O-Week

This week started out with O-Week. There were numerous sessions helping us get situation here at Uni [university]. I was a lil stressed trying to find a business course that would count for my Finance major & International Business minor. But finally yesterday [Wednesday] I found one! I am only allowed to take 3 courses, which are Outdoor Education, Perspectives on Australia, and lastly Security Analysis & Portfolio Management. The first two are a breeze and the finance course pretty hard, from what students have told me. But, we’ll see how it goes…should not be too bad, especially only having class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I am most definitely looking forward to 5 Day Weekends!!

It finally stopped raining Tuesday afternoon. I woke up from a lil cat nap with my apartment bright from the sun…funny how the weather can affect your mood so much! Now I can go for a run without getting completely soaked! I am also on a team for beach volleyball intramurals on Thursday nights…can’t wait for that! Not sure yet but I also would like to do basketball...hope I still have something left.

Wednesday I went on a bus tour of Lismore to help me gain a sense of direction, but that didn’t happen. I recognize all the places, just can’t put everything together. It is especially hard because there are huge hills everywhere…the only relatively flat surface would be downtown Lismore, in the valley. One stop we made was at the visitor’s center, where we got information about all the parks, museums, and camping spots etc the region offers. A second stop was at Lismore’s Community Center, where we were told of numerous options to volunteer in the community. Once school starts and I get a schedule figured out I would like to volunteer…I’m not sure where yet, but possibly a nursing home? There is also a Koala Sanctuary on campus, where koalas are brought if they are sick or hurt. Volunteers help nurse them back to good health, then release them into the wild wherever they were found. Currently there is only one koala being treated.

Later that afternoon, we went to a few shops downtown in search of the perfect 80’s outfits. Thursday is 80’s night at the Unibar, a pub on campus conveniently located next to the gym…not unusual at all right? Haha…weird! We found some cool things from thrift shops. It should be a pretty good time. The plan is to have a Barbie around 4 o’clock, which should be pretty fun with all the people who are coming dressed in their 80’s gear…I will have to post some pictures of our hotness...I’m planning on teasing/crimping my hair to go along with the heaps of blue eyeshadow & pink lips!

I am still the only one moved into the apartment, which is alright for now but eventually I would like to have a few housemates. Wednesday I stopped by the accommodation office to see if they could tell me who would be moving in…so far it looks like an Aussie Boy will be returning from semester one, a girl from Australia who will be new to the Uni, and a girl from Texas. Weird! Just as I was typing…a girl unlocked the front door to move in…Ashley from Aussie. No lie. She is pretty nice…hopefully the other two are not crazies! Haha…I’m sure they will check out fine.

Today I still need to get my butt ready for the day…it is 1:00 pm and so far I have accomplished cooking some eggs with heaps of ketchup for breakfast. A trip to Lismore Square is still in the works to get a few groceries, find one more piece for my 80’s outfit, and print off a few pictures. On that note…over and out good buddies!

P.S. HAPPY HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY MEL!! I’ll have to buy you some drinks when I’m back…you can count on it!

First Weekend at Southern Cross

It has been raining since we arrived in Lismore. Maybe you’re thinking a few showers here & there, no big deal…but no…there have been downpours a few times each day. It is starting to get frustrating because you can’t do much outside and once you do venture out your clothes are soaked. People say it is a good thing though…they always need the rain. While we were in Brisbane there were signs everywhere urging people to limit their water usage…people were not allowed to water their grass or wash their clothes. In fact there has not been a sufficient amount of rainfall in 5 years!

On Saturday was the Lantern Parade in downtown Lismore. Lisa & I were going to head down there to check it out and browse through the markets, but it kept raining and was getting stormy. About a month ago there was a flood that washed through the valley in downtown Lismore and people are worried it may happen again if the rain continues. I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

We ended up just hanging out with everyone here at Orion College [student housing…college=apartments]. It was fun getting to know everyone over goon sacks. It was kinda hard trying to remember everyone’s name and where they were fun, but I think I’m getting better at that. There are students from all around the world…Sweden, Norway, Germany, China, Netherlands, Austria, United Kingdom, India, and of course heaps of kids from the States. People from the States come from New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado, Ohio, Utah, Minnesota, and of course Wisconsin. I’m the Lone Ranger from UWEC.

Sunday, Father’s Day, we went to Byron Bay. It was about 45 minutes away…by bus…but definitely worth it! A bunch of us wanted to walk up to the lighthouse, which is about a 20-30 minute walk, but we decided to catch a Maxi Taxi [van that holds 10-12 people]. Once we got to the top we were at the most “Easterly Point of Australia.” When the waves smashed into the surrounding rocks you could feel water spraying onto your face. We walked down another trail to the beach below the lighthouse and collected a lot of cool shells. Instead of walking back up the hill [which was a beast], we decided to walk the beach back to town. It seemed like a good idea at first, walking along the beach, but wasn’t that great of an idea once it started to downpour on us! It didn’t stop raining until we got back to the center of Byron. Surfers probably did not know what to think when they saw a group of people with cameras, bags, and some with no umbrellas…but I can guess we looked like crazy tourists. My jeans were soaked to my body and were pretty heavy. Once we got back we all went shopping for a new outfit. JayJays definitely made some money off all us girls!

Later that same night a few of us [Me, Hanna, Yuan, Sean, Kelly, and Lisa] decided to go to the cinema to see The Hangover. The movie was crazy good! It definitely made me miss all the Girlies and James & Spring Break! Crazy Crazy Times!!

One last thing…Congratulations to Granger & Michelle and Dustin & Hannah!

Hope you all had the time of your life on your wedding day! Wish I could have been there!

The First Week

This week has been pretty quiet. There are not many people in the apartments yet…most of the Australians are still at home “on holiday” for the winter break. This weekend should be pretty busy though because it is when most of the kids will begin to move in. In my apartment there are 6 bedrooms and we share a kitchen, bathroom, and living room. So far, I am the only one moved in, but word on the street is that there is an Aussie boy returning from semester one. You would think the apartments would be cleaned and ready for people to move in right? Wrong!! I have been cleaning for a good part of this week & refuse to touch the toilet & shower….gross! The fridge took most of the day today because it was so moldy. There was also a funky smell to the apartment…stale food & mildew perhaps? No worries though cause now it is looking [and smelling] alright since I have been religiously spraying air freshener throughout the entire apartment.

Next week is when all the fun begins! It is Orientation Week or O-Week for short. I will finally be able to hook up my int’l cell phone that one of the girls left for me, so that will be nice. I still need to buy some calling cards for it though.

The weather is still a bit chilly. Today (Thursday) has been rainy & windy, not very fun…good thing I have been busy with cleaning! Yesterday Lisa & I walked down to Lismore Square to buy a few more groceries, cleaning supplies, & random things we forgot to buy the first time. One thing I made sure to buy was a heater…this morning was the first time I woke up without seeing my breath! It really does make my bedroom a lot warmer.

Katrina, Lisa, & I have been cooking our meals together. Our plan is to continue this throughout the semester. Last night (Wednesday) we made salads with ham, cheese, & green apples, penne pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, and had Goon with apple juice. [Goon = Wine] The apple juice helped make it tolerable…it is pretty dry. After we ate we headed to my apartment to watch Step Up, drink wine, and eat a few chocolates. Definitely a fun & successful Girls Night!

Getting settled…

Last night may have been one of the longest of my life! I had my windows open a bit earlier to air everything out, but closed them before the sun went down. My room was an icebox! It was absolutely freezing…probably didn’t help that I had taken a shower before I went to bed the night before. Oh well!

Today was another long day. Lisa, Kayla, & I woke up early to drop our car off at the airport…we had to have it there by 8:00. The International Office couldn’t pick us up until 9:00, so we had a nice hour wait at Lismore’s tiny airport…not! We went back to campus and were all over trying to get our internet set up, find the international office, the library, and the student center. Oh yeah…I had to find the Accommodation Office as well because I brilliantly locked my keys in my bedroom, in my apartment at the beginning of the day…cool.

The colleges [dorms] are at the top of the hill with the offices at the bottom of the hill. For all you UWEC kids that think The Hill is bad…you should see this…the hill down to campus is 3x as bad! It is steep & very long…at least I should have bangin’ leg muscles when I come home!

I got the wireless internet hooked up to my computer…but one small problem. Internet Sucks! We are only allowed about 200 megabytes each month. They go by pretty fast…I have been connected for about 20 minutes and already have lost 10 MB. Rumor is you can complain to the Int’l Office and they will give you 700 MB a month…which is what I plan to do in the near future!

Hey Katie…I tried Tim-Tams today & they are pretty good. For those of you who don’t know what they are…they are similar to those Girl Scout thin mints…only better. :)

We’re Driving to Lismore? Okay!

Today started bright & early at 7 o’clock. Lisa and I walked down to Avis to pick up our sweet ride. We rented a Mitsubishi Lancer…a decent car, but when you add 4 Girls + 8 Large Suitcases + Many Carry-on Bags…you have a Problem! But amazingly, we made it work…no big deal. At least it wasn’t for me cause I was the only one who could drive [over 21]…but for Kayla, Katrina, & Lisa…life was not good. Kayla was in the front with a suitcase on her lap & Katrina and Lisa shared a suitcase on their lap as well. Next to them, in the back seat were 2 other large suitcases & in the boot [trunk] were 2 large suitcases holding the 2 smaller ones and all the carry-ons were smashed in between everything else. It was quite the site as we pulled away from the hotel…people walking down the sidewalk were definitely amused!

We should have known this was going to be quite the ride once we picked up the car.

Sign #1: Lisa & I got into the wrong side of the car, so we switched so I could drive on the right side & she was my passenger on the left…weird.

Sign #2: We couldn’t start the car. We asked the parking garage attendant how to start it and he simply told us to take off the parking brake and put it into gear. Duh…who doesn’t know that? Well, apparently me!

Sign #3: Being the good driver that I am, I signaled my right blinker…however it was not the blinker…it was the windshield wipers!

Sign #4: I began to turn onto the wrong side of the road & quickly corrected when I saw oncoming traffic.

Sign #5: We were all squished into a tiny ass car...that situation is never a very good one!

Once we got out of the city everything seemed fine…except for the car. It sounded pretty bad. It was automatic, but sounded like I needed to shift it to the next gear. After about 10 minutes & bad smells coming from the engine, we decided to pull over at a gas station to have it looked at. Thankfully, there was a garage there with a mechanic. He took it for a ride and came back to tell us that we actually could shift it. All you had to do was tap the gear shift forward or backwards to go up/down a gear. While we were stopped, we grabbed breakfast and were on our way!

The countryside was beautiful! A lot of steep hills, cows, and flowering trees. It was scary driving because 1) Lisa couldn’t get her seatbelt on [Seat belt fines are about $200] and 2) they are very strict with the speed limit. There are tons of cameras along the road that take pictures of you, the car, & the license plate if you are speeding. If you are caught, you will get your license taken away & receive a HUGE fine…I think about $600-700…No thank you.

After 2.5 hours we arrived in Lismore…finally! We dropped off our luggage in our apartments & headed to the shopping center to get the essentials: cooking, eating, cleaning, sleeping supplies and groceries. Again, we were stuffed in the car with all our purchases…at least we were used to it!

At the end of the day, I was definitely exhausted! There was a lot of cleaning to do the next day because the apartment was smelly & pretty dirty from the last group of students. Cool.

South Bank

Today was a lazy day. We slept in, had a late brekky, and headed out for South Bank. We met up with Adam & Craig, who we met in the hotel lobby. They are from Toowoomba & were real nice…they even volunteered to let me practice driving in their car! Scary! We strolled through the markets & found some pretty cool things. I picked up a big bag & some jewelry. At one stand they had chocolate-filled bananas. They just cut off the end of the banana, injected chocolate up the middle, and sealed it off with wax and the end they had cut off. Strange.

Since it was our last night in Brisbane and we were pretty tired from being busy all weekend, we decided to go to bed early. Tomorrow we will be driving to Lismore, beginning our stay at Southern Cross University. This will definitely be interesting!

I Held A Koala & Fed Kangaroos!!

We started the day at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. It was a ½ hour bus ride from the city… not very fun for this Motion-Sickness Girl. But now I finally feel like I am in Australia. We got to feed Kangaroos, hold Koalas, and see tons of other weird animals like dingoes [they look like a cross between a dog & a fox], wombats, wallabies[small kangaroos], colorful birds, poisonous snakes and the usual sheep, pigs, baby chicks, & one lonesome cow. Lisa was disappointed the Tasmanian Devils were not in their homes. They are ugly piggish-koala looking things…gross. Overall, it was a really good introduction to Australia. The best part was feeding the kangaroos. They are lazy bums. All of them are usually lying on the ground, waiting for some tourist to feed them food. Be careful though….they slobber all over your hand! They were even some kangaroos with joeys in their pouch. It was weird to see a big kangaroo with a random foot sticking out of their pouch!

When we headed back into Brisbane we decided to get off the bus and catch a ride on the river ferry. We bought tickets earlier in the day for only $5.50 AUD [about $4 American]. They lasted the entire day & you could catch any city bus or river ferry. Once we were downtown Brisbane, we got off to eat some lunch, then headed to the city’s Botanical Gardens. It was crazy because there were these HUGE plants & trees inside the city! It was pretty awesome. One tree was really weird…the branches had huge vines coming off and going back into the ground. We left our mark by carving our initials into the side. We ventured across the river to an area called South Bank. On the weekends there was a market, with people selling jewelry, soaps, pictures, purses, etc in tent stands. Too bad we got there when they were closing!

Later that night we went to another part of town called The Valley to have dinner. It was conveniently located in the middle of the nightlife scene. So of course…we checked it out. There were some pretty cool places, one of them was called The Bank…it definitely made me miss the all the bank girlies! It seemed like we were out real late, but we all were in bed before midnight.

Thanks jet lag.

Finally in Australia!

Hey Friends!!

I'm Here!! I got in yesterday morning around 6am my time, which would be about 3 pm your time. [You just add 15 hours to your time to get mine.] I could see the sunrise as we were landing and it was amazing! My mind was pretty messed up yesterday...I didn't get to see Thursday at all...just went from Wednesday night to Friday morning...weird.

I am travelling with 3 other girls who go to Stout and they are all pretty cool. Yesterday we walked around Brisbane, checking things out. Brisbane is very similar to Minneapolis, maybe a bit smaller. It was freezing yesterday!! Even though we are in their winter, I didn't think it would be that cold, but holy crap! It was! The temp was probably around 40*....it started to warm up as the day went on...maybe getting around 60*. The news tonight said it was supposed to get around the 70s, so that is Great News!

Tonight we checked out some wine to celebrate being in Australia, but prices are outrageous! Most bottles started at $45 and went up from there, so we decided to stay classy and go with $12 box wine. I was looking for Boone's Farm, but so far no luck....Nuts! We stayed in tonight...just ordered a pizza, watched Australia's Deal or No Deal & Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and played cards. It was pretty pathetic, we all crashed at 8 pm. I should have made myself stay up...cause right now I am Bright-Eyed & Bushy-Tailed at 3 in the morning!

Today (Saturday) we are planning on taking a river boat up the river to check out a Koala Sanctuary and a few museums at the Cultural Center. We will be staying in Brisbane until Monday, then we are heading to Southern Cross University in Lismore. The drive by car is about 3 hours, but should be pretty cool because we are driving down the eastern coast.

[Hey Uncle Donny..just thought of you...I saw a street sweeper go by the hotel!]

Hi Mum! There is a little shop across from the hotel called Bongo Beads. It is really cool & they have a shitton of beads!! Soooo, you & Dad should come visit so you can pick some up. Really, you should!

Well, I should probably try sleeping again, so I am not a pile tomorrow. G'Nite Mates!

P.S. Friends, please download Skype on your computers. I will be able to talk to you & possibly see you if you have a webcam! It is free and doesn't take long to download. That's all. Ok? Bye.

6 Days & Counting...

Ahh!! I will be leaving in 6 Days for Australia & still have tons of stuff to do! Packing is definitely at the top of the list...haven't even attempted that. Probably will do it the last few days before I leave. :) Today I got my International Student card so it is finally starting to seem real. The news of the Air France plane that crashed was scary...probably doesn't help that I recently watched Taken either. Hopefully everything will go smoothly. I'm departing Minneapolis Wednesday night and will not be arriving in Australia until Friday early morning. The flight from the States to KoalaLand will be about 18-21 hours. I usually end up sitting next to the Lady that smells like Cheese..moldy cheese, so I am keeping my fingers crossed! My hours are wasting away, so I'm off to get some stuff done!!