Dolphins and Space

Hey all! Got up early yesterday for an international student excursion to Nelson Bay...its only like an hour bus ride from Newcastle, not bad.  Its adorable...little town!  I'm obsessed, once again.  We went on a dolphin watch cruise...it wasn't as long as I thought it would be, but it was still nice just relaxing in the sun...getting over drinking and little sleep. We saw like 20 dolphins and even though I've seen dolphins a million times and swam with them, it never gets old.  The boat also had this net thing that you could lay in in the water...seemed like a good idea, but it was crowded as crap and uncomfortable and basically when you tried to get out, it attacked you.

After the little cruise around the bay, the boat docked and we were allowed to roam around town, shop and eat and the like, for a couple of hours.  A few of us went to this little hole in the wall, whose name I can't remember for the life of me...it had everything fried possible and it smelled glorious.  We got some serious burgers and chips (chips are french fries here), one of the best burgers ever!  And I know that its really "American" of me to just get a burger and fries and not try anything new, but I haven't had one in forever and it was the perfect hangover meal...anyways, they put beats on the burgers...sounds so wrong, but it was SO good! I should have taken a picture of it for Elon, he would appreciate it.

Oh and Diddy, I'm entering and tabbing more...we'll see if this looks better.

Anyways, last night was a good time.  Bara had a party...a space party haha, yes...themed.  Of course, me and the girls waited til the last minute and had like no money so we just put together some galactic looking outfits, but there were some serious costumes.  My favorites were definitely the Futurama people...funny as hell.  Australians love that show, that and Family Guy and House, weird right?  There was some serious DJ-ing and attempts at break dancing, fun times.  Other than that, got attacked by about a hundred or so more mosquitos...i really effing hate them, starting to bug me...whoops, pun haha. Kkkkkk, so then the music and dancing had to end by 12 cause it was in the dorm and we have to be quiet for everyone...so we just took it to the common room and drank and played Never Have I Ever...I hate that game, so I just listened...learned a lot about everyone.  ANYWAYS, I also had to go find my Jersey friend.  I know, you all will love this...There are Jersey people here...man, do we get along or what!  Anyways, so he lives in the city which is like a 30 minute bus ride from campus.  And I guess there was nothing going on with people there so I told him to come to our bara party.  Well, hes never been on campus yet haha and this campus is huge and confusing and dark as shit (apparently they dont care if ppl get raped here).  Well the bus drops him off at this building Birabahn, but I live at Barahineban...so there was some serious confusion...had to go searching for him...found him over an hour later, got back and the party was over...hahaha, shouldn't be laughing, but it was ridiculous.

Dont worry, there are plenty of pictures, but I guess you won't see them for a bit...sorry, kkkkkk that was a boring post, but I have nothing to do right now so I figured why now...but yeah, laundry time now...peace yos.

Okay so...nothing new has really happened since my last post except that my retardedness is still very much alive and well...I FINALLY got a cell phone and I had it less than 48 hours and left it on the damn bus! The best part is that I would have totally thought someone would have taken it by now cause it can be pretty ghetto-ish down here, but one of my friends texted it cause he didn't know I lost it and he got a text back saying: "Tell the owner of this cell phone that I found it on the bus and that they can pick it up at the Hamilton bus stop. Cheers, The Bus Driver". Uhhh, can you say BEST BUS DRIVER EVER? Seriously. I'm used to Gville bus drivers who see ppl running to the bus and are literally .5 seconds away, but instead of stopping they hit the gas...awesome.

Other than that, went to the beach this morning with my Bara friends. 'Bara' is short for Barahineban which is the dorm I'm staying in and the friends consist of my RAs and the random assortment of aussies and other international students...good times, good times. We played crickett, which may be the most boring, gay sport ever...dont play it or watch it unless intoxicated and even then you run the risk of being completely bored...and we played rugby and vball, but mostly I just laid out with the girlies and then had some dank sausages! Oh and another weird thing here, no one seems to use hot dog buns...they just take a slice of normal bread and wrap it around the sausage...AND they never have mustard at damn bbqs...driving me crazy! So I bought my own.  Oh and random thought for drew...speaking of boring, I was hanging out in the common room last night with some friends and there was nothing to watch so this one Aussie kid was like LETS WATCH BODY BOARDING VIDEOS! and I was like uhhhh what is that? but ok.  Well if you thought surf vids were boring, you need to watch these cause they literally have like one trick that they do over and over again, looks like fun to do, but dont need to watch it...thought you'd appreciate that.

Well now that I just ranted about the mustard it made me think of another thing to rant about. We went to this club called Customs and had a grand ole time, but i literally had one scoop of ice cream ALL day and we had done the freakin sand dunes earlier that day so i was obviously starving at 230 am after drinking and someone mentioned Taco Bell, so of course I freaked out and wanted it right away! Welllll, Australia doesn't have any Taco Bells, NONE(Silvana and Taylor, I know you'd freak out about that too)! Apparently they used to, but business wasn't good enough so they got rid of them...pretty much the saddest moment of my life (big exaggeration, but i was drunk so oh well). Anywhoooo, got to take a shower and get ready for tonight...going to The Bar On The Hill...its the bar on campus...thats right, drinking on campus...amazing! Let you know how that goes....but yeah, I'm still trying to put pics up on facebook, but everytime i try uploading it says 'server cant be found' what the hell...just look at tagged photos for now. Miss and love everyone!

Australia!

Cairns was absolutely amazing! Hot as heck, but beautiful...everyone I've met doing the same program are really cool and they're all from somewhere different...I'm the only one representing the state of Florida...can't do much better than me if I do say so myself. 

We all stayed at a hostel in Cairns called Gilligan's for 4 days...it was pretty sick...pool and bar connected and in walking distance to the marina.  I went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and actually saw some white tip sharks while we were swimming, probably the best moment of my life ever! Then the second day we went to the Rainforestation about a half hour away...got to hold some koalas and hang with the kangaroos...OH and they taught me how to throw a boomerang...totally getting one so I can be pro.  And there was the ridiculous croc there the size of montana that the people call Jack the Ripper because so far he has killed 10 of his mates...good guy, good guy. ANYWAYS, we got to see him during feeding...crazyness!

We went out to all the bars every night(one of which was called Shenanigans, once i saw the name I made it a goal to go there before we left Cairns, mission accomplished)...drinking is effing expensive in Australia...thats probably the only downfall...I'm not too happy about it. ANDDDD they dont have ladies night like they do back in Gville...oh well. If you wanna drink cheap, stick with the boxed wine...otherwise a six pack of their normal beer(Tooheys) is about 14AUD, laaaame.

Newcastle is pretty sick too. Definitely not as touristy as Cairns, but really fun. I'm gonna be here for the next 4 months so I better like it. My Uni is in the bushland (man, that sentence was some serious Aussie talk)...the mosquitos here are actually ridiculous, i'm not even exaggerating...I live in FL in a damn swamp and the mozzies (more lingo) here are 20 times worse...I have to put bug spray on EVERYDAY before i leave my room or I will be attacked.  My dorm room is amazing, HUGE. I have a freakin queen size bed, my own bathroom and kitchenette...my RAs are tight too, the first thing they did after we put our suitcases in our room was hand us a beer...and then we played volleyball...could I be more obsessed?

The beaches here are perfect...waves are ridiculous...i'm nervous about surfing, i may actually die.  Yesterday a couple of my RAs took me and a couple friends to "the beach"...after some serious 4 wheelin in the forest we finally get out of the car, walked a hundred feet or so out of the forest and all we saw was sand dunes.  I seriously thought I was in Aladdin, they were HUGEEEE! So of course we climbed them (led to a realization that i am majorly out of shape) and when we finally got to the top we could see the forest we came from one way and when you turned around all you could see was ocean...never seen anything like it...we were the only ones there too...I decided I want to move their when I'm old and don't want to be sociable anymore.

Anyways, a bunch of other stuff has been going on, but I'm way too lazy and impatient to write about it all right now since I've just had to write over a weeks worth of Australia time in 5 seconds...trying to put pics up, but facebook isn't working so look for tagged ones I guess. Talk to you all soon, love and miss everyone!

-Adriana