Bye Bye Bye-ron!

The last day in Byron was my favorite day! We decided to do the two major tourist attraction things: the beach and the lighthouse. We started off with the lighthouse. It was honestly one of the most beautiful places I've ever been! The view was amazing. It's situated on Australia's most easterly point.. and you get an amazing view from up there. You can see all of the beaches both north and south of Byron Bay, surfers included*. You can also see all of the lush greenery and the rippling waves. We were lucky enough to see a pack/pod/group? of wild dolphins. I LOVE DOLPHINS, so this was especially exciting for me! It was super windy up there, not the best day to wear a flowy top... I would love to go back there when it's sunny. I'm sure you could see even more than what we did... and I can't even imagine how great that would be! 

           Super awkward piece of hair that looks like a horn. 

We went from the lighthouse down to the beach... it seemed like we went to a cool local spot. This was both a good and bad thing. Good because it was awesome to see all of the surfers and really get in touch with our "aussie side". Bad because we looked dumb, as we had no surf boards and were planning on simply frolicking. Surfing vs. frolicking... hmmm. We frolicked anyways. The water was amazing, like a heated pool. The current was really strong, but it was safe because you just got drifted along the shore. There was no need for a boogie board, we definitely were body surfing! We stayed there for a bit and then headed back to the hostel to pack up our stuff... and sadly head home :(

We had some delicious pad thai before we got on the bus. It was hands down the best pad thai I've ever had... and that's saying a lot coming from Vancouver! Then again, the fact that I was so incredibly hungry could have been playing a role in that judgement. The greyhound back was a breeze, slept the entire way. 

Roomie Love! 

Left Byron and woke up in beautiful Brizzy. 

Find Your Zen.

We woke up the second day and ate some muesli, as per usual. We wanted to go to the beach, but unfortunately it was pouring... so we decided to hold off until Sunday, in hopes of some sun! We spent the day walking around the main strip, which ended up being a really really awesome day...

We decided to walk into all of the stores to see what they had to offer. The town has a definite relaxed vibe, definitely giving off the "hippie vibe". I bought a few gifts... but I won't tell what! Cause that gift may or may not be for you! We found our Byron Bay gem - a little Asian restaurant that sold THE most delicious food. So good, that we ended up going there for lunch on Sunday as well! I ate a couple of their gluten-free products - steamed rice in a weird bamboo wrapper and some vegan spring rolls. They were so delicious. It's a cool idea for a little restaurant actually, because it's just one communal table with about 6 or 7 seats at the front of the store. It's actually less of a restaurant, and more of a cool asian boutique... but they sell food in the front? Hard to explain. Anyways, everyone just kind of comes and goes.. with their little meal and there is a pot of green tea in the middle of the table that everyone helps themselves to. The best part about it is that it's as if you're sitting on a patio.. but you're inside... cause there is just a big window frame.. but no glass. Wow, I am really butchering this description!!! Besides the point, it was great!

We really took the "see every store" concept to a new level when we went into the cafes and window shopped.

"Wow, those look like excellent muffins. Oh yes, especially compared to the ones at the store a few blocks back. But what about these sandwiches? I'd had to say the ones at the store around the corner look like they're on better bread..." What a group of ridiculous, hungry girls we were!

My dream vespa! 

I decided to get my ear pierced. Now, I know what you're all thinking... I'm now a crazy girl that, according to Miley Cyrus, "can't be tamed". In actuality, I've been wanting to do it for the last few years and finally had the courage to! It's really small and you can barely notice it, but it was a very good memory and, for those who want to do it, it doesn't hurt at all! I know my mother thinks it's a gateway act into tattoos, more piercings, etc... but I swear it's not! She claims that I've given in to my generational pressures, and maybe I have. We'll see how long this "gateway" earring lasts.

For dinner, we decided to have a girls night out at the hostel "happy hour". We ordered nachos and beers and had a grand ol' time before we headed out for our Saturday night out on the town, again. At the bar, we all measured our height, and turns out I'm the tallest! You know you spend a lot of time with people when you start measuring yourself at a restaurant!

I'm not going to lie... we ended up at Cheeky Monkeys... again.

ARRIVING IN BYRON BAY!

We were lucky enough to get to go on another adventure this past weekend. We decided to head down to Byron Bay - a really cool surfer town on the Gold Coast that everyone seems to rave about. We wanted to check it out for ourselves! It's a simple greyhound away... and we were very excited to see what the infamous bay had to offer!

The greyhound took about 4 hours... simply because we got the one that took all of the stops. I think it can be as quick as 2 hours. Luckily, we were all pretty sleepy, so we slept the majority of the way. At the beginning of the ride there was an announcement about putting on your seatbelt while you were on the bus. It sounded super serious... so I decided that I better not take any chances. The roomies laughed at me while I had my seatbelt on. To be honest, I think the bus driver was laughing as well. I guess now that I think about past experiences on greyhounds... the seatbelt thing is more of a protocol. Anyways, I ended up taking mine off mid-slumber.

We arrived in Byron 4 hours later. The ride was actually pretty scenic... saw lots of cool vegetation and beaches! Too bad the weather was horrible, so everything was super foggy. The hostel we were staying at picked us up from the Greyhound terminal. We stayed at a place called "The Arts Factory". It was recommended to us by a ton of people, so we thought we'd give it a go. It was my first hostel experience! It was a really cool place, because it was a bit removed from the main strip and they had shuttles that constantly took you back and forth. There was a pool, pool tables, hammocks, a cafe, a restaurant with a live band. It was really awesome. We stayed in a 6 person room - a room with the three of us and three other people that we honestly never really met - we seemed to never cross paths, except while sleeping (we all know how hard it is to mingle while sleeping!) We had a quick dinner down at the cafe and decided to get ready for our first night out in Byron!

The night ended up being really good. We went to a few different places and ended up at a place called "Cheeky Monkeys". Essentially, if you've ever been to Byron, you know what Cheeky Monkeys is. I guess you could say it's not known for its "class," but we had a really awesome time there. Great music, great people, a great night overall. Get ready for day two!

Last Day...

The third day we decided to be studious and do a little bit of reading. To be honest, I ended up coloring. It’s really hard to focus when you’re on a mini vacay!

Our Group! 

We decided to take our hosts out for dinner to thank them for all that they’d done (letting us use their mattresses, taking us around town, taking us into the dining halls, etc).They wanted to go to the casino, so we decided to just go to the restaurant there. They were extremely thankful, and it was the perfect way to end a great weekend. I had the classic “Reef and Beef” (steak and prawns). It was covered in hollandaise sauce, so that was interesting. They ended up screwing up our order, so we actually got six free desserts. We went around the table over dessert and discussed our most “shameful” moments. Due to table confidentiality, I won’t be able to share those with you! We all played keno, which is actually pretty fun. I won 20 cents. We also placed bets on a horse race. I was cheering for Silvan Rose (she lost, of course). I attempted to play the slots with my dollar coin, and became baffled as to why in the world someone would waste their time playing slots. It’s not even fun…

Jupiter's - The Casino

We ended up getting home pretty late and had to wake up at 3:30 for our 6:00 am flight home. Déjà vu. Note to self, 6 is too early. Always. 

Day Two in Two-nsville.

The second day we decided to go to the river. Now, the thing about this river is that there was recently a crocodile found in it. Excellent. To get to the river, we had to go through a few tunnels, full of cool graffiti, walk through a few fields and a few residential areas, and down a path over a marsh that could have been the section of zoo where you go for croc sight-seeing. There were tons of rope swings, with kids climbing and jumping like monkeys into the water. It was quite the sight. I had a weird feeling about going in… I don’t know why. Maybe it was the recent croc discovery, but who knows. Anyways, I definitely chickened out, although I played the role of an excellent photographer! 

The boys kept on attempting to throw me in the water, but I made it very clear that this would result in a very upset Emily. We went a little bit father up the river and found a few young boys trying to climb this insanely high tree. One of them was too short to reach the section of the tree that you needed to grab onto to get up any farther. Of course, we decided to give him a boost. Thank goodness he didn’t end up falling…

Crazy River. 

That night we went down town Townsville. Before we went out, we got to know a few of the students staying in the residence. Lots of them were only 17 or 18 years old, in their first year of uni. I felt old. There were also lots of American exchange students. One of the guys that I met told me he was in a fraternity (he insisted I didn’t say “frat”) and asked me to guess which one. I guessed on my second try. Pretty impressive, considering how many there are! Downtown was overall a great night. Caught the bus home and met an Aussie bloke that taught me a few Aussie nursery rhymes:

“Give me a home among the gum trees,

with lots of plum trees.

A sheep or two, a kangaroo, a clothes line out the back…

Verandah out the front, and an old rocking chair”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h85hqvskiCw

I wish I could show you the awesome actions that go along with it!

First Day In Townsville!

I haven’t had the chance to blog for a while because life in Australia has been very busy! I’ve decided to put off writing the rough draft of my global population paper to inform you all of the excitement! This weekend, the roomies and I decided to go to Townsville! It’s a city up in Northern Australia, pretty much situated in the Great Barrier Reef. You may recognize the name if you watch the news, as it was just hit by Cyclone Yasi. 

Our flight left at 6 am on Friday morning, the infamous 6’s. I’m not a fan of getting up in the 8’s, let alone getting up in the 4’s to get ready. We had to get up at 3:30, because we hadn’t done our packing the night before (dumb). The night before one of my roomies had a date to the movies, so my other roomie and I decided we’d “escort” her to her date – in sum, we pretty much just wanted to see a movie as well. It was the classic helicopter parent scenario: we walked her there, hid while she and her date bought their tickets, but we were nice enough to see another movie. It turned out to be an excellent date for me – we both got slushies and popcorn. That will definitely be a weekly occurrence! Anyways, we ended up getting back at midnight and decided we had to clean our kitchen before we left, in hopes of getting rid of our major ant problem. What responsible girls we have turned out to be….

Went to bed at 2:30 and had an hour nap before getting up to pack for our adventure. We flew Virgin Blue. They don’t actually even give you boarding passes, just receipts. I kept on almost throwing mine out. After a quick two hour flight to Townsville, we took a cab to James Cook University – the uni that the guys we were visiting were staying at. Our cab driver was really nice and gave us the Townsville low-down. A few of the main roads in Townsville used to be military airplane runways. Apparently all of the beautiful “mountains” that they had (which, in the end, turned out to be rolling hills – of course, in comparison to Vancouver mountains…) couldn’t be seen because of the crazy amount of fog they were experiencing. Just our luck.

Plane photos! 

 

The guys live in a residence type thing, so we were lucky enough to stay with them for the weekend! We even got all of our food for free in the dining hall, as they thought we were students… It was essentially the perfect scenario. Granted the six of us (3 of us, 3 of them) all slept on 3 mattresses spread out on a tiny residence room floor….

 Rainy Townsville! 

We were pretty tired when we got there, so we decided to take a quick power nap. The weather was terrible. It was raining so hard, but when has rain ever stopped a Vancouverite?! I think the guys were pretty impressed that we were so pumped/still down to go out in the rain. Side note: They play this game within their group of friends where you can’t say “mine” or “the m word”. If you do, you have to do 10 pushups, whenever and wherever. They do whatever they can to set you up, constantly asking you whose what belongs to who. Highlights of places where these pushups were done would be: in middle of the dance floor at an Irish pub, at the casino restaurant, in a puddle outside, on the stairs. That day we took a bus down to the “Strand”. The Strand is essentially a strip of cool restaurants, etc along the beach, with piers and water parks. The city was empty when we went out (probably due to the torrential downpour). We stopped by the waterpark and played in it for at least an hour. It was honestly awesome. I wish I was still a kid!

Our next stop was the rock pool. The whole time I was imagining this creek or lake thing in the middle of the forest, but I was definitely wrong. It’s essentially a pool overlooking the ocean… that is filled with warm filtered ocean water. The water is kind of slimy, because of the algae at the bottom. We stayed in there for a long time, it was hard to get out.

When we got back we all went for our showers and got ready for our night out at the university pub. The boys were telling us about how they had a “totem” animal dance move. I asked what mine would be and they told me I’d “feel” it when I got out on the dance floor. I joked around about being a sloth, because sometimes my dance moves look rather sloth-like. Turns out this dance move is not the most attractive; thankfully, I discovered another one: the eel. It’s good, and I mean really good. So good that it was all I did. Some could say that I overdid the eel, but they’d be speaking nonsense! We ended up making a dance on the dance floor, consisting of all of our inner animals. 

We were nerdy enough to make a poster in commemoration of our dance. To be continued. 

First Week of Classes. Finally!

I only have classes Tues, Wed and Thurs. I'm essentially living the life! My first class of the semester was MARS2005 - marine biology. I was honestly only taking it because everyone has told me to (which sometimes doesn't work out). The class was essentially 95% international students, with about 4 token Aussies. Everyone takes it for the field trips, with one to Heron Island and one to the Great Barrier Reef. Then I thought about it. Looking at fish and coral and such is a cool thing to do, but I'm not sure if researching which fish fill certain pools during the night time and which fill them during the day time is really my cup of tea. I haven't taken science since Chemistry 11, and that's when I had mono and got away with not even really taking it. I would essentially have to start from scratch. When the "lecturer" asked the class who was a science student.. there were only a few of us that didn't raise our hand. She then went on to talk about different aspects of waves, etc... and the novelty of the class wore off quickly. I decided to switch into a class about Australian pop culture - now that's my cup of tea.

I'm also in a sociology class called "Sex, Drugs and Diseases". The prof is a little cute man, who speaks like kermit. I didn't come up with that myself, my TA in my tutorial did. I've learned a lot about Australia already and am so excited to learn more. We already have a project and presentation due next week on lesbians. It should be very interesting!

My other class is a geography class (also another first) about global population issues. This class looks unbelievably interesting, especially because at the end of the year the Earth's population is going to reach 7 billion! How crazy. Did you know that there are 2.5 more people every second? Crazy. The big topic of discussion is that the earth's population is supposed to reach 9 billion by 2050 and if we're ready for that. I'll get back to you on that with an educated answer.

The last class I'm in (only in 4 because 4 here is a full course load) is a political science course on the indigenous people of Australia. Honestly, I only took it because the prof's last name is Brigg. Thankfully the class looks amazing and I'm so excited to learn about Australian politics. It's in a really nice building, with fancy projectors and flat screens that drop from the ceiling, and everyone gets their own computer. How exciting! The prof was playing music when we came in and seems really relaxed. It was a really great learning environment (how nerdy).

So far, so good. I'm really liking UQ. Everyone hangs out on their breaks in the "Great Court". It's an open grass field with really pretty trees and tons of people eating lunch. Sat outside and read there for a few hours today. I'm getting a bit, just a bit, more comfortable with the roaming birds. I was sitting outside with a friend from a group project who got bit by a "green ant". I asked if we could move (not wanting to get bit myself..) and she went on to tell me that there was no point because "everything wants to kill you in Australia".

How comforting.

The Great Court. I'll try to take a better photo, without the garbage can.