Heaps of Fun in the Down Under

So I am well aware that it has been some time since the last time I blogged. Life has been crazy this past month. We've had visitors and gone on trips and everything. 2 weeks after having Harrison come visit the Gold Coast, my sisters Beth and Ali came to Australia to visit me! It was amazing having them here and we got into some ridiculous adventures which were not surprising considering when we get together, anything can happen. We roadtripped all the way to Sydney which is about a 13 hour drive. We stayed with Harrison got to see the sights of Sydney and then got majorly lost on the way home turning our already long road trip into a 17 hour one. It was nice to have more family come visit and we made some great memories. The only downfall was that they had difficulty getting the tan they so desperately wanted which made it the first time in my life that I was ever tanner than those two.

The Opera House!!

At the same time my sisters visited Jen's parents were in town which was fun to see them so there were visitors left and right!! Since than our days have been very busy trying to soak up the last rays of Australian sun and enjoying our last few nights in our lovely home by the sea. Our last weekend we were able to go to an actual AFL game with Scott and Jamie which was so much fun and the Brisbane Lions won even though everyone was losing faith! The next day we all went down to the Fox for the $2 steaks that the Brisbane boys had been telling us about for the past month. For only two dollars, it surprisingly wasn't too bad! I have left out heaps of stories but at least this is a quick update on the past month in Australia. I sorta failed on blogging these past weeks so my apologies but I will blog at least once more before I leave this country I've called home for the past 4 months!!

House Guests Galore!

This past weekend was probably one of the top 3 of my favorite weekends since I've been in Australia! It started off by seeing Shutter Island on Thursday night with my roommates which was a movie we had been wanting to see forever! It was an eerie movie that we called what the ending was going to be, but nonetheless pretty good! I attempted to go to bed early because the next morning Harrison was coming to visit at 7 in the morning!! Friday morning I went and got Harrison at the bus stop outside our place and we went directly to the beach to sit and talk and catch up. It was so nice to have a friendly face from APU come and visit and really comforting to have a member of our AC group Team Strip be there to talk to about everything to do with Australia. Harrison is studying in Sydney so it was awesome to catch up and realize how on the same page we both were on living in the Land Down Under. After spending four hours at the beach talking (according to Harrison thats how long we were there...questionable) we walked into Burleigh's town center area and got some breakfast at a cute cafe where Harrison was greatly disappointed by the the long stack of pancakes that consisted of only 2 tiny flap jacks.

I look awesome at 7 in the morning still in my pj's!!

Once we got back from breakfast and we all ran to the grocery store to buy food for the weekend, we headed down to Southport where we went to see a professional AFL (very similar to rugby but I can't for the life of me tell you the difference). The game was a lot of fun to go to and as I sat there on the grassy hill eating a burger with my roommates, Harrison and some friends from school I was in complete bliss :) .

On the loooong bus ride to the AFL game

After the game, one of my favorite pictures of the weekend!! :)

Once we finally got back to the apartment after our lovely bus driver decided to take us all around what seemed like the entire Gold Coast, we got home and cooked up some steak fajitas for dinner which were amazing! That night we just hung out, Harrison went running into the ocean because he had a random obsession with going into the water in the dark. That whole escapade lasted about ten minutes before he came running out because it was so cold. Later in the night when everyone went to bed and Harrison and I were sorta bored he gave me permission to shave the name of our AC group's name into the back of his head. His hair was already really short so it didn't take much for my artistic skills to show up in his head.

Proud moment for me. Harrison didn't keep it long though :(

The next morning we were pretty tired so we slept in really late and than once we woke up we headed over to McDonald's to use some of their handy dandy unreliable Wifi. Well unreliable it was, as we spent at least an hour trying to skype with people from our AC group and set up times of when we would be able to. We were pretty unsuccessful which was slightly annoying but afterwards we headed up to our rooftop on top of my apartment building and talked for awhile while watching the beautiful Gold Coast sunset. Being able to talk to Harrison this weekend was so refreshing and makes me miss Team Strip so much!

Totally rocking our awesome Alpha shirts too!!

After the sunset we went in and I made the house some dinner and than we went to show Harrison downtown Surfer's Paradise which he absolutely loved. I mean it's no Sydney but it is our own little big city right next to us :) At one point during the night, Harrison accidentally misplaced his wallet and we were never able to find it! That put a slight damper on the night because he lost everything in it including my license and some other cards of mine he was holding for me because I didn't have my purse. Luckily he still had his passport back at our place so that was the most important!! On Sunday we woke up tried to skype with AC members, had no luck so then I had to go with Jen to go pick up her sister from the train station while Harrison went and caught some waves surfing with Matt. Turns out Jen's sister, Alisha caught some buses as well as walked to our place so she was actually waiting in our lobby for a majority of the time that Jen and I were walking around the train station looking for her! Also some friends of Jen's from California, Zack and Josh, who were travelling around Australia before heading home on Tuesday came to stay with us. So Sunday evening we had a huge barbeque with everyone and hung out and got to know each other. It was a really fun night especially because the boys Zack and Josh introduced us to the phenomenal Australian ice cream, Heaven, that we had never tried. Let's just say we will be having more of that little piece of Heaven! The night ended pretty early because all of our guests were tired from traveling. Little ole' room 2204 was squished with people with the 2 Bowker sisters and I squished onto our bed, Zack and Josh snuggled up on the pull out couch and Harrison made a bed out of the cushions from the couch! Quite the set up! Monday I took all of our house guests to the beach while my roommates worked on schoolwork. At the beach Harrison and I got caught in a rip tide while playing in the water and almost died but that's just the usual here in Australia's waters :)

We were finally able to skype with Carisa and Hilary in South Africa which was so nice to see them and the 4 of us be together even though it was for a short time and through a video camera! Harrison needed to catch his flight later that afternoon and it was sad to say bye to him but I enjoyed a great weekend with a great friend! After he left, we took the rest of our houseguests to see Surfer's Paradise and caught some dinner at a really cool Irish pub called Waxy's where they had live music and the guy was singing a cool version of Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry" so I was in hog heaven with that in itself! After hanging out there the boy's only request for their last night in Australia was to go play laser tag! It was such a simple request that we had to comply so off to the arcade we went!

Sadly, the boys left this morning and Alisha went to Sydney to visit a friend for two days so now we're stuck alone with presentations and paper's looming above all our heads. Better kick it into gear!

Beef Pies at Midnight

Welp another weekend has passed in the Land Down Under. That means another seven days I have spent here in Australia and seven days less that I have left here :( But it was a weekend well spent! On Thursday night we all went out to dinner at a restaurant down the street from us called Mermaid Tavern with some friends with school. It was nice to eat out with friends and it was nice restaurant with a cool atmosphere. Afterwards after a failed attempt to go putt putting we all just went to our apartment and hung out. Friday Matt, Jen and I headed to the beach even though it was slightly cloudy still (no news there). After observing some sea gulls yelling at each other on the sand and creating a scenario as to why the sea gulls were being far from polite to each other, Jen and I decided to go play in the ocean. So there we were splashing around and getting knocked down by the waves like rag dolls and Jen all of a sudden freaked out. A leaf had touched her leg and she thought it was another blue bottle jellyfish. Silly girl was mistaken. Five minutes passed. All of sudden I see the little Blonde from Burbank cringe in pain. An actual blue bottle had stung her. For the 2nd time this trip. So least to say, that was the end of our lovely play time in the ocean.

Saturday we all went out to dinner at Hogsbreath Steak house which is a restaurant where they prepare the steak for 18 hours to get it super super tender. It was delicious and one of the best steaks I have ever had, no wonder they're famous for their steaks!

Sunday was a lot of fun because we all went to the water park Wet N Wild which is nothing compared to Water World in Colorado but it was a good attempt :) It wasn't a very sunny day but it didn't rain so we couldn't complain too much! Overall it was a nice fun weekend that sadly had to end with studying for my 2nd spanish test but I can't forget that I'm supposed to be here studying!!

Yesterday after completing our spanish test that we had thought was at 10am not 11 Jen and I went home to nap and try to make up for the loss of sleep from the night before due to studying and talking ( more talking than actual studying but oh well). When we woke up no one was really hungry for dinner so we went straight to the Putt putting place at a 2nd attempt to complete this fun activity we have been striving for. I didn't start out so hot on this fun pass time but I finished 2nd overall which was decent to me considering I was going up against Tiger Woods aka Jennifer Bowker (minus the scandals). Once we got home at 11:30, we were all famished so we tried the Australian favorite, beef pie. There's nothing like enjoying a beef pie, white rice (remember I live with 2 Asians) and watching the Oscars at midnight on a Monday night. Gotta love Australia!

This weekend I'm suuuuper excited for because Harrison from APU is coming to visit because he's studying in Sydney this semester. It'll be nice to see a friendly face from home and I can't wait to catch up! Nanae's friend from home is coming on Friday too to stay with us for the wekend and Jen's sister is coming to stay with us for a whole week on Sunday not to mention 2 other people from California that are travelling through Australia and need a place to stay on Sunday and Monday. So to say the least, it's going to be a full house at Apartment 2204!! G'day mates!!

Rain, Rain. Come Again another day.

Well this weekend was rather unexciting because I spent the entire time studying for my Social Psychology midterm that was on Saturday. Pretty much from Wednesday night to Saturday afternoon I studied, ate, watched movies, got a little sleep and studied some more. I studied everywhere. On Thursday I went on the beach after it rained and it was nice and gloomy so I sat out there for a couple of hours studying. I studied on the couch, at the kitchen table, on our porch, on my bed. Everywhere! Thursday night, Nanae and I took a break from studying and went and opened up an account at the movie rental place down the street. On Friday Jen, Nanae and I studied hard but with tons of breaks in between. Jen decided she couldn't study any more so she went out Friday night with Matt while Nanae and I rented another movie to take a break from another all night of studying while it rained cats and dogs outside! Saturday we all woke up early to get some studying done before the test and I tried my first McDonald's pancakes in Australia. Nothing too great. Small portion and expensive. Like everything else here! After our brains were way too full of useful information about Social Psychology, we headed off in the pouring rain to Uni to get hit hard by the midterm. The midterm was alright, I felt like I had just gotten ran over by a bus after it but hey that's pretty much how I feel after everything to do with school here, so I'm getting used to it! That evening all of us were just so exhausted from studying that we watched a movie and went to bed early. Sunday it was still raining and we were informed that there was a tsunami coming right towards us due to the earthquake! They said anyone in the southern part of Queensland needs to be cautious and stay off the beaches. Well turns out, our little shack is located about as south as you can be and still be in Queensland, and right across the beach! So we were slightly worried but I was just planning on booking it up to the roof if I saw a huge wave coming, it couldn't be 11 stories high right? Well no one really seemed to listen to that warning because when I went running Sunday morning everyone was on the beach like it was the safest place to be. When I was running I came across a random national park and went for a little hike up to the top of the hill where it overlooked the ocean and I could see for miles on the left and right sides of me. I wish I had brought my camera but that's not something I usually equip myself when I'm going jogging. Right when I started jogging back the mile and half back home, Mother Nature thought it would be nice to began a torrential downpour of rain. That's when everyone thought it would be a good idea to finally get off the beach and I was just trying to sprint through the rain before my ipod broke. That night I thought I would check out the beach myself because I saw the moon shining off the ocean from my balcony and it was just calling out to me to go appreciate it. The only catch was that I had to sit way far up on the sand because the tide was up so high that it covered about 4/5 of the sand that is usually considered the beach part. It was kinda eery how far the water would come up but mesmerizing at the same time. But then because the waters were coming up so high they brought with them all kinds of nasty critters like crabs and random bugs so I got grossed out and the mesmerizing ended quickly so I went inside and called it a night. This week has been the usual boringness of school and raining everyday. I'm for sure ready for the raindrops to stop falling on my head and the sunshine to come back . Love you all!

Let Me Just Stab the Can, It'll Work I Promise

I would say that this past week has been a pretty good one! It was relaxing during the week. Last week I made my roommates dinner two times which was a pretty big deal considering I usually stick to just setting the table for dinner. One of the nights was Taco night, just bringing a little of my Mexican ethnicity into Room 2204 since our two Asian roommates make rice every night. The other night I made dinner all I needed was a can opener but of course that is the one thing that they forgot to equip our apartment with. Yes we need a knife sharpener, but not a can opener. So I went next door, thinking our neighbors would be able to help me out and I could borrow one. No, not that easy. Out of our entire floor, no one answered their doors. I was forced to go up to the next level just to retrieve a can opener before Matt completely destroyed the can by hitting it with anything he could get his hands on. But the rest of the week was nice, where we just hung out and watched the Olympics. We went to the beach a lot this weekend which was fun! One of the days Matt was trying to teach me how to paddle on the surf board and while I was bobbing along in the waves Jen got a little over her head (literally) in the waves and like almost drowned before Matt calmed her down and brought her to shore. It was a pretty funny matter once we realized she was okay. Saturday the Brisbane boys came down to hang out again which was fun and when we went to the beach on Sunday we walked down to the huge surf competition that was on our beach. We only made it there for the finals but it was still fun to watch. Those surfers are amazing! Also on Saturday when we were just sitting there hanging out watching the Olympics, all of a sudden our electricity went out. We all had the same fear, we didn't pay our electricity bill so they cut it off. Of course it was 4:41 pm and the reception office closed at 4:30. So we needed to call the person on duty and figure out what the deal was with our electricity. Turns out, the reason behind the shortage was that Jen put one of the comforters in the drier and it couldn't handle it being that full so it blew the whole outlet. Yeah that was embarrassing...

Sunday night the band Shwayzee was playing in Surfer's Paradise and we of course had to go because they are Matt and Nanae's absolute favorite band. So we all headed down there and watched them perform. It was so much fun! We were right up next to the stage and Nanae got to knuckles it with Shwayzee and Matt got a high five. It was so much fun singing along to Shwayzee, with my 3 roommates in Australia. Yesterday was a fun day, Matt Jen and I all went to the beach (Nanae had class). Jen was my little surfing paddling instructor and was teaching me how to paddle out in the waves. She was a hilarious teacher considering she was still a little scared of going far out in the water because of her rough experience from a few days earlier in the ocean. So she just stood ankle deep and yelled instructions at me. Than Matt, our little own pro surfer came and took me directly out to the big waves and would push me into the waves. He only pushed me into a few but I was able to at least get on my knees on the board! That was exciting. After my attempt at surfing and swallowing half the ocean, we went in to cook dinner and read for politics. Now I'm sitting at school in the middle of my 4 hour break between classes, chomping on trail mix. Ahh trail mix, a reminder of Colorado :)

Sorry if this was a lame post, I felt like I had a lot to say but I can't remember any of it now! Until next time!

Woah... Wait... Dad! What are you doing here?!

So there it was Wednesday afternoon, I'm tired after pulling an all nighter and I have one class to go. Jen and I are sitting in the lounge as usual because God forbid we go some place else on that campus, and my mother dearest wanted to Skype. I was so oblivious to my entire day that I didn't find it suspicious in the least bit that my mom was extremely curious about my location on campus. She told me she had a map of my campus and just wanted to know where I was. I graciously informed her, without thinking it was strange that my mom was looking at a map of Bond. All of a sudden some strange little mexican man comes and kisses my cheek. I look up and low and behold it was my dad standing there just smiling. I was completely dumbfounded. I was so confused at what was going on and could not wrap my head around the fact that my dad was standing right here in Australia with me. I finally got enough composure to get up and hug him as Jen continued to sit there still not completely understanding what just happened. Apparently for the past two weeks my parents have been planning on having my dad surprise me in Australia and not even my sisters knew he was coming! Well they planned well because I was for sure surprised! Since I still had one more class to go to in an hour, I gave my dad a quick tour of Bond but than of course it started raining in the middle of my top notch tour so I had to cut it short. After class I gave my dad the grand tour of our apartment on the beach before we headed to his hotel. That in itself was an adventure considering he needed to learn real quick how to drive on the opposite of the road. It was a difficult task and every time he tried to turn on his blinker, the window wipers flew up. No one knows when he is turning and he turned into the wrong lane a few times but hey at least that windshield is clean! His first night here we just grabbed dinner down at the hotel restaurant. We were going to start his vacation off in style by having the legit seafood buffet thinking it couldn't be more than a $30 buffet but after asking it ended up being a $75 buffet. Good thing we inquired or my mother would not be pleased with that bill! We just stuck to the ordinary entrees offered. On Thursday, my dad was still a little hit by the jet lag and that whole minor detail of jumping 17 hours ahead, so we just decided to lounge by the pool and let him rest. That evening we went to my apartment where we threw the classic shrimp along with steak on the barbie and had a barbeque on the roof of our apartment. It was a huge, delicious and fun dinner. Us five ended up hanging out and talking until 10pm when they close the roof and we had to get off! Friday morning after meeting my doctor partner to work on our presentation in the morning, we went and picked up my roommates for a trip to Byron Bay. We weren't completely sure of the whereabouts of this supposed beautiful place but we had a GPS in the rental car so we figured we would be golden. That was a mistake. The nice lady who told us the directions of Byron Bay must have decided that taking the long long scenic route was a better way to go instead of the quick and direct route. We found ourselves somewhere in the countryside where there was no ocean in sight. It ended up taking two hours to get to Byron Bay when it was only supposed to take 45 minutes at the most. At least my dad got to see a little more of Australia!

the countryside

After driving through the winding roads of the countryside and the mountains, we finally arrived at Byron Bay and boy was it worth the drive! We hiked up to the awesome Lighthouse which was the furthest eastern point of the continent! After grabbing some smoothies we went to some big rocks where the waves were crashing against to take pictures. As Jen was making her way to take a picture with me, she slipped and cut her toe and ankle, that girl has had an injury filled trip to say the least!

He's so adorable

Right After Jen cut her leg...

Once we returned to Surfer's I took my daddio to Hungary Jack's which is Australia's version of Burger King. BK is his utmost favorite restaurant in the states so it would make sense for him to get some in the land down under! Saturday was nice we just talked, hung out by the pool and got burnt to a crisp. For dinner we tried a nice Thai restaurant which had really cool legit artifacts surrounding us and my dad was obsessed with the large wooden elephant sitting next to our table.

Sunday we woke up and tried out the Surf City Church in Surfer's Paradise. After the service we went out in search for a place to get breakfast but we weren't having good luck considering it was already 11:30. We finally struck gold and were able to get breakfast food at a little cafe near the water. The rest of the day I needed to work on preparing for my presentation with my brilliant doctor partner for Tuesday. I felt bad that we were inside the rest of the day but I need to at least seem like I know what I'm talking about in my presentation next to my partner who was the main speaker at a medical conference this past weekend. We're obviously at the same level on public speaking. My dad didn't seem to mind, he was enthralled by the speed skating in the Olympics for a majority of the day.

On Monday we went into Surfer's Paradise and I had my dad try our favorite chicken place... yeah you guessed it, Nando's!!! He of course loved it like the rest of us.

Obviously in love with Nando's by that expression

We then went to the local touristy store to buy him some souvenirs for people where he of course embarrassed me in front of the young Australian clerk boy. He wouldn't be my dad if he didn't embarrass me somewhere right?! We than grabbed some ice cream at Cold Rock (Australia's version of Cold Stone, see the connection?) and than I had to go finish for my presentation with the doctor. It was a nice last day in the Gold Coast with my daddio. I loved having him here and was sad to say bye. It was a great surprise though! Now next in the family to come... Dumb and Dumber (Beth and Ali). I can't wait for my sister's to come and visit in April!

That Lizard is Planning Something...

Well this week has been a very laid back week but has kept us all busy with school. I'm still preparing my presentation with my super smart doctor partner and trying to figure out my politics class. But this weekend was a fun one. It officially really started on Friday when Matt and Nanae headed about 20 minutes south of Burleigh to Coolengatta where there are amazing waves to go surfing on. After taking our time to get ready, and baking under the sun at the bus stop, Jen and I finally met up with them at the huge beach. Nanae had gotten stung by a jellyfish on the arm while she was paddling out (I am the only girl left out of us 3 to get stung, I'm crossing my fingers it won't happen!) so she was just chilling on the beach while Matt caught some waves. Jen and I took the easiest of hikes up a hill (easy because they so politely put in stairs to use) where you could see all of Coolengatta, Burleigh in the distance and even Surfer's Paradise all the way across the water. It was beautiful. We just stood up there and looked out over the waves while discussing the plan of the lizard what was looking up at us while standing a few feet away. Apparently Jen is frightened of lizards because one ran across her bare feet as a child so now she freaks out whenever she sees one. She was convinced that the lizard was planning on attacking her and it was holding eye contact with her. I convinced her to not be so vain and think that the lizard was staring at her but was just planning on having his family of lizards come attack her from behind. It was a ridiculous dialogue that we shared over this lizard for about 20 minutes and if you want to know all of it, check Jen's blog soon. We than walked down and all four of us headed over to Nando's chicken again! We enjoyed our time at the amazing chicken restaurant and than finally took the bus home. When we got home Jen wasn't feeling well at all so she napped while the rest of us examined the game of Cricket for a few hours. We are determined to learn the rules of this game so we tried to figure it out by watching it for awhile. We now finally have a basic understanding but are still in search of a little clarification on some parts of this popular pass time activity.

The next morning I woke up to go to the grocery store looking for a thermometer for Jen because when she is sick, it is apparently a necessity to be aware of her temperature the entire time. I had no such luck finding one but I did buy a lot of snack food for the sick roommate to chomp on while she is all sniffles. Later on our friends Jamie and Scott came down from Brisbane to visit because they were surfing in Burleigh. Matt joined the two in going surfing and while they were gone Jen and I decided to watch our classic show that we love making fun of, Laguna Beach on her computer. Nanae came in and commented on how stupid the show was but we knew that once she started watching it, we totally would get her hooked on it. So for about three hours we all laid on our bed and watched the completely realistic high school drama show. It was some classic girl roommate bonding time. When the others got back from getting rocked by the waves, we all went out for some Thai food. I never had any before so I had no idea what I was getting myself into but it turned out to be quite delicious. It was a nice chill evening until it started storming and raining really hard. We went out in the rain and it was raining so hard my umbrella collapsed under all the pressure or something. It was slightly ridiculous. So now it is Sunday and I have a Spanish test tomorrow that I am not looking forward to considering the only phrase I can remember is "A que se dedica?" Overall a good weekend in the Down Under

I'll post pictures of Coolengatta once I upload them to my computer :)

B TOWN or as the locals call it- Brisbane

Welp it's been a little bit since I updated my blog, but that's because I was out of town this weekend! We decided to take a quick weekend trip up to Brisbane for a few days. After grabbing some sushi (it's become a regular activity) on Friday we went and caught the one hour train ride up to Brisbane. Public transportation like the bus and train have become pretty regular to us these days, and I don't even mind the long trips. I usually just pop in my headphones and listen to my ipod which makes the trip relaxing and quick. Matt began to make me an anklet on the train ride while I just looked out at the scenery and Jen sang silently to herself.

view from the train- beautiful

We have some friends in Brisbane so we got picked up at the train station and then went to their place where we enjoyed some homemade spaghetti. We got into Brisbane in the late evening so we just hung out there and played Rock Band (apparently the musical game is a big hit worldwide). The next morning we woke up and took the bus into town. The area where we were at was like a a huge outdoor and indoor mall with heaps of stores and places to eat. Our friend Jamie was our official tour guide and showed us all the cool shopping stores and introduced us to Nando's. It is a chicken restaurant that is absolutely delicious! I can't believe I've been missing out on it all my life.

Deliciousness

We then went and saw Sherlock Holmes at the cinema in the mall. The way they do movies here is a little different than back home, where when you buy the ticket you tell them where you want to sit in the theatre, back, middle or front and than you get a specific seat like D 12 or something. So everyone has specific seating in the theatre! It was a fun movie and a good way to end our day! It was cool to visit the city of Brisbane and now its one of the things we can check off our list!!

Other than Brisbane we have just been enjoying our apartment. We had steak and rice the other night and just dimmed the overhead light (we wanted candles but that was the next best thing, dimming the light) and watched the storm outside our window. Last night as Jen and I attempted to learn our 2nd language of spanish for class (and I failed miserably at rolling my R's, you would never know I am half Mexican) Matt and Nanae went and bought groceries. They bought some kangaroo so we can finally try it but last night we stuck with chocolate chip pancakes for supper. We than watched Valkraie (spelling?) and called it a night. The nice relaxing nights where we enjoy a good dinner and end with a movie are usually my favorite nights here.

So nothing super new, just trying to get through classes. I need to prepare for a presentation with my 30 year old partner who is a doctor and has given presentations in front of hundreds of people. When he asked how I was at presenting I told him I took Public Comm last year so I felt pretty confident. I then asked him and he was like "pretty good, I give speeches all the time, I'm giving one tomorrow in front of 250 people about my medical research" How I got paired up with him... No idea. We'll see how that goes! Prayers are always welcomed!

15 Minutes of Happiness

You know those moments where you just feel completely content with life and that you are really happy to be in that moment. I've had a lot of those here. One of them being when we first arrived at our apartment and I just stood on the roof and looked over at the ocean on one side of the building and than the Gold Coast on the other side, pure bliss. Yesterday I had another one of those moments. It was our first thunderstorm in the Down Under! It was raining and the clouds were dark and looked like they were just eating up the blue sky. It was cool to see them move closer and closer to where the sky meets the ocean. Jen doesn't experience thunderstorms very often and she was freaking out in excitement over the thunder and lightening. That made the whole experience better. Her and I walked to McDonald's where I got a 50 cent ice cream cone (now that's a steal if nothing else) and than we walked back to our apartment. We sat on our porch and watched the rain come down, listened to the thunder and could see the ocean in the distance. She sat and ate her Big Mac while I chomped on my turkey sandwich and we listened to Justin Timberlake's version of Hallelujah (amazing everyone should listen to it). As I sat there and just took in everything, it was one of those moments where I was completely content with where I was and really enjoyed myself. It's those simple moments of bliss that I love. It is those small blessings in disguise where you can sit on a porch in a thunderstorm with your best friend looking out at the ocean that you can't ignore. You just gotta appreciate them.

Super random post but blogs are supposed to be about our thoughts right? Well that was my thought for yesterday. The rest of the day was nice because than we took like a two hour nap in the thunderstorm while falling asleep to her playlist that was labelled "Rain." Obviously the perfect music to fall asleep to. When we woke up our roommates were home from class and Matt was napping on the couch (us 4 are all big nappers if you haven't noticed from previous blogs) and so we all just chilled and watched tv the rest of the night. Nanae went to bed early cuz she had an 8 o'clock class this morning as Jen, Matt and I enjoyed a very intense episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent (yeah we're in Australia watching law and order at night, pretty american right?) We all got ready for bed around 2 and than realized we weren't tired and decided to watch Inglorious Bastards (super gory movie but pretty good) until 5:30 in the morning. It was cool to see the sun come up from our porch and the sidewalks become littered with runners. Today I finally opened my Australian bank account, Matt and Nanae bought a surfboad and tomorrow we're going to head to Brisbane for the weekend! Nothing too special as usual but hopefully there will be a lot to blog about since we're going somewhere new this weekend!

What Did I Do to Deserve These Blessings?

What Did I Do to deserve these blessings is the question I have been continuously asking myself as I have spent this third weekend in Australia. Saturday was our last day living in Surfer's Paradise and it was a good one. We woke up around 10 am and headed to the beach where we all just hung out. Matt and Nanae peppered with the volleyball (they have to get ready for their intense beach volleyball team they joined with the school...) and Jen and I just sat and watched them and chit chatted. It was relaxing and perfect. Once we got back we went to Pacific Fair shopping center had some sushi for lunch, shopped and than headed back to clean our apartment! It was a good day in Surfer's Paradise. Today we woke up at 8:30 to finish cleaning since we didn't the night before and cleaned our ridiculously disgusting apartment. We swept forever considering our apartment pretty much turned into a sand box in the last two weeks. The whole time we were planning on taking all of our luggage, hopping on the bus and taking it to our hotel. Luckily Matt made a little friend that lived across from us where we have been staying and he was nice enough to take all of our luggage and Matt to our apartment while we took the bus. It was super helpful to not have to lug everything all the way to Burleigh Heights from Surfer's. Once we got there, it was about 11 and we weren't able to get to our apartment until 1. So all of us being tired, hungry and hot decided to go find a place to eat lunch to waste time. We stumbled into Sushi Train and it was delicious and killed about an hour of time. We than just sat in the lobby of our apartment building for the next hour until we could get our keys to our place. The wait was well worth it!

Our living room

Just the first part of our deck before it wraps around

the view from our porch

After jumping around and enjoying our apartment for a little bit we all unpacked and got ourselves situated. But before we did that we needed to head down to the store and buy the necessities for life in our new home. We bought food for our huge dinner we have been planning to have on our first night in the apartment: steak, garlic shrimp, salad, garlic bread and rice. We came back and cooked it on the roof of our apartment which is as amazing as our apartment itself!

The roof of our apartment building

The view from the roof... Beautiful

As I stood at the railing of the roof and looked out over the ocean and than the sunset over the Gold Coast I was overwhelmed about how much God has blessed me by bringing me to the place and giving me this experience. I never dreamed of how beautiful it would be and how I would be living here for 3 months. I still haven't fully grasped that concept that whenever I want to go on that roof I can go up and just look around at God's beautiful creation. I am so happy to finally be in our final residence!

Life is a Journey, Not a Destination

Welp, I can't really blog about too much new happenings, because it's kind of been the same old, same old. I only have class two days a week, so Wednesday was my Friday :) It's weird that its now Friday and my weekend is only half over while everyone else's is starting. Today has been a good week in terms of catching up with people. On Tuesday I was able to skype with Nicole, Josh and Ryan and that was so much fun. I talked to them for over an hour and it really made my day. Skyping with people is a little bitter sweet because it's so nice to see them, but at the same time really hard to not be able to actually be in the same room with each other. Josh kept wanting to teleport here and I would of loved if that was possible. I miss them a lot more than I ever thought I would.

I'll miss him so much :)

Christmas time with my favorite people

Josh left for South Africa today along with Carisa, Bianca and Hilary and I am so so proud of all of them for taking that huge leap of faith and going there. It's going to be such an exciting experience for them, I just wish I was there to witness it with all of them!

Wednesday was a fun packed day of video chatting as well! I skyped with Josh and Bianca which was really nice and than I got to talk to my parents for about an hour which was so much fun. They're so funny and I'm so proud to call them my parents. We had a really good time talking (probably because we weren't discussing money as usual) and they make me laugh really hard. I am so thankful for the sacrifices they have made for me in my life especially for letting me travel here. They're just the bee's knees :)

After getting out of my long long day of class I was than able to see most of my amazing Team Strip AC group. It was so nice seeing them and I wished I was able to be there with them. I miss them a lot and it's weird not being with them since they were such a huge part of my life first semester.

The last two days we have just been hanging out and enjoying our last few days living in Surfer's Paradise. We are moving to our permanent residence on Sunday which is exciting but we're also going to be sad to say bye to our lovely motel in Surfer's. It was so close to everything so it was nice to live right in the heart of the city. We went and took a look at our apartment last night and from the outside it looked really nice, so we're hoping it looks just as good inside! I miss everyone at home a whole bunch but I am also excited to be living with the three roommates I have. I'm excited for us to adapt to each other and they way we live. We're going to grow together, bicker together, eat together, play together and live together. It's going to be an experience but it's all going to be worth it in the end. We will for sure never forget each other because living with people for 4 months of your life, that's something you'll remember forever.

Oh Yeah... I Came Here for School!

Well it is only Tuesday of my first week of school, and after a variety of schedule changing, tomorrow will end up being my Friday! The week began with me having to wake up at 5:30 so I could catch the 7 am bus alone to Bond since my roommates didn't have class until 11! My first class was Criminal Profiling which I decided to take because I just needed an extra class but it doesn't actually go towards my major, so I was never totally sure if I wanted to keep it! Well I went in expecting to be surrounded by college students, that was not the case. Out of about the 30 students that were there, half of them seemed over the age of 30 at least. Apparently graduate students took the class too... It was defiantly intimidating because the class was mainly for people who actually want to go into Criminal Profiling as a career, which is not me. From there after a little break, I headed over to my Spanish lecture with Jen. That class was great! Our teacher is adorable and her name is Alicia and she pronounces it in Spanish which is how my dad calls my dad Alicia. So every time she uses her name as an example, it reminds me of my family :) Than wonderful Alicia explained to us that our lecture class was an independent study, so we actually only had to come back on Monday's three more times the rest of the semester. After hearing that, I knew I needed to get rid of Criminal Profiling so I could have Mondays off. After the first day of classes us four came back, Jen and I made tortellini and it was a nice chill evening with the roommates.

For my 2nd day of classes I had to do the same routine in the morning because I had another 8 am class which was Human and Behaviour (I didn't spell it wrong, everything here is spelled with 'ou' instead of just 'o' I'm going to have to get used to that or else I'll get marked off on my assignments. No good.). I replaced criminal profiling with this class, but this class isn't going towards my major either. It was a little hard to stay awake in class but not nearly as intimidating as the prior 8 am class. From there I went to my International Relations class. That was painful. I know very little about politics and international relations, and this class is for people with the major and everyone seems to know what the teacher is talking about except for Jen and I.

After sitting through that rough two hours, I was able to skype with Nicole, Josh and Ryan for about an hour and half and it was sooo much fun. I didn't realize how much I truly missed them until I talked to them for so long. It was really nice to see and joke around with them and it for sure brightened my day up :) After classes we headed back to the apartment and Jen, Matt and I sat on our porch with turkey sandwiches and Doritos and just enjoyed the nice 80 degree weather while listening to reggae music. We than took about a 3 hour nap and got up just in time to make dinner.

The past two days have been hard in the morning but the afternoons don't even feel like I had class at all. It has been really nice and hopefully won't get too stressful as the weeks continue. I am continuing to learn a lot about myself being here. There are still some times of home sickness but as we become more acquainted with the place, it becomes more comfortable. We move into our apartment on Sunday so we are all very excited about that fact! I hope everything is going well for all of you and I miss everyone :)

First Weekend in Gold Coast

Well after getting the wonderful free Wi-Fi from Bond on Friday (which was the last time I updated I think?) Our little group of four took our favorite and only choice of transportation, the bus, to the Paradise mall where we bought some groceries for the following week at our hotel/motel. That was quite an interesting trip considering we have the two healthy Asians Matt and Nanae who were planning all of our meals for the nights for us. When you looked in their basket one would spy with their little eye, eggs, chicken, salad, turkey and other healthy foods. When you would look in Jen's and my grocery basket, one would spy with their little eye: two types of Doritos, two types of Cadburry chocolate, some more Nutella, some sour gummy candy, white bread and for those of you who know me well of course we had cookies in our basket!! Successful shopping trip even though there was a wide range of foods purchased! That evening we popped a frozen lasagna in the miniature toaster oven and figured Matt would be okay left in charge of preparing dinner for the evening. Well that was our first mistake of the night! Instead of putting the setting to bake, he put it on grill so within ten minutes our hotel room was filled with smoke and the top layer of lasagna was black! Being the handy man of the hotel room he is, his solution was to just scrape off the top layer and continue to bake it. Well it worked and we were able to enjoy lasagna for dinner. The 2nd mistake of the night was thinking that it would be a good idea to go to the beach at night and just go ankle deep into the water. Once we did that we were regretting that decision almost immediately because Jen got stung by a jellyfish! (Her luck on this trip could improve a little). I ran and yelled at Matt to pee on her ankle, going off of the show Friends where they perform that action but she refused to let him. So after helping her back to the hotel, Nanae being the brilliant soon-to-be physical therapist, ran to the gas station, got vinegar and we poured that on her ankle (where the stinger from the jellyfish was still attached). Finally everything calmed down after a little bit and we all went to bed.

Saturday was a nice pleasant day in Australia too! Matt and Nanae, very excited about their purchase of a volleyball from the previous night,went to the beach to play volleyball for a couple of hours, while Jen and I went into town and shopped around all day. We wandered through stores, made some cute dress purchases and than returned for dinner of chicken and salad made by our roommates.

Today was about the same events. We were planning on going to a church we saw earlier in the week but we all woke up too late (epic fail) so we were unable to. We all headed down to the beach where we played in the ocean, made a sand lizard, ran on the beach and just laid out. This evening we walked half a mile to a nearby McDonald's to get free wi-fi. After having an expensive fast food meal (we're in Australia, no surprise there that it's expensive!) we are able to use the slow slow wi-fi and than later on we might go into town to catch a movie. Not a super eventful weekend so I hope no one fell asleep while reading this post. School starts tomorrow so I'll let you know how first day of classes go! Wish me luck!

Nutella-Survival in Australia

Welp not too much exciting has happened since my last post. I know my first few posts were a lot in them but now I think they're going to in a way 'plateau' because we're almost settled in Gold Coast (even though we're not at our apartment yet) and we're about to begin classes on Monday. But I will still keep you updated! Yesterday was the epitome of living the life in Australia. Jen and I woke up early and walked to the beach with our bowls of cereal and than sat in the rec room at our hotel with the breeze blowing and just chatted. Once Nanae and Matt woke up we all headed over to the beach about two blocks away and laid out and Matt played in the ocean for a little bit, but not before all of us having some toast with Nutella on it! Since Australia is so expensive to live in our only savior to not eat out every single meal is to enjoy toast with Nutella on it! We have all fallen in love with the chocolate spread and eat about 4 pieces a day if not more. Nutella in Australia equals our survival.

All of us were starving so we thought we would head back in search of somewhere to eat. We also needed to find a doctor's office because it was discovered that morning that our dear Jen has the wonderful Pink Eye! So we were now in search for food and eye drops, two things that go together perfectly :) We got cleaned up and caught the bus (we like to think of ourselves as experts on the bus system here now, but we still got off on the wrong stop so apparently we were not accurate in this belief). We found a nice Italian restaurant in the heart of Surfer's Paradise where they served us chicken nuggets with our pizza... After lunch/dinner we walked around looking at the shops and just messed around.

We thought this photo was us exactly, 2 brunettes, 1 blonde and 1 guy. We reenacted it at one of the shops.

We all got smoothies and shakes and listened to a guy playing his guitar on the sidewalk while we were the 4 awkward Americans who sang along to all his songs. It was a warm evening so we walked back to our hotel where we all just sat on the bed and talked. Once everyone was ready to go to sleep I went for a run on the beach which turned out to be really pleasant but apparently I'm extremely out of shape because my calves are feeling it today! All together it was a really nice day in Australia relaxing with friends before we have to start school on Monday! We'll see how that goes because apparently classes are a lot harder in the Land Down Under than they are in America the Beautiful.

It's still taking a lot of getting used to living here but I'm learning to one day at a time!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles...

We were unbelievably happy to be leaving the hostel but if we knew what kind of day we had ahead of us, we probably wouldn't have been itching to leave so badly. We began the morning at 6 am to it pouring rain outside. We were instructed to return our keys, have breakfast and be outside and ready to get on the bus by 7:30. Well one small problem with that plan is I lost my key earlier in the week. So I had to go pay for a new key after eating the usual hostel breakfast. We brought our luggage out and dragged our suitcases through the huge puddles surrounding the hostel and out to the bus. After standing and getting soaked while waiting to load our suitcases onto the bus we were finally on our way to the airport. Once we arrived at the airport we were informed that the plane couldn't carry both our suitcases so we had to choose one to come on our plane and the other suitcase would be delivered around 8pm at the university later that night. Extremely thrilled at this fact, we tried to repack some items real quick and than checked in for our flight. We boarded the flight and luckily Matt, Jen and I were sitting next to each other so that was helpful for the 2 hour flight back to lovely Brisbane. We played a little game on the plane where we all listened to our Ipods and than would journal our favorite lyrics from each song. Sounds dumb, but pretty entertaining. When we got off the flight under the impression that we had transportation to the Gold Coast from Brisbane which was an hour away, we discovered we were dead wrong. Since we aren't living on campus, the program we were with hadn't booked us spots for transportation to the Gold Coast with the rest of the group we were with. So quickly after getting our 1 checked bag, we bought a train ticket to Gold Coast which left in 9 minutes from when we got to the counter. We hopped on the train and ready to head to our home for the next 4 months.

The view from the train

The Train ride where Matt looks frustrated...? I'm not really sure haha

After about an hour on the train we got off to realize we were still pretty far outside the city so we needed to now take a bus into where we were staying at Club Surfer's. We got help from a little 10 year old looking Australian boy who was dressed as if he was 30 years old. (You see here, where we are living while studying at Bond is in apartments about ten minutes away from campus, but since it is tourist season our apartments won't be ready to move into for another 2 weeks so for the mean time we are staying at a hotel called Club Surfer's that is in Surfer's Paradise.) Once we got on the bus smarty pants Matt realized he never looked up the address of our hotel so we didn't even know where to go once we were on the bus! Luckily after asking the kind man, with a questionable girl magazine in his hand, for help we were able to get off on the right bus stop for our hotel. Since we were so far away from Bond we decided to just stay in the first night and not travel all the way to the university. We got some Italian food from the Italian restaurant down the street, played some cards in our lovely small hotel room and called it a night. The next day after getting frustrated about our bus not coming, we just decided to take a $20 cab to the university, but once we got there, it was worth it. The campus is beautiful and pretty big for only 4000 students.

This is just the main part.

Once we arrived we grabbed some food, and went and did the usual orientation stuff to get ourselves ready for the semester at Bond. We than got our luggage that had luckily made its way to the university, bought these little bags that had t-shirts in them which were the whole reason we decided to buy the bag and put our names in a raffle for a free helicopter ride ( that helicopter ride is totally mine). After dropping our bags off at the hotel and taking a quick hour nap (thats quick for us considering the day before we took over a two hour nap) we headed to the huge shopping center where we thought we could buy groceries and things at the Target there. False. Target here is expensive, little trashy and does not sell food. But K-mart on the other hand is cheaper and nicer than Target. We had to hurry our shopping though because everything closed at like 6! After our shopping experiment I decided to walk to the beach two blocks away and just spend some time looking at the waves while the others hung out at the hotel. It was amazing just looking out at the ocean at night with no one around sitting in the super soft sand, jamming to music and staring at the stars. I have now been in Australia for a week exactly and I have felt like it's been a month. I've had to grow up real quick because if I don't take care of something, it won't get taken care of. I miss my family and friends heaps more than I thought I would but I know God brought me here for a reason so I plan on spending the next 14 weeks here figuring out what it is. G'day mates :)