 200 m swim but even that wasn’t that bad. Once we finished the test (all 5 of us passed) we began our dive training, which on Saturday began with 3 pool dives. On these dives our instructors would show us something such as how to get water out of your mask when you’re underwater and then we would have to repeat it. We also learned a lot about what to do if you run out of air. Since you always dive with a buddy it’s not actually that bad of a situation and there are many simple quick solutions. After our three pool dives we went to Tweed River and did two dives there. The visibility in the water wasn’t too great because of the changing tides, but that worked out better for us because it taught us how to deal with low visibility situations so we’ll be incredibly comfortable when we go to places such as the reef. On the two open water dives we basically did the same skills we practiced in the pool, but it was slightly more difficult in open water due to currents. While on the dives we saw a bunch of schools of fish and I saw a puffer fish. I also got to see a sea turtle. Granted it wasn’t while we were diving, but it was still pretty cool. I must say, diving for the first time was a strange feeling, especially when you thought about the fact that you’re breathing underwater, but it was so much fun and I can’t wait to go again. The only part I don’t like is putting on the wet suits. In order for them to be effective they have to be incredibly tight, which makes them incredibly difficult to put on. Dad you’ll appreciate this story…When we finished diving, we were packing up our gear into the cars and looked across the river at an island where cars can drive along the beach. Well, high tide was coming and some idiot decided to park fairly close to the edge of the water and his suv got stuck in the sand. He was all by himself and couldn’t get his car out so he had to watch it go underwater as the tide came in. Granted we felt bad just watching but there was nothing we could do. After we got home that night Claire and I decided to go out for some cheap sushi and ice cream. We thought we deserved it after diving all day, which turns out to be very exhausting. Needless to say, I did not go out that night, but I still hung out with everyone for a little while before going to bed.

Sunday I got to sleep in an extra half hour since we knew how long it actually took to get there. From the dive shop our instructors drove us to the pool where we had two more pool dives to do. Again we just practiced some general skills, which we would later have to apply in the open water. After the pool dives we headed back to Tweed River to complete our last two open water dives before being officially certified. The visibility today was much better and we got to see a ton of different fish. Our first dive was typical shore dive, but our second dive was a drift dive, which was awesome. It’s exactly what it sounds like; you get into a current and just let it carry you along. We took the current, which made you go really fast, down to a beach, and along the way saw a huge assortment of fish from pipe fish to puffer fish to fish like Gill from Finding Nemo. It was absolutely incredible! After the drift dive we walked back to our site, packed up our gear and then hung out for a little while with a couple that had just finished their advanced diver certification course. I think the best part about diver certifications is that they work all over the world and never expire so this is something that I’ll always have. When we got back to the dive shop we got our dive logbooks, filled them out, got our certificates and obviously took some pictures. That night once we got home I relaxed and then just crashed. I was so exhausted from the weekend, but it was well worth it! That’s all for now, but I’ll post again soon (and I actually mean that this time). Love you and miss you!

Britt

Monday Septemper 6, 2010 - Friday September 10, 2010

Ok so I know it’s been a while since I updated this so I’m going to have to give limited details on last week because I don’t remember the specifics that well. Monday I went to my classes and hung out with my friends. Tuesday I did some work and then went grocery shopping with Carrie, Dani and Camilla for Taco Tuesday. After shopping I went to volleyball and then went to Taco Tuesday at Carrie’s house. We all ended up hanging out at Carrie’s house for a while discussing traveling plans. Then, Nicki, Dani and I went back to my house and we painted our nails, which didn’t go so well for Nicki and I (there are pictures of how awfully we painted our nails on facebook). Wednesday I had class in the morning and then went grocery shopping. I ended up deciding to make some chocolate chip cookies because I missed them so much. They weren’t as good as mom’s, but no ones ever are. I also had to make them the ghetto way. We don’t have measuring spoons so I had to guesstimate with a regular spoon. I also had to borrow my neighbor’s mixing bowl because we don’t have one. Once I finally finished mixing the batter I realized we didn’t have a baking tray so I had to make something up. I decided to attempt to use the bottom of a cheesecake pan because apparently we have one of those but not a mixing bowl, measuring spoons or baking sheets. That could only fit four cookies at a time so I finally decided to use my microwave tray as a baking sheet. Overall it turned out pretty well, but sugar here is not as finely granulated, and you could tell when you ate the cookies. Thursday I had classes all day, did some work and then went to volleyball. After volleyball some people came over to my house before going out to the Victory, which seems to be our new place to go to. During this time, Dani and I decided it would be fun to make cookies again...so we did and they were scrumtrulescent. Friday I spent almost the entire day in the library doing my online course work for my scuba certification because I was going to get my dive cert that weekend. Later that evening we had a girls’ night and watched Greek for a while. After that I had to go back home and finish up my scuba course work/get everything ready for the next day. All right I’m going to stop here and write about the weekend in a separate post. I’ll write again soon! Love ya!!

Britt

Sunday September 5, 2010

First and foremost: Happy Birthday Jack!! I love you and miss you and I'm sorry I can't be home for your birthday. I hope you had a great day and I'm glad I got to skype with you!
Anyway, Sunday I spent having a girl’s day with my friend Claire. We went shopping at Queen Street Mall, which is an open/outdoor mall. We then went to the wine store together because we recently discovered that we both appreciate red wine and they have a deal where if you buy 12 bottles you get 30% your entire purchase. So we went and together we got 12 bottles. A decent up front payment but well worth it in the long run. It’s like Dad buying butter in bulk; it saves a lot of money in the long run. We also decided that we’re going to have to go to some wineries and do some tastings. By the time we got back from our shopping excursion it was close to 3 and it was just starting to rain. We definitely got lucky with our timing because not more than half an hour after we got back, it started torrential down pouring for the rest of the day/night. On that note, I spent the rest of the day inside relaxing with the roomies. That’s all for now, but I promise to try to catch up with my blog later today. It’s been a crazy last few weeks with midterms. I love you and miss you!

Britt

Saturday September 4, 2010

Saturday was opening night of Brisbane’s Riverfire Festival. It’s this huge festival that lasts the entire month of September where they have all sorts of musicians and plays and whatnot going on every night. However, opening night is the Riverfire portion where they set up fireworks all along the Brisbane River and then have two F1-11s fly over and do a fuel dump. Yes for all you environmentalists it’s very not environmentally friendly, but when the planes dump their fuel it ignites and so it looks like there are rockets flying through the air, and no none of the fuel itself actually falls on the ground. You environmentalists will also be happy to know that this is the last year that they’re doing it, so I’m quite happy that I got to see it. Anyway, during the day my roommates and I pretty much just hung out. We were going to go to Streets Beach in South Bank, but we realized that we would then have to come back pretty early to get ready for Riverfire (we were leaving around 4 for it) and then head back to South Bank because that’s where people watch it. Needless to say, it would have been pointless to go back and forth from South Bank that day. We didn’t end up getting there until around 5 or 5:30 and the fireworks started at 7, but even by then South Bank was absolutely packed. At that point we found a good spot on Streets Beach and then Katie, Carrie and I went to get food, which took forever. We went to an express seafood place to get some fish and chips and probably waited in line for an hour. Then we had to get back to our spot, which was quite the difficult task because there were so many people there. On the bright side we got back with just enough time to eat our food and then the fireworks started. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a fireworks show as incredible as this. They had fireworks going off in 3 or 4 different areas along the river and they had them coming from buildings. All of the fireworks were synchronized and going along to music. Then there were the planes that flew over. The best way to describe the show is through my pictures, which I’ll post soon. Just to give you an idea though of how incredible it was, there were 600,000 fireworks that they set off. The only down side to this is that now whenever I watch fireworks I’ll compare it to this show, and I don’t think anything will ever compare. Oh and at the beginning they literally lit part of the river on fire. I also have to note that before the show started there was a blackhawk flying up and down the river, which for those of you who don't know, the company I work for builds them. After the show, we went back to my friend Sam’s apartment and hung out there for a little while before going to the Victory. By the time we got to the bar it was probably close to 11:30 or 12 and I think I ended up heading home around 1. The bar was packed and you felt like a sardine and I was soaked because it had been raining so it wasn’t the most comfortable conditions there. All in all though, I must say it was an incredible night! That’s all for now!! I hope all is well back home!!

Britt

Friday September 3, 2010

Friday was a fairly uneventful day, but I kind of needed that. I spent most of the day hanging out with my friends on one of our decks. While we were out there we decided that we wanted to go to a rugby match because you can’t get much more Australian than that. As it turns out, Friday night was the Brisbane Broncos last home game of the season so we decided to go to that. The game started at 7:30 and we probably got there around 7 or so. Watching rugby has made me realize a. just how girly football players are and b. just how boring football is. Rugby is so intense. First of all, they have no padding (not even helmets) but get tackled just as hard as football players do. Second, the game just keeps going. It’s a rare occasion that the time stops. However, unlike in football 99% of the time is actually playing rather than standing around and setting up plays. I know that if anyone reading this likes football you’re probably going to hate me for what I just said, but if you watch a real rugby game, you’ll completely understand and probably agree with me. I just wish rugby was bigger in the states because the games are fun to go to and it’s a really cool/interesting sport. Granted the Broncos lost, but it was a close game and they had a good comeback. They were losing 18-4 in the last 10 minutes and managed to comeback and make the score 18-16, so it got really intense at the end. Either way it was a lot of fun and I hope I get to go again at some point. Quick side note, apparently Australian’s love their fireworks. Every time the Broncos scored, they would set off fireworks haha. Also, the refs had to wear neon pink shirts; it was amazing. Anyway, after the rugby game it was around 10 and we headed back home. We all then went over to my friend Erin’s house and had a girl’s night. We’ve actually been doing that a lot lately, but we all love it and she has a really nice house that has a very homey feel to it. Alright that’s all for now, but I’ll update again soon!! I love you and miss you!!

Britt

Wednesday September 1, 2010- Thursday September 2, 2010

Wednesday, as I mentioned earlier, was the day of my circuits exam, so I had that from 10-12. I then had a little break before my circuits lab so I hung out with Katie at one of the cafes on campus. After lab I had to work on my circuits problem journal because it was due the next day, and I spent the rest of the night/early morning doing that. I didn’t finish it until 5:30 in the morning…awesome night. Yea Wednesday pretty much sucked, but once Thursday morning was over it was smooth sailing for the rest of the week as far as work is concerned. However, Thursdays are my busiest days as far as class is concerned and with the amount of sleep that I had gotten it was a little rough to make it through them. Once my classes were over I went grocery shopping and then it was time for volleyball. By the time I got back from volleyball one of my roommates had some kids over so I hung out with them for a little while and then we went out to two bars: Friday’s and the Victory. Friday’s was kind of lame and when we got to the Victory I was so tired from not sleeping the night before that I just didn’t feel like being out anymore so I headed home early. That’s all for now but I’ll update again soon!!

Britt

Tuesday August 31, 2010

Tuesdays, as I’ve already mentioned many times, are my day off. My plan for the day was to go to the travel agent in the morning, study for a while, go to volleyball, and then study some more. Obviously since I had a plan things didn’t go as planned. In the morning we did get to go to the travel agent however I did not anticipate having to be there for 5 hours. On the bright side, Katie, Carrie, Dani and I booked our trip!!! We’re going to go to Darwin for the first few days and do take a tour of some of the national parks up there, which are supposed to be incredible. We’re then going to go to Cairns (Great Barrier Reef) and do a tour that takes us white water rafting one day, on a rainforest tour the next day, and then scuba diving the last day. We’re all so excited for it!! After we finally booked this I went to the library for a little while to study and then went to volleyball. Sadly though I didn’t get to play much volleyball because one of the kids on the team is in my circuits class (the one I had the exam in the next day) and was helping me figure out some of the stuff for our exam. There’s definitely a reason that I’m majoring in mechanical engineering and not electrical engineering. Anyway, once I left vball I spent the rest of the night studying…fun stuff. I promise to update again soon!! Love you and miss you!!

Britt

Monday August 30, 2010

Hey Everyone!! I hope this post finds you all well! Monday can basically be summed up into 3 words: paper, class, library. I spent the morning finishing my paper before I had to turn it in. In Australia they have a strange way of turning stuff in. You have to print out a cover sheet that has a bar code on it, attach it to your assignment, and then go to a building to drop it off. When you drop it off you put it in this slot that reads the bar code and notifies your professor as to when you handed it in. Why you can’t just hand it in in class I have no idea. Anyway, after I turned in my paper I had my 3 hour anthropology class, which is fairly interesting, it’s just really long. Then, as soon as class was over I went to the library to study for my exam on Wednesday. The day after the exam I had to turn in my “problem journal” for that class, which is just a notebook where you do all your mandatory problems for the class, so when I say I was studying, I was working on the problem journal (in engineering doing problems is studying). I got back from the library around 6 or 7 made some dinner and studied a little bit more. I then hung out with some of my friends for a little while and we finalized our plans for spring break and made a plan to go to the travel agent on Tuesday. I’ll update you again soon!!

Britt

Saturday August 28, 2010 - Sunday August 29, 2010

Hey everyone! When I started writing this post it was less than a week since posting, but then I lost motivation for writing, sorry. On Saturday a bunch of my friends and I went back to the Gold Coast for a day trip. The weather was absolutely perfect. It was a gorgeous, warm day with hardly a cloud in the sky and almost no breeze. We left for the Gold Coast at around 8 in the morning and after taking some public transportation, we were settled on the beach by around 10. We were all pretty tired when we got there so I think that pretty much all of us ended up taking a nap. We layed out/slept for most of the morning and then it was lunchtime and some of us went to get some $10 fish and chips (fries are called chips in Australia). Considering it was an entire meal for $10, which mind you is even less in U.S. money, it was pretty good. I then spent most of the rest of the afternoon laying out. Towards the later afternoon my friend Zach and I were getting a little bored so we decided to bury our friend Adam. We started out doing it while he was sleeping, but then he woke up, but still agreed to be buried anyway. As we were burying him some little girls around 4 or 5 years old who were nearby came over to “help” us. I think they ended up pulling more sand off of him than they put on him but it was cute. Once we finished turning Adam into a mermaid the girls decided it would be fun to jump on him, which was pretty cute/funny to watch. As I’m writing this I’m realizing how creepy this sounds, but I swear it wasn’t, their parents were sitting a little ways in front of us. After the whole burying escapade, we spent a little bit more time on the beach, but the sun was starting to go down a little bit and the way the Gold Coast is set up, there are sky scrapers right along the beach so their shadows were starting to hit us. We ended up leaving the beach around 5 and walked around the downtown area a little bit. It’s a really nice area with a lot of great, classic surf shops such as Billabong and Hurley. We also went to a milkshake bar where you pick any kind of candy you want (there were about 50 different kinds) and they make a milkshake out of it. Needless to say it was incredible. After that we headed home and ended up getting back around 10. We were pretty wiped so we just hung out that night.

On Sunday I had to do work all day because I had a paper due on Monday for a professor that hates American students (yes she actually told us that word for word on the first day of class). Still haven’t gotten that paper back so we’ll see how that goes haha. I also had an exam on Wednesday so I needed to study for that. Sadly, unlike most study abroad students my grades transfer hence why I actually have to do work here. So like I said I spent Sunday doing work ugh, but at least I was able to do it outside at one of our campus’ outdoor cafes, which was nice. That’s all for this post but I’ll start working on catching up. Love you and miss you!!

Britt

Friday August 27, 2010

I have finally caught up and reached the present with my blog!!! On that note, today was fairly uneventful. Dan left this morning to fly to Sydney so I got up at 9 to say bye. Once he left I got myself organized because I had been neglecting my dishes this week. I then got ready for the day and called home and talked to my family for a while. I actually got to talk to just about everyone today: mom, dad, sam, and kate. Jack and Mark we’ll have to skype again soon! Once I did that headed to Toowong, the local shopping village because I needed some groceries and assorted other things such as shampoo/conditioner. Once I got back from Toowong I made myself some lunch and then headed to campus to get some more work done. I think I made it through an hour of work before my attention span became less than that of a gold fish. After that I honestly just hung out the rest of the night and as I’m sure you’ve noted, caught up on my blog. Everyone’s had a pretty long week with midterms and papers and so we’re all exhausted right now. Not to mention since we had just gone out for Sam’s birthday we had all just had a pretty late night last night anyway. Also, we’re getting up early tomorrow and heading back to the Gold Coast for a day trip. Alright well that’s all I have to tell for now, and now that I’ve caught up on my blog I’m going to try to be better about keeping up with it. Love you and miss you!!!

Britt

Thursday August 26, 2010

Thursday was not much better than Wednesday. It’s my busiest day as far as classes are concerned and then throw on top of it my work load, and trying to show Dan around. I ended up just showing him around campus a little and giving him some ideas for places he could visit in Brisbane, which he went off and did. I pretty much spent today going to classes and in between them I would study for my exam, which was my last class of the day. After all of my classes were over I went to the library until about 6:30 to work on my paper. I should note that normally it wouldn’t take me this long to write a paper, but my teacher hates my writing style so I have to try to make it sound like what she wants. Being an engineering major, as it is I hate writing, let alone changing my writing style and then writing a paper (she makes me quite bitter in case you can’t tell). Then, when I finally got home from the library (still not done with the paper) I checked my email only to find out that she gave us an extension until Monday. As happy as I was to get an extension, it would have been nice to know earlier so I didn’t waste my whole day stressing about it in the library. On a better note, that night was my friend Sam’s 21st birthday so obviously we all had to go out and celebrate it. We went over to her house first (she's my neighbor) and then we went to the Victory (a bar), which was a lot of fun. That's all for now.

Britt

Wednesday August 25, 2010

Wednesday was just loads of fun…please note the sarcasm. I had a circuits course from 10 to 12, and then I went to the library until about 6. I had been trying to switch to a different course from my anthropology one, but that failed and I found out on Wednesday that I wouldn’t be able to take a different course. Since I had been trying to get out of it, I didn’t bother to start my paper that was due on Friday, for which I had to use at least 8 articles…awesome. So now not only did I have to study for my exam on Thursday, but I also had to start my paper, which is why I spent my entire day in the library. That night when I got back from the library Dan came over to stay with me for two nights so he wouldn’t have to pay for a hostel while he was in Brisbane. I felt so bad, but it honestly couldn’t have been worse timing because I had so much work. This Wednesday was pretty much the first Wednesday night since I’ve been here that I couldn’t go out. Like I said, bad timing. That honestly just sums up my Wednesday, work all day. I'll post again soon. Love you and miss you!

Britt

Tuesday August 24, 2010

Tuesday is my day off so I started off my morning with a “nice” run. I hadn’t run in a while so it was a little tough to say the least, especially with the hills around here. I then spent most of the rest of the morning cleaning. Our kitchen and floors were getting pretty gross and we have recently discovered a massive ant nest outside our house, and I’m hoping to keep them out of our house. Once I finished cleaning I got some lunch and then headed to campus for a little while. That night I went to beach volleyball, per usual, but I headed home early for Taco Tuesday! It’s pretty self explanatory, but I’ll note anyway that on Taco Tuesday we all go to our friend Carrie’s house (she lives next door) and she makes tacos. We’ll help a little bit, but she does most of the work, and she does the grocery shopping. One of the best parts about the whole thing though is that it’s fun to all get together for dinner one night a week because it reminds me of family dinners back home. After that I had to go home and study for my exam that I had on Thursday because sadly UConn doesn’t do study abroad as a pass/fail, they actually have my grades transfer back home. That's all for now!

Britt

Monday August 23, 2010

I’m almost at the present now! Ok so Monday I had my typical classes, which consists of math in the morning for an hour and then an anthropology course for three hours in the afternoon. Let me just say, it is quite brutal to sit through three full straight hours of aboriginal heritage. Thank you UConn for forcing students to become “well rounded”. This Monday was particularly brutal because following my anthropology lecture I had to go to my fluid mechanics lab. Apparently for that class we only have one lab all semester so I can’t really complain, but prior to lab I hadn’t had a coffee all day, which, for anyone who knows anything about me, is not ok. Anyway, lab wasn’t too bad. It was only an hour and a half and I got to meet some kids in my class so now when I have questions I have people I can go to. After that it was almost 7 so I went back home, made some dinner and hung out with friends the rest of the night. I promise to post again soon!

Britt

Monday August 16, 2010 - Sunday August 22, 2010

Ok so I’m going to try to start to catch up again and in order to do that, last week won’t have much detail. That’s also due in part to the fact that pretty much nothing eventful happened Monday through Friday of last week/I don’t remember specifics that well anymore (yes I know what you will all say to that one, post more often. Well I’m working on it) Per usual on Tuesday and Thursday evening I went to beach volleyball with my friends, which is always a lot of fun. We had our what is now becoming weekly Taco Tuesday. Wednesday night we went out to the typical Wednesday night bar, the Regatta. If you’ve read my previous posts then you’ll know that when we went to the Gold Coast we met someone from New Zealand. Well, she was travelling through Brisbane on Wednesday and Thursday so she crashed with us during that time, which was fun. Even with her here though, we still pretty much went about our typical week, except it was a little more fun because we had someone new around. Other than that my week was filled with classes, homework and relaxation. This brings me to Saturday and since I’m starting to get confused on the dates, I’m going to write it. It was August 21, 2010, which also happens to be a very important day, Kate’s birthday!!! (p.s. I’d like to wish a belated birthday to my wonderful brother-in-law who never makes fun of me, Happy Belated Birthday Mark!!!) Anyway, it wasn’t just any birthday for Kate; it was her 21st birthday. Sorry I couldn’t be there to celebrate it with you but Happy 21st Birthday!!!! Ok back to the thrilling (or not so thrilling) events of my life. Saturday we had a social 4s beach volleyball tournament. We got there at 10 in the morning and left at around 5, and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. The tournament was also a cookout so there was food, a keg and lots of goon (cheap aussie wine). Basically I spent the entirety of Saturday drinking, playing volleyball, being in the sun and hanging out with my friends and some aussies. So obviously it was an awesome day. For the record, you have no idea how hard it is to play a sport when you are not at full mental capacity. After the tournament was over we all went back home, got some food/cleaned up and then everyone on the team went out to a bar together, which was a lot of fun. Then, Sunday came and it was time to get some work done. It’s just around the middle of the semester for us so per usual, it’s one of the most, if not the most, hectic time of the year. I had a few assignments due this week and an exam so I pretty much spent Sunday doing work…fun right? And I’m going to end this here because I don’t want the title of this post to cover a two-week period. It makes me feel better about not having posted if the dates are separated. Love you and miss you!!!

Britt

What I Miss from the States

Ok so this blog post is going to be a little different. Recently, Jack asked me what I miss from the states besides the obvious family and friends and mom and dad’s cooking, so I thought I’d start an ongoing list of everything I miss.

1. Unlimited Internet – Internet in Australia is awful. The signal cuts out all the time and you’re limited to how much you can use per month, even on the campus computers!

2. Orange Juice – OJ here is disgusting, it’s worse than concentrate oj

3. Juice in general – They’re not big fans of juice here so their selection is very limited. It took me 2 weeks to find just cranberry juice, everything has mango or apple juice in it.

4. Sweet n’ low – They are firm believers in either equal or regular sugar here, and I love snl in my coffee in the morning

5. Options – This is just general when it comes to food shopping here, there is absolutely no selection on brands. Popcorn for instance, they have 2 types you can get. Cheese, unless you get fresh expensive cheese, it’s mozzarella or tasty cheese, which by the way, tasty cheese is not a brand, here it’s the equivalence of saying mozzarella, and it tastes very similar to cheddar

6. American cheese and coffee yogurt – Neither of those is even available to buy here, let alone being able to eat them together so I’ve had to find new lunch foods

7. Vodka sauce – At school last year I would live off of penne a la vodka, but they don’t have vodka sauce here

8. Buffalo chicken – I have yet to be able to find buffalo sauce here. I miss the buffalo chicken salads, sandwiches, pizzas, everything.

9. Driving – Both having a car at my disposal and driving in general because I’m weird and actually like to drive

10. Baked goods – Earlier when I said they don’t really have options for stuff that especially includes baked goods. At one of the grocery stores, it took me probably at least 15 minutes to even find the miniscule baking section they had (I’d say baking aisle but they don’t have a section large enough to fill an aisle or even an 1/8 of one).

11. Mac n’ cheese – I could probably find ingredients to be able to make this here, but I prefer to make it with velveeta cheese like mom taught me, and they don’t have that here. They also don’t really have cheddar, so we’ll see if that ever happens

12. Italian food – Obviously due to the location of Australia, Italian food is not the most popular food, nor is it the best tasting here, rather Asian and Thai food are

13. Pizza – I haven’t had it here yet, but everyone told me it’s awful so I’m not really tempted to try it either.

14. Late night food – Places are not open late here to order food. We tried to order a pizza at 12:30 one night and everywhere was closed, even Dominos, and yes they have Dominos here, but apparently it’s much worse than ours.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll add more as I think of it.

Saturday August 14, 2010 - Sunday August 15, 2010

As promised, I posted again soon after I wrote the Friday one. Saturday morning we left for the Gold Coast, which is where Surfer’s Paradise is located. The trip there only took about an hour and a half with public transportation, so it wasn’t too bad. When we got there we made our way to the hostel, checked in, and then headed for the beach. It was great at the beach for about the first 2 hours, but then it got windy, so it started to get kind of cold. After another hour or so the sun was starting to go down and the wind had picked up some more, so we decided to head back to our hostel. At that point we were starving anyway and needed to get some food in us. When we got back to our hostel we decided to warm up by going in the hot tub for about half an hour, then got ready and got some food. The service at the restaurant we went to couldn’t have been any slower, which when you’re as hungry as we were, was not good. Anyway, we eventually finished dinner and walked around the area a little bit. I’ve never been to Miami, but everyone said it reminded them exactly of Miami. Whether it was like Miami or not, the area was beautiful. After walking around a little bit we went back to our hostel and got ready to go out. Since there were only 7 of us that went early and got rooms (2 came later), we ended up having a random backpacker in one of our rooms (rooms of 4). Her name is Anara but she also goes by Kiwi, and was really cool. She’s from New Zealand but has been living in Australia for a while, and she knew her way around the area. This worked out really well because she then took us on a pub crawl and we got to see a bunch of the local bars. At one of the bars, Melbas, we actually ran into someone that looked identical to and was dressed exactly like Crocodile Dundee! This was the moment when I knew I was really in Australia haha. We took some pictures with him (on facebook), which was awesome. We also ran into a sort of creepy magician mime, but he was definitely entertaining. Throughout the course of the night I think we went to about 5 or 6 different bars, a great way to see the area/nightlife. By the end of the night we were all exhausted. The next morning we got up fairly early, checked out and went to get some breaky (what they call it here) at a local $10 all you can eat breakfast buffet. Aside from the sausage it was delicious, and it was good to have a real breakfast for once, usually mine consists of cereal and coffee. After breakfast we rented some surfboards and Carrie attempted to teach Katie and I how to surf. The water was really choppy and for Katie and I the waves were huge, so needless to say, it didn’t go so well. We attempted that for a few hours, but were pretty exhausted after that, so we went back and laid on the beach. I pretty much spent the rest of the day laying out and going in the water; great day in my book. Then 3 o’clock hit and a couple of us needed to get back to get some work done…sigh…yes we are in fact here for school. By the time we got back it was almost 5, I made myself some dinner, got some work done and then went to bed. Since I’m writing this a week after the fact, that means it’s Sunday again, and I need to get some more work done, but I’ll try to catch up on my blog more tomorrow. Love you and miss you!

Britt

Friday August 13, 2010

Hey guys so I know I’m absolutely terrible about posting, but again, I’ll try to get better. Ok so I believe I left off on Friday. Well you might have seen the pictures I put up on Facebook, but we went to EKKA, which is the Australian equivalent of the Big-E. It was so much fun! There were people dressed up in all sorts of costumes and there was a huge building filled with all these stands. At each stand they sold themed bags. One of the ones I took a picture of was the Pepsi one where you would pay a certain amount, usually around $20, and get a backpack, hat, pepsi bottle, and other assorted stuff, all Pepsi themed. Such a strange concept haha. After we went through that building we went to the more carnivalish part and went on one of the rides, which I was thrilled to do since I just love carny rides so much. I mean why shouldn’t you trust those high school dropouts that are paid minimum wage to put together an entire fair in 24 hours? Anyway, after that Katie and Carrie went on another ride. One thing about carny rides here are that they cost a lot of money, ranging from $8-$15, it’s ridiculous. We then decided to move out of the carnival area and go to see all the farm animals from dairy goats to sheep to cows (we couldn’t find the chickens). We even got to hold a lamb, which we of course named Lambie. After the farm animals we just walked around a little bit, got some coffee and then some “fairy floss” aka cotton candy. Some people went on one more ride and then we all went back to the city. When we got back into the city we decided to go to The Pancake House for dinner. The restaurant is open 24 hours and obviously has the best pancakes. They have everything from plain pancakes, to Mexican or other assorted dinner pancakes/crepes, to dessert pancakes. We all obviously got dessert pancakes, mine were plain pancakes with grilled bananas, chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and walnuts…mmmm (there's a pic on facebook). The other cool thing about the restaurant is that it used to be a church, but was converted into this restaurant. We all thought they should have named it Heavenly Pancakes, but that’s just us. After The Pancake House we went back home to a party at our house. One of my roommates had invited over some of the Aussie beach vball kids, so we all hung out for a while before going to a bar called the Victory, which was a lot of fun. All in all it was a great day! That’s all for now. I promise to update again soon (I’m writing it right now)! Love you and miss you!

Britt

Saturday August 7, 2010 - Thursday August 12, 2010

Ok so clearly I’ve been slacking on this lately. I’ll try to get better. Saturday a bunch of my friends and I went for a hike at Brisbane Forest Park, although it turned out to be more of nature walk than an actual hike. The real hiking trails there are apparently really hard to get to and you have to have a car. Also, this weekend they began doing their controlled forest fires, so it’s not exactly the safest thing to be hiking through that. Either way the nature walk was around a lake so it was pretty, but like I said it wasn’t much of a hike. After this one of my friends Melanie and I decided that we wanted to go to the top of Mount Coot-Tha and then hike down it. To get to the top you take a bus and it overlooks the whole city, and then there are trails that you can hike down. Anyway, when we got back from Brisbane Forest Park we were starved so we got an all American meal at none other than Subway (yes it’s actually called Subway here, unlike “Hungry Jack’s” (Burger King) and “Donut King” (Dunkin Donuts)). After that we went to a travel agent to get some brochures on some cool potential trips. At this point it’s about 3:30 and we decide we’re not going to hike down Mount Coot-Tha, but we’ll still take the bus to the top and see the view. Once we finally figure out which bus we need to take and get to the bus stop, we have to wait for almost half an hour to get the bus. As we’re about to get on the bus, we double check with the bus driver that we’re getting on the right bus…nope. Thankfully Australian bus drivers are really nice and once he finished going through the route he was on, his bus was going to switch to the route that heads to Mount Coot-Tha, and so he let us get on. We finally ended up arriving at the top of Mount Coot-Tha and just in case, we check the bus schedule to see when the last bus would leave from the top of the mountain, 5:05. Guess what time it is…5:03. So basically we got to the top and went down and didn’t even really get to see the view too well. We did get to see it a little bit though and what we saw of it was gorgeous. So after Melanie’s and my adventure for the day, we were pretty wiped and just hung out that night. This brings me to Sunday, which I used as a catch-up day. I pretty much did work most of the day, nothing too eventful. This whole week was pretty dreary because it rained from Monday to Wednesday. So pretty much we all just hung out, went to classes and whatnot. On Tuesdays I don’t have classes and neither does one of my friends Carrie so we went to the travel agent to try to figure out our spring break trip. As of right now we’re going to go up to Darwin, go to some national parks there, and then go to Cairns (Great Barrier Reef) for the rest of the trip. Wednesday was Ekka Holiday. Ekka is essentially Australia’s Big E, and on Ekka Holiday the entire city gets the day off to go to the horse races. At the horse races everyone gets really dressed up and they drink the whole day. This would have been great had it not been raining, which made no one really want to go. We ended up just hanging out, and doing some grocery shopping, a good roomies day. At night, after the horse races everyone goes to the typical Wednesday night bar, the Regatta, so we did all go to that, which was packed and a lot of fun. We also planned our trip to the Gold Coast this weekend, which is where Surfer’s Paradise is located, so that should be a lot of fun. Today (Thursday) I decided that since I wasn’t able to see shark week I would just experience it first hand and so I’m going to get my dive certification with some people, which again I can’t wait to do. That’s really all I have for now, but I promise things will be getting more exciting soon. Love you and miss you!

Britt