What an awful weekend

So this past weekend was absolutely awful! Thursday is technically when my weekend starts, and to start my weekend I had to leave my one and only class early because I did not think I would be able to make it through the entire thing.

It was a nice day out, partly cloudy, with a temperature around 68 degrees. As I was barely stumbling back to my apartment at 10:45 a.m. drenched in sweat. I felt horrible, I considered jumping into the Brisbane river on the way back just to stop the pain, and to put that into perspective... there are sharks in the water that was 35 feet below the bridge. After making it back to my room I downed a couple bottles of water and ran through the shower. I slept for as long as I could in the direct line of the air conditioning only to wake up once again drenched in sweat.

I had a temperature of 99.9 the first night I took it. I drank more water, slept a full night and took some advil only to wake up the next morning with a temperature of 101.4. I could not win, I stayed in bed the entirety of the weekend either sweating or getting horrible shakes. On the bright side, I think I lost 15 lbs... mainly because I could not eat.

Things to look forward to.
1. Getting a different car for a temporary time tomorrow. It is a 6 wheeled car (not a duely truck). I will be sure to include pictures on my next update of my new driving conquest.
2. River fire this weekend. Heaps of fireworks over the Brisbane River, and they do a dump and burn with a jet fighter. Which is when they drop a stream of gas from a fighter jet and they burn it as it falls. I hear it is crazy cool.
3. Turning in my Marketing project on Russia!!!

I am a negligent blogger

So, after a two week hiatus I have returned to you with some exciting news... well, not really, just the run of the mill travel update. Two weeks ago I went to a local rugby league game with some guys from Ferno. We had just a lovely time watching the game, eating some good food, and enjoying some refreshing libations. On a sad note, our team lost quite badly, never-the-less, a good time was had by all.

Just this past weekend I ventured to Sydney to do some touristy stuff like the harbour bridge and the Opera house. I met up with some Culver people (Rogelio Lemarroy and Alex Bell) and had an awesome time with both of them. Alex was my very well prepared tour guide, taking me to Bondi beach and the Blue mountains, as well as some fantastic downtown Sydney driving tours. While Rogelio and his friends refreshed my spanish all weekend with some crazy cool clubs and some mind boggling delicious kebabs. This past weekend has easily been the best weekend I have had in Australia (Katie, yours was a close second). It was nice to see some familiar faces even if I had not seen them for years before this past weekend. I truly can not wait to go back in three weeks for the last tri-nations game and enjoy the city once again.

And once again I am tired of Blogger and am not going to bother to try and figure out how to upload pictures and just provide you with a link

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31294706&l=3c98e710b6&id=1170720024


Elin, as promised, posted before midnight my time

New Zealand ski trip

This past weekend I went to New Zealand for a little skiing. A simple 3 hour flight over, stay in a hotel and drive up the mountain the next morning and hit the slopes. I landed in Christchurch thursday night then got up early the next morning and drove to Methvan about an hour and a half away. Again, I am making this a little easier to reference...

View Larger Map

It was a lovely and simple drive. Checked into the hotel and headed strait for the slopes in my makeshift ski gear; which was comprised of sweat pants that were under some track pants, and a Culver hoodie under my North Face. Worked out pretty well to tell you the truth. After my two days of skiing I drove back to Christchurch and went to the pubs to watch the All Blacks v. The Wallabies (all blacks won).

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31264596&l=e7c264445f&id=1170720024

The following morning I got up and headed out to the Antarctic Centre to look at some penguins and what have you. They were quite cute, some of them had little booties on because their feet got blisters and they had trouble walking. Then we took a ride in this Antarctic vehicle that could do all sorts of crazy things, like float and propel itself in the water, drive across 2 metre gaps and go up and down crazy inclines.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31264610&l=5fe835233b&id=1170720024

That is really it for the NZ adventure, next weekend I am going to Sydney to do all the touristy things, so I will be sure to take pictures of that.

Also, sorry about the copy and pasting of the links... Blogger is starting to aggravate me.

5 1/2 hours later and I am in Armidale

This past weekend i decided to take a drive down south to Armidale in New South Wales. And for those of you who can't be bothered to open up google maps i have done the hard work for you.

View Larger Map

I went down there to visit a friend of mine from Miami. She (Katie) is down here doing chemistry research at the University of New England. Since she was leaving the following weekend i felt it would be necessary to drive down and experience another part of Australia. It was a long 5 1/2 hour drive but my goodness was it pretty! It was kind of like a combination of driving through the Indiana corn fields and the rolling hills of North Carolina with mountains in the distance. Just mind blowingly beautiful.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31244753&l=7ef83621a0&id=1170720024
(side note, i have spent the last 30 minutes trying to get this stupid website to let me upload that picture but it had no desire to)

I arrived there around 7 pm on friday and Katie's roommates (local Australians) were having a BBQ and asked me to join. Katie was one lucky girl i tell you, her roommates cooked every night and it was always fantastic. Any hoo, we went out to one of the two bars in the town and hung out for a little while. It was a much different bar scene than i was used to but that is the point of traveling places right?! The following day was rainy and gross, but we went to this huge gorge. There was this 100ft (estimation, may be more) waterfall.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31244738&l=858ae35873&id=1170720024

That night we hung out at Katie's house and taught her roommates to play quarters, with actual quarters. so that was alot of fun, by the end of it the two roommates were so competitive that they were screaming and going crazy if they lost. After that, it was just a long drive home. So there is my weekend!

Next weekend i will be going to New Zealand for some skiing, so be sure to tune in for that update!

First week of school and Tri Nations game

So, I have completed my first week of school and it went over very well. I had one class a day except for Wednesday i had two and friday i had 0! Their schedules are set up with one lecture per class per week and one tutorial or practical per lecture per week. The classes seem fine so far, no complaints yet, i really enjoy my Emerging Technology class because we just talk about computers, cell phones, different cool web sites to go to, and software. So it is right up my ally.

On saturday i went to a Tri Nations rugby game. The tri nations matches are, obviously, between three nations; Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The matches are in a round robin format, so they all play each other once. the game did not start till 8 pm though, so it went for a little while. It was really cool though. We saw the Australian Wallabies play "SA Rugby" (that was there name apparently). The Wallabies won 30 to 13 so that was good to leave the stadium with a win under the local belt. And that for the most part is all i know for now. Have just started another week of classes so that is boat loads of fun! And i may be doing a little bit of traveling this weekend, but it has yet to be decided.

First day of school! First day of school!

Now I know that all of you have been patiently waiting by your computers hoping i will update any second. Well wait no more, the time has come. (what i mean by that is sorry about the 7 day delay and i will do my best to make the intervals between posts shorter)
My first day at Uni (wow, im so hip using aussie lingo) went a little like this... woke up at 10 a.m. with the thought that i would get over to campus early, wander around and make sure i knew what i was doing and where i was going before my 1 pm class. but alas we all know i am not that motivated... so instead i woke up at 10, made some easy mac for breakfast, finally unpacked, set up my school email(again... finally), and then began downloading Finding Nemo. Well when i did finally set up my email, i had a couple (47) waiting for me in my inbox. So i sifted through them and found one that said the first tutorial class for my monday class was canceled due to there was nothing to work on till after the first lecture. So, my day starting at 1... turned into my day starting at.... 5. What a rough first day i will say. I will tell you what i have already started to like this.
Going to school is slightly different here...obviously. For one, i walk to class across a sweet bridge, second, the syllabus are like 11 pages long, and lastly, the profs introduce themselves by their first names.... and that is it. there is no Dr. Tim Rollins... just Tim. so that took me for a little bit of a loop, but other than that it seems all fair.
in other news, i got a couple new flat mates. two from Dubai, which i rarely see. and one from Boston. so that is all good and fun. and i believe that is about all i have for this installment of the blog. Continue to wait anxiously by your computers and i will not fail at keeping you on the edges of your seats.

I forgot I came here for school

so the other day i went over to the school to get my ID card and all that fun stuff. What i forgot was that i had to sign up for classes... ugh, why cant this just be a long vacation?! I had a bunch of classes ok'ed by QUT and Miami so i had plenty to choose from, it just came down to the days i wanted to be in school. And as most of you know, i am not a big fan of friday classes (or classes at all for that matter) so i did my very best to have friday off. once that was accomplished i thought... i wonder if i can have a 4 day weekend? Turns out i cant, The best i could do was out of class by 12 on Thursday, so a 3 1/2 day weekend is not bad at all. I have signed up for Business Law, Emerging Technology, Marketing, and Australian Society and Culture. So i should have a fairly easy schedule, minus the two business classes.
Yesterday we had to do a whole bunch of orientation things and have them tell us not to binge drink, and dont get raped, and make sure we go to class. the normal bit you get when you are a freshman. the only difference was that this meeting took 4 hours.... with no breaks. and all international students. so that got old real quick.
Well, the only new news is that tonight i am going on a Brisbane River Cruise with all the international students. So that should be a whole bunch of fun. There is a meal, bar, and dance floor all on the boat. I doubt i will be bored, so i will do my best to find my camera and take some pictures.
Thats all for now folks. Enjoy your night/day