welcome, wine and grey's anatomy

So yesterdaywe had our welcome tour of townsville via a lovely bus (with air conditioning - aircon!). i had already seen teh strand and cosino but it also took us up to the top of castle hill, and i got some great panaramic view shots up there. mountains in the distance and magnetic island and everything. then it was off to riverside, a public area by the river with an art gallary and swimming area (even a sporting arena under construction) and we enjoyed an afternoon in the pool which was warm enough to feel like a bath. it was nice though - and all free so i'll have to make it back there soon. and i now have some lovely fliers for other activeties in the area that i plan to take advantage of. staying on magnetic island for a weekend seems doable, and i really want to make it over to the billabong sanctuary, probably this weekend, as well as the big waterfall site. sky diving and sea kyaking are also options i plan to look into.

so i've been here at the uni for almost a week and i feel like its been FOR-EV-ER. it all just goes so slowly without hardly any planned activeties. classes don't start untill the monday after next, and i'm sure Oweek will be more eventful i just wish more people were here now. why did we have to get dropped off here so early? we could have easily arrived today or tommorow and not really missed anything at all. megan and i have been walking out to the liquor store that is close to campus and buying cheap wine. yesterday we were joined by joe, who lives in george robert's hall with aircon, so we went to his place and sould have enjoyed the red he bought but we had no bottle opener. we had the bottle of rose which was skrew-off top instead but he persistantly dug at the cork with his key all night and it was pretty funny. tonight it was just meg and i, we've been watching season 2 of grey's anatomy, as well as introducing her to dr who, and i was doing laundry so it was a slow day in. we are going out to stockland's tomorrow though, gotta set up health insurance and get myself a laundry bag. another large group of americans showed up today so maybe we'll have company. i met a girl who goes to CSU - how wierd is that? she's a biochem major and lives in my hall somewhere. pretty cool.

i also need to work out my schedule for Oweek tomorrow, they have a lot of presentations and its difficult to know which ones i need to go to. obviously the international students one but i don't think i need to go to the ones that are about going all 4 years here at james cook. we'll have a look. i think i got my classes sorted out already:

biological oceanography
evolution and biogeography of marine organisms
evolution and life history of coral reefs
linking indiginousness (i can't spell this word haha)

and that gives me a full schedule. there's also some uni-sponsored trips, i think snorkeling is one of them so i'll deffinately check it out.

i've mostly worked out how to avoid having bugs all over my bed. if I leave the window open at night i just can't have the flourescent light on. if i close the window AND door i can have the light on. it was really kinda uncomfortabl for the first few nights before i figured that out.

lots of love!