After O-week

Hello all, I know its been quite a while since my last post. I always forget about my blog haha. So last I wrote to you all about was O-week which was over 3 weeks ago. Since then class has started and they are hard. I am taking Austrlian Cinema (all I do is watch movies), Advanced Genetics and Genomics (this class will be the death of me), Conserving Marine Wildlife (awesome class) and Evolution of Reef Fishes (for this I get to prepare a skull, which includes boiling my fish head, whose name is Gerald by the way). So since classes have started nothing too exciting. Uni club is still a popular place to be and I still go on occassion. Weekends here are still crazy, but I love them. I have also gotten my nose pierced, which I love :). St. Patty's day was a fun and drunken night as expected. We drank in the dorms and then went to Flynn's Irish Pub. I had beer there but did not enjoy it. I prefer my goon (best ever, I might have to mail some to the USA) and I have discovered Bundaberg run (an Aussie specialty). Last weekend my friends Ashley, Brittney and I went over to Magnetic Island for a 2 day adventure. We got to our hostle on Friday night and chilled at the bar. I'm just going to say that we had an amazingly hott British roomate. Saturday we went to Picnic Bay on Maggie and just layed out by the beach. Saturday night was a mess. Drank too much and we all know what that means when I do that. But Sunday was amazing too. We ventured to the other side of the island and layed out on Alma beach. The water around Maggie is clear and beautiful. I plan on going back soon (its only a 20 minute ferry ride away) and renting a car to adventure around and also go horseback riding over there which is supposed to be awesome. This upcoming weekend I am going whitewater rafting on the Tully River. We are going Level 4 rapids, which is pretty intense. I am just hoping that I don't injure myself when I fall out of the raft. I also have plans for Easter break. I am going to be sailing around the Whitsunday Islands for 4 days so thats pretty sweet. I also have made spring break plans. My friend Ashley and I are going to the gold coast and doing some adventure parks and some reef diving. I am really, really excited to start travelling more. I am hopefully getting to Sydney soon too, seeing as how its such a beautiful city. Well I'm off to my river adventure and I'll hopefully get better at this whole blogging thing.

Missing all my loves in the states

Townsville and O-week

So when I arrived in Townsville, I was very excited. My housing assignment was set to be George Roberts Hall and thats where 2 of my good friends were living. So I'm all set with my 120 plus pounds of luggage when I find out I'm going to be in the last possbile building. Perfect. Even more perfect is that my room is on the 3rd floor and there are no elevators. Luckily my RA helped with my stuff. So I get into my room only to discover that I have a pet, I named my gecko Lizzy and he keeps my room spider free :). After getting settled all in we went into town. The shopping center around here, Stockland, commonly referred to as Stockies by the locals is somewhat different than the typical American mall. Not only are there clothing stores, but also "Wal-mart" aka the Big W and the food store (woolworths or Woolies). Theres also butcher shops in the mall which I find a bit disturbing. Malls are also only open untill 5 pm on weekdays and then 3 pm on weekends. Thursdays is late night shopping where malls are open until 9. That takes some getting used to. No 24-hour anything. The first few days were fun getting settled in even though my roomates werent here yet. So along comes O-week, which is fresher (freshman) orientation. Its bascially a week long party where the fossils make you drink till your sick (like we minded lol). My two roomates moved in, Kieran and Caitlyn. Both are from Australia and are extremely nice, we get along greatly. So O-week begins. Tuesday night was Toga Party and I've never experinced anything quite like it. We all got dressed up in our togas and over 3,000 freshers made it out to the Uni-Club/bar (yeah thats right, we have a club and bar on campus--awesome). Wedenesday was sponsors night in town, meaning free and reduced drinks at the clubs. Thursday was Fresher kegger in which you drank from 2:30 until 8 pm and bascially just skulled goon (chugged cheap wine). Thursday nights is also uni-club night which is a weekly occurence and a ton of fun. We all have a party in somebodys room and then go to the club to dance all night. Too bad I have an 8 am on Friday, but it has yet to stop me. Friday night was the Op-shop formal and Fresher Graduation. Your supposed to wear something old and hideous and then party it up outside. It was a ton of fun. Really good community and alcoholic sense, haha. After op-shop my friends and I went to the uni-club again and had a blast.

Traveling and the beginning

On February 7th I prepared to say goodbye to everyone and everything familiar; my family, my friends, my cell phone and good ol' American food would be absent from my life for the next 5 months. It was a whirlwind of a day. I started out at Newark International Airport and had flight to LA. It was a pretty good flight, considering the nice old man next to me bought me champagne, yum. Once I got to LA I had a bit of trouble in that they made me check my carry-on becasue it was too big, although flying from NJ to LA I had no problems with its size. Once I was all checked in I ventured to the gate where my flight was destined to leave from, only to find out that the flight was delayed another 2 hours. I soon met this girl named Ashley, who is from Kentucky and wierd. We bonded however as we saw Daisy from Rock of Love and her lips that looked like they were sucked down a drain hahahaha. The rest of the night consisted of meeting a ton of new people and playing UNO. The flight to Brisbane from LA was pretty uneventful considering I took some SleepMD and don't remember the plane even taking off. So since our flight was delayed in LA we were going to miss our connecting flight in Brisbane to Cairns. They instead held the plane for 107 of us trying to catch that flight. This would have been fine and dandy however we had to get our luggage and go through customs. We all know that my luck made me one of the last to actually get on the next flight. I thought it was all good until I realized my luggage was still in Brisbane when I got to Cairns, which roughly meant I was in the same cltohs for around 35 hours, gross. We got to our backpackers accomodation (Gilligans), went to dinner and had an early night in. The next day I fianlly got my luggage and showered. It was then that I met Sara, another crazy girl whom I have since become very close with. Day 2 in Cairns consited of going to Rainforestation in which we held a koala, played with roos and went on an army duck tour (we almost died due to the incompetence of our driver, damn you TINA). By the way, we all call ourselves and everybody Tina, its wierd and we know it. After Rainforestation we were on our own, so Ashley, Sara and I were like, well lets go skydiving. Thats right everyone, I jumped form a plane crusing at 14,000 feet and I was the first one out of the plane. 60 seconds plus of free fall and it was AMAZING. I loved every second of it and can't wait to go by myself (I was tandem with and old guy instructor whom I thought might have a heart attack). The next day was our reef adventure day. I went snorkeling over the GBR and saw a sea turtle and a blue-spotted ray, both of which were beautful. I also got to test out my new camera and took a ton of pictures of all the little fishes. This day however I also got second degree sunburn and that is no lie. The pharamacist actually told me I should have gone to the ER, it was that bad. But PawPaw's ointment saved my face, even though most of it fell off. Gross, I know. The next day we headed to Townsville, which is where my next post will tell you about.