Queensland Adventures with the Fam

After their week in Port Douglas/ Cairns, the family made their way down to Gold Coast! They arrived Thursday afternoon and we took them on a tour of campus first. They were kind of surprised how small campus really was. It's literally a little circle of buildings. And of course, they weren't surprised by how messy my room was. Some things never change. We then got cleaned up and headed to Broadbeach, a town that is a part of the Gold Coast, pretty close to campus, with a bunch of my friends and had a nice dinner! It was nice to introduce my parents to all the people I've been hanging out with.

Bright and early Friday morning, 4:15 to be exact, we had to wake up to drive the hour to Byron Bay to skydive. The parents were surprisingly calm the whole time. We got there, got checked in and got suited up to jump! My dad got partnered up with my hunky tandem from my last dive, Nick, I was with Matty and my mom was with Nado, Alex's tandem from last time. We piled into the plane and much to mom's dismay, she was last to jump. We did the same flight up and it was fun watching them get a little more worried the higher we went. I was the first in the family to jump so before I knew it, it was time! My tandem pushed me out and then we were flipping, yes flipping, towards the ground! After a few tumbles, we evened out and then he grabbed my hand and we spun in the fastest circle ever! Once the parachute had been pulled, he handed the reigns to me and I got to steer for a while. We flew over towards mom's parachute and then floated for a while before he decided we should probably land eventually. The parents beat me to the ground and I was glad to see a smile on both of their faces when I finally landed! They both enjoyed it, however, dad was fast to say he would be content to never do it again. Then I got to drive home. I think dad was more worried about this than jumping out of an airplane. Don't worry though, I'm pretty dang good at driving on the left side of the road, which is good cause I have to do it again this weekend! Here is the link to mom's dive video, and here is the link for dad's! 


After stopping to get some lunch and picking up Aunt Jo, we headed to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary so they could experience all the lovely animals. They were a little alarmed when they went to hold the koalas and they realized it just keeps on pooping and doesn't stop. Luckily no one got poop stains on them! The koalas were being super active so we got to see them up and jumping from branch to branch, and then running across the ground! It was seriously adorable. We moved on to the kangaroos and got to do the usual feed/pet them. Mom was in love!


Friday evening, I took the family out to Surfer's Paradise. It was definitely different from the other places they'd been! I compare it to Miami. Lots of beach, lots of nightlife, lots of young adults.

Saturday morning we woke up and drove to Eumandi. It's a little town about 3 hours north of Gold Coast that has a HUGE market with all sorts of craft booths and clothes and food vendors. After a lot of shopping, we headed to Noosa, which is a little beach town that is a popular vacation destination for the Aussies. It's one of those places that I never would have thought of to visit, but it was really pretty and something different to see. Early Sunday morning, we packed up and headed on a tour of Fraser Island. It was pretty similar to Moreton Island that we camped to earlier this semester, but much bigger, busier and more developed. The tour involved lots and lots of driving along the incredibly bumpy sand roads, which the family wasn't exactly expecting. We got to swim in a freshwater lake, walk through the rainforest area of the island, and eat a nice Aussie barbeque. Once our day of riding around the island was done, we drove to Brisbane, checked into our hotel and then got some dinner. Then it was time to help the parents repack all their bags and get them ready to leave bright and early for the airport to head to New Zealand.

Saying goodbye to them this morning was tough, but I know I'll be seeing them again soon! Only a little over a month until I have to leave this beautiful country and return home, where I can only assume it will still be less than 40 degrees and there will probably still be a foot of snow on the ground. I am so so so glad they came to visit me and that I could share this little piece of heaven with them! Much to their dismay, I can totally see myself living here in the future, so they'd better get used to it!

Sydney

I'm going to attempt to do all of this whirlwind trip in one post, sorry about how long it will end up being!

After much anticipation, the weekend we'd all been waiting for arrived! Sydney!! The big city that you automatically think of when you think Australia. Plus, my parents and aunt were coming! So Thursday morning we woke up bright and early as usual (why do we always choose flights that leave so dang early??) and took a cab to the airport, where we were then told our hour and a half flight from Gold Coast to Sydney was an international flight. Excuse me what? That kind of freaked us out because we were expecting it to be like in the states how security would be 10x more intense and then we would have to go through customs and everything, but we should have known better. International security consisted of only me going through a full body scanner and the security guards joking around with us about our accents. Literally, that was it. After landing in Sydney and walking straight out the door without a second glance from customs, we took a train downtown and went in search of our hotel. Yes, you read that right, hotel. No hostel for us this weekend! Thanks to my lovely parents, we were living in the lap of luxury. We had a king sized bed, pull out couch and balcony overlooking Darling Harbour. It was seriously unreal. And we may or may not have had a freak out dance party to celebrate.  Darling Harbour itself is a really cool little place with tons of restaurants so we got some lunch and then headed to Bondi Beach!

The hotel concierge told us it would be significantly cheaper and faster to take a cab so we took his advice and it was neither cheap nor fast. But, the beach was beautiful. You can tell it gets more use than the beaches we usually go to because it was a little dirtier, but there were these awesome rocks that you can climb out on so obviously we had a photo shoot. The waves would splash up really high behind them so we spent at least an hour trying to capture all the perfect pictures with the waves. Then we decided to explore the whole Bondi Beach area. Its a ways out from the center of town and has a totally different vibe. There were a bunch of cool little shops around the area and we met this store owner who totally cracked us up and had a $15 sale box full of dresses and things that were originally $120+. Of course, as I've said before, being built the way I am makes it harder for me to find fashionable things that fit me right, but Alex and Christy both found awesome things in the box! We meandered around for a while and got dinner before heading back to the hotel and calling it an early night. When I say early, I mean early... we were all asleep by 10 in anticipation of waking up early for my parents arrival the next morning!

My parents had told me they were going to text me once they landed in Sydney so that I would know when to be up and ready for them to get to the hotel. Well, at 7:15, our hotel room phone starts ringing and when I answered, it was my dad saying they were in the lobby waiting for us! We were all still in our pajamas but we sprinted to the elevator and into the lobby where I'm sure we caused a scene with our screaming and crying. After we all calmed down, we got ready as fast as we could, ate poptarts (a delicacy that my parents hand delivered from the US) and then headed out to explore! We took a ferry to Sydney Harbour, where the bridge and Opera House are located. The weather was absolutely beautiful too, which made it even more perfect. Our first stop was the botanical garden. We were going to go on a guided walking tour but after about 3 minutes, Alex, Christy and I got bored so we ducked out and went back towards the Opera House for a photo shoot. I mean, if you don't take a million pictures, did you really even see it? The answer is no. Then we met up with the family and got ready for our tour of the Opera House! We got to see the inside and a three of the five theaters plus got to learn a lot about the construction and everything. The lobby outside the main auditorium has purple carpet and purple walls. For such an amazing building, it was alarming that it would have such a bizarre interior. After getting lunch, we headed to Manly Beach, which we got to by taking another beautiful ferry ride.

Manly Beach is home to the building that they used for filming the new Great Gatsby movie. Its actually a college of management but they covered it in vines and used editing to change the top of it and viola, Gatsby Mansion! The bottom two levels are exactly what you see in the movie! I have officially walked the same grounds as my main man Leo DiCaprio. It was glorious. We called it an early night then in preparation for an early morning of bridge climbing!


The Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb is something that literally everyone we talked to told us to do, so thanks to my amazing parents, the dream came true! I hadn't really thought to be nervous about it until we got there. I knew my dad was super nervous and I had seen the pictures but I guess it didn't really hit me until we walked through the doors. Then I started to panic. I would be walking on a piece of steel 250 feet off the ground. We got a quick briefing and then had to put on our super cute janitor looking outfits so that we didn't distract drivers on the bridge and trucker hats because it was so hot and sunny. Then we put on our harnesses and did the practice course, which was small and had practice ladders so you could get the hang of walking while attached to the bridge. Then we were off! It started walking over these wooden planks that looked ancient, which didn't help my nerves.

Then we were to the ladders. There were four steep ladders that you had to climb up with traffic rushing past on either side of you, which was terrifying. But then suddenly you were at the top and it wasn't scary at all anymore! The view was unbelievable. It was a lot of steps but it didn't seem too steep until walking back down, when I started to panic a bit again. Then I had to climb down the ladders we came up and my harness got stuck. I tried to balance and hold on for dear life and untangle myself all at once which was not an easy task as the trains rolled by next to me, but I somehow managed to survive. We finally landed on solid ground again and survived the bridge climb!

 We met back up with Aunt Jo at the hotel and got some lunch. Spicy hot wings and BBQ pork sandwich <3 <3 <3 Then we were on the move to go shopping. After spending some time in a very upscale mall and realizing all we could afford was a caramel bar (which was delicious), we walked across the street to the other mall which had stores we could afford. Yay shopping! We went to church at the gorgeous cathedral, while a nice storm raged outside. After mass we headed to the Sydney Tower, twice as tall as the harbour bridge, and went to the bar on top. It was kind of like the Space Needle in Seattle where the whole thing rotated so you could see the whole city without ever moving. Since it was dark out the whole city was lit up! Again we called it an early night and I prepared for an even earlier morning to cheer on my parents.

They've been training for a half marathon for a while and decided to run a 10k while they were in Sydney. They made the mistake of choosing to run a trail race instead of a road race so when our taxi pulled into a national park at 7 Sunday morning, we started to get slightly concerned. There were big hills and lots of trees everywhere but the parents stayed optimistic. They got all checked in and I was all ready to cheer them on! Once the race began, I realized I couldn't really go anywhere besides the start/finish line because they were literally running through the woods so I sat on the rocks, soaked up some sun and almost got eaten alive by giant mutant goose creatures. As people started to cross the finish line and more time passed I got a little concerned. Finally, mom emerged and then dad followed 10 minutes later. Apparently the course was much more treacherous than anticipated and to avoid getting hurt, mom cut out and only ran the 7k. But, they both finished and survived! Dad hurt his finger (yes, he hurt his finger in a run...) but other than that they were both unscathed!

After showering and packing up, we headed to lunch at a cute restaurant called the Glenmore. It poured rain while we were there and then stopped in time for us to leave! We did a little souvenir shopping and got dessert and then just hung out and talked at the hotel before we left for our flight back to the Gold Coast. The fam is spending the next few days in Cairns before coming to see the Gold Coast for themselves. After spending time in cities like Melbourne and Sydney, I've realized that Gold Coast is kind of like a mix of Vegas and Miami. Lots of partying and lots of beaches but not much else. It'll be fun though anyway! In the meantime while they're enjoying the beach, I'm at school trying to finish all my assignments because I officially will be busy every weekend from here until I leave for home! We're working on planning our New Zealand trip this week and that'll be our final event! It's all flying by so insanely fast it makes me sad to think about it all ending! I will never be able to express how thankful I am for this opportunity to see a part of the world so many people never get to experience.

 PS. For all you Finding Nemo fans, it's official: P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney does not exist :(

Calm Before the Storm

So again we spent another weekend just kind of bumming around, working on homework. I mean, on Friday, I literally only left my bed for food until 6:00 pm. The weather was kind of crummy, otherwise I like to think I would have gone to the beach. But it's about to get unbelievably crazy!

Anyway, Alex, Christy, Maddie and a few of our other friends are in Buddhist Philosophy here at Bond. Their professor is the head monk at the monastery in Berkley, California, and sings songs about Buddhism. In fact, he has a CD on iTunes full of Buddhist songs. On Friday night, he was recording some songs for his second album and had invited his students to come, which meant I got talked into going as well. So, on a Friday night, that's how I ended up at the Buddhist monastery. It was actually pretty cool and I learned a lot. Songs ranged from ones that taught about the teachings of Buddhism, to songs such as "Every Burger Has A Mother" and other fiercely vegan/vegetarian/save the earth songs. The best part is that we had to sing parts of some of the choruses so I'm officially a back up singer on a CD that will be on iTunes, AKA I'm living the dream.

Sunday we took the train for 3 hours to the Australia Zoo - Home of the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. It's a really big, nice zoo with a ton of animals, from the typical ones - kangaroos, koalas, wallabys, to the expected ones - crocodiles, lizards and snakes, to the unexpected - giraffes, zebras and rhinos. The entire place was basically a shrine to Steve Irwin and his family and their mission of wildlife conservation. Everyone there was super passionate about that.

And then today was another installation of 'musement park Monday for me! I went back to Movie World to finish the rides I didn't have time for last time I went! The lines were super short so I was able to get on them pretty fast! Some girls standing behind me in one of the lines came to Movie World a lot and said that this half hour wait was unbearably long and I just laughed and thought of the two hour lines for rides like the Raging Bull at Six Flags at home.

Since we're over half way through the semester and our time abroad, I thought I'd give you a rundown of everything I've crossed off the bucket list since being here, plus the other things I never would have thought to put. (Inspired by Alex's post here)

Bucket List:
2. Swim in the Pacific Ocean.
20. Learn how to surf. (Even though I failed...)
38. Go snorkeling.
61. Go paddleboarding.
72. Camp on the beach.
97. Go to Australia.
102. Hold a koala.
106. Study abroad.
116. Try seafood.
119. Skydive. (And in a week I'll be able to say I've done this twice!)
126. Attend a beach party.
131. Crash a wedding.

Other Unreal Experiences:
-kayaked the ocean
-survived a cyclone
-4 trips to student health
-an overnight in the hospital
-sandboarding
-selfies with kangaroos and emus
-learned how to successfully navigate the public transit (most of the time)
-sang backup for a Buddhist monk
-seen penguins in their natural habitat walking home along the beach
-made friends from around the world
-drove past a mobster in Melbourne that has definitely killed people
-experienced hostel life - and realized it isn't for me
-went to the casino and lost some money (sorry dad...)
-sang karaoke
-tried Vegemite (not good. not good at all.)
-embraced Aussie fashion and all its quirks

There's still so many big things to come too, I can't even explain! The majority of our trips are still waiting to happen and most importantly, MY PARENTS ARE COMING IN 4 DAYS!!!!!! I'm just a little bit excited.

I am so not about that Vegemite life. I even ate it how they tell you to and it did not help.

 Oh you know... casually rocking the short life. But look, I finally found a romper I like that fits me and isn't super scandalous!!

 Buddhas for days.

I am one with the Irwin family. 

Downtime

Sorry there hasn't been any posting happening recently! (PS there's surf camp pictures at the bottom of this post)

We've had a very non-eventful few weeks since returning from Melbourne. Basically it's consisted of going to class, going to the beach, going to the doctor and repeat. Okay, maybe not quite like that but close enough. It's getting to the point in the semester where assignments really pick up and most of my classes only have 2 or 3 grades total, so it's important to do well on them. The grading scale here is much different than at home and I've noticed the teachers are much more strict in their grading than I'm used to. Because of that, it has taken some extra study time to get my act together. In the last few weeks I also finished my antibiotics that I had been given at the hospital so of course what happens three days later? I am sick again. The swelling in my tonsils never really went down so as soon as I was done with the medicine, they just picked up the next strep that passed through. So I went back to the doctor, got prescribed more meds, had problems with those, went back to the doctor again, and got prescribed different meds. I am now on a more longterm plan that should last until a few weeks before I leave for home so hopefully this will stop me from continuing to get sick.

Aside from all that, really the most exciting thing I've done is go to the Quicksilver and Roxy Pro surf competition! It's held at Snapper Rocks which is a beach in Gold Coast that's about an hour bus ride from Bond. Saturday we headed down there, unsure of what to expect and it was awesome! Saturday was the Roxy Pro so it was round 1 of the girls competition. There were a ton of people there and we got a spot on the beach where we could tan and the surfers would walk right in front of us to get to their starting place! You could walk out into the ocean quite a ways and be super close to the surfers as they caught their big waves. Seeing this made me wish even more that I was a surfer chick. It's seriously the coolest. After a long day in the sun, we headed back, but then went back out to the competition on Sunday because we loved it that much! Sunday was a Quicksilver Pro day, meaning it was the boys' turns to catch some waves. It was incredibly more crowded and we got to see 11 time world champion surfer Kelly Slater walk right in front of us as he got swarmed by fans and we got to watch him surf. It was insane. They did all the cool tricks you see on TV, going through the wave as it makes a tunnel, doing crazy tricks off the tops of the waves, all of it. It was definitely a highlight of my trip here so far. It is so intrinsic in the Australian culture that I feel like you can't witness anything like it elsewhere.

I hate to disappoint but this weekend will probably be as low key as the one before it. But after that, our trip takes a whirlwind turn and we go to Sydney, my parents visit (and skydiving round 2!), Cairns, the outback, and New Zealand! And then I'll be home! It's so crazy, I'm so beyond not ready to leave! Can I just stay here forever? Kay awesome!

A picture from the Quicksilver Pro -- you can see how far out into the water you can really go. It was crazy. 

Another shot of the Quicksilver Pro!

And now for the long awaited surf camp pictures (if you haven't already seen them on facebook that is...)!

Here's a complete progression, and thought process, of the best wave I caught - notice it is very very small - from start to epic wipe out ending.

"oh yeah, look at me paddling like a pro surfer, this is gonna be a good one!"

"okay, smooth and balanced. one foot in front of the other, you can do this"

"now slowly stand up. no sudden movements."

"you haven't fallen off yet, this might actually work this time!"

"wait, i'm actually standing up! how did this happen?! i might as well be bethany hamilton or something right now!"

"this is great! all the other times i wiped out were clearly a fluke, i was born to surf! wait, why am i tipping over and how do i fix it?"

"maybe i'm not as good at surfing as i thought... i guess i should get ready to fall..."

"yeah, definitely not good at surfing. and this water is a lot more shallow than i thought so that kind of hurt. how are people actually good at this?"

 Our group with Juicy J, the best surf instructor there is! She's the only reason I was able to catch any waves at all!