expensive hobbies

so my 2 favorite things to do in the world are now SCUBA and skiing, and i have come to the conclusion that i have an affinity for expensive hobbies. equipent alone for both these sports my contingency plan should my life not go the way i'm headed is now to alternate between being a ski bum and a SCUBA bum. both of which i could concievably do in the southern hemesphere - new zealand or tasmania for a few years, and then cairns/townsville for a few years. not that any of this is appening, certainly not any time soon... i just, you know, have to figure out what i'm doing with my life sometime and i like the idea that i would still be immensly happy if everything falls through :) and now i shall leave you with a few random australia pictures

american and british TV shows

this week has been filled with watching TV shows with people (not on TVs of course, on computer screens :P) - i must add again that i LOVE the hub. seriously. i just need to say how cool it all is :P and that i love my friends here.

first: Battlestar Galactica = WTF?!?!?!?!?! no more episodes until january and THAT is how they chose to leave the season?!?!?! blaaaaahahahahahahahaharghghggg!! mike and dan and i spent a good 20min geeking out about the last episode. omgz.

second: firefly rocks my face off. it is a beautiful series, and i'll probably finish watching most of it in the next few weeks, it makes me happy.

third: black books is quite possibly the funniest british show i've discovered since coupling. i'm bringing it home to spread to the states.

and lastly, as a completely random note, they don't have squirrells here and its a bit strange not to see them scampering about, so we've decided that these guys are the australian equivalent:
turkeys!! they're everywhere, digging through garbage and making messes and are basically stupid squirrells.

breathing underwater

OMGZZZZ livaboard! what an amazing weekend. holy crap.

so on friday i had to get up and review my scuba skills with tom, since i was getting the rest of my cert through referal. he seemed pretty impressed by my knowlage - i remembered most everything, even dive tables. so that was cool. i'd picked up my gear on thursday, and mike packed most of my stuff into his ginormous bag so i was free to fill my bag with junk :) julie was kind enough to drop us off at the boat at 8pm and we got on to meet the crew and get settled in for the trip. emily and i shared this tiny little room:and then the night began... o man. keep in mind that i havent been on a boat for like 3 years or something? and i'd never slept on a boat. we cruised most of the night at 8 nots, and most everyone on the boat got sick. poor emily had nothing left in her stomach, and i only avoided getting sick by laying down and sleeping out on the lower deck by all the scuba gear. i eventually got blankets because it was COLD. but i reckon i got more sleep than most that night. we woke up the next morning, and this is what we saw.
so blue!! after a light brekky (=breakfast) we went out for our first dive at keeper reef (on the great barrier reef, obviously) it was a nice reef, but aparently just recovering from a massive crown-of-thorns outbreak - they're a pest that kill off the corals. anyway there were 8 of us doing out open waters, led by this lovely lady, alanaand my buddy was this tall and lankey kid named sean who had hair a bit like scott's :P here he is with dawn. i guess he's a free diver and plays underwater hockey - the kid doesn't breathe! and he could make bubble rings when he got bored on the bottom :) anyway we did 2 dives at keeper before cruising again out to wheeler reef. i took the opportunity to nap on the way there - i think most everyone did. o and of course the chicas decided to sunbathe
this spot had been spared by the crown-of-thorns and was pristene!! we got through most of our open water skills by the end of the 3rd dive of the day, and o it was awesome. here's some pictures of us getting ready - i haven't gotten any underwater ones from people yet so that will be a later post :Pso after the last dive of the day we had a lovely fish curry dinner and watched madagascar, as well as some looney tunes and a movie called the power of one... a little depressing, i was too tired to stay up for it. the advanced divers went out for a night dive while the rest of us chilled inside. one of the best parts about the evening was my chance to shower - nasty salt hair is not my friend! and the showers weren't just in the bathroom, they were the bathroom - the shower head was possitioned right above the toilet! but hey it works :P i got in my PJs and everyone laughed at me, it was great. also there was this cool needle-nose fish hanging around the boat light. he was cool. i slept beautifully that night, i was dead tired and went to bed before i even began to feel sea-sick. we got up for a dawn-dive at like 6am, it was our last cert dive!! here's me just out of the water, fully open waters certified :)
and then we had a fun dive before lunch - it was nice to go down and not have to worry about flooding my mask or throwing away my regulator or anything :) i've got my temporary card now, but i think i'll have my advanced diving cert before my official one comes in the mail :P oh well!

there were so many cool thins underwater - i saw 5 white-tipped reef sharks, 2 giant clams, several kinds of parrot fish, angel fish, and butterfly fish, a cuttle fish, a little bull ray, and so much more!!! i'm hooked if you couldn't tell. i can't wait till our next livaboad. here's all the cool people i was out with!
and now i'm back on dry land. BOOOO! the world still seems to be rocking back and forth haha. i'm sore and bruised and scabbed and bitten and scratched and just generally phisically exhausted and i can't wait to dive back in.

on a strange not, it appears that my belly button got sunburnt. wierd.

crazies

this week's just been mad. i had my lab report due on wed afternoon and really had to have it finished tues night because i have non-stop class wednesdays. all went smoothly, no worries, but it was just a pain to lock myself away in my room and do real work for the first time this semester :P anyway once that was done i had my dive medical to worry about today - all checked out - and then tomorrow i have to have a pool refresher course with the dive master person because i did half my cert through SSI and i'll have my full cert from PADI and just madness, so i gotta wake up and swim at 9am. BUT it will all be worth it because tomorrow night i hop on a boat and get out to the reef to dive for the first time since i got out here. JOY! i'll be out of touch for a few days and come back with lovely pictures and my open waters :D sara wins. mike is doing his dive master course on the boat as well so he might get stuck babysiting me - and he can't mess with me at depth becasue he'll be working. he'll save that for our next livaboard. fun stuff let me tell u lol.

i forgot there was a weekend between this one and easter, so i have a free weekend - whoda thunk? we'll make it a good one, i'm thinking billabong and a pub crawl of some veriety.

i don't want to leave....

crystal creek and st. patt's

goodness i love weekends :P

thursday was julie's floor party, which was super-hero themed :) i crashed wearing my australian flag as a cape and julie was GI Jane, and it was just generally awesome. as per usual we ended up in mike's flat playing drinking games with the nast goon punch (goon = box wine) and we watched robyn slowly destroy her liver with several shots of vodka.

Friday was supposed to be a night we went out with uni hall and took over the brewery, but we didn't end up going and once again it was down to mike's flat. we watched boondock saints and firefly and i discovered that i just lose at king's cup. luckily, mike and julie forced me to drink a lot of H2O and i was fine in the morning for my trip.

and that trip was one to crystal creek, about 40min north of townsville. it was a trip with the student association, and i had thought amy was coming but it turned out i didn't know anyone there. it didn't really matter, and i didn't really meet any cool people - didn't even get names. they called me tina fey for the whole trip :P and i read my book by the waterfalls after i dried off. we hiked a short ways to a few cool viewing stations in the tropical forest. and on the way home we stopped at the frosty mango for some delectable icecreams :D overall not bad, and i think i'll insist on going again with cooler people so we can jump off the cliffs into the waterfalls :) it is free!
yesterday was also st patty's day... and its a big deal here! the dive club had their pub crawl, but because of my trip i didn't sign up and i chilled with kate and julie for a bit. tea (= dinner) was atrocious so we decided to make a trip to hungry jacks (= burger king) and this guy brice tagged along for the (sort of) decent food. we somehow got on the topic of fighting and i don't know if i've mentioned it before but julie studies jujitsu, has for 3 years. she's maybe 5'6" and 130lbs at most. brice is a good sized fellow, about 6'2" and built like a rugby player. he said julie wouldn't be able to beat him and kate and i just started cracking up because he just didn't understand... and so julie got to demonstrate on him! she showed us all these awesome moves and blocks and what to do if someone has a knife and we sat near the kiddie area at hungry jack's for a good hour and a half, after which brice admitted he would probably loose a fight against julie. mwahahahaha

we got back and it was raining, so i decided not to get dressed up to go out and just went out wearing my all-green attire :) and since it was raining, julie decided to drive us. we met up with the dive club people around 11pm and started the night. damn i feel like a steriotypical uni student!! i think we should have stayed at that first bar longer but we ended up hitting a few more sucky places before we got into the CRI, which was pretty chill. we stayed out untill about 4, and everyone owes julie a LOT of drinks, because she made 2 trips as DD to make sure we all got home.

anyway, all in all we had a fabulous night. i woke up at like noon today and its now time to finnish my lab report i have due wednesday. ta!

still more pictures

i keep finding more on facebook and feel compelled to put at least the ones of me on here :P proof that i was actually there, not just behind the camera! the last one is the moon rising over alma bay :)

more pictures from maggie

i got some more pics from facebook :) and so i shall share them!

also, dan amd mike and i started monday session last night because we don't have class till 2 on tuesdays. a very good idea if you ask me :P

island paradise

this past weekend i went out to magnetic island with about 7 (or 9 depending on what night you counted) other people and it was AMAZING. seriously. Friday afternoon we got over to the ferry terminal and after 25min we were on the island.
bus over to magnum's hostle and we set up in our good sized room that fit 10, and kinda smelled (we later realized it was the oder of wet and unwashed dive gear... we didn't improve the stench). we walked 2 doors down to the dive shop and got all the gear we would need for the next few days - dive gear for mike, dan and jenna, snorkle gear for julie, will, andrea and me. we slipped into our stinger suits and all went for an evening snorkle in Geoffery Bay. (this is andrea in her stinger suit that was just a little too big... heehee
it was a quick one, mainly because visibility was crap so late in the day, and the bay was full of baby jellyfish. they were in great clouds and even though everyone got stung no one but julie (and mike a little) felt anything so it wasn't a big deal, just irritating. we went back and showered off the salt water (andrea and jenna in the shower here) and then we had real food. OMGZ i haven't had anything but rez-hall crap for about a month so this is a big deal - i usually love how mel goes on about her fabulous meals and this is my first chance to do so! there was this little bistro place and it seemed like it might be crap but wow. chicken cesar heaven. after eating we played a few goames of pool, and discovered that all of us are terrible at pool. it didn't help that the pool balls are tiny over here lol. the tables were under black lights that attracted the usual moths, one large green one actually hissed at us when we tried to move it and when we threw it off the table, it landed on the bicep of a guy setting up his shot... so what does he do? he eats it! he bit it off his arm and spat it out - funniest thing i've seen in a long time. anyhoo, mike and dan eventually got more interested in the rugby game that was on TV, while will, jenn and julie played the longest game of pool EVER. we also played some poker, which i am getting better at :)we soon retired to the room for the night since we were getting up early for water sports :D
and this was written under one of the beds, how nice :P
the next day we got up and ready for snorkle/scuba things, and headed over to Alma bay. Will, Julie, Andrea and i were snorkeling, and the water was beautiful. this bay was very sheltered so no jellies in the shallow parts, though once we got deeper there were still clouds of them. we swam a good ways out in the middle and couldn't see much from the surface, but when we got over to one side of the bay and it was more shallow, visibility was pristine. we saw big reefs and chased angel fish and swam into a school of very large parot fish, even saw a little sting ray :) i had a disposable underwater camera so eventually those pictures will be developed and scanned but for now here are some pictures i stole from mike, who was out with the divers - maradeth, dan, and jenna :)
After chillin on the beach for a bit, we walked back for lunch and a dip in the pool. i split a chicken burger with andrea which was soooo gooood, and then we had a little time to relax and return the stinger suits (the snorkelers did anyway) before the afternoon/evening activeties began

so while mike, dan and maradeth went for an afternoon dive followed by a night dive, the rest of us caught a bus up to horse shoe bay for sea kayaking. we sat on the beach for a bit eating ice cream while we waited for our guide to show up. he was this portly british guy named steve who was pretty entertaining and made us wear these rediculous suits to protect us from jellies just in case we happened to capsize. we got out to the bay in the 2-person kayaks and man, it was beautiful. there were sea turtles surfacing all around us - dozens! and they were BIG. we also saw some beautiful bird species, and a few of us (myself included) spotted dolphins! we then sat in our kayaks sipping champagn that steve brought out and we watched the sunset. paradise. again the pictures are on the water-proof disposable camera that will be developed and scanned in... eventually :P
after getting back on shore and changing into dry clothes we went to the mexican restaurant on the bay - called noodies. its the first mexican i've had in over a month, thats just madness to me! and julie had never had it before! i was actually impressed, their encheladas weren't bad (even if the salsa was ever so slightly pathetic) and the margaritas were descent :) we got a jug of strawberry margarita so it came with the sombrero, and i of course had a traditional margarita :P We were also visited by this little possum friend who was sitting on the roof

We got back and met up with the night divers (they saw a baby shark, we saw turtles, you descide who wins) and chilled for the night. rum and coke and beer and a few interesting shots later we went to bed (no one got real drunk, drinks are expensive!) and the next morning, mike and julie and i left on the 8am ferry because bio oceanography had a field trip mike and i had to go on. julie just came back to study but its a good thing she did because i needed a ride back to the docks at 11. 9 people were supposed to show up for that group, and a grand total of 3 were there, including me. so that just meant a lot of work for the 3 of us, adding to my exhaustion but interesting all the same. the boat i went out on the the sample collection is aparently going to be in a movie - has been a set in fact - and has been carting around kate hudson and matthew maconahey (i can't spell his name) for a few months. cool right? we also sighted some dolphins on the way back - a little closer than what i saw on the kayaks.

off to get some food. not real food mind you, its back to gruel for a few more weeks :P