Wednesday July 28, 2010 - Friday July 30, 2010

I am so sorry I haven’t really posted all week, but quite frankly there hasn’t been much to report. The weather hasn’t been too great all week; it’s been overcast and misting/raining, but the weekend is supposed to be gorgeous. Both Wednesday and Thursday I had classes and so did my roommates so we pretty much just did that and hung out. Wednesday’s in Australia are one of the main going out nights, which means cheap drinks, so we went back to one of our favorite bars, The Regatta, where we ended up meeting the Australian soccer team. I don’t think I ever clarified this, but when I say we I’m referring to some of my housemates and I and some of our neighbors; there’re usually about 10 of us that go out together. Thursday night I didn’t feel too great so I took the night off and just hung out. Friday I was supposed to have class, but as I was walking to it, the fire alarm was going off in the building, and it ended up getting cancelled. So naturally, being that Friday was the first nice day we had all week, I headed back to my room, got changed and met Katie, Dani and Nick (3 of my housemates) at the beach, which is about 15 minutes from me. When we got back we made some food, relaxed a little and then went over to our neighbors’ house for a house party. Now it’s Saturday morning and low and behold, I have a cold. It was only a matter of time before this happened, so m and d I’m sure you’re not too surprised. That’s really all I have to report for now. Like I said, not too much happened this week, but I should have more to update you on after this weekend. Love you and miss you!

Britt

p.s. I tried eating that paw paw that I bought...never ever again. The seeds are definitely not meant to be eaten; they taste like sour, salty fish that's gone bad. The actual fruit tastes like a bland, slightly gone bad cantaloupe. I also tried vegemite for the first time, which is also to NEVER be eaten again. I was shocked that my gag reflex didn't kick in when I ate it. First of all, I've never seen a less appealing "spread" in my entire life. It's a blackish brown color and sticky and paste-like; imagine combining peanut butter with maple syrup and some blackish brown food coloring and that's kind of what it feels/looks like. Second, I'm not sure my palate has ever experienced a less appealing food. It was sour and incredibly salty. Sam, remember when we were little and would go into the Garner's backyard and fill a bucket with the gross pond water and other assorted things we found around the yard, and then dare each other to taste it or even just smell it? (don't worry m and d we never actually tasted it) My point is, vegemite tasted as I would imagine that concoction would have tasted. There is no other way to describe it than just being absolutely vile. So needless to say, I would highly recommend for personal health/safety that no one ever eat it again.

Tuesday July 27, 2010

Today there’s another birthday in the family: Happy Birthday Aunt Ev!!!!

On Tuesday’s I don’t have class, which is pretty nice, I just wish someone else didn’t have class with me. So today I woke up, went for a run, showered and what not. I did laundry today for the first time, which I ended up forgetting about until around 5. It ended up working out though because it rained today, and we have to hang our clothes to dry, and by 5 it had stopped raining. Speaking of which, I’ve never had to hang all of my clothes out to dry before…it’s quite annoying. I also went grocery shopping today and did my first big shopping trip. Since last Tuesday I’ve been living off of cereal, pasta, fruit, and coffee, so it’s very exciting to finally have a variety of foods to choose from. I decided that from now on whenever I go to the store I am going to buy an Australian food; today it was a paw paw (some sort of fruit). I have no idea what it tastes like, when it’s ripe, or how to eat it, so we’ll see how that goes. I also learned that I should never again make a big trip to the grocery store by myself because it is incredibly painful trying to carry back all of the bags by yourself. After my big shopping trip I just hung out the rest of the day with the roomies and we all got infuriated that our internet wasn’t working. That’s all for now, talk to you soon!

Britt

Monday July 26, 2010

First and foremost, Happy Birthday Sissy Poo!!!!!

Today was the first day of classes…oh joy. My first class was at nine – calc 2 and linear algebra, which shouldn’t be too bad at all since I’ve already taken calc 2, I just need the linear algebra portion. My next class wasn’t until 1 and it’s a 3-hour class about aboriginal anthropology. I’m hoping the class won’t be too bad, but we have to write stuff for it and it’s 3-hours, which she actually tries to fill. On the bright side she also seems pretty chill, so I guess we'll see how it goes. I really didn’t do too much today besides going to class; I pretty much just hung out the rest of the day with my friends/roommates. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more interesting. I'll talk to you soon.

Britt

Sunday July 25, 2010

Hey everyone I hope you’re all doing well! After such a long day yesterday, we all decided to take it easy today. Ann, the person in charge of my housing, held a “sausage sizzle” (aka a barbeque) today for all of the Semester in Australia students (SIA is the name of the company that helped to house me and other study abroad students for the semester). It started at 11, so my roommates and I all took the ferry down to the park where she was hosting it. She cooked up some burgers and hotdogs, which were delicious since we pretty much haven’t really eaten meat since we’ve been here (meat is very very expensive in Australia and we’ve been too lazy to really cook). One quirky thing about Australia is that they don’t have hotdog buns, so you have to eat hotdogs on a piece of bread – very strange and surprisingly difficult to maneuver since the hotdog keeps rolling around while you’re trying to put ketchup on it. That brings up another strange aspect of Australia, they don’t eat ketchup, they eat tomato sauce. If you ask for ketchup in a restaurant, they look at you like you have two heads. The same thing is true with napkins; they’re called serviettes here. At the barbeque I got to experience eating my first TimTam, a staple cookie for Australians. It’s basically the equivalent of our Oreo, except it tastes so much better. It’s two chocolate cookies with chocolate frosting in the middle all dipped in milk chocolate. They also have dark chocolate ones, white chocolate ones and ones that have caramel in the middle of the chocolate frosting – by far the best Australian food I have experienced so far. After the barbeque one of my roommates Katie and I took the ferry to Toowong (the local shopping mall) to get some produce and school stuff. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a. a spiral bound notebook or b. paper with margins here – then trying to find a spiral bound notebook with margins…forget it. It’s absolutely unbelievable. We also got some stuff to help us get our rooms a little more organized, which made it interesting to say the least to get back home via the bus. On the bright side, we did end up being the entertainment for people standing near us on the bus. Later Katie and one of my other roommates Dani and I made dinner together and watched The Ugly Truth. When I say we made dinner, I mean we sautéed some garlic, chicken, peppers and onions and put that on pasta with some sauce – so we actually made a real dinner as opposed to what we’ve been making…cereal. We all decided to make tonight an early night since we have our first day of classes tomorrow. In case you’ve forgotten, yes I am in fact here for school, even if it doesn’t seem like it so far. That’s all for today, but I’ll talk to you soon.

Britt

p.s. I posted a bunch of pictures today if you’re interested

Saturday July 24, 2010

Today was a very long but amazing day to say the least. We started off our morning by packing up our stuff from the hostel and grabbing a cup of coffee all before 8:50 because that’s when a van was coming to pick us up to go take surfing lessons. Upon arrival at the surf shop, we got into our wet suits, grabbed a board and headed to the beach. Only about 6 people from our group took the lesson, but the ones who didn’t take it seriously missed out. It was absolutely incredible and so much fun! I can’t believe I never discovered this sport before now! I managed to catch and ride some waves by myself fairly quickly, however, I also nose dived 3 times, which is not the most fun to say the least. The water was absolutely gorgeous and the temperature wasn’t too bad, especially with a wet suit. The wet suits were particularly helpful in the morning because it was “raining” (misting), but midway through the lesson it cleared up and was just another beautiful day in paradise. Overall it was an incredible experience, I only wish it lasted longer than 2 hours. Once we finished surfing our group got back together, grabbed some food at a food court and then we split off from there to do the various different activities that we wanted to do. I chose to go with Julia and visit the Noosa National Park. It was gorgeous to say the least (pictures on Facebook or will be soon). The wildlife here is so much different from CT (as it should be). It’s honestly indescribable and the best way for me to show what it was like is from my pictures. Sadly, we didn’t see any koalas in the trees, but the sightings are rare so I wasn’t too surprised. Also, it wasn’t until after we got back from our hike that we saw the sign listing the different sightings that people have had. That probably would have been helpful to look at ahead of time, but oh well. I have to admit though, the fact that it’s even possible to see koalas in the wild is unbelievable to me. After this Julia and I went back into town to grab some sushi and smoothies before we all headed home. The ride home went fairly smoothly. We had a little confusion as far as transfers on the train are concerned, which ended up involving Zach and I running and jumping onto the train as the doors were closing, but don’t worry mom and dad, we made it home just fine. We ended up getting back home around 8:30, at which point we settled back in, got changed and went out for a girl’s night out for Dani’s birthday. We started our night by going to the Regatta, which was dead, so we just got one drink there then left. That led us to the RE, another bar, which we stayed at for a little while before moving on to Down Under Bar, which we stayed at for the rest of the night. At Down Under it was Ladies Night so all the drink prices were reduced…awesome! All in all it was an incredible day followed by an amazing night. That’s all for now, but I’ll update again soon. Thanks for reading!

Britt

Friday July 23, 2010

Today a bunch of us got an early start to the day and headed to the Sunshine Coast. We left our house by around 6:30 and arrived by 11. Sadly, had we rented a car it only would have taken us an hour to get there, but oh well public transportation is cheap, which is good. We’re spending the night at a hostel that is about 100 m from the beach…what a hard life we live. Upon arrival we checked-in, got ready, and of course headed to the beach to get food, and then went to the beach after that. First note, we went to a sufficiently nice restaurant where you pay for your food when you order it. As it turns out, this is quite convenient and is a custom that the States should adopt. Second note, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen such a beautiful beach in my entire life, and I’ve been to the Caribbean so I do in fact have something decent to compare it to (as opposed to just comparing it to the beaches in CT). I’ll be posting pictures of it on Facebook soon. The only down side to the whole thing is that although it was in the low 70s, it was incredibly windy, making it feel pretty cool outside. However, the water was the same temperature as the air, so when you went into the water and your body finally adjusted to the temperature, you felt warm once you got out and dried off. All in all I would say it was a great day. The main reason for us traveling to the Sunshine Coast is because it is Zach’s birthday tonight and Dani’s tomorrow, so we wanted to celebrate. We decided to go out for dinner, but sadly that’s all we had the energy to do, so we got a few drinks with dinner, then headed back home and crashed. I must say, I’ve never been in a group of 13 people before that were so exhausted that they didn’t want to go out, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. That’s all I have for now, but tomorrow’s will be much longer since we have a lot planned, so I’ll have a lot to tell. Thanks for reading and I’ll talk to you soon!

Britt

Thursday July 22, 2010

Today was just another day in Brisbane where nothing too eventful happened, although it was a day of firsts. This morning I skyped mom, dad and sam for the first time since I’ve been here, which was a lot of fun. I then took the ferry into the city by myself for the first time and went shopping at Toowong Village (the local mall). I needed to get some things for my room like hangars, a hair dryer and blankets and whatnot so of course I went to none other than…Kmart! When I got back I had just enough time to grab some lunch before I needed to head off to the safety meeting for orientation. Yes I am in fact here for school, but don’t worry because I forgot about that too. The safety meeting was quite interesting and I learned a lot. The top piece of advice was if you encounter a shark, stay calm and slowly move away…yea right like that will ever happen. When’s the last time you heard of someone encountering a shark that’s about to attack them and they remained calm and slowly moved away and everything turned out all right? They gave the same advice for snakes…Anyway, after that was over I went and explored campus and walked around in awe of its beauty. If they’re not already up when you’re reading this, I’ll be posting the pictures I took soon. I also went and got my UQ student card, which I came to realize is my third school ID that I’ll have. Some other “firsts” that I experienced today include: seeing a pick-up game of cricket, seeing a kid playing cricket in a Buzz Lightyear costume, and having a boy ask me for concealer. Yea so all in all it was a pretty interesting day, but nothing too extravagant.

Later tonight we played some ‘ruit at our house and then went to the movies to see Inception, which was pretty good, although I’ll probably need to see it again because it was very confusing. We all just kind of wanted to take it easy tonight since we’re getting up at 6 am tomorrow to go to the Sunshine Coast and learn to surf!!! Speaking of getting up at 6 tomorrow, I need to get to bed. I’ll try to keep you updated this weekend. Thanks for reading and I’ll talk to you soon!

Britt

First Day in Brisbane

Today some of the girls and I took the ferry down the Brisbane River to South Bank and laid out on the beach all day. I’m calling it a beach but it’s really a huge pool that was designed to look exactly like a beach, sand and all, and it looks out at the river. It’s their way of allowing people to swim near the river but not actually in it since there are bull sharks in it, which have killed more humans than great whites…awesome. The ferry is about a 5-minute walk from our house and it’s really cheap making it incredibly convenient. We had a wonderful lunch consisting of sushi and smoothies, which by the way, the states apparently have no idea how to make good smoothies. So needless to say it was a nice and relaxing day; perfect for my first full day there.

When we got back from the beach I had to go shopping and obviously get some nice cheap Australian wine and some food of course. Later we took the ferry to a pretty nice bar called the Regatta. It was great until it got so packed you quite literally couldn’t even move. Weird note about Australia, they like to go out really early, like 7, and then everything shuts down by around 12 or 1.

Ok so now to discuss the Australian wildlife that I have experienced so far. I don’t remember if I mentioned this earlier or not but we have a wonderful pet spider named Huey who lives outside of our house. His gigantic web extends from our railing to our house so it’s really fun going up and down the stairs…Birds here: some of them may look similar to birds from back home, but they’re bigger and they make the strangest sounds. I have yet to hear a bird make what we would consider to be a normal chirping sound. Seagulls: they look similar to ours, but their noises are even worse than ours making them even more obnoxious and annoying than the ones in the states. Last night I saw a pelican, which was awesome and so stereotypical of Australia. The plant life here is so much different than back home, things that would be considered exotic are just standard backyard plants here, it’s crazy.

So despite only having been here a day, I already feel really settled in and comfortable here, which is awesome. That’s all I have for now, but I’ll update again soon. If you actually read this then thanks for reading! I love you all and I’ll talk to you soon!

Britt

ps I'm not going to post pictures in my blog, I'm just going to post them on facebook

7/18-7/20: Travelling to the Land Down Under

Ok so this is my first blog post ever so you’re gonna have to bear with me and I find it necessary to make this disclaimer; I’m sorry if it’s boring and if it is then don’t read it, I don’t wanna hear complaints about it. I’m doing this as a way to keep a journal for myself and to update people because I don’t feel like writing out a million emails with all of the same information.

Anyway, so the adventure begins…7/18/10-7/20/10: (again, bear with me for this post because I went through a lot of time changes so I’m very confused as to when things happened and what tense things belong in, not to mention I’m also rewriting what I wrote in my personal journal that I will be keeping making time even more confusing)

7/18/10: I’ve never really done this before but Jack says I should because it’s the thing she regrets the most. Anyway, yesterday was Jack’s wedding, which was incredible and so much fun. Thankfully I’m not hung over so the flight won’t be too awful. Albeit this morning was a little hectic since people were still at the house from the wedding, it wasn’t too bad and everything went pretty smoothly. Once I got to the airport, I checked-in (which went smoothly), and then got one last dinner with mom, dad and Sam. Then, it was time to go through airport security; time to leave everyone behind ☹. I must admit, I was/am freakishly calm about the whole thing. I guess I just somehow know it will all work out. I think it also helped that J and M’s wedding was yesterday to distract me. Since I had been there since Thursday morning I was ready to finally have some quiet time to myself. That also meant that I had to be completely packed/organized since Wednesday night. Also, all of my roommates are there already since I was supposed to be there 7/15 so now I’m just jealous of them and ready to be there. My only real freak out (so far) was oddly while I was waiting in the terminal for my 6:55 pm flight, which didn’t end up departing until 8:06 pm. Hopefully I make my next flight. Now I’m on the way to LA and very relaxed (again, oddly enough) and excited. Alright well it’s diner time: spinach catalari? – couldn’t really understand what the flight attendant said, but of well food is food and I need to eat. On that note I’ll write more later and eat now…what else is new…10 minutes later…ok so dinner – spinach catalari? (still don’t know what he said) looks and tastes like spinach manicotti, there was some weird salad with lettuce and ball shaped pasta that had a hint of tuna flavor to it – I didn’t see a single thing that looked even remotely like fish in that salad…yea needless to say I passed up that one. Oh I also checked out the entertainment system on the plane with the in-seat screens – they have The Office – Qantas has instantly gone up 10 degrees in my book…

Many hours later…

So I thought I’d write a little more, it’s currently 12:51 est and I have no idea what that means for where I am now since I recently crossed the International Date Line. It’s all very confusing. Anyways, I’m obviously on my flight to Brisbane right now from LAX. I believe I’ve been on the plane for 9.5 hours now and still have 3.5 left – it’s a very long trip. I’ve spent a decent amount of time sleeping, but not nearly enough and I can’t fall asleep so now I’m just really bored. I must admit that I’m still not really nervous about arriving; maybe that’s weird but I think I’m just too excited. For those who want to know what I did on the plane (cough: mom :cough), earlier I watched some movies, slept, listened to music, and read a little bit. I guess that’s it for now since I don’t really have much else to say and quite frankly there’s not much more for me to tell.

Ok I’m back with a fabulous update, we had to land in Noumea because there was fog in Brisbane so we would have to circle the airport, but we don’t have enough fuel to do that…awesome. So instead we’re gonna take a 3 hour detour and land in Noumea to refuel. Now instead of arriving in Brisbane at 6:20 am their time, I’ll be arriving at hopefully somewhere around 9-9:30.

7/20/10: My flight just landed not too long ago and everything went smoothly. I got through customs, had all my luggage and found my driver very quickly, which was reassuring. Now I’m just waiting for the other kids to arrive that my driver needs to pick up. Hopefully this won’t take too long because I’m dying to see my house and meet my roommates and see the city. Not sure how long I’ll have before I leave the airport so I’m checking out for now.

Ok so I arrived at my house, which is really nice/big for a college kids house. My roommates aren’t here yet but Malcolm (resident director) took me and another study abroad kid to kmart and the grocery store so we could get sheets and food. He then showed us around campus a little bit and got us settled in with some housekeeping stuff. We went back to my house and got phone/internet set up and I met my roommates, all of whom seem awesome. I also had my first experience with a “small” Australian spider (J and S, it was bigger than any spider I’ve ever seen, so you know what that means). Wildlife here is very interesting, especially the birds. To say that they’re big and loud is an understatement. Anyway, I’m sure I’ve bored you all enough for now (sorry nothing too interesting happened yet) and I can barely keep my eyes open anymore, but I’ll post again soon. Final disclaimer: I didn’t proof read this at all so I apologize for any errors. I love you all and I’ll talk to you soon.

Britt