Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Go Brisbane Broncos!!!


AHHH I have so much to write about! It's so hard to keep up with this blog!

Anyways, about two weeks ago on August 31st a group of my friends and I headed to Brisbane again. Megan had written a review about how bad the service was at the hostel last time and somebody from the hostel contacted her and told her we could all stay there again for free to make up for it. There was a Brisbane Broncos "footy" (rugby league) game that night so we decided it was a good time to go and have our free night in the hostel. We took the train to Brissy and got settled into the hostel. Then we headed for the stadium, which was just a short train ride away from the hostel. Megan's friend from home, Sam (he stayed with us for a week before going to Singapore), Sea Bass and I got McDonalds because we didn't want to pay for food at the game. Then we headed to the stadium and met up with everyone. We had the seats furthest away from the field, but the game was so much fun! I think I already wrote about this in a past post, but I like watching rugby a lot more than football. The game only stops if someone gets seriously injured, instead of every other millisecond like football games, so it's a lot easier for me to watch and not get distracted haha! And they only last 80 minutes, which is the perfect amount of time for me! Although I have to say that App football games are more fun to go to than rugby games here because of all the school spirit and everything! I am so bummed I'm missing football season, not to mention the fall season, which is probably my favorite season in Boone! Anyways, the "footy" game was so much fun and the Brisbane Broncos won against the Panthers (from Sydney)! After the game we all got to go on the field because that game was one of the player's last games so he gave a speech. It was pretty cool! When we left we went and everybody but me got McDonalds. Then we were going to go to a bar but we couldn't get in because Sam was wearing shorts (the dress code in the bars and clubs here is strictly enforced!) So instead we headed to the same bridge that we walked across last time- the Story Bridge. We were able to see all of the city lights and they reflected off of the water and it was so beautiful! After that we almost went to the club in the hostel but there was a long line to get in so we just went to our room instead. I was EXHAUSTED and pretty much went right to sleep even though it was so loud because we were right above the club. It was a great night!

 BEAUTIFUL sunset! Took this from the stairs in the hostel and it's not edited at all!

 View from our room in the hostel

 McDonalds and the stadium




 Cheerleaders




 The players warming up

 Can't remember who was in them, but these cars were awesome!

 The Brisbane Bronco!





 We won!!!

 Petero Civoniceva

 Sooo many people!

 We were in the seats in the top row, in the very back row haha 


 Peter!

 Me and Aren
Sam, Max, Sea Bass, Eli, Sam, Megan, me, Aren, and Peter

 This is the bar we were going to go to- I thought the name was pretty funny haha

 Story Bridge





 We threw coins in the water and made wishes! 


 Sam and Sea Bass dancing haha


The next day we woke up pretty early to go walk around Brissy. We basically did the same thing we did last time. We took a ferry and then walked around the markets and then went shopping. 




 The fake beach


 This was seriously so so so delicious!!! Strawberries with whipped cream, ice cream, and chocolate drizzled on top! Ahhh I want one right now!!!


 We went into the candy store again and they had Shockers! Shockers are one of my favorite candies and I hadn't had them in years- I think they stopped selling them in the US for some reason!






Warning: this story is a tad bit inappropriate and you adults probably don't want to read it but I know some of you will find it amusing...

Everyone else stayed in Brissy that night. I had a lot of work to do, plus I didn't want to spend money on the hostel and they were going to the casino that night, which I didn't really want to do anyway. So I went and caught the 5:09pm train, which was supposed to take me to Landsborough station (a station that's just a short bus ride away from school). However, about halfway into the ride they made everyone get off the train because the tracks were closed off. I was so confused but they said they had buses that were going to take us to our destinations. As I got on the bus I heard an extremely drunk man talking to everyone. Of course he got on my bus! He and his new friend, a drunk woman, were soooo loud! The bus driver along with some other guy went and talked to them before we left to make sure they didn't have alcohol with them on the bus (which they did but said they didn't). They were both singing and laughing and were so loud they were annoying everyone on the bus. I have a good sense of humor so I was able to see the humor in the situation, but a lot of people got really mad. The man definitely thought he was a rock star and was singing songs at the top of his lungs and was slurring all of the words and getting them all wrong. Then the woman started complaining about how she had to pee. She wanted the bus driver to pull over so she could go to the bathroom, but since we were all already late he couldn't. So then she started crying and cursing at him and yelling things like "You're evil, where are you taking me??!?!!?" Then she stopped crying and instead started singing "EVERY SINGLE CELL IN MY BODY IS HAPPPPYYYYY" and was laughing and the next she started crying again and yelling. She started threatening to pee on the bus but nobody thought she actually would. Well, after awhile she just squatted on the floor of the bus and peed. Not even kidding. It was so ridiculous! We FINALLY made it to the bus station around 7:15. The bus to USC wasn't coming until 8 so I had to wait 45 minutes. A really sweet older woman started talking to me and we talked about the eventful bus ride and about a bunch of other stuff. She was adorable! The bus got there at 8 and I finally got home around 8:30! I was so happy to be home- I was supposed to get home before 7!

I have a lot more to write about but I need to go get some work done so I'll try to do it tomorrow! Hope everyone is doing well, miss you all!

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Fraser Island (Most Beautiful Place I've Been)!

So I was waiting to write this blog until I got some photos from my professor, but I can't get them from him until Monday. I'll have other blog posts to do by then, so I thought I'd just write this one now and add those photos to it once I get them. Also, the surfing picture that I had been waiting on is now up, so check that out in my last blog! Anyways, here we go...

I can certainly say I never expected to go to the most beautiful place I've ever been to on a school field trip. But that's exactly what I did last Tuesday for my integrated marine systems class. I woke up around 5am Tuesday. That was rough, but I was SO excited! My friend, Emily, is in my class, so we made a plan the day before to meet at 5:40 at the pavilion since we didn't exactly know where we were going. On our way over to the uni the sun wasn't even up from behind the clouds yet, so the sky was really pretty (I have yet to see a good sunrise though- that's on my Australia bucket list)! We walked around for awhile trying to figure out where to go. We finally found two girls from our class, Hannah and Ruby, and eventually more people showed up (people are never even on time to class, including our professor, it's kind of ridiculous). There were around 10 students (everyone except me and Emily was Australian, which was awesome!), 2 honors students (I think that's the same as grad students in America), and our professor, Thomas. The grad students drove 4WDs owned by the school and Thomas drove his own. We all just piled up in the cars, and I was in one of the school 4WDs with Emily, Ruby, Hannah, and Dave, an honors student. I dozed for the two-ish hour car ride and it passed by really quickly. Then we stopped at Rainbow Beach. Rainbow Beach sounds like some magical place, but it really isn't, or at least the part we saw wasn't. Don't get me wrong, the beach itself was beautiful, but the town was pretty dead. I looked it up and this is what I found about how it got its name: "The town takes its name from the towering coloured sand cliffs nearby which are part of an aboriginal legend. The legend states than an ancient aboriginal god threw himself into the sand cliffs in a fight over a woman, colouring them forever." Pretty cool! Anyways, Emily and I went and checked out the beach, which was BEAUTIFUL. Then we sat and talked to Joe, one of the guys in our class, about how ridiculous Thomas is (he is funny and extremely intelligent but is not one of the best professors I've ever had... I won't even get into it, but he really makes me miss my teachers from Latin and App!!!)

 Sky on the walk over to uni

 One of the 4WDs

 What I believe is the main part of the town of Rainbow Beach


 At least there was some cool art!

 Rainbow Beach!


When we finally left Rainbow Beach we drove through some sand to get to the shore where the ferry picked us up. We drove the 4WDs onto the ferry and then got out of the car and some of us climbed the stairs to get a better view. While we were gazing out at the ocean we saw a few dolphins, which was so exciting!




http://www.rainbow-beach-holidays.com/image-files/fraser-island-map.jpg 
This map will help you understand where we were!



 From the looks of the map, I guess this was Inskip Point- where we left mainland to head to Fraser Island

 "Queensland- The Smart State"

 That's a dolphin!!!

 The southern tip of Fraser Island!

Once we drove onto the island, we began our research. I knew we were going to be counting birds, but I had mistakenly been thinking we were going to be walking around the beach counting birds. But instead, we rode for hours in the 4WD. I thought that was a little weird since we had learned about all of the negative impacts 4WDs have on the island, but that was really the only way to conduct our research. In fact, 4WDs are the only way to get around the island since there are no roads. That's why you basically can't see Fraser Island without paying for a 4WD tour, which costs at least $200, so the fact that we got to do it for free for class was AWESOME. Anyway, we drove up the beach for probably about two hours identifying and counting birds. We saw hundreds of Crested Terns and a ton of Red-Capped Plovers, which were all really cute. We also saw people dragging dead fish in bags across the sand. Apparently that makes huge worms come out of the sand and the people catch them and sell them for a lot of money to fishermen! Not long after we started counting, we saw a wild dingo! Fraser Island is known for being home to a good number of wild dingoes. The dingo didn't seem phased at all by our car, which makes sense considering how many 4WDs go up and down the beach everyday. I know they aren't friendly animals, but he/she was SO cute!!! The beach itself was absolutely incredible because it seemed endless. It's actually called 75 mile beach, so I assume it's 75 miles! We kept going for miles and miles (or I guess I should say kilometers and kilometers!) and all we saw was vegetation on one side, white sand, and the most beautiful blue water. I can't even describe that color, and pictures certainly can't capture it. It's surreal. It has to be the most beautiful color that exists in nature. Sometimes I forgot to look for birds simply because I was so mesmerized by the ocean. Plus we had the windows down so we could also hear the ocean. At one point I actually almost fell asleep I was so relaxed! 



 How adorable is that face?! AHHH

 We each got our own bird ID books!

 This is what we used to keep track of the distance we had traveled. We wrote down the number and species of birds (and also people and cars) we saw each km.

 We saw a lot of big groups of Crested Terns!

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~vwsg/pics/crested%20tern%20(ind).jpg
Since we were only in the moving car, I couldn't get any good pictures of birds. But here's one I got online of a Crested Tern!

 I think this is a Caspian Tern! He caught a fish and flew away with it!


http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4141/4896754575_8144f20196_z.jpg 
 I didn't take this picture either, but this is a Red-Capped Plover! They are tiny and absolutely adorable! 

We saw one of these, a Rainbow Honeyeater, from a distance (we had binoculars) and it looked so pretty even from so far away!

 Can't see it well in the picture, but the man in the middle is dragging a net across the sand to catch worms!


Piece of a shipwreck on the beach

 The beach seemed to go on FOREVER

 Didn't edit this picture at all, but the water is even bluer in real life!

 We stopped in Happy Valley for a bathroom break! It's on the map above if you want to see how far we rode up the beach that day!



After a few hours of counting birds, we went on a hike to Lake Wabby. The hike was beautiful! It was crazy because the entire hike was through sand. Other than that it was like a normal (really pretty!) hike, but it was so much harder because of the sand. We all took our shoes off for the whole hike. Lake Wabby was pretty, but the best part was the sand dunes all around it. It was unreal!!! I had never seen anything like it. Pictures certainly don't do it justice! The sand seemed to continue for forever, it was so cool!
















 Yes, it really was as steep as it looks in this picture, my calves were burning after I climbed it!



 The majority of these dunes looked untouched, which was awesome!



After we walked back to the car, we drove to Wanggoolba Creek. The car ride there was so fun, it felt like we were off-roading! Once we got there, there were a ton of incredible trees and the water in the creek was crystal clear. It was so beautiful!


 Anybody know what these are called? I asked somebody in my class but I can't remember! They were everywhere and they're so cool! 













After this we drove to another small lake. The sand there was the whitest I've ever seen! My camera started flashing low battery though so I didn't take many pictures. I was so mad the battery was low! It was fully charged in the morning but I took SO many pictures that whole day. I'm tempted to buy another battery so that doesn't happen again!

 I sat in the passenger seat when we got back in the car and felt SO weird to be in the front on the left side without having a steering wheel in front of me!



Then we drove for probably about half an hour. At first the ride felt like a roller coaster and we all kept laughing. Then it made me so tired that I actually started falling asleep until I almost fell over and everyone in the back seat burst out laughing at me. It was pretty funny! Then we got to the "Dilli Village," which is basically a campground owned by USC with some buildings, including rooms, a kitchen, bathrooms, etc. We got settled in our rooms (I chose a room with Emily) and then made our own dinners. I was super fancy and heated up some microwavable soup. Meanwhile, my professor and his honors students had steak and a whole feast haha! Then Emily and I hung out in our room for a little while. She's awesome! We bonded over our love for all the American restaurants they don't have in Australia. It was pretty terrible because we started craving all of the food they don't have here (like buffalo chicken)! Then we headed for the campfire that the boys had started. We all sat around the campfire and had a beer (I'm 21 now!) and just chatted. I talked about how jealous I was of everyone for being able to live here, and Thomas said Emily and I could be successful if we moved here and started an American restaurant. Sounds good to me! Emily and I went to bed around 10:30. If you know me, that's pretty hard to believe, but I was EXHAUSTED! I hadn't had a good night's sleep in way too many days and needed to catch up on my sleep!


Part of Dilli Village!


The next day we woke up around 9 and left around 9:30 and headed to Indian Head. I'll let pictures help me explain the rest!

 You see that little tiny spec in the ocean?! That's a WHALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I saw my very first wild whale and was so excited I seriously almost cried! I got to use the binoculars to look at it and saw what I believe was the flipper and I think I saw its tail too but it was really far away, so it was hard to tell! SOOOO COOL THOUGH!!!!!

 A dead Maco shark with maggots all over it...

 MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE I'VE EVER BEEN!!!






 We saw a turtle and shark in the water (so awesome!), but I'm not sure if that's what's in the water in this picture!









 No special effects or editing- this really is what the color of the water looked like!!!



These next four pictures were taken on Emily's camera:

 Me and Emily!







 I used the super vivid effect on my camera for these two, but honestly the color of the water was closer to what it is in these pictures than in some of the others!


 This is the Maheno shipwreck. I really wish we had actually stopped the car and gotten out to look at it, or at least that those people hadn't been standing there so I could've taken a picture without them in it, but oh well, it was still really cool! Here's a link explaining about it:

 This is Eli Creek!



 Nobody here wears Chacos haha but I've gotten a lot of use out of mine!



 Cliche picture, but I had to do it...

 This is the ferry that takes all the 4WDs across

 The drive back was really pretty!






As you can tell, it was a MAGICAL field trip! I would love to go back, but it's so expensive so I'm not sure if I'll be able to! I'm just so fortunate that I got to go there on a free field trip!

The rest of the week was pretty good. We went to Friday's on Thursday, as always. Then Friday we went to Brissy again for a footy (rugby) game, but I'll make a separate post about that! This week has been the roughest week I've had here, but compared to last year at App, it hasn't been too bad. Plus... I'M GOING WHALE WATCHING TOMORROW!!!!!!!! If you know me well, I'm sure you can imagine how excited I am! Cross your fingers that I actually see some whales! :)

Megan, Helen, and me


Hope everyone is having a marvelous week! Miss you all lots and lots! 

Hugs from Australia! xoxo