Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in laleri's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Monday, December 25th, 2006
1:46 pm	I'm home! After 32 hours I made it. Despite the general incompetence found at every baggage claim, jeez people, just take two steps back! But anyway, my last few days in Australia were good. Brisbane was sorta boring so I headed out to Surfer's Paradise to lie on the beach. Unfortunately it was cloudy the whole time. Sydney was a fun city. Did the harbor bridge walk, checked out the opera house and the aquarium. I headed out to Manly beach for a few days and finally got my tan. I also took a surfing lesson! That was tons of fun, I actually surfed a few times. I could definitely see myself surfing if I lived near the beach. Back in Sydney ran into an American friend, Bryan, from JCU and hung out with him for a while. I went to a play in the opera house, somewhat random, often confusing, but funny. Then on my last night in town, Bryan convinced me that I just had to stay out all night since my flight was early in the morning anyway. Had a good time, but it ended up meaning I didn't really sleep for about 50 hours. Now I'm recovering from the jet lag and looking forward to christmas! (Comment on this)
Monday, December 11th, 2006
11:42 pm	As I get ready to head back to Australia, here's a quick run-down of New Zealand.  Things NZ has a lot of: Snow-capped Mountains Glaciers Bright blue lakes and rivers Mossy forests Green pastures Waterfalls Rain- up to 30 feet a year in one place I went! Scenic routes- the whole country is a scenic route Dead, and presumably live, possums Sheep Bungie jumpers Japanese tourists in bucket hats Things NZ is lacking: Skim milk Radio coverage People that I know People that know me ( I got a little lonely after Morgan left, but I still had fun) Things that I've done in NZ: Driven around most of the South Island Gone to Christchurch Walked in Arthur's Pass Hiked on Franz Josef Glacier Gone to Queenstown Sailed on Milford Sound Hiked to the base of Mt. Cook Seen a Kiwi, and a Kea (the world's only alpine parrot) Taken hundreds of pictures Seen lots of beautiful places Had a good time Things I've learned: Always bring your raincoat It takes more than an hour to go 100 km, even when you're travelling at 100 km/hr Make sure the heater is plugged in before you go to bed Sheep are really, really stupid That's about all I can think of for the moment, sorry, but you'll have to wait for the pictures. One more day in NZ then off to Brisbane and Sydney. Can't wait to be home. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 30th, 2006
6:57 am	School's out! I'm done, I'm done, I'm done! Took my last final this morning, and I think it went fine. It was an essay exam so who knows how I did, I definitely got something at least semi-intelligent down for each question, and it turned out to be questions that I knew a bit about. So hopefully that works out. All day today I've been packing up my stuff, turns out I've got a lot of it. I don't know how I got over here in the first place, but now that I'm shipping stuff home in tiny little boxes it seems like more. Another one of my good friends went home today. She had a major luggage dilemna last night when she realized she was only allowed to have one bag and she had two huge ones. Luckily I had already been doing research on shipping stuff since I knew I was going to ship one of my bags. I ended up packing up one of her suit cases in boxes and shipping it for her today. Now I've got 2 more days in Townsville before I head off to New Zealand for 11 days, Brisbane for 5 and Sydney for 5. I probably wont be updating while I'm away. But just to wrap this semester up: It's been awesome, I've had a great time, met some wonderful people, seen some beautiful scenery and visited some really cool places. I'm looking forward to being home Dec. 23, but I'll certainly miss this place. Hopefully I'll make it back here some day... (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 25th, 2006
10:22 am	Exam week, anything but exams! So, let's see. What have I been up to these past couple of days. Tuesday I went to the top of Mt. Stewart, which is a mountain I can see out of my room window. I got an awesome view from the top, could see all of Townsville and out to sea. Mt. Stewart is sorta owned by the army, there are all these signs along the road about "active laser fields" and "unexploded ordinance". I had to laugh at the laser field signs, what does that even mean? Anyway, they pretty much shouted that if you went off the road you would blow up. I stayed on the road. After that I finally made it to the Museum of Tropical Queensland. Thankfully I got in free, cause it wouldn't have been worth any money. They had a huge exhibit on the Pandora, some ship that apparently sank at some point in the past. I went through the exhibit backwards by accident and was really confused about the whole thing. Probably would have been better in the right direction. A major question I had: What the heck is the Pandora, and why do I care? This was answered in the first few feet if you went the right way, or the last few if you did what I did. They also had some fun kid science and physics exhibits. I can throw a tennis ball at 70 km/hour, Matt could do 110. I am also not tone deaf, and I learned that big bubbles rise much faster than small bubbles. And a bunch of other cool things, thankfully there were no actual kids there, so we had all the time in the world to fool around with all the exhibits. The last thing of interest in the museum was some really cool fossils of sea creatures. Amazing how modern bivalves and other shell fish are just small replicas of the ancient ones. Just wanted to take the fossils with me, but I think they would have frowned upon that. Wednesday I had my first final. It was the photography one, so I was severely undermotivated to study. Not really sure how it turned out, but who really cares. After the final I went to Billabong sanctuary. Saw a lot of cute koalas and wombats and kangaroos. Also some turtles and big crocadiles, pretty much the usual. Thursday was Thanksgiving and the Ashes. A bunch of us went to one of the frisbee guy's houses and watched the Ashes, which is a big Australia v. England cricket match. Cricket is sorta cool, mostly long and slow. They didn't get an out for the first two hours. When I got there I asked who was winning, they said Australia. It wasn't until later that I found out that England wouldn't bat until the next day! Crazy, crazy. Thanksgiving went well. The food was good and it was mostly chill. I ended up carving the turkey, good thing I've watched my dad and new a bit of what to do. No one else had any clue, but I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. Friday I went to the Yongala! It was absolutely amazing, definitely worth the wait, the boat ride and the money. The Yongala is a passenger ship that sank in a storm in 1911. All 122 on board died, so it's a mass grave site and a historical ship wreck. Since 1911 it's been slowly taken over by coral and animals and is considered one of the best wreck dives in Australia, if not the world. I totally agree. On our first dive we saw 5 sea turtles! Up close and personal, too, you could reach out and touch them if you wanted. Also an amazing variety of soft corals and big fish. On our second dive we saw a 3-4 feet diameter Marbled Ray. It swam less than a foot from me, it was so graceful and had these little yellow fish riding its bow wave. Also saw a Moray eel up in the anchor well at the bow of the ship. Definitley one of my favorite dives and I only got a little sea sick. Today I took my second final. It took 3 hours and covered a lot of information. I'm pretty sure I did well on it, I certainly studied long enough. Now it's time to get to work on my last final and start packing up my room. Lots of stuff to do in this next week. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 21st, 2006
3:39 am	It is so hard to study here. Finals aren't going to be easy, but there's so many other things I'd rather be doing right now. And my Yongala trip has been canceled twice now, we're scheduled for Friday and hopefully it will come through this time. I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I have a week and a half left in Townville. It will be hard to leave, I've made a lot of good friends here, some of whom I may never see again. And that's a sad thought. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 15th, 2006
7:36 am	Yesterday I took a day off from study week and Matt and I went to Jourama falls. It's about 2 hours north of Townsville and is sorta on the edge of the rainforest. Sadly, the overlook was closed so I only got to see the falls from far away. Instead we went swimming in some of the rock pools and had a good time doing that. I got to see a bit of what the rainforest is like, but it hasn't been very wet this year. It was soooo hot, I continue to be amazed at the intensity of both the sun and the heat here, and it's not even full summer yet! I got a light sunburn from being in the sun for 30 minutes, and I already have a good base color. I'm really not used to having to worry about sunscreen all the time, I don't know how pale people survive in this country.         I registered for classes at 11 pm and got somewhat screwed once again. The seniors had already filled one of the Bio classes I really wanted, so that changed my whole plan and I was scrambling at the last second. I've got some of the classes I wanted, hopefully I'll be able to stalk the one I didn't get and it'll work out in the end. Also, the anthro class I wanted is apparently only open for freshmen and sophomores, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't that way when I WAS a sophomore cause I couldn't get into it last year. So now I've got to get an override for that one. All very frustrating, I was hoping that this year would be different than past years, but it appears that the whole point of registration is to screw people.         Spent a few hours working on my paper today, and got quite a bit done. I'm about a day ahead of schedule on it, and I realized today that pretty much no matter what I get on it I'll still do fine in the class. There went the motivation to really work hard on it. I'm still going to put work into it, I'm not very good at half-assing things, but I'm not stressing about it anymore. I also sent off my Monroe proposal to a faculty adviser. I'm really disappointed in the whole Monroe thing, I wanted to do something related to biology, but the structure of the proposal makes that nearly impossible to do. I wish that the monroe project was still the BS fun thing it was in the past, I'm willing to lose the extra money if it meant I got to do what I wanted with it. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 11th, 2006
11:53 pm	Speeches, ok, not speaches. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
2:05 am	The Valedictory Ball went off without a hitch. The shoes were uncomfortable, the dresses were pretty and the speaches were minimal. The food was really good, too. We got there about 6 and they served drinks in the lobby for a while. We sat down around 7 and listened to about 15 minutes of speaches and then got to eat. After we ate there was a few more minutes of speaches, desert and dancing. Seemed like everyone had a good time and I'm glad I went. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 10th, 2006
1:32 am	Classes are officially over. Man, this semester has just flown by. I've got three weeks left here at JCU and so many things I still want to do. This coming weeks is a study week, so I'm planning on just doing local Townsville stuff that I never got around to instead of traveling. Then two weeks of exams after that, three exams total. Tonight is Valedictory Ball, the Uni Hall end of the semester semi-formal. I'm hoping it'll be a good time, a bunch of my friends are going so it should be. Uncomfortable shoes? Bring it on! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, November 3rd, 2006
6:12 am	It's been a long week. I had a big paper due at 4 today, that I worked on for more than 30 hours. Hopefully I'll get an Ok grade on it. In other news... Last Saturday Morgan, Liz, Ben and I went to a D or S costume party. You had to dress as something that started with a D or an S. I went as a Dork, Liz as Daisy Duke, Morgan as Dry, and Ben as a streaker. Our costumes were all pretty funny and it was a cool party. Ultimate Frisbee had playoffs on Monday night. I had friends on both teams that were in the final, so it was really win-win for me. On Tuesday night (Halloween), Frisbee had a costume party. I went as a mad scientist, I teased my hair out and put tons of hair spray in it. It was huge! My friend Katie was laughing the whole time she was doing it because she knows how much I care about my hair. It took me 20 minutes to brush it after I washed it the next day, but there doesn't appear to be any lasting damage. Liz went as Bride of Frankenstein for that party, she made her hair into an afro, which was pretty awesome. A good time was had by all. Next week is the last week of class here, I'm going to spend this weekend planning my post-school trips and relaxing after my horribly painful paper. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
6:09 am	I'm an advanced scuba diver! What a great dive trip. Liz and I went on this trip together, we were dive buddies. She was a good buddy, lots of other people on the trip were not good buddies. We boarded the boat around 8 pm on Friday night and started the boat ride out to the Great Barrier Reef. It took us from 9 pm til 6 am to get there. The seas were kinda rough. I was very seasick, even though I took medicine and everything. That aspect of the trip was horrible, I was sick nearly the whole time I wasn't diving. But the diving itself more than made up for it. I saw my first reef shark, it was only about 2 or 3 feet long, but I'm fine with that. No worries about it attacking you, with a shark that size. I also saw these giant hump-headed parrot fish. They're the biggest member of that family, about 3 feet long. Their teeth were huge! We did a night dive and I saw some lionfish and a bunch of other stuff I've never seen during the day. It was weird to be out there at night with just a flashlight. When I looked back at the rest of the group it was like a scifi movie, beams of light shining down all over the place. Now that I'm advanced my next move is to make it to the Yongala. That's a world famous wreck dive that you have to be advanced to do, so I've got to do it before I leave Australia. Sadly there was one casualty on this trip. My beach towel. Rest in peace butterfly-towel-with-my-named-sewed-into-it-that-I-got-when-I-was-10-years-old. We've been through a lot together. I know you've gone to a better place... My towel flew off the boat in the middle of the night. Despite being pinned with three clothes pins. It really just wanted to be free. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
1:07 pm	I had a great weekend around Townville this weekend. On Friday night a few of us went ice skating. Funny to come all the way to Australia to skate. The rink was the smallest rink that Ive ever seen. It was almost a square, so we were practically skating in a circle instead of an oval. They also seemed to have a hard time keeping the ice frozen, there was a layer of water by the end of the night. But we still had a good time, and no blisters! There is a whole bunch of highschool aged kids that apparently go skating every Friday night. They all had their own skates and the staff knew them by name. Glad I am not that age any more.     Saturday I just did work all day, but at night we went to Greekfest. It was pretty cool, got some good food. That was the best part because the dining hall food was horrible that night. I also saw some interesting performances of traditional dancing and that sort of thing. My friend Katie got recruited to dance on stage during the belly-dancing performance. That was hilarious, I got some good pictures and video.     Sunday I went sailing curtesy of a boy named Stu on the Ultimate frisbee team. He is a big sailor and got to borrow one of his friends boat for the day. He took a bunch of us out and it was awesome. We left the marina at 8:30 in the morning and sailed to Radical Bay on Magnetic Island. It was a beautiful day, sunny, not too hot, just enough wind to sail. I got a bit sea sick and didnt quite make it to the bay without hurling over the rail, but it was still a nice trip. Once in the bay we jumped off the boat and swam to shore, played some beach Ultimate, threw the disc around in the water, lay on the beach, and splashed around. Doesnt get much better than that. While I was swimming I got bit by some sea lice and started freaking out that I was getting stung by jelly fish, even though its not that season yet. Imagine my relief when they told me they were harmless. We ate lunch on the boat, and Stu and Ben climbed the mast and jumped off into the water. I thought they might kill themselves, since climbing the mast for Stu involved using hands and feet like a monkey. Climbing the mast for Ben involved being pulled up on a rope by the other guys. I guess hes not as monkey-like as Stu. They both survived the jump, and of course thought it was great. Around 3:30 we started sailing back to Townsville. About half an hour into the sail we saw a huge sea turtle right by the side of the boat. Sea turtles are so awesome, I am happy every time I see one. We all got a bit sunburned, my first burn in Australia. I guess now I understand why they say not to be outside between 10 and 2. I guess 8:30 to 3:30 might not be the best idea. My burn isnt bad though, so no big deal. We finished up our awesome day with Pizza Hut.     And now I am back to class, not nearly as fun. Getting my advanced scuba certification next weekend. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 8th, 2006
3:24 pm	I finally made it up to Crystal Creek yesterday afternoon. Liz, Ben, Matt and I all made the hour long journey up there. We stopped at the Frosty Mango along the way and has some really good sorbet. Crystal Creek is a swimming hole in one of the National Parks. There were rocks to jump off of and rock slides and all kinds of fun stuff. The water was the perfect temperature, cool enough to feel good on a hot day, but warm enough to get right in without feeling uncomfortable. I'd been wanting to go there for a long time, so I'm glad I finally made it.     Today, unfortunately, I had work to do. I went to the Townsville Botanical Gardens to take pictures for my photography class. How is it that the class that was supposed to be fun, but isn't, the class that doesn't transfer at all back to WM, and the class that I have the worse grade in, is the one that takes up the most of my time? And I had such high hopes... Oh, well. It was so hot sitting at the bus stop that I actually got a sunburn and a bit dehydrated. Let me tell you, Australia is a harsh land! I can't wait until I no longer have to depend on buses, I spent more time waiting for the bus than I did taking pictures, a sad state of affairs. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 6th, 2006
7:09 am	And another week down. I realized this week that I'm going to have a ton of stuff due at the end of the semester, all at the same time. So, my previous plan of pretty much taking friday, saturday and sunday off every week is definitely not going to work. It's getting to be crunch time on several papers, as well as on my Monroe project. I made some progress today on a couple of things, and I'm sure I'll be alright. Studying abroad is getting to have a bit too much "studying" in it... (Comment on this)
Monday, October 2nd, 2006
1:29 pm	I'm back from the semester break! What a fun, but tiring trip it was. I think I need a little vacation to recover from it.     ( Semester Break details! ) (Comment on this)
Friday, September 22nd, 2006
3:32 pm	Heading off to Melbourne tonight for our semester break! So, there wont be any updates for a while, but tune in next week for all the details of our trip! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 19th, 2006
12:42 pm	Sorry about the pictures, folks. Had internet trouble last night, I'm working on it now. (Comment on this)
Monday, September 18th, 2006
8:37 pm	Hello out there faithful livejournal readers! Sorry it's been so long since I updated, but there was nothing going on and then I was busy having an absolutely amazing time sailing in the Whitsunday islands.     Last Thursday I took the Greyhound bus from Townsville to Airlie Beach. It was my first experience on Greyhound, and while I don't really have any complaints it's definitely not going to be on the top of my list of favorite ways to travel. The ride was about four and half hours, mostly due to our hourlong stop at a gas station/restaurant. Apparently standard opperating procedure, but I mean c'mon. I pretty much just napped on the bus ride down, there isn't a lot between here and there and practically nothing to see. Just a lot of sugarcane and fields of tall grass with cattle or horses. I spent the night at a Hostel in Airlie Beach, where several of my roommates came in at 4 in the morning, drunk, talking loudly and then shushing themselves while continuing to talk loudly about how they should quiet down. I didn't feel bad when my alarm went off at 6:30 and I took a shower and banged around in the room.     Friday morning I headed for the marina at 8 to see what my new home at sea was going to look like. I was sailing on a boat called the Kiana, it takes 14 passengers and 3 crew. I met the other passengers on the dock and I was the youngest person there and the only one travelling alone. There were 5 Brits travelling together, two British couples, 1 German girl, 1 crazy old foreign lady of unidentifiable origin, me, and two canadians from BC. I got to be pretty good friends with the 5 Brits, two of whom were on a 10 month world tour, the other three were visiting them for a few weeks. The crew was a divemaster named John, the skipper named Brent, and a hostess named Ainsley. They were all nice and excited to be going back to sea since they were coming off a two week vacation.     That first day started out cloudy and cold with occasional downpours. Thankfully the boat had a covered sitting area so I didn't have to go below and risk the horror of sea sickness. As it was I spent a fair amount of time with my eyes on the horizon. We motored out to our first island destination, passing other islands out in the rain and fog. The sky started to clear in the afternoon and we prepared for our first dive/snorkel at Hayman Island. We were diving fairly close to shore in about 30 feet of water. Sadly, visibility was absolutely awful. The windy conditions of the past few weeks had reduced it to 6-10 feet, which is the worst conditions I've yet experienced. However, I'm of the opinion that a bad day of diving is better than no diving at all, and I still got to see a lot of great coral and fish, I just had to focus more on the stuff right next to me instead of looking far away. We saw a big Napoleon Wrass named Elvis and a huge school of bait fish. The bait fish were cool, you could swim right through the school and see them dart away.     We spent that evening and night in the same bay and watched the sun go down and the stars come out. The sunset was really brilliant with the scattering of clouds left over from earlier in the day. The stars were the brightest I've ever seen, it's too bad I only know two constellations down here in the southern hemisphere. It was a breezy and cool night so I didn't spend too much time on deck and I went to bed early.     Saturday morning dawned partly cloudy with a good forecast for the rest of the day. First thing in the morning I saw a huge sea turtle about 10 feet off from the boat. That's the first wild sea turtle I've seen down here! We left Hayman island at 7:30 and set off to our next destination at Hook Island. As we motored on to our next destination we saw humpback whales sporting off in the distance and lay in the sun as the sky cleared by mid morning. At Hook Island we did 2 more dives. Visibility was pretty bad here too, about 15 feet, but on the first dive I could hear whale song! It was really cool to hear them off in the distance. Sound travels so well through water. I also saw an amazing variety of hard and soft corals, that were absolutely spectacular even with the bad vis, and a bunch of brightly colored small fish.     In the afternoon we went on our first sail. The wind was blowing really hard and the seas were rough and I had my worst afternoon of sea sickness of the trip. I didn't actually get sick, thankfully, but I spent a lot of time clutching the rail and watching the horizon. We saw some dolphins really close to the boat and they went and rode the bow wave, just like in the movies. After our sail we anchored near another island for the night. The stars were even brighter here, but the night was also colder and I was really tired.     Sunday morning we were up at 6 am as we headed off for Whitsunday island, home of Whitehaven beach the whitest sand beach in the world. On our way over there we came upon a mother humpback whale and calf. I think we surprised them because they were only about 30 feet from the boat as they hightailed it out of there. We could see the baby frisking around once they got a safe distance away. The whale migration has been really amazing, seems like I've seen a whale every time I got on a boat around here. We also saw a couple more dolphins and a turtle once we arrived at the island. It was a beautiful ride to the island, blue, calm water. Once we landed on the beach we climbed a trail up to a lookout to get our first view of Whitehaven. The view was spectacular with tourquoise water and dazzling white sand. Next we hiked down to the beach. It definitely lives up to it's reputation, the sand was white as snow and soft as powdered sugar. I've never seen its like, and I don't think any other beach will ever be able to compare. The water was clear shallow and we saw a ton of rays. Don't worry, I stayed clear of them. We spent about 2 hours on the beach taking pictures and laying around. A bunch of the women were using the sand to polish their jewelry. Unfortunately, I'd left all my jewelry back in my dorm room so it remains unpolished.     In the afternoon we sailed back to Airlie Beach. It was a much calmer day and I didn't feel sick this time. I even spent about 20 minutes out on the bow of the ship, as far out in front as I could get. And that was the end of my fabulous trip. I spent the rest of the afternoon putzing around in Airlie, buying postcards and such. My bus didn't come til 8:30 so I had about 5 hours to kill, and I got a bit bored. That's the worst thing about buses, the waiting...     Now I'm looking forward to my semester break trip to Melbourne and Uluru next week, busy, busy.     Make sure to check out the pictures from this weekend!     (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 9th, 2006
11:31 pm	We've got our semester break plans finalized! Here's the plan: Fly to Melbourne night of Sept. 22 Tour Melbourne- 23-24 Drive the great Ocean Road and see the Dandenong Ranges- 25 Visit Phillip Island and see the penguins- 26 Stuff in Melbourne- 27-28 Fly to Uluru the morning of the 29 See Uluru in the afternoon- 29 Kings Canyon- 30 Visit the Olgas- morning of the 1st Fly to Townsville- afternoon of the 1st I know it seems really heavily planned out, but you know me. Actually leaving the 27th and 28th open for whatever we find in Melbourne is a big jump for me, but I'm sure we'll find tons of stuff we never even thought of. Perhaps surfing? Only two more weeks, and I've got the Whitsundays next weekend. I'm sooo excited! Now I just need to get through my first exam on Monday and try to resign myself to missing Ultimate on Thursday night :-( I guess visiting the Whitsundays will be worth it, but still a tough trade... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 7th, 2006
11:14 pm	I've got my first real paper due tomorrow. 1000 words for my photography class! I'm so bitter...     It's the full moon again, and I was just thinking today how weird it was that I've already been here so long. Last month I was out on Maggie Island for the full moon, this month I'm just hanging around in Townsville. Hopefully I'll get some kiteboarding, frisbee golf and beach time in this weekend. My stupid paper prevented me from going to the beach today, but I got to play Ultimate in the afternoon. Played for the first time with my new cleats, and whew what a difference. I just felt so much faster, and I was able to turn a lot better, too. Maybe I'm not as slow as I thought I was. I think they'll be a good buy, especially considering how cheap they were. I'm feeling nearly better after my strep throat event. I'll be good as new in no time. Hopefully I'll be able to avoid getting all the other plagues that are going around campus.     For everyone at WM... I'm still waiting on pictures of most of your rooms! Don't just leave me hanging. (Comment on this)