Easter Break: Whitsundays

For Easter break, I decided to go to the Whitsunday Islands with 2 friends from school, Sarah and Sydney. It was AWESOME. Definitely the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life, there are so many cool people around, and so many great activities you can do. I had thought Tahoe was the best place on earth, but this sorta blew it out of the water (in terms of summer weather anyways), and that is saying something coming from me about Lake Tahoe. Everywhere you look it looks like a postcard, I was in constant awe of the place. The Whitsundays are a group of islands south of Cairns, a few of them have small resorts, and there are a fair number of condos on Airlie Beach on the mainland, but the main street of the town (pretty much the only street with anything on it - by anything I mean only hostels, bars, and travel booking places) is overrun by all the backpackers. There is a lot going on and all in such an amazing setting. It is a very chilled out town, you can get into any bar/club in beach gear (unlike Brisbane), and I don't think I wore a shirt during the day once, its pretty good being able to go around in a swimsuit top and board shorts pretty much everywhere. We had gotten a package deal that included a bunch of activities, hostel accommodation at Koala Backpackers, and some of our meals. Here is what we did. (this is a pretty long post, but our days were pretty full, I figured I would just write it all, you can read what you want).

Day 1
We woke up and went down to the dock to get on a sailing daytrip. This was on a smaller boat that was wind powered, but had an engine as well. The skipper was from the San Fernando Valley, how weird is that? The other two crew members were Magnus from Estonia and an Australian guy whose name I can't remember. Very diverse crew. Apparently a lot of backpackers get jobs on the boats for a few months at a time to save up money and keep traveling, it would be a pretty cool job I would think. We sailed to Blue Pearl Bay, hoping the sun would come out the whole time, but it remained overcast and lightly rained off and on. Nevertheless, it was a very cool experience. We signed up for the introductory SCUBA dive which we were all really stoked about because none of us had really wanted to spend lots of money on the certification training that took up two weekends which we didn't really have time to do in the first place. But we got really lucky because they were having a special deal on it and it only cost us $40 to dive. Pretty sweet. The 3 of us and one other American girl went diving with 2 of the crew and it was awesome. We didn't go super deep because it was an un-certified person dive, but we got a few meters down and saw a rass, the fish that switches sex from female to male and then gets frickin huge. This one is apparently mid switch, and her name is Priscilla. She comes right up to you and you can pet her, which is pretty weird, kinda like a dog. She is about 1.5 meters long. Big fish. Tons of other fish swim all around you right in front of your face. A couple of them even nipped at my mask, it was so crazy how many of them there were. Breathing underwater is really cool, one of the girls was freaking out and had to go up, but I was having a great time and it was fun just hanging out down there with the fishes. After we came up we got to snorkel for another hour and that was fun as well. The visibility was not amazing because it was overcast and there was a lot of debris in the water from recent bad weather, but it was really cool anyways. We sailed back home, and it was a bit cold, but still a lot of fun. The other people on the boat were cool too, there was a shark marine biologist, a construction guy, some other American exchange students studying in the Daintree rainforest, and a bunch of others. Everyone was real interesting to talk to. I also found out that recent storms in the past 2 months had caused over 60 boats to sink, 30 of which are still unrecovered. Nobody was hurt, a bunch of people had to get rescued by helicopters though. One of the boats is still washed up on the shore near the harbor. Pretty bad times, I'm glad we missed all that.

Day 2
The sun was out today and it was glorious. This place is much more beautiful in good weather, and I was excited to go out and do something. The 2 girls I was with wanted to go shopping, and I didn't really think I could handle that, so I went over to one of the 30 travel places on this tiny street and looked around for something that I could do. Some girls on the sailboat the day before said that South Molle Island had some great bushwalking trails, so I looked for a way to get over there. I found out there is a ferry that leaves 4 or 5 times a day to get over there so I hopped on the next one that was going out at about noon. It was a really nice trip over, a lot faster than sailing but a lot louder, and everything was clear and sunny and beautiful. I got to South Molle and had only a few hours before the last ferry was leaving so I took off to the trails pretty quickly. The first one I went on, a snake fell down the hill across the trail in front of me, it was a bit startling. The trail went out to the beach and it was low tide, so you could also walk across a rock bridge to Mid Molle Island. The next trail I went on had an amazing view of the bay on the other side of the island, and the third was up to Point Jeffrey, where you had a 360 degree view of all of the islands. I took a bunch of pictures, it was a really amazing place. I had to run the last part of the trails because I was going to miss the ferry, and that would have been problematic to say the least. I guess I could have camped on the beach, there were campers there, but I was glad I got back to the mainland. It was a very cool experience and much better than shopping for surrrrrrre.

Day 3
Third day here we took the Reefjet boat out for an all day trip to some really neat places. There were about 30 people on the boat, and it was a motor boat, not a sailboat. This was cool for getting around quicker and spending more time at the locations we were going to. The first place we stopped was off of Hook Island and we went snorkeling there. I saw a bunch of fish and took a ton of pictures, the camera works pretty well underwater, pretty amazing. My friends even saw a turtle and were in touching distance which is pretty amazing. I saw another rass and a giant clam and a lot of really pretty coral. The sun was out today, so you could see a bit more of the colors of the fish. On the way back to the boat, I saw a pretty big box jellyfish about 2 feet away which kinda scared the shit out of me, I stopped pretty quick and looked around to make sure no others were going to be around. There were none, so that was all good, because after hearing what happens to people that get stung I didn't want to stick around and find out about it. The skipper said that you dont really feel the sting, it just itches a bit, but then 30 minutes later your spine starts hurting a lot and your central nervous system starts shutting down. No good. They make you wear 'stinger suits' when you are in the water, they are pretty much wetsuits that would protect you from box or irigangie jellyfish, both of which are all over, which is too bad because it is such a beautiful place, but to swim in the water you pretty much have to wear the suits.

We got back on the boat and went to this bay where green turtles hang out because the whole floor is sea grass. They come up for air every once in awhile and I got to see a couple. They were really big turtles, about 4 or more feet long I would guess. We took the little raft boat to the shore and went on a bushwalk through a rainforest/jungle type area for a bit to a lookout point. I am pretty sure this was on Whitsunday Island, but it could have been a smaller one nearby. The lookout point is the 2nd most photographed spot in Australia apparently, and I can see why. It was an amazing panoramic view of Whitehaven Beach and the surrounding islands. We got some good pictures and stayed for a bit to enjoy the view. After, we got back onto the boat and went to Whitehaven Beach, and wow, it was just awesome. It is supposed to be one of the top 6 beaches in the world, and I can see why. The sand was pure white and extremely fine. You could pack it into a snowball if it was wet and the dry sand made skid sounds like on a basketball court when you walked on it. It had a really beautiful view as well. Another nice thing was that it wasn't very crowded because you have to take one of these boats out there to get there, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. You still have to wear the stinger suits if you want to be safe when swimming though. I swam around with Sydney and Sarah for a bit and then went walking along the beach. That walk made me really sketched out about actually swimming at that beach. I saw 4 stingrays just chillin at the edge of the water and jellyfish had washed up onto the shore as well. I guess the danger of this place adds to the beauty? haha, also, there is a small island next to this beach (less than a square kilometer), and it is said to have the largest death adder snake population of any place in the world per square meter. Sounds like a great holiday destination. I played some volleyball with some Irish guys in the water and hung out with this guy from Slovakia as well, they were pretty cool people. The Slovakian guy, Mattej, is a real backpacker. He puts the others to shame. Most people travel around the country on buses and stay at hostels, but he was hitchhiking and camping everywhere he went. He had everything in his pack, cooking supplies, clothes, his whole life. Pretty impressive I thought. He was headed up north the next day to hopefully get work picking fruit. Many of the backpackers do that when they run out of money, just stop and pick fruit for a month or two until they get enough to move on to the next place. After leaving the beach, we got back on the boat and they gave us watermelon which was pretty much the best thing ever after being in the sun all day. We came back to Airlie Beach and decided it had been a pretty awesome day.

Day 4
We got picked up by a bus in the morning on Wednesday and taken out to Porsepine for a Crocodile Safari. The guy that runs the place was even named Steve and wore khaki shorts/shirt, I guess the Steves gravitate towards this kind of work with the crocs in Australia. This activity seemed to be more geared towards families, but I had a good time. It was really hot out, but we werent doing anything very strenuous so it wasn't that bad. We got on a boat and it reminded me of the jungle cruise in Disneyland. We saw some crocs laying out on the banks, they looked pretty relaxed. Saw a lot of birds too. The tour guide was really informed and I learned a lot about the animals and the ecosystem of the mangrove area. It pretty much enables all the animals of the ocean to survive, as most of the bottom food chain animals are born there, such as mud crabs. The mangroves are pretty amazing too, they can grow in salt water and sweat out the salt through their leaves. I also learned that Ian Fleming based his character of James Bond on a guy from Porsepine that was into doing crazy adventurous stuff. I don't remember the name, but he was real into crocodiles apparently. We went back to the main area and had a great lunch, probably the best meal since I've been here. Barramundi fish, chicken, salad, and this cake/bread/scone stuff called damper. It was all very fresh and good. We then went out on a ride through the grassland/swamp/forest area around the camp and saw a bunch of wallabys, birds, and cattle. It was a cool experience, definitely slower than the stuff we did on the other days, but I am glad we got to go on it.

We got back and went straight to the lagoon (this public pool in the middle of Airlie Beach, very cool thing to have there) to go swimming. Played catch with a bunch of Irish guys for a good long while then just hung out in the sun. We met up with some of Sydney's friends after dinner (I heated up some good canned soup at the hostel, it was quite awesome) and had some goon (cheap box wine) and played zoo (they call it thumper - the clapping game where everyone has a sign and you send it around the table, good times) at one of the bbq area picnic tables. It was fun, this one girl kept fucking up the game and they were giving her a hard time. We went out to some bars after that and it was pretty good. We ran into the Irish clan again (plus a Scottish guy) and went from the backpacker's bar Beaches to the Irish Pub to this dance club place called Evolutions. We had briefly stopped by Evo's the night before, but the whole place smelled weird, reminded me of my hockey gear, so we decided to take off. They must have air freshened the place up because it was better this night. All these places are pretty much right next door to each other, and that's how the street is set up. I hung out with the Scottish guy for awhile after that and asked if he wore kilts all the time and played the bagpipes. He said no, but that he really does like haggis. But not scottie dogs. There were a bunch of Europeans and people from other places that were all really fun to hang out with. It was cool because the place is pretty small, and you get to know a lot of people that are there during the same time you are because you keep running into them. I also met an Australian guy named Jack that works on one of the boats, and he was telling me that it is pretty great work. You get to go out a few days at a time and do your job in the islands, then have a few days off to do whatever in the Whitsundays. Sounds good to me.

Day 5
Today was probably my favorite day out of the week. We went sea kayaking out to this rock, like a small island, in the water about an hour away and hung out there for awhile. We paddled around it and climbed around on it and just hung out there with the guide and a 6 other people. There were a couple French exchange students, some women from New South Wales, a British guy, and our guide that was from New Zealand. The guide was a cool guy, he was telling me to read Slash's biography (from Guns 'n Roses) and we were talking about music a fair bit. He said he jams with friends in the Irish pub on the main road some nights, he plays drums and guitar. Very chilled out guy. I was in a kayak with Sydney and we got to see a green turtle pop up a little ways in front of us which was neat. We paddled back and saw some people skydive and have their parachutes come out in the sky. After kayaking, we went to use our coupons for 15 minutes of jetski use, and that was a lot of fun too. I got going up to about 68k/hour and it was definitely fun. Reminded me of jetskiing around on Lake Tahoe, which is always good times. We went out for awhile again this night, it was fun, met more people and danced some. Met a Canadian guy that is studying at Griffith on the Gold Coast. He said it's a lot of fun down there, I think I'll try to check it out pretty soon, its really close to Brisbane.

Day 6
The next morning I had to get up at about 9 because I had decided to do this deal at our hostel where you work 3 hours for free accommodation for the night plus a free meal at their restaurant. So I got up and went to work with this full time employee girl from Tasmania changing the mattress covers in all the rooms. I don't really know if it was worth it, this hostel was probably the grossest place I've stayed at. We kept hearing rumors of bedbugs and and other fun stuff like that, a lot of the rooms smelled terrible, and a lot of people were complaining about the place. However, I got to hang out with the workers there and hear about what's up in their lives, and it was definitely a different experience from hanging out with UQ students or backpackers. They were pretty young, probably my age, but had kids already and chain smoked. Different sorta lifestyle, but they were real nice and we made the most of our nasty bedsheet changing shift. The rest of the day I hung out at the lagoon because we had nothing really planned. I had my good free dinner and made it an early night.

Day 7
I got up early and went running before we had to check out, I was pretty happy to be out of Koala Backpackers. We flew back home without any problems, chatted with some people at the airport and they said that I have to go to a B&S Ball while I am here (it stands for blokes and spinsters or something?). It is pretty much a redneck country person Australian festival in the outback or some other such desolate area where a bunch of people get together and make things like 'spud guns' (out of plastic pipe) that shoot potatoes up to 200 meters away, have burnouts in cars, blow up other stuff, and just party it up hick style in the desert. Sounds like an interesting cultural experience, he talked it up and said it was a pretty big Australian tradition, they started up as a way for young people in the outback to meet each other.

Got back to Union and it was the 'turn off lights between 8 and 9pm' day to save energy. It was awesome, everyone went out on the oval (field) and played frizbee and soccer for that hour and then some. We should do it every week I think, it was good being back and having everyone hanging out together. I did laundry pretty immediately, and am excited to be sleeping in my own bed that most definitely has no bugs. All in all, this trip was amazing, probably one of the coolest things I have done in my life. The Whitsundays are a great place to go do adventure trips, meet cool people, and just see some of the most beautiful landscapes ever, I would definitely recommend visiting this great place.

Pictures: big croc next to the river, out with the Irish/Scottish/Australian boys, kayaking, the climbing on the rock we kayaked to, landscape pics from South Molle Island, fish I saw when snorkeling, and Whitehaven Beach.

Morton Bay Research Station

I had a field trip for my marine science class this weekend. We drove to Morton Bay and took a ferry out to Stradbroke Island to do research projects and hang out for 3 days. All the kids in my class are international, so I was with mostly North Americans for the weekend along with some Germans, a girl from the Dominican Republic, and a Swedish guy. The group I was in did our project on comparing how many predatory animals are in the water at night compared with the day. We took a huge net with a float line and a sinker line and walked out into the water up to about waist height and then both sides walk in and you pull all the animals back in to shore that are in that section of the water. You really pick up a lot of different fish, and we counted tons of garfish, gobies, pike, leather jackets, longtoms, and many other fishes. One of the other groups caught a really big stingray and had to figure out how to untangle it from the net without getting stung. It was a few feet wide, but we saw some other rays that were even bigger, one of them went right by my feet when we were out waking around at one point. We all froze and were freaking out a bit until we were sure it was gone. Doing the netting at night was pretty awesome, we were out in the water really far because the tide was so far out. You can't use flashlights when you are doing the actual netting because it scares away the fish, so the only light we had was from the moon, it looked really neat. We caught a lot of squids and they were really cool. You can hold them in your hand with gloves on and they change colors and squirt ink out at you. We also got some pretty big crabs, a puffer fish, and a bunch of other fish. When we got back, my friend told me that her group leader had said that you couldnt pay him to go out in the water at night because there are sharks everywhere. That made me feel really safe, especially after our leader kept pulling out these leather jacket fish that can sting you from the net and throwing them right next to our legs in the water. She also said she saw a shark out in the water a ways off. We were also warned about blue octopi and stone fish that are in the area, both of which can kill you. It was good nobody got hurt, because all the talks about all the animals in the ocean that will kill you were a bit crazy.

I was talking with some of the other girls in my group, and we decided that Stradbroke Island really reminded us of the island in Lost. It was funny because we all thought the same things, for example, the rain shuts on and off really randomly. It will be sunny out, then torrential rain for a few minutes, then sun again. The plants were all rainforesty and the beaches were really nice, and we were staying at the research station that was similar to one of the Dharma Initiative stations. They even had a 'Duress' button on the wall, like in the hatch. Some people went out to a bar in 'town' during the night I was netting, and they said it was full of middle age fisherman that were creepy, just like 'the others' in Lost (a girl said they looked like the guy with the big beard that abducts Walt, like the fisherman on the frozen food packages). We were kindof pushing the similarities at that point, but it was pretty funny and we kept finding more ridiculous things in common with both islands.

The third day we were there we got to go to the other side of the island where there are nicer beaches (not just the harbor and tide pools) and hung out there and swam. The waves and current were pretty strong, I hadn't swum in water like that before but it was a lot of fun bodysurfing with everyone. The waves all came really quick one after the other, it wasn't very predictable so you had to pay attention. It was raining out too, but was still warm so a bunch of people were swimming. Some people played cricket on the beach, but I didn't make it over there, and cricket doesn't seem that great. Lots of standing around. One of the instructors said that the kangaroos in the canyons come down to the beach sometimes and swim in the ocean to get rid of parasites in their fur. Sounded pretty funny. We saw a couple of them in a park on the walk over to the beach, they really are like deer in America, just all over the place. In the end, it was a really neat trip and I was glad I signed up early and got to go on it.

Pictures are: my group leader holding a longtom, really big spider on the side of the road, the harbor, and shot walking down to the beach.

Nambour Train to Caloundra and Mooloolaba: The Sunshine Coast

I went up north to the Sunshine Coast this weekend with three other girls from school and had a great time. Train ride was good, only $6.50 for the whole thing that takes about 2.5 - 3 hours with the bus transfers. Much more affordable than charter buses. I stayed with my friend Chris I met in Brisbane a couple weeks ago, which was really cool because he grew up there and knows all the good things to do. We hung out around his apartment complex for awhile the first night and I met some of his friends and they were all really chill and fun to hang out with. Also went out to a bar in Caloundra that night called Tonic. Much smaller than the places in Brisbane, but Caloundra is a much smaller city (it seemed to be like comparing Palo Alto to San Francisco, suburbs and a big city). Thinking about it now, Caloundra did sortof remind me of a city like Palo Alto, everything else on the main street there was pretty dead except this place (like that Japanese place on University where people do sake bombs and dance on the tables but everything else is closed). I tried this drink called Vivenza, which is a premixed Jose Cuervo with lime soda and it was really good. Usually I hate tequila but it was a good combo I would say. It was a fun night, danced for awhile hung out with Chris' friends.

The next day was pretty sweet. Chris lives a block away from the ocean and we just got up and went swimming in the morning. How cool is that, any time you want you can just get up and walk to the beach? Very neat. Chris had some stuff to do during the day so I caught the bus up north further 20 minutes to Mooloolaba and hung out at the beach there with my friends from school. Swam a lot and took a nap on the beach, it was really nice. The hostel that my friends were staying at lets you have free surf/boogie boards to take to the beach, so i boogie boarded for a long time. We tried to surf for a bit but concluded that short boards are really difficult to do anything with, especially when we just suck to begin with. Later on in the day there were random rain showers. The rain here is weird, its sunny one minute and then pouring sheet rain really hard the next but for only a couple minutes. The hostel had free dinner which is always good, so we had hot dogs with bread for dinner (they don't use buns here). We met a bunch of Canadians, Kiwis, Europeans, a bunch of people from Wash U, and some other Australians at the hostel and had a good time with them. We played King's Cup with really gross energy drinks called 'Elevate' - don't every get them. The Canadians definitely had some different rules for that game, it was funny to play with rules like you can't ever look one person in they eye if they draw an ace. I really like hanging out at the hostels, you meet such fun random people. We went out to meet Chris at the bar he works at in Mooloolaba called the Wharf Tavern. It is pretty much the biggest place to go on the Sunshine Coast and Saturday nights there are pretty huge. It gets packed and there were probably about 3,500 people. I met more random people, listened to a band that was playing, hung out with this girl having her bachelorette party (she had this veil headdress thing made out of condoms, i don't know if that is an Australian thing or what), and just had an all around good time.

Next day was cool, we went to the downtown markets that happen there every Sunday and walked around the vendors for awhile. There is an election coming up there and many of they candidates for mayor were walking around talking with people. There were some bands playing too, and we got some awesome chicken kebabs and watched this country group for awhile. America needs to get kebab stands, they are everywhere in Australia and its pretty much the best food ever. Sorta like gyros because its a lamb/chicken/beef/falafel wrap, but you can put all these other sauces and ingredients in it and they toast it and its just super tasty. I recommend the chicken-vegetable-pineapple-sweet chili sauce combo. I caught the train back at about 3 with one of the girls from school because I had to make it home for water polo. Slept most of the way home and was refreshed and ready to go for my first wopo game. It was a lot of fun, our team is pretty horrible with almost no polo experience (we lost 2-18), but the other team had Australia national team people on it so I don't feel that bad. I also tried out playing touch rugby for my college, and that was really cool. It is a really fast paced game and I hope that there are more pickup games organized because I am away on a field trip during the week of the tourney here and can't play on the team. I might also try out rowing down on the river with the sharks, it sounds like a good time. There are so many inter-college sports here, it's awesome. They are mostly only a few weeks long too, so you can just go try a bunch of different ones. I just went and watched a Netball game today, it's weird, like basketball with extra rules (only girls play it usually - you can't dribble, there is no backboard, and you can only shoot inside they key). Union won by a lot and it was cool to watch. Anyways, all good stuff, life is pretty good right now I would say.

Pictures here are of the beach, hostel New Zealander/Canadian wearing a fur hat, and people out at night (some from Brisbane, some from Sunshine Coast). Sorry yes that one is inappropriate, but I found it so funny, I had to put it up.

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Yesterday I went to the Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane with five or six other international kids. It was a really cool place, they had a bunch of neat animals that you could see really close up. There were fruit bats, lots of birds (kookaburra, lorrakeet, wild turkeys, emu...), a ton of koalas (200 in the whole place i think?), kangaroos, wallabies, crocodiles, snakes, and some other cool animals. We couldn't find the echidna or tasmanian devil, but they had spots there too. The koalas were so freakin' cute! They had different habitats for each group, like 'moms and kids' with the joey still living in the mom's pouch, the females that were going to have kids, the 'retirement home' for the older koalas (some were over 20 years old), 'kindergarten' for the young ones, and there was even a bachelor pad for this one guy koala by himself. I guess he doesn't get along with the others. The coolest part of the day was that you got to hug a koala and feed the kangaroos there. The Australians think its funny how people get really excited about the kangaroos, because they are like deer are in the US. People wake up with kangaroos in their backyards, they are everywhere. A guy also told me how people go 'spotlighting' kangaroos here too (shine big lights at them from a truck and then shoot them - like some deer hunters in the US), because they eat crops and are sorta a pest animal. But they were just chillen at the sanctuary and it was definitely cool to hang out with the kangaroos. Here are some pictures from lone pine.

E Floor and Red Week

All the people in my res college are pretty cool, but I really like the ones living on my floor. Our floor is mostly guys on one side and girls on the other, but for some reason my room is in the middle of all the guys' rooms. Everyone just hangs out together all the time, which is cool. I live next to this guy named Dave (wow Christina, I'm replacing more of you all the time... haha), that is really into music and made me mix of the last 30 years of Australian music. It has some pretty cool stuff, Redgum, Hilltop Hoods, The Herd, it's always good to get new music. They have a file sharing system here for music/TV/movies/whatever between everyone at Union (D.C. it's called) that is like OurTunes, and it is amazing. I have downloaded way too much already. The girls on my floor are really cool too and fun to hang out with when I make it to the other end of the hall, one of them is an aerobics instructor at the gym. I went to her class yesterday and it was hilarious, about 50 girls and 4 guys doing all this crazy stuff to techno remixes of Fall Out Boy and other such wonderful music. It was actually a lot of fun though, I thought I wouldn't really be into it but it's not as boring as just running miles. One of the other instructors also fell off the stage when she was doing some sort of kick in the middle of the routine, and that was pretty entertaining too.

This week of school is called 'Red Week', when everyone is back at school and moved in. The social coordinator of Union organized events and they bus us out to a different bar or club every night. You might not believe it but I have gone out in high heels (flip flops not allowed, what is that about anyway?) and actually did things with my hair the last 3 nights. It's a lot of fun, I have met a ton of people. I was going to stay in last night and watch a movie with the international crew, but my floormates would not have it and made me come out to The Chalk (it was downtown in this area called Woolongatta - my friend Olly and I decided that Australian city names are all ridiculous because they just sortof roll off your tongue when you're drunk and it makes it easier to tell whoever is driving how to get you home. He is from Toowoomba, a couple other of my favorite names are Indooropilly and Noosa), and it ended up being a really cool night. They were playing salsa music because some class was going on at the place, and two of the guys from Union were doing made up flamboyant salsa moves all in between the people taking the class, it was pretty hilarious. I mostly hung out and talked with people that night, the night before was at a club called the Embassy and it was a more dancing type place. We also went out to a bar/club named Union Jack's and that was a really fun night, lots of people there from all the res colleges and a fight even broke out between a couple guys. It's funny noticing how the Australians dance differently from people in the US, the guys here seem to be more excited about dancing and aren't embarrassed about it, they even dance with other guys pretty often, which is not something I have seen in the US. At times they get really into doing moves like 'the sprinkler' or 'the shopping cart'. At first I thought they were kidding about it, but I think that's just what they do... it's funny.

The bus rides on the way to these places are quite the experience also, the boys have these chants they do that are so un-politically correct yet hilarious. I don't think they would ever go over in America very well. One starts off like, "My name is Jack, I'm a necrophiliac, I get frustrated when people get cremated." And they get worse from there, I'm sure the bus drivers love getting these jobs.

Byron Bay

I took a trip up north about 3 hours to Byron Bay this past weekend. My friend Lindsay knew a guy that was traveling up that way, and 4 of us from Union got a ride with him there and then bought bus tickets to get back home. It was a beautiful place, definitely one of the nicest beaches I have ever been to, if not the best. The water was warm and it was about 105 degrees outside, so a good day to go swimming. Lindsay's friend Steve had some surfboards too, but there were not very many waves at all, so that didn't really happen. We stopped in Surfer's Paradise on the way up, which is only about an hour away from where I live, and that was a great beach too. There is a huge city in Surfer's Paradise, a lot of high rise apartment buildings and a big downtown. Byron is more like Santa Cruz, a smaller town with a lot of hippies. Everywhere you go there are street musicians (they call them buskers), even a guy playing processed music with his digiridoo. A lot of tourists go through there, I think one guy said something like 5,000 people per week? There are a lot of hostels and backpackers all around.

We stayed at the coolest hostel ever. It was called the Arts Factory and it was a couple blocks outside the main area of town. They had a chill spot with hammocks, an indoor area with pool tables, a bar, and an area where they did workshops like learn to massage or build your own digiridoo. You could stay in the main lodge area, or they also had this option to stay in the 'islands', which were these huts that looked like covered wagons out over this marshy area. You walked out on a wood plank walkway to get to your little place, and they were really neat. We crammed all 5 of us into a two bedroom place and it was a cozy night for sure. When we first went by the room, there was a spider about the size of my palm on one of the beds. Steve trapped it in the trash can and got it outside, and we thankfully did not see any more of those the rest of the time there.

The city had a cool night life, we went to this bar for their $2 dinners, but Lindsay and I ended up eating free dinner at the seven day adventist church. For some reason they were giving away free soup and toast and playing projecting sports videos on their wall. Cool church, nice people, and they didnt even talk to us about converting or God or anything. Good deal. We went and hung out on the beach after that with a bunch of other Canadians mostly that a guy with us knew (they travel in huge packs, i look around and realize there are like 20 of them around me, weird). It was a really nice night, just a bunch of people out on the beach. The guys picked up some 'goon', this box wine that is the only affordable alcohol in Australia, its $8 for 4 liters. That's how you know it's quality for sure. They call it goon and make punch with it and its pretty awful stuff. About the same as Franzia, but ugh, just sortof sickening. I didnt really drink that night, I was just happy with being outside and hanging out with people. We slept allright then got on the bus the next day back to Brisbane, it was a cool trip for sure, but would have liked to spend more time there, another day at least. It was a bit last minute planning and could have been done better, but all in all was a very cool weekend.


These pictures are: beach, our island hostel room, very mellow iguana in the hostel yard, Lindsay with indigenous child mural, and more pictures from the beach.

End of Orientation

Finished up 0-week today, we all went out to a water park which was awesome because it was ridiculously hot outside. Even now at night I am sitting in front of the fan, its still really warm out. Last night was a lot of fun, pretty much all of UQ went out to this toga party in downtown Toowong (they have such great city names here). We took the bus over and got there early at about 7, which was good because the line to get in was about 2 blocks long by 8:30. It was at this bar called the R.E. which is apparently a big student hangout. I hung out with the international people for awhile, and was listening to the band that was playing there (it was funny, they played all American cover songs from bands like Green Day or The Eagles), but then wandered around and met random people that were all really awesome. I met a guy that plays on the national water polo team for Australia, and also plays for their intramural league at UQ that I just signed up for. That should be interesting considering there are super beginners and national team players in the same games. Everyone else I talked to was really cool too. Other people have photos, and I will try to get them because there were some pretty great outfits. One guy dressed up as a transvestite toga-wearer with a rainbow wig and heavy makeup. He had a great transvestite accent too, it was very entertaining. It was probably one of the best parties I have ever been to, just a good vibe and I had a great time meeting all these new people. And who doesn't like to wear togas?

I really like the Australian people I have decided. They are all very positive, easygoing, and very friendly. They don't complain about things and they don't think they are too cool to do things that Americans would be embarrassed about, they just seem to have fun in whatever they are doing. They are all really easy to have conversations with about anything, everytime I have sat next to someone new on the bus or at a meal its like you have been good friends with them for awhile. It's interesting hanging out with them compared to the international kids. At our international meetings, people just keep bitching about the cafeteria system, how the internet works here (you have a 220 megabyte quota/month that gets eaten up on every website or application you use that streams anything over the net. One of the guys used it up in 30 minutes streaming TV on his computer.), or just random things that are not up to their standards of living in North America. They also were complaining that the Australians didnt get their sense of humor, which mainly consists of quoting family guy. I think they just need to suck it up and deal with it. I really do like the international people too, but it's just refreshing to go back to the Aussies that do not seem to really be bothered by anything.

We also went on a boat ride down the Brisbane River for another orientation activity, which was cool. I got to see the city at night which was neat, and it was Hawaiian themed so people wore a lot of funny stuff. We went by these cliffs that have been turned into a 24/7 rock climbing place with belay ropes and everything set up. They looked really neat, and were higher up than any rock wall I have ever seen, probably five stories tall? I'm not exactly sure. They were lit up and people were climbing all around. Tonight, there were a few local bands playing on campus for free, so I headed over with some people and we caught the last one. They were called Butterfingers and were cool. They played rap/reggae music and the singer had great lyrics. Some really hilarious stuff, and it was cool to listen to with the accent. Sortof reminded me of The Streets, but with more instruments. I'm going to try to pick up some of their music.

The pictures are of Brisbane at night, international kids at the Hawaiian boat event (that I can't seem to get right side up), and the rock wall on the bank of the river.