A Rosella! I took this picture in Toowoomba a few weeks ago.

A tree frog! This little guy lives in my friend's bathroom.

On The Road Again!

Hi Team,

My roommate Sonja and I are currently in Melbourne. We flew here last Thursday and have stayed with a friend in town. It's got great public transport, awesome vintage shopping, people with style, lots of good food, lots of live music, beautiful architecture, and it's not too far a drive into nature. We're leaving Melbourne this afternoon and will be spending the next two days driving the Great Ocean Road. In Australia you have to pay per MB of internet usage, so I won't be uploading any pictures whilst on the road, but I'll give updates whenever I can. We've rented a car and after driving the Great Ocean Road we'll head to Canberra, then to Sydney, then back to the Gold Coast. Only 17 more days and I'm home! Miss you all.

Mid-Semester Break!!

Now that I've got some time to sort through photos, I want to tell you about my mid-semester break adventures. I arrived home with over 500 photos, more than 25 mosquito bites, and a tan that makes it seem like my butt could glow in the dark. Too much information? Maybe.

I started my trip in Cairns on the 24th of September. Cairns is in the northern tip of Australia and was about a 2.5 hour flight from the Gold Coast. I spent 6 days hanging out in and around Cairns, which is a backpacker's haven with $2 meals at the pubs, a ton of hostels, a great walking path along the waterfront, and lots of amazing nature to explore. 



 

Cairns doesn't have a beach, so a lagoon was constructed at the waterfront to give everyone a place to hang out and cool down. In summer time, the weather in Cairns frequently reaches 40 degrees or more!



One of my favorite photos from the trip. There was a festival going on at the waterfront, and both this little girl and I got our faces painted.



I scared the camera out of focus.

One of my favorite spots in Cairns included the Night Market, which is open every night from 4:30 pm to 11 pm and has cheap asain food buffets which go on half price after 9 pm. I also really enjoyed Rusty's market, which is a farmer's market full of beautiful locally grown fruit and veggies and was luckily just around the corner from where I was staying.

Cairns is also one of the best places in the world from which to see the Great Barrier Reef. Of course, I took full advantage of my proximity to the reef, and spent a whole day snorkeling and diving at the outer reef, and I have a few hundred underwater photos and a sexy wetsuit tan to show for it. (I'll put up a bunch of my underwater photos from my Great Barrier Reef dive in their own post). Cairns is also within close proximity to the Daintree Rainforest, so I spent a day driving along the coast and up into the Daintree National Park where I saw some of the most amazing, enormous trees.

Gorgeous vines and trees.



I spotted this guy digging french fries out of a garbage can at a rest stop.

I also took a day drive about 3 hours into the middle of the country away from the coast where I really got a taste of what the outback is like. I saw lots of small, secluded towns that could only be reached by dirt roads and were populated by cattle farmers. I even saw a kangaroo!! That wasn't in the Zoo!! And we didn't run it over in with car!!

"Falling in love rocks"



Mossman's Gorge



After my time in Cairns, I jumped in a campervan and started heading down the coast. (Down means south, and the further South you get the colder the weather, which seems to go against my instincts).

I think I've bombarded you with enough pictures for now, and I've got numb-bum, so I'll share pictures from my campervan travels in another post.

Done! Done! Done!

I'm done my semester! Got all of my essays in, and now I'm a free bird. I've spent thepast few days of freedom going back and forth between the beach, the pool, and the couch -- it's been glorious. Now that I've had a few lazy days I'm starting to yearn to travel and explore a bit. My roommate Sonja and I have planned a trip to Melbourne for November 24th. We'll stay in Melbourne for just under a week, and then take 2 weeks to drive the Great Ocean Road and then back up the Coast to Brisbane, hitting up Sydney on the way. We're still trying to get all of our planning done, but the more we find out about what kinds of cool things we can see along the way, the more excited we're getting.

Since I last posted, a couple of fun things have traspired:

First, I had my birthday!

I invited a bunch of my friends to come over for a BBQ and some drinks, and then we headed out to dance. I really enjoyed the party, and best of all, my roommate Tessa made two pies for me! One pecan and one caramel nut. They were delicious.

Second, the Gold Coast hosted their annual V8 Supercars race. Our apartment building is located right along the race track, so we got a front row (and free!) seat to all of the action. Unfortunately, we also had to listen to the noise of the car race all day, which, let me tell you, is A LOT of noise.

It's been getting warmer and warmer here. The days are now consistently about 25 degrees at the peak of the day, which is more than warm enough for me. As much as I love the heat and the beach, the sun here is really strong, so I try to keep out of it as much as I can. I think I'll be really happy to escape the heat by the time my flight home comes about. However, not sure what my body will think of going from +25 to -25....

Boring Stuff

Hi Team,

I've been slogging through essay and exam season for the past two weeks, so please excuse the lack of posts. Friday is the last day of classes, and I have 3 essays due this day as well. The essay topics that I've taken on are really interesting, but a lot of work. Once I'm a free bird again, I'll be sharing lots and lots of photos and stories with you.

In the meantime, here is my theme song:

Coolangatta Beach Day

Coolangatta is a suburb about an hour long bus ride from where I live. It's known for its great surf and beautiful beaches, so a group of about 40 of us exchange students decided that it would be great to have a beach weekend there. We spent the day riding the waves, soaking up the sun, and listening to music. Then in the evening, we all spent the night at the same hostel and went out dancing together. One of my favorite Canadian bands, Hey Rosetta!, will be touring around Australia in the next few weeks, and they're playing a show in Coolangatta. Of course I bought my ticket a long time ago, and got to check out the nice venue where I'll be seeing them. They're playing the day after my birthday, which will be a pretty nice present.

 Here are some cool pictures I took at the Coolangatta beach with my friends.



Coolangatta Beach




Catching some waves



A friend we made on the way to the beach



Excited me with a poster for the upcoming Hey Rosetta! concert.





Tuckered out on the bus after a day of sun.



Midnight Pie

This travel blog is starting to turn into a food blog. I find I've got more time on my hands here than I usually have when I'm at uni in Canada, so I'm spending my free time doing a lot of baking. I think food is so beautiful, so I just can't help myself taking and sharing pictures of what I've made. Hope you don't mind.

I had a brutal few weeks during mid-semester exams, so after dragging my weary self home after my last exam, I couldn't help but celebrate my freedom from an overbearing workload by baking a pie. (I'm a pie girl, not a cake girl. But don't call me a tart. Hah!). About a week before this midnight pie event, I discovered a fruit and veggie market that sells their produce for at least half the price that the supermarkets sell their produce at. I bought an entire flat of 15 of those small plastic containers of strawberries for only $10. Yum!

Thus, I found myself at 10:30 pm starting to roll out pie crust and mix up the innards of a strawberry-rhubarb pie. As it turned out, I had just enough flour to make the pie crust, but not enough to dust on the counter top to keep the crust from sticking as I rolled it out. I couldn't get my pie crust off the counter-top, so ended up having to press fragments of crust together in the bottom of the pan using my knuckles. I also realized after mixing up the egg wash that I didn't have anything to brush the egg wash onto the pie crust, so I had to use my fingers, and unfortunately you can tell. But when that pie came out of the oven just past midnight, I didn't care that it looked kind of crappy -- it tasted sooo good! Besides, if my Grandpa Venour had been there, he would have said that it was going to look worse where it was going.