'Musement Park Monday

Sunday morning Alex and I got up to go to church. The closest Catholic church is like a 45 minute bus ride that only comes once every hour so we had to leave an hour before mass was even supposed to start. As I've said before, the bus system here is horribly annoying but it's our cheapest option as students. The church was unlike anything I've seen before. The Catholic population in Australia and particularly Gold Coast is very small and I'd say the church was half full at best. Most of the people there were also over the age of at least 55 or 60 as well. Definitely not the masses full of college students or families with little kids that I'm used to at SLU or St. Patrick's. There was a small entry area under an awning basically where we were greeted and then it went straight into the church. The whole back wall was glass sliding doors that were wide open to the outside. The inside was very very simple with a plain altar, plain walls and plain solid wood pews. It was weird to be able to hear everything that was going on outside with the back open because the church is right in the heart of Surfers Paradise, which is a very busy, loud part of town. Also the priest had a very thick Indian accent that had hints of Australian so it was really difficult to understand. After the homily, they took up a collection, said the Apostle's Creed instead of the Nicene Creed, had intercessions and then took up another collection. We were really confused. The mass itself was very short but then we had another hour and a half of bus struggles on our way back to campus. After all the bus trouble, we decided to have an easy day and chill by the pool.

At home or SLU, I usually have a space where I can go and have me time. Being an introvert, it's really important that I get some time to myself and not be social. Here, I don't really have that space. I want to get the most out of my experience here and spend time with my friends and the awesome people I'm meeting but I decided that I needed to figure out a way to get some 'introvert time' as I call it or I knew I would snap at someone and cause a big scene. Since I don't have class on Monday but all my friends do, I figured Mondays could be my 'me day'. Last week I laid out by the pool but there was still a lot of pressure being on campus to go to lunch or do something, so today I tried something different. Gold Coast is the amusement park capital of Australia, with Movie World, Dreamworld, SeaWorld, Wet n' Wild, and White Water World, and I knew I wanted to go to all of them before I left because I'm kind of a roller coaster junkie. Today I started with Movie World. It's owned by Warner Brothers so it reminded me a lot of Six Flags. In fact, there was a roller coaster that was exactly like the Batman ride at the Six Flags at home. There's lots of Looney Toons stuff and there was a Superman roller coaster as well. I got a lot of judging looks for being alone at an amusement park but it was exactly what I needed. I had time to just be by myself and enjoy doing something that I had looked forward to. I got a VIP pass for pretty cheap as a student which means I have unlimited access to Movie World, SeaWorld and Wet n' Wild for the entire time I'm here, which means many more 'musement park Mondays!

Most of you probably know that I'm a picky eater, but I assumed that Australia was close enough to America culturally that I wouldn't have too much of a problem. I was wrong, at least for the on campus food. We have one bigger cafeteria and then some coffee shops and one other cafe that I have yet to see open. The main cafeteria has a menu with maybe 25 items and it hasn't changed. There's also a little sandwich bar part that's open during lunch time. None of the food items are just normal though. The first day, I made the mistake of ordering a cheeseburger. One bite and I knew it was not what I wanted. There were all sorts of veggies ground up in it, from carrots to onions to an unidentified green thing. So that was a definite no. Pretty much all of the food is like this with little surprises in them. Kendra I know you're reading this shaking your head at me. Also, EVERYTHING has mayo on it. You order chips (french fries) and there's mayo on it. You order a ceasar salad and the dressing is just straight up mayo. I haven't had nearly as many problems with it when we go out to eat but the food on campus is just not good. I eat chicken burgers (crispy chicken sandwiches) and chocolate chip muffins on a regular basis. They sell Ben and Jerry's in the cafeteria though. One pint for a lovely $12.00! I will never complain about how much it costs at home again. In the stores here, it's even more expensive. Everything here is so expensive!

I don't really have any fun or exciting pictures to put with this blog.... sorry everyone! Happy Forth Day to all my TECites reading this! Let me know if there's something from my adventures or life down under that I'm not talking about that you want to know more about! I'm literally obsessed with talking about all the awesome stuff I'm experiencing!

 

I've had some people wondering where exactly I am, so here's a handy map! Australia is huge so even though it looks like I'm not too far from Sydney, its a 10 hour drive along the coast in between!