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.

Day 91 - Reality Check

Today was one of those days where I realized that finals are actually coming up very very soon. It's only another three weeks of classes, a week of "reading" and then are the three weeks of finals. We finally figured out when our finals are (for some reason they're stupid and don't actually tell us until October), and I'm actually psyched that mine are all in the first week. I would HATE for mine to all be the last week of November so all I can do all month is think about the hell to come. Plus I'm used to doing all my finals in one week since in Amuurica that's what we do, and I'm not even used to a full week off to study for them before hand, so I think it should be enough time to study! Then I can have two weeks left in Australia to do whatever I like! Seems like a good enough time to me!

The downside of finals coming up is that the classes are reallllyy starting to get complicated, well, one in particular. My genetics class is completely going over my head sometimes because he goes so fast, so today I found myself going over the recording for one lecture for 2 hours starting and stopping so I could frantically write what I wanted. It's a good thing my lecturer changed or I would have been COMPLETELY lost. I guess my schooling had to get tough at some point! Luckily for me, all my other classes have remained consistently easy so I have been able to devote the majority of my time to understanding the vast world of genetics while still acing my other classes. It definitely is a comfort!

Now in TWENTY MINUTES I am headed for the weekend out to the Grampians! I'm super excited except for the rainy forecast that may or may not make me completely miserable, but I'm going in with a positive outlook! Oh! And on a completely separate note, I am trying to cut my gum addiction, since gum is so expensive here, by using mints instead. I decided to eat a mint every time I wanted to chew a piece of gum and thought for some reason it would leave me completely satisfied. The result, however, is me popping eclipse mints like crack cocaine. I think I need to go to gum addicts anonymous. Damn it's minty deliciousness.

Day 89

I am so incredibly proud of the dinner I had tonight. I'm starting to get extremely sick of my high carb diet of pastas, rice, cereal, etc. just because it's the cheapest option, so I decided to spend the extra cash to start eating more chicken and vegetables. Tonight I had a chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese, onion, rosemary, and garlic and lemon roasted asparagus. It was even more delicious than I had imagined and it was super easy! I'm not usually one to make up my own recipes too, so I'm actually very proud of myself! Speaking of food, I am feeling EXTREMELY nostalgic for fall foods and just fall in general. I really am missing seeing all the leaves turn colors and carving pumpkins and I have a humongous craving for pumpkin bread. Even foods that I don't really like such as apple pie I find myself missing and wishing I could have a slice of. At least I'll have the full holiday season to go all out with making christmas cookies and doing holiday things! (Watch out parents, our house is going to scream Christmas ALL. MONTH. LONG.)

Yummmmmm.....

My beautiful dinner!



As for the rest of my day, classes were...okay. I narrowly avoided a confrontation with jerkface in my genetics class by quickly moving to another row when I saw him about to sit down. What was fabulous about that class today, too, was we filled in evaluations of our two professors in that class so I got to write exactly what I thought about my first professor. I love evaluations. I will always put in more time than everyone else and I will never get more excited about them when I really have something to say. Beautiful invention.

New Plan for Capturing Cats

Day 88 -- Jerkface Strikes Back

Today started as normally as any other day. I went to my animal phys lab and worked with mice and honeybees, measuring their metabolic rate in multiple environments. That was actually fun, despite the environment where we had to stay in a 4 degree cold room for 20 minutes while taking measuring the amount of oxygen produced by the mouse. That was a bit cold. But we got out a half hour early and I didn't get stung by the bees so I consider that a success! Now everyone is freaking out about how we have to do a full lab report, and they even gave us an entire week off from classes to work on it. This blows my mind as I've had to write so many lab reports over the course of a weekend while having like a midsemester exam on the same day, so all I can say is melbourne students are babied! But I won't complain about an entire weeks material NOT being on the final exam – I already have enough to study for.

I had about an hour before my next class once I went home and ate lunch, so I decided to go find the veterinary school. I walked around aimlessly for about 30 minutes in the general direction that I thought it was and eventually found this wall with a giant horse head sticking out of it – I knew I'd found it! It looks GORGEOUS! Some of the buildings look brand new and I was able to creep inside the windows and see some lab benches with physiology books on them and got practically giddy. I want to go so bad!

My good mood was absolutely killed, though, when I walked back to my human-animal interactions class and opened my computer to check my genetics mark for the midsemester exam. Never has my heart dropped more than seeing the grade “68”. Thankfully a 68 is a B, but my brain has been trained to think “failure” when I see that. Looking at the other marks in the class, I feel a little bit better, but I definitely want to do better on the final now that I know what to expect. This mood was only heightened when I notice a shadow over me and look up to see jerkface trying to casually lean back on the chair next to me while tipping his chin up in a total “bro” like way. I tried as fast I could to look back down at my computer but it was too late. That little second of eye contact was enough to make the jerkface pounce. He sat down next to me.

I tried to look at my computer with such intensity I don't think I've ever done before – anything to avoid talking – but he started with a “so what did you do your essay on?” I quickly told him the welfare of chickens without even looking at him and continued with my reddit. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him turn his entire body to face me while he said “well what a coincidence, I wrote about the same exact thing. It was so boring.” Of course he had written about the same subject and thought it was boring. I wouldn't be surprised if he had seen me in the library researching and decided to do the same topic just so he could tell me he thought it was boring. I didn't even warrant his sentence with a response, and I guess he really can't take a hint, because he started up again with “So what are you doing tonight?” Luckily at that moment the class started and I pretended like I didn't hear him, and snuck out ten minutes early from class to avoid any future communication. It is starting to get to the point where I really have to ask myself what am I doing wrong??

Day 87

My first day back at school since spring break and I'm actually surprised of how awake I was in my classes. It helped that they were interesting stuff -- in depth thermal regulation of mammals in various climates in comparative animal phys and post-newtonian natural philosophy in philosophy. I really do love my classes at the moment! I also got back my philosophy essay and found I got a 95 on it, which is completely UNHEARD of in Australia seeing as they make an 80-100% an A. I was psyched! After catching up with some friends, I also realized how lucky I was to get all of my work done in the first week of break. So many of them pulled late if not all nighters last night in order to pull all their work together. Plus I'd hate to imagine how much money I would've spent if I spend my entire two weeks traveling... 4 days was definitely a big enough hit to my bank account.

Now I'm just trying really hard to get over being sick before this weekend! We finally got our news on what is happening at the Grampians, and I'm nervous but excited! I'm very nervous about the rock wall climbing portion of it. Now I know some of you are thinking, what the hell Kara you jumped out a plane but you're scared of a rock wall. Well, the last time I actually climbed a wall was when I was 8 at a Jessica Simpson concert and I ended up getting halfway up and started balling my eyes out. I haven't climbed a wall since. I really hope it's not a repeat event or else I will look like the biggest wuss ever. I guess we'll see!

Spring Break!

I got back last night from spring break in Brisbane! It was so much fun and had some of the most absolutely magical moments of my life!

The first day we got up at 4am to catch our flight out to Brisbane, which was ridiculously hard to do seeing as I couldn't fall asleep until maybe 2 or so, and even then I just drifted in and out of this crazy world where I had no idea if I was dreaming or not or what was reality. Anyway! We get to Brisbane and realize that we have to walk about a mile into the CBD to where our hotel is with our baggage. Only problem was we've gotten so used to the flat city of Melbourne, and Brisbane is about the hilliest place I've EVER SEEN so it was a mile on practically a 45 degree incline up, so by the time we got to the hotel we were pretty much dead. After that adventure, we decided to spend the extra cash to take the train to the XXXX brewery, where we had a tour! It was actually pretty boring, but it was something our friend wanted to do extremely badly so we went anyway. Afterwards we got changed into fancier clothes and had an amazing dinner right on the river front to celebrate my friend's birthday! It was absolutely gorgeous with the backlighting of the city and the lit up bridges over the water. The place was crazy expensive, but our friend treated us so my bank account didn't take quite the hit that it would've (thankfully..).

The next day we were supposed to go skydiving, but the weather was cloudy and rainy so we had to postpone it. So instead we walked around the city and went to Queen St, the main shopping plaza in Brisbane. All of us wanted to save our money for actual activities, so we just bought some silly souvenirs and headed over to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary! This was what I originally decided to go to Brisbane for, and it was ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT. We each got our picture taken holding a koala (mine was named Crumbles and she was absolutely adorable) and hand-fed kangaroos and wallabies and emus, and saw other Australian wildlife like Dingos, Echidnas, Wombats, and so many types of birds/eagles. It was by far my favourite part of the entire trip! It was also cool because so many celebrities have been there (LIKE T SWIFT!)!
Afterwards we went to South Bank beach and found the bench that the Renovators made for a challenge on the show. Me and Alyssa were absolutely freaking out because we absolutely LOVE the renovators so it was like seeing a celebrity...except a bench. But ya know, I was excited! We finished off the second night by wandering around the city looking desperately for a restaurant that was open (very difficult for a Thursday night, who would've thought) and ended up at this place called JoJo's. I had no idea at the time, but my Australia book even recommended this place – it was crazy good! They had basically any type of food you could ever want from stirfrys to steaks to mexican to pastas so all three of us got exactly what we wanted, and there were so many pretty lights everywhere. Gorgeous!

The third day we actually went skydiving!!! The company we went with was called Jump the Beach and was wicked fantastic. I would recommend them to anyone! We were supposed to jump from 11,000 ft because we just wanted a cheaper option than the tallest, 14,000 ft, but once we got in the air there was apparently a cold front at 11,000 ft so we all had to jump from the highest point. That gave us 60 seconds of free fall, and I was absolutely terrified but it was SO worth it! There was only a few seconds where I felt my stomach drop and then it just felt like I was floating on air. The only bad part was that it was so incredibly cold, apparently -6 degrees, so my arms were numb most of the day down. But it was definitely worth it and I'd recommend it to anyone, just wear long sleeves!! We landed right on Bells Beach and got beautiful views of the water and the coast. Absolutely amazinggg! We celebrated being alive that night by going out to China Town and actually just stumbled upon this hole in the wall Thai restaurant where I had the best pad thai of my entire life! No joke, I think I could probably eat that every day of my life and never get sick of it, it was SO GOOD. Afterwards we went to a cocktail bar just to go dancing and had so much fun! The age ranges were really interesting since people from our age to clear 40 year olds were there, and multiple people with wrinkles offered to buy me a drink – which was just plain creepy and I ended up running away to the bathroom multiple times in the night – but they played music like the Time Warp and music from Grease so we had so much fun dancing!

The last day we didn't have our flight until about 10pm so we decided to take a train down to the Gold Coast. Our friend really wanted to go to Surfer's Paradise since he's really into touristy type beaches, which honestly I think was a mistake since there were so many people you could barely move. All the souvenirs and food were also so expensive because it was such a touristy area, but it was nice to lay in the sun for awhile! Unfortunately I was pretty miserable the whole time to be honest because my friend had given me her cold, so I'm still kind of feeling like my head is going to explode at any moment, but as activities go, there are much worse things to do when you're sick! Plus I was at the Gold Coast, I couldn't really complain!

Now I'm happy to be home and ready to not spend money for awhile! Vacations here really do drain your pocket money more than anything.