tim tams are amazing

so classes start tomorrow, fun stuff... i am actually quite excited about that. gotta pick out my tutorial times and sign up for field trips - joy! the past week doesn't seem to have gone by as fast as i expected now that i ave people to hang out with but i'm not really complaining, we've been having a good time

julie and amy introduced my to black books and little britain, two rather hilarious british comedy shows that are mostly skits and that was fun. julie also introduced me and the other americans/canadian to tim tams with hot chocolate. tim tams are little chocolate covered bisckets with soft chocolate in between the cookie bits, and if you bite off both ends of it you can use it as a straw in hot chocolate and its the most amazing thing EVER haha. it gets all mushy and melty and delicious. i may have to send a pack home... mwahahaha.

we've also been watching a lot of scrubs, i love that show. we'll all just pile on my bed and watch 3 or 4 episodes at a time, we've gotten through most of season 4 and a bit of 5 :)

i'm developing a habit of sitting at diner after everyone is finished and just talking to a large group. its usually me julie alysha amy mat brit dan mike xavier and mybe a few others but for 3 nights in a row now we've been just about the last people to leave the cafeteria. we usually end up comparing america and australia if only because me mike dan and alysha will start talking about something like food (recess peanut butter cups, for example) and the aussies at the table will be like... hu? its really helping me learn a lot more about oz :) i like it and hope it continues.

yesterday we decided to go see the aquarium in town, its reeeeaaally big and had some awesome fishies in it :) pictures!






we saw them feed all the various tanks after lunch, it was cool.

then last night we went out clubbing - my first time, and most of the other girl's first time as well. its a little strange being 21 because i didn't really do this stuff at home so i'm on the same level as the 18-year-olds here. but we had a good time, went to this place called bullys, got there at like 10 and it was pretty empty until about 11 but once we started dancing it was cool. the music could have been better, i think next time we're going to go to a place with live music instead of a DJ. we stayed out till about 12:30 and then got out of there. a guy was trying to pick up amy, he was an awful dancer but seemed all right - we just laughed at him. his fried billy started dancing with alysha but moved on to me when she shut him down. these guys are a little strange, trying to have a conversation by screaming into your ear over the pounding music - not just a few words, trying to tell you their life story. i would have liked it if he just danced instead. luckily we left soon after billy started talking to me so yay for escape. we walked over to the bus station and made it home by 2. bus drivers here are cranky, and the bus was completely full.

dunno whats going on today, probably just chillin, maybe taking a walk around campus with alysha. we shall seeeee.

Oweek

so we're in the midst of Oweek right now, all the first years running about going to the "learn how to study and take notes and use computers" lectures. and the hazing is interesting... parently its a lot worse at the privat colleges, waking them up at 4am to scream and stuff but with ours last night was just making us run around campus screaming our very vulgar war song for uni hall. i won't put the lyris up here, they're pretty bad (and they call americans vulgar... heehee) then tonight is the toga party, that should be interesting. I'm pretty much done with all my orientation stuff, got signed up for classes and took my library tour, i don't really need to do anything else for the week but get my card from the bank, join the student union and go on some trips. thursday is going to be the trip to billabong sanctuary (holding koalas and playing with the crocs) and friday is the trip to magnetic island for the day, i'm thinking of getting a group together to rent a jeep for the day and drive around the island :) exciting

so i've met some awesome people that i think will make a great group for just hanging out with. julie, matt, amy, canadian girl (jen?) and brit all are much more like me in that they'd rather sit in and just hang out (not big on drinking but i think if there was a bottle of wine in the room it wouldn't be a problem) and don't have an interest in going out to the bars. max joins us too most of the time, tough i think he'd go out if he was 18. and justin and lex look in once in a while as well :) but we all sit in amy's room talking or watching movies, its great. julie has very similar tastes in movies and books and TV as me, she lent me a good fantasy book and we geeked out about lord of the rings. she's cute, she and her friend kate are fun to run around with. and hey all these people have cars!

can't wait for classes to start, i have field trips in 3 of my classes and i'm so psyched!

i leave you with some lovely pictures from my tours and such. Nemo first!! the last ones are when julie, amy, kate and i went out to explore campus and four a croc sculpture :)

people are here!!!!

so finally yesterday all the first years arrived (freshers... they don't use the freshman-sophmore-junior-senior system and they get confused when i do haha) so now i'm getting to know my neighbors and we're actually having things explained to us... which is nice since i've just been figuring things out on my own untill this morning.

we sat through many-a boring speach about college life this morning, things that i mostly already know but its cool. almost everyone i've met so far has been at least 2 if not 3 or 4 years younger than me, one kid on the floor won't be 18 (and so can't drink) until september. its interesting. the mild "hazing/initiation" they have for us is these rags with our names on them we have to wear on out heads all week or get "punished." i don't really mind that so long as none of whatever else they have the freshers do gets out of hand. i could pull the "well i'm actually a 3rd year so ha" on them but i don't want to if i don't have to you know?

and of course it is interesting talking to all the aussies. brandon says i'm starting to pick up an accent (sweeeeeeet) and i notice i tend to slip into it a little if i haven't talked to any americans for a while. i can mostly understand people, unless they're mumbling, which in addition to strong accents makes it quite difficult. they say mine's a pretty thick accent, or they did untill i put on a southern drawl and then they were like.... wow haha ok your not so bad.

amy across the hall seems pretty chill, and her friend julie from upstairs. britt is about a foot taller than me and also pretty cool so hopefully i've got people to hang out with and watch movies and whatever. max and matt are the younguns, only 17 but pretty entertaining. justin next door has the share network in his room and helped set me up on it so i can share all my music and movies and steal other people's stuff too :) so peter hopefully i won't need you to send me BSG because i'm pretty sure i can find it here - joy!

well we've got a barbeque going on i think i'll check out here, more later on the interesting people i'm meeting :)

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!

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!

helloooooo aussies

so i'm here! the internet is painfully slow and 20c gets me 2 min so this will be short but i'm here i'm excited and man its hot!

our orientation is in noosa, a vacation spot (island?) about an hour and a half north of brisbane and i'm here to the 10th learning to surf an petting kangaroos and taking speky pics! (i'm working on the slang, speky=spectacular) i'll get up to townsvill and have a more stable internet connection then so i won't post again until i'm up there.

aussies are crazy, i lve it!!

i miss you all **many kisses**

Sara

fare well to the states

leaving tomorrow, ooooooooo my gawd.