Wait… I have to go to class while I’m here?

This is a really long post… grab a drink, a snack, go to the bathroom first, and enjoy.

When I last left off I had been running errands in preparation for the big trip to Surfer’s Paradise. When we read our horoscopes that Wednesday, mine told me to stay close to home to avoid drama. Now… some might have heeded said advice and had a casual weekend in Toowoomba... but there was no way I was going to miss a weekend at the beach. Plus, it was already paid for.

On Thursday morning we got up early, packed our bags, made lunches, and headed down to the bus stop at the Student Village, to get to downtown Toowoomba. At this point in time, my horoscope was already coming true. I forgot to pack my loaf of bread to make sandwiches for the weekend, I also forgot to pack my pillow, and between my house and the bus $50 fell out of my pocket. However… I still wasn’t going to let these setbacks ruin my weekend at the beach. Plus, it was already paid for.

After a half hour city bus ride to the Bus Interchange, we waited for another half hour or so until our bus left at 11:30. At this point the Toowoomba Transit Coach showed up. TTCoaches is a discount bus/van that travels back and forth from Toowoomba to Brisbane every day, multiple times. The driver told us that we could all get on the bus and that he was going to get a coffee. To the severe misfortune of the other ten passengers on the 1.5 hour ride… we were very excited about the trip. And very chatty. While we waited for the bus driver in the sweltering heat (it is important that I mention we went to the club the night before, no one was in tip-top shape this morning) I really wished I had my pillow to sleep on… and I also wished I hadn’t left my ipod in my backpack, in the trailer behind the bus. As everyone else slept and/or listened to music I basically talked to myself to keep myself entertained. Again, the horoscope.

Once we arrived in Brisbane we had another half an hour to kill before we caught the train to a station about 20 minutes outside of Surfer’s Paradise. This ride was about and hour and a half long and was complete with PB&J Sandwiches: our staple meal of the weekend. For this train ride I was stuck riding backwards. Again, we went to the club the night before. From the train, we had one more city bus ride to go into the heart of Surfer’s Paradise. From there, we had to take a cab 4km north to our Hostel. All in all it was 6 hours of travel. It may have been long… but it was cheap! (I would like to digress from the timeline here to say that a friend of a friend drove from Toowoomba to Surfer’s that same day and it took him 1.5 hours. I hate him.)

As soon as we were checked into the hostel we threw our suits on and ran to the beach. Like children we threw everything down, and went running and splashing into the ocean. Mind you, it is almost 5pm and no one else is on the beach at this time. However, the water was like 75-80 degrees or something “bath-watery” like that and we stayed in for quite some time. As we went back to our hostel we decided that as a treat to ourselves… we would eat out for the first time in Australia. We went to a nice, but overpriced, restaurant right next to our hostel. As we were leaving the restaurant a torrential down pour started… this horoscope may have been coming true. To our luck though, there was a bottle store in the same building our hostel was in. The rain had nothing on us now. So true, that we decided it would be a good idea to go to the beach in the pouring rain. Now, the winds on the beach were probably pushing 20mph and it was raining horizontally. Put that together with the sandblasting effect of the sand/wind and it was like a micro-derm-abrasion. So we snapped a few photos and then ran back to the hostel for some more wine and some card games.

Lauren, Trina, Stephanie, and myself decided that it would be a great idea to get up at 5am the next morning and watch the sun rise at the beach. This seemed great until Lauren was poking me saying…. ‘Get up! It’s 5am!” I somehow managed to throw myself from the top bunk, find clothes to put on, grab my camera,and stumble to the beach. Once we got there though, it completely made up for it. The sunrise was actually really drawn out because there were a ton of clouds along the horizon… so we watched as the sky and the clouds turned different colors until the sun finally rose above them, hit the skyline and the beach, and illuminated all the colors of the sand, the trees, and the blue sky. We hung out there for a while and then I clearly went home to take a nap.

Lauren and Trina went for a run…. Overachievers.

That day we lathered (I use this term loosely) on our sunscreen, packed up our towels, made some PB&Js and went to the beach. Now… some of you may be aware that Australia has many parts that lack a strong o-zone layer. If you aren’t aware of this, sit in the sun for more than 10 minutes and you will shortly understand very clearly. I was well aware of how intense the sun was, so before the trip I ran (not literally) to K-Mart to purchase some sunscreen. As I looked through the meager and expensive selection, I came across a moderately priced tube of sunscreen from the Cancer Council of Australia. Now I assumed that this council was preventing cancer, by way of their sun block. How little do I know? Apparently, they WANT you to get cancer… and not just any kind of cancer, but SKIN CANCER! I used this “sunscreen” (I’m assuming it was just hand cream) at least every two hours. At the end of the day, myself and many others, were so red that it hurt. My foot, my entire left side, and my neck looked like I was tanning on the sun. Our next purchase was obviously a huge tub of Aloe Vera… and a creemie from McDonalds for good measure.

That night we walked our crispy selves down a path near the beach to an outdoor craft market. It was really interesting. Some of the things were actually very artsy… such as some pottery, hand carved cutting boards, and some didgeridoos. Some things… were not. My favorite of the “not-so-artsy” things were pink and camo baseball hats that the sales woman had taken glitter-glue and written many common names onto. I didn’t look at the price, mainly because if I looked and saw them being sold for more than $5 I would have burst out laughing… but I seriously thought about getting some of them for all of you. You know, some genuine Australian gifts.

Saturday was probably our most fun day. We signed up through our hostel to have SURFING LESSONS! Now I said to myself before hand… If I can stand up on the board once in the two hours, I’ll be more than impressed. However… I was standing up in just about an hour’s time. Granted, we were on HUGE learning surfboards, but nonetheless… it was so cool. After a while though I was so exhausted from constantly fighting the waves to get out to where I could ride one back in to the shore. It was so fun though, and we all did so much better than we anticipated. I definitely want to try surfing again. I was so beat from the surfing that all I wanted to do was take a nap. Then we found a mall… I bought a new bathing suit. I did end up taking a nap, only after eating a PB&J first though. After dinner (a BBQ put on by our hostel) we got all dressed up and went into town to meet some friends and go out to the clubs. It was a pretty fun evening, but we were so sore/tired from surfing that we called it an early night.

Now, this picture has a water bubble RIGHT over my face. I swear that it is me. It was one of the best pictures of me surfing... sadly my face was cut off. Try not to cry.

On Sunday we had to check out of our hostel by 10, but we weren’t leaving Surfer’s until 3. Luckily we could store our bags there while we went to the beach. Now, I was still pretty charred from Friday and the last thing I wanted to do was be in the sun. So when I got to the beach, I buried my legs in the sand, kept my shirt on, and used Trina’s rain umbrella to shade me. I looked like a complete idiot. But, it was 90 degrees out that day and I was keeping myself cool and no more burned than I was already. Sadly, we got back on our 5 leg journey back to Toowoomba. 5-6 hours later I was back in the Grasshopper Den conserving water.

On the 5^th day, I rested.

Tuesday was the first say of class!! I was really nervous at first because our schedule seemed so confusing, and I didn’t even have a notebook yet, and I already felt behind. But once we got to class everything seemed fine. The classes here are interesting. Usually, there is a main lecture once a week and then every class has what is called a tutorial, once a week, which goes along with the lecture. This tutorial basically reinforces what was taught in lecture. I think they’re going to be very helpful in studying and retaining the information. Today we had our Situations in Clinical Practice course, our Episodes of Nursing course, and our tutorial for Episodes. We were supposed to have a lecture for our Mental Health class, but we found out that the first 5 weeks have recorded lectures and powerpoints online for us to watch whenever. Tuesday is our longest day, but it didn’t seem too bad today.

Last night and tonight we played Ultimate Frisbee in the field and did a little exercising as well. We’re trying to make it an every night thing. We’ll see…

Other than that things are going well. Hopefully this post wasn’t too long to absolutely bore you to death. But this weekend was pretty eventful!

Oh! Trina, Lauren, and I are going to Sydney this weekend. I know, I know… such jet-setters. But our friend Melissa will be there from Perth this weekend and we’ll also visit our friend Aaron who is studying there. Should be another fun weekend!

Hope all is well at home!

Miss you all!