Day 142 -- The Final Day

Today was my last day in Australia, and before I get into the sappiness that is inevitably about to come, I'll go into how my day went. I obviously spent the majority of it packing, but embarked on a journey with the guys to visit a cider tasting rooftop bar in Federation Square that we've been wanting to go to forever. It was totally worth it. I tried over 8 different kinds of delicious ciders, and ended up buying a pot of strawberry and pear cider. The bar itself was very quaint itself, as it totally rocked the fake grass and white picket fence around the outside. There were little rooms inside shaped like huts that a small group could sit in as well. Very adorable. We then ate lunch (if you call french fries lunch....which we do haha) at a chain we've been dying to eat at – Lord of the Fries. Like the name suggests, you'd be willing to become a cannibal in order to get these fries they are so good. Okay, not really, but they really were good! You can choose from about 10 different sauces for your fries, so three of us split a box of fries with “Parisian” and “Aussie” sauces. Parisian was this garlic aeoli which I have grown to love after going to Blue Moon so many times, and the Aussie was a twist on tomato sauce (or ketchup – can't wait to actually start hearing ketchup again...), and the combination together was to die for. Two places I'm extremely glad I got to visit before I left!
But alas, all good things must come to an end, and that end is now for my amazing journey in Australia. I'm overwhelmingly sad to be going, and overwhelming happy to be headed home. There are certainly things I won't miss – Coretto's, high prices, paying for my own internet and...well, everything, doing school work, having the smallest fridge and kitchen in the world, certain people, etc, but there are also certainly things I will. I'll always have the memories of family dinners, a comforting home-away-from-home event that helped me feel less alone in this big city. I'll remember all the nights we danced like crazy until the wee hours of the morning. I'll remember risking my life by jumping out of a plane from 14,000 feet and how it felt to be flying through the air. I'll remember not seeing my roommate all day and then not being able to shut up to one another for hours and hours since we had SO much to catch up on. I'll remember conquering my fear of rock climbing in the Grampians, and then sealing it by walking backwards over a cliff to abseil down the mountain face. I'll remember hiking up and down Cradle Mountain and every mountain in between in Tasmania and being in awe of just how strong my legs can actually be. And I'm definitely lucky to be able to remember how much my friends have become a family away from home. I didn't know anyone coming in, and now leaving I feel like I'm leaving a huge part of me behind. There is no doubt in my mind that I am the most lucky person in the world to be able to experience this with the people that I did. I couldn't ask for anything better!
It's also unbelievable to think how far I've come from when I got here. When I got on the plane I was terrified, heartbroken, and doubting whether all of this was even worth it. Melbourne has made me fearless enough to jump out of a plane, mended my heart, and I'm coming back knowing this was the best decision I have ever made in my life. I'm going to miss it more than words can say. I hope that I can one day make it back to this amazing city, but even if I never do I'll never forget what this city has done for me. Melbourne, you have truly captured my heart. I'll never forget ya, mate ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

First of all, happy thanksgiving!! It technically isn't even thanksgiving anymore in Australia, but it is in America so I thought the timing would be fine. As sad as it was to not be in America watching the parade, I had a fabulous makeshift dinner with my Arcadia family! My friend Randy and I made a green bean casserole and an apple pie, both of which came out amazing! I even wove the pie crust which I've never done before, but I'm so incredibly proud!

Everyone brought a different dish, including the turkey itself (cooked at the home of some church person our friend's mom ran into. Nicest lady in the world to let us use her oven!), along with mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, dinner rolls, stuffing, two pumpkins pies, artichoke dip and cranberry sauce. By the end we totally had a loot! Especially since as the night went on, more and more people showed up bringing food so we ended up having a good 14 people!

It was so much fun and totally made being away from home easier :) I love my arcadia family and I'll be so sad to leave them!

Afterwards we headed to trivia night (because what else would you do on thanksgiving --- come on) and although we still won the just dance 2 competition and only missed 4 questions in the entire game, we lost to the team who's guy always challenges me in just dance (the one who told me he'd won every game and was super cocky about it all -- turns out he's super nice, you just have to beat him a few times first!). But we still came in second, so not bad! I'm still super proud of us! After that we were just hanging around talking and these australian guys that also danced in the competition came up and challenged us to an australian-american match in foosball. We couldn't NOT defend America, so two of our guys went up and CRUSHED the others in a massive 6-1 win. The Australians then got discouraged and challenged us to pool, so we attempted to play pool, but ended up not hitting a single ball into the actual pockets so needless to say, pool is not the sport of Americans. But we can play foosball god dammit!

Two Days Left

You know it's been a good semester when you go to shut down your Commonwealth bank account and almost start crying because you realize you'll never see your favorite bankers again. This is my life right now. Full of too many goodbyes and it doesn't help that people are leaving ONE BY ONE so every day is more sadness. At least we still have one last family thanksgiving dinner tonight, which I'm super excited for, but more one that once it actually happens!

So the last couple of days...Tuesday I officially realized I have too much stuff. I cannot possibly fit all of my newfound and old possessions in my suitcase. Lucky for me, I packed lighter than everyone else did and so I was able to go to vic market today with my friend and his friend and buy a new huge wheeled purple duffle bag that says AUSTRALIA down the side, and I'm allowed to check 2 bags so this is perfect! But for the record – why is packing so incredibly stressful? It seems like only yesterday I was packing to come here and needing to call everyone in a tristate area to calm me down. Gah has 5 months really gone by? Crazy.

The night finished off by going with a few people to Hawthorne Hotel, a fun dance club about 20 minutes away from Melbourne that our australian friend insisted on taking us to. It was super fun with them playing older songs like “Scotty doesn't know” as well as my favorite bands like the Strokes! Except my one girl friend that was with me ditched as soon as her new boy arrived, so I spent most of the night dancing with my dependable guy friends. Afterwards we headed to where our australian friend told us everyone goes after Hawthorne Hotel – Mcdonalds. I was so mad because I had ALMOST gone the entire semester abroad without going to a Mcdonalds, but it definitely was an experience! There was a line out the door, and even a bouncer outside. For Mcdonalds. Crazy Australia!

Then yesterday I headed out with one of my guy friends to pick up movies for tonight's pizza and movie night (Rocky Horror and Finding Nemo!! – cause we really can't go without seeing Finding Nemo while we're in Australia, come on now). Then we went out to lunch in china town where he got a crocodile stirfry, and I had some! It tasted just like chicken, except super chewy. Not really the best texture in the world, but now I can say I've eaten crocodile!

The more I look at this picture the more disgusted I become that I ate that. So terrifying.

But we then went out for a drink at this bar/cafe that's underneath a bridge on the Yarra River! It was super pretty, but made me realize when I looked around at how many things in Melbourne I still haven't done yet. I guess I'll just HAVE to come back!

So then last last we had our pizza and movie night, but it was going on at the same time as our kind-of-friend-who's-kind-of-sketchy's barbeque, so we all played nice and went to visit the bbq for a little bit. I was just enthralled by the cats (the bbq pit is out by the cats at college square) and spent the majority of the time kneeled down feeding little pieces of ham to the kittens. Seriously -- they're SO CUTE. But then we eventually sat down to watch Rocky Horror and I had to stop myself from singing along to the entire movie since only one other guy in the room had even seen it (although we totally bonded over that, it was fun!). Then we totally switched up the pace and watched Finding Nemo, where we all knew the movie so well we were telling the lines a good 10 seconds before they were all said. And once that was all said and done, we just stayed up until 2am telling jokes about women (the girls were totally outnumbered...) and talking about video games (extremely outnumbered...). But it was sooo much fun and a wonderful end to the day! :)

4 Days Left

These past couple of days have been very relaxing but fun! I spent the majority of the days with big plans to do things, but then with torrential downpours, the plans were kind of forgotten so I finished the third game of thrones! But then I came to the awful conclusion that my friend is not even close to done reading the 4th one (stupid colin), so I went out and bought it at big W for 10 dollars. I don't think that's bad to continue my never-ending addiction!
This whole weekend was when the first group of Arcadia people left, including one of my best friends on the trip. It was extremely sad to see them go, but at least I'll see one of them back at Wooster in January! I'm so excited to see what kind of shenanigans we can get up to at Wooster now. It'll be a completely different experience!
Today I headed to Bendigo, a large-ish town about two hours outside of Melbourne with my australian friend who is from there, and it was so much fun to see another part of Victoria before I left! We visited her old school and walked up to …. I'm forgetting what it's called, which is sad because she told me an infinite amount of times, but Bendigo is an old gold mining town, so they have these structures that used (still do?) to pull...stuff out of the ground with. I'm still confused on the concept. But they were cool to look at!
Her friends then heard that I had never played laser tag before and were appalled, so we ended up going to a place called “The Zone” for the ultimate laser tag experience. I channelled my inner Barney Stinson and tried to play the best I could, but I ended up being terrified the first half of the game, and then just sucking the last half. But it was fun! Then we played mini golf, which is where it started feeling a bit fifth wheel on a double date with two couples, but I guess that's just naturally what it's going to feel like when you go mini golf with two couples...and yourself. But regardless, I did have a good time, and I won! Super proud moment!
We then got ice cream at this place really similar to Cold Stone, but of course it's Australia so it was called something else that still started with the word “cold”. It honestly wasn't as good as cold stone, but it was still delicious! Cold stone is definitely hard to top!
I ended off the day by heading back to Melbourne to go out with arcadia people to Blue Moon and Turf one last Monday night! One of my best friends here had one of his friends visiting from back home, and I spent the majority of the time talking to them, which was so much fun! Most of the arcadia girls are gone now since they went home early, so it's just me and my friend alyssa, who was extremely wrapped up in her own boy, so it was kind of like, kara and the bros kind of night, but I did't mind! They're all awesome :)

4 days till I leave....

Day 133

The past couple of days have been extremely laid back and relaxing -- exactly what I needed as I'm trying to nurse my horrible sunburn back to health. It also doesn't help that it's a bagillion and a half degrees here all the time, so I have the horrible dilemma of either dressing for the weather or covering up my burns so the sun doesn't make them worse. I end up just being scorching hot either way and curse the lack of ozone layer so thus concludes, even more, that I am SO a cold weather person. I officially do not function in heat.

Yesterday I spent the entire day inside reading nonstop the third Game of Thrones, which I am officially addicted to. I really had to limit myself to how much I could read during finals, and almost didn't let my friend even give me the third book because he and I both know I'm very bad at limiting myself when it comes to Game of Thrones, but somehow succeeded and now am in a reading frenzy. Such a good book!

But last night I broke my reading frenzy by going to trivia night at the backpacker's bar with the normal crowd. The questions actually weren't that bad, and I found myself knowing a lot of them (okay, like 5, but same diff). Then the Just Dance 2 portion came on, and I won over 10,000 points on "Rasputin" (the other guys didn't stand a chance against me with that song with the amount of times we've danced to it at Wooster, let's be honest) and because of those extra two points we won trivia again! Okay, it was also because of everyone else that contributed that we have the rest of the points, but I am still extremely proud that I can contribute something to this trivia.

Now today I woke up semi-early and headed back to vic market to do the remainder of my gift shopping for everyone. I also picked up two buckets of strawberries, a half kilo of cherries, and 6 bananas for 10 dollars. I almost cried it was such a good deal. I love when things come in season! Afterwards I stopped at the "Rice Bar (not only rice)", this chinese place I've been meaning to go to forever because it basically screams my name. Their rice was as good as it should have been with that kind of name, and I was extremely happy I made it there before I head home! Which is in 8 days. Whattttttt.

Day 131

These last two days have been so busy but so much fun! Yesterday I had breakfast with my roommates parents and her (something I love about parents visiting -- free meals!) which was so much fun and absolutely delicious. Then I ventured off to vic market to do some christmas shopping! They have lots of the tacky australian gifts as well as legitimate gifts that I would go into more details about, but that would spoil the surprise! But needless to say it was a wonderful success and I came back full of things that won't fit in my suitcases!

Afterwards I was exhausted so I laid down for what was supposed to be a 20 minute nap, but ended up being a 2 hour nap. I finally woke up to my roommate coming home at 5:30 and realized it was time to head over to the Fitz restaurant for the Arcadia farewell dinner. It was so much fun but kind of really sad to think that this would be the last time all of us would be together before the end of the trip. So many people are leaving this Saturday or Sunday, leaving only about 10 of us for the final week. But dinner was so delicious and I loved that Arcadia paid for it haha.

Then those of us who did not have exams the next day went back to our friend Jeremy's room and had a fabulous hang out session until 3 am. I am definitely going to miss these nights!

Today I woke up far too early and remembered I had made plans with some friends to go to the beach! So I got dressed really fast and embarked on a journey with two of my guy friends to the South Melbourne Beach, which was absolutely gorgeous! It was a bit too chilly to actually sunbathe and go in the water, but we all put our feet in and it felt wonderful. We spent a good 3 hours hiking up and down the coastline and found all these hidden treasures like beautiful parks, irresistable little kids playgrounds, and ice cream to top it all off.

Then we headed back on the tram to go to Chapel St, a big shopping street in a suburb of melbourne none of us had ever been to before. We got so excited when we were walking down the street and saw a sign for a jam factory, and practically ran up the walkway to find it. After looking around the arcade for a good twenty minutes, we finally asked someone who said that this arcade was just called the jam factory because the building used to be a jam factory. Biggest disappointment EVER. But inside we did find a wonderful tea shop and was able to sample different kinds of iced teas which were absolutely delicious. We had a ton of fun looking in all the different shops as well, as some of them were really high class and we even saw the building for "ten", a huge tv channel here that shows amazing shows like masterchef australia and the renovators, but there were also some reallyyyy hipster stores which were really entertaining to look around in. We finished off the day with crazy cheap drinks at a happy hour and then headed home, completely exhausted. Now unfortunately I got pretty sunburned today, as I realized when I went to take a shower and ended up in complete agony, but hopefully it will turn into a tan and then I can be less white when I come back to the states! I'm hopeful!

Day 129

Today was such a busy but fun day! One of the woes of being off of school so early and having all my finals in the first week of finals is that even though I'm all done, none of my friends actually are. This did not stop some of my best friends here from going and celebrating my finale to Coretto's last night (love them!) but today was a different story – everyone actually had to study – so I had a wonderful day with me! I started off by walking towards the docklands which are actually like a 2 hour walk away but I was too cheap to actually buy a tram ticket, so I ended up just walking in that general direction. I ended up at this giant store that said the largest christmas store in Victoria, so I thought, why not? This is the first thing that greeted me when I walked through the door:

Yep, I'm definitely in Australia. And if you can believe it, this baby was half off! Only 60 dollars for your own personal 10 ft tall blow up kangaroo! Don't worry parents, I didn't buy it (although I was definitely tempted to see it take up our entire family room).
Afterwards I walked out, got completely lost, and happened upon this absolutely beautiful park called Flagstaff Gardens. I found this cute little bench by some flowers, and since my oh so nice friend Brian had told me the other night that I'm “so white” I “should go to the beach”, I decided to sit in the sun and read my book until I was hungry. I ate lunch at this tiny little japanese place on King St (actually the street that everyone tells you to avoid at night because you'll probably get caught in a drive by. I decided to risk it when I saw how many other people were walking down the street). Then walked down the street and ran into the aquarium!

There was a student price for the aquarium, so I was able to get 10 dollars off the entry price to make it pretty reasonable! I'm happy I went too, since although I thought that every zoo/aquarium around the world is relatively the same – not true! Most of the fish in the aquarium were native to places around Asia and Australia! It definitely wasn't as good as the Boston Aquarium, and I'm not going to lie, I was EXTREMELY disappointed when the cuttlefish exhibit was empty, but the adorable penguins, and huge manta rays swimming over me in the clear glass tunnel through the fish tank made it worth it!

After the aquarium I walked out to see the city circle tram stop right in front of me. It's this free tram service that goes in a circle around Melbourne's CBD that is very touristy, but I decided to hop on and see where it went. I was happily surprised that it brought me right down to the docklands! The place where it dropped me off reminded me of California with all these palm trees and they even had those celebrity stars in the ground! I only recognised one name:

So I walked around the docklands a bit and ended up at a big arcade with a ton of outlet stores! I hadn't had basically any retail therapy this entire trip so far, so I decided I should splurge a little and got new boots!! The best part about them too is that they were marked down from 200 dollars to only 40! I think we all know nothing makes me happier than a new pair of boots, so it was definitely worth the money!
Then I got back on the tram and headed back towards the CBD. It ended up on the opposite side of Melbourne near the parliament building, which I didn't even know existed. So I got off and walked around and ran into this beautiful huge church, which was across the street from a little tiny church that looked exactly like the kind of place I always pictured getting married in haha.

I finished off my day of adventuring with a stop at this adorable cafe I found called the Jellybean Cafe and got a pear and honey tea (DELICIOUS) and of course a handful of jellybeans that cost me 20 cents. I couldn't go to the Jellybean cafe and not have jellybeans! And now I'm already planning for tomorrows adventures – I'm going to make these last two weeks count!

Goodbye Coretto's

Now that I had my last day at Coretto's Cafe on Lygon St, the only words that come to mind about that place are extreme profanities. My bosses were in the worst moods of their life, screamed at me for nothing, and would have made me cry if I hadn't kept thinking to myself -- this is my last day. I messed up on one pizza order, and one order they messed up on but of course blamed me. The one I did mess up on, the couple had a very strong European accent and I thought they said Salmone when they really said Paesana, and my boss screamed at me and got so mad he sent me on my break. I was so incredibly pissed off that I ended up at Brunetti's calming down with strawberry cheesecake and an iced chocolate (delicious, by the way), and then came back an hour later cooled off -- but my bosses weren't. One of my tables actually liked me enough to leave me a big tip, and when I went to collect it from my boss he immediately yelled at me saying "Why are you making so many mistakes today, you can't make these mistakes ever again!" so I defended myself by calmly explaining I had made 2 mistakes (even though one of them wasn't my fault -- but I didn't dare tell him that), and he screamed "Well that's 2 too many!" So I told him "Don't worry, I'll never make a mistake like this on any other day ever again!" He didn't understand, so I explained it was just a joke because it was my last day. That set him off the wall! He started screaming that he does not think that's funny, he should deduct the pizzas from my pay if that's how I'm going to act and just because it's my last day doesn't give me the right to make mistakes. I almost brought up that being human allows me to make mistakes, but I didn't want to poke the fire too much, so I just said "okay, calm down." and walked away.

I will miss my coworkers so much though. They really are the sweetest people in the world and none of them deserve to be treated the way that my managers have treated us. Getting paid below minimum wage and getting sexually harassed constantly is enough of a reason to hate this job, but the fact that after we get sexually harassed, we then get screamed at for things that aren't always our fault -- beyond excusable.

Goodbye forever Coretto's! %&#%@ you!

This week has been so incredibly stressful and I'm so glad it's done! It started wonderfully enough with a visit from Michelle and her friends. I really wish I could've hung out with her more and shown her the city, but of course I had to work all Sunday and then she went with her friends on the Great Ocean Road tour on Monday, but I still was able to take her out to meet most of my friends Monday night! They had to leave on Tuesday at 3 in the morning, so they wanted to just stay up all night, so I took them to Blue Moon and 7/11 to get free slushies (since it was 7/11, seeing as they're weird here and do the day first) and Brian bought us all pizza and chocolate cake afterwards (but it's okay, because he bought it, it had no calories)! And afterwards we went to Turf and danced it all of anyway! Then I took them on a 1 in the morning tour of uni campus since I hadn't had time to show them during the day, and we ran into some VERY drunk guys who we skillfully ran away from. But it was so much fun seeing Michelle and meeting her friends and taking a break from all the studying!
The rest of the week was literally spent being a hermit and studying all the time because my exams were on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. By Tuesday I had totally had enough studying and just wanted to get them all over with, but I guess it's always good to feel more prepared than not prepared enough. And as a result, all my exams went really well! It was so intimidating though! We don't have our exams in our normal lecture halls like we do in the states, we have them in the Royal Exhibition Building, aka this:

It was all set up with these giant rows of chairs with desks, the exam booklets and everything all pre-laid out, and we get assigned seats. I was number 2577 for my genetics exam, which shows you how freaking big this hall was. It was also so distracting with how beautiful the ceilings were!! I just wanted to look around the room for the whole exam, but that may have also been aided by the fact that I would've done anything not to actually have to take those exams.
My last exam was today, Animal Physiology, and by last night I was completely brain dead. I guess that's what waking up early and studying all day, taking exams, and then immediately studying some more with no study breaks will do to you. So when my friend Randy called me and asked if I wanted to meet him and the other guys at the backpackers bar again for trivia night, it was impossible to say no. I brought my notes along with me so just incase I wanted to read my notes in the dim lighting while answering trivia questions I could, but of course I ended up just taking a break. Trivia night was EPIC. We knew so many of the answers (or, well, the others did. My contribution came when they played Young, Wild, and Free and asked who the artists were. Thank you minimal hip hop knowledge!) and so we were set to win. Then came a challenge: A Just Dance 2 Challenge.
Now most people reading this will know of my just dance 2 skills. I pride myself in my ability to move a wii stick in the same motions as the little electronic person on the screen, but when I went to go represent my group I was so nervous! I hadn't played in 6 months and didn't know if I'd be completely terrible after completely talking up my Just dance 2 skills. To make things worse, when I met one of my competitors he asked me "So, are you good at this? I am. I've won the last 5 weeks in a row." So I just shrugged my shoulders and gripped my bright pink controller. And guess what? I KICKED HIS ASS! I then went up for round 2, and beat the other finalists by a good 3000 points. It was definitely a proud moment in my life!!And despite the giant study break on Thursday night, I actually totally owned my exam today as well! Totalllyy worth it!

Now I'm finally done with exams and I was so excited to go sell back my textbooks because there is no way I'll have room in my suitcase for 2 giant science textbooks, and of course, being a school bookstore, they're not taking them back. I. Hate. University. Bookstores. And I can't even sell them online here because 1, I don't know how, and 2, I don't have enough time to ship them out to people before I go home! My next move is to try local bookstores to see if I can get any kind of money for them because it would be better than just having to throw them out or trying to fit them in my suitcase.

But regardless, I'm all kinds of happy now that I will never have to do another assignment in Australia again! I can now just focus on having fun and enjoying my last couple of weeks with my friends. Perfect :)

3 weeks left!

This week totally threw me off any internal clock I had whatsoever and now I just feel confused. I guess that's what an entire week of studying during the day (all day, every day) and staying out late with friends will do to you. The restaurant also just hired about a boatload of fresh blood, I mean employees, to start working, so they've been letting me go ridiculous early, or just telling me not to come in, every day this week. Normally this would be nice, but of course now when I get sent home early I have this huge struggle of, should I stay in and study, or see if other people are doing something fun since I've already spent all day studying? Ah the woes of swot vac week.
One of the highlights of my week has got to be Thursday night, where I cut my studying short at around 9 and went out with some guy friends to a backpacker's bar for Trivia night! Lucky for us, a lot of the questions happened to be kind of sciency, and having two engineering majors and me being bio/chem, we kicked butt and won! We won 50 dollars, and had the chance to win 500 dollars if we answered a bonus question, but like always, the question was extremely hard and we couldn't get it. We definitely walked out of there with our heads held high though!
Now with 4 days to go until my first exam, I'm feeling slightly more confident every day. It definitely helps to meet up with some people from the subject and go over everything – especially since I've gotten minimal feedback on how well I understand the material so I could be thinking I understand something and really be totally lost. I just can't wait until this Friday (at exactly 4pm) when I will be done!!! Then I just have a weekend of work (where at this rate, I won't even be coming in anyway), and then I'll have the rest of the two weeks to do whatever I want! It still terrifies me that I only have 3 weeks left as of today, but I'm still with mixed emotions. As excited as I am to be home again, I know I'll probably start crying when I have to leave Melbourne and certain people. I even started getting nostalgic as I looked around my sketchy projects-like neighbourhood and remembered how nervous I was when I first got here. Has 5 months really gone by already? Everyone who still has more than 3 weeks left, savour it!!

Tasmania was SOOOOOOOO MUCH FUN! And exhausting. Very exhausting. On Friday afternoon we flew out to Launceston, which is technically a city but it really was as much of a city as like...Manchester is. There was literally a paddock full of sheep right next to the airport runway where we came in, and green grasses all around. The airport itself was wicked small too, only about 4 terminals in the entire place. It was so much fun travelling, though, since 5/7 of us from Melbourne were on the same flight. We got to the airport, and within maybe 5 minutes I hear a “Kara?” I turn around and it's Michelle, a friend from Wooster! I knew she was going on the Tasmania trip since she's part of the Arcadia Sydney people, but it was so crazy seeing her there. Two worlds collide. She travelled around with us until Lyndon picked us up since she was the only one from her Arcadia group going on the trip and she fit in perfectly with us!

We had about an hour before Lyndon was coming to get us, so we decided to take a shuttle into Launceston. It was only about 10 minutes in this kind of sketchy white van that just had a sign saying SHUTTLE on it, but the driver was really nice (and very Australian. He said g'day and mate and heaps every other sentence) and even gave us a discount on the price! We were only able to pretty much walk in a square around some blocks before it was time to get picked up, but we still saw the Boag's Brewery, which 2 of our other friends who arrived earlier actually went to and had a beer and cheese paired tasting. I was jealous.

We eventually got picked up and joined up with the other Arcadia students who were from Bond University, which is on the Gold Coast. They were nice enough, but we pretty much stayed segregated throughout the entire trip. We were each pretty close to our respective groups (ours adopted Michelle and another girl who also didn't have anyone to travel with) so it just worked out that way. We stopped at this tiny little town called Sheffield for dinner, where after learning everything in the town was crazy expensive, we all piled into this place called Moo Moo diner (or something of that nature) and got some pretty cheap, but not very good, fried food. Half of us couldn't even finish our food, which made two of my guy friends extremely happy that they were travelling with a bunch of girls. I don't understand how guys can eat so much.

When we arrived at our campsite about an hour later, we separated out into three cabins. Miss Lloyd and I ended up sleeping on this big queen sized bed in the middle of the living room while the boys slept in bunk beds in the “bedroom”. The cabin was so small it was hard to say it was more than just one small room, but there were curtains separating different sections. But it was definitely really fun!!

The first day we got up super early and drove to Cradle Mountain. It was SO incredibly gorgeous. We kept taking pictures of basically the same exact picture over and over again because we couldn't help but try and capture the crazy beauty of it all. It was an all-day kind of hike, which really got intense when we were actually rock climbing through the mountains. We all thought our legs were going to give out at any second, since it wasn't one of those, go up and then go down kinds of hikes. It was the biggest rollercoaster of hiking ever – when you get to the top of one mountain and think, that was awesome! Now it's all downhill from here! And then you go all the way down and realize you have to do the same thing all over again with the next mountain, and the next mountain, and the next mountain... it was exhausting, but so worth it. I always forget how much I love climbing rocks and hiking until I actually get out there and do it!


That night we had a good old Australian barbie and then went to a Tasmanian Devil Feeding Show! They were SO funny to look at and hear because they made the most crazy sounds ever! The actual information about them was really interesting too because our tour guide just kept talking about how they are unnecessarily given the name "devils" because they can actually be really sweet. And to show us this, she brought out one that they had raised since he was a baby and we got to pet him! He just sleepily curled up against her shoulder and it was soooo adorable. But I guess they can also be kind of vicious when it comes to food:

On Sunday we got up not quite so early, thankfully, and went for a much easier walk around Dove Lake. It was so beautiful, and I was really happy we went because the sky was a lot clearer, so we got to see all the mountains without clouds being in the way. The hike was only a couple hours, so afterwards we had time to drive to some other hikes where we saw a baby wombat!!!

Can we just talk about how cute these guys are? Adorable.

We then went to this little cabin...thing. I'm still not quite sure what it was -- we were all kind of bored by it -- but outside the cabin thing was a PADEMELON! What is a pademelon you ask? WELL it is only one of the cutest animals on this earth! It's kind of like if you squish a wallaby down into a one foot radius.

We had a long time before our flight flew out that Sunday night, so a few of us went to this beautiful gorge back in Launceston. There were all these walking and hiking paths all around it, which for a couple hours we enjoyed before we were so tired we all just sat in the grass and talked while the boys threw around a frisbee. We were all just exhausted from the past couple of days, and I had gone on a few rock climbing adventures with the guys earlier that day for some reason I still don't know, so lying down felt amazing. Even when we finally got to the airport, we still had a good 4 hours or so before our flight took off so we just spent the time looking up youtube videos on my ipod.

Now I'm back in Melbourne and it's officially swot vac week -- the week before finals begin where there are no classes but you still end up pulling your hair out from all the stress. I've somehow found a very nice balance between studying and going out with my friends. Monday night I stayed in and finished writing my entire philosophy final, so I was ahead of schedule and able to go guilt free to the Melbourne Cup yesterday! It is called "the race that stops a nation", which it totally did. It's this huge horse race where basically everyone (including a spice girl and Miss J from Americas Next Top Model!!, and possibly Sarah Jessica Parker, although I didn't see her) turns out in these crazy hats to drink champagne and watch the horses. I've never felt more prestigious in my life!

The winning jockey and horse!

The races ended by 4 or so, when a couple of us went back to my apartment to watch the Hangover before meeting up with the other Arcadia people to have pizza at Bimbos. Then we headed to the boys room downstairs to watch the first Woody Allen film I've ever seen! And it was hilarious! I didn't know what I was missing!

Finally, this morning I signed up for my classes for next spring! I was very excited to get the last spot in Microbiology, so I will be taking that along with junior independent study and analytical chemistry. I had an extra spot free which I initially was going to fill with linguistic anthropology, but this morning I found out it was only for majors, so now I am taking Intro to US national politics. It was a random course, but everyone I've talked to says it actually is pretty good so I'm excited!

Now I will blogging very minimally for the next week until I am done with finals, wish me luck!

Day 115

Today ended as one of the best nights I've had in awhile! The actual day wasn't too bad either, except I could feel myself wanting to shut my eyes during my genetics lecture and my philosophy tute. But in both it was a very relaxed style of teaching, where it was mostly just question and answer about specific topics we've covered. Definitely not too bad, and I was actually productive in my off time as well now that I've officially finished the second book of the Game of Thrones series. I'm itching to read the next one, but I'm tempted to make my friend hold onto his copy until my finals are over so I won't have that to procrastinate studying with. We'll see how long that holds out hah. I gotta see how my Starks are doin....

After class I headed to, where else, but work. It started off terribly, with both my managers in horrible moods where they'll yell at you for the tiniest little things you do wrong. As the night went on, however, they actually noticed that I was doing a good job and making good tips (I made 20 dollars tonight!) and started congratulating me. They even brought out a secret hidden stash of sweets from Brunetti's and gave them to all the serving staff! Then to make the night even better, they seemed totally fine with me leaving this weekend and then stopping work in 3 weeks altogether. I mean, I told them I was leaving the country in exactly 3 weeks, but what they don't know won't hurt them haha. Even better than everything else was that they let me go at 10pm, so I was able to run down to Puggs to grab a drink with my Arcadia friends!

Puggs was SO much fun, and I was able to catch up with some of the people I see less often. I even found some people to lend me a raincoat for Tasmania so I will be able to go and not get soaking wet! Now my last day of classes OF THE YEAR are tomorrow and I can't believe it. It does not feel like the end of the semester in the slightest, although I guess this entire semester hasn't exactly felt like normal anyway. Crazy how time flies. Wayyyy too fast.

Day 114

Today was one of the biggest fail days of my life. I had all these dreams of how the perfect situation would lay out, and NOTHING did. Let me explain.

So I woke up this morning knowing I had a very busy day ahead of me. I first had to go to my genes and genomes problem session, which I usually go to the session on Friday, but as I'm going to be on a plane to Tasmania this friday, I went today. My first problem was actually FINDING the lecture theatre, since when I got to the place where I thought the lecture was going to be held, there was no one waiting outside. As I turned to leave and go find a computer to see if the location had been changed, I hear a "So you decided to actually come to a problem session?" and immediately my stomach drops. I turned to see the one and only jerkface standing in front of me, leaning against the side of the stairwell. I ignored his comment and asked him if this is where the session is, which he confirmed so I turned around and sat down on a bench, putting my jacket on one side of me and my backpack on the other so there was no possible way he could get close to me. He did his best, sitting next to my backpack, and started asking whether I had actually done the problem set before the class. Obviously, douchebag, otherwise I wouldn't have been here. Luckily I only had to make awkward small talk for a short time before we were let into the theatre and I purposely sat on the opposite side of the room as him. I had escaped, but just barely.

I then ran to the ERC to get a new uni ID since my old one was warped and now lost completely, and got my ticket and went to sit down. My stomach dropped yet again when I saw I was number 78, and they were on 45. So I sat and sat, and finally after 40 minutes my number was called. I went and explained the situation, and the woman said I had to pay 30 dollars to get a new one. WHY DOES A LITTLE CARD COST 30 DOLLARS?! I was outraged, especially since I never even USE my card since my last one was so warped it literally was useless. But I reluctantly gave in, seeing as exams are crazy legit here and you need to have your uni card on your desk when you're taking your exams or something for identification. So annoying.

After that excursion, I ran to catch the tram to Brunswick to find a raincoat for Tasmania. I literally went to every store I could think of to find a raincoat and NOTHING. I even went down into the CBD to look at target, big w, even myers (the huge department store with things WAY out of my price range) and sports stores and it seems that Australians just don't wear raincoats. Which is absurd for how much it rains here. By the time I was ready to give up, it was 4 hours later and I had to run to class. I made it just in time, sat through my last human-animal interactions lecture, and then had to run to work.

Work was pretty normal today. Two big families came in that were both friends of my bosses so they told me to take care of them. I was doing brilliantly if I say so myself, and got each order exactly right. Both tables ordered a TON of food, so I was sure they would add 5 or 10 dollars onto the end of the bill. Nothing. I had spent all this effort actually being a good waitress, and I got nothing. Even more ironic is the table of 3 chinese people I spent next to zero time on since all they ordered was a pizza, THEY gave me a 5 dollar tip. The lesson I'm taking out of this is that if I try really hard, I won't get a tip, but if I barely put in an effort, it's possible. Ah well, at least I didn't get yelled at tonight! So I guess my day wasn't a complete fail, only a partial fail!

Day 112

So I have been failing with this whole, writing every day thing. The thing is that I literally have NOTHING interesting to talk about! Every activity that other people are doing I can't do because I'm either working or in class, and as soon as I have free time, nothing is going on so I just study. At least I'm making a good amount of money every week and gaining about 15 dollars in tips a night (nothing compared to this douchebag I work with who takes everyone elses tips -- he makes about 100 a night. I WONDER WHY. We all hate him and one of my highlights of the night is just talking with everyone in the restaurant -- cooks, bartenders, waiters/waitresses alike -- about how much we hate him). All that's keeping me going in this job is knowing that it's the reason I was able to do such awesome things like skydiving and Tasmania and snorkeling with cuttlefish. Only a few more weeks and then I'll be done and ready to just have fun in Australia again!

But something absolutely ridiculous did happen last night at the restaurant. So I was working inside all night which was absolutely dead since it was so hot out, but then got switched to working outside when one of the girls went home. I walk out and the first thing my coworker says to me is YOU TAKE 41, I CAN'T TAKE IT. I looked over and thought, okay, it's a big table of 8 people, she might have just had a long day. So I go over there and ask if they'd like anything to drink, and they all start cracking up histerically. It took me about 2 seconds to realize they were all high off their asses on something to the point where one of them couldn't even talk legibly. The rest of them could speak just fine, but because of the nonstop giggling it took a good 20 minutes to get their entire order because they kept just telling me they wanted "pasta". We have probably over 60 different kinds of pasta combinations. That table was definitely a struggle to get through, but at the end they left me 10 dollars in coins and an array of lollies! The lollies I decided to pass on seeing as I would not be surprised in the slightest if they were spiked with heroin, but the 10 dollars was definitely appreciated.

Now it is officially our last week of school, and even though I got next to no sleep last night I still decided to get up and go to my 9am class to get some good karma for the week. The universe repaid me by making it rain the entire walk over here and now not even 30 people are here in my class of over 200 students. And we're learning material that I've already learned before. This makes me highly doubtful of this karma thing.

Day 108- Karaoke!

Last night was one of the most fun nights of this entire trip BY FAR. The entire Arcadia crew went out to this bowling alley and rented a room for karaoke for our friend's birthday. I was kind of scared people weren't going to be into it and just sit back and it'd be really awkward, but it wasn't at all! My friend and I started the night off right by singing Last Night by the Strokes and everyone was cheering and singing along and laughing and having the best time ever! It made it even better that the venue provided costumes, so i spent the entire night with sparkly pink antennae on my head while other costumes like fairy princesses, 80s rockers with gaga masks, and Army pants were worn. We ended up staying until the place closed even though we only paid for 2 hours, but we were having so much fun who could really stop us? I realized this morning that perhaps the videos and pictures I took probably should not have been taken (I guess belting your heart out to Queen feels a lot better than it looks in pictures) but now I will always have something to crack me up.

I am now one class away from finishing my 2nd to last week of class! It's so crazy that's it's almost over -- part of me feels like it was yesterday and part of me feels like I've been here forever. When we walked downtown yesterday, we all got extremely nostalgic of when we took our first tour of everything and Melbourne seemed so big and scary. Now it feels like home. I'm definitely going to be so sad to leave here and everyone I've gotten to know so well! But I'm not thinking about that yet -- I still have more than 5 weeks!

Classes wise, I'm not worried about this semester in the slightest anymore! I still can't believe I'll have an entire week and a half off to study for my finals, so I feel like it'll be impossible to do that badly on them, especially with the semi-work ethic I've had this semester. I'm definitely excited to have them all over with and just be able to hang out with mah wonderful friends for 2 weeks before we all go home. And since I've persevered through the italian restaurant, I actually have money to do more fun things before I leave! Definitely worth the job this semester -- despite how horribly I was treated sometimes.

Aaand on that happy note, I have run out of things to say!

Day 105!

I made an exclamation point in the title to make my life seem more interesting, but alas it's not. With finals coming up in exactly 3 weeks it is now that time in my life where if I am doing anything but studying I start feeling immensely guilty and lazy. Most of my time lately has been taken up by writing an animal physiology lab report which was just interesting enough to make it my procrastination technique for studying for finals. Yes, I procrastinate studying by doing other homework. I'm quite aware of how lame I am.

As a side note, for family dinner this week, a jewish person in Arcadia cooked us some traditional jewish food and it was so delicious I was practically ready to convert. Okay, not really, but there was this tomato, peppers, onion egg dish that was totally to die for. And for dessert they had these sweetened apple pieces -- yummmm!

Oh! And my life is about to get more interesting! Tomorrow our group is FINALLY going out and singing karaoke in celebration of my friends birthday! It apparently will be in a bowling alley ... legit right? I don't think I'm quite ready to show everyone my immense bowling talent yet, but if forced I may have to show them how I can hit other peoples pins by aiming for my own if I'm lucky...

Day 101 -- Winery Tour!

Yesterday was certainly..interesting. It started off bright and early, heading off to the Yarra Valley for a free wine tour courtesy of the wonderful wine club I'm in. We (my spring break crew and I) took the Melbourne subway trains for the first time ever, and I realized how easily I could get to so many different places around Melbourne. The train only costs 7 dollars for a day pass and with it I can ride any tram, bus, or train in the greater Melbourne area. Blows my mind!

Anyway, we finally get to the Yarra Valley after about an hour train ride and load onto this big bus that takes us to our first stop, Yering Station, Victoria's first vineyard. It was absolutely gorgeous since you could see far off into the distance of the valley every way you turned. We got a tour of the wine making process which was actually really interesting seeing as I know NOTHING about wine. We were able to try as many wines as we wanted, so we really quickly were able to focus on what kinds of wine we like. I, not surprisingly, like the sweetest bubbliest wines, which apparently is very common among new wine drinkers. They kept joking that in no time I'll be drinking a dark dry red with the rest of them. But for now, I'm perfectly fine with my dessert wines and champagne!

The next winery was very different from the first, a small family-owned winery that only opens 2 days a year for tours. Their wine cellar literally is just in the cellar of the house, and they only produce about 1200 bottles of each kind of wine a year. That is absolutely nothing compared to the other wineries we visited. This tasting was especially interesting because they showed us the same wines in different years so we could taste the difference that an extra year makes on these wines. I was actually very surprised of how big of a difference I could tell between the different years. The 2008 chardonnay and the 2010 chardonnay were completely different creatures. And I love that I can say that now and sound like a complete snob.

The last place was by FAR my favourite, but mostly because along with selling wine tours, they have cheese tours. Now there is few things in this world I love more than good cheese, and this was some of the best. They had the biggest list of wines of the three wineries and had a very distinct order in which you should try them in. Apparently you should always try wine lightest to darkest, starting with champagne to cleanse the pallet. Who woulda thought? But it was so delicious and I'm SO happy I got to do this wine tour. Usually they're about 100 dollars at least, which they're easily worth, but I probably wouldn't have done it if it wasn't free.

Cheese platter!

The night ended (after a very long day at work) as wonderful as it started, with a slumber party at my downstairs neighbour’s room! They have so many more channels on their tv than my roommate and I do, so I had so much fun flipping through their channels and freaked out when I saw Buffy!! I screamed and made them watch with me even though they had no idea what was going on and made fun of me endlessly. I didn't even have the guts to tell them I knew it was season 5 episode 12...

Day 98

It has finally gotten beautiful in Melbourne!! It finally is starting to feel like spring, with 70 degree weather and all the leaves returning to the trees! So gorgeous! I even got HOT as I was walking around campus exploring libraries (...cause that's what cool kids do right? Find the different libraries on campus?) But despite the gorgeous weather I somehow ended up indoors for much of the day, rewatching multiple episodes of Game of Thrones with a friend and then going to Brunswick St for the majority of the night. But it was fun nonetheless and the gorgeous weather outside made me happy!

The only problem last night was how inevitable it is to run into people you don't actually want to see when you're on Brunswick St. It was a girls night, with the few minor exceptions of our guy friends who both have girlfriends back home so they're practically one of the girls (don't tell them that) and we went out dancing. There I was, minding my own business, rocking out to Moves like Jagger because that song is amazing, and who walks up but this german guy I talked to very briefly during the Melbourne Welcome. He was a giant skeeze then, and he proved that nothing has changed when he pulled me in for a hug and then said "By the way, I overheard some guys talking about you in the bathroom. They said you were really awesome except you were a midget, so that's your downfall". Thank you german man for giving me this useless information. But at least now I know I'm short, cause ya know, I was kinda shakey on the subject before that.

Now today after taking one look at my genetics assignment due next Friday, I knew I was in trouble. I spent an hour struggling over decifering genetic codes and looking for sites where specific restriction enzymes would cleave the DNA and what the resulting amino acid sequences would be and got through one question. At least I'm starting this a week ahead of time so I actually have time go to into my lecturer and perhaps look like an idiot, but it's obvious that I need help. Only two more weeks of school left!

Day 95

Today was supposed to a totally awesome day where I'd go tour the veterinary hospital and talk with veterinarians about the whole process in Australia. However, all my hopes and dreams were crushed when I realized it started at 6, my class ended at 5:30, and the veterinary hospital is in a zone where the tram doesn't go, and it's a half hour CAR ride. Then, just as I was defeatedly canceling my tour, who calls me but work saying they need me to come in tonight. That will make 5 days I'm working this week, most likely till close every time. Ughhhhhh. I wish I didn't like making money so much, it would make my life so much more fun....

On the bright side, today I was actually productive so I got all my data analyzed and graphed for my huge lab report due in, what, like 3 weeks. Gotta love Australia! And in a couple of weeks I will be venturing around the beautiful lands of Tasmania! Just gotta keep looking ahead.... :)

Day 93 - Grampians!

I had SO MUCH FUN THIS WEEKEND!! I am so unbelievably happy I went, and I'm feeling totally refreshed to get back into things. Friday night we drove down in this bus for what was supposed to be a 3 hour bus ride, but ended up taking closer to 4 since we were stuck in traffic for an hour. This would have been horrible if I hadn't been with some of the best people in the world, so we ended up just having a wonderful time! We finally arrive at the campsite around 11:30 and realize there are kangaroos EVERYWHERE. Seriously, everywhere you turn there were kangaroos as common as there are squirrels around Wooster! You have to be apparently be really careful with them though since they'll try and steal food from all the campers. But honestly IT'S A FREAKING KANGAROO stealing my food so I don't think I'd mind.

We woke up the next morning and walked out of our cabin to go to the breakfast cabin and this is what greeted us!

After breakfast we drove to this giant mountain where we went rock climbing! Now I don't mean those things that have the pre-made knobs and things that you put your hands and feet on -- I mean we were literally climbing about 20 meter high cliffs! It was so scary, but since I had one of my guy friends belay for me, he was practically pulling me up the wall himself. I barely had to climb because the harness was held so tight against me so it made it a lot easier. After we climbed up the cliff, we went abseiling down another face of the mountain. That was FAR scarier, as literally it's you literally backing up over the side of a cliff, and it didn't help that I was the second one to do it in our group after the one person who was experienced. I felt SUPER proud of myself after I did it though, and the views were absolutely gorgeous!!

We left the rock climbing wall and had I guess a true Australian picnic lunch -- a box lunch. This entails putting a ton of different things into a giant lobster pot, like tomatoes, beans, corn chips, onions, and I don't even know what else and then putting it all in a tortilla. It was a weird combination of all the different ingredients, but it wasn't bad! We then went and hiked up Mount Zero, which is called that since apparently it is a magnetic anomaly. People seemed to want to race up the mountain, so we ended up summating after a half hour or so, but it was the hardest uphill climb I've like ever done. It was especially hard after having rock climbed all morning so we were all exhausted when we got to the top. But it was so worth it!

After we got down, we headed over to a different part of the mountain to see some aboriginal artwork that was carved into the mountain. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but the fact that the hand prints are 600 years old is pretty cool!

The rest of the day was spent exploring waterfalls, a giant lake called Lake Bellfield, an Australian barbie for dinner, and drinking cider until we all were so exhausted we had to go to bed. The next day wasn't quite as eventful, but still really cool! We went to this aboriginal center where we learned about the different aboriginal tribes that occupied the Grampians. We got to paint our own boomerangs, which I'm actually super proud of how mine turned out! We then learned how to actually throw boomerangs, and of course I was so incredibly bad that mine just fell right to the ground, but I'm totally blaming the wind for that. Then as we were leaving, we look over and see this GIANT snake in the bushes, and our tour guide tells us that it is the most venomous snake in the entire world. It's about time I see something that could kill me! But I'm so happy I went on this whole trip and it was one of the best times I've had here so far!

Yikes.