I flew here, to Townsville, QLD from Miami, FL. First I flew to LA. Then, after four hours of waiting to fix... well, a broken engine, we took off for the 16 hour flight to Sydney. That's 20 hours on a single plane, with perhaps three pee breaks. Then I flew to Brisbane, another 90 minutes - and, after a two hour layover, to Townsville - about two more hours. If you do the math on that, you'll find that - er, wait, it's also a 15 hr. tack on for time zone change - er, 14 hour because of our daylight savings - so... oh, yeah, so I don't fucking know what the hell I even went through. I'll accept "Dante's nine circles" as an answer.
But I'm here now! And I've been here since Thursday night. What have I done since then? Well, my memory + alcohol means that... I think I had fun and lost some money doing it. Brief overview:
Friday: climbed a mountain, went to an orientation, went to a shopping center, hung out at one particular international student's dorm with a dozen of them after drinking four glasses of wine
Saturday: ran in the morning, went to the beach with a bunch of international students instead of the vastly more popular, fancy, and alcoholic horse races, return buses took three hours or more to get back, and then I still had to walk the last two miles because I didn't want to wait - that brought me to 8:00 PM, when I just began to watch a rugby game while exceedingly hungry... not halfway through the game, headed to a different international student's place for some more rugby on tv and free pasta... this time I had rum that i'd bought at the bus stop... already had like four shots, and while walking back to my place, realized that >30 people, including just returning ozzies from the break, were lining up to head out to the pubs. Wanted to sleep, wouldn't have because of the fact that I'd be the only one doing so... went out to the bars already half drunk, proceeded to take six more shots of my rum, about 2 shots of all six different local beers at the brewery, then three of my favorite beers out of those, annnnnd that took me to 1:15 am alone on a bus back to uni which I'm surprised I made it on. I gave myself plenty of washing to do the next day by liberally spreading stomach contents all over the inside of my sweatshirt, while riding the bus, to attempt discreteness, not that I would have been able to recognize discrete in that condition.
Sunday - woke up at 1400, went running, went to the shopping center with John Parkinson, the other UMiami guy, bought some small necessities and returned for a meet'n'greet for our dorm at five... then played basketball and frisbee outside until later, when Casey, Josh, Luke and I ordered two domino's large pizzas, which were way too small to be larges. Then went to bed.
Monday - running, shower, breakfast, shopping center to research banks with Sarah from Minnesota, and check out phone plans - came back for international student barbecue, then back to Stockland (shopping center) alone to check finals on phone and banks - got the phone, not the bank account - very pleased with prepaid plan. now typing in blog... crazy.
Truth is, there's a lot of people here - ~83 came from different schools THROUGH an organized program called AustraLearn, which, if one were to be envious, seems to provide better services than UMiami has been doing, such as in providing International Student Cards that get various benefits (a hallmark of the world's education system that UMiami didn't inform us of), and in planning an earlier trip to Cairns for them. Hum ho.
Without getting into stressful details, there seem to be much more redundancies and excessive informations - both on web site and doled out paperwork - and yet, ignoring it seems just as acceptable as attacking and "completing" whatever is needed.
So, with all the businessy catchup out of the way, let me elucidate on the actual country itself, eh? First, here's my dorm room, a picture taken from the balcony facing in. It's very tiny, maybe 10' by 15' or so:
I still haven't bought sheets - I'm just too lazy for that. It gets cold at night, so I just sleep in a sweatshirt. Note the curious window through which the picture was taken - it's actually composed of three sliding panes of glass in three tracks, kind of like 1950's chalkboards (which are kind of like JCU's chalkboards).
Also, remember how I love the 70's/80's El Caminos? Check this vehicle out:
Far out. While the optimist would say you can haul your stuff but also get good gas mileage, the pessimist would say that the car frame couldn't support a full bed of whatever you were pulling besides beanbags, and otherwise you're just taking away seat space. Which do you prefer to hear? For your consideration: Most of these driving around seem to be tricked out with fancy colors, stereos, and added performance parts. Hm.
Back to the country. These next (last) three pictures are about the country. Recall that I wrote that I climbed a mountain on friday. Well, Townsville is surrounded by hills. Tall ones. Like, several hundred feet. Pretty good stuff, eh? Anyways, teh closest to the end of campus allowed me to climb it in less than an hour, but that's because I ran into some signs - like this one:
...And my favorite, this one:
They were about 2/3 of the way up, so I couldn't climb all the way - and apparently surround all the nearby hills. I was wondering why I could hear gunshots. But check the following pics - on the hill, and out from it - worth the climb, I'd say:
Finally, I'd like to note that I was confronted by marsupials in less than 12 hours after getting off the plane - just that morning after the mountain climb. What's funny is that I was told I wouldn't see any wallabies or kangaroos around this campus...
Bingo, two wallabies outside some obscure dorms. Crazy, eh? But these were the second and third 'supials of the day.
The funnier part is that I almost peed myself when I saw the first wallaby, which thunderously bounded right out from the three foot high brush in front of me while I was running down the mountain alone. I presently fell into grass and earth and freaked and then looked back, saw it hopping, and laughed.
