longest entry EVER

all right so this entry will actually be a combination of all the entries i've been writing without internet (3 of them actually) so it will be rather long. hats off to you if you get to the end in one sitting!

here's the first one, written shortly after i landed in brisbane

Traveling

So I’m sitting here in a slightly dingy hotel room in BRISBANE AUSTRALIA!!! Why in a hotel room you ask? Well I won’t meet up with my orientation group until about 7:45 tomorrow morning and its now about 12:30. I’m not real ambitions about getting anything done today so I have a hotel room, I’m watching Australian news, and soon I’ll take a shower. Maybe take a walk to stay awake, I do have to keep up for another 9 hours or so haha. I don’t have internet here so this will have to be paseted into the blog later

The flying was looooong… but that was expected. The flight to LA was actually the most uncomfortable, but that was only 6 hours and I was still fresh. Got to LA and everyone in the air port was watching the super bowl haha. I picked up some food and called home before my next flight on a 747 to Auckland, New Zealand. That flight left at 9pm LA time (so midnight NJ time) and I was hard pressed to wait to take my tylonol PM and try to sleep until after they served food and such. But as soon as I did I actually slept for about 7 hours (not strait, but close enough) and then an extra hour later in the flight, so I don’t feel TOO bad right now haha. The plane was pretty fancy, lots of business class and business premium class (apparently better) and personal video screens for all! They were playing lord of the rings (all 3) and I thought that was appropriate J. Also pirates 2, nemo, lion king, the prestige… a lot of movies! That with harry potter and sudoku and my game boy kept me quite entertained. I landed in Auckland at like 6:30am NZ time (12:30pm the previous day NJ time) and had a nice wait in the air port chatting with a 65 year old new zealand man named Kevin who was going to see his girl friend in China for 3 months. Kiwis are so cool haha. The next flight was only 3 hours to Brisbane, and it was pretty painless – on a 777 this time with the same entertainment system as the 747. I landed and went through customs without a hitch, and boom I’m here. Imagine that.

One observation that was slightly unexpected, aussies drive on the left side of the road like the brits. I stood outside waiting for my ride wondering what was wrong and after about 5 min before I realized the cars were going the wrong way!! Too cool.

So Townsville, where I will be living starting the 10^th, is apparently underwater right now. They’re having really bad flooding I guess, so we’ll see about that when I get up there…

Ok time to shower and brush teeth and stuff and things. I wish this room had a fan, its really hot, but I’d like to shut the window at some point because the trucks driving by (on the wrong side of the road) are really loud. Oh well its just for one night.

This one was written when i had arrived here in townsville, still without internet.

Orientation

So I’m once again sitting in a room without internet, so this will be pasted in on Monday when I have my cord and virus stuff and whatever. The difference being that I’m sitting in MY room at james cook! I’ll post pictures up later – I have a single room with my own balcony and a fan that I will never turn off.

SO orientation. We traveled from the air port in 3 charter busses for about an hour and a half to reach Noosa, a very touristy hot-spot that the Australians seem to be jealous we went (“oh well I’d like an orientation in noosa too!”) and rightfully so. It is gorgeous! I stayed in a room with 3 other Sara(h)s (one went by Jacquie but still, craziness!) and they were all going up to cairns instead of Townsville, and they were pretty chill. The first day was mainly meet-and-greet stuff, giving out cell phones and information packets and then a quick presentation about bush and beach safety – pretty much all the things on this lovely continent that can kill or injure you and how to be safe bout the whole thing. It didn’t help that most of them he said “well you won’t see these unless you go up north” and well, I am up north! After that we could go down to the beach… which is also a highway! Literally. Its marked on the maps as a highway. Mind you it is inaccessable during high tide and it wouldn’t be advisable to drive on without a 4WD truck of some veriety, but there was more traffic (hooners, hoonin’ down the road..haha) than you might expect. The water was soooo warm and pretty, we wore ourselves out and crawled into bed soon after diner.

The second day was info sessions and surf lessons, and I believe our group had the best schedule, info first and early, surfing a few hours after lunch. Dawn, our james cook coordinator, gave several presentations about academics, life in Townsville, stuff like that, and then it was surfs up! Our instructor was this nutty French guy (apparently world-class surfer) and he was great. I actually got up once or twice (followed by spectacular wipe-outs haha) before I got stung by a blue bottle jelly (the same the Portuguese man-o-war) and came running out of the water. It was just a stray tentacle that had gotten wrapped around my hand and caught in my ring – note to self, no jewelry when surfing. Its kinda like a bee sting in that it affects people differently. There were about 6 of us that got stung in my group, and some were find after about 30 min with ice one it, while mine persistently hurt for about 4 hours, and one girl had to go to the local hospital for a little steroid shot. It was an experience though, right? Anyhoo that night we had a presentation on Australian wild life.

Croc named bruiser, sugar baby- kinda like a flying squirrel only a marsupial, frill lizard, beard lizard, giant snake!!

The next day we had a trip to frasier island, the largest sand-island on the planet and a world heritage site. We got there in these truck-busses, which were needed because we used the beach highway to get there and then the island had no paved roads, they were all sand. So seat belts were a very good thing and a lot of people were feeling motion-sick by the end of our 3-hour journey. We arrived at lake Mackenzie, a perched dune lake whose water is acidic enough that nothing lives in it and whose sand has silica in it so it makes a great exfoliate haha. It also had points along the shore where there was such a steep drop-off that you could make a running dive from the beach no problem. But it was windy and cloudy, so we didn’t swim for too long because we got cold. After a picnic lunch we went to part of the island that is a rain forest.

These ferns are virtually unchanged from their fossilized ancestors and so this spot was used in the filming of “walking with dinosaurs” how cool is that haha. And these trees are so cool! Nothing here is familiar, not even the plants. And then in the bathroom, up on the cinderblock wall was a 4-foot lizard, looked like this one only bigger, part of the joana (?) family. Anyway he was just chillin up on the wall and sarah was flipping out cuz he was so big! Too cool.

That night we had a presentation by an aborigional group (family actually) and they did some cool dances and showed us the didgeridoo – which women can’t touch or they will become pregnant haha. They also showed us some of the dances

o the hilarity.

Then yesterday was travel day again. The group coming to Townsville turned out to be the largest – about 35 of us total. We got on a 737 and landed in the tiny air port, and then a quick bus ride and I was here. A lot of the group went out last night but I wasn’t feeling good so I made my first night a quiet one and stayed in my room after diner.

That is one thing that is worrying me. All the Americans here seem to have come for one purpose: beer. I’m not a big drinker (rather a light weight actually) and I’m starting to worry that I won’t fit in too well here, because that’s basically what the aussies do as well, hit the bars. I suppose its something I’ll have to try eventually here but its really not that appealing to me.

But anyway, today I gotta go out and buy some stuff:
-sheets
-another pillow
-a fly swatter
-shampoo/conditioner/soap,
-laundry detergent
-laundry bag
-hangers
-curtains (maybe)
-binders/paper/pens/pencils
-scissors
-stapler
-phone card (maybe)

and lots of other useful but tedious things

another one written in my room before the arival of the internet cord:

Some kulcha from Oz

So we had a presentation at noosa about aussie culture and I thought it was all rather interesting so here’s what we were told:

Aussies are seen widely as very friendly people, but apparently they’re rather difficult to become good friends with sometimes. Aussie humor is self-deprecating and unlike Americans who are taught from the get-go to be “winners” and push yourself to the front of the line, aussies are much more likely to try and blend in and be back with the pack. They won’t say great things about themselves (if they ace an exam and you ask them, they’ll say they did all right) but are far more likely to lift up their mates. And if someone gets really ahead, they tend to take the micky out of them a bit and bring them back down to earth. So if an aussie makes a really scathing remark about you with a big goofy grin on their face, that’s supposed to mean they’re getting to be more comfortable with you and you could be good friends. We’ll see how that all works out when I know some aussies better.

Also, at home the three topics that you should never discuss are politics, money and religion, right? Well apparently that’s all you’ll ever talk about in Oz. oh boy haha. We’ll see about that one.

Other observations, not necessarily culture but fun. I went down to the Strand today (what they call the beach here in town) and saw all these kids playing in the ocean in a netted off area in full wet-suit-looking things. That had to be hot! There was also what looked like a zip line that went out aways outside the net. When we asked a local, they said the net was for the box jellies (I guessed that) the suit was for the irakongies (tiny jellys that will put you in a pain-induced coma for a few weeks) and the zipline thing was in fact part of the shark and salt water croc net. Cool right? They actually have a little enclosure next to the beach called the rock pool where they filter in the salt water so nothing can sting or bite

all rather beautiful. in the distance there is magnetic island, where we’ll be going later in the semester with the butler group. Awesome!

other things i've been getting used to, in addition to just the heat, is how its coped with. our halls are open to the elements a bit (probably to try and coax a breeze inside once in a while) and there is no such thing as a screen on the windows. so once in a while you'll get eaten alive by gnats and mozies (mosquitos) or see a small lizard crawling along the bathroom wall, or even find a dead goliath beetle on the tile floor by the showers. Also, there is no longer any ozone over australia, so the burn time here is about 6 min. i'll be going through sun screen a lot faster than shampoo. its also so humid that going for a day without showering is not really an option.

I’m becoming a bit scared that I will be the hermit girl here because I don’t want to go out tonight and I know a lot of people are. I just don’t feel that comfortable yet. We’ll see. At least there’s more people showing up at the school now. I still couldn’t get sheets today because all the shops are closed on Sundays. Oh well. Tomorrow then! I can go to the bank as well. Joy!

and that brings me to today, with some pictures of my room :)

we all have lovely balconies and i now have sheets!