Long week

So far it has been a long week, but all of my lecturers are great and have a really nice sense of humor. My marine invertebrate biology class seems like it is going to be a pain though. Our professor says we need "graduate skills" so part of our homework will be doing things like applying for a job, turning in a resume, and learning how to make a poster. I think this is a load of bull and she should stick to teaching the material, but no. We also have to write an essay per week and turn in in depth essay outlines every Thursday at practical. The reason I do science is because I don't like writing papers and lab write ups are totally different. This whole things is a bit silly. Speaking of the lecture for that class, today we had to attend practical and have a woman speak to us about writing essays. She basically reminded me of a modern day Delores Umbridge (for all of you harry potter fans) and spoke to us like we were incompetent 6th graders. She gave us an essay example that said to discuss annelid feeding mechanisms and then asked how we would tackle it. We said we'd research annelid feeding mechanisms and she told us that was wrong. whatever, crazy woman. This lasted for 2 hours and I really just wanted to shoot myself. We did, however, get handouts that defined important words you could find in essay questions like "discuss, analyze, compare, contrast, investigate". Because honestly, I had no idea what those words meant before this.

Other than that disaster, today was a pretty good one. Before class at 3 I walked over to GR and had lunch with everybody over there and then decided to hit up the pool to swim a little. My current RA is involved in water polo here and the "lifeguard" there on mondays and thursdays so he hooked me up with a water polo ball to swim around with. After about 40 minutes I was getting ready to leave to clean up for class, but he offered to get in and pass with me so we chatted a little and threw. It was really nice and I was excited that he was shamelessly rocking a speedo because so many people hate on speedos these days.

After class I walked back to GR with lisa and had dinner there and then we did tonight's orientation activity. They chartered a bus to drive us to an ice skating rink that they had privately booked for an hour and a half. It was a ton of fun and it was nice that I actually knew what I was doing. All of the americans were pretty competent in the ice skating department and I only fell down when I was attempting to be like nancy kerrigan. Surprisingly a lot of the australians were doing well too, but they were all FREEZING and bundled up while we were at the rink. We got home from that around 9pm and then Lisa and I went to Dave-o's room and watched super troopers instead of going out again to the Tav. All in all it was a good night. I got to share a ridiculous movie with lisa and David because they had never seen it, but david was so exhausted he fell asleep part of the way through.

Tomorrow is friday and I only have class from 10-10:50 and then a few of us are off to the op-shop (the equivalent of our thrift stores) to get ridiculous outfits for the O-week op-shop party. I still have yet to hear about the room switch, nothing has opened up yet so I guess that means they haven't kicked the kid out of his room. The head of hall over at GR emailed me back today and ended it with "i look forward to having you as a resident" so hopefully that is a good sign!

First Day of Class

Today was my first official day of school here at JCU. I stayed up late to talk to the parents and then slept in because my first class today was at 1pm. I was woken up by housekeeping and answered the door half asleep, but managed to ask her if there was something that could be done about the horrific smell in my room. She proceeded to talk about how horrible the guy was that lived here before me and when i mentioned it smelled like he smoked in here it didn't surprise her. She told me to get some rest and that she would come back next monday (even though they only clean twice a month every other monday) to try giving my room an extra thorough cleaning. After that little encounter I got up and showered and ate lunch by myself. That kinda sucked, but I saw the water polo guy there and he said he'd open the pool up today from 1 to 6 and that he'd put some balls in so we could throw around and whatnot. I told him i'd be there around 5 only realizing after our conversation that I have class from 5 to 6. Oh well, I might go there now because my photography lecture and practical finished REALLY early today because it was the first day.

Speaking of photography, I already love that class. My professor is this tall skinny guy with a long face and a very prominent beak nose. He has very VERY curly chin length ringlets, but it is cut so that the sides of his head are buzzed and it is longer at the top. Based on his accent he is DEFINITELY a spanish speaker and I'm pretty sure hes from venezuela. Anywho, Raul seems like he is going to be a really cool professor and he spent a good portion of class cracking jokes. So far so good, I have coral reef ecology and Biodiversity of Tropical australia later today and hopefully they will be just as excellent as photography was.

I still haven't heard from the other dorm seeing if I can transfer yet, but hopefully I will get word soon. Once again, keep those fingers crossed!

Saturday Races

Saturday was the day that everybody dressed up and went out to the races for the day. By races I mean horse races. The girls and I didn't go because it was expensive, but we still dressed up and went out downtown to the bars at night with everyone else as is customary to do after a day of getting drunk at the races. Out was fun and we didn't get back until 3 am. Jeppo hooked us up with some free drinks at Mad Cow because she knows the managers and we danced all night. They placed spice girls AND the macarena, talk about a good night!Unfortunately,Cameron got kicked out of the bar before we had really started the evening. He found a leopard print pimp hat and jacket on a table and decided to put them on. He put them back before the bouncers got to him, but they gave him a speech about how they don't tolerate thieves in their bar and kicked him out. Le major bummer. We still managed to have a pretty quality night thought. The bus ride home was ridiculous and lisa gave up her seat to a guy who looked like he was going to pass out. I spent the entire bus ride with him encroaching seriously on my personal space. I think that about covers saturday night. Just the usual out to the bars and dancing, nothing too special.

In other news, I emailed the woman in charge of housing at George Roberts hall to see if there was a room open there for me. I'm there all the time because that's where all of my buddies live and i spent the weekend sleeping on the girls' couch cushions because the 10 minute walk back to my dorm isn't exactly safe at night and the boys strongly warned me against doing it. Basically it just makes sense for me to move there. I'm pretty sure it's too late for me to move there because it is a little late now and I think all the rooms are full, but who knows? Doesn't hurt to ask, right? It will be a little more expensive but at least I will be near my buddies and I won't have to sleep on a floor or walk back late at night by myself. Please keep your fingers crossed for me! Hopefully I will know by tomorrow.

As for right now, I'm tempted to go for a run or a swim. It looked like it was going to rain and started sprinkling on my way home, but for now its just cloudy and a little cooler.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

Wednesday night was pretty low key. I spent some time with the girls and we went to the mall to do a little bit of shopping. Afterward, we played a little bit of dress up in Jeppo's room looking for dresses to wear for Saturday night because everyone dresses up to go to the races and then into town after. Later that night, Lex walked a bunch of us out into some of the brush behind the dorms where he has an area cleared with for bonfires. We sat around talking a lot and somehow happened on the topic of scary movies. I was getting quite anxious because we were sitting in the dark in the middle of random brush and Lex didn't help the matter because he thought it was hilarious to throw rocks behind me to make me jump. All of the conversations about scary movies prompted us to actually watch one, so the guys peed out the fire and we went back to davo's room to watch a scary movie called Wolf Creek. It didn't help that it is about people traveling across Australia who get picked up and killed by this crazy man living in the middle of nowhere. Great.

Thursday was another low key day. Today we actually got our first chance to go down to the river where the row club has a rope swing as well as a pontoon/dock area where they launch the boats where people go to swim. A whole group of us went and once again it was super fun. The water was a lot warmer than the ocean and i splashed around a little bit with somebody's soccer ball. I also managed the courage to try the rope swing out. You have to climb up this big tree that angles over the water and then shimmy to the very end and grab the rope that dangles at the very end. Once you grab the rope, you crawl back until it is taught and then let yourself fall to the side. SOOOOO MUUUUCH FUNN!! The only downside is that the dirt you walk through after you get of the water makes your feet dry and makes it harder to grip the tree with them. Also, the water level is way down since they’ve been repairing a dam further up the river so the drop is a little bit higher than usual. I had a few problems with my bikini becoming misplaced after dropping into the water, but luckily the water is murky enough that I didn’t have to worry about anybody creeping. I think the river is one of my new favorite places and definitely will be looking forward to going back again and again. After we were done at the river a bunch of us went to the tavern to hang out Thursday night. A few people got pretty schwasted and I got teased for just sticking to water, but it was still a fun night. I was rolling around in Davo’s wheelchair and having an overall good time. We left the Tav and got back to the GR dorm’s around midnight. I had to help Lisa out because she had a little too much to drink, but I was being a good friend and made sure she was tucked into bed and had a garbage can and water in case she needed it. Somebody was supposed to walk me home after that because I didn’t want to sleep on the floor here, but I managed by myself. It was definitely a little spooky and I don’t think I will do it again, just to be safe.

Today was another great day of many great days. The international students had the opportunity to get shuttled to Billabong Sanctuary to check out all of these cool animals. Of course, the oregonians and I thought we should take up this opportunity despite it costing $50. This place was absolutely beautiful and I shelled out the $25 to have my picture taken with both a wombat and a Koala. It might have been a lot, but they are kind of hilarious and at least the money is going towards a good cause. Before pictures they let the wombat run around a little bit and they look so funny when they run. This little guy ran straight up to Lisa’s and my ankles and started nibbling on them. We also had the opportunity to get pictures with an Olive Python and a baby salt water croc, but those were free, so of course we all took advantage of that and got ridiculous pictures of one another modeling them like high fashion accessories. One of the coolest things about this place is that you could go into a fair number of the animal cages and interact with the animals. There was a pen with these tiny red kangaroo-looking creatures that you could just walk into and play with, just as long as you didn’t pick them up. I can’t remember what they were called, but I will post pictures later. There were also a few with a mimicked rainforest area with water features inside that house a few different kinds of birds including the laughing kookaburra. There were also grey kangaroos hopping around all over the place (or maybe they were wallabies) and you could buy animal feed for 80c to feed them with. A lot of them seemed to be females because you would see little baby joeys just running up and head diving into their mothers pouches. All of a sudden you would just seed a kangaroo that looked like it had a large tumor growing out of its belly and then feet sticking out at an awkward angle. This was highly amusing. Before they fed us they also gave us a behind the scenes Crocodile show where the keeper gave us really good facts about them and baited it with a chicken drumstick. He talked about how a lot of what you hear about them is myth, and that most people who die from them are complete idiots who don’t acknowledge posted warning signs around areas where rivers meet the ocean. Ever since they have been protected in Australia (since the 60s or 70s) there have been less than one death per year by crocodile, whereas 3 Australians per year die from jiggling a vending machine and having it fall on them. I don’t ever have a need to go back to Billabong Sanctuary, but It would definitely be a really cool place to work and it was both a fun and educational trip. Right now I’m chilling in Lisa’s room and I brought my stuff so that I can just stay here for the evening instead of having to walk back again tonight. I might take a nap and then later everybody is feeling like keeping things low key with a movie night. People were suggesting things like anchorman and zoolander until I said we should watch super troopers, so now we are watching super troopers because lex and I seem to have both decided that there are too many people here that have not seen it. I win!

Cheap Tuesdays!

Today started off with some more boring orientation stuff. We were guided through campus and sat in on a talk given by our department, but it didn't really apply to exchange students like myself because most of us are entering into higher level classes and already have the prerequisites completed. After all the boring stuff we had the most delicious pizza lunch out behind the student union and I don't think I could've been happier. Well, unless it was Lou Malnati's or something like that. I wanted to take care of registering for two more classes today so that I would have a full course load, but that turned out to be a nightmare. I went to the faculty of science and engineering to get approved for the coral reef ecology class that I really wanted to take, but wasn't approved for because when I had applied i was still taking the prerequisites and didn't have grades for them yet. After the difficulty I had finding that, the lady gave me a form and a copy of my transcripts and told me I had to go talk to an academic adviser for my program to finish sorting things out. She then pointed me in the direction of building 21. It took me a good 15 minutes to find the building, seeing as the maps we have of campus are sometimes very hard to read. After finally getting there I walked inside and was very confused on where I was supposed to be. Luckily, a nice man walked out of his office and I inquired where I could find Orpha, the woman who was to be doing my advising. He didn't know who the hell she was or where to find her, and at first I thought I had gotten her name wrong. After all, who the hell names their kid Orpha? He asked why I needed to see her and for what course, and then he told me that I should've been directed to building 28, because the one I was in was actually that of molecular biology. I was getting pretty overwhelmed at this point, but I set off anyways to find building 28 this time. This one didn't take me quite as long because i recognized the marine biology building. I found where I was supposed to be and double checked with the woman, but I had to come back an hour and a half later when walk-in meetings were available. Fast forward an hour and a half to meeting time. I got there early because I was in a hurry to get back to hanging with the cool kids at George Roberts. Turns out, Orpha is basically 4'7" and possibly the spawn of satan. She told me that I hadn't listened to my orientation meeting and that she wouldn't be doing any of this for me until Wednesday after I checked my schedule to make sure none of the class times would clash with one another. I also wouldn't be helped because she had other students to attend to. In all reality, I was the only person on the second floor and it would've taken her two seconds to sign off on my sheet instead of being such a dumb, condescending wench about the whole thing. So yes, now tomorrow at 10:30 I have to find another building and go to another orientation meeting just to learn about my schedule and how to read it and how to tell if classes don't go, at which point she will sign off.

After all of that mess Lisa and I hit up the mall so I could get my cell phone and pick up some other things. The mall wasn't that exciting, but we did try on some sassy silver sequined dresses. On the bus ride home it was just us and the bus driver, and he asked if we were in a hurry. We said he could take his time, but he informed us that he would like us to be in a hurry so he could get this bad boy moving! We had the most lovely conversation with him on the ride home. He told us all about where he lives more inland in the bush, where some good restaurants are, and that we should definitely eat kangaroo. As a matter of fact, he hunts kangaroo with a bow and arrows and makes jerky out of it, among other things. HOW COOL IS HE?!

The most exciting part of today was that it was cheap tuesday! That means that all drinks are cheap and that we would be going downtown to hit up the bars/clubs this evening. Before going out, a lot of us went to Dave-O's room to hang out. I kept it classy with some boxed wine that I'm pretty sure they affectionately refer to as "Goon". I learned how to play the game king's cup, and it was just really nice to socialize with a lot of people that weren't just americans. After most people were sufficiently boozed up, we got on the bus to get downtown. The bus ride turned out to be great! Only 6 or so of us had made it onto the first bus because everybody else was being too much of a drunkard to pay attention to the bus schedule. We had a lot of good laughs, mostly making fun of american accents and especially of how nasally some of my vowels are. We also broke down in some bus-wide singing, belting out hits such as Ain't No Mountain High, Don't stop believing, and I'm pretty sure there was backstreet boys or N*sync in there somewhere too. The first bar we stopped at was called Mad Cow and it was a blast. I got my dance on and was able to continue talking to this super cute boy who lives over in GR with all of my buddies. I also found a drink that is absolutely delicious. It is called a Vodka Raspberry and it rivals the deliciousness of pina coladas. I only had to pay for one drink that night, a rum and coke, and this guy bought me and the ladies a vodka razz each for us all to try. I continued to get my dance on, because us Gucinski's are such professional dancers, and just kept enjoying the great night out I was having with all of these random people. Eventually I got my dance on with previously mentioned cute boy and Lisa proceeded by playing the most excellent wing man the world has ever seen. He asked for my recently obtained cell phone number, which she provided because I had no clue what it was, and after we had switched bars and he had left for the evening he sent me the most lovely goodnight text. Thank you, Lisa!

Moral of the story is: Australia is the greatest place in the entire world and I've already had more fun here than i think I've ever had back home at school. The people are great, the location is great, and the accents are hilarious and quite endearing.

First Day of Orientation

Today kicked off orientation week for the international students. I had to attend a basic seminar about classes, enrollment, health insurance, etc. It didn't take too long and afterward there was a barbecue for all of us in the fine arts center where they had live entertainment, free food, and raffles. We had hotdogs, or I guess you could call them the Australian equivalent. They were probably 50% longer than regular hotdogs, sort of more sausage-like, and you eat them on regular bread instead of buns. Whatever they were, they were downright delicious. I didn't win any of the raffle prizes, but I did run into that obnoxious girl from San Diego that I first met on the bus ride to campus. She sat behind me during the seminar and kept complaining about how she didn't want to have to listen to people ask questions at the end. There were only two people who asked questions and I was one of them. Luckily for me, I was talking to another kid at the barbecue who also confirmed her HUGE attitude problem. I was quite glad that other people had noticed too.

After the barbecue I went back to my room for a little down time. I hadn't planned on getting a phone, but everybody here seems to be getting one and I don't want to be left out. After a little convincing from Jean Slana, I quickly ran back to the bbq to get my free sim card from the phone guy and put $40 on it, which should last me the entire semester. Tomorrow I will go and buy a cheap phone to put it in. After that quick change of mind I spent the majority of the afternoon sitting out on my balcony reading my book.

A little before dinner I met up with the ladies to help them move from their temporary Uni Hall housing into George Roberts where the boys, and all of the other cool kids that I've met so far, are living. I'm definitely sad to see them go. It's at least a good five minute walk and now I won't have anybody to walk me back late at night. Luckily for me Cameron is a pretty good guy and said he wasn't going to let me walk back alone so he escorted me home this evening. But anyways, I ate dinner with them at their dining hall and met another cool aussie, Peta. After we spent some time hanging out in Jeppo's room, bumming around watching youtube videos and listening to music. All in all i'd say it was a pretty good night. Tomorrow we're headed downtown to a bar called mad cow because tuesday nights are cheap drink nights. I also believe that this is the kind of bar that has dance music, which means I will surely be debuting my dance moves. I hope they can handle them!

Oh yeah, those Norwegians who are temporarily living in my building before finding off campus housing keep leaving the toilet seat up. Come on now, it's not hard to put it back down when your done. This is getting ridiculous.

To the beach!

Today I met up with the kids from Oregon to ride the bus into town to go to the Strand, which is their boardwalk/beach area. It is a really REALLY nice area and there are pubs everywhere. We walked along the strand for a little while and headed to the beach to test the water. It was a little cold, about 75*, but still nice nonetheless. It turns out I forgot to pack my beach towel in my luggage, so nobody had one for drying off afterward so we did some air drying on the cement. During this time, some crazy old woman that we originally thought was a man started chasing down some skateboarders and yelling at them to piss off and get back over there if they dared. She finished it off with some other colorful profanities. She turned and explained to us that they had been bothering her and then walked away. Weird.
I think the best thing about the downtown area besides the beach would definitely be all of the parks situated within the city. There are these really awesome trees here called banyan trees which look drop lines down from their branches and they eventually grow into the ground so it looks like this massive, gnarled, many-trunked tree. We climbed a huge one in a park by the beach and took a really nice group pic, so hopefully I’ll be getting that soon to post.
We also hit up the tavern last night with a bunch of locals and other exchange students. Some random girl, Jeppo (her nickname), came up to us at dinner and invited us to go, so we went. Everybody is just so friendly here! The tavern was pretty cool too, despite the fact that my drinking skills are nonexistent. I had no idea what to order, so Jeppo ordered me a girly drink called a Fruit Tingle. I thought I was just going to get a glass of it, but it turns out she ordered me and the two other girls from Oregon a pitcher for the each of us. I didn’t know how I was supposed to finish an entire 1140mL jug on my own, but I sat down to make Ashley proud, pushed the glass aside, and stuck my straw directly into it to start drinking my beverage at a leisurely pace. As it turns out, fruit tingle isn’t something you ever want to drink that much of. It is a combination of booze, some sort of purple kool-aid type juice, sprite, and grenadine and is ungodly sweet. I didn’t finish it, but probably made it ¾ of the way through. No worries mom and pops, could still walk a straight line, talk coherently, and use good judgement! I did feel as though my teeth had rotted completely through thought and brushed my teeth 3 times before getting to bed.
I met a lot of cool people there and learned a few rowdy drinking songs. There was a kid named David who was DUI in his wheelchair and kept quoting Dave Chappelle who was absolutely hilarious. I think at one point I was crying I was laughing so hard. His favorite quote happened to be something about an ‘N word’ getting off of his couch and he had no qualms shouting it for everyone to hear. ..Multiple times. Well, I’ve made it up until midnight and I’m and still quite jet lagged and now even more exhausted, so I’m off to check on my gecko roommate and then sleepy time 

I'm living where??

I finally made it to Townsville after 20 or so grueling hours spent on airplanes. There were at least 15 of us that were waiting for transport to JCU, so they brought a bus that pulled a trailer for all of our luggage. Most everybody seemed nice, except for one huge piece of work that kept talking about how she’s from the S.D. (San Diego) and just acting like she was hot stuff. She was only interested in talking to the grad student that is here, she is obviously too cool to socialize with other undergrads.
Today I finally met the woman who I’ve been emailing back and forth about my room, Mary-Ann. She recognized who I was at once and personally showed me to my room. She also called me a few times once she had left me  to make sure I was settling in okay. Bad news is that I feel like my building was previously used as a concentration camp and my room is sketchy as all hell, the walls are covered with residue from tape and sticky hooks from previous residents, and smells like chemicals and ripe feet. I was expecting my room to come with (based on what the internet said about University Hall) a pillow, bedspread, mattress cover, tv, bug screens and working electricity. I have none of these things and my window, which is basically a bunch of panes of glass set like shutters, doesn’t seal tightly (and aren’t screened) so all those dangerous spiders can crawl right up into my room. Excellent. There is so much space between the glass panes, in fact, that I came back to my room to find that I had gotten a gecko as a new roommate. The other university hall building is a lot nicer, has brick walls, classier balconies, legit carpeting, and doesn’t feel like a prison cell. Oh well. I think my adventure for tomorrow will be to hop on the bus to the kmart to find out how I can spend as little money as possible to make this room smell better and look a little more homey.
In other news, the campus is BEAUTIFUL. There are a lot of huge rainforest type trees and palm trees and all sorts of other cool plants. We also have a lot of interesting wildlife. So far I’ve only seen some crazy birds, but word on the street is that wombats and kangaroos are the equivalent of deer and they are on campus enough that they warned us not to feed them.
I’ve also started making some new friends. I met the guy who was in charge of water polo and it turns out he is an R.A. and will be living on the floor below me. They practice three times a week, but that won’t start up for another week or so. I’ve also been hanging out with a group of kids from Oregon. They are all really nice and the two guys, Grant and Cameron, are both scuba certified so I’ve found buddies to go diving with!! The two girls, Aleks and Lisa, currently are temporarily housed in the nicer building of University Hall so we’ve been eating meals together. Unfortunately, I will have to find buddies to eat with because they will either be moving off campus or into the housing of one of the different colleges on campus after tomorrow when their temp housing expires. I’m not so sure that you can eat at the other college dining halls, but will be investigating further soon. If so, hopefully the other food is better because the food I ate last night sucked so hardcore. It was kind of like mom’s stroganoff, but instead of being delicious it was just overly heavy, the meat was tough, and it just tasted like crap.
Also, could somebody tell me how the toilets work over here?! There are two buttons for flushing and I’m not sure which one I’m supposed to press…

Too many airports

The parents dropped me off a lot earlier at the airport than I expected so I had 3 hours to kill before boarding my flight from Chicago to L.A. There were some interesting characters, to say the least. I was sure that kharma would bite me in the bum and sandwich me between the two very large women and in front of the woman with the dog in a pink soccer jersey. I ended up sitting next to a really nice woman from California who was in Chicago on business. She gave me some cheese and crackers as well as her People magazine when she was finished with it. Our inflight movie was that crappy Miley Cyrus film, The last Song. We both watched it and cried, hilarious. She was really nice to talk to and I definitely lucked out. The plane landed on time in L.A. but we had to wait forever to get to the gate because a plane was blocking the way. When I finally got off the plane I managed to pay too much for a whopper at burger king before having to hunt for an open floor space to sit at the terminal. The flight to AUS was packed! They boarded the back of the plane first, so I got to settle in my seat right away. On that flight I managed to luck out again and sat next to two kids travelling to study abroad in Brisbane from a cali state school. We managed to be ‘those kids’ on the flight because we were very giggly. They provided booze with dinner so I had to remind the girl next to me that if she drank too much and barfed on me I wouldn't be happy. I decided to keep it classy and have a mini bottle of chardonnay with my meal.
I was actually really surprised with the food. Not in the sense of how good it was, but just by how much they were giving us. Dinner consisted of salad, chocolate volcano cake, a dinner roll with butter, and your choice of either bbq salmon with garlic rice and peas or honey glazed chicken with parsley mashed potatoes and beans. The chicken kind of sucked and the potatoes were DEFINITELY from the box, but I was already pretty full from whopper at the airport, not realizing that I would be fed so soon. After dinner they came around to serve tea, peppermint tea, and Cadbury hot chocolate complete with a jumbo marshmallow. The hot cocoa was delicious and probably my favorite thing that I ate on the flight. After they collected our dinner trays they gave everybody a goody back with snacks and a water bottle in it to hold us off until breakfast. Yes, breakfast. We got TWO MEALS!! I only thought they were going to feed me once. Breakfast was the same kind of thing as dinner. You got a tray with fruit salad, OJ, a croissant with jam, and then your choice of either an egg and bacon frittata with mushrooms, tomato, and spinach or cereal and milk. I, of course, went with the eggs which proved to be disappointing, but I was starving.
I didn’t sleep much between dinner and breakfast, maybe 5 hours max. We had personal tv screens in the backs of the chairs that included tv, movies, music on demand, videogames, and a thing where you could see the progress of the flight. I watched a few movies and fell asleep during one of them. The rest of my time awake I spent trying to sleep or making frequent trips to the bathroom. Thank goodness I landed that aisle seat. I’m definitely going to try to reschedule my seat assignment for the flight home as aisle instead of window once I figure out this internet business.
After that long flight I had a 2 hour one between Brisbane and Townsville. It was short and sweet and they served us a light morning tea with streusel, but actually navigating the airport was a disaster. You had to catch a bus between the international and domestic terminals and the man I asked wasn’t exactly the most helpful. I finally figured it out, but it cost me $5. Thank goodness I had exchanged some currency before I left. The major bummer was that after I paid I found out that all I needed to show was my Qantas boarding pass and it would’ve gotten me on free. Oh well.

Pre-departure goodbyes

Being my last day at home, I had to make sure I hit up some of my favorite restaurants before leaving for Australia. I had the pleasure of meeting up with the most excellent Mike Kelly for lunch at Lou Malnati's for some deep dish pizza as well as heading to Gemato's for gyros with Peter for dinner. My buddy Catie also stopped by for some quality bonding too! Thanks to the two of them I have finally finished packing and am now ready to get on the plane tomorrow! I am definitely going to miss those guys.