Home again!!

      Well the way home was paved with trouble but I made it. I arrived at the airport thinking I could check two bags and that they both needed to be under 30 kilos, when I got there I found out I can only check one and it must be under 23 kilos. I decided I would pay the extra bag fee and then even out my luggage so that each bag would be under (since one was way under and the other was over by 8 kilos) after some work I could just not move enough stuff so they decided just to wave the overweight fee (I guess they thought $150 for the extra bag would be enough) once I had that sorted and was about to finally check in the entire Australian system for checking flights in went down.. how does that happen? It was down for about an hour. I had a great chat with the Virgin Australia lady and another women waiting to be checked in. After about an hour of waiting they started manually checking in people. She checked the other lady in first and then when she was about to check me in again the system started working. She thankfully waved the extra bag fee though because of the system being down. After that long weight I made it to my flight.

     On my flight I got about 2 hours of sleep and watched some good movies. I was seated next to a Purdue Materials engineering professor too by chance so that was nice. I had a good chat with him. I wish I had gotten more sleep and the flight had been cooler but it wasn't so bad. We were late arriving to LA but after some rushing I made it to my gate barely in time. I almost didn't get on the plane though because they had overbooked. After some haggling and a girl that offered to take a later flight so I could get home I got a seat on the flight. That lady was so sweet. When I got on the airplane though another girl had the same seat I did! I almost got kicked off the flight then. A flight attendant figured out that the other girl had been upgraded and didn't realize it, so the seat was once again mine. 

     In the end I made it Minneapolis to Mom and Kelsey just fine. Mom had a rose waiting for me which was so sweet. We got my bags pretty quick and headed home. They had Chinese food waiting for me at the airport too. It was amazing. I slept most of the ride home. That was great! When I got home Dad and Allyse had made us dinner. It was a great end to a great trip! Thanks everyone for reading about my adventure. I had an amazing time, met some great people, learned a lot but am still so glad to be home finally. 

CHEERS :)

Last Fay in Brissy :(

     Although my last night in Brisbane was pretty sad, it was also a pretty great day. I slept in a bit and then me and Joel took a trip up to Mount Kootha So I could say goodbye to the city. The view is amazing from up there. After Mount Kootha we met up with Ben, Ben, Mark and two of Ben's other friends to go Ice skating. Aussies aren't that great at it, but we still had tons of fun. I can't wait till winter now :) After that me, Ben and Joel hung out for a while. I tried to stay up all night before my flight but didn't really make it that late. I got about four hours of sleep before it was time to head off to the airport.

My Final Week in Brissy!

     The day after my last exam the fun began. MESS (Mechanical Engineering Student Society) had a big get together the day after exams. It was pretty fun. Me and my 3 roommates left at our house had a true Aussie Barbecue as well. I had Kangaroo meat (I don't like it.. bleh) and shrimp (they call them prawns here) on the barbi. hehe. I'll add some pictures of that. A few days of this week were spent packing as well. Me and Sara (my roommate) went and turned in our keys together so now I'm at a friends house till I leave tomorrow morning. While we were at the pad I also brought brownies to the nice people that helped me the first day. None of them were there so there co-worker put them aside for them, but I hope they'll still enjoy them when they come in to work next. Yesterday night me and Joel went to a Footy (rugby) game. That was pretty awesome! Now today is my last day, so the plan is ice skating and Mt. Kootha. I'll tell you how it goes when I get home. Can't wait to see good old ND again. Oh I added some pictures of my walls with all of the things I got from home on them before I cleaned up my room as well.  Cheers!

Study Study Study and Exams..

      Oh exam weeks.. yeah weeks here (they get two weeks for finals here). I'm glad those are done and over with. Sorry for not posting. I was pretty busy studying and doing my best on exams those two weeks. I had my Acoustics exam first which was open book. I think that one went well. Then I had my music exam. It was exactly like the practice exam which was awesome. Next I had my Materials and Structures exam.. that one wasn't so good but hopefully I'll be alright. My last exam was on the last Saturday of exam weeks and was for thermodynamics. It was awful. At least they're all over with now :) Now my last week is just Fun Fun Fun!

SWAT Vac

     SWAT Vac is what they call this week where we have no classes before exams start. My first exam isn't until a week from Friday so I've been pretty lazy these past two days. It's hard to get up the ambition to study for an exam that's almost two weeks away.. especially because that's one of my easiest exams and the two hard ones aren't until a week after that. So I've been watching a lot of movies these past two days. Yesterday I went to a new fruit market with Sara and got really cheap fruit! That was really cool. Oh and then last night after Joel got off work he brought me a free dominos pizza and we went and checked out this park close to my house that has a great view of the whole city. I found it with Allyse when she was here.
     Today all I've done is gone into the City to get some supplies for the last project I have to turn in. I have the project completely done but needed a CDR to burn it too and a page protector for when I turn it in. Well that's all for now folks! Have a great night!

Super Fun Saturday and Sunday :)

     This past Saturday I ended up going to a get together for exchange students in the city with my friends Joel and Michelle. It was lots of fun. It was a facebook party so everyone wore white shirts and then you wrote what you would write on there wall on there shirt. Haha, not the best theme ever but it was still pretty fun. After the party me and Joel watched a movie. It was a nice night.
     The next day I had breakfast with Joel and Michelle and then that afternoon went to a free comedy show with Joel. It's the second Sunday that we've gone and it's really fun. The acts are pretty good, although they were better the last time we were there I think. I wish we had something like this in West Lafayette. :)

Back in Brisbane

     We got back into Brisbane that same night and headed home. The next morning Allyse came with me to Uni for a few hours to get a bit of work done and then we headed off the the Koala Sanctuary. I always have the best time when I'm at the Koala sanctuary, and I think Allyse liked it too. We looked at so many different kinds of animals and Allyse got to hold a Koala and get her picture taken with it. We also fed the Kangaroos some and pet them. We saw this really cool Mommy Kangaroo that had a joey in her pouch! It was soo cool. That night Allyse packed up and we said goodbye. My friend Joel was nice enough to give her a ride to the airport so she didn't miss her flight. We set our alarm for 1am, when he was going to pick her up, but didn't wake up to it. We woke up two hours later to him pounding on our door!! He was so nice to wait out front of my house that whole time for us!!
     The rest of the week was pretty boring and stressful. I had two group papers, on project, and one individual paper to finish up. After lots of hard work I got them all done and submitted on time :).

Sydney!

      Sydney was so cool, I fell in love with that city right away. It has a more up tempo feel while Brisbane is so relaxed. Me and Allyse hopped on the first train we could to the city and headed to the Opera House first. It was really cool. We ended up taking a full tour of it. So worth it. After the opera house we walked through a bit of the botanic gardens before having lunch. We had a good seafood platter.. yum! After we were full and happy we did a little window shopping and then hopped on a ferry to take us to Bondi Beach. I always see Bondi Beach on the TV shows here so it was fun to see in person. It's so much smaller in real life though. haha. We spent a little bit of time there before heading back the the Airport to catch our plane home. :)