March 13, 2009 - FRIDAY!

since i last wrote i have had a few things going on! first of all, this past weekend i was suppose to go to the gold coast for the Roxy Pro/Quicksilver surfing competition. i was really excited for that. however, the girls i was planning on going with decided to not make the trip...so it was a no go! that was a big bummer. to see a surfing competition with some big name surfers would have been a really great experience.

that friday i was able to go to the city(brisbane) for the night to get away! a couple guys just rented a car for the weekend so we headed there for a few hours. i saw some really amazing sights. they had a beautiful botanical garden, which was really just like a big park area in the center of town. there is also a man made beach right down town; it is called "streets beach" and it was really neat. i have never seen anything like that before! that night also happened to be their market night, so the sidewalks were lined with vendors and stalls of all sorts of great things. i saved my money however and resisted the temptations!

school is definetely underway and the lecturers have no mercy! i feel like every teacher has plenty they want the students to be doing. i am going to have to really buckle down and get organized....especially because on monday i have two friends from back home coming to visit me! which will be really great and i hope we get a lot of activity in while they are here.

this past week was rainy and windy everyday, almost all day! back home was a blizzard and here was a tropical storm. i still think i would pick the storm :) it was a result of cyclone hamish, which was taking placing right of the coast of queensland, thank goodness it ended up going the other way! also, even more recently there was an oil spill just down the coast. hopefully there isnt too much damage!

but the rain and the wind stopped and i was able to do some surfing this morning. it was really great! i enjoyed it thoroughly. unfortunetely right after that my brand new board shorts got misplaced/lost/SOMEHOW fell out of my bag. so that was a huge disappointment. oh well, money grows on trees right?! i blame the fact that it is friday the 13th and bad luck is bound to occur.

a beach moment

me and a bunch of Germans! there everywhere :)

going out and about

heaps of fun

March 4, 2009

I can not believe it is already March! Of course it helps that February is a short month, but still…in some ways I feel like I just got here and in others I feel like my time here has already been so long.

School is well underway this week and I will have had each of my lectures and tutorials by 3:00 o’clock on Thursday! Yes, Fridays are free and make for a long weekend! The beginning is a little rocky because everything is so new and all the teachers have different styles. The setup of how they run their courses is different from UND. I will have completed a lot of presentations by time this semester is over.

Last weekend was pretty quite, however on Sunday I was able to head to Dream/Water World on the Gold Coast for the day. It was Carina, Josie, Regina, Michaela, and my self. Carina drove us down and her and Josie and had discount passes for us, so that was great! It was a really good day, enjoying each others company, the weather, and the rides. It was nice to get away for the day that is for sure.

On Tuesday it was my friend Pat’s birthday so a group of us went out to Montezuma’s, which is a Mexican restaurant down at Mooloolaba. After supper we walked the beach and it was soooo beautiful. The buildings, the lights, the moon, the beach, the water; all of it! Those are the moments when I am truly amazed at nature and how God could have possibly come up with something so wonderful.

Lastly, I just came from making some plans for my Easter break, which will take up a huge chunk of April and it looks like I am going to New Zealand! Even better I will be there on my birthday.