So i finally made it to Toowoomba! I got here at around 2pm Sunday local time (11pm Saturday EST) and have been loving every minute since. Immediately after getting settled into my town house I took the most desperately needed shower in history. 30 hours of travel time really worked up a stench. :)
After I was clean enough to not clear a large room of anyone with a nose, Lauren, Trina and myself wandered around a bit. There is a little plaza of some small shops across the road from the Student Village. There is a bakery, a small grocery store, pharmacy, liquor store, a computer store, and some other shops. The dilemma is they're only open from 9-5 Monday through Saturday. We then came home and made some dinner.
Today was the first day or orientation for the international students. We thought it was going to be all people like us who are in college at other locations and are staying here for a semester or two. However, it was mostly people who are coming to college for the first time, but are from outside of Australia and will be staying here the entire 4 years. Most of these people seemed to be much older than us.
The climate here is soooo beautiful! The weather is amazing... blue skies and sunny! The temperature is probably near 80 degrees, but it doesn't feel that bad because it's not very humid here. I would say the landscape is a cross between northern Maine, or Vermont, Florida, and Kansas. When we started driving out of Brisbane towards Toowoomba it was very green and luscious and full of rolling hills. Eventually it flattened out and stayed flat for sometime. Then as we kept driving there was a large mountain range off in the distance. The bus driver told us that Toowoomba was on TOP of this mountain range... and he wasn't kidding. The climb from the bottom of the mountain to the top was a 4km switchback road that was very steep... 10% grade. I think our top speed was maybbeeee 8mph. He had it down in 1st gear I'm pretty sure. At the top we were in the middle of toowoomba. It was really weird. Oh, and I did see my first kangaroo!!! Unfortunately... it was dead on the side of the roads. Sorry to get your hopes up... haha.
Anyway... things are going great here! We're going to venture down into town later today and see what's around.
More to come!
Daniel, we're glad you made it safely and look forward to reading about your adventures! Have fun!
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