Surfing, family visit, all of the above

So I feel like I have posted in a while...it's probably because I haven't had enough time in the day to actually sit down and think about what I want to write. Well I have finally found a few extra minutes and here it goes. 2 weekends ago I went on my Mojosurfing adventure down past Byron Bay into New South Wales to Spot X. It took us a good 5-7 hours to get down there in our big pink and black party bus! It literally looked like it was a celebrity's bus, it was that decorated. Well when we first got on the bus we were greeted by Pepper...the guy who was driving us's puppy. She was the sweetest thing ever and very well trained! He let her off the bus and she didn't even run into traffic or go attack people haha. She just roamed around for a bit then got back on the bus. So once we picked everyone up from Brisbane and the Gold Coast we headed off to Spot X. When we got their our rooming situation was to put it nicely kinda dirty. We had 4 bunk beds and a toilet/shower the size of my pinky finger. But we dealt with it. That weekend we got 3 surfing lessons, 1 one hour and 2 two hour ones. We had our own private beach basically when we went out surfing too! So it was a group of about 30 of us out in the ocean with 2-3 mojosurf people who would help us if we needed them to. Anyways photos of me surfing will be up on facebook soon, we couldn't take any pictures with our own cameras cause of course they want to make money off of it, so I have to purchase them off of the website. But other pictures from the weekend are up. Saturday night we had a garbage bag party. So basically everyone gets 1 garbage bag and they have to make an outfit out of it. That was a fun night cause we had a runway show to see who had the best outfit. Pictures are of course up online already.
Anyways we came back Sunday afternoon/night and I'm pretty sure I was asleep by 9 PM, everyone was exhausted. The week wasn't too exciting, just classes as usual. On Friday though a few friends and I booked our Spring Break trip to New Zealand. I know, weird to think we haven't gone on spring break yet, but ya we haven't. Here is the link to the Contiki tour which we are taking: http://contiki.com.au/tours/92-scenic-southern-clockwise/itinerary. It sounds like it will be a fun week!! So after that week I will have about 4 days to just hangout in Brisbane or go down to see the family in Gold Coast or maybe go to Sydney! We'll see what I end up working out.
This past weekend, I went to go see Barb and Helen in Gold Coast. And I met the rest of the family as well. But lets start from the beginning. I got there Friday night and we had brisket and potatoes, carrots, and string beans for dinner. It was delicious!! Finally a meal that I don't have to cook and had lots of veggies in it. Saturday I woke up nice and early, 8:30 because of the lovely birds that were making noises outside my window...15 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off! Oh well, some of them made nice whistling noises, while one cockatoo was either sick or just learning how to make his noise...it kinda sounded like the penguin in Happy Feet that can't sing, he can only dance. But anyways I got up and went to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary with Helen's sister's grandkids. So there were 4 of us: Me, Nicholas-5, Curtis-8, and Ivy-10. We walked around the entire sanctuary, which took us about 2 and a half hours and then went back to Barb and Helen's house for a nice swim and late lunch. We of course had everyone's favorite ribs and chicken wings, but Jane- the kids mom- made delicious potato bake with white and sweet potatoes and some bacon on the bottom. So that's when I met the rest of the family. Helen's sister Barbara Mary, Jane and her husband Garry with their 3 kids, and Emma, Jane's sister/another daughter of Barbara Mary. There were so many people! haha but once they all left Barb, Helen and I just crashed. Sunday we just relaxed and I hung around the pool doing some work. Nicholas and his dad came back in the late morning to put a tree in their front yard. Nicholas was Garry's helper. I think it was a Magnolia tree, but it's little right now so it just looks like a tree with leaves to me. I obviously had to leave them yesterday to come back here and finish my work/get ready for the week.
I think that's it. OH random fact, I was reading in one of my articles for a class about the development of transportation- like railroad to steam ships to big diesel ships. Anyways my question was has anyone ever come up with a ship that uses salt water to power the engine? I know that the salt would probably build up and that might be an issue but I'm sure someone has come up with it before. It would just use the salt water from the ocean to power the engine and it wouldn't be as destructive to the environment as diesel gas.
If I forgot anything I apologize, I will update it in the next post.

St. Patty's Day

I have come to the conclusion that I will probably only be posting once a week from now on and it will be on the weekends cause that is the only time of the week that I have enough time to sit down and think about what I have been doing with my life. Where to begin. Last Sunday I went to the grand final soccer game between Brisbane Roar and Central Coast Mariner. We ended up leaving at about the 80 minute mark because we wanted to miss the crowd and it was still tied at 0-0. We waited for the bus for a while, took our time getting back to the apartment and when we got back we saw that Brisbane had won in overtime 4-2. Yay Brisbane!
Nothing too adventurous happened this past week, up until yesterday. Yesterday was St. Patty's day here in Australia. And you could definitely tell the who was an international student and who wasn't from the way that they dressed. Most of us wore green of course, but most of the Aussies didn't wear green! It was so weird cause in the States everyone wears green and if you don't you'll get pinched. But anyways we went out last night to a few different pubs/bars which were fun and I won a green St. Patrick's day hat at one of the bars.
Tonight we leave for our Mojosurf weekend. We're going to Byron Bay, I think and spending tonight through Sunday afternoon there learning how to surf and just hanging out. It should be a ball! I will def update everyone when I get back. Yeah I know this was a short post, but it was an uneventful week, what can I say?

The dancing crow

Sorry I haven't gotten around to posting anything in the past 2 weeks or so. My schedule has been a little crazy with classes and such. So let me start from the beginning. I'm taking Intro to International Inequality and Development, Australian Foreign Policy, Contemporary Australia, and Sports and Exercise Psychology. The prof for the international class is foreign, which is fine, except she likes to pause a lot during her lectures which can get annoying and she also doesn't articulate so most of the time I'm just reading off of her slides. Which by the way are mainly quotes from the readings. My foreign policy class has a teacher who on the first day came in and said that he has a small wardrobe of button down shirts and an even smaller list of jokes, so if you're in his other class he may wear the same shirt twice in a week and tell the same jokes. He's entertaining, his voice is a little mono-toned though. Contemporary Australia seems to be a class that would be taught in the States. The teacher definitely is used to first years not doing their work so we have something due for that class every week. Finally my sports class seems like it will be interesting, just cause I've never taken a sports class before. Classes here are different cause most of them have a ton of readings but very little assignments. I'm still trying to get used to that. But I'm sure I'll get used to it and then just come back to the States where it's different again.
On to more exciting things than classes. Last weekend there was an International students fair down on Queen St. mall, which is like an outdoor NYC mall. But the fair had different vendors advertising for example skydiving, the Queensland government, and different places to visit. So I got lots more ideas on where I want to travel while I'm here. Which remind me today I will be planning out my life for the next 4 months or so. Just trying to figure out where to go and start booking things. Skipping forward to yesterday, cause the rest of last week was just classes, I went to go get an 18+ card from what we would call the DMV here. It's just an official government card that says you're over 18+ and can get into clubs/buy alcohol. It's helpful cause some places don't take your US drivers license as proof of ID cause apparently they can be faked really easily here. And no one wants to carry around their passport. I also went to the XXXX brewery. That was interesting, we couldn't take pictures which was kinda sad, and it wasn't what I was expecting but whatever. We walked around and were told about the different ingredients in their beer and how it was made, and then saw how it was bottled/canned/put into a keg. I think they said they produce 100,000 liters every 4-5 hours so obviously that's a ton of beer. haha and at the end we went to the gift shop and bar area and got 4 free beers. So we sat around for a bit and then came back to the apartments. Later we went out to a jazz bar, which was yet again interesting. There wasn't much seating and the guy who usually is on had another gig that night so apparently it's usually better. Who knows? I'll definitely go back just to check it out though.
Oh I almost completely forgot, the title of this post is in dedication of a crow I saw outside my window. I'm on the first floor so the street lamps are at about my level. Anyways I was just looking out my window and a crow landed on the slanted part of the light and tried to walk up it to the flat part. But it was too slippery I guess so it looked like he was doing the running man trying to get up to the top. He ended up flapping his wings a bit and landing on the top, but I thought it was the funniest thing...guess you had to be there sort of thing.
I have officially been in Australia for a month today. It feels so weird cause I feel like I've been here for forever! I'm finally getting settled in though and organizing everything, hence me organizing my trips and plans later on today. So for the rest of the day, I'm just doing homework and going down to the river where the little shops are. OH i should probably also mention something about the earthquake/tsunami in Japan...I'm fine, the tsunami warning has been lifted for Australia, they just advise people to stay away from the beaches for a few days just in case the tides/waves change. I'm on a river so there shouldn't be anymore flooding, hopefully.
Well that was a really long post, but I think that pretty much sums up the past 2 weeks. If anything else fun comes about, which I will probably remember as soon as I post this; I'll let ya know.