Spring Break Oh Eight

Hey Everyone!! I've been back from spring break for a little over a week now trying to stay caught up with Uni and catch up on sleep. Break was absolutely amazing! There were a few goof ups from STA but overall it was worth every penny. I got to see and experience the most incredible things. I did things I never thought I would do in a lifetime and I am very fortunate that I got to go on this trip. I will start with the beginning. We were supposed to meet at the Brewery at 7pm Friday night so my roommates and I all got our things packed up and out in the kitchen area. At 5:30 we started a power hour. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is when you take a shot (or in the girls case a small drink) of beer every minute for 60 minutes. We all had our beer and sat out on the balcony to watch the sunset. It was beautiful by the way. We listened to a power hour mix, one that switches songs every 60 seconds so you know when to take a drink. Needless to say, we were all "ready to go" at 6:30 when we made our way to the brewery with our luggage.

We got the Brewery and had a couple more beers only to find out later that the Greyhound bus we were supposed to get on was 5 hours late. We were supposed to leave at 9pm. We ended up leaving around 2am. There were 31 of us on the trip all together. 29 Americans, 1 guy from belgium and 1 girl from sweden. We ended up getting our own bus and somehow still got to Byron Bay on time in the morning. Byron Bay was absolutely amazing!! It is the cutest little hippie town in AUS. The beach was gorgeous and the little shops were so fun to check out. I learned how to surf while I was there with MojoSurf. I actually got up and rode the wave a few times. It was a blast and I cant wait to try it back here in Newy. Our first night in Byron was a blast. We got $5 meals at Cheeky Monkeys. This bar was awesome. MojoSurf actually messed up some times so they bought all 31 of us free jugs of beer for most of the night. That night happened to be Ladies Night. There were 5 guys picked from the crowd to go up and strip to the underwear and dance on the tables. Nate (my roommate) was not one of the chosen ones but he decided to join them anyways. Haha he got disqualified i guess because one of the girls from our group pulled his boxers off. Thank you Lord I wasn't looking then. I would have been scarred for life. Needless to say, it was a good time in Byron.

Then we got on a bus for a full day and headed up to Hervey Bay for a night. Then we packed small bags and headed to Fraser Island (the biggest sand island in the world) for 2 nights and 3 days. It was so pretty. There were 11 of us in my vehicle and 10 in the other two. We got to drive around the island the whole time. Mostly we were on the beach driving along side the ocean. We got to stop at Indian Head. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life. Maybe if you look up images on google you will be able to see for yourself. Otherwise I’ll be bringing pictures and postcards home. We also stopped and swam in Lake Mackenzie. It is the largest fresh water lake on a sand island in the world. It was so refreshing to go in freshwater as opposed to always swimming in the ocean. The lake was an amazing color blue too.. about 4 different shades. Same thing with looking it up on google images. While camping there we got to pitch tents and all hang out and have a few drinks on the beach. It was awesome. The day we got back to Hervey Bay we hopped on an overnight greyhound bus to Airlie Beach. This town was so fun. They had a lagoon and a bunch of souvenir shops. This is where we took off on our sailboat, The Matador.

I’ve never been sailing before but it was so much fun!! The ocean was gorgeous and the islands were even more so. We sailed “the Whitsunday’s.” This is where we all got to work on our tans. We woke up about 6am both mornings and laid on the boat deck until the sun went down. The middle day we stopped in a bay and went snorkeling. That was the first time I’ve ever done that too. I’ve never seen so many colored fish in my life. It was so so much fun. I went twice that day haha. Other than that, like I said we soaked up the sun. It was gorgeous every day too. We got really lucky. At night we threw parties, it was a blast.

After we got back to Airlie beach we hopped on one more overnight bus all the way to Cairns. We arrived on my birthday. I slept approximately 30 minutes on that awful bus so I was exhausted. I never got a chance to take a nap. I called everyone from home and then went shopping with the girls. I didn’t buy anything but towards the mid afternoon I needed to get in some a/c and/or shade. Nicole and I went back to our hostel and just hung out until it was time to get ready to go out to dinner. The entire spring break group plus some of our other friends that happened to show up in Cairns that day (about 40 of us) went to a Mexican restaurant. It was s blast! A couple people bought me drinks and then everyone pitched in at the end of the meal to get a shot of tequila for everyone. Haha needless to say it was a good night. We all went back to the bar in the hostel because they had $2 drinks (which is a VERY rare occasion in Australia) so people didn’t feel bad about buying me a drink here and there with that deal. Haha.

The next day we went to the outer great barrier reef to go snorkeling. It was sunny out so everything out there was so bright. That was a lot of fun! Again when not snorkeling we just got to hang out in the sun on the boat. Then the day after that was the Cape Trib tour. That was more of a relaxing day compared to the rest of break. We were in a bus most of the time. Cape Trib is one of the Rainforests in Aus. There is one part of it where we ate lunch that was beautiful. It was a beach with the rainforest on the edge and then the water was part of the Great Barrier Reef. 2 of the great landmarks or something like that come together only at that point on earth. I don’t quite remember how they explained it. It was cool tho!

The next two days were the best! We went whitewater rafting down the Tully River! I could go on for an entire day about how it was. Needless to say it was absolutely amazing. It’s a grade 4 river out of 6. We almost flipped a couple times but it only made it that much better. The tour I had made the trip so much better. Then the next day was the last day of wild adventures. I went skydiving for the first time! I was SOOO nervous!! Haha But whats really amazing is that my parents let me get a video of it so I will always remember what it was like! Its so funny haha I can’t even count how many times I screamed “Oh My God!!” haha. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever done. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I jumped 14,000 feet which was a 60 second free fall. Then once the parachute opened everything went calm. At first the wind was deafening then it was completely peaceful. So crazy! I cant wait to show people the video! Haha mom and grandma are going to freak out.

After that we just finished up some souvenir shopping and came back to Newy. School started back up and I’ve been busy with that ever since. This is the last week of classes and then theres 3 weeks of finals. I am here for 27 more days and then I hop on the 20 hour flight home. Yuck haha but I’m super excited to come home and share with everyone my stories. I have some awesome adventures ahead of me still. Thursday my roomies and I are going to the Hunter Valley Vineyards to do a wine tasting (mom I bet you’re jealous haha) and then Friday I am going to a little farm where we get to hold koalas!! Yes hold them!!! And pet kangaroos! Haha then heading up to Nelson Bay to go on a Dolphin Watch tour on the ocean. Then Sunday I am going to Catherines (I’ve mentioned her before) house and swimming in her pool maybe having a bbq and going for a walk to look over all of Newcastle. Its going to be a blast and make the time here fly by!!

Spring Break Itinerary (for all you interested)

September 26 Meet at Brewery Hotel at 7 pm. Leave at 8:50

September 27 Arrive at Byron Bay. Surf lessons at 8 or 12.50. Meet at Cheeky Monkeys for wine/beer

September 28 Surf lesson at 12.50.

September 29 Depart on bus at 7.35. Go to Brisbane to continue to Hervey Bay. Free BBQ night

September 30 Fraser Island for 3 days

October 1 Free day, Champagne Pools, Lake McKenzie

October 2 Return to Hervey Bay by 4pm Ferry. Overnight bus to Airlie Beach

October 3 Check in to OZ adventures

October 4 Sail 74 islands for 2 nights

October 5 Free day sailing aboard the Maxi Racing Yacht ‘Matador’

October 6 Return to Airlie Beach. Chill for afternoon. Depart on bus 8 pm.

October 7 (my birthday) Arrive early in Cairns. Free day, laze by the lagoon, maybe dinner and drinks at the woolshed

October 8 Check in to Deep Sea Divers Den for outer reef trip aboard reef quest including snorkeling and lunch

October 9 Cape Tribulation tour

October 10 Full day Tully River rafting

October 11 SKYDIVE. Jumps start at 7am

October 12 Free day in Cairns

October 13 Fly home

Catching Up Once Again--Sydney and Blue Mountains

So once again, its been a while since I last updated. I know I said I was going to update you on how Sydney went. It was amazing! We got to Sydney and spent the afternoon shopping around Bondi Beach. The roommates had never been there so we went back. It was gorgeous as usual. The shops there are so fun. Then we went to the Opera House Bar for dinner with Catherine. We literally sat on the harbour and had a fantastic view of the Bridge and the Opera House. The next morning we went to climb the bridge. That was amazing. We learned a lot about how it was built and some interesting stories along with it. We got to climb to the very top.. up by the flags. You could see all of Sydney and even the Blue Mountains. We got our picture taken up there but we couldn’t bring cameras. After that we went to get lunch and then headed to the Opera House for a tour. We learned a lot about how that was built and got to go into some of the rooms. The inside was surprisingly ugly. They had purple velvet floors and walls… in the same room! Gross. Um after that we went to the German Bar. We always manage to end up there in Sydney. It’s a nice atmosphere and they have really good beer. The one I really like is a regular beer with mango juice added. It sounds disgusting but it’s really good there. Then we went back to the hostel for the second night. The hostel Catherine booked for us was awesome. It was a railway one because it was right next to the train tracks (which kind of sucked at night) but was really cool because the rooms they had were old cars from trains. The next morning us girls got up early and headed back because we all had papers due a few days later.

My eyes look a bit creepy here but this was where we ate dinner. The opera house is in the background.

Heres the Harbour Bridge. You can see the two flags on top.. we walked in between them.

Other than that I have just been writing papers nonstop and keeping up with school. We’ve had a few good weekends and Wednesdays (student night) out at the bars. It’s finally starting to warm up here so its fun to get dressed up to go out now. Us girls can wear dresses and not get chilly on the way home. It has been in the 80s for the past week and I know this last Saturday was 77 at night. That was great. We saw heat lightening off our balcony across the harbour.

This is us girls hanging out with PJ at the bars

And then there is Sam. Typical Wednesday night.

This past weekend was great tho (even tho I have a 2000 word paper due tomorrow—thank god I finished it a few hours ago). My flatmates and I went on yet another trip that was included in the program costs. We got to spend the weekend at the Blue Mountains in Katoomba Australia. It was so beautiful there. Very outdoorsy. We stayed in a hostel that was very old fashioned, that was fun. We arrived Thursday and left Saturday. It sucked because it took 5 hours to get from Newcastle to Katoomba. They were doing track work on the trains on Thursday too. So we had to catch a train from Newcastle to Morrisset then get on a bus for a half hour to Gosford, then get on another train to Strathfield in Sydney and then get on another train to Katoomba. Thank goodness on the way back the track work was finished so we only had to switch at strathfield. We arrived Thursday night and grabbed some dinner then headed to bed. We had to get up early to meet Catherine. We grabbed some breakfast at Fresh (a coffee shop that apparently hates Americans). We got tickets for a day trolley pass to take us from one site to the next. We took a bus to Blackheath and went on a tour through the bush. We had a tour guide (Janelle) who taught us about the Aboriginals and their beliefs (kind of like the native Americans of the US). It was great. They use rocks to make paint for your skin. We found some on the ground and mixed them with water and we all got to paint our faces. That was fun. Then the tour was over and we were at Govetts Leap. One of the most beautiful sites I’ve ever seen. We were staring over the Blue Mountains. There was a waterfall to our left and mountains in front of us. After that we went back to katoomba and shopped around a little. Then we walked to the ever-so-famous three sisters. There is an old story that goes along with them. Something about 3 sisters were running away from this man and their dad was a sorcerer of some sort. In order to save them he turned them into stone and then he lost his baton with the magic and could never turn them back into humans. That was the shortened version. Obviously. We watched the sunset over there and walked back. It was absolutely amazing.

Tater and I painted each others faces

Me standing at Govetts Leap... still with the paint. oops.

The three sisters... Gorgeous!

Sunset!

The Blue Mountains. If you take the last 3 pictures (all taken from the same spot and at the same time), imagine standing on a platform looking over the mountains. The three sisters was on the left, the mountains were straight ahead, and the sunset was on the right. Just giving you an idea of what it looked like.

Then we got super lucky and found some Chinese food. We have all been craving it for ever because Newcastle only has thai or Indian. After that we went to a bar called Carington Hotel. It was the fanciest hotel I have ever seen in my life. We went there and got a cocktail. After that we went to bed for an even more eventful day in the morning. Once again we woke up early (6:30) to check out of the hostel and meet Catherine after breakfast. Saturday was the day we got to go Abseiling otherwise known as repelling down a mountain. It was amazing. We started at 7 meters just for a warm up and to see how it feels to lean over backwards over a cliff. We got sweet helmets and harnesses. Next we got to do 12 meters. That one was difficult because the mountain concaved in so you kind of had to leap while dangling from a rope. It was terrifying because when you looked over the edge you couldn’t see anything except for a pile of trees that were just on a plateau in the mountain. After that one we got to do the big one. 35 meters. 5 of which were rock and the 30 other meters were you swaying in the wind. That was absolutely crazy. We got to do that one 2 times. The first time was so scary. The rope was extremely heavy that I had to hold behind my back and the wind was crazy! I got all hooked up and leaned backwards over the edge. I started walking myself down the rock and a gust of wind came. Next thing I knew I hit my side on the mountain and had to use my feet to balance out again. I made it thru the 5 meters of rock then cruised on the way down. I wanted to reach ground more than anything. I actually got rope burn on my side from sliding down so fast. The guy at the bottom thought he was going to have to catch me.. thought I wasn’t going to stop. The guy at the bottom was crazy. He tied himself to one of the trees on the plateau and leaned backward over the mountain to catch us coming down and push us to the plateau. I don’t even know how much mountain was below him. I know we didn’t even repel down half of it tho in the 35 meters. My second time going down was completely opposite from my first. There are 2 ropes when going down. You are connected to one and the other one was there for some odd reason. Well once again I was super scared and the wind was crazy. I didn’t fall this time tho. I made it through the rocks and then on my way down I wanted to go slower. Well a gust of wind came and swung me so rather than facing the mountain, I was facing everything else. All the other mountains. Due to the spin, I got tangled up in the spare rope and could barely give enough slack to make it to the bottom. It was an amazing sight tho when I was turned around.

After that, we made it to Scenic World. We took the steepest railway car in the world to the bottom of the mountain and then walked along a path around the mountain. It was cool being surrounded by the bush and walking through it. Then we took the steepest cablecar back to the top. Then basically headed home. It was a wonderful weekend. Full of adventure and beauty. I loved it! Hope you all enjoy the pictures!

Other than that, we have been hanging out on the beaches on the really warm days. Its fun going out there and watcing our friends try to surf. I've been in the water a couple times and its a struggle just to make it through the waves. They are huge! Once you get out so far you have to start diving underneath the waves so you dont get pulled back to shore. The pictures below are from the beach on the first warm day in Australia. It was wonderful! It was about 84 degrees and all our friends from the halls and around town met us there. It was a good time.

Krysti and I at Nobby's

Ben, Jack-attack, and Adam watching friends surf

Ethan took Nicole and I out for the first time in the water. It was freezing by the way.

Now I just have 2 papers due this week and I am free for spring break! We leave Friday and come back 16 or 17 days later! Its going to be amazing! I will post the itinerary so you can all see what I’m doing each day. I’m excited because my birthday will be in Cairns. We were told to go to the woolshed, one of the most popular pubs in Australia. Its going to be a good time! I’ll update you all when I get back!

Pictures you've been waiting for

Walk By myself

Me, Krysti, Sam

Us playing Flippy Cup. The guy in the front just recently got mugged and ended up in the ER. Scary!!

The path I walked up on my walk

Beautiful

Us girls at Syndey at the Mexican Restaurant

Merewether Beach

Jody and Nate on our walk to Merewether Beach

And us girls

On the way back. It was soo bright

Us in Sydney

The boat show.. not quite like Duluth.

We saw a real jelly fish in the ocean!!

The Opera House

Krysti, Nicole and I again at Cafe Pacifico

Keepin' Busy

G’Day everyone. Haha

So once again, it’s been a while. And once again, a lot has happened. I’ll start with last night. Dad, you’d be proud if me on this one (not). All of my roommates and I were doing history papers last night because they are due tomorrow so all our computer were plugged in. Mine wasn’t because I was at the table and the powerpoints were taken. My computer started to die and I had some good websites up for information so I went to plug it in. Well the next thing I knew flames shot out of the outlet and the whole apartment went completely black. I hit the main circuit I guess and blew out the whole apartment. Haha. The switches in our circuit breaker box weren’t working so we had to call the company that owns the villas. Oops. Us girls decided to go to Mackers and get some ice cream and sure enough the power was back on when we got back. But yeah, I almost burnt down the apartment.

Two weekends ago after Nicole sprained her ankle a group of us went to the beach to play beach volleyball. It was so fun. We played about 5 games and the bruises on my hand are just starting to go away. I guess I have no technique. It was a really nice day tho and the beach was gorgeous so it was well worth it. After our games we went to Harrys. It’s a little place on wheels and they have meat pies (an Australian specialty – very similar to pot pies at home). Also, they are the only place in Australia that sell REAL hotdogs. The other ones here are basically sausage sticks. Weird.

The next day a group of us went for a walk to Merewhether Beach. There was a juniors surf competition going on. It was a really long walk there, we had to pass Bar Beach. That’s past Nobbys and Newcastle Beach so it was a good distance. It was so sweet tho! We saw about 30 dolphins riding the waves that the surfers were on! They would jump out of the water and flip! I have some pictures but I haven’t taken them off my camera. I actually have to go to the hub tonight to print my history paper so I will get those pictures up in a few hours!

Other than that, this past few weeks have been really weird. There is this thing called culture shock that almost everyone goes through. Its basically a U curve on a graph and when you arrive to a new culture you are at the top of the curve and super excited. You are ready to meet new people and see new things. Then as time goes on (in our case a month to two months) you slowly make your way down the curve. Everyone is crabby with each other. We all miss our friends from home and families. We just miss everything about home. Now as the weeks continue, we are going to be on our up slope of the U curve and by the time we leave we will be at the top and not ready to go home. So then once we get home we go through it again because it’s a new culture. It’s actually quite interesting. It kind of sucks tho.

Well a week and a half ago I was having a really bad day. Everyone was mad at each other in the house and it was a nice day. I was convinced by Tony to go on a walk by myself. He said he does it in Boston all the time and he loves it so that’s what I did. I ended up going to some shops and walked all the way down to Newcastle beach. Then up a huge path (up a big hill) to see most of Newcastle and the ocean. It was so beautiful. I brought my creative writing assignment and finished it up there. Then listened to some Beatles and walked home. It was so refreshing and I’ve basically been looking at the upside of things since then.

This weekend is going to be a blast. My roommates and I are going to Sydney with Catherine. It’s part of our class so its already paid for (except for food). We leave Friday morning and hang out in Sydney. We plan on taking Catherine out to eat at a nice restaurant. Then we get up early Saturday morning to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb! It’s so famous here and it’s quite expensive (but its included so that’s nice)! It’s a 3 hour tour and we basically get harnessed and they take us up in groups. We get to see all of Sydney and the Opera House is going to be right in front of us. The sad thing is that we don’t get to bring our cameras but we could get a picture taken of our group at the top. So we’ll see. It might be worth it. After that we are either going to the Taronga Zoo or the Aquarium. I’ll let you know how Sydney turns out!

Parties, tattoos, sun rises, and sprained ankles!

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I last wrote. I still haven't gotten to the hub to put pics up. I might try to load them one at a time here in the apartment tho. Well the past week and a half has been nothing but eventful. For starters, the beginning of last week wasn't anything special.. just school and homework. Then Thursday I got a tattoo (sorry dad) in the middle of my upper back. I love it! Then, this past weekend one of our roommates decided to go out of town. The rest of us wanted to throw a party in our place to show that we could have fun without the other one. haha

Well we started out playing a game of circle of death. That's always a good one to start with. Throughout the whole night, someone had the genius idea of playing the coin game. That is when someone drops a coin in your drink without you seeing it, you have to finish what is in your cup. I got lucky, I only got it twice and everyone was so drunk by that point that I didn't finish it either time. ooops. haha. While this was going on, our Aussie friend that lives downstairs, Justin, was having a party of his own. When he only had 15-20 guys left at his place, he came up to ours with his friends. haha there was about 30-40 people in our tiny apartment that night.

When everyone got there we decided to play about 10 rounds of Flippy Cup. I didn't have too much to drink then either but it was fun! The 4 girl roommates all went in on Baileys and Guinness for Irish carbombs (we skipped the whiskey cuz its so expensive) but i had about 1 of those! Needless to say, my roommate and our guy friend ended up throwing up EVERYWHERE!!! Everyone else left and Nicole, Jody and I stayed back to clean and take care of them. Both just so happened to miss the bathroom multiple times. My room smelled like puke for 4 days! and that was using carpet cleaner twice, and deoderizer, and bleach in the bathroom. YUCK! Well Nicole and I had to leave. We were sobered up by the time we left because we were so mad. But we couldn't sleep in a puke filled house. We met our other roommate at the bar (well outside.. she got kicked out haha) and walked to our friend Jacks house.

Jacks roommates were having their own party. Krysti passed out on the couch. Nicole, Ethan, Jack, and I tried to sleep... for about 45 minutes. Around 5 am us four decided to watch the sunrise over the ocean. We left around 5:30 not realizing how cold it actually was. It was about a 20 minute walk each way! It was so worth it tho! It was beautiful!!! We got back around 7:30 to Jacks place and crashed til 10:30. We walked home and cleaned the rest of the day.

Finally, this week I have been doing nothing but homework. I have 3 papers due in the next 3 weeks. So today after Creative Writing, Nicole and I went to the library. After checking out books for our history class we were leaving when she slipped down the stairs! We left about 3:30 to catch the 4 train back to the city. No... security picked us up and drove us to the health and services building. The doctor looked at it and in the morning I am going with Nicole to get Xrays taken. They think she pulled a tendon. We didn't get back until 6:30. We couldn't make it to the train and didn't have enough money for a taxi so Catherine had to come pick us up and bring us home. It's been quite the week.

Also, today I took a few pictures of the campus. It's literally in a jungle. Haha. It's so pretty tho, especially when it's sunny out.