Last Week of Classes Before Break

March 30 10:30am

Yesterday was a typical day off at 77 Sir Fred Schonell Drive, aside from the Public Administration final I had to send back home and the 1,000 word essay I had to have turned in by 1:00. But after getting up at 8:00 and working diligently for a few hours, I had the email sent and the essay done and was still able to go to the Bible study at 1:00. After the Bible study, Casey and I went to City Beach on South Bank and laid on the beach for a while. Of course, as soon as we got there it got overcast but we weren’t going to leave just because the sun was gone. Later on we walked up to Queen St. where we spent a few hours just walking up and down the street and going into a few stores. We found a Krispy Kreme donut shop, but a donut was $2.80 so we decided to pass on that. Right next door; however, was a sushi restaurant with about 15 different kinds of sushi rolls. Since sushi is one of the best foods on this planet, I had a fresh salmon roll and a California roll. Both were excellent, especially after adding a little wasabi paste to “kick it up a notch.” Tonight, Casey, Andi, and I decided to hike up Mt. Coot-Tha, which is a nice mountain that overlooks the city. One of our roommates went up at night and said the view of the city is incredible. Sure enough, after walking nearly five miles up this mountain, we finally made it and the view was, indeed, breathtaking. The entire city was sprawled out in front of us, making Brisbane look about ten times bigger than we ever thought it could be. It was cool picking out the sights we could recognize: a City Kitty on the river, the Central Business District (CBD), the “Brisbane Eye,” lights at the aquatic and tennis centre on campus, and of course Brisbane International. It was cool being able to see the planes way off in the distance and track them on their decent into the airport, which was a jumble of lights way off behind all the skyscrapers but still cool to watch. I then realized that in about four days I will be flying out of that airport when I fly to New Zealand for Easter break, and that made everything that much better. On the way back down the mountain, a bus passed us but was off duty so it wasn’t allowed to stop and pick us up. However, when we were walking past the bus depot about 10-15 minutes later, this guy was walking towards us and asked us where we were headed. We thought this was kind of sketchy so we told him Toowong and hoped that would satisfy him. He then tells us that he was driving the bus that passed us and told us to get in his car. After driving us to Toowong, he asked how far from there we lived, and after telling him we were like a mile down Sir Fred Schonell Drive, he decided just to drive us home, free of charge. So the trip home was definitely a lot quicker than the walk there, which is good because we got back close to midnight with the ride.

I also have a ticket booked to Melbourne for Anzac weekend, which is like the Australian Memorial Day. I will be by myself for five days, during which time I hope to rent a car and drive out Great Ocean Road and see the 12 Apostles and whatnot. It will be good to take a break from school and get out and see some parts of Australia on my own, and will hopefully be enough to get me through the last two months. I am still trying to get to Japan or Thailand before I come home, as I think seeing part of Asia would just be icing on the cake for this trip but we’ll see once how feasible that is. A few days ago, there were tickets to Tokyo for $230/person but we got online too late and they were already double price, which still isn’t bad to Tokyo but you needed two people to book that ticket and I couldn’t find anyone else that wanted to go.

I got a nice surprise in the mail today. LaRue and Shirley sent be a box filled with all kinds of food and candy. On the outside, I was informed that Australian customs had opened the box for quarantine purposes and confiscated the popcorn and chicken noodle soup mix that she had in there. I was slightly disappointed they took the soup mix, but I was devastated when I found out they took the popcorn. I guess that is on the list of things never allowed in here so I guess I’m SOL until I get back home. As I’m writing this, it is now past midnight and I need to get up early on Tuesday and head into campus. We lost our internet signal today and now the only way I’ll have access to cyberspace is by trekking to campus so I won’t be able to post this until tomorrow morning. As it turns out, I have a small test tomorrow in one of my classes that the reading is online for so I need to go in and read that before class. I may just have to suck up the extra cost and buy a wireless modem, since most of my readings are online it would be a convenience to have internet in my room.