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 :)

The Great Barrier Reef- A Wonder of My World!

Well I haven't been able to blog for awhile so here's a little update of the last few days starting on Sunday!

Well Today was a fantastic one! I got to see one of the 7 Wonders of the World, The Great Barrier Reef. It was amazing. I started the day off at 6:30 to squishy fruit and cereal with warm milk again. We took a bus ride in the pouring rain to the dock at Cairns and hopped on the Passion Paradise II. We sat on the front of the boat and as the boat crashed against the waves the waves would hit the boat so hard that the entire front deck would get soaking wet! It was really choppy weather so a few people got sick but luckily my sea legs didn't give out on me and I didn't get sick. So right now in Australia its the season for really nasty jellyfish. There's the blue bottom jellyfish that has a sting that hurts for about half an hour but there's another kind that if you get stung you might have to end up in the hospital. So to prevent from being stung we had to wear legit blue stinger suits while we were in the water!

So after a two hour boat ride out to the interior reef of the Great Barrier Reef we stopped near a little sand island that was a bird sanctuary that could only be walked on in a little section because the rest of it was for the birds! So the boat gave us the option to be able to scuba dive for half an hour even if you weren't certified so it took me about half a second to say yes to that! So they got me all geared up with my flippers and oxygen tank, taught me a few hand motions to do underwater in case i started to freak out (which could have been very likely) and I jumped on in!

my scuba suit!!

I was with three other students and an instructor and it was incredible. I was able to touch some coral and other really sweet things. There was this certain type of coral that looked like spaghetti and whatever way the water would flow the spaghetti coral would flow with it. At one point I was completely surrounded by it and it was a wonderful experience to be in the midst of moving spaghetti in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef :) After scuba diving and snorkeling all day at one of the 7 wonders of the world we headed back but right into a huge storm where it started pouring on us so everyone was forced to sit inside the boat where it is very easy to get sea sick. Preferring to not throw up my lunch with a bunch of people I'm unfamiliar with, I decided to stand outside. It was very refreshing standing out in the rain on a boat off the coast of Australia :)

Once we returned to the hostel we packed up our things to get ready to leave the next morning and than just relaxed on Nanae's bed (a twin bed so 4 people squished onto it isn't actually that comfortable but we made it work). My next blog will be about the trip to Gold Coast, oh what an adventure that was...

Let's Give Back to the Community a Little

Well today was an interesting day in Beautiful Australia. We started the morning off with the continental breakfast at the hostel. Nothing says good morning Australia with some squishy fruit and warm milk for your cereal. Today we had our community service day and so to get us prepared for that, we got to sit under the hot sun and listen to the benefits of community service. Not only did we listen but we participated in writing on a large piece of paper the reasons why it is beneficial. Now thats a good time at 8 in the morning. Luckily us APU students are well aware of all the ins and outs of community service considering its a requirement for us at school :) After this we took a windy windy road up into the rainforest to a really cool nursery tucked away in the forest. We got separated into groups where we walked around and learned all about the nursery and how they take koala poop and throw it to the worms who than make it into fertilizer for the plants. We were shown around by Jen's and my now new hero Jax who was overly excited to tell us all about the Roo Poo Juice for the plants.

this is Jax :)

After gaining some knowledge about the plants we had some lunch and luckily we found a spot under a roof because as soon as we sat down it started raining pretty hard. It was so ironic that it was raining in the rainforest right? After lunch we were put in charge of potting plants which pretty much consisted of putting new soil on top of old soil in the plants. We were under the impression that we were doing a dandy job when the man (who looked identical to Bernie from Weekend at Bernies if you've seen the movie, minus this guy was alive ) would come around and tell us to pull out the weeds, which we had thought were part of the plant and had put dirt on top of. Then he came around again and told us if there were worms in the soil to take them out because they'll make the soil all squishy, before this helpful hint we had just been pushing the worms in the soil as well. So here we are attempting to give back to the community and more than likely we probably killed all those plants because we weren't doing it quite the right way... Mid-way through helping the plants/killing the plants we took a little walk and went and looked at a tree that had completely green bark all the way up, it was legit. We also saw this ants nest that was weird, cool and impressive at the same time.

-the brown leaves all put together are the ants nest

Once we finished up at the nursery we took the windy road back to our humble abode, the hostel. We took a nap and in a little bit we're gonna go to a pool hall to play for a little bit. Gotta get plenty of rest tonight, the Great Barrier Reef is tomorrow!!

1st Days Down Under

Well I have been in the Land Down Under for three days so far and it has been quite the adventure! I still can't believe I will be here for the next four months!! Getting here was an adventure in itself! Lets begin with LAX

-We got there three hours early and got through security in about twenty minutes so Matt, Jen and I sat and talked for a few hours. We weren't supposed to sit together on the plane so once we finally got on the huge two story plane we had to pull some strings and flash our pearly whites to get people to switch. All those dentist trips must have worked for us because we were able to sit together.We had a 13 1/2 hour flight ahead of us but luckily we now had each other to bug the whole plane ride. Although it was the early hours of the morning to us, Matt wouldn't let us sleep for the first few hours so we could get on Australia time. Luckily that was helpful because it helped with the jet lag.

-Once we switched planes in Brisbane and got to Cairns after skipping the entire day of January 5th, our luggage wasn't put on the plane to Cairns so all we had for our first day were our carry ons. Very helpful right? There were about 140 other students with us that are going to Bond University and we are all staying at the Bohemia Resort which is pretty much like a hostel. It's not too bad but a little crowded because I'm rooming with 5 other girls and we are sharing 4 bathrooms and 6 showers with everyone else on the hall. The only mirrors there are is about a 1ft by 2 ft (thats being generous) that are in the rooms. So living with everyone has been interesting! I wasn't aware that going to Australia, my first days would be similar to going back to the freshman dorms. But not near as nice :)

-On our first real day the group got split into two and half of the group went to the Great Barrier Reef while the other half got to go to a Rainforestation. Matt, Jen and Nanae all were in the other group going to the Reef and I went to the Rainforestation. There I did a lot of sweet things that I normally wouldn't have been able to do! I saw Aborigines spear throwing, I threw a boomerang (still need to improve my skills a little bit on that sport), watched an Aborigines dance, held a kuala, held a huge cobra snake, tasted a green ant that tasted like a sour Warhead and fed a kangaroo!! It was a fantastic day in good ole' Australia. After getting back and laying by the pool for awhile, we went out and got some pizza in downtown Cairns at the Woolshed. It was a good night out on the town.

-Our 2nd day was a free days so us four walked a little ways and went to a deli and had sandwiches. Interesting sandwich, they have a very sweet tasting mayo which threw me for a twist but still good. We were planning on walking to the beach but the beach turned out to be a lagoon sort of deal at the end of 10 feet of sand. After contemplating if it would be kinda interesting to go walk out in it, we decided against it and just laid in a park for a few hours on our towels and relaxed. It started sprinkling on us so we just laid there and tried to catch the rain drops in our mouths. Laying with three good friends in a beautiful park with birds chirping in Australia, not a bad day.

Sorry for such a long first post but I needed to catch myself up! Hope it didn't bore you to sleep :)