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

Monday August 2, 2010 - Friday August 6, 2010

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t posted all week long; it’s been a pretty hectic week, and I’ve been sick all week. To make up for it though, this one is extra long. Nothing too thrilling happened on Monday. I basically just went to my classes, did some homework, and hung out with my friends. I did go to Toowong, our local shopping village, to buy a printer because our house was in desperate need of one. Tuesdays are my day off so obviously I went to the city beach to do some work. That night I went and played beach volleyball, which was fun. The only down side was that it was “cold” out that night (60s). Although if you know anything about playing beach volleyball, then you know that when its cooler outside, the sand is even colder, making your feet freeze, which is no fun. Wednesday I had class in the morning, and my circuits lab in the later afternoon. I was quite excited when I found out that they don’t do lab reports here! They just have labs to teach you how to make the circuits and how to use the equipment. Then at the end of the semester you have to build and test a circuit by yourself. As always, on Wednesday night we all went out to the Regatta for some $4 drinks. Thursday I had a lecture in the morning and then tutorials all day. Tutorials here are the equivalence of our discussion classes and that’s when your homework is due. Since all of mine are on the same day I was stressing all week about getting my work done. As it turns out, the work is due at the end of your tutorial (if at all) and they give you the entire class time to do the work and to ask the instructor questions on it. That would have been nice to know ahead of time, but oh well. Since I had done it ahead of time all I had to do was go to class and hand the work in and then leave, which was nice. After classes I went into the city with my roommate Zach because we both needed to go to the pharmacy, or as they call it here, the chemist. We both needed some cough syrup and I needed to get some hand soap for my bathroom. Never in my life have I had more trouble trying to find hand soap. When I asked the lady at the chemist for hand soap she looked at me like I had two heads. At that point I realized they call it something different, but how do you explain what hand soap is, it’s pretty self-explanatory. I tried to explain it as soap you use to wash your hands when you get out of the bathroom, but then I remembered they don’t call them bathrooms here. So then I had to try to remember what they call bathrooms, so I’m rambling off things like restroom and washroom and clean my hands and soap for my hands. At one point I said the words hand sanitizer, which registered for her so she took me to their hand sanitizers, which turns out to be the same thing as our hand sanitizers, and not what I wanted. When she showed me the hand sanitizer, she described it as a way to wash my hands without having to rinse them off because it doesn’t make bubbles or foam. So I then go back to trying to describe what hand soap is using some of her words, saying things like soap that makes bubbles and you have to rinse with water after going to the washroom. It is honestly one of the most difficult tasks to try to describe things that have names that are self-explanatory. Thankfully at that point I saw hand soap on the shelf and just told the lady I found it. Later I found out what hand soap is actually called, you ready for this…soap. The lady honestly must have been on something because who can’t deduce that when I’m asking for hand soap I mean soap. Anyway, once my 15-minute ordeal to find soap was over, Zach and I headed to the grocery store to get some much needed food for our house. When we got back from our trip into the city I went to play beach volleyball with my friends, which was a lot of fun. Some of the kids that actually know how to play were playing doubles, so I got to join them and finally get to legitimately play. When we got back from playing beach, I decided to make brownies. I can honestly say these were the most ghetto made brownies I have ever made. We don’t have a mixing bowl so I had to mix it in a saucepan. We don’t have measuring spoons so I had to guesstimate with our spoons. If we don’t have clean cups, we drink out of our measuring cups and the one I needed was being used so I had to use our measure cup whose marking start at ½ cup and I needed ¼ cup, so I had to guesstimate that too. To top it all off, we don’t have a brownie pan so I had to use a loaf pan. Let me just say, there is a reason they are not normally made in loaf pans. The one thing I was truly thankful for about the brownie box though was that it did convert the temperature required to cook the brownies to Celsius for me, because in Australia they use the metric system for everything, including ovens. Even though I knew what temperature to cook the brownies at, I was so uncertain of how long to cook them for since I wasn’t using a normal brownie pan. Because of this I had to keep checking them, but it was a huge balance on when to take them out so that the edges didn’t burn, but the inside wasn’t still liquid. When I finally took them out I didn’t want the edges to keep cooking from the pan so Dani and I thought it’d be a brilliant idea to just take the brownies out of the pan right away. To do that we decided it’d also be a good idea to just flip the pan over. Needless to say, things did not go as we planned. It broke completely in half, and we ended up having to get the other half of the brownies out with a spatula. Once we did this we just tried to more or less put them back together to try to give them a good appearance. To top it all off, we put frosting on top of them and made the most disgusting looking brownies ever (pictures are on facebook). Even though they were the vilest looking brownies ever, they were some of the most delicious double fudge chocolate chunk brownies with chocolate frosting ever! After the brownie making adventure, a bunch of us decided to watch Gangs of New York. Since we only have 2 couches and there were about 10 of us watching it, we moved a bed into the living room for extra seating. We then all sat crammed into our living room watching it on my computer. I can only imagine what we would have looked like if anyone saw us. This brings me to Friday. I had what most would consider the ultimate stereotypical girls day. Dani, Katie, Julia, Carrie and I all went to South Bank (the city beach), then went shopping at the outdoor mall, got some dinner, and ended the night watching a movie. That’s about it for now. I promise to try to get better about posting. I’ll talk to you soon!

Britt

Saturday July 31, 2010 and Sunday August 1, 2010

On Saturday I went with a bunch of my friends to a park along the Brisbane River, where there was an open court day to play beach volleyball. We found out about it from the UQ beach volleyball club team, which a bunch of us signed up to join. Club sports here are nothing like at UConn, they’re more social and like intramurals, so you don’t have to have played the sport before. I must say it was great to finally play again, but volleyball is a sport that if you actually play, it’s hard to play with people that don’t know what they’re doing. On the bright side, some of the kids on the UQ club team actually play beach and they invited me to join their competitive league, so we’ll see what happens with that. We played all day and didn’t get back until dinnertime. Since I’m also kind of sick I was exhausted by the time we got back and decided to just take a night off and sleep and get some homework done.

Today I needed to get some reading done so I went to the city beach, laid out and read all day. It felt great to just sit out in the sun, and the weather was perfect, 75 and sunny. By the time I got back from the beach it was almost dinnertime, so I relaxed for a little bit and then made stir-fry. After dinner I just hung out with my friends and then we watched Shutter Island. All in all it was a great relaxing weekend, which I think was perfect since pretty much all of us are sick now. I’ll update again soon! Love you and miss you!

Britt