Choir!

      Today I had my second 8:00 class. I woke up early went to class and then came home and went back to sleep. At around 1 I woke back up (I was really tired from staying up late last night to finish my book) and then, surprise surprise, worked on 375 some more. At least our professor was smart and later today sent out an email saying we didn't have to do half of the homework because it was too confusing, about time. Too bad I already did parts of those haha. Oh well.
     Tonight I went to choir practice. It started at 7 and then we had a pizza break at 8. The pizza was so delicious. Then it continued on until 9:30. It was pretty fun and it was really nice to sing again. I'm going to try to keep it up and go every Wednesday. Uffta, it was tough to get back into singing again though. My vocal cords are out of shape, haha. Well that's all for now. Cheers!

Wooo!

     Haha, I say woo because that's how I feel after booking my flights to Cairnes. Me and Pat finally planned our trip to Cairnes (pronounced cans I guess) where we're going to go snorkling. It's not until may 3-6th but I'm still really excited. I was able to get really cheap flights because I booked so soon as well. I even booked a hostel that's $20/night and picks you up from the airport. We have yet to book the snorkeling trip but we'll do that soon before the price rises on that as well.
     Ok, now for my day. I spend the morning working on the same 375 homework but was actually able to make some headway today. That felt good. Then I talked with Allyse and planned some things for when she comes here. We need to find more snorkeling in the Brisbane area which is proving to be kind of difficult, but we'll figure it out. I'm so excited for her to come. At 12:30 I left for campus and went to this meditation class I'm kinda doing. I'm not sure if I'll keep doing it or not, we'll see. After that I went to my music technology class. We have 3 projects in that class this semester and it seems like it will be fun. The projects make up all of our grade which I like. I'm also almost done with my book which is the last book in the Inheritance Series. Hopefully I'll finish it tonight. I've read 8 books while I've been here so far. That's crazy for me.. I rarely read. haha. Night everyone!

First day of school!

     Today I woke up bright and early at 6:30 and got ready for school. My class started at 8 and the professor that taught the class was the professor I've been working for. He's a good lecturer and really funny. It was supposed to be a two hour lecture but he cut it off at one hour today saying that two hours is just too long. After that I went home and attempted to get more of my 375 class done. That was just frustrating. After a few hours with not much done I gave up on it and am hoping a friend from home will help me with it. I wish our homework for that class was even a little bit like the lectures... that would help. Oh well.
     At around 3 I headed back to the campus for my Practical in my acoustics course. When I got there the room was deserted. I went to ask Kamel, the professor I've been working for, why no one was there and found out that we only have practicals once a semester. After taking that into account my schedule for the semester got a lot nicer. I now only have three hours of class max a day which is really really nice. I wish I had known before I walked all the way to campus though. Hopefully day 2 will be good as well.

Fun Weekend :)

     This weekend was really fun. Friday I finished up my last day of work at around noon and turned in my computer. Then I just hung around for a while until I ran into Matt and we went to the mall. That was kinda fun but I didn't hang around too long. When I got home my roommate Sarah asked if I wanted to go to a blues club with her. It sounded super awesome so I went.
     The blues club was actually pretty lame so we ended up going to a place called the Archive instead. It played a lot more recent music and was very fun. I met Sarah's engineering friend Joel and his engineering friend Ben. I got a long really well with then... yay engineering, I can't seem to escape it. We hung out there for a long time before crashing that night.
     I had a really lazy Saturday that consisted of introducing the Australians to PBandJ's and laying around. I thought it was funny that they had all heard and knew the 'Peanut Butter Jelly Time' song but had no idea what it mean. haha. On Saturday we decided we'd go to the beach on Sunday, which we did. We drove up to Kirry (I think?) beach yesterday. We swam for a few hours and then went on to surfur's paradise. There we stumbled upon a place having gold fish racing and a random guy let us race his goldfish.. he shouldn't have though. We didn't do very well. Oh, to race goldfish you blow bubble behind them, haha, it's pretty cool. Yeah, after that we just hung out on the beach a while longer and then headed home. It was a pretty awesome relaxing weekend before school. :)

Exam 1 = Done!

      I woke up this morning and went and took my first exam of the year at 9am. It was for my online class and it did not go well. I'm really not liking taking this class online. I hate not being able to go to the help room or get answer from the professors when I ask questions. Oh well, I guess that's life. Other than that I just worked and read most of the day. It's been very relaxing. This afternoon me and my roommates took a trip to a mall, well mostly the super market there. It was nice to replenish my food and spend some more time with them.

Market Day

     Today was what is called 'Market Day' at the University. It's where all of the different organizations on campus set up booths on campus and try to get you to join their clubs. I joined 3 today: MESS (Mechanical Engineering Student Society), a choir, another ME one I forgot the name of, and Quest (the exchange student society). I'm really excited about MESS, Quest, and choir because they all have weekly get togethers where I can meet more people.
     Other than wandering around at the booths getting free food (I had a bag of free instant rice for lunch) I studied all day for my 375 exam tomorrow while I worked. I finished up my crib sheet tonight and am hopefully prepared for my exam at 9am tomorrow. Eek.

Back to work again!

     Sorry I didn't write last night, I was out and about the Valley here. That's the area where all of the night clubs are located. Yesterday we had orientation all day and there we learned about this group Quest. They're basically a group for new students that organized trips and outings. Last night they had there first day meet everyone kinda party. I went with my new roommate I got yesterday. Her name is Sarah and she's from New Jersey. She's super nice and I love having another girl to live with. Over all last night was really fun. It was great to branch out some more and meet a lot of new people.
     Today I finally wandered back into work after being gone for almost two weeks. At first I thought I had been replaced because all of my equipment was moved around, but then I learned my supervisor was using it to do another experiment he had started while I was gone. I'm going to try to get some good data this week as I'm leaving done with work on Friday. Hopefully I'll get something useful. At around noon today I left work to try out meditation at a church they have on campus. Adam suggested it to help me destress. It was pretty nice to take 20 minutes and focus on positive things, I think I'll do it again next week. Unfortunately the people also there were very.. strange. Maybe I'll just do it on my own, we'll see. After that I had another orientation session on being safe in Australia. Most of it was a repeat of what I've learned already, but the overwhelming theme was 'all the animals can kill you'. Fun fun... I'm finishing up the day now with more studying for my online class. I have an exam on Thursday and a lot of learning to do before then. Wish me luck!

Getting Home

     Tim left me and Matt when we reached Melbourne and me and Matt went out in search for a hostle. After calling 6 different places we learned that any hostle we could afford was full for the night so we decided to spend the night in the airport once more. It was a lot better this time because there were a lot of shops in the airport lobby area and we spend a lot of the time talking in one of the little restaurants there. At about midnight we went to sleep and slept until Matt had to board his plane at 5. I read for the next few hours while waiting to check in for my flight. I then learned that the business I had booked my flight with, Air Australia, had went bankrupt the night before.
     What are the odds of that happening? I was given an informational packet and that was it. I started off looking at tiger airlines for a new flight after being told they were the cheapest but found out a flight that day from them would be $300. The guy was so nice though and let me know that Qantas and Jet Star were matching the price of the original flights. I tried Qantas first and ended up waiting two hours while they kept telling me they were checking on things and finally got sick of it and went to Jet Star. Jet Star booked me a flight right away for $90 which was what I had paid originally and I was again on my way. My flight was delayed, just my luck, but I was able to get back to Brisbane by nine oclock last night.
     Today I've been doing laundry and a lot of cleaning. I need to catch up on my school work but have been putting it off in order to post all of these pictures and update this blog. I already emailed the company that I booked the flights with asking for my money back but on Monday I'm going to call my bank as well and see what can be done. Hopefully I'll get the $90 back I paid originally. Well that was my trip. I hope you enjoyed hearing about it. School starts on Monday and I'm pretty excited about it. Onto my online class schoolwork now. :)

Great Ocean Walk: Day 7

     We woke up at 7 for the last day of our hike and I was so determined to get done. I was pretty hungry from eating granola bars for seven days and really missing civilization. I missed being able to talk to my family and Adam the most. I had tried to call them every night on the trip but never had any luck. That morning we covered our first 7Km faster than we ever had before and had lunch at 10 at a river half way between where we started and the Twelve apostles, our final destination. I kinda felt like giving up right then and there though, after we realized that our bus were needed to catch left at 10:40 and that we'd have to hitch hike to make our planes. There was no way we could have made it in time. We kept trekking though, hoping something would come our way. We got to the twelve apostles at around one noon. I celebrated by eating half a bag of chocolate and bacon flavored chips. There was no real food at the information desk so junk food had to do. I started talking with some people that were around to pass the time. Thank God that I did, because after talking with one group of english tourists who'd bus had broke down they offered us a ride back to Geelong on there bus when they got a replacement in a few hours.
     I was overjoyed that we again had a safe way to get home on a legitiment tour bus. We waited until there new bus came and then hitched a ride back to Geelong. It was cool seeing the country side on the way back. There were a lot of Dairy farms and ranches that we passed. They made me think of home. When we got home we called Jeff (he asked us to to make sure we made it alive) and he came and gave us a proper tour of Geelong and took us out to eat. Afterwards he offered us showers and let us stay at his place. He was so nice and generous. The next day he gave us a tour of the whole bay area and fed us again. Then we said goodbye and boarded a train back to Melbourne.

Great Ocean Walk: Day 6

     The first half of the walk on Day 6 was very very up and down. It was an incredibly difficult hike and my calves have never hurt so bad. It took the majority of the day to do the first 5Km. After that though we were on a much smoother path that was a lot flatter and walking went a lot quicker. It wasn't too long before we reached wreck beach. Wreck beach was very cool because there were four anchors and many other boards scattered along the length of the beach. We had to walk across some rocks though and I cut open a blister on my foot. That hurt. After relaxing on the beach for a while I slowly made my way up to camp. The second to last picture is the view from the bathroom. That bathroom probably has the nicest view (for a bathroom) in the world. The last one is of a cute little mouse that was hanging around our campsite.

Great Ocean Walk: Day 5

     Day 5 started out with a big big scare for me. We were walking along a dirt road next to some pasture land for cattle and I was in the lead. It seams like whenever I was in the lead there was a snake on the road and it happened again. I got within about a foot away from a tiger snake... It was not on purpose either. When I started backing up quickly, Tim, the guy behind me didn't know what I was doing so he held my pack in place so I couldn't move. I could have killed him at that moment. The snake lunged at me twice before I was able to break his grip on my pack and run. I cannot express how mad and terrified I was at that moment. Tiger snakes are very very poisonous. Thank God that was my last encounter with snakes on the trip.
     A ways down the dirt road we came to a sign that said free water for all! It was awesome. The people that live in the house put our free water and jam and postcards for hikers. We ate lunch there and chatted with the people living there for a bit before continuing on. From that point it was down hill to this beautiful beach. There we met two german hikers going the other direction on the path. They had just been hanging out there. We relaxed on the beach for quite some time before heading up to our camp. It was a brutal hike but the view was amazing.

Great Ocean Walk: Day 4

     We said goodbye to Jeff and his son in the morning and let our stuff dry out from the rain the night before. Once that was all dry we took off for our next stop. We were in the woods most of the way. During the middle of the day we heard a Koala in a tree making one of there mating calls. That was really cool. We tried looking for it but didn't want to wander off the path too far. We were told there's an art to spotting koalas and I guess we just didn't posses the right skills. At the end of the path we had to walk 2Km along Johanna beach. There were some Australians already walking along that beach so we talked to them as we walked. That was really nice. They didn't have packs on though so we looked so funny struggling to walk on the beach next to them. There was a big campground right on the edge of the beach but unfortunately ours was a ways away. We were later told that a lot of people will camp there and go surfing. Sounds fun. My camera randomly stopped working that night and I was pretty sad. It lasted 4 or 5 years, maybe more, so it was about time it went. Luckily my phone takes pretty good pictures as well so I used that the rest of the time.