Bush Dance... maybe as fun as an Obama Dance

Last night all of the international students crammed our sweaty selves into a small cafeteria to participate in a traditional Australian Bush Dance... what we might call a line/square dance.
The bush dance was complete with a bush band, 50 international students (most of which have a slightly hard time with English,) and very little air flow. As temperatures rose, the sweat fell, the dancing got harder, and the laughing got louder. It was a riot in there! Everyone was trying to understand the caller as well as try to understand the dance at the same time. I think I got more of an Ab workout from laughing so much!This is a picture of the band. The main singer (in the middle) had this stick with tons of beer bottle caps nailed to it that would rattle. He would stomp the stick on the ground and whack it at the same time with some other type of stick.

At the end of the bush dance it clearly had to start pouring! I've finally figured out the weather here... in the morning it is cloudy and muggy. By noon the sun comes out and it is sweltering! When the sun sets around 6 it gets cooler, and then when 9 or so rolls around it rains. Now the rain is hit or miss... sometimes it's a mist, other times it's a torrential downpour. But there is one thing for sure: it will rain, you just don't know when.

During the day Wednesday we took a bus tour around Toowoomba and we were then dropped off downtown so we could do some more than necessary shopping! I bought two things that I will hold so close to my heart until I leave... a pillow, and a Brita pitcher!!! Not having a pillow was almost unbearable and I have a pretty killer one now thanks to Target :) Also the water here tastes like it came straight from a public swimming pool, so to have filtered water every day now is just amazing! On the bus tour we went to what I think may be the highest point in Toowoomba, called picnic point. There is a giant Australian flag on top of this hill, and I could see that when we first drove up the mountain to Toowoomba. From here I could look down on the highway that we took to get here. This picture is looking east towards Brisbane.

That seems to be all for now... I've been having a great time hanging out with all of the international students.... Germans, Canadians, Americans, Indians, Malaysians... it's been so much fun. We are planning on going for a hike sometime this weekend and we're also planning a trip to Surfer's Paradise for next week some time. Google it. It's beautiful. I think we're also going to head into Toowoomba this afternoon to venture.

OHHHH! I almost forgot... I BOUGHT A BIKE! It's a special bike... needs some TLC, but I think it'll do the trick to get me to the store and back. I'll post a picture of that soon!
Miss you all!

Grasshoppers Everywhere

Every evening Lauren and I don our exterminator gear and go throughout our town house to murder the tons of grasshoppers that try to inhabit our house with us. However we must have missed one last night as when I was showering today I looked down to see one of the little buggers washing up with me. Needless to say he didn't make it to the end of the shower.

Aside from the grasshoppers things are going great! I have gone grocery shopping, gotten some needed supplies for my room/house, went RUNNING!!! (shock, I know), went to the bottle shop last night (aka Pearl Street Beverage.)

Toowoomba and most of Queensland has been in a drought for like 15 years or something crazy like that so the city is on a Level 5 Water Restriction. What that means, I have no idea. However... that does mean that they want people to only use 140liters per day. This may sound like a lot... but let me run down through some common water usages (all of which are posted on a sign in our townhouse)

1. A shower: 1 minute = 12 liters. We have little hour glasses in the showers that suction cup to the walls. We are only to take a 4 minute shower, as governed by the hourglass.
2. Doing dishes: 9liters/minute
3. Using the toilet: Our toilets have two flush settings. 1 is just a mere 3 liter flush... for the casual pee. Then if you need to call in reinforcements there is a second flush that uses a whopping 12 liters... clearly you can imagine what that might be used for.

We have met a very cool girl from the UK/Hong Kong, 3 very nice German girls, some guys from the US, and we just got a new roommate today who is a guy from Germany. He seems very nice.
We have orientation class a little later... something on multiculturalism (basically alana... ha)

Anyway, miss you all!
I'll send out an email soon...
Daniel

Palm Trees, Beautiful Weather, Shorts and Flip Flops... oh... I'm in Australia!!!

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!