Sydney

Sydney was awesome! I had so much fun! I didn't even get to do everything I wanted to, there is so much to do in that city! Friday was my friends 21st birthday, so we went out and celebrated Friday night, although we had a hard time finding places open because it was Good Friday.
I am now an accomplished surfer. I took a two hour surf lesson at Bondi Beach on Saturday, which was beautiful, and I stood up on a couple waves! It was really cool. We took a tour of the Blue Mountains on Sunday-not a bad way to spend Easter if I can't be at Legal Seafood with everyone. They are the Blue Mountains because the eucalyptus trees have an oil in them that makes them appear blue from far away. I bet you thought I wouldn't know that. On Monday we wandered around the city and got caught in the rain, I was soaked! Overall it was a great weekend, but I didn't get nearly enough sleep! We flew home Tuesday morning at 7 and I slept all afternoon. I think I got more sleep Tuesday afternoon than I did any night while I was in Sydney, but it was worth it! I've been catching up on work and stuff this week, I finished one paper and started another that are due in two weeks. I haven't uploaded my pictures yet, I've been crazy busy and trying to catch up on sleep which isn't working! This next week is "Autumn break" but I keep calling it spring break. So I'm off tomorrow morning to Cape Tribulation which is north of Cairns, and I'll be there until Wednesday night. Then I'm here trying to do work for two days and Friday afternoon I'm off to Melbourne to do a tour of Great Ocean Road. Pretty Exciting!! I'll update with pictures as soon as I can!

Day two of Hidden Valley

This is delayed, but better late than never! On Sunday we woke up and had a delicious brekkie (Australian for breakfast) and got ready to go on a hike. Our guide, Ross, then took us on a hike through the bush. We were following a road for a while and then all of a sudden he just took a left off of the road and we were walking through the grass. He grew up there so he knew the area really well, but I was amazed that he could know exactly where to go. The bush is so different than the forests at home. There are trees here but they aren't anywhere near as thick as they are at home. So after hiking for about an hour or so we were warned that it was going to start getting pretty steep (we were heading downhill). He wasn't kidding either, but we took it slow and made it to another cliff, where it was even steeper and rockier. But at this point we could see a beautiful gorge that was waiting for us below. Don't worry I made it down safe, I managed to save my clumsiness for swimming later. I managed to slip on the rocks and fall, it was pretty funny. It looked like a cartoon, my feet just came right out from underneath me. No injuries, promise!

We spent the afternoon here; we had lunch and swam in the river. I jumped off a cliff again, this one was a little scarier! It was a blast! No one wanted to leave, we actually tried to delay as long as we possibly could. After we left the gorge we hiked back to the resort and packed up to go home. It was a little depressing to go back to campus after such a great weekend!
Well anyway now that you're all updated on the happenings here, I'm going to go to bed. I'm off to Sydney tomorrow morning for the weekend. I guess there are a million gluten-free places to eat there--including pizza, burgers, tacos and bakeries. I'm bringing my big suitcase so I can bring food back here. Seriously, I am. Totally not kidding on that one.

Hidden Valley

Last weekend I went on the Hidden Valley tour and stayed at the resort there. It was AMAZING! We were picked up at the uni (oz speak for the university, and oz means aussie o-z get it?) at 9 am Saturday morning and from there we drove north to Paluma. We drove by all this sugar cane and our guide told us about these cane beetles that were eating all the sugar cane. They were looking for a way to get rid of them and some country suggested the cane toad because they would supposedly eat all the beetles. Well after introducing 100 cane toads they didn't eat any of the beetles and they hopped off. But they are poisonous, not bad enough to kill humans, but other animals. There are no predators for the toad, and now it's overtaking Australia. They reproduce at a ridiculous rate too. I thought I would share that little fun fact with you. So the first place we went was Little Crystal Creek. It was this beautiful river with a bunch of waterfalls. We stopped there for a while and we were able to swim and hang out.

So after we hung out at the upper part of Little Crystal Creek we adventured down to the lower part. There was another waterfall and a couple of people in the group we were with were jumping off of the rocks. So I did too, only to read a sign later that we weren't supposed to. Oh well.

Now, I think that's a pretty sweet jump. I kind of look like I'm second guessing myself actually, but my form is top-notch. Don't worry I didn't hit any rocks or anything, I made people go before me to test it out. See, I used my head! So after this we went on a hike through the rainforest. It's not as lush or wet as I had expected. Maybe we weren't in the thickest part of it, but either way it was beautiful. It's so different than home.

We saw a bunch of cool trees, Strangling Figs and Quandongs.

That's me and my friend Nicole in front of the Quondong. We hiked to a lookout that overlooked the valley and the other mountains, you could even see the ocean!

It was really pretty. Later, after lunch because we were all starving, we finally got to the resort. This place was so cool. It was completely powered by solar power. They are totally off the grid. They had a bunch of cabins, but mine was the best. No, really it was. My friend Caitlin and I shared a room and we got our own cabin with a patio and little propane stove and tea kettle. So after we got there we had about an hour and a half before we went on a platypus walk so we had tea and sat out on the patio and played cards. It was perfect. Now here is where I would like to post a picture of a platypus and talk about how awesome it was to see one, but those animals are sneaky. We waited for almost two hours (quietly and you know how hard that is for me!) but we never saw one. We split into two groups, and the other group saw a brief glimpse of one but that was it. I haven't given up hope though- I'm going to find one when I go to Melbourne in 3 weeks. We then went on a night walk to see night animals. We saw possums, gliders, spiders and wallabies.

Ok, this last one wasn't actually on the night walk. It was our other roommate. He was big! The spiders we saw are harmless though, we made sure to ask! Well I still have to tell you about the Sunday, but I'm tired and I need to go to bed. So I'll post more tomorrow. 4 days until opening day. I still get just as excited all the way around the world, even though I can't listen to or watch the games!

The Strand

Last night I went to The Strand (that's the name of the beach) with some of my friends. At night here they light up the stinger nets and the beach so anyone can swim if they want. There is a huge section of parks and playgrounds that run along the side of the beach for people to play on. It's really cool because the beach stretches for a couple miles. It's not the nicest beach, the water is kind of murky because it's muddy around here and there aren't big waves because the reef blocks them from coming in to shore. But it's a beach and still a lot of fun to go to. Last night we played frisbee and went swimming. There was no one else on the beach, which made it strangely quiet, but nice. Today is my day to catch up on some work, and get ahead because I'm going away 5 of the 6 weekends coming up. Next weekend I'm going on a Rainforest and Waterfall Safari! They claim I'll get to see a platypus, so I'm going to have my camera ready! Did you know that a platypus has spurs on their hind legs the male's spurs carry venom. It's one of very few venomous mammals. It has to be one of the weirdest animals, maybe I should make one my pet!

Finally, an update!

Hey everyone! I know I've been slacking in my updates of this thing; I don't even have an excuse for you! I've been trying to get into the routine of actually going to school here, but it's been hard. I don't think I've ever been to class where it is nice out every day. It's not exactly conducive to studying if you ask me! The way they have classes here is really weird. Each class has a lecture for two hours and a tutorial for an hour every week. I feel like I am never in class! It doesn't help that every weekend is four days long for me! It makes it hard to get into a routine, but I can't really complain! It gives me plenty of time to go to the beach! Let me think about what I've done since I've last updated. I should update more frequently, it will save me the trouble of thinking about what I've done. Last weekend it was two of my friend's birthdays so we all went out on Saturday night to celebrate, which was a lot of fun. Last Saturday I was supposed to go to Maggie Island, but then we found out we might get hit with a cyclone! So we changed our plans and decided not to risk our lives-we went to the aquarium instead! It was awesome, they had a green sea turtle (the one in the picture above) that is supposed to be a vegetarian but because it is in a tank with so many fish and stuff it has started to eat other fish! Pretty sweet! We didn't end up getting hit with the cyclone, which was pretty intense from what I heard, it was just a little more cloudy and windy than normal. This week was pretty uneventful, except for some technology difficulties right before I had to make a presentation, but I won't get into that.

This past Friday there was a full moon party on Maggie Island. The party itself was alright, nothing too special, but we went and hung out on the beach for a couple hours and that was awesome. It was beautiful out and completely wonderful! Then we all ended up pushing each other into the water, which in retrospect was definitely not a good idea, but hey we all made it out alive! With a good story to tell too! I swam with killer jellies and didn't die. How many people can say that? Saturday and Sunday we went to the beach, I actually just got home! It was beautiful! The water here is so warm it always surprises me that it's salt water. I'm still expecting it to be fresh water because in my mind there is no way that the ocean can ever get warmer than freezing cold. I was supposed to go kite boarding this weekend too, but we messed up the lesson times, whoops! We might go tomorrow though! It's great to not have classes on Mondays! I'm going to post you some pictures of campus, because my mom has been requesting that I do so!

This is my frog friend. He lives in the stairs that I take to get to my room, he's nocturnal but he's there a lot. I'm pretty sure he protects me from anything gross coming into my building.

There's me holding a crocodile! He was much softer than I thought he would be. I was told that he could get up to 6 meters long! That's huge!

I couldn't figure out what kind of bird this was, points to anyone who can identify him.

This is just between some of the buildings classes are in. Some of the classrooms open up to the outside, it's so different than at home!

This is the path between the many buildings that the classes are in. The way the number the buildings is ridiculous. 302 is next to 24 which is next to 3. There is no order and it drives me crazy, on top of making me get lost all the time!


These are bush turkeys, and they are kind of annoying because they hang out by the student mall, probably because everyone feeds them. This is one of the buildings I have class in, I think it kind of looks like a castle!

This is on the walk back to my room, I was playing around with the settings on my camera that's why it looks funky.

I was walking across campus to see my friends the other day and there were wallabies all over the place! It was so cool, I had to have seen about 10 of them on my walk.

This is looking up at one of the sets of stairs that lead to my suite. I live to the left on the second floor. It's really pretty! The flying foxes (which are what the giant bats are called) like to hang out in the trees pictured.

I'm heading to Sydney for Easter! I'm really excited for it. We're deciding what we are doing for spring break tomorrow but so far the idea is to rent a van and drive up to Cairns and drive around there for a couple days.

I hope everyone had a good weekend, I'm off to "do some homework" which will probably turn into watching a movie. What can you do?

This is me doing my homework...

It is a good thing I don't go to school "for real" here because I'm pretty sure I would fail out. I can't bring myself to do any work; maybe it's because I just had over two months of vacation and it's hard to get back into the swing of things. Either way, I've been procrastinating my homework for a while now and I thought I would write an update for you guys while I did. See, I'm being productive...kind of. Anyway after I last posted I hiked up Castle Hill, which is this giant hill that is in the center of Townsville. You can see it from everywhere downtown, which would probably be a good way to know what direction I am heading, but I don't know enough to know where to head based on it. It was a great hike, and I didn't die from heat stroke! It was pretty hot, but I think I'm getting used to it. I'll probably be cold when I get home this summer, crazy I know. This weather is kind of confusing me though, because I keep thinking that because it is this nice out I should be going to Maine soon, but that's not happening (which I'm kind of sad about, I will miss Maine in the spring. Actually I'm going to miss Spring in general, which is upsetting). Anyway, the hike wound around the mountain because if it went straight up we would have needed rock climbing gear. I could see Townsville and the ocean the whole way up, which was strange to be able to see the city on a hike. It was beautiful though, the dirt and rock here is so much different then at home, it's almost red. There were stairs that were built into the path to make it easier to climb--I was pretty grateful for these! The view from the top was neat, we could see everything: JCU, Magnetic Island, all of the city, and much more. It was so nice and peaceful on the top of the mountain, after I caught my breath that is! We stayed there to watch the sunset, which was definitely worth the wait. I didn't even fall down the mountain on the way down. It must have been the fact that I thought ahead and brought band-aids, or maybe my sweet new hiking boots. Here are some pictures from the day...

I love this picture! Too bad I was only halfway there though.

Other than Castle Hill, nothing overly exciting is going on here. I'm missing spring training a lot, I've resorted to streaming WEEI over my computer. It's weird to listen to the Big O at 7 am though. I am going on a trip at the end of March to the rainforest and a waterfall. I'm pretty excited! We are planning our trip to Sydney tomorrow, so hopefully we'll book that soon. My friend Caitlin and I are looking into going to Tasmania during our Study week before finals. They give you a whole week to study for your finals before you take them, it's crazy! I plan to take full advantage of that and not study one bit! I'm still trying to figure out a way to get to the Outback, but plane tickets to Alice Springs are pretty expensive. I'll figure something out though, hopefully! O.K now that I have officially wasted enough time I'm going to go finish my work! Or I'll go catch up on what the sox are up to. I love Youk's new facial hair, I think it disguises his massive chin a little better than last years style!

Back in Action!

My computer is fixed! Finally! It was a close call for a little bit, they tried to tell me that my International warranty no longer covered accidental damages, but after a long time on the phone, they finally realized I was right, and they came to fix it on Friday. Molly- 1, Dell-0 Anyway, now that my computer is back I can post more pictures for you!

This is the entrance to the Rotary International House, where I am living this semester. It's pretty awesome to get to look at a row of palm trees every time a walk back.

This coocaburra was making a lot of noise as I was wandering around campus one day. They are so cool!

These are my favorite birds here so far. I'm pretty sure they are Rainbow Lorikeets. They are so bright! They can make a lot of noise but that's alright... for now.

This was taken down at the Strand (the beach). They take their jelly fish pretty seriously here, probably because they will kill you! Don't worry they have stinger nets and a rock pool that are protected from the stingers!

Alright I'm off to climb that big rock at the back of this picture. It's called Castle Hill. I'll post pictures later, probably before any of you wake up... except maybe Mary and Phil!