Noooosaaaaa

I spontaneously went on a trip up the Sunshine Coast to Noosa this past weekend with some new international kids (3 American girls and 3 Italian girls). It was only for one night, but we packed lots of activities into the hours we had there, and it was a sweet couple days. We took the train up (with bus transfers on either end), which only cost $9, and it took about 3 hours to get up there, not a bad deal. We arrived about 11AM on Saturday and I went jogging while the others were shopping around for stuff. I went through this community hang out park area that is along the water, and it was such a nice environment. All these families were there having barbecues and kids were running around and it just seemed like a really nice place to live. They have a weird futuristic park course set up too, they have machines like arm and leg presses where it uses your own weight as the resistance, kinda a step up from the Menlo Park wooden sit up benches. There were also some huge pelicans on the footpath that were intimidating, I ran past one of them and it looked like it was going to take a lunge at me, and it's a really big bird, just a bit scary. But I somehow survived, thank the heavens.

We met up after that and went hiking in the national park down the road from the hostel. It was really beautiful, the track goes out on this hill/cliff along the ocean where you can go down to different beaches or climb around on rocks. The views are amazing and it goes all the way around a point if you do the whole thing, but we only had a few hours, so we took the return loop that went through the eucalyptus forest. There are supposed to be koalas there, but we didn't spot any. We saw some huge spiders and a lizard, and a lot of bush turkeys that one of the girls was seriously afraid of and would scream every time they crossed the path, which was often. It was a good walk, probably about 14 kilometers total and all the surroundings were awesome.

I had one of the best kebabs ever for dinner, and was really really glad I didn't wait to eat with the rest of the group. They took over an hour to pick a restaurant (one frustrating thing about traveling with girls.. they are usually so indecisive and nobody will just choose something), and all the choices were crazy expensive. Noosa is a town that caters to more cashed up older tourists, and there is one food court with Subway and kebabs and stuff like that, and the rest of the area is super fancy restaurants. Somehow all the rest of them really wanted to eat at one of these places, and it really did not work out very well for them I thought. We ended up at this Italian place and they ordered weird stuff like a plate of mussels (literally a plate of shells and a piece of bread) or calamari (literally three small steamed squids and a piece of bread) for about $30 a pop, and they were still starving afterwards and wanted to go get kebabs, hilarious.

The next day we had a surf lesson that we signed up for through the hostel, and it reinforced my previous experiences with surfing, meaning that I still suck a lot at it. It was a lot of fun, I definitely always am up for being in the ocean, but wow, I'm terrible and just can't seem to get up. I can catch waves, but the standing up part really isn't happening, I think boogie boarding is the way to go, just a lot more fun in my opinion. It was a really nice day out, and after a couple hours of being tossed around in the surf, we hung out on the beach a bit and then went kayaking. The kayak hire came free with the surf lessons, and it was sweet. There are a lot of estuaries around Noosa that you can paddle around in. I saw a lot of resorts around, I didn't know the place had so many of them. It really is a huge tourist place, but it still seems like a small Aussie beach town. It was probably one of the more expensive places I've been through, but you can also hang out there cheaply. There were a few backpackers, but definitely not as much as other places I've visited. It was nice to get out of Brisbane and hang at the beach, I'm really looking forward to it heating up here so that we can at least go to the fake beach at South Bank (It's this pool with sand next to the Brisbane River) on weekends and hang out in the sun.

One last thing about the trip: the train ride home was epic, it even rivaled some of the experiences I have had on LA public transit (conversations with heroin guys, recently released prisoner substitute teachers, really loud gay people...), which is saying something. I went to go sit with my friends Dave and Sarah, because they had been at home in Noosa for the weekend and were coming back to Brisbane on the same train. There was a family right across from us that was just going off, pretty much the most dysfunctional group of people ever. The mom had no front four teeth on top or bottom, and she had two small kids and an older girl with her who was probably 16. The kids took turns having shrieking tantrums for the first half hour of the 2.5 hour trip, and she pretty much ignored them, but then the older girl got in on it. The mom refused to give her a cigarette, so she started screaming and saying things like, "I hate you! I hope you get hit by a train and die! You're a sadistic bitch!" She then called her dad and said she was getting off and coming back to where he lived. The mom then wanted the mobile phone back, because it was hers, and the daughter flipped out. They then got into an epic battle about whose SIM card it was, and the girl was punching her. The mom then went, "I don't hit any of you, but if you don't stop right now I'ma deck ya!" This all went on for the entire trip, everyone in our car was silent for awhile, but then just started talking again because these people clearly were not going to simmer and we all just sorta got used to it. The little boy was tapping on the mom at one point, and she didn't even look over, she just put her arm out and shoved him away to the next seat. It was crazy, there are for sure white trash people everywhere! It made my family's arguments seem very weak sauce.

Anyways, photos are: kayaking, friends, and extreme shots on our bushwalk through the park.

Semester 2 Beginnings

I've been back to uni for about 4 weeks now, and it has been really busy. I have class, work, and my internship all during the week, they keep me occupied pretty much all day and often into the night. It's good though, I am definitely never bored. This past week, I got to go to the awards show for the Q Song contest (songwriting contest that is put on by the company where I intern), and it was really cool to finally see the end product of something that we had been working on for months. People came from all over Queensland that had been chosen as finalists for the show, and all the winners for the different categories were announced, such as rock, pop, new music/experimental, folk, blues & roots, etc. There were also performances between awards by some of the nominated groups, and I was very impressed by their musicianship. The groups were mostly all unsigned bands, but some of them really blew me away. The first one was a group that was nominated for hip hop, and it was made up of kids from all around Brisbane. There was every race imaginable represented, and at one point I counted 16 people on the stage. They worked together so well though! Everyone had a job, whether it was doing a rap at one point, or background singing, or break dancing on the side, it reminded me of 'School of Rock', but more urban. There was also a guy called 8 Ball Aitken, one of the folk musicians, that had a giant red beard and red hair and played a mean blues guitar. He had a cordless setup for his guitar, and did 15 minute solos while walking around the audience and harassing them. The Gin Club also played, they were at Splendour too. They are a cool group with a bunch of musicians that keep switching instruments between them and have really nice melodic songs. Sorta folky, with other influences, but they are all really talented and fun to watch. They won the 'Song of the Year' award too, it was a good choice I would say.

Life at res college is good too, I somehow got nominated to be on the squash team (I seriously just got a call on my phone one day, being like, hey you're playing squash), even though I have never played the sport. It's lots of fun though, I won my first game against Duchense College (Douche for short, haha! It never gets old...). It was an epic battle of the two most novice players on each team that ended in a really long tiebreaker rally where my opponent collapsed on the last shot she tried to make, it was pretty dramatic. The rest of my team lost their matches, so I was glad to at least get us a few points. I also got on the tennis team somehow, even though I havent played since grade 9. I was very rusty, but the skills seems to be coming back a little. Very fun though, it's cool to just go play tennis one day a week. College sports are pretty relaxed, and free to play, so it's a pretty optimal situation. I also signed up for a capoiera class that starts next week. It's a Brazilian martial art, I went to the free trial class and it was a lot of fun, so maybe I'll learn some new skills! They wanted us to do cartwheels and it was very embarrassing, I have never been able to do those, it just turns into a weird side-hop thing. We'll see.

I had a field trip to the Brisbane Forest Park this week for my Australian Terrestrial Environment class. I learned some cool stuff, but I really think it could have been completed in half the time. We spent forever talking about rocks on this patio, and it got really dull. Rocks are pretty boring in my opinion, but we did learn some cool stuff about the rainforest and the sclerophyll forest (made of gum trees and eucalyptus). There were some cool strangler fig trees in the rainforest area (epiphytes - woah crazy science terms!) that grow up on a host tree and then strangle it to death and steal its sunlight. I also thought it was cool that the way the two forests are separated is through the spread of fire when it breaks out every few years. Rainforest can't handle fire and will all die, while the sclerophyll plants are designed to coexist with fire and regenerate quickly after a blaze goes through. The whole trip was mostly to get us to see how different plants grow up in each forest, because the two forest types are meshed together in varying compositions throughout the park. It was mostly about plants taking advantage of gaps in the canopy when a big tree falls down. Rainforest plants grow quickly to take in the sun and reproduce as fast as they can to spread throughout the forest, while the others grow slow and steadily to eventually fill in the gap. Birds and wasps also help to spread seeds and cross pollinate different plant species, which also determine where the different plants end up. I might not be explaining this extremely well, but I thought it was pretty interesting stuff and actually felt like I was learning something, so I thought I would share, hope it was with some level of clarity.

Anyways, that's what's up with my life at the moment. I put up some random pictures of friends and life over here, because I don't really have any photos that correlate with what I just wrote about. The first is from my floormates Tom and Olly's birthday night, the second two are on the Ekka raceday in Brisbane, where we all got dressed up to go to the horse races, and the last is me and a couple friends. The one in the green bra is this hilarious girl from up the coast that lives on a dairy farm. She is never seen without makeup, and even insists on wearing it while playing sports, and is really obsessed with clothes and shoes and all these other things that I am pretty much apathetic about, but also cusses more than any other girl I can think of. She's one of my favorite people here, it's very interesting to me because I can't think of any clothes obsessed girly girls that I really get along with amazingly back home, but I guess she really is not the typical American version of that sort of person. Crazy Australians.

Splendour in the Grass Music Festival

Last weekend I went down to Byron Bay for a 2 day music festival at Belongil Fields. I got lucky and got a ticket some months ago (it sold out 4 hours after tix went on sale), and did not really have any concrete plans of how I was going to get down there, or where I was going to stay until a few days before the weekend. I found my friend Kylah a ticket, and she had a friend that lives down in that area in a place out in the country called Mullimbimby, and Kylah has a car, so I got a ride and a place to stay in the same day! It worked out pretty great. We drove down late Friday night and just went to sleep, but the next day was amazing. I woke up at Kylah's friend Kara's house, along with 4 of her mates plus her brother and his mates, and their family had brought home a bunch of groceries and we all made an epic breakfast. I was definitely not expecting to do anything but sleep at the house, but this family was insanely hospitable, and Kara's parents were really cool too. We hung out there for a few hours before heading over to the festival grounds and getting our wristbands for the weekend.

The first day we got there pretty early and walked around the markets that were set up all around. There were lots of cool stands with people selling crazy hats and clothes, crafts, and official merch for the bands. There were also a lot of food stalls with every kind of ethnic food imaginable. They had hare krishna, sushi, mongolian bbq, organic donuts, everything. It was quite the setup. There were three main stages for bands, an area where there were dance workshops, an area for dance music, and then the teepee forest, which was a collection of teepees around a stage where DJs were spinning all day and night.

We started off the day by seeing Bluejuice on the Mix Up Stage. They were pretty great for opening the day at an early time slot. It was dance music/rock, there was a pretty big crowd to see them too. After that I saw a few songs by Tokyo Police Club, they were really mellow in comparison to the first act. They were allright, nothing amazing, but pretty entertaining nontheless. We then went to Lightspeed Champion, The Music, The Gin Club, and Bliss N Eso. Bliss N Eso were really good, they're an Aussie hip hop group that had lots of good songs to jump around to. They got the crowd going pretty well.

Later on in the night I saw MSTRKRFT, Soft Tigers Food Fight (both DJ acts), a bit of Band of Horses (lots of people were crazy about them, but the music was too chilled out for me at that moment, so I went back to the other stage and saw PNAU, which was the best decision of the day. I had heard a bit of them before, but wow, they were an amazing show. They play dance music, and the songs are all really different, which is not always the case with electronic acts. They also have a live drummer and guitarist, but most of the sound comes from electronic beats. The frontman has such a great stage presence, he has periods of extreme calm where he just stands with his arms up and stares out into the crowd, then he goes nuts and empties water bottles over his head and jumps around everywhere. Also, people come out on the stage in giant strawberry suits (and bird suits, sun suits, and a green skull suit) and just dance around during the songs. The drummer also has crazy energy, he stands up and just beats his drums during some songs, and at the end of the set he kicked his kit over and threw the cymbals across the stage. They were awesome.

After PNAU, I headed over to the far stage and saw the Polyphonic Spree, another amazing show. If you have not heard of this group, it is made up of about 30 members that all play orchestral instruments (plus some others that play guitar, etc.) from Texas, and they all wear choir robes. The frontman was really interacting with the crowd and they had an awesome sound. They even played a Nirvana cover, 'Lithium', that had everyone singing along. This random guy I met that I had been hanging out with (Kylah and the other girls wanted to see different bands during the day, so I met a lot of random people throughout the day and made some new friends) put me up on his shoulders and it was awesome to finally see over the heads of all the tall people. Believe it or not, Devo closed after them, and I went over and saw about 2 songs, and it was complete shit. There was such a small crowd for it too, the music was terrible, and the band members looked like they were about to fall over dead. One guy had really white hair, a huge gut, and was all decked out in the Devo uniform of those stupid red hats, a t-shirt with their own band name on it, and kneepads... it was awful. By that time everyone was pretty beat, so we went home and passed out, which was really smart because the next day was packed as well.

Sunday we got up and made our way over to Belongil Fields a bit later and got there in time to see a group from Brisbane called Yves Klein Blue. They were cool, sorta folk rock, pretty fun guys to listen to. We got some food and just hung out for awhile (They had this area that was in a huge bubble that was filled with pillows and hammocks that we just chilled out in for awhile because there were no bands we were wanting to see at that moment). I then saw a bit of British India before Vampire Weekend. VW was pretty good. They were fun to listen to, but they didn't amp up the crowd too much. The Wombats from the UK came on after that, they were so much fun. Everyone was jumping around and singing along, I got pretty close to the front and had a great time. They have really well written songs too, I'd say they're a pretty solid all-around band.

I went to the Mix Up stage after that and danced around for awhile to the Bag Raiders and Van She, and then saw Lyrics Born all the way from the Bay Area. I was right up at the front for that, he has a lot of people on stage with him playing various instruments, he had a pretty good sound. I'm not a huge fan of his raps, he just talks really really fast and I'm never sure what he's saying except during the hooks, but I guess it's like that for a lot of hip hop artists. But more with him. It was fun though. I went over to check out the Vines after that, I was hoping the lead singer would throw a tantrum, but he was unfortunately mellow. He is famous for freaking out at shows and breaking equipment, but he might be on medication now or something because he was diagnosed as being autistic or having Ausberger's Syndrome or something a few years ago. It's not quite as rock 'n roll as it was when he was having fits, but still a good set.

After that was New Young Pony Club, a dance/rock group from the UK. They were fun and their lead singer had a crazy tutu outfit on, she was a really energetic performer. I went to go find my friends after that to see if they wanted to see the Presets together, but they opted for Sigur Ros instead, so I headed back to the other stage to get a semi decent spot for the Presets. They are probably one of the biggest groups in Australia. They've had the number one played song in clubs since I've been here ('My People') and places just go off when it gets played.
The crowed to see them stretched for so long, way beyond the tent, but I managed to get in through the side to have a pretty good spot. When they started, the place just went nuts. They consist of a guy who sings and deals with the beats and a drummer, and it was for sure one of the best times of the weekend. Note to the people at home: I checked their tour schedule, and they are playing some really small rooms in the US in the next few months (cuz pretty much nobody knows about them), it would be amazing to see them in such a small venue, I can't imagine how jealous most Australians would be to get to go to that. So if you like dance music, you should go see them. They're playing with Cut Copy I believe, another good dance group.

Anyways, that was great, I met up with Kylah again and saw the last few Wolfmother songs at the Supertop Stage, and then headed over to the Teepee forest and danced around until they kicked us out. I was really hyped up still, and would have loved to stay later, but sadly we were booted out and had to go home. The atmosphere at the festival was so great all weekend long though! Everyone was into the music and really happy to be there. There was lots of crazy art around too, like a giant Medusa head, or a bunch of socks stretched out on wires and arranged in formations sticking out of the ground. There was also a tent set up that was the 'Church of Two Hands and a Chicken'. It was a strange place that I really still don't understand, but there was a minister type guy that would occasionally come up and read from 'The Book of Chook', or have fake weddings, it was really just some sort of freak show. People had some really crazy outfits too, really elaborate costumes and eccentric accessories. There was a group dressed up like firemen even, or just people wearing flouro tights. I think there was 17,000 people there in all, which doesn't sound like a huge number in comparison to sports (USC football anyone?), but the place did seem pretty crowded. Everyone was so cool and open to talking or hanging out, I even met a guy that told me I should come visit his farm in New South Wales. I was really happy the way everything turned out, it was one of the best weekends I've had here. I haven't been to too many shows since I've been in Oz, but this definitely should be a fix for me for awhile (although I did go see PNAU again on Thursday because I found out they were playing in Brisbane and just couldn't pass up the opportunity...). In conclusion, everyone go see PNAU and the Presets!

Pictures are: giant disco ball at Mix Up Stage, art made from tires, the Polyphonic Spree, PNAU with Strawberries, PNAU with characters looking at him passed out on the floor (those are from the other show I went to), Bliss N Eso, and the chillout area with a Ganesha statue.

Melbourne

Melbourne is awesome. It is definitely the best city I have visited in Australia, there are heaps of things to do and it has a really good feel to it. It is the arts/cultural capital of the country, and it shows. There are so many different kinds of people there, and just walking down the street you can see skater kids, business people, hipsters, and everyone else of any race you can think of (I even met a guy from Sudan). Our visit also coincided with World Youth Day, which is this giant Catholic gathering of 'pilgrims' from all over the globe. The city they meet in this year is Sydney, so they were touring around the country beforehand I guess. You would see people walking down the street wearing flags from their respective countries or other paraphernalia. Our hostel was at full capacity with these people and other backpackers too. Anyways, the city was really neat, there are all these different sections to it, and I'm pretty sure I covered most all of it by walking around in a different direction each day. There were a ton of laneways and arcades that were cool to explore. One time I walked into an arcade and it popped out into this alley that was filled with cafes on each side with graffiti on the brick walls and a guy was playing the violin in a corner... I felt like I had landed in some sortof Harry Potter other universe, the place just felt so different from where I walked out of. I had a sortof double take, and had to just take a moment to look around. There is a ton of street art there, and I took very many photos of the graffiti that I found all around the city. There were a lot of stencils around Brunswick Street, and the rest were more elaborate creations of crazy images that I saw around Victoria street or just in random places. It doesn't seem to be minded that much, at least it seems that they don't try to cover it up constantly because it's everywhere.

We did quite a few things in the city. We went on a tour of the old Melbourne Gaol (Jail, its spelled differently for some reason). It was used until 1994, which seems pretty recent because it looks very ancient. It reminded me of Alcatraz. It is the jail where Ned Kelly, the famous Australian outlaw, was hanged after he was finally caught. The facility housed women as well, and even some of their kids if they were too young to be left by themselves. It seemed like a bad place to end up, but most jails are like that I would assume. We also went to an AFL game! (a.k.a. Australian Rules Football, or footy). We were really confused in the beginning as to what the hell was going on, but we figured it out mostly by the end. It was at the MCG, which is a really famous stadium. They play on a gigantic oval field, which was cool, different from what I'm used to with the rectangular playing fields for soccer or football or anything else. One of the most fun nights was when we went on the 'hidden bars of Melbourne' tour. These bars really were hidden. Most of them consisted of a door in a random alleyway that opened to stairs, and when you went up them you found these little bars with different crazy themes. The best one by far was the ice bar. It was awesome. Everything was made of ice (walls, statues, chairs, the cups...), and you get a snow jacket, gloves, and booties when you go inside. It's really cold in the place, so you don't stick around too long, but it was really neat to be there for awhile. They had really good drinks too, and for some reason messed up and gave me 2 drink cards instead of one, so I felt lucky. The other bars we went to were Seamstress (used to be a sweat shop? It had oriental style fabrics hanging all around), Cabinet (really good drink there - it was warm and lemony with honey and cloves in it, it was like alcoholic tea), Eurotrash, and a couple others. We were in a big group of other random people, and it was cool to hang out with them.

Our hostel was freakin amazing. Definitely the best hostel I have ever stayed in. It was super clean, all the rooms had only 4 people in them at most, some even had their own bathrooms, there were a lot of cool hangout areas and plasma TVs everywhere, and they had a huge bar and really nice kitchen facilities (free breakfast and pasta/rice too!). The people there were awesome as well, easy to make friends with and they all wanted to hang out and have a good time. It was a bit of a walk out to the rest of the city, but I didn't mind it, it was definitely worth it to stay at this place. OH and every day at lunch we had sushi. That was another awesome part of Melbourne, there are sushi stands on every street pretty much, and it's just about the cheapest food you can find, so perfect match for our trip. It's about $2 per roll (its just the rolled up sushi, they don't cut it up), so thats a good deal I'd say, you get a couple of those and you're set. I would definitely be buying that all the time back in Brisbane if I didn't have a meal plan. Anyways, this whole trip over my winter break was lots of good times, I really had fun traveling around with Shannon and exploring new places around the country. It was cold at times, but not as bad as I thought it would be, and we got to do a ton of awesome stuff, i give it two thumbs up! Woo!


Photos are: city during the day/night, hanging out in a park, Shannon and I at the ice bar, me wearing Ned Kelly's 'armor' that he had to not get bullet wounds, Shannon and I at the AFL game, and some of the graffiti around the city

Grampian Mountains and the Great Ocean Road

We left really early in the morning to start our three-day trip from Adelaide to Melbourne. We slept most of the morning on the bus until we got to the Grampians. The Grampians are a mountain range in Victoria, and they are some of the oldest mountains in the world. We hiked up to the top of one of the peaks and it was a really fun trip. It was not a very long hike, but at least half of it was climbing over boulders and going through tunnels that the rock formations had made, and that was a lot of fun navigating up the mountain. The view at the top was cool as well. After getting back to the bus, we drove past a farm where they breed white kangaroos. Our tour guide said that this project was just for the benefit of tourists, and that the animals really should not be bred, as they are albinos and have a lot of genetic problems associated with them. They are more susceptible to cancer and other diseases, and it's just a bad deal. It's possible that the one at the San Francisco zoo came from this place, our driver said they are shipped all over to different zoos. It was just sortof a weird place, right off the highway in the middle of nothing else. We saw tons of wild kangaroos along the side of the road just driving along too, literally hundreds of them at a time. I found out that a group of kangaroos is known as a 'mob'.

The next day we went on another hike to the Pinnacle, which was the top of another one of the Grampians. It was a bit cold and wet out, but was a sweet hike nontheless, and the view at the top was amazing. You could see for miles around and it was really beautiful. We saw a wallaby, and were told that echidnas live around the area too. I learned that a baby echidna is called a 'puggle', that's a pretty cool name. After we completed that hike, we started our trip along the Great Ocean Road. The road was originally built by ex-soldiers after WW1 that returned to Australia and could not find work, so the government gave them jobs building this road. It was very hard work and some of them even died in the process. It was originally named 'Government Road', but the name was eventually changed to the Great Ocean Road, and that is exactly what it is. The vista points along the road were amazing, really beautiful rock formations and the water is super blue. We saw the sunset over the formations known as the 12 Apostles, and it was really pretty. We had good weather this day, and it was nice that the sun was out for most of the time.

The third day we went along more of the Great Ocean Road and walked down along this beach that had a really neat cave we got to walk through. A ship, the Lock Ard, had crashed near this beach in the 1880s, and the two survivors of the wreck very luckily found their way to this cave and lived there for awhile until they figured out how to climb up the cliffs and find civilization. After that, drove to the Otway Fly, a rainforest in Victoria. It was a really neat walk, they set up these catwalks through the trees so you are walking pretty high up in the air. At one point, you can walk up the stairs of a tower to be right at the tree tops, it was a different perspective and was interesting to be looking down on so many plants. We didn't see very many animals there, but the plants and environment were really cool to see. We kept driving down the road and stopped at this camper van park where a ton of koalas hang out for some reason. They were all around, and we even got to see a mama with her baby on her back! It was really cute to say the least. Another interesting Australian animal fact I learned is that male koalas have a double headed penis, and that female koalas have 2 vaginas! Ridiculous! It reminded me of the girl in my freshman dorm that had 2 utereses (uteri?), but even more crazy. As you can tell our guide was full of information. We went by Bell's Beach on the outskirts of Melbourne on the way into the city, it's a really famous surf spot. It is the only beach that is dedicated as a sort of 'sanctuary' protected area for surfers. I thought that was pretty cool. It was rainy and cold out, but there were still guys in the water, and we watched them catch waves for a bit. We finished up our trip that night and got into Melbourne about 7 or 8PM.

We went with a group of about 16 people from all over on this trip (Germany, Denmark, China, Korea, Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Belgium to name a few), and it was a good mix. One woman from the Netherlands was a bit annoying and complained about a fair number of things. She found the bathrooms to be unacceptable everywhere we went. She had just gotten back from a tour through the outback, I was wondering what she did out there? Everyone else was just like, suck it up princess! The guy from Korea was really cool, he kept asking me what phrases like 'suck it up' meant. He had just finished his military duty in Korea and was on a working holiday visa hanging out in Australia for awhile. There was a mother and daughter together too (from China), and the mom was wearing the most unpractical shoes on the hikes we were going on. I was amazed she made it through most of them (had to stop at the rock climbing parts for the first one), because they were like semi dressy shoes with no backs. People are funny. The only bad part of the journey was that Shannon got attacked by some nasty spider and has a few hardcore bites on the right side of her body. They are pretty intense and we are hoping for them to heal up soon, it looks painful. Other than that, it was a good trip with many very awesome views.



Photos are: view from the top of the Grampians, hiking down slippery rocks on our second hike, the tower you could climb up to be above the treetops in the Otway Fly, rock formations on the Great Ocean Road (the one on the right used to be called 'the tits', but is now known as the 'salt and pepper shakers'), one of the koalas we saw along the Great Ocean Road, sunset over the 12 Apostles, and Shannon and I being oh so gangsta

Adelaide and Kangaroo Island

Winter break has begun, and I just started my two weeks of travelling. I flew out of Brisbane on a 7AM flight to Adelaide, was very lucky and got a very motivated friend to wake up at 5 and give me a ride there. I got into Adelaide and met up with my freshman year roommate Shannon a few hours later, it was really awesome to get to see someone from home. We mostly walked around just killing time that afternoon, and then went back to hang out with people at our hostel and discovered that it was a very strange place. It was a bit removed from the Adelaide CBD and a lot of people seemed to be mentally unstable that were staying there (or many were living there permanently - we saw people leaving in suits to go to work). The woman that checked me in that morning seemed normal at the time, but later revealed herself to be a joint smoking, mural painting, rambling woman that was supposedly needing to be on some sort of mood medication but decided she was not going to take it. We were all sitting outside on the patio of this place, and she announced to the whole group of hostel people that she was off her period. It was funny, yet awkward. Another guy kept nervously pacing throughout the whole place, and would occasionally come outside and say something like, "What a nice little piggy!" and then go back in the hostel. He asked for a cigarette once, and when nobody had one, he freaked out. One girl told me he was on heroin or something. Some other people there were a guy from northern Ireland who was impossible to understand that had impregnated a black girl that was also living there (I guess they were having the kid too, she was 6 months pregnant. I really hope they move out of that place, I can't imagine a kid having to grow up there, it would be a messed up childhood for sure), a kid from New Zealand that looked a lot like the Irish guy and tried to tell people they were brothers, and a middle aged Asian guy that came outside to smoke every 15 minutes and filled all the bookshelfs with manga books (like a lot of manga, like over a hundred books I would guess). It was an interesting group, I felt like I was in a movie where people end up at a hotel or some place where everyone is just twisted. It was funny though, and a different hostel experience.

After 2 nights at Adelaide Backpackers, we went on a trip to Kangaroo Island. It was awesome. Our guide picked us up and we went and saw some cool places on the way out of Adelaide before catching the ferry over to KI. There was a really neat hill we drove to that people go to look for whales, we didn't see any whales, but the views were amazing, and it was just a really peaceful place. There were some cool rocks to climb on too, and we hung out there for awhile. We did a lot of really cool stuff on the island. There was so much wildlife there! In the 2 and a half days we were there, we saw koalas, kangaroos, echidnas, penguins, australian sea lions, new zealand fur seals, wallabies, and lots of sheep. Not only did you get to see these animals, you got to see tons of them really close up. The two places we went to go see the seals had hundreds of them, and you are only a meter or two away at some points. The kangaroos are everywhere, and one that was hanging around one of the picnic sites (it had a baby in its pouch too) even let us come up and pet it. The farm we were staying at had two koalas that lived in the trees right outside our building. It was crazy how many animals there were. We also went on a couple hikes, went sandboarding on these dunes called the Little Sahara, and visited these rock formations known as the Remarkable Rocks. They were quite remarkable. Another cool thing I found out about the island is that the air you breathe there is the cleanest of any place other than Antarctica (according to the guide at the sea lion beach). It definitely was very fresh air. It was neat visiting in wintertime also, it is definitely off-peak and there are hardly any other tourists there. We had most of the areas to ourselves wherever we went, and apparently this is definitely not the case in warmer months. Our guide said that the island just seems more wild this time of the year, and that it is definitely a different experience than if you were to come in the summer when it is busier and less stormy out on the ocean. At one of the hikes we went on, we hung out at these cliffs over the water for a long time just watching the waves. They were probably the biggest waves I'd ever seen in person, at least 5 meters high, and they would even splash water up where we were on the cliffs. It was really an awesome thing to see.

Our group for this tour was pretty sweet. Everyone was stoked to do the activities and pretty outdoors oriented people. There was a Swiss-German girl that was in Australia to learn English, 2 British guys, and a crazy Austrailan guy that was pretty amusing. He was about 50 I would say, but acted like a six year old. He was obsessed with the plant life on the island, and would touch every plant we went by. He apparently used to work for an animal trainer and told us that kangaroos are really hard to train because they will never bond to people, and that they are like sheep in that they don't care at all about humans, even if you bottle feed them and raise them from birth. He was just sortof a goofy guy, and had random things to say at just about every time of the day. Our guide was an Australian named Hamish, and he was really cool. He drove us around in these mini-buses on mostly dirt roads, and we were always blasting some sort of music that would bring me back to jr. high school (crazytown anyone?) while driving through the island. He had a really diverse iPod for sure (Elton John, Michael Jackson, Kanye West...), we even listened to Chris Rock for awhile, it was awesome. The first night on the island he hit a wallaby, and we gave him a lot of shit for it the rest of the time.

We got back into Adelaide at about 8PM on a Thursday, and I went running and Shannon told me I was crazy, and then we went out to a bar with her friend that lives in Adelaide. It was a fun night, we met some crazy people and had an adventure trying to find our way back to the hostel we were staying at. We chose really out of the way hostels, but at least the new one (Backpackers OZ) is normal and does not have any obviously mental people around.


Photos are: kangaroos hanging out in the parking lot at the visitor center, the hill with the awesome view and rocks outside of Adelaide, spooning sea lions, baby sea lion, Shannon and I sandboarding the little Sahara with turbans, baby New Zealand fur seals, and the kangaroo with a joey in her pouch that was begging for food at a picnic site.

End of Exam Week

I finished my tests last Friday, and it was a beautiful thing. The exam period here is 2 weeks long, but my four tests were four days in a row all in the first week. It was a pretty busy week studying for all of them, and I'm really happy to have them be over. I have just been working and going out with friends now, we had a good night out at the Embassy (club in the city) and the Down Under Bar last night, it was good to be out with most everyone except the very unlucky few that have exams still on Friday and Saturday (Saturday is a test day too... how sad). Most of the other exchange students are leaving this week, and it's pretty sad. It's just going to be weird without them here, I've definitely gotten used to them being around and shared a ton of cool experiences with them, and it's a sad time to see them go home back to the US and Canada and Italy or wherever else they would be from. A few are sticking around for their degree or for another semester though, and I'm pretty happy about that. New ones will be coming in a month, and there are apparently more Europeans coming for semester 2.

Some cool things have been going on in the last few weeks, before exams started I went to a Socceroos game (the Australian national soccer team) vs. Iraq, and it was a lot of fun. We all painted our faces and had a good group of people out. We took the bus over, the Suncorp Stadium is only about 10K away from UQ which was easy. I also went to a concert at the uni bar called the Red Room a couple weeks ago, it was an Aussie hip hop group called TZU (say it: T - Zed - U). They were sweet, they had really funky beats and live musicians (guitar, bass, drums, keys, and a DJ) plus 2 guys rapping (asian and a white guy). It was upbeat and fun to dance too, and my college got discounted tickets which is always good. The ICC (inter-college) sailing regatta also happened some weeks ago, which was a crazy experience. All the colleges compete against each other in the morning for rowing on the Brisbane River, and then people just party all day at the river, then moving to Leo's college (in this room called the Snake Pit) where it got really messy. It was a really hot day out, and people were all sweaty, and then different colleges started throwing and spitting beer on each other, and the entire room was covered in beer, and everyone was soaked. It sounds disgusting, but it was a lot of fun being there, and on the walk back home to Union, one guy Lacky felt the need to be naked and walked across the whole rugby oval and down the street into college without any clothes on. It was a ridiculous day to say the least. We also had the Union Mini-Ball, which was like Halloween. You can dress up however you want, and they organized buses to take us out to the Fox Hotel to their bar up on the roof. It was fun, people definitely went all out with their costumes. I went as Guiness, and the other girls in my group were Smirnoff, Captain Morgan, and Absinthe. Some of my other favorite costumes were a zebra (say it: zeh-bra), Tyrone Biggums from Chapelle's Show, the Spartans from 300, and my friend Carly that dressed as a jungle woman, but people were asking if she was going as a rape victim. Some girls also went as the Union College superheroes, and had pretty sweet costumes.

I'm also looking forward to winter break here, I have 5 weeks off in total. I am going to work for the first 2, then fly up to Adelaide to meet Shannon (my frosh year roommate), who is awesomely coming out to travel around Australia. We are going to go to Kangaroo Island there for a few days, where there are penguins and seals and sandboarding and other cool stuff I've been told about. We are then traveling to Melbourne and going to national parks along the way as well as the Great Ocean Road. We get to stay in Melbourne for a few days, and then I fly back to Queensland into the Sunshine Coast airport, where I get to hang out with friends up there for a couple days, then go back to Brisbane to work for another few days. I reckon it'll be heaps of fun.


Photos are: Socceroos game crew, miniball photos (me + jungle rape victim, capn morgan, and cat, the Beatles, Tyrone, zebra), and photos from the rowing regatta (check out the wet people and the guy's nose dripping some brown liquid, it was real nasty), and spot naked Lacky walking on the field.