Le camembert, Jacques Cousteau, Baguettte!

Song: "Foux da fa fa" by Flight of the Conchords

April 18th

Recovering from the night before, I decided a nice peaceful kayaking trip would be a good plan for the day. The other girls were going on a three person jet ski, which probably would have been fun for me too, but: I had done it before, I was trying to save a little money, and it might have been too much for me, oh and I wanted to go kayaking.

I booked a trip, and got picked up to go on my kayaking tour. On the bus, I met a very nice couple from France who were backpackers as well. Once we got to the kayak place, we met another couple from France and the man's sister. There were six people in the tour: me and 5 Frenchies. I loved them all so much for speaking English the whole time. That was really nice of them.

Our kayak guide was a Kiwi (originates from New Zealand) and he was pretty cool. I thought kayaking would be just like canoeing, but it's not. I mean, minus paddling a lot.

Well, for one, the paddle has two ends, and two, you don't steer with the paddle. The person in the back of a two person kayak (me) steers it with pedals. I was in a kayak (hey, "kayak" is a palindrome! sorry...) with the sister of the second couple. She was a lot of fun. They call the two person kayaks the "divorce boats" because most all couples leave the kayak wanting to kill each other because they can't paddle in sync. We did ok. I kept wanting to pull a canoeing move and use my left side to go right (incorrect) with the pedals, so we got a little sidetracked more than once.

We paddled to one of the islands, which is actually small enough to be considered a rock, and is one of the only ones not part of the national park system there. So we just chilled on this cool island made of coral. I attempted to snorkel around the island with everyone else, but I was not coordinated enough. I really do not like being underwater, as we will see much more of in later Easter break posts. I enjoyed swimming around, but I preferred walking and climbing around the island. Oh, and they had snacks. Lovely snacks. Brie and crackers, apples, juice boxes. Yum.

I really enjoyed myself on this little excursion. It was incredibly peaceful and it was my first glance of the Whitsundays and I loved it.

Ok, pictures:

From Airlie Beach

From Airlie Beach

Kayaks!

From Airlie Beach

The whole island looked like this. I actually stabbed myself in the foot on one of the pieces of coral.

From Airlie Beach

From Airlie Beach

From Airlie Beach

From Airlie Beach

Lovely day.

When I got back, and when the other girls got back, we decided to go out to eat. Nachos were involved. We had a lovely dinner. The bathroom sign and the "Albert Einstein/Marilyn Monroe" picture was cool.

From Airlie Beach

I think this was the evening where I did laundry and met the people in my hostel. The other girls were supposed to join me when they got back from jet skiing, but something went wrong, and we got split up. I enjoyed meeting the people in my room. One was from Leipzig, one of the few obscure towns I know in Germany (because Ben's studying there). She was cool. The Canadian and the Brits were also lots of fun. I also was supposed to use the shower in the 8 person room I was staying in, but I was used to the nice place next door we booked the night before, so I just boldly walked over and used that shower. MUCH nicer. The Canadian kept talking about how the bathroom smelled like cat urine, but I really don't think it was that bad.

Next day we were off for our sailing trip, so I rested up instead of going out. Probably a wise decision. And I had clean clothes to boot.

This was important because for two weeks I brought one backpack and my purse, and forgot a towel. Well done, self.

I'm tired of using technology...

Song: "Ayo Technology" by 50 Cent featuring Justin Timberlake

March 16th

Lab report day! My favorite! I finished Monday morning about 10 minutes before class at noon, went back to The Village to get it printed for lunch, ran back to lab to turn it in. Essentially this part of all my Monday posts are the same. I had "Ayo Technology" in my head this morning. No clue why. After lab, I may have attempted to take a nap before going to the gym, but I can't remember. I was all excited about watching How I Met Your Mother after my class at the gym, but an episode of Scrubs from the new season was on instead. I watched the whole things with my headphones on; someone cracking up hysterically while running and also while no one else can hear the source of their humor must be incredibly strange to watch.

Nothing terribly interesting happened after this. I did my laundry. I ran into Kelsey there and we chatted about St. Patrick's Day plans. That was essentially my day.

We sit and grow our roots into the floor but what are we waiting for?

Song: "Believe" by The Bravery

March 8th

After Mardi Gras, I actually got enough sleep. Shocker. I woke up with a list of things to accomplish. This list consisted mainly of "laundry" and "lab report."

I started doing laundry and ran into Alex and Lindsey at the laundry hut and Lindsey said a few of them were going grocery shopping and asked if I wanted to tag along. I said I would, and found them before they left. Unfortunately, someone had taken my clothes out of one dryer before they had finished and completely stopped the others, so my clothes weren't quite dry. Since I was so miffed about my laundry being moved, I just decided to be a horrible person and just leave my laundry in the dryer while we went to the shopping center.

I tried a burrito from Mad Mex, the Chipotle imitation chain in the mall that just opened up. I've had worse, but it's just not the same as home. After we ate, we hit up Woolworth's and got some groceries. I had one of those moments where I really missed stupid things from home, which I still get even a month into this trip. This moment involved stupid trips to Shoppers (Food Warehouse) with my roommate.

We had a handful of girls who wanted to ride the bus back with their groceries, and then Cam and I, who brought backpacks along, decided to walk back to the Village, taking our chances with the cloudy, ominous skies. We beat the rain (and the girls who took the bus) back to the apartments. However, while taking my clothes back from the laundry, it started pouring. The clothes and I made it back dry enough.

Somewhere in here we decided to go to get free sausages at the admin building. We ran into Greg in line and Colton cooking sausages. Colton had the worst sunburn I had ever seen. Greg and I walked back in the rain, and once home, I tried to work on my lab report the best I could.

Inconveniently, my roommates were having the world's coolest jam session outside my door and despite most of my efforts to be a diligent student, I kept wanting to go play guitar/sing with them. I caved and spent an hour doing just that. Eventually the group died down and I got to work. Seriously though, my roommate Sean and Jon are both incredibly good at guitar. Having a guitar in the house makes me so happy.

My heart's in overdrive and you're behind the steering wheel...

Song: "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" by The Darkness

February 25th
Ash Wednesday

First of all, I decided to give up sweets for Lent, excepting one biscuit at mid-lab tea time at each lab each week. So I get two butter cookies a week.

I am not even going to try to express the longing I have for every ice cream bar, bag of Tim Tam cookies, and giant chocolate Easter egg that seems to fill aisle after aisle at the grocery store.

I'm trying something different to see if I can do it, so why not try it here, where almost everything is something different?

On another note, the song was stuck in my head from the night before at Scruffy Murphy's. I could not get it out of my head all day.

Anyway, today started off with more Physics, which was more review (again, I cannot thank you enough professor). I had a fairly large break in between class and my first Physics lab, so I decided to go to Macquarie Centre to get school supplies and hair ties. (I remembered this shopping list because it rhymed.) On my way, I ran into Justin, one of my new friends here, and we went shopping for quite a while looking for a fan of any kind. We never found it, but we had fun on the way. We explored The Rejects Shop (kind of like an expensive dollar store) and it was definitely full of rejects. We tried Big W (the Australian Wal-Mart), Myer (the Australian Sears), and Target (the Australian Target), all with no luck. Stupid Australian stores don't restock quite as fast as America. Anyway, Justin and I ate lunch, then headed back. Along the way we met a girl who was lost and looking for the Village, which was conveniently where we were headed. She was very nice, and since I had to go to the Administration building anyway, I walked with her.

I'm not sure how I went shopping for two hours, but regardless I got to lab on time, and met my lab partner Shaheen. She was so helpful. I have no idea how physics labs work here and she really cleared up some of the muddy spots for me. We were on the noise lab and were playing with EM noise in a circuit system. Pretty fun. Luckily the lab reports for this class are due every three weeks instead of every week like optics.

After lab, I went to the gym, and after the gym, I went to do laundry, where I ran into Justin again. Turns out I didn't have quite enough change, so I went to the Trafalgar Square store (the local convenience store) to get some change. I may not have mentioned this by now, but I was carrying my laundry around in my suitcase, and the lady at the store asked me if I was moving out. I laughed. I am looking into a better system for transporting dirty clothes to the laundry as we speak. Over the course of the laundry evening I ran into Julie, Lauren and Lindsay, and a few other people I didn't know at the laundry place. It was a very productive night.