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.