so europe....

ya internet in europe costs $$$$$ so i haven't been updating everyone, but i will when i get home. i would just like to say happy harry potter day to all from florence, this trip is AMAZING. iput a few pictures up, more to come later!! i love you all

naked germans... heehee

so as i am feeling better, today mel and i went to the lake with kendra and jessica for some sun and lounging and a little bit of swimming. i didn't do much of the latter since i'm still a bit ill but it was a nice lake to spend the afternoon at. it was also a naked people lake, though we were on the shore with proprotionaltly more clothed people. it was just funny. here are some lovely pictures of us at the lake haha (above?).

so tomorrow brandon will be coming to munich, though since the trains were full he'll get here a bit late, but then we'll head out to prague, followed by vienna. i am so excited! omg i'm so glad i'm not sick, i would have hated myself for going home haha. anyhoo i'll update when i can form here on out, i'll at least be back in munich with bird in like a week or so. much love!

getting better and plans...

so i went to the doctor's on thursday, and she didn't want to test for mono because she thought it was unnecessary and expensive, and she said it was probably a viral thing that turned into bacterial bronchitis. so i'm on antibiotics that seem to be doing the trick, along with some mucus thinner (she was so german and cute - when you have the mucus, what color has the mucus? lol) and pain killers so yay drugs! i felt better yesterday but crashed pretty hard at night again. mel took me on a walk of the gardens by where she lives and we had tea at jessica's, and today we'll go to martkauf (spelling?) to get some more food. i've been drinking lots of tea and continuing to force myself to eat so hopefully that will speed the healing :)

as far as my planns for europe go, i'm not headed home any time soon. i am, however, skipping ampsterdam to stay here and recuperate, imposing on mel's room a bit longer than expected but she is so good to me :) and i'll be meeting up with brandon and going to prague either monday or tuesday. so thats cool. i'm so upset i'm sick now, we'd be having so much fun here! but i'm saving the rum for when i return to munich to see bird and the plan is that it won't make it to itally because that thing is heavy lol. also i'm excited for when i can finally have some german beer.

anyway i hope to see a bit more of munich, though i know mel has work to do and such. keep you all posted, much love!

townsville to brisbane to munich and sick

SO i am sitting in mel's room in munich :) she is off to class and i will be entertaining myself for a bit. i got here yesterday morning and haven't done any touristy things yet, mainly because mel actually has to go to school still and because i am quite sick. i got sick, starting with a massive sore throat, the day before i left brizzy and have gotten progressively worse. i was that anoying sick person on the plane you know you can blame for everyone else getting sick within the next week (though there were 400 people on the plane so i wasn't the only sick one...). i am deffinately concerned that it is mono and have a doctor's appointment with a guy approved by the american consolate so hopefully i'll know soon. if it is mono i think i will just fly home to NJ because this is miserable and i'll just be paying to sleep in hostels for weeks... not cool. so cross fingers and toes for me that its just a really bad cold of doom that will get better in a few days. i want to see europe!

in other news, i think i will write about my lovely trip to brisbane with some of my favorite people :)

so mike, kate, julie and i left uni hall on wednesday afternoon when kate had finished her last exam - dan still had one on friday so he was flying out to meet us in brizzy. packing julie's car for the trip was absolutly rediculous. we had mike's dive suitcase and his massive suitcase, which took up most of the boot, but we squished in my large back pack and squishy extra bag and kate's little bags as well. and then julie didn't even have a bag, she just took out all her clothes and put them in plasic bags and shoved and stuffed them in little nooks and cranies between bags, and we also fit in her computer. thenwe piled by other suitcase and my backpack and a few other of kate's little bags on the back seat behind the driver's side - packed all the way to the celing. and pillows and my fins in the back window so we couldn't see out. i sat in the middle next to kate and holding up the pile of stuff next to me. it was insane! the car was litterally at a tilt, it felt like we were sitting in recliners lol. we barely got the boot closed and then didn't open it again until we got to bilo the next day so we could take out julie's computer and some of her clothes to leave with her parents. anyway we got on the road a bit late and julie had gotten so little sleep that we only made it to serina (6 hour ride) and stayed with her family friends again, which was cool. we got a rediculously early start the next day and got to bilo pretty quick. after dropping some stuff off at kate and julie's and seeing their families briefly, we left for birzzy - 7 hours to go. one of the most amazing things about this trip was that i didn't ever open a book, slept for maybe 30min total, and we hardly even listened to music because we were just talking the whole time. almost 20 hours and we didn't shut up the whole way - even at 4am lol. the whole ride was great until the last bit when we were trying to navigate birsbane and it was stressful, and then julie got a speeding ticket via camera and really freaked out. hopefully mike or i will be able to take it for her with no penalties, i don't want her to lose her liscence or anything. then we went to check mike and i into the hostel we'd booked - tin billy's. and they told us we weren't in the system which was stupid, then they found us but still skrewed it up so to mollify us they gave us the delux suite for the night for the same price :) awesomeness. we even had a TV and our own bathroom with towels and soap and everything. but it was just for one night then they moved us back to the room we were supposed to have. anyways then we met up with kate's friend bernard (her real name is monica heehee) who she was staying with, and then we found nick so we could chill for the night. we were tired so we shuffled around for a little and ate our umpteenth meal at mackers before we dropped julie off at nick's with her stuff and mike and i headed back to the hostel for a quick drink at their bar (which wasn't a bad bar, just crowded that night) before bed.

the next day we all slept in a little bit and met up on queen street mall to wander the city. we crossed the river and went to the cultural museum and science center which was so much fun. we played there most of the day, and then walked along southbank by the river for the afternoon. nick and i did the bungie trampoline for $10 each, which made my bicepts all sore and bruised the inside of my legs but oh the flipping! lots of fun. i'll put pictures up when i can :) then we tried to ride the ferry on the river at sunset because it was supposed to be cheap but they wouldn't take our student cards so we spent $2.50 to cross the river and didn't even get to sit outside while the boat was moving because we were arguing with the woman selling ticktes. st00pid. anyway it wasn't bad. kate and bernard left us after that though, and we went back to nick's to make some pasta for dinner (yay cheap!). nick had at one time had cooking equipment but it apparently got stolen so we made our spagetti in the electric kettly lol. it was amusing but still delicious, and the cheap wine mike and i picked up was surprisingly good with it. julie even had about a glass of it by mooching off mike, which makes me smile a lot - she will like wine yet! we sat and watched an episode of scrubs before mike and i headed out, and then met up with wayne! he's working in brizzy and we met up at the bar at the hostel for a few quick drinks, which was very nice, and then made plans to meet with him again the next day. then it was early bed again becuase we had to get to the airport early saturday.

saturday we took kate to the airport so she could fly back with bernard for her friend's 18th birthday and such. she had like an 8:30 flight, and dan was supposed to land at like 7:30 but his flight was delayed and they missed eachother by like 10min. it was really sad. i do not like goodbyes in the first place and then dan didn't even get a proper goodbye from kate so it was even worse. :( i miss my kate. i wish she'd been able to stick around a bit longer. then they lost dan's luggage because qantas likes to be mean to nice minnasotan boys, so he only had his backpack and his tim tam bag with him. oh well so he was a little stinky the next day. so we were supposed to go to the sunshine coast for one last day at the beach, but the weather was crap. so instead we went to a nearby winery for a tasting, which dan had never done, and bought wine for the night and dan got some wine for his parents. then we got lunch at this nice burger joint - proper fast food-ish but delish. except at one point while we were waiting for our food there was this loud vaccum-like noise and the staff sprinted to the back. they came back when it had turned off and said: 'sorry, we have to turn that off quick if the doors are shut or it will vaccum in the glass in 45 seconds.' so would you like a side of glass-in-your-face with your burger? wierd lol. anyhoo we made it back to brizzy and checked dan into the hostel, and then tried to figure out how we were getting to the cactus jack's that was elegidly in the area. nick said we had to take 2 busses, which was fine because it was only $1.60 with student ID so yay. we met up with wayne at nick's place and headed out to the bus station. the first bus wasn't a problem, and we got on the right second bus but the driver didn't know the stops at all. so we got off in the middle of nowhere suburb of brizzy and walked a bit aimlessly for almost an hour before it started raining and people started getting a little grumpy. then we knocked on a random house's door to ask directions and this really nice guy piled all 6 of us into his little car and drove us to a civilzed area with restaurantes. i love australia and auzzies and omg that guy was awesome. there was no cactus jack's but that was ok because there was an irish pub place where i had a delicious steak and a chocolate cake with a white russian and some rum-and-coke :) it was awesome. we called a maxi taxi to get back to the city, which wasn't too pricy, and then we chilled up in nick's room playing kings cup and such. but at that stage i was feeling pretty sick so we didn't stay too long. then julie came back to the hostel with us and spent the night there, which was great.

we got up early-ish sunday to get me to the airport with plenty of time to get through the massive lines at check-in (the hollidays had just started for school-age kids) and waited at the gate for as long as i could before getting on the plane. if i haven't said so before, i hate goodbyes. especially when i'm not sure when i'll get to see people ever again. i'll see mike in august at least, and mike and dan probably soon after new years when we go to st croix for diving, but i don't know when i'll get to see julie and kate again. i miss them terribly. when they're 21 they'll probably make it to the states and we'll do a massive road trip of doom, and if i get the chance to go back to the southern hemisphere before then i won't turn it down but none of that is certain. i had a horrible moment in the sydney international terminal when i was done shopping and eating and writing emails, and i needed to spend the rest of my cash so i ordered a rum and coke from the bar, and realized the last rum and coke i would have in oz i was drinking alone in the airport, and i cried at the bar. *sigh.* we got kate some bundy glasses and julie some great books we knew she'd love, and julie got me a beautiful new bag. anyway i'm gonna stop thinking or it will make me sad.

the flights were fine, no dramas except that i was massively sick. i drugged myself to sleep for most of them, and othewise was playing sudoku or watching persuit of happiness, happy feet, and the end of the holliday. i got into frankfurt and got the train (3.5 hours) to munich no problems and chilled with mel for the day, met some of her friends. today we went shopping for food and such and now i think i'll nap for a bit. i'll keep you all posted on the status of my sickness :) much love!

oh and also

forgot to add this to the last post, i had an interesting day yesterday. see on friday i had my last exam, i am done. so friday night i celebrated with some of the delicious wine i'd been saving and i made another black cake. the next morning i woke up feeling sickish and nautious, but while normally if i vomit once it all goes away and i'm good for the day. no no, that couldn't happen because i FAINTED! when i got up becasue i was nautious i fainted in the bathroom - while i was standing up. i have the largest goose egg on my left temple, all blue and swolen, and i don't recall the pain of getting it or what i hit my hear on but omg it hurt me. i was just grose the rest of the day. wierd.

anyway i did all my tourist shoping today and spent more money than i thought i would have - but i now have the opal necklace i have been wanting and gifts for lots of people. and i won't be buying anything else here except food, accomodation, and gas for julie. w00t.

allrighty off to pack <3

ahhh! exams are DONE! well at least for me

alright, so my exams are over and done with, i feel reletively comfortable with how they all went. oceanography went so much better than i expected thanks to mike. and they're out of my hands now, can't fret about it anymore and so i won't.

so sydney! yes i need to tell you all about that still... :P

mike and i got into sydney sunday morning and made it to our little hotel without a hitch. there were hostels but they were almost all in the red-light district, and plus since it was just the 2 of us the hotel was actually about the same price. and the room was nice, we had a little fridge and our own bathroom and a balcony and everything. and it was just a block away from the red-light district BUT we were nice and close to a cute little cafe and fountain and a decent bar that was open all the time - not to mention the woolworths right down the street that we used to stock our fridge. so we got settled and went for a walk about town. mike navigated the subway system like he lived there and soon we were at the harbor - you know, with the opera house and the bridge. these landmarks each have nicknames lol, the bridge is the coat hanger and the opera house is the scrumming nuns - if you know rugby you'll get that if not i could try to explain... heehee. anyway we wandered and took fun pictures and walked through the gardens for a while, and then we went up to "the rocks" where some of the bars were. there was this german bar we went to 3 nights while we were there for happy hour, and delicious beer of course. after a drink we found this wonderful little itallian restaurante and splurged on a wonderflu dinner :) oh the veal and the house wine and mmmmm. we got icecream on the way home and made an early night of it.

monday we got up for the wine tour of the hunter valley - famous for shiraz! i bought a sweet shiraz at the first cellar door, and omg it was amazing with black cake. AMAZING! it wasn't a dessert wine, just very sweet and lovely and even julie loved it! anyhoo we hit up 2 more wineries before lunch, each quite entertaining. and the area we had 2 hours for lunch in had 4 cellar doors, a cheese factory and a chocolate factory. OMG. so mike and i had our wonderfully cheap and delicious picnick lunch we'd packed and went around to collect some tastey things - fudge, bree, cheddar, belgian chocolate (dark) and 2 more bottles... that never made it out of sydney lol. they were amazing and delectable. we got back to the hotel not-too-late and settled for the night after good pub grub and beer.

tuesday was our first day of diving in sydney, and o goodness it was great. the guy running it, rob, picked us up at the hotel in the morning and drove us out to are island. if you've seen mission impossible 2, the scene with the little fortress island? ya that is bare island, i dove there :P. the bridge was out so we had a rocky entrance which was interesting to say the lease - crawling down the rocks in a full scuba kit was not exactly easy! but we made it down there and super-man jumped into the very cold water. i wasn't actually very cold for this dive because i had a 5mm wetsuit that fit me, good thick gloves, and a nice hood. but when i first jumped in i lost the weights from my side pocket, so after the surface swim (akward when you're unevenly weighted) i couldn't sink. luckily rob had enough extra weight to allow me to sink properly and the rest of the dive went really smooth. it was a great experience to dive in the cold/temperate waters of sydney as opposed to the tropical waters i'd dove in before. it was just new and different and so cool! we saw lovely starfish and nudies and urchins and even a cuttlefish (cuddle fish if you happen to be me and dan :P but he wasn't there lol) we got out at the end and found my lsot weights, which was gooooood, and went up to chill by the van for the surface interval. rob had soup and biscuts for us which was lovely. unfortunately i had to stay in my wetsuit for the surface interval and it was quite windy, so by the time we were getting ready for the second dive i was visibly shaking and SO COLD! we called the dive on accout of me freezing and rob was really good about it all. so i shivvered all the way back to the hotel and we had a bit more time for a nap and shower and such, and we ate at the burbon bar down the street for tea.

wednesday was the second day of diving, and we got up early with our dive gear to get out to mannly beach via subways and ferry. we found the dive shop on mannly and we weren't alone that day for the dive. we had our guide and 3 other divers with us. it was a really nice day for it and we drove off to the beach after i rented my equipment. we got to the beach and unfortunately, and for the first time, the wetsuit was too small for me. it was a farmer jane 2-pice and the legs just didn't want to get past my thighs so it was super tight and made it more difficult to breathe. and i was cold the whole dive. other than that it was a great dive, we saw big schools of fish and many nudies and a weedy seadragon which was sweet, but i was deffinately ready to go in soon after that. luckly it wasn't windy so i didn't die of cold when i got out, but again we didn't to the second dive. instead we enjoyed lunch at a nice little bistro before taking the ferry back for a shower and nap... again. cold water diving makes me sleepy! then we went out again for delicious german beer and pub grub, and it was a good night.

thursday was supposed to be our day to make it up to the blue mountains for some hiking and scenery BUT that was thwarted by weather. it would have been miserable. so we made it a relaxed and laid back day of watching scrubs, firefly, sleeping in and eventually going to wander around the harbor and down town. we were going to stay up all night again since we had a 4am taxi to catch for the flight but we did actually get some sleep. and we made it back friday without incident. except that apparently sydney airport closes at night??? who closes an airport! we had to wait like half an hour before we could check in because no one was there. wierd.

anyway now i'm back and done with exams and should be packing. should. because tonight is lazy, tomorrow i go to stockies and other places and cook for people again, tuesday i want to see magnetic island one last time, and wednesday we're driving out of townsville to make it to brizzy thursday and i fly away from the land of oz on sunday. wtf where did my time go??

incidently i can't wait to see everyone in europe :P but OMGz i don't want to leave!
<3

i am back!

haha! so ya i had no internet access for my trip, but OMGZ it was awesome. i got back yesterday morning and had an exam this morning (which i pretty well rocked dispite minimal studying... hello i was on vaccation? heehee) and now i'm relaxing before i run off to bake a black cake :) gotta chill out the crazy julie. plus it will be marvelous with the sweet shiraz - but more on that in a bit.

SO i shall start but probably not finish describing my trip :) and post pictures in a later entry. yes that is my plan.

so mike, will and i flew out of townsville last thursday (may 31) at the obnoxious hour of 6am... we caught a 4am cab, not wanting to wake the julie, and basically didn't sleep wednesday night - it was a good time. slept on the plane and for the layover in brizzy, and on the next plane, got into melbourne (pronounced mel-bun btw) around 1-ish and got subway after we dropped our baggs off at the hostle. it was a nice hostel for the price, nice and central location and all - except it had no celings on the rooms and was obviously a converted storage warehouse or something. it was good for the 3 nights though :) after subway we walked through the cloudy rainy city over to the aquarium, which was awesome - probably the nicest i've been to. my favorite part was the tank with a bunch of rays and elephant fish in it and they thought i was there to feed them so they came right up to the surface by the glass and i poked their noses :D good times. anyway we wandered for the rest of the day after a quick nap at the hostel, then went to a place called taco bill's which we had heard was good... well we'd heard wrong. it was pretty shameful for an attempt at mexican food, and i've learned to only go to cactus jack's from now on. oh well. we made it a pretty early night after wandering a bit more. mike has an impressive memory of both cities i visited with him, particularly a mental map of the bars he liked (suprise suprise haha) and it made me feel a lot less like an annoying tourist :)

the next morning (friday) we got up nice and early again to catch a bus out to the yarra valley wine country :) oh the wine! i feel so much more educated about wine, and had very good self control - i didn't get tipsey and i only bought a bottle of delicious sparkling pinot shiraz, which will be enjoyed after my last final. we hit 4 wineries, and the countryside was just beautiful. we got back fairly early and went out on the town for the evening. most of the bars were irritatingly crowded and smokey (something i'd gotten used to NOT dealing with, thank you CO, NJ and QLD) so we didn't stay out long after pub grub and a beer or two, and mostly just walked up and down the river, and got some really nice cake from this desert place in the cassino. we returned to the hostel and played cards and watched dr who - will is now addicted haha and it was a good night.

on saturday we didn't have to catch our bus until 1pm so we slept in a bit and wandered th city some more, i kind of shopped for a nice opal but didn't find anything. the bus we caught was out to philip island to see the fairy penguins! on the way we had a nice tea with the wallabies (which would have been nicer were they not playing annoying country music)and saw a koala sanctuary. we got out to the island and walked down to the beach to watch the little penguins emerge from the sea. we weren't allowed to take pictures because the flashes give the birds sezures, but of course that didn't stop a few retards from trying and subsequently being thrown out of the park. but the little penguins were sooooo cute! all waddly and only like 6" tall and omg so cute! will was great to go to this with because he's a bird watcher - in fact he was just amusing for the whole trip, with his binoculars and bird guide. pretty cool. anyway after a few groups of penguins came ashore, we walked back trough the sand dunes (on a boardwalk) and watched the waddle to their little hutches. all in all, probably the most adorable experience i've had in a while. we got back to town early enough to get some ice cream and watch more dr who. will had an annoyingly early flight again so we didn't see him in the morning. and mike and i caught a flight to sydney around 10am so no too bad.

ok thats all you get tonight, i'm off to bother a dan :) more later or tomorrow! <3

done early?

since when do i finish things before they need to be done? since yesterday :P i finnished my reefs paper last night and i am free for the day to pack for tomorrow! and thus the time for a post before i leave for 8 days and most likely will have no internets. but if i do i'll update if there is time, its a pretty packed schedule.

anyway here's a few pics from maggie, there are more but dan hasn't put them on facebook yet sooo ya these are just mine. i <3 maggie, gotta go back during finals weeks... :)

aaaand then this past weekend, in addition to working my tail off, we had the dive club ball friday night. well it wasn't a ball really, no dancing and semi-formal but so much fun! we went to the german club for DELICIOUS food of beef and veggies that were actually cooked and yum! a few drinks were on the house but not all. and i discovered something about myself that night; i like dark beer. like really dark beer. see the pic of the giant glass, thats dark beer i finished all by myself. yum! i really can't wait for germany now! anyway here's a few pics :)

BLARG nevermind about the pictures, blogger is being retarded and not uploading them. soooooo i'l post when i can, if not when i get back :)
<3

yarrr!

OMG i saw pirates 3 before ANY of you and OMGOMG :PPPPPP <3 fly the colours!!

allright so a recap of the past few weeks of MADNESS now that i've gloated :P LAST weekend started with my first ever game of pong on thursday... lol awesome. i love rum. friday we went out to tea at the hog's breath (which i want to call the hog's head, oh harry potter) for delicious steak. and a dense chocolate cake that was bigger than my steak. mmmmm.

saturday the 5 ninja turtles got up quite early to get out to magnetic island for the day :) mike and dan and i dove in alma bay, which was lovely. i've come to the conclusion, however, that i have problems with shallow shore dives because we go up and down so much and a bit quickly. the sinus behind your eye isn't really supposed to pop but i get the nastiest squeeze if i move just wrong, and it really freaking hurts. again, nothing normal can be wrong with me. due to that and dan's BC being held together by a paperclip we had 3 short dives, the last one with kate and julie joining us on the surface with snorkels :) would have been a lot more fun if julie wasn't so sensetive to jelly stings and i didn't have my head explode, but it was still awesome and i'll have some pictures later. we got out and magically ran into will and emily who were hiking around the island, looking at the koalas - they saw a drop bear! and we decided to meet them for tea at noodies, the mexican place at horseshoe bay. tea was tastey but the margaritas were a bit weak. although mike did order a long island ice tea and they managed to mix it almost properly :) (which inspired him to buy ingreedients for it and he now has basically a stocked bar in his fridge) but we didn't get home too late. we were lucky we had gotten julie to go, she was freaking about an exam on monday.

sunday and monday were days of work on the oceanography paper for mike and i. funny how i feel i know NOTHING about that class. whatever. dan and julie and kate were kind enough to make us wonderful chicken parm sunday night, with leftovers for monday.

yesterday was interesting because out of the blue julie came and was like ok, the origin match is on tonight we need to watch with beer and chips. and so we did! the origin is queensland vs new south whales rugby league, the biggest games of the year. go queensland! the maroons (thats us) won and julie was hillarious yelling at the screen. dan was a bit of a poop but i think he's been in a mood about being homesick for a while. he snapped out of it today though, and OMG pirates! awesome.

anyhoo i have an exam in the morning, dive ball tomorrow night, big paper due monday and paper of the same size due wednesday and then i leave thursday for MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY!!!! so i'll be trying to post but i may be insanly busy. pictures to come, i love you all!

wtf?

3 random giggly girls just knocked on my door and asked me if they could hop my balcony to get into justin's room (he's my neighbor) they are going to kill themselves and i'm not going to be part of it - they can ask the other neighbor. people are wierd.

STRESS

ok this is being used as a procrastination tool but also to let my lovely readers (whowever you are) know that i have not forgotten about posting, i am just overwhelmingly stressed right now. i will post an update on the happenings of this weekend (thurs pong, fri hog's breath, sat maggies, today work) LATER. when i have no more exams or papers soo close. well i'll have 2 more papers but they're not due till later and i have time for them. i have no time now. and so i retreat into my cucoon again.
<3

pub crawl and delicious food

oooo weekends are my favorite :)))
friday's pub crawl was oh-so entertaining. kate, unfortunately, decided not to go :( but whatever. the rest of us set out with our amazing costumes and met the dive club at... the club lol. we also met this chick emily who is pretty much awesome, she was dr jekle and mr hyde. we hit 6 bars in town, i think the metropolitan was our favorite. dan and mike got best costume, with good reason :P isn't dan's jay hair amazing?? i made it :P and his hat says snoogins. i had to sing "joy to the world" to a bunch of people who didn't get my jeramiah the bullfrog, awesome lol. and there was another julius ceasar but julie was deffinately sexier :P we had different rules at different bars and our own bus to cart us about. one was you had to be touching somebody's ass if you wanted to take a drink - julie broke that one and had to do the green snorkle of death with some nasty goon, really happy i didn't have to do that. a rule we came up with was that at least dan and i didn't want to have the same drink twice :P we ended up mixing lots of stuff with coke, and he had 2 white russians while i only needed one (they are delish though) but i never did drink wine so i could tell people to help me drink it. oh well. it was an awesome night :D and would have been better if kate were there but oh well. at the end the bus left unannounced, which was annoying but i think the people who were running that were quite drunk. we caught a bus back at about 1am and all was well.
saturday i got up reletively early, especially considering the previous night, and went to get some work done in the computer lab with mike. we got stats and journals for the oceanography paper. then we caught a bus to stockies with dan and kate because julie was doing study (silly girl) and got cooking supplies for the night. we made chicken fajitas that were marvelous and lasted for 2 nights. dan also made this marshmellow oreo chocolate stuff, which was cool except they don't do normal shmellows in this country, they were vanilla/rasberry flavored? strange. still good though :) and we watched rocky horror picture show! zomg i can't believe i'd never expereinced it - by the end, dan and i had finnished half of a very large bottle of rum (mostly dan!) and i was making up awesome stuff. mike then kicked us out because he had his dive master course in the morning, and julie and will went to bed, and kate and dan came to my room and just... didn't leave until 6am. we listened to the kukaburras laughing! it was marvelous :) and then we spent all sunday in bed basically, watched some dr who and then went to cook the rest of the fajitas. it was a marvelous weekend.

will might join mike and me in melbourne :) how fun! i love my friends here :D

Queensland Roadtrip!

laaa!

so this past weekend was labor day here in OZ, i get 2 this year :) and it meant we got a long weekend. and so we flew away! well, drove but whatever.

it was origionally going to be the ninja turtle group (my dream made that title official, that and its now on facebook :P) but dan couldn't make it because he had a bio field trip saturday and couldn't (wouldn't, he can't lie) get out of it. SO it was me kate and mike with julie driving, and we left friday afternoon to drive the 5 hours to Mackay and Serina. We stayed with phill and nurell, part of julie's extended family, which was lovely. they had kitties! i am deprived of fuzzy things to pet and nuzzle. of course the joke for the rest of the trip was that i am in fact a pet of my friends, they let me out of my room a few hours a day to play and keep me on a leash and so on... i love my friends lol. anyway we got up early saturday to continue driving all the way down to Biloela, where julie and kate are from. we stopped by julie's house to meet her family for a bit and got to see kate's mum, who is going to southafrica soon. and then kate had her friend sarah's 18th birthday party to go to so we dropped her and her rum off and picked up julie's sister amy and her friend kelly before the drive to gladstone, where we met nick for bowling. hillarity ensued, here's some evidence:i actually bowled really well :) i won the first game with a 120 - though i don't think nick was trying. he worked at the bowling alley for a while so he was just havin a good time. by the end mike remembered how to bowl :P and as usual my abilities degraded. but it was a lot of fun. we got icecream after from cold rock (not cold stone.... better) and then played poker back at nick's house. i'm getting better at that game :P we eventually got to bed, and had to be up in the morning to meet julie's dad, who had brought kate and matt to us.

it was really cool getting to meet all the people i'd been hearing about for a few months - i'd already been talking to nick for a while particularly. we each had our own inside/practicle jokes to play on eachother. i did "whatever am i going to do with you" and matt used the force on me. nick was funny because he was just about extatic that he was taller than julie (for the first time in his life) and was surprised at how short i am :P and i think amy was just freaked out that julie actually hugged me :) sp much fun!

anyhoo we left gladstone for our longest day of driving yet on sunday morning, all the way up to Bowen (north of Mackay), so like 8 hours. we entertained ourselves with music, australia trivia from one of the rest stops, and before long julie broke out her pharmacy and anatomy notes for us to quiz her on. the girl's a little crazy when it comes to school work but it was fun torturing her with mitosis and such :P we made it to Bowen in good time, eating fish and chips in the car (crappy fish, its always a tragety when a costal fish and chips shop doesn't serve fresh fish...) and we stayed at julie's house there - not our julie but the woman julie was named after :) she made us tea and set us up nicely. in the morning we had baccon and eggs and delicious :D before we set off to find the dive shop and horseshoe bay. we got a good deal on gear and mike and i went out for a nice dive in the bay - he had to map it for his divemaster course and i just followed along for an enjoyable shore dive. it was great until the sinus ehind my left eye started to hurt with the depth - thats not one you can really pop. so i chilled on the surface for the last bit of the dive. we were going to go out again and snorkel but it started to rain and julie wanted to get back to uni at a reasonable time. we got things packed away and returned and popped back to julie's for showers before we made the quick 2.5 hour drive beck to townsville. we then proceded to invade dan's room for a few hours because we missed him :P

and since then the week's been good. we've discovered latenight shopping at stockland on thursday nights - great place to find the little tweens dressed like skanks and the kiddie gangs, but also convenient if we need to shop. picked up chips and salsa yesterday which we ate while watching grey's anatomy (omg!) and clerks 2 and drinking rum and coca-cola :) we bought a case of cokes for that purpose and left them in mike's flat as usual, but aparently someone decided it would be a good idea to steal them last night so we're out like $12 and all thats left is an exploded can outside mike's dore. great.

tonight is the diveclub pup crawl :) the theme is dressing as something beginngin with J so i'm jeramiah the bullfrog (frog PJ's and the stuffed frog bird sent me) julie is julius ceasar, kate is a jackass (jack written on her ass), and dan and mike are Jay and his hetero life-mate Silent Bob. its going to be a good night, hopefully no one will get pegged and have to deal with the green snorkel of death, i'm sure there will be pictures :P

ninja turtle dreams and plans and spiderman

so i had a dream last night that me and my friends were ninja turtles - i was leonardo (odd because i'm never leo but whatever) dan was donnie, kate was mikey and mike was raf and julie was splinter. we were all on a plane flying from minnesota to england, and dan was looking at a map to get us there but it looked like a dive sie map, and when we looked out the window it looked like we were on a boat. but we were on a plane :P. we got there and started to get off the plane but they wouldn't let mike off because his head was too big and it would explode. and that was my crazy dream this morning :)

been having a laid back week since anything that would have been due got pushed back by a week or 2. kinda odd that people from home are almomst done with semester and i have a month and a half till finals. whatever :P we went for a walk in a big mob monday night, over to the riverside tavern for a few drinks - its a nice walk.

i've been planning a trip with mike for the study week before finals (we're such good students) and so far we've got melbourne and sydney pretty much planned. i think we'll book before this weekend. 3 nights in melbourne should be enough to see penguins and wine country and aquariums, and then i think we have 4 or 5 nights in sydney for diving and touring and the blue mountains :) its gonn be an awesome trip.

tomorrow spiderman 3 comes out in theatres and i'm a mite dissapointed there's no midnight showing. BUT its ok, we'll make it to the 9:25 showing in town :) OMG i can't wait!!! when does it come out in the states? is it already out? meh whatever i get to see it tomorrow! ahhhh venom!

the circulating curse!

so i know its about 2:30am and i'm crazy but whatever.

since the beginning of the semester, since i had found my group of regulars, there has been a circulating curse. something bad has happened to every one of us and i think it may be starting again... it started when dan had a kidney stone and julie had food poisoning from dining hall ham, then robyn got the nastiest of colds, i had my ear problem on the livaboard, and kate just got over her traveling cold. then last night we went to hungry jacks (=burger king) and mike and julie got the same meal - a double baccon cheese something. julie is getting over a mild cold, but soon after we returned and started drinking (she only had water) she vomited. she was alright most of the night, just little bits of nausea. mike was drinking heavily as per usual, i think he went through 1/4 a bottle of jamison, a tallie or 2 (beer in a BIG bottle), at least 3 glasses of wine and a bit of his lychee port (delicious by the way) by 2:30ish when we were winding down. he came up to my room to chill and watch some dr who and then the baccon hit him. violently. so that was mike's bout with the curse but the problem i'm seeing is that julie has now had 2 cases of food poisoning. is the curse circling? we shall find out. incidentally we're never going to hungry jacks again. they are both fine now but man was i glad i had the chicken.

tonight was awesome because i made tacos for everyone and also black cake of deliciousness :D apparently i'm allowed to cook whenever i want now. and i have leftover ingreedients to make more cake and the leftover beef will make more tacos tomorrow! i do love avoiding dorm food.

ah well off to bed i suppose, bty the dresden files is an awesome show. so is black books. and kevin smith films are also amazing. w00t!

<3

post of the pictures

ok so the these are from the tully field trip, beautiful rainforest:

these are from the livaboard, i stole a few from my dive buddies - the underwater ones are from mike.

and these are from the underwater camera i brought to maggie island and crystal creek :D i finally got them developed! these are from sonrkeling in alma bay:
and these are from kayaking in horseshoe bay:and this is from our little crystal creek trip - i was sad i ran out of film. the water was refreshingly cold haha.
and thats all i got for now :P so many pictures!!