Sunday, June 22, 2008

I'm done!!

So I had the last of my finals a couple days ago!!!! Whew, it feels good to be done with school over here! I now have 8 days left in Australia and I'm getting kind of sad! I went out with my friends to a mexican restaurant called Taco Bill's earlier tonight where we had a really huge plate of nachos and a really huge margarita which we all shared. This week I'm just planning on spending my remaining days with people and souvenir shopping for everyone back home! (but i really suck at souvenir shopping so don't expect anything very interesting). Also, a group of us are going to have a christmas barbecue before everyone leaves because it's winter down here and it feels like christmas! we actually saw people selling roasted chestnuts on the streets tonight... Anyway, I'm just chilling out for a week and then it's back to the good ol' US of A.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

photos for last post...















Sydney Opera House!!! Then we went to a ballet later that night.















Featherdale! Katie feeding a kangaroo







































Inside the Sydney Aquarium!















On the Great Ocean Road















These are Crimson Rosellas in the wild along the Great Ocean Road





























The Twelve Apostles





























This is just some other really cool/pretty stuff along the Great Ocean Road

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Yay another update!

So Katie is here now visiting me!!! She got in last monday and we've been hanging around Melbourne mostly. Last week, we did the tourist shuttle and walked around Queen Victoria Market and then hopped back on the shuttle and walked around the Royal Botanic Gardens. After that, we went up to the top of the Eureka Sky Deck building thing. It's a tall building...

On Friday of that week, we left for Sydney!! We stayed in a cute little hostel there, which was nice and cheap. The first day, we walked into the city through the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens, which were pretty as well. We then realized we didn't have towels, and the hostel didn't provide towels, so we went to some tourist shop and got Australian themed towels to use. Then we went to go look at and walk around the Opera House. It was really pretty. As we were walking around we decided to go look at the box office and see what kind of shows were playing....then we decided to go see one!!! The one we originally wanted to see was sold out, but the ballet still had tickets, so we got them!!!!! An hour later, we were sitting in the Sydney Opera House watching a ballet!!! It was pretty awesome.

On Saturday, we got up early and caught a train/bus to Featherdale animal place thing. It took like an hour and a half of travel time. We got to do the whole kangaroo/wallaby/koala thing again which was cool. It was a long trip back too, and by that time we were pretty tired so we turned in around 9 pm that night, haha.

Sunday we had to check out by 10, so we left early for the aquarium. The aquarium was really cool!! After that, we took a water taxi from there to Circular Quay and got to ride under the bridge and see the opera house during the day which was very pretty. Then we went back to the hostel to pick up the duffel bag we left there, and we went and got lunch at the G'Day Cafe and we ate our food outside next to the harbor with the opera house as our backdrop. We walked around a bit more and watched some street performer lady stuff herself into a tiny box. Then it was time to go home!! It was really a fun trip!!!!

Yesterday, we spent all day shopping at Queen Victoria Market and Brunswick street. I have a buuunch of australia garbage to give everyone when I get home. I also bought this really cute purse/bag and shoes on Brunswick...oh, and me and Katie found an awesome churro place on brunswick, so we shared like 6 churros yesterday. They were delicious. Tomorrow, we have a reservation for the Great Ocean Road! That should pretty much be a full day trip and im sooo excited! It should be very pretty! Hopefully the weather is really good tomorrow. I dunno what we're doing on Friday, maybe going to a comedy club...and then saturday katie is leaving! :(

It's been really fun! I might get a chance to go to Western Australia after finals, but I gotta talk to some people..i don't wanna go by myself. Anyway, school's been okay..it's almost over! yay! I guess that's it...i don't want to put pictures on here cause it takes a really long time and is annoying, sorry!

Friday, May 2, 2008

Picture update

This is for you, mommy!




These first three are from the Moomba Water Fest that was in March.








These are just some pictures of campus I took sometime in April. I think it looks a lot like Harry Potter...it's a pretty freakin cool campus.



Ah yes, and this is when I got my ear pierced and my friend got her tongue pierced!!

Katie is coming to visit me for almost 2 weeks pretty soon!! I am so excited to see her! We're gonna hopefully do a lot of cool, probably touristy stuff, so I'll have better/more pics to post here later!! I'm having a great time down under! I have been pretty busy with school, having to write a couple 1500 word papers and tests and assignments and what not. I have 4 more weeks, and then two 2500 word papers and finals and then I'm done with school! Hooray!

Thursday, April 10, 2008

ANOTHER UPDATE YAY!

Sadly, I don't have much to update since my last entry. School has started. bleh. I don't have much work to do or anything, but the lecturers here are realllly not as good as at home and it's harder to do the assignments cause it seems like they just ramble on in class and don't talk about what we really need to know. Oh well. I'm definitely not the biggest fan of the accounting part of my management class...

Other than school, I've just been hanging out. There's this library where you aren't allowed to study and you can check out dvds and magazines and what not. I like that place. I went to the Melbourne Museum earlier today (I have an essay due in Australia Now on monday, so I had to go...). It was pretty cool; mostly I like the park that's around the museum, it's really pretty. I don't have any pics for this update, but I plan on taking pictures around campus tomorrow after my 9 am class so yall can see where I walk every day! yayyy!

Sorry, I'll try to do more exciting things so I can have more exciting updates.

Monday, February 18, 2008

First days in Melbourne

So now that I'm about to start school and my adventures are ending, my blog posts will get more and more spread out.

Since my last post, I basically haven't had internet. I did the Melbourne Welcome program, which was very fun. There were about 100 people staying at the residential college I was at. We got to go to the beach and I learned how to surf! I actually stood up 4 or 5 times too and rode the waves almost all the way to the beach. We also went to a zoo and we went to the Immigration Museum. They had a lot of parties and trivia nights planned for us too, so i didn't get much sleep for about 4 days :(

The dorm I stayed at looked like it would fit in Harry Potter world which was very cool! I'm kind of glad I'm not staying in the residential colleges though because the rooms were very small and I wasn't their biggest fan.




















So that program ended today and I'm all moved in to my actual apartment called UniLodge. It's very near campus and near Lygon street which has a bunch of pubs and restaurants and shopping on it. So I've just been walking around and shopping and getting settled in today. I also took an hour and a half nap in my room which was nice. That's about it...I have some study abroad briefings the next few days and then Orientation week starts next week. hopefully I'll get my classes figured out.















Tuesday, February 12, 2008

My days in Australia....

So it has been about a week and a half since my last post...woops!

After the cool bungy day, we went on a Lord of the Rings tour. I liked that a lot, we got to see where they filmed a lot of the scenes and it was beautiful. They also happened to be filming the new "Wolverine" movie with Hugh Jackman while we were there so we got to see some of those sets.

We left the day after that for Sydney. In Sydney, we went to the Blue Mountains and some animal place. I really liked the zoo place because the wallabies were just running around and you could pet 'em and feed 'em! They were very cute, as were the koalas! We also went on a tourist bus in Sydney and got to see all the touristy things. We saw the Opera House but didn't get off the bus because it was raining a lot. The main thing I remember about Sydney was that it rained a lot and they had this shop that sold really good bread/pastry things and I had an apple one and it was sooooo good!

Next was Cairnes. Cairnes was sooo hot when we got there! We walked along the "beach" the first night and went to a cool animal dome. Our hotel wasn't very near town so walking back and forth wasn't so much fun. The next day we got to go on a boat to the Great Barrier Reef. We went on a semi-submersible ship or something and got to get up close and personal to the reef and its inhabitants!! Then, we went to the beach and went snorkeling in the reef which was cool. It started to rain after that though, which was sad. The next day we went to Kuranda village which is this cool little village in the middle of the rainforest. I got to cuddle a koala there!! She was very soft. I also made friends with some lazy kangaroos! After we walked around a little we went to this pub where I got my first official legal alcoholic umbrella drink! a mango margarita mmmmm it was good! It started raining pretty hard then and we just went back to the hotel and hung out. It rained pretty much the whole next day but we managed to go to some tourist shops and we found a mall so that was nice.

We're in Melbourne now. I'm liking the Melbourne weather and atmosphere a whole lot better than both Sydney and Cairnes...so that's good. It has really good public transportation and today we took a free tourist bus around the city. We stopped off at the university and i saw the civil engineering building and the dorm i'd be staying at for 4 days for the melbourne welcome program (the dorm looks like it'd fit in harry potter world....) We also found UniLodge where I applied for an apartment but never heard back. Apparently I have a spot and they'd been emailing me, but i never got the emails...sucks for me. But i still have an apartment and I can move in whenever. I'm probably going to move in tomorrow because I don't want to have to lug all of my stuff to the dorm i'll be staying at for a few days then lug it back again to the apartment. Anyway, that's all we've done. I really like Melbourne so far and am excited for school to start!!