Just a week!

Okay, okay! I am behind on my blogging again (what's new?). So I will write about last week (Sunday-Friday) and then my weekend at Sharnie's (AKA Shiney) families house in Hervey Bay. But I will make a separate blog for that so this one is not 100 pages long.

Well... Since I waited so long to write in my blog my days are all going to be mixed up.  But I am going to try and get it close.  Monday I went surfing with a group of people.  It's best to get on the water early because that is when the best waves are so we caught the 8:30 bus to the beach and got on the water by 9 am.  I decided that it is not always best to go in the morning if you are still learning how to surf, it's just best for the people who already are good.  The best time is most likely around 11 or noon because then the waves are not so big and you have time to learn instead of getting beat up by the waves and have the waves take you out every single time you almost get up.  I am going to go later in the day next time so maybe I can get a few good waves because on Monday I didn't get any.  I almost got up once and that's it!

That's me but... I still suck!

Walking to the beach from the bus drop off

So.. After another failure at surfing I just went home and did homework for the rest of the day.  I was actually pretty successful at that because I made a deal with myself that if I was gonna go surfing then I had to stay inside for the rest of the day and do some assignments.  I did take a half hour break and go to the pool with Tilly though because its not like I could do assignments from 11am-bedtime.  That is not an option.  Plus, it ended up being a sunny day on Monday and there has been a lot of rain here lately so I am trying to take advantage of all the sunny days. I also took another break and went to the gym.  I ran two 5K's last week but I dont know what days they were on.  For sure not on Wednesday though because I took Wednesday off from working out. 

Tuesday... It was another sunny day.  I went to the pool, went to my 1, 1 hour class and worked out, I think that's it though.  I had good work outs last week 5 out of the 7 day week.  I skipped Saturday because I was in Byron Bay and I skipped Wednesday because I had a sore knee and I needed a little break since I just went hard 3 days in a row. 

Wednesday is Hayley and I's "Workout Wednesday's" and it was the first one that we skipped the whole time we have been here.  Our Wednesday schedule is this:  We both go to class during the day and when I go to my 4-5pm class she is coming back from class so we see each other in passing.  She makes a snack while I am in class and then she gets my Nalgene out of the freezer, tops it off with water, puts in my splash guard (we had strict training on the steps with the Nalgene in the beginning, haha) and wraps it up in a sweat towel, puts it in her bag and walks to my classroom and meets me there at 4:50, if it is my lucky day I get a lemon in my Nalgene :).  Then we walk to the gym, change, (pee), and go on the tread mills for 30 minutes for a warm up before our circuit training class starts with Matt.  But this Wednesday we skipped (trainer Matt was mad because we are is favorites and we have been faithfully coming each week). In the beginning it was just us and maybe 1 or 2 other people, but word of mouth advertising has made the class max out every week and we have to get tickets if we want a spot in the training class. 

So anyway this Wednesday we skipped workout wednesday not only because we were tired and grumpy and my knee was a little pissed off at me but also because it was our turn to cook in the dinner competition we have every week with apartment 90.  We made a really good pasta (veggie spaghetti).  We had zucchini, peppers, onion, garlic, and maybe one or two more kinds of veggies in it that I cant remember. Water with lemon for drinks and the most delicious bread I have ever had from the bakery.  Pretty much we won the competition because our meal rocked and it was so good but... on the point board we didn't win.  Every week after the team cooks they get graded on different areas on a scale from  1-10 from each person who enjoyed the meals.  Hayley and I made the mistake of giving the team that won (Bancake boys) some pitty points because we were being nice, but in reality our meal was 10 times better than theirs, and I am not just saying that because I want to, I am being honest.  And then we had Harry Potter pancakes for desert, courtesy of Lucy. 

Left to Right around table: Ahmad, Nathlie, Anas, Me, Hayley, Lucy, Alice, Sebastian

So that was my Wednesday.  This picture is in my backyard.  It was a nice night out but... lots of bugs. 

So now that all teams have cooked we will have a potluck for week four and the winners do not have to make anything and they also do not have to do dishes for the next time they cook which is not this week but next week.  Hayley and I will officially win the next round.  FACT!

So.. Thursday I just had my busiest day at school (all tutorials, which are pretty much mandatory).  I have class from 10-noon, then 2-6 and then I worked out and came home and Anna from Germany came over for a couple glasses of wine and Sebby, Anna, and I played 31 (card game) and then I went to bed early so I could have a good workout in the morning.

Friday I woke up and Hayley was going to take the 11am bus to the plaza so I thought I would go with her.  I ran to the gym and did a 1 hour workout, came home, showered, and we went to the plaza for a little bit and then she went to an appointment with Alice and I came home and packed to go to Sharnie's house for the weekend.  We left at 4 pm so I had plenty of extra time to go slow and take my time and relax until we hit the road.

At some point during the week I went to go to the gym and I thought Nigel (the best bike ever) was at my house and I always take him on Thursdays for the whole day and other times during the week to class and to workout, Alice nicely shares him with me.  Anyways, we don't lock him up because it is not that necessary. Alice forgot to pick him up from me because she decided to walk home instead of take him home with her and she didn't tell me.  I thought she had picked him up from my class and took him home but she left him there and he was there ALL day until dark... Poor Nigel! I walked to Alice's house to go pick him up to go to the gym and he was not there so I called her and asked where he was and she said, "I don't have him I decided to walk him and I couldn't tell you because I didn't have credit on my phone," so she expected me to know that and bring him home but I didn't.  So I walked to campus and there he was right where I left him at my class... Nobody took him and he was there ALL day and some of the night! 

I was SOO happy to see him that I had to snap a few photos.  He is so awesome and I love him! He is over 50 years old! I am really lucky that Alice is so polite to share him so much with me.  We have joint custody of him.  Its about 50/50 custody so I am really lucky!

Anyway, I am going to take a break from blogging and then I will write my weekend blog about my time at Shiney's parents house in Hervey Bay!
TTFN!

Byron Bay!

On Friday our goal was to leave Sunshine Coast by 10:15am.  So we hit the road around 12:30pm and off to Byron Bay we were.  It is about a 3 hour drive from Uni so we got to our accommodation around 3:30ish because we passed the exit and went for a 20 minute side tour.  When we got to our hotel we called a kayak company that took tourists kayaking with the dolphins to see if we could go on one that day but they were done for the day.  Next we called a "snorkel with the sea turtles" company to see if we could go do that, but both of those were no goes so we brought all of our stuff into our room and drove about 5 minutes away to the light house, (best option, by far).

This was such a beautiful place I can't describe it and I suppose you will never really know unless you come visit me :).  I didn't take a 360 degree video of here but I should have.  This lighthouse is the furthest point East in Australia that you can be and I was there!  That is the closest I will be to home in 3 more months, haha!  There was a whole walk around 

this whole area with stairs and walk ways through trees and it was so beautiful.  We walked and walked and we eventually made it to the bottom where the beach was.  It was really cloudy out but it was a beautiful night to go to the light house and it was still warm outside.  From the top where we were we could see Dolphins and Sea Turtles.  We watched the Dolphins for a really long time and were able to follow them for awhile so that part was really awesome.  The sea turtle I never got my eye on but everybody else did.  I just couldn't make him out but he kept on coming up and back down over and over again and he was by a rock.  I guess I was just blind but I could not find him for the life of me.  Everybody else was able to follow him for like 5 minutes. In this same spot during the months of May-September there are always hump back whales here that are really visible.  So in May when Ian gets here we might have to head to Byron Bay to try and spot some!

Byron Bay kind of reminded me of Missoula a little bit.  In a completely different weird way it really did.  But there was a lot of hiking here and just a lot going on all the time and friendly, active, outgoing people everywhere.  Dinners in the park and on the beach and all kinds of things like that.  Except everybody in Missoula Kayak's, skies, or snowboards and the whole town of Byron Bay is all surfing.  Everybody surfs there.  It is one of the best places in the world to surf.  I didn't get the chance to but maybe next time.  Plus the weather was crappy all weekend there :(.  That put a damper on somethings but we tried to ignore it and not let it ruin our fun.  Another reason why Byron Bay reminded me of Missoula is because of this:  YEP, these vans EVERYWHERE!

And I have to admit... Byron Bay beats the hell out of Missoula in the painted hippy van contest!

Now that we are on the hippy topic I will tell you about our Saturday.  We signed up for a tour that included time spent in Nimbin, a waterfall visit, and lunch.  We got to experience the town of Nimbin.  It was like nothing I have ever seen in my whole entire life.  I cannot even believe that this town actually exists and even though I visited it, I still do not believe it is real! Nimbin is- as the tour guide describes it, "Australia's capital of the hippies".  So... if that doesn't tell you enough, I am about to.  This town was first a logging town, then it was a dairy farm town and both of those business's failed so after that, in the 1960's the hippies took over and made it into a hippy town. 

It is pretty much this little, tiny, colorful town in the middle no where. You could walk from the top of town to the bottom in 5 minutes (not including stopping in the shops).  So here we are in this little tiny town in the middle of nowhere.  The hippies painted the whole entire town in screaming bright colors so everywhere you looked pretty much blinded you.  And about that hippy van contest, Nimbin blows Byron Bay and Missoula out of the water.  Its pretty much- if you don't drive a painted van from the 1970's then you can't be in this town at all, haha.  All vehicles in Nimbin are hippy vans.  So... we stayed there for a little bit and we toured the Museum that was there (free entry) and that was also interesting and colorful, like I said everything is painted and colorful.  Imagine a tiny town that is all tidied...Even the business were tiedied inside and out. 
Krista and I were throwing out the peace signs like it was the 1970's in this town, haha :).

So we just walked around all of the colorful shops here for an hour and then we ate at a little cafe.  You could eat inside or outside but we were forced to eat outside under an umbrella because there were a lot of people inside.  There was a little puppy outside running around.  He was SO cute and he just wanted to play with everybody. He brought a stick over and dropped it at who ever's feet he could find and who ever smelt like they would throw it for him, haha! I played with him for a little bit but then I had to eat.

After we all loaded the bus we drove about an hour to the waterfall swimming hole.  It was beautiful.  There was about 6 or 7 waterfalls all in one area and people swam in the swimming hole.  Krista and I didn't swim but Ahmad and Anas did and they said we missed out.  I know that we missed out but it was rainy and cold out and if I got my swimsuit wet then I would not have been dry for the rest of the day and I would have froze.
After we left this swimming whole we went to this national park that was really pretty.  We ate a BBQ there and walked around a little bit but then it started pooring rain so we just stayed under the picnic with the group. Then I saw my first Kookaburra! She was really pretty but the pictures doesn't give much justice.

 We stayed there for about an hour and ate and then we loaded the bus to come back to Byron Bay.  It was a really fun trip and I am happy that I went but I am also happy to say that Nimbin didn't make my list of things to do twice while in Australia, haha! But only Nimbin, not Byron Bay, Byron Bay is on my list of things to do as many times as I want while in Oz.  Fraser Island is also on my list of things to do again but Fraser is so big that I could see a lot more cool stuff and not see any of the same stuff twice.  I will wait for Ian to come before I do Fraser again I suppose :).  But anyway, there is my weekend of adventures! I wish I could put up all of my pictures because I have some other really nice ones of the light house but I feel like this post has enough pictures.  The others hopefully will make it into my scrapbook that I make :).

Okay, GOODNIGHT, I am going to bed!

Dinner Competition

Well... Once again I am falling behind on my blog, I'm sorry!  Blogging is actually a lot harder than it sounds.  Anyway, I'll fill everybody in on last week (which wont take long) and then I will post a different blog post about my weekend in Byron Bay along with some pictures! It was awesome!

So last week was pretty much school and gym and food! I just went to class all week and Monday night we had our weekly dinner competition.  Whatever team is cooking, they get to decide what day we are eating and everybody who is involved has to come at that time (if they want dinner) and if they don't come then most likely the other team members will give them a couple mark downs for when they cook.  On Monday night team Anas, Ahmad and Sebastian cooked so they were in charge of the kitchen.  They made salad, seafood pasta, and stuffed peppers, it all turned out pretty good except Hayley and I will beat them this week.  They got put on a scale of 1-10 and got graded on a bunch of different categories.  I gave them a 10 for the presentation category- that was where Ahmad introduced all of the food and explained everything he knew about it, since it made me laugh so hard I decided they got a 10 for that category.  I think the food made it around an 8 or 9, (hope they don't read this because the results are not out until each team has cooked, but it is documented for final result purposes). :) :)

Oh yes and in Australia peppers are called CAPSICUM so when this topic comes up there is a pepper/ capsicum war.  I am pretty sure the American's with the proper English win this one!

Tuesday was just a school, laziness, lay by pool, read a book, and think about doing homework kind of day... Oh yeah and we planned our Byron Bay weekend on Tuesday and that took a lot of time because we had to find a place for 5 people and figure out everything that we were going to do.  So I was a little productive on Tuesday :).  Wednesday I went to school and then did the workout of my life, I hope I get that good of a workout again this Wednesday.  Thursday I ran another 5K and Friday afternoon we were off to Byron Bay.  Now... If you remember I talked about going to Byron Bay a little bit a couple of weeks ago.  It was when I was coming home from the surf trip and we stopped in Byron Bay for a two hour break before we came back to Uni. After that two hour taste of Byron Bay I knew I wanted to go back so... This weekend I went back!

I will tell you all about my weekend and post up pictures on my next post "Byron Bay!" --hope you like it!

Anas's Birthday AKA Kartoffel

As soon as we got home we stopped at Woolworths to get some groceries for the week and I had to get a cake to make for Anas.  It was his 24th birthday yesterday so I busted out my baking skills.  He is German so I made his cake in German with the help of my other German friend Timm, who is also friends with Anas.  We put our brains together and this is what we came up with: 

But I wrote it of course.  This says "Happy Birthday Anas you potato" HAHAHAHA!! Isn't that just great?! The heart is because people in Germany replace the first part of the word "happy" with a heart because "Herz" means "heart" and the whole word to say happy birthday is Herzlichen Guerwunsch so people in Germany usually just put a heart instead to save room and time.  Its kind of like how we do gr8 for great I guess.  That may be a poor example but you get this jist. And then the potato comes from Germany also.  Sometimes people call other people "Kartoffel" which means potato.  I think another poor example of this would be how we call people Clowns or Goofballs.  So it was a little tacky but hilarious too.  Anas got a kick out of it and was surprised at my German lingo.

A group of us went to dinner at an Indian restaurant that is walking distance from our apartments and we had a great time.  We were the only people in the place so we got all the attention.  My food was delicious.

Top row: Nathalie, Shiney, Me, Hayley, Alice.  Bottom Row: Yeappi (sp), Timm, Anas, Christian, Phil

 After we ate we walked home and played a few games at Anas's house and then went to bed since today is Monday and we all had class, well... at least some of us.

Today I woke up went to classes and worked on an assignment (a little, I didn't strain myself though) and went to the gym.  I ran 5K but not all together.  First I ran 3K and then I worked out abs and sides and arms and then before I left I ran another 2.5K so I got over a 5K in of running today which is really good.  I am trying to run and workout a lot more lately.  Last week I worked out and ran everyday Monday-Friday.  This week I will try to do the same.

Now I am just trying to finish typing this really fast so I can shower and head over to Anas's house because today is our cook off and it is my roomie Sebastian, Anas, and Ahmad's night to cook (it sounds like they have something really good so I hope Hayley and I can still beat them next week) :)!  So for now I am going to stop typing, take a shower and head upstairs.  I will write again soon... (I think)   :)!

Weekend at Alice's

Alright, now I finally have a few minutes to sit and write about the rest of my weekend :).  On Friday afternoon Alice and I drove about an hour and a half North to her parents house to stay the weekend.  When we got there she showed me her town and where she went to high school and all that fun stuff and we pretty much just relaxed and watched a movie on Friday night.  We got up early Saturday morning and drove with her mom about 2.5 hours to a town called Bundaburg.  It was a really cute town, I am not sure how many people lived there but it wasn't too big.  Bundaburg is known for the rum they have been making since the 1920's.  They have some in America but it isn't everywhere like it is here.  98% of the rum they make stays in Australia, and it is all made at this one factory in Australia.


The tour took about an hour or maybe a little bit less and after the tour we got to go to the bar and have two drinks of Bundaburg rum.  I tasted the one called red something... and the other one I tried was a kind that people could only try at that one factory in the whole world and you can also only buy this kind at the one factory that I was at.  It was called Royal Liqueur and it has coffee and chocolate and you just mix it with milk or cream, it was really sweet and was just like a White Russian. I couldn't bring my camera in the tour with me because it has batteries and nothing with batteries could go, or else I would have taken some pictures.  I guess I will be the only one that knows what it looked like in real life, and it was pretty cool!

After our tour was over we looked around the town a little more, ate lunch and went back to Alice's house.  When we got back we just played with her two dogs Bonnie and Zack and her 6 chickens and watched a movie, spent time online (school work of course) and relaxed. 

They were so cute and I loved them! They get all of their eggs from these chickens and the chickens have a huge 'house' and just roam around in their yard.  Sometimes Zach (the dog) scares them when he tries to play with them! They don't have names though so I don't know who I am holding.

When we woke up Sunday morning we went to the beach to catch the dolphin feeding.  They have a dolphin feeding every morning and it is like a 5 minute drive from Alice's house.  Almost 100% of the time dolphins will show up for this because people can pay money to get a dead fish and give it to the dolphin and they all know where to go in the morning to get food.  All of the dolphins are wild.  When we went at 8am Sunday morning only one dolphin showed up but it was pretty cool.  They have a name for him but I forgot it.  He was an adult male and had been into two shark fights before so he was in rough shape but he was happy when we saw him.  He is all healed and happy as ever now.  It was really cool. He came right up to the beach as close as he could.

We were only there for a short period of time and then we went back to Alice's house and hung out there before we went over to a family friends house for a 'morning tea'.  Australians call any meeting that is after breakfast a morning tea.  Even if there is no tea and you are just going there for company it is still a morning tea, haha!  However I did have a cappuccino that they made me and it was delicious.  We hung out there for awhile outside on their patio and learned line dances by 60 year olds, haha! It was fun!

When we left there we got back to Alice's house (bout 5 minute drive) and packed up her car, said bye to the dogs and chickens and drove home.  On the way home we stopped to see Alice's horses.  She has two of them, one is her's and one is her sisters.  They live about an hour from her house toward school so we stopped and fed them some hay and bread.  They live at a friends house because they have more land for them there and she just makes sure they have water and the horses just eat her grass and eat other food when Alice comes to feed them.  They were both so beautiful.  Then we stopped at subway and hit the road for Uni!

Once we got back into town we had to stop at Woolworths to get some groceries for the week and I had to get a cake to bake for Anas's birthday.  So... More pictures and more about that on my next post :).  TTFN!

Time at the 75

I didn't do anything exciting this week but it still was a lot of fun! Monday ... We talked about Monday already.  Tuesday I went to Aldi, which I thought was supposed to be like a Walmart, I was wrong.  Anas (from Germany) insisted that we go there because they are everywhere in Germany and he is used to them and promised it would be cheaper.  It really was a lot cheaper but the store was the size of a McDonalds and the produce was not very good.  They did have box's of cereal for 99 cents though.  But they didn't have any broccoli.  I would go there again but just not for produce.

Later that night Natalie cooked a stir fry for all of us.  She got graded on a scale of 1-10 with compliments and area's for opportunity.  Next week it will be Sebastian, Anas, and Ahmad's turn to cook and they will get graded on their performance as well.  We have one cook off a week and whoever wins gets treated to an out to dinner meal (we might change the winning prize tho, it will be discussed over the next week).  There are three teams:  Natalie & Sharnie, Hayley and I, and a group of three Anas, Ahmad and Sebastian.  I am pretty sure that Hayley and I are going to win because we are the best cooks together!

Wednesday and Thursday were just school and gym.  Thursday I ran my first 5K (3.2 miles) and I am going to try to increase either the time or distance every week.  Thursday was my favorite night because we played Scategories with Ahmad (Saudi), Anas (Germany) and then Natalie, Sebastian and I.  Playing scategories with two guys that are still working on their English is probably the only way to play.  I wish I could just explain how funny this is! I laughed so hard all night that I think I got the best ab work out I have had since I have been here, haha! Ahmad wasn't doing that good for awhile so when we were playing we rolled a "B" and he was so excited because he thought he got the categories "School Supplies", and "Breakfast Foods" (both had to start with the letter "B").  So we rolled a B and we go down the list and name things on our list that start with a B.   So Ahmad was just excited because he thought he got a lot that round, well once the timer went off and we went through the categories Ahmad had, "BEN" haha, "a Ben that you write with" he said.  He was actually REALLY excited that he got breakfast foods also because he yelled "BANCAKE" right when we said who got breakfast foods, hahahah! it was the funniest thing E-V-E-R1! (Obviously more funny in real life).  He thought he really got those points and we had to explain to him about B's and P's.  The "G" and "J" lists were just as interesting for both Anas and Ahmad as well.  It was by far the funnest game ever.  I hope I can convince them to play again soon!

Anyway, that was my Thursday night fun.  After that I just went to bed early because I wanted to have a good workout Friday before I came to Alice's house.  Now I am at Alice's families house and we are having a lot of fun.  I took some pictures today of what we did and I will post them later on.  We went to the Bundaburg Rum factory and got a tour and it was awesome! I'll tell ya all about it later and post up pictures.

Good bye for now!

P.S. Sorry if you don't understand the Scategorie game part, that just means that you have to play the game because it is the funnest game and its my favorite!!

Surf camp, rain, liver and birthday's :)

Oopss, Sorry! I have slacked for the past week (or so) but here I go…  Last week was pretty boring but interesting and mostly laid back.  I went to all of my tutorials and lectures except for my Monday morning 8 am lecture because I was up too late writing my Fraser Island blog post, but that is all old news. 

Tuesday I got done working out and I checked my e-mail when I got two e-mails that said “LIVER”.  The perfect liver arrived for Dan.  He has been on the waiting list (healthy, skiing, playing etc.) for over a year and a half and has had 3 liver calls.  The three livers that he was called in for ended up being turned down because they were not healthy enough so they were not going to call him in again until they were almost 100% sure (can’t ever be 100% in this department) that the next time they were going to call him the liver would be healthy, sure enough this was the one.  The transplant can take 12 hours max (his took 11) and so I didn’t sleep that good but I set my alarm for 1 am to check the blog to see if Laurie and Anne had wrote any updates on there for him and there were none up yet.  Then I went back to bed again but I left my internet signed in so I ran out of internet (again). 

I have had little but some communication with them, (it makes it hard when the time zones are completely opposite) but the transplant went better than perfect.  It is still early on the recovery time but it sounds like everything is going great and all the tests have been perfect so far after the transplant.  After the transplant he was out for a really long time so I got to talk a little bit to Nancy while everybody was waiting for him to wake up (and waiting and waiting and waiting).    He woke up and everything sounds like it is going just as expected.

The rest of the week went by fast, I just went to school (take note Dr. Neuliep) and worked out.  Thursday night was my roommate Hayley’s birthday!  Sharnie and I went to the bakery and got her a birthday cake (birthday pudding if you’re an Aussie) and invited a few friends over for cake (pudding) and then took the free bus to $2 taco night.  I don’t think any of us had tacos though.  We took the bus that came at 7pm and then we were all back by 11.  It ended up being a pretty early night because we all had things to do the next day. 

Hayley on her Birthday!

Friday morning I had to catch the bus from school at 6am to go to my surf camp that I signed up for.  It ended up being pretty fun but I would never sign up for it again and I would not recommend it to others.  So we get on the bus and the bus driver said, “well, get comphy because we are going to be spending the next 6 hours together,” NEWS FLASH—none of us knew that it was going to be that far away but we still began our journey.  He stopped around 10am at McDonalds for the bus to get breakfast but I had cereal so I didn’t get anything and then we were back on the road. 

Our sweet ride!

We got to surf camp around 12:30 and had lunch there (it was gross).  Then we got put into our accommodation (that was not only gross but the most discusting accomodation I have ever had) and then we were on the water by 3 for our first surf lesson (the weather was gross and rain).  

My first lesson was not that good but… I almost stood up once or twice but not for very long.  The second lesson on Saturday I skipped because I was freezing and it was raining the whole day and that made me crabby so I napped(in my accomodation, blahh), and hung out with the other people that skipped that lesson and then my third lesson was awesome!  I killed it and I got up like 5 or 6 times and stayed up until I reached the beach then  I just had to jump off so I could swim back and do it again. 

The weather was crappy and the places we stayed in were really dirty and gross so those two things combined made me really grumpy.  But overall it ended up being a really fun weekend.  I am sad I didn’t get to kayak but the weather was not good enough for that but I feel really good at where my surfing ability is at right now.  I am confident that I can get pretty good in the next month or so if I stick to it (which I plan on). 

Our sweet C-R-I-B! Quite the treat!

Julia, Me, Anna

  Saturday night was my favorite night, I hung out with a few people I met from Germany and then later that night we hung out with a couple people from France and I learned how people in France drink their wine and whiskey so that they can get every different taste that both of those drinks have to offer.  So that was really fun.  It was most fun to walk on the beach with them and listen to the Germans and French communicate and talk about how things are so different from one another even though they are so close on a map.  It is pretty interesting.  I definitely want to travel all over Europe someday and see the friends that I have made and explore all over there. 



Left to Right: Volkan, Johanas, Marcel, Me and Anna (all from Germany and I probably spelled all their names wrong :).  Except Anna, thats easy )

 When we drove back we stopped in Byron Bay to drop some of the group off who were staying there for a few days.  A lot of the people that got off in Byron Bay were backpacking all through Australia.  I wish that we got to stay longer in Byron because it is really beautiful there and has some of the best beaches in Australia (probably debatable though).  We did get to tour it for two hours though but that just gave me a test taste and now I want to go back.  You can see the point from the beach in Byron that is the furthest point East you can get in Australia.  There is a light house and it is really pretty.  So my weekend ended up being pretty good but it was the best feeling to come home and feel comfortable again.  I got back late Sunday evening and my roomies made me stuffed peppers so I ate that and pretty much went right to bed. 


Anna and Me at our sweet secret surf spot (MOJO X)



Yesterday was just a small case of the Monday’s but I survived it and . . . HAPPY TUESDAY.   Yesterday I just went to class, I had one lecture and one tutorial and then I just relaxed all day and had a really good workout.  I went over to my friend’s house that live above me on the other side, Anas (Germany), Ahmad (Saudi Arabia), Sharnie (Aussie) and Natalie (Canada) and I ended up being there until ten because me and Anas were trying to figure out what all we wanted to do while we were here and we talked about all the things and now we have an idea of all the fun things we are going to explore while we are here.  We are only here for 4 months so we have to squeeze in a lot but Ahmad is here until he graduates and Natalie is here for a year so they have a long time to do everything.  Ahmad already did pretty much every cool thing you can think of.  But he told us what he would do again and what he hasn’t done so he said if we do any of that then he would like to come also.  So I suppose we better get to planning. 

Today I have class from 12-1 and then I am going to the gym, and at 6 me, Natalie, Ahmad, Anas and Hayley are going to go to a new Grocery store that Anas found that he said is much cheaper.  I think it might be more like a Walmart but I am not sure.  He said they are everywhere in Germany and it is way cheaper than Woolworths (which is the grocery store that is about a mile from home) so let’s just hope because I have a few things that I need.  Then my week is sounding pretty uneventful so far.  I’ll keep ya updated!



There is the light house in the background + a little tast of the beach :) (Byron)