Last Weeks of Uni

Well, the school year has been winding down, and with final exams quickly approaching, there has been quite a few last big nights out before SWOTVAC (study week, I don't know what the hell it stands for). The first one was ICC Ball where all the colleges get together and get bussed to some unknown location and drink lots of cheap wine and mid strength beer while wearing ridiculous costumes. The theme was Unpredicta-ball, so you go as something unexpected. One idea was for Union to collectively go as the theme 'sober', since that would be pretty unexpected, but nobody was really keen for that. My friend Laura and I went as the two unicorns from the Charlie Unicorn goes to Candy Mountain youtube video, here's the link to them if you don't know... what I'm talking about (theres 2 of them).





http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charlie+unicorn&search_type=

It's unexpected because at the end of one of the videos, Charlie gets tricked and gets his kidney stole, which is pretty unexpected, yeah? We wore party hats and taped candy to ourselves, it was pretty cool. We also got to go around talking in obnoxious unicorn voices all night! (really, you have to watch the videos or it makes no sense). Some other costumes were, the 412 bus, a snake charmer, babies, iPods?, natives, Vegas brides, the Spanish inquisition, and my favorite, a coat hanger. I was going to go as pregnant as the other half of the coat hanger costume, but we decided that was too horrible and it would be too annoying to go around with a ball or pillow under my shirt all night anyway. It was a really fun night, they drove us to the stadium where the Reds play (a rugby team for Brissy), and we rock up and the Socceroos are practicing on the field there. They are the Australian national soccer team that was in town to play Qatar, and it must have been weird for them to see a bunch of crazy dressed up uni kids get off a bunch of buses and be dumped in the middle of their practice. Was a great night, hung out with everyone, some people went way too hard on the alcohol and got really sick and had to leave early (a couple of my friends were home by 8:30, it was pretty funny, but we did leave at 6, so it's not too too bad I guess). After that was over, you could either go home on the buses, or some other ones were going to the city for the kickon at a bar out there, but most people went home in anticipation of the next day, known as 'recovery'. I went home and went around to all the floors in college with Rob and talked to everyone that was still up, but when we came back to our floor, Rob also got pretty sick and ended up passing out in the shower with the water on. I was hanging out in my other friend Tom's room that is across the hall from the bathroom, and we kept trying to get him to come out because he was lying over the drain and flooding the place and that water was coming out into the hall, but he would just be like, no! I'm fine, I'll be fine just leave me alone! And we kept trying to explain to him to either turn off the water or get off the drain, but it took him awhile to get around to doing it. Crazy times.

The next morning, bright and early at 8am, everyone gets up and grabs some brekky and gets on the buses again to go to recovery. Some people really did need to recover and slept through their alarms and actually rested and slept, but the event of recovery was quite different. Probably crazier than the night before, we got dropped off outside this club in the Valley called Birdee Num Nums where they have a bar and on the weekends they open up their pool and jacuzzi as well. It's a sweet setup, there are all these high tables outside where you can hang out and then a bunch of people got in the water and it was just a ton of fun. We had a $10,000 bar tab, and amazingly went through it by 1pm. I think we got there at 9:30 or so and were kicked out by 2, so it was a fair bit of drinks to go through by then. Everyone brought sharpie pens and was writing on everyone else, and then the food dye came out too. People would put it in their mouths and just spit it all over and try to get as many people as they could, it was a very messy day. My favorite moment was when my friend Teiqua, who had been trying to keep her white shirt white all day and refusing to let us draw on her, got massively sprayed on by this guy with blue food dye in his mouth, and then she just turns around and whips out her makeup kit and starts messing with her face. Everyone else around looks just a total mess, and she is trying to touch up her concealer or something, it was hilarious. The Red Frogs peopel were also there, they come to events and hand out donuts and water, they are some Christian organization that helps drunk people. I'm not sure why, I feel like there are much more deserving groups of people to be helped, but hey whatever, I'll take the free food. They were making pancakes and it was great. A guy there was playing guitar too and everyone was singing along with it, people got really into the 'Waltzing Matilda' song too, good stuff. I found out there was a backpackers connected to Birdee's (I had no idea before and we've been there a bunch of times), so my friend Marnie and I tried to go make friends with them. However, the minute we walked in the door, the receptionist girl came over and physically turned us around and pushed us out the door, saying, you don't belong here! We tried to say that she was being excessively discriminatory, and how dare she imply we were part of the group outside (but we had pen and dye everywhere, so that didn't really work). When we all had to go, it was really funny walking through the Valley on a Saturday afternoon with a bunch of drunk messy people, others on the street would come up to us and ask what the hell was going on. We finally made it to the train and got home and showered for excessive amounts of time (this weekend was not kind for the water restrictions for sure). It was an awesome couple days, a might sound gross in writing but was a lot of fun.

Some other good things that have happened lately was getting to go make a slip n slide out of the cricket oval outside Union during a couple recent thunderstorms. These were insane storms, there were 'severe warnings' ahead of time telling people to move their cars and to avoid driving, and hail was predicted in some parts. The first one that happened was at night, and we went out to the oval and put detergent all over the tarp that covers the middle of the field (for the cricket, its a special part of the oval that they keep hard so the ball bounces), and got to run and slide on it. Everyone had a blast except the cricketers that were watching us distainfully from the cover of the building a ways away. I think they called security on us a couple times but we didn't stay long enough for them to show up. It happened again a few days later and we went out and played soccer in the rain and then did the slip n slide again. Made for a very sore body the next few days, but was worth it.

Also got to go on a biology field trip to the Australia Zoo, it's the one that you see on Animal Planet where Steve Irwin does all the stuff with the crocodiles in the 'crocaseum'. It was a really nice zoo, all the habitats were really well put together and lots of plants everywhere, probably the best zoo I've seen. They were really touchy-feely with the animals, it was strange to see one of the keepers wresting around with the wombats or another one just pick up the Tasmanian Devil like it was a cat or something, they are all really tame looking animals. There are a bunch of crocodiles there too, mostly ones that have gotten into trouble with being to aggressive in the wild with attacking people or things like that, so if they get lucky, they go to the Steve Irwin Zoo instead of being shot. It was a cool field trip, would have liked to have some more free time, but we got to hear some cool talks from the keepers and feed kangaroos, so I can't complain.

I also had another adventure in the valley on our last Thursday night out. We were out at Birdee's again strangely, and a lot of people from college were there, but I went to go use the bathroom at one point and when I came out I realized that everyone I knew had gone home. I was like oh, I knew this would happen at some point, because I tend to wander around among different groups when we go out. I usually make sure there is always someone from college there to get a cab home with, but I guess they left without me noticing. Anyways, I went around asking randoms if they were headed to St. Lucia, but sadly none were, and then it was pretty late so the club kicked everyone out. I was standing outside wondering what to do next when all these Maori/Kiwi guys were like, come hang out with us! I'd been talking to them inside and they were pretty funny and I wasn't really sure what to do so I went walking with them around the city. We ended up just talking forever walking around and ended up at the casino, where this other Maori woman came out and started talking to them. They figured out that she was one of their aunties, but they had never met because this guy had about 200 cousins or something, just a massive family, but they started hugging and she was crying and it was this big family reunion. She came walking with us too, and she saw this bruise I have on my back, and decided that I must be a victim of domestic abuse, and cornered me and got all up in my face asking who was beating up on me and saying she was going to kick their ass. I kept trying to assure her it was nothing, but she wasn't really listening, and then she took out her old lady spraycan perfume and sprayed me with it. It was strange. The rest of the guys rescued me and one of them made me take his earring for some reason. I told him that he should keep it, but he made me take it, so now I am stuck with 2 mismatched earrings and I look a bit funny, but I'll get a new pair soon enough. These guys told me I should hang out with their sisters when I go to New Zealand, they were all just so friendly. We then went back to the casino and all got a huge breakfast, it was really good food too, and after that it was about 7am and I took the bus home! The guys were pretty hardcore and actually went back to drinking because they knew a place down the street that started serving at 7am, what a nation of alcoholics. They said they didn't have work til 5pm, so had to do something in between. I personally would have chosen sleep, but I guess I'm just not as hard. Oh well.. Was a long night for sure, fun times and glad I got to get the bus home instead of paying for a taxi by myself, was about 20 times cheaper.

And now, it is study week and finals soon, I've already finished 2 classes that just had final assignment research papers, but got 2 more to go. Only 2 weeks left here, it's definitely strange that my time is almost up, the year has gone by pretty quick. Will definitley be sad to leave all the friends I've made here, they really are some of the most fun and just all around friendly and awesome people, and living at college is a pretty optimal situation with people around all the time to hang out with. BUT also looking forward to seeing all my homies in the bay and down in LA for sure, gonna be back home before all you people in the states know it, gotta get ready for a sweet winter break and last semester of college! Life definitely does go pretty fast.

Pix: ICC Ball, Aussie Zoo, oval in the thunderstorm

Cape Tribulation and Port Douglas

After coming back down the windy road from the tablelands into Cairns, we got a shuttle into Port Douglas and stayed there for the night. The next morning, we went on a trip into the Daintree Rainforest, which was pretty cool. We were on this tour with a family of three and a teacher who was on school holidays, and the family was apparently taken aback by my semi-excessive swearing in front of their daughter (I didn't even realize it but my mom said that the mother would cringe in the seat next to her because I accidentally let slip a few curse words.. I don't hang around kids enough anymore I guess I should clean up the language). Anyways, we saw a lot of cool things in the forest, it was a pretty surreal place. Definitely more tropical than the rainforests I have seen in the south, and there were all these crazy plants that kindof reminded me of a Dr. Seuss book. They had these mangroves that would grow up on the forest floor, and they were just these pokey roots that came up everywhere, it would have been impossible to walk if there had not been an elevated platform. We saw some water dragons (lizards in trees), lots of birds, and also went on a boat on the estuary and saw some crocodlies. They are everywhere up north, there was even a story going on in the news at the time about a guy that had been eaten by a croc when he was out hunting for sand crabs... pretty stupid guy for doing that I think. They were trying to figure out which croc had eaten him, and kept extracting them from the water (somehow..) and X-raying them to look for bones. (They since found the one that ate him and he is probably off to the Australia Zoo now). We also got to eat some green ants, which was actually pretty interesting. They taste extremely citrusy and have a strong citrus smell if you squish them too. The Aboriginals crushed them up and ate them as a drink, real bush tucker style.

Cape Tribulation is a special place because it is the only place in the world where a reef meets with a rainforest, and you could go off to the edge of the forest to these amazing beaches that were pretty much deserted. They were really pretty, the water was so warm and then you look behind you and there is this really thick forest. It would have been cool to spend more time at the beaches, but we didn't have much time and the group we were with moved pretty quick. We got to stop at this ice cream stand on the way out, this woman owns it as her own small business in the forest and makes ice cream with fruits and other flavors from things that come from the rainforest. You get a cup of four flavors, I can't exactly remember what we had, but it wasn't like any other ice cream I have tried before. It was very good, but very different, from some strange rainforest plants. After that, we drove out of the forest to Mossman Gorge, which was my favorite part of the day. It was this freshwater creek/waterfall area that you could go swimming in, and it was really refreshing and a lot of fun. You could swim up to where the current was coming down and jump into the stream and get pushed out into the river/creek. My mom and I were the only ones that went swimming, I don't know what was wrong with the others because they were really missing out. It was a good day, pretty relaxed and we got to see a bunch of cool things.

When we got back to Port Douglas we hung out on the beach there for awhile with some Bundy Dry n' Limes (a premix alcohol in a can drink from the fine Bundaberg Rum Company) until the sun went down. We went to this really good seafood place for dinner and had a great meal of shellfish, including the Morton Bay bugs! They have these crawdad-like shellfish that they cook up that are native to the area, and they are amazing. It's sortof like lobster, they were really good. We also had this seafood curry that was really spicy. The next morning we hung out for awhile and then had to catch the shuttle back to Cairns and fly back to Brisbane. It was definitely a full week of great stuff up north, it was probably my favorite part of Australia I have visited, along with the Whitsundays, which is pretty much the same type of area. My mom spent a few days in Brisbane, and we had a good time looking for bats and possums at my campus and just hanging around. We went to dinner one night at this place in the valley called Garuva, it was pretty cool, you sit on the floor on pillows and the tables are all separated by these white sheets that hang from the ceiling. My mom said it reminded her of a WWII hospital facility or something like that, but probly with better food. All in all, it was great getting to spend a week and a half with my mom exploring far north queensland, definitley was an awesome adventure.

Photos are: me with plant from the rainforest, mom and I at Cape Tribulation, stick insect in the Daintree, warning sign for stingers, and a possum in a tree outside where I live in Brisbane.

Atherton Tablelands and Yungaburra

After getting back from Green Island, we slept in Cairns and then were off the next morning with a bunch of backpackers on a trip up into the Atherton Tablelands. You drive up this really windy road up a mountain that kindof reminded me of 84 up to the coast, but even more windy. They have a lot of accidents there, I think he said one car goes off the road every week or so. We had a cool guide, a kiwi guy named Sam. He took us to some really neat strangler fig trees, definitely the biggest ones I have ever seen. These trees start out as a seed that germinates up in the canopy of another tree and then it puts down roots and grows around the host tree and eventually strangles it and kills it and it rots away so that the fig stands on its own. It looks really cool like something out of Lord of the Rings, this one was huge, as big as a 5 story building and had a really big base too. It's strange because the whole thing looks like it's made out of roots or vines, just stringy pieces of tree that make up the whole thing. We also went to some waterfalls and got to swim around in a lake after going on a walk through the rainforest. We learned about the stinging plant in the the rainforest that the Aboriginals called gympie gympie, which means 'really really bad'. It sounded terrible, it's this plant that will leave shards of silica in your skin if you brush up against it and it takes 9-12 months for them to come out. Everytime your pores change size (temperature change), it feels like someone is holding a blowtorch to your skin. Sounds really awful, Sam said that a hiker once fell into a whole patch of it and just died from the shock of the pain, and that another guy in the army tried to use it as toilet paper once and then shot himself the next day because he couldn't deal with it. Crazy stuff, so many thigns around this country that will try to kill you.

We also went to see this huge hole in the ground, its literally just a huge pit filled with water that nobody has been able to explore because it is just too deep and too cold to send people, and they haven't gotten around to sending robots or anything like that yet. They explored the top layers as much as they could awhile ago and found 2 new species just in that bit, so there might be all sorts of crazy stuff deeper in. We threw rocks down in it, and they really took a long time to get to the bottom, and it sounded like a gunshot when they finally hit the surface.

We went to a backpacker lodge out in Yungaburra after that where we were going to be staying for the night, it was a really nice place. Very homey and everyone working there was cool. Two Welsh girls and a Canadian were also staying from our group on the bus that day, and they were fun to hang out with. We went out to Lake Tinaroo that night with Sarah the Canadian and a guide from the hostel named Damien to go spotlighting from canoes for wildlife. It was really cool, Damien found a tree kangaroo up pretty high in this one tree, and was trying to point him out to us. He got out of the canoe and was shining his light from the land and the kangaroo suddenly fell out of the tree just a meter away from him and jumped away. It was hilarious, Damien said that he had never been that close to one of them and that he was really happy it hadn't landed on him, as they have huge claws and it could probably mess you up a bit on impact. It was really cool looking though, they're furrier than normal kangaroos. I'll put up a picture from Google so you know what I'm talking about. We also saw some pademelon kangaroos that are these little animals that are less than a foot high, and they hop around on the rocks on the shore. They were really cute, just mini kangaroos. There were also some wallabys around and possums. A platypus was also swimming around our boats, Damien said that had never really happened before either, and it even ran into Sarah's part of the canoe. We thought that maybe it had some vision problems.

The night got even more interesting when we got back to the hostel. I was hanging out with people downstairs and we kept hearing this car honking outside. One guy said he had heard it a couple hours ago and not really thought much about it but it was going off a lot now so we went outside to look around. It was a bizarre situation. We found this guy that was completely naked that had his hands taped to his steering wheel and was stuck in his car, hitting the horn with his face. He said he had been mugged by a guy threatening him with a syringe filled with blood that he said had HIV on it, and that the guy made him strip and then he stole his wallet and some other things. It was kinda freaky, the guy was really weird too, and nothing really made sense about the situation, but we got him freed up and he drove away pretty quick. The police came awhile later and filled out a report, and a bunch of us were downstairs thinking, this place doesn't even have locks on any of the doors (it's in a very small town in the middle of nowhere pretty much), what if the crazy needle guy comes after us?? These people that were camping outside decided to get a room. It was funny, the cop thought it couldn't be a true story because things like that just don't happen up there. But it was definitely a bizarre occurrance.

The next day we woke up and thanked god we had survived the night free of HIV needle guy attacks and went on a bike trip around the area. It was really fun, we got to go swimming in a lake at the end of it which was really great because it was quite hot out. When we were biking back to the van, my mom turned the wrong way and went up a huge hill the opposite direction and just kept going, so Damien had to go searching for her after she didn't show up at the end for awhile. I guess she just wanted some extra exercise and couldn't get enough of the biking. She said she saw a roadkill snake though, so it must not all have been a wasted extra trip.

We also went canoeing again in the day, I went swimming a lot because it was so hot out. We brought along these 2 French guys too that were really funny. They spoke a little English, enough to communicate, but it was hilarious some of the things they would say. One of the Welsh girls was trying to explain what 'cocky' meant to one of them, and he went, "mmm cookie I love them!" But then she said, no, COCKy, it's a different word, but he still didn't get it, he was like, "cockies are good!" and would rub his belly. It was really amusing. They also would try to sing along with the songs on the bus, but they only sortof knew the words. "I Kissed a Girl" came on, and they were rocking out to it. They knew the music, but not really the words, it was really amusing. When we were canoeing with them, they were both trying to splash our boat at the same time and ended up leaning too far to one side and flipped their boat. They kept trying to splash the Welsh girls too, and the one girl kept trying to say not to because she had her camera, but they didn't get it. She was like, just ignore them, maybe they'll leave us alone! It was an entertaining trip. We saw a possum and a kangaroo too, but nothing as good as it had been the night before. It was a really fun trip all around, I really liked the backpacker hostel and all the people there. They also had an awesome dog named Jeb that was really sweet that we got to hang out, he even came canoeing with us.

Pix are: canopy of giant strangler fig tree, mom and i with view on the way up to the tablelands, waterfall in the tablelands, the backpacker lodge, Jeb the dog from the lodge, and a baby tree kangaroo awwww

Cairns and Green Island

After my field trip, I had a night at home to do laundry and pack again to go off for the rest of my spring break. I flew up north to Cairns to meet my mom who came out for a couple weeks which was really cool. It was really good to see her, it had been about 6 months since I have seen any of my family and was definitely great that she could get time off work and come hang out over here for awhile. I got in at night and we didn't do very much because we had to get up early to go white water rafting the next day. The bus picked us up in the morning and we went to the Tully river that is a couple hours south and had an awesome time rafting the river. There are a lot lot lot of Japanese tourists in Cairns, so many of the guides are from Japan as well, and we got one of them named Yoshi, who kindof spoke English, which made it an interesting and probably more exciting trip, as you were sometimes not sure what he was instructing you to do. He was really enthusiastic though, and the other people in our boat were cool, there were some Germans and a couple from Dubai. We got to swim some rapids which was a lot of fun and they did a lot of tricks with the different rapids like doing 180s down the white water and flooding the raft. It was a sweet trip. They dropped us back off at Cairns that night and we got dinner at a sushi train place, it was like one of the sushi boat places, but on a train. Very awesome.

The next day we got up and took the ferry over to Green Island out on the great barrier reef. We stayed over there for 2 nights and it was great. You could snorkel whenever you wanted, and we got up early both mornings and went out before breakfast and got to see some awesome stuff like fish and turtles and sharks. They even fed the fish every afternoon off the jetty and tons of them would come and freak out over the fish food. One day we swam around the whole island and went to some places that were comepletely empty of people. My mom saw two shovelnose rays that freaked her out a bit, and we saw a ton of sea cucumbers too that are always good for entertainment. They look like deformed penises and when you pick them up they squirt out liquid from one side, what a ridiculous animal. We also got to go out to the outer reef on a boat that drove out about an hour to a platform in a part of the ocean where you couldn't see any land in any direction. It was really cool, you could snorkel off the platform or go in a semi-sub or even take a helicpoter flight over the reef. We snorkeled the whole time and had a good lunch there, and then snorkeled some more. I got a cool sunburn all over my back, it was pretty sunny out and the water wasn't even cold. I am really glad we were up there when it wasn't stinger season, because you can just go swimming anywhere without worrying about jellyfish or having to wear the 'stinger suits'. It was really neat, we saw a lot of fish and some sharks even, it was really beautiful.

They also had a crocodile farm/zoo thing on the island that was a bit random but it was neat. They had a bunch of crocs over there and we went over for one of the feedings where the guy got the big 5 meter croc to jump out of the water for a chicken. It was pretty impressive. We also got to hold a small crocodile that had its mouth taped shut. I was happy about that because they will aparently just go for anything and would take a bite out of you without really thinking at all. It's true though because a crocodile has the brain about the size of one of our fingernails, and everything it does is based on instinct and it doesn't really ever think about anything. Pretty weird, but it makes them predictable I guess.

The rest of the time we just chilled out at the beach and walked around the island. They had a free drinks hour at 5 every night and we took advantage of the free mimosas! Was pretty cool, really nice place, and we had good weather most of the time. It poured rain really hard for a few minutes at a time or a lot at night, but we were definitely lucky and had sunny days most of the time.

Pix are: sargent major fish at the fish feeding, the outer reef, snorkeling, mom with sea cucumber, and a turtle