Aussie Night Out!

Saturday night was so much fun! A friend and I went out into the city to go clubbing with some local aussies from the church that we go to. It was so nice to be taken around to "the best places" instead of having to guess and be the "tourist". Knowledge is a powerful thing and if there is knowledge incorportated into a situation, that situation is always less stressful, atleast from my experience.

Australian clubs are interesting, each one has its own vibe so its fun to travel from one to another in the same night ( WIth the exception that if you are wearing heels...you will die from the pain in your feet...not advised). The dancing is so funny in a good way to the standard american "bump and grind" method....aussies like to just move in place and they love their techno music! quite and interesting experience.

Sunday church was good and we all went out to eat for dinner which was fun to fellowship and eat Amazing food! Fasta Pasta is still my favorite resturant so far!

Got Class tomorrow, it seems like mondays come so fast...i can't believe its already the 7th week of my adventure here, its going by so fast and often times i have to remind myself that i am actually in australia and that my dream of going to australia is actually happening...

im sure i will get back home and think that "WOW i was just in australia for 5months....where did the time go!"

Anyways, i suppose all i can do it just take everything for whats it worth and make memories as i go along so that i may relive my experience later on.....

Long Week...

This was the longest week since i have been here... Having my computer at of commission has really put a damper on doing school work and being able to communicate with people back home. I didn't realize how much i used my computer until i found myself having all this "free" time inwhich i would normally be devoting to talking to people or writing emails. So instead i used my free time to sleep... Luckily, i did not have any major assigments due and thus did not feel the burden of not having my computer available for use in that manner. Also, i have a friend who has been gernerous and has allowed me to use her computer to skype occassionally and to get a facebook fix. ;)
Hopefully, the startup cds will arrive soon that my mom sent. these are vital in the process of erasing my harddrive and restoring it again. I just hope that it can all be back to normal in the coming week!
No big plans for this weekend, just going to the beach and relaxing and i will probably go out with come church friends tonight so that should be a good end to this lame week.
More to come later! Cheers!

Saving the Daintree Rainforest!

So this past weekend i did a little conservation work that dealt with saving and developing a new part of the rainforest up in the tablelands. It was really hard work but inspiring at the same time. Though i dont think physical labour is the route for me, participating in the conservation effort for one weekend was good. the best part of the entire work was mucking about the bush chopping down overgrown tobacco trees with machetes. the larger they were the easier they were to chop down which i found fascinating. it was the little ones that took all the effort to get rid of.

People have dedicated their lives to this conservation work which i think is quite a task since seeing the fruits of your labour doesn't happen until years later. I am very much a "see your progress as you go" type of person and get mentally exhausted doing something if i don't see the actual effects of that pretty quicky.

besides all that my computer crashed with massive viruses and now have to erase my hardrive... i knew this was going to happen!...see i am psychic!

New photos on Picasa...

Just loaded more pictures from Kuranda and Tinaroo onto picasa....Have a look if you are intersted! Cheers!
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/eaglchk/KurandaAndTinaroo#

TiNaROO

So Saturday we were picked up by a friend and were taken up into the tablelands to go water skiing/wakeboarding and tubing. The day was absolutely perfect...awesome weather amazing friends and lots of aussie fun! we made a side trip to lake echam which is the crater lake that i had been to previously but it was really gross that day so we couldnt swim. But today we all jumped in and had a bone chilling swim...IT was SO cold...i was having a really hard time breathing and decided that the doggy paddle was the best stroke because you have to move faster which i thought would help me warm up...it kinda worked...i think i just became numb. Anyways, it felt amazing afterwards laying out in the sun which is a lot more intense and you can feel it on your skin much more than back at home ( I suppose that is why queensland is the skin-cancer capital of the world)

We finally got to Tinaroo where joel was getting the boat ready for activities. We went tubing first and i only got thrown off once which was really fun because i was riding backwards and later i wakeboarded which was also really fun but super tiring...I was SO sore the next day that i could barely move, but it was a good soreness because you know you had a lot of fun getting that way.

We went out to a local pub that night in Atherton and the food there was so good and so bad for you but so good! so well all ate together and had lots of laughs...aussies really like to tease, especially americans so thats always fun, especially when its in a harmless way...im just getting comfortable with them to start the teasing back which surprised a couple of them...haha

Booked my flights for sydney so i could catch the bus to go to a surf camp over my semester break! i am so excited...i've always wanted to go surfing in australia and wear a wetsuit so i just have to stay focused on school and reward myself with this amazing trip and experience!

Cairns Central $$

This has been a pretty quick week, had alittle more work than the last and it will probably continue to increase in amount as the weeks go on, but im trying to stay on top of it all amidst this aussie way of life. Today, i spent the whole day walking around cairns central which is the shopping mall for cairns with a friend from church. She showed me where all the good shops are and took me to the ones that were here favorites, so it was interesting to see the types of clothes that she liked and what the general aussie style is. They have a target in the mall but its quite different than ours back home. Its alot more expensive and they only sell clothing and accessories and most of the clothing is dressy or atleast leaning toward that side of the scale. I ended up getting a cute dress from there so i deemed that as my "going out" dress. Also she took me to this other cool store called "ally's" and i got my first pair of australian jeans. Though they are really no different than the jeans back home...its the mere fact that i bought them in australia that will forever label them australian! I'm on the hunt for my "australian shoes" as i shall have to keep up the tradition from getting my "italian shoes".
Its funny because since they are just exiting their "winter" all the clothes are mostly longsleeve so part of me wants to go ahead and buy stuff for the winter time when i go back home, but another part tells me that rediculous because its 80 here and only going to get hotter so there is absolutely no need for longsleeves...Anyways, the quest goes on.
We also went to see GI JOE and it was surprisingly really good...i pretty much love everything that dennis quaid and channing tatum are in, and they are both in this movie so i think that played a large part. The good thing was that it has a little bit of comedy, lots of action and an actual plot so i would deff. recommend going to see it at some point. Oh and i was really surprised because i think there were less than 5 bad words throughout the entire movie which is rare to find in movies these days...
Tomorrow we are going water skiing on the crater lakes in the Tablelands, so i am really looking forward to a whole day out on the water with all my aussie friends.
Post about that soon! with pictures to come! Cheers!

Keranda Excursions

This weekend, a friend and I went on a little semi spontaneous trip to a little village in the mountains called Keranda. It was very much a tourist trap in the main part where all the little markets were but outside of that on the less traveled path was Barron Gorge and Wrights Lookout. Both of which we walked to from the center of the village which took a really long time, but the views were amazing once we finally got there.
I personally thought that there would be a place that you could go swimming under the waterfall but i was under the wrong impression and was a little disappointed when there wasn't anywhere to go swimming.
So 1st story of the trip: we were walking back down the road from wrights lookout when i directed a young woman in a blue little car to the little dirt road to the peak and i had a feeling that on our way back down the road someone would have a soft heart and offer us a ride back. Several car/campers passed and then wouldn't you know it, the little blue car rolled up next to us and she offered us a ride back to the village...we never got her name but she said she was from byron bay area so we just call her byron. anyways, that was my first Hitchhiking experience, which apparently is a really safe thing to do in australia as long as you use your judgement and dont jump into a car with a creepy old dude...:) I was SOO thankful she offered us a ride because i really had to go to the bathroom and really didn't want to have to kill off some of the rainforest to relieve myself :)
Once we arrived back into town, we walked around a little as shops were beginning to close as they do there at 3:30 in the afternoon, which i think is rediculous, and we slowly were becoming the only people walking around which was a little creepy. we were scouting places that were actually open to eat dinner later on, and while doing so we stopped to look at a cafe's menu for a possible breakfast the next morning, and the owner told us she was closing up because she had a show to perform at that evening and preceeded to show us the poster advertising this "folk music" concert in the town hall. So we decided that we had nothing better to do and decided to attend a little local concert. Soon there after we found the hostel that we were planning on staying at and checked in and made our beds. it was only 19$ a night which is super cheap...but as the old saying goes, "you get what you pay for"...lets just say i was afraid to climb onto the topbunk because i had little confidence that it would support me as i tried to climb up onto it and heard the stereotypical noise of something about to crumble beneath you... I just pulled the matress on to the floor and slept there though i accidently baracaded another door in the process which almost caused me to be stepped on several times throughout the night. Wasn't the best night of sleep ever but it just added to the whole experience.

The next morning we got up really early, as you pretty much had to get up when the sun got up, and packed up our backpacks. we had planned to find some swimming holes that the owner of the hostel told us about which apparently only the locals know how to get there. So we were going to attempt to follow these sketchy directions and just hope that we would make it there, but we met a true aussie hippie at "breakfast" more like instant coffee and a banana that some one was gracious enough to provide us...and he decided to take it upon himself to show us the way to the local swimming holes. His name was dave and he ended up taking up to the top of the gorge which had been dammed up but water had overflowed the dam and preceeded to travel over the rock face of the waterfall...i call it bouldering, but we were literally climbing up and down the face of this huge gorge/waterfall system. at one point he decided to take off even further down the rocks and we stayed back and decided to go swimming under one of the many little falls in the waterfall system....it was so cold but exhilarating at the same time...i do not think i have attempted anything so adventurous and possible as dangerous, but it was soo worth it and i don't think i will ever forget it! after sun-baking (what aussies call sunbathing) on the rocks like a lizard for a while we went back up to the top to swim and jump off these massive rocks that were in the middle. that was tricky because when the rocks got wet they became extremely slippery so we made sure to take extra precaution before jumping off.

We probably could have stayed there all day but we had to catch a shuttle back to cairns at 12:30 so it ended out morning adventure before we really wanted to leave....there was just a different lifestyle up in this area that is was nice to get a different perspective on the classic "aussie hippie" mentality.

later that night we got invited to a wonderful birthday party for a girl that is in the youth group at church, so we all got together to have a really nice dinner inwhich we got to dress up. i thought it was funny that we could be dirty sweaty backpackers one minute and nicely dressed and made up women all within a 24hr period. Guess that means im versatile :)

It was such a wonderful little trip with so many great details that i just wanted to share and remember..... oh, we also went to a koala sancturary where we got to cuddle with koalas...though i already got to hold one the first few days i was here, this was heaps better because we actually got to hold and pet them for an extended amount of time and they let us take our own pictures so that was really great!

Im looking forward to more adventures ahead with new experiences to accompany them!

until later, Cheers!

Flying Leaps and Shutter Speeds

In the front of JCU: Well it's been another week down under and i haven't got too much to report. Sunday night church was really good and was based around the idea of disappointment. we are disappointed when we dont get what we want but fail to realize that we disappoint God by not following him and placing others and things above our Creator.


Classes were alright this week, i am slowly seeing the subtle differences in teaching methods here as compared to back home. It seems that each class i've had with the exception of photography, the lectures have been rather unorganized and i can't seem to find a common focus for the lecture though i think there is one that i am not able to pick up on because it is being produced in a different way. Hopefully, i can figure out the secret soon...





Photography has been fun and interesting as well as challenging. I was working on my folio due in a few weeks and after putting several hours in of taking pictures this afternoon,(displayed to the left), i found out that we had to create a central theme inwhich all our pictures fell into ...and so far i had not been taking them with that frame of mind...so i am finding that i am going to have to start all over....o well hopefully with all the practice i have had doing the wrong thing, the right thing will turn out lovely!


Though it was not a very eventful week, i was able to talk with several friends on skype and facebook which really made it special and i always enjoy the times i get to make contact with people back home.

Tomorrow i don't have classes so a friend and i are taking a couple buses up to a village on the other side of the mountain called Keranda where there is a little market and a koala garden aswell as a hostel which is really cheap. so we plan on doing some hiking, holding koalas, and stayin at the hostel like real backpackers. We were also invited to a birthday party of a girl from our church group so i am excited about getting to dress up and hangout with all my aussie friends!
Well, i'm sure ill have new photos from Keranda and the party, so until later...Cheers!

Walkabout Adventure

Today i went on a day trip all over the tablelands just by Cairns. After going south out of the city, we went up the mountains on a rode that consisted of more then 90 turns...fortunately i did not feel too sick after the ride up there. We visited crater lake and the millaa millaa waterfalls along with the Curtain fig tree and a crocodile farm. It was a really great trip except that the weather was really rainy which made it really cold and unpleasent to go swimming under the waterfall. Im hoping i get another chance to go back up there when it gets warmer.

the crocodile farm was interesting because we got to watch them feed some of them which was really cool and they showed us how you can't even see them when they are in the water even if they are only a few feet in front of you. Scary! but later we found out that the farm is actually a breeding farm in which they sell the baby crocs that they breed to be killed for their meat and to make stuff like purses and boots and what not. I really wasn't ok with that because by going there and paying to see the place, i was supporting them which id rather not do. but anyways, it was still cool to see the massive crocs in a pen of course.

Here's the link to all the days pictures! http://picasaweb.google.com.au/eaglchk/WalkaboutAdventure?authkey=Gv1sRgCIb_s-ainbXHFg#