back in the US

i'm home! got home thursday night. My flights were good... had an empty seat next to me on all of them so I could stretch out & sleep. plane got delayed an hour or two in San Fransico but not a big deal.

it's nice being home; easier than i thought it would be. it's not weird at all really, almost like i haven't left which is nice in a way. and it's nice that everyone's interested in all of my stories. even the car inspection man wanted to know about australia when i told him why the car was over due inspection.

the weirdest thing about being home is that it gets dark at 4:30. In New Zealand it didn't get dark until 9:30 at night. Also, I keep using the wiper instead of the blinker in the car.

Thanks everyone for reading the blog while i was away!! it was really nice to know I had so many people who cared and followed along. Hopefully I can travel again soon and update everyone about that!


<3<3<3Niki

weird!!

Ah!!! It's so weird to be going back to Australia tomorrow and even weirder to be going to the US in 2 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We handed in our van today. It was sad but today has been a good last day for the 4 of us. We're back in Christchurch to fly out tomorrow. Hopefully I can get an earlier flight otherwise I'll have to be in the airport for 8 hours by myself, but oh well... my ipod's charged.

Today was so weird because Steph said "want to go to NYC Sunday?"... and I realised I'll be home before THIS WEEKEND. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

South Island

Happy december!! Happy thanksgiving too! We cooked turkey day dinner in a hostel kitchen. it was fun, but SO weird not having american football on... or any tv for that matter. we played cards & had apple crumble pie after. That was in Christchurch. I loved Christchurch. Really nice city. Then we went to Mt. Cook & then Dunedin (Cadbury Factory, Cheese factory & good fun). Today we arrived in Queenstown. Went Jetboating and tomorrow we're going bungy jumping on the 3rd highest jump in the world. It's called the Nevis jump. 135 meters or something like that. (400 something feet.)

I can't believe I'll be home so soon!!! We listened to Christmas music yesterday in the van cause it was the 1st of December.

7 days in NZ

we've been in NZ for 7 days. it's beautiful here. we did zorbing (rolling down a hill in a huge plastic ball that has water in it), sky diving which wasnt as cool as i thought it'd be but i'm glad i did it, walks & hikes (i did a 7 or so hour one yesterday & my legs HURT), geothermal pools, tons of sight seeing. we're crossing from north to south island tonight at 3am with our van. pretty crazy idea to spend 3 weeks with 4 girls in one mini van. the back converts to a bed and then there's this white contraption on top of the van that rolls up and becomes a bed/sleeper thing. there's not really enough room for everything but we've figured out a system and it's our home. we're having fun but looking forward to Christchurch which is on the 25th or somewhere around there (we're spending Thanksgiving there) because Sarah & Lucy are staying with Sarah's friend and Nish & I are going to stay in a hostel for at least 1 or 2 of the nights. Space! we're really having fun though and seeing amazing things. i'm glad i came but i'll also be glad to leave. i miss australia and i miss home but i'm not looking forward to going back to australia for a day and definitely not looking forward to going on 15 + 6 hour flights to get back home. oh well...

we bought advent calendars today. they were only $3 for the chocolate kind... i feel like they're so much more expensive at home and NZ dollars are pretty much half US dollars. it's weird being away from home during holiday season. it's even weirder being in the southern hemisphere because it's summer (although NZ is pretty cold compared to Australia) and there's been Christmas decorations everywhere for weeks. There were candy canes in the super markets before halloween even happened. makes sense though cause they dont really celebrate halloween and don't celebrate thanksgiving. (i dont know if i wrote this here already.)

anyway, i just feel like rambling. i'm in a weird mood about leaving and home and other stuff but i think it's just cause i'm really tired right now.

Auckland!

We're in Auckland!!!

SAD!

Tomorrow's New Zealand. We're doing the north island the first week and then the south island for the last 2 and a half weeks. we're renting a 4 person camper van which is going to be interesting but good. it's going to be a really amazing trip but i can't even be excited about it right now because i have to say good bye to everyone. :( hopefully i can update every once in a while but if not i'll be home December 11th!!!

So long!

Sorry it's been so long! I've had very few non-traveling days and those days have just been sleeping and hanging out with everyone before I say goodbye (sad!!).

I just got back from Alice Springs today. It was amazing!!! Sarah and I flew in Thursday, stayed the night at Alice Springs, got up at 6 am for our tour, rode camels, saw King's Canyon which was amazing, but it was POURING (crazy in the desert!!) so we didn't get to take many pictures of that. Camped in swags that night. Swags are these roll up mats that zip up and have a head flap to cover you in the cold desert nights. Basically like a cocoon. Got up at 6 Saturday to go to Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) which is a cool rock formation. We hiked that and then went to Uluru (Ayer's Rock) and watched the sun set. It was amazing. We camped again that night but slept on a sand dune so we could see the amazing stars that weren't blocked by any city lights. So beautiful. Then we woke up at 4:30 to see the sunrise on Uluru. The rock was HUGE. so much more impressive than i ever thought it could be. We couldn't climb it because most of the time it's closed because it's really dangerous and it's also offensive to the Aboriginal tribe there. It's probable that I wouldnt have climbed it anyway because of culture stuff, but luckily i didnt have to make the decision. We walked around Uluru though. It took about 2 hours to get around all of it. After that we went back to Alice Springs and spent 2 more nights there just hanging out with people we met on the tour (fun people!) and sleeping by the hostel pool.

Before Alice Springs was my trip to Tasmania and before that was my road trip around Brisbane/Gold Coast/Sunshine Coast.

The road trip was Oct 21-28th. It was my friends Sarah, Chris and I living in a "Wicked Campervan" which is a painted van that has 3 seats in the front, drawers & a table that turns into a bed, and in the back is a tiny sink/kitchen. It was a really good week. The three of us got along really well. Much better than i thought we would. The first day we stayed at my friend's apartment who goes to school in Brisbane. The second day we picked up the van after hanging out in a park in the morning. Drove down to Nimbin which is this crazy hippie town and then Byron Bay which is a cool beach town. We tried to get a camp site but got there too late at night so a cop knocked on the van that morning. We hung out at the beach that day and then went up and saw the light house. Walked out to the most easterly point in Australia. That night we camped at a site, made fajitas. The next day we drove up to Tweed's Head & Surfer's Paradise which are on the Gold Coast. The Indy 300 was goin on in Surfer's Paradise so it was SO crowded, not even any place to park in the city. We drove a long time that day looking for a place to stay and ended up staying at another camp site. On the way to going out that night we found this really cool play ground that had these crazy contraptions that are more fun for adults than for children, really high sea-saw like things that bounced and spun around. The next day we drove up to Brisbane and parked next to a golf course where we slept for the last three nights. One day we went up to Caloundra on the sunshine coast and spent hours body surfing, the next day we went to the XXXX brewery which was a really cool tour, very interactive and then we got free beer after. Then we went to an art museum and drove around the city trying to find a pizza hut (which we finally did). The last day we hung out in the park and played cards & ate lunch before dropping off the van and taking the bus & train back to the airport. You would think that 2 girls and a guy in a van for a week spending every minute together would be disastrous, but it was actually a really really good trip.

Tasmania was SO beautiful. We hiked up Cradle Mountain. So indescribably beautiful. It was a 7 hour hike up steep rocks. We were actually climbing boulders. Everyone's legs hurt so much the next day but it was SO worth it. It was really nice to see the people studying through Arcadia who i met at orientation but haven't seen since then.

I'll post pictures. Have to go get ready for going out tonight!!

Last weekend.

Tomorrow's my last day of classes. This weekend is my last in Melbourne. How crazy is that??? I still have a month and a half left but this is my last weekend here. Luckily I finished all of my work 2 days earlier than I expected to so I have the end of this week and the weekend to relax and hang out with everyone before I leave to travel. Monday I have my Contemporary Australia exam which is going to be easy, and then Tuesday is the road trip around Brisbane. Our flight got changed from 7 am to 2 pm so we can't pick up the van that day anymore. Hopefully we can stay with my friends in Brisbane, otherwise we'll have to get a hostel that night. I'm excited about the trip, it will be interesting because we don't really have anything planned. Hopefully the people I go with are good travel buddies!

I said my first good bye yesterday. One of my friends who I hang out with in 2 of my classes is leaving tomorrow for the outback and then going to Indonesia so I won't see her again most likely. It was weird saying "nice to meet you" when we've known each other for months now. Hopefully I can see all of the friends I've made again some day. It's good that New Jersey's so close to NYC because whenever anyone visits I can just meet them in the city and catch up.

Class time!

Great Ocean Road

Just got back from my Great Ocean Road trip. It's a road that follows the ocean across the bottom of Victoria (which is the state i'm in) and possibly further, i'm not sure. We didn't nearly do all of it, but got to see The Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge. It was a nice trip, but I'm glad it was free because most of the time was spent on the bus and after a while the ocean out of the window all looks the same. It was a good time to catch up on sleep. What we did see was amazing. And we got a surfing lesson too. I think i'm actually getting a little better at surfing. I'll put pictures of it up. And i'll put some pictures from One Fish Two Fish up too. Hopefully I'll find some time to squeeze in writing more about One Fish Two Fish, but this is the last week of classes so I have A LOT of work to squeeze in before i start all of my traveling!

Something small before I write about everything else

sorry i havent updated about my trip yet. i've been so busy with classes this week since i've gotten back. i figured i'd just write a short one and then go back and describe my trip in detail later on.

bungee jumping was amazing. i was the first one to go out of all the people from my trip. it was tons of stairs to climb up. you just kept walking and walking and look up & there were still tons of stairs. it was 44 meters high which is about 145 feet, and then you get up to the top and they tie your ankles into a towel with straps & buckles and tons of knots, then you get down and shuffle to the edge (since your ankles are bound together) and they make you wave to the camera, which is hard to do since you've already looked down at the water below you. then they said put your arms up & stick your chin in & then count 5,4,3,2,1 & you jump or dive off. i hit the water & went waist deep. i wasnt expecting it because they said it doesnt happen to everyone but apparently it has to do with how you dive off and since i was the first to go no one told me about it. it was fun though. so then you're hanging by your feet and a man in a raft comes & unties you and you get off and run back to your friends. it was weird, i felt a bit paralyzed when he was untying me, i guess because i didnt know what to do and i was really shaky. it was amazing though and i bought the video to watch when i get home.


Scuba diving was amazing too. At the Great Barrier Reef. It was a two hour boat ride on a really nice boat but it was so choppy & bumpy that we all got nauseous and had to lay down & sleep. for me diving was scarier than bungee jumping was. you have to remember to breathe a certain way & pop your ears and then swim a certain way & stuff. they say the most important thing is to not touch the reef because you'll kill it and it will cut you and at one point i thought we were going to run into it because i didnt realize the guide was steering us (3 of us were linked at the arms) so i kind of freaked out, but i just used my A-OK signal & everything was fine. the reef is so amazing, colorful. stuff you'd never be able to imagine on land. we got to see Finding Nemo fish in their little house. It was really indescribable.

I'll have to write about the rest later because i have to go to class.

I changed my flight from November 16th to the 28th. I get home the day after Thanksgiving, but I get to go to New Zealand for almost two weeks. I'm excited but I miss everyone so much!

During One Fish Two Fish

Is it seriously October already???!!?!!!

I'm at an internet cafe in Port Douglas, which is an hour outside of Cairns up in Queensland. One Fish Two Fish (my spring break trip) is amazing!!! I have 3 days left, but figured i'd do a quick update to tell everyone i'm still alive!

We've done the australian zoo, sailing, kayaking, snorkeling, beaching, 4WD with a bus through an island, whitewater rafting was yesterday, stayed on an island with the clearest blue water ever, tonight is bungee jumping, tomorrow is snorkeling the great barrier reef and i'll probably scuba if it's not too expensive, then we still have the rainforest & cliff diving.

i'll go into more detail when i get back to monash and have time to write, although it will be my last 2 weeks of classes and i'll have a lot of work!! I can't believe how fast time's gone. I also still can't believe i'm in Australia. We all have to keep reminding each other that we're actually here... a lot of times this trip i've felt like I was in a commercial or in a dream or something. i feel like i won't be able to remember it all because there's just so much to look at!

Sydney & Phillip Island

Sydney was really good! I got to the hostel around 11:30, put my stuff down & wandered around the city a little bit. Found a place to eat & then went back and took a nap until Gozi (my friend who is studying in Brisbane) got there at 4. Then we went & wandered around some more, had dinner, met a German guy who was sharing the room with us in the hostel and one of his friends who is Irish, and we hung out with them a little bit. Friday morning we got up early & walked around Sydney doing the touristy things. Saw some of the Darling Harbour, walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, saw the Sydney Opera House, which was SO cool to see. I was so excited to see it, which was surprising. We took a tour of the Opera House, which was beautiful inside. And then since we’re students & took the tour we got a HUGE discount on Sydney Symphony tickets and got to see the symphony in the Opera House later on that night, which was REALLY cool!!! I’d never seen a symphony before, and this one was doing “Crime Time” which was scores from movies like The 6th Sense, & The Matrix. The tour was really interesting. I didn’t realize the Opera House is so new. It was started in 1963 and wasn’t finished until the ‘70s, which I found shocking… for some reason it was placed in my mind in the category of things like the Eiffel tower & Big Ben, which is silly really because Australia was only found by the British in the late 1700s. But still, I guess I thought the Opera House had been around for at least a hundred years or so. We also saw some museums and stuff on Friday. Saturday was the tour of the Blue Mountains. We got to see the Three Sisters rock formation and other really cool nature stuff. I’ll put some pictures up. Sunday Gozi left after breakfast and I walked around the Darling Harbour. Went to Paddy’s Market- a huge flea market where I got a backpacker’s backpack for only $20. Also went to the Chinese Garden of Friendship which was beautiful.

This past weekend 2 of my friends and I went home with an Australian friend to stay with his family for the weekend. We were supposed to camp but the weather wasn’t nice so we just hung out and went to his friend’s house. It was so nice being in a home, and his family was so friendly and welcoming. We also went to Phillip Island which has amazing views and we watched the Penguin Parade, which is when the penguins come in out of the sea and find their little nests in the hill for the night. They’re so cute!!! They’re Little Penguins, so they’re not like the ones we normally think of, and they come in to the shore in little groups and get scared and swim back and forth until there’s enough of them to run out into the grass. It was a really good weekend.

This Thursday I leave for my One Fish Two Fish trip. 9 days of crazy rafting, bungee jumping, snorkeling/scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, up from Brisbane to Cairns. Can’t wait to be in the sun!!!

I’m thinking about changing my flight coming home from November 16th to sometime mid December. If I do I’ll be able to go to New Zealand for 2 weeks and then some other stuff that I wouldn’t have time to do otherwise. I have to figure out the flight change prices & some little things though. We’ll see!

Quick Update

Quick update during my break in class!

I'm going to Sydney tomorrow morning. So exciting! I'm meeting a friend there who's studying in Brisbane, so I'm flying alone, and I booked everything myself and have to catch shuttles and stuff to get to & from the airport, so I'm kind of nervous. We don't really know what we'll do when we get there. The hostel is booked, but other than that we have no plans. Definitely going on the Sydney Opera House tour & maybe a tour of the Blue Mountains. Should be good pictures!

I figured out that I have at least 13 more flights, including the ones I take to get home. That's a lot of airport time!! I never in my life thought I'd be on planes so much. Good thing I'm not afraid of flying!

Last weekend I went to a Latin Fiesta fundraiser. It was so much fun... there were Capoeira & Samba shows and we spent the whole night dancing. Last week I also went to St Kilda, which is a suburb of Melbourne I guess and it has a beach and fun sights to see. Tonight is the Deakin Ball (my residence hall). Should be a lot of fun!!

Pancakes, Star Wars & Surfing

It’s been a long time!!! I’ve been so busy, but now that I think back, I’m not sure why. So much has been going on, but nothing extremely exciting. Art projects & papers that I should be spending more time doing, but instead I watch Star Wars & make pancakes. Ingredients are different here, so sometimes we get really flat or egg-y pancakes… it’s an adventure every time. The regular sized eggs are so small! And the jumbo ones are the size of our regular eggs and they’re brownish-red. The milk here tastes different in a not good way. Especially the skim milk. The mayo isn’t as thick, and is kind of sweet… and the only place you can find real ketchup is in McDonalds. I’m not really meaning to complain, just naming differences I never would have thought of.

Something else that shocked me was the fact that NOT everyone has seen Star Wars. No one understands why all the Americans love Star Wars, apparently it’s a geek thing everywhere else. And Macaroni & Cheese!!! I made it for dinner one night (from scratch in the oven, not box kind) and the girls I made it for had NEVER had Mac & Cheese! I was amazed!!! So then I felt very stereotypically American not being able to imagine people not having seen Star Wars & eaten Mac & Cheese.

I went surfing this past weekend in Torquey. It’s a famous surf town on the Great Ocean Road. It was fun. There were 17 of us who went & stayed in a hostel. We were the only ones in the whole hostel, so we got to be as loud as we wanted. We surfed in the rainy coldness, but it was really nice to be at & in the ocean. We had full wet suits & boots, so the only things that got cold were our hands, but after they went numb it wasn’t too bad. J I’ll put some pictures on here from it. It took 2.5 hours to get there, but it was worth it! I think I need to do some push-ups before I can get any better at surfing, because my arms were so tired from paddling & pushing myself up!

Olympics

The rain is making me crazy!!! It also made me sick. :( I had to go to the doctor and get medicine… weird using an international insurance card.

I’ve been watching the Olympics a bit. It’s really odd being in a foreign country with other foreigners watching. First of all, half of the time the Australians reporting on the games really don’t know what they’re talking about. And they never interview the winners, unless they’re Australian. If an Australian comes in 3rd or even 8th, they’ll interview that person and not whatever country came in 1st. It makes me feel sort of disconnected. It’s weird too, knowing who to route for. Obviously the US, then Australia, then whoever I’m watching with- Holland, or Britain, or Denmark, whoever.

It’s also really interesting because for a long time Australia had a really strict immigration policy, mainly to keep Asians out. Since Australia is an isolated country it has always feared being taken over or something like that. So there’s a lot of tension here towards the Olympics being in China. (I’ve heard that there’s tension in America too because it’s very likely that China will soon be the world leader, not America. Is this true??? It’s hard for me to keep up with news here, especially foreign.) It’s really a strange thing because now there are so many people here from China, Malaysia, Singapore, other Asian countries. I don’t really know if I explained this very well…

Anyway, I’m going to an Olympic party tomorrow night for the exchange/study abroad students. We have to dress Olympic-like. I know people wearing togas, a group of people going as the rings. Two of my friends & I are going patriotic. I’m wearing a blue dress, red scarf & white leggings, an American flag pin & painting something red white & blue on my face. They’re both Dutch so they’re wearing orange because that’s Holland’s national color, and red, white & blue because that’s the color of their flag & painting their faces too. It should be really fun.

Oh! Does anyone have really easy, yummy, nonmeat, cheap, healthy recipes??? I’ve been making chili a lot, and Mexican casserole (my Mexican friend hates that we call our Mexican food Mexican), and grilled cheese. My friends & I are still cooking together, so I need to stop cooking the same thing again and again.

tons & tons of flights

Sorry it’s been so long! I’ve been so busy!

I can’t believe I’ve been here for over a month. It’s crazy. I feel like i’ve been here forever and only a week at the same time. I’m surprised at how comfortable I am here, getting from campus to campus and going into the city on my own. The first semester at Arcadia I never did anything alone, now I don’t mind doing things alone at all… it’s nice.

I booked my flight for my Tasmania trip. I’m staying a night myself and then meeting the rest of the Arcadia people for 2 nights. I’m excited, but hopefully I can borrow a lot of stuff for that, like a rain coat or pants or anything that would be expensive and very hard to take home on a plane. I also booked a flight with my friend Sarah to Alice Springs, which is the outback, and we’re going to take a tour from there to Uluru (Ayers Rock). So we’ll probably stay in Alice Springs one night then go to Uluru and stay in hostels or camp there for 3 nights, and then go back to Alice Springs for a night and catch our flight home. That’s the weekend before I leave, and the Tasmania trip is the weekend before that… It’s going to be very busy!! I’m also planning on meeting some of the people I met at Arcadia’s orientation in Sydney sometime in September, otherwise I’ll probably go myself. I’m so excited about traveling. It’s crazy though, I’ve never spent this much money in my life! But, all of this might be a once in a lifetime chance.

Nothing too exciting is going on here… just classes and going into the city. I had a field trip on Friday to the Botanical Gardens. We had an aboriginal talk & tour. It was really interesting but it got really cold and miserable out so I wanted to leave as fast as possible.

cold cold cold.

I AM SO COLD. :( It’s about 45 degrees here. …I still don’t understand celsius. I also still can’t remember to look the right way when I’m crossing the street, so that’s kinda scary sometimes. I have to look both ways like 4 times before crossing and sometimes that doesn’t even work. But anyway, it’s really cold and rainy so it’s making me be lazy and unsocial because I don’t want to leave my dorm to go over to the other residence halls and see what anyone’s doing. Oh well. I saw a double rainbow today though. Actually, it was like 3 rainbows. There are LOTS of rainbows here. And they’re really long and bright. It’s really cool, I wish I had my camera on me today.

Today started the 2nd week of classes. I got to sand blast glass today. It kind of turned out not that great because it was the first time I’d done it, but there will be many more chances for improvement! My metals class is weird. We’re only doing one project for the whole semester. It has to be a food container for a specific food. I think I’m going to make a sushi container, because it seems like I could make that last for a whole semester if I get detailed enough.

Other than that nothing much new. We went to a free AFL (Australian Football League) game on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. It started out boring, but then it got really close and exciting. The final score was 108 to 104. The team we were rooting for won too. Yay!

I miss the food from home. The really easy, frozen vegetarian stuff I can just put in the microwave and eat fast. Here I actually have to plan real meals and go grocery shopping like 3 times a week and eat the stuff I buy before it goes bad. And everything is about twice as expensive than at home so I can’t even get really good stuff most of the time. I also miss my clogs and a real heater and WalMart and going to the gym and having a printer. And of course family & friends. It’s okay though, I’m still having an amazing time. :)

I guess that’s it for now.

Looong post.

I thought I was going to Brisbane, but I actually went to Caloundra instead. It’s on the Sunshine Coast and A LOT warmer than it is here in Melbourne, although today isn’t too cold.

The hotel we stayed in, The Shearwater, was SO nice. It was on the beach, which was beautiful. The group flight got delayed 29 hours, so there was a group of 13 of us for half of the orientation. I’m happy it happened that way because I got to know the other 12 people really well and we’re going to keep in touch and hopefully meet up with each other in various places on the continent, and hopefully back in the states too eventually. We had a whole morning free while waiting for the rest of the group (45 more people), so we decided to go surfing. It was a bit cold in the water, but so much fun. There were 10 of us who went, we got rash guards, boards & 2 instructors for $25 each. So it was really cheap.

We eventually had a bunch of orientation sessions about boring things that I practically slept through, but other than that the whole weekend was fun. We went to the Australian Zoo (Steve Irwin’s Zoo). It was really cool. I got to pet kangaroos, wallabies, koalas. Saw wombats, Tasmanian devils (which are crazy because they just run around in circles all day long), crocs, tons of weird birds & snakes, a komodo dragon, some other animals. We saw Steve Irwin’s daughter, Bindi. She sang and had grown men dancing behind her. It was really strange, but whatever.

I’m back at school. I’m now a pro at sitting in airports alone and not getting bored.

Classes started today. I thought it would be really hard to make myself go, but I actually ended up getting to class an hour early. All of my classes are on Caulfield campus, which is anywhere from 20-45 minutes by bus from Clayton campus, where I live. The bus ride only took 15 minutes and it turned out the drop off is right in front of the building my classes are in. It was alright though; I got a cup of coffee and explored the student union. I had my glass class today. I’m not actually blowing glass, but it seems cool anyway. And I’m trying to get into the advanced glass blowing class as an independent study or something. I really hope it works out. Tomorrow I have Metals & Jewelry, Wednesday I’ll either have glassblowing or business of illustration, which I’ll probably switch to something else anyway, and then Thursday I have Contemporary Australia. I can already tell I’m not going to want to come home. The studios & facilities are so much nicer here than at Arcadia & probably most of the universities at home. And I’m in Australia.

I signed up to go on a trip to Tasmania through Arcadia, which is awesome because it’s really cheap and I’ll get to see my new friends who are all up north. I just hope I don’t have exams right near there. We have a month long exam period and all of my art classes don’t really do exams, so that leave Contemporary Australia. I could probably go even if I had an exam right before or after because the trip is Friday night to Sunday night, but it might be very stressful and I was thinking I could go a day or two early to explore the town myself.

I also get a free trip through Arcadia. We get to take a bus ride on the Great Ocean Road, which is supposed to be beautiful and something that everyone who goes to Australia needs to do.

I’m hungry, I hope we’re cooking soon! I'll put up more pictures.

brisbane

i played australian rules football today. Footy they call it. Actually, i didnt even get to play because we ran out of time and couldn't play an actual game, but we got to kick the footy ball around and learn some techniques. it's such a strange game. it's a mix of soccer, american football, basketball, rugby & probably lots of other stuff. it was pretty cool.

tomorrow i'm going to brisbane for arcadia's orientation so i probably wont have internet until sunday when i get back. classes start monday so it's going to be a crazy time when i get back.

differences

i've been hanging out with a lot of brits lately and it's funny because they say things like charAAAHHHds (charades) and tomAAAAHHHtoe (tomatoe) and they call the pocket in pool the pot and the paddle in ping pong the bat. and underwear pants, so if you say something like i like your pants they think you're speaking of their undies. burger king here is hungry jacks and the aussies call mcdonalds macce's pronounced macka's. people dont say college, they say uni, and we've been teaching all of the non-americans how to play beer pong. we played a game like charades today and we all put names of famous people in a bowl to pick out... there were a lot of people no one knew unless you were from the same country as the person who wrote it down. what's really weird is that i've caught myself thinking in a different accent than my own a couple of times.

i'm going to post a couple of more pictures, so make sure to scroll down and look at them!