Gloucester

I spent this past weekend in Gloucester, New South Wales, Australia. This is where my roommate, Tamara is from, and she invited Autumn and I to go home with her for the weekend. Gloucester is about 9 hours (driving) away from where we live on the Gold Coast, so we prepared ourselves for a road trip. We left Friday morning and arrived Friday night. It was a very beautiful and scenic drive down. We passed The Big Banana, which is a popular tourist rest stop. We even got to see the sunset, which was really pretty. We had a time change an hour ahead when we crossed the New South Wales border.

Tamara took us to the local pub Friday night for a little bit, as it closed at 11pm (and always does!).

Gloucester is a very small town out in the country. It is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone and there is one of everything; one grocery store, one doctor, one pub, one post office, etc. Tamara’s graduating class had only 40 people in it!

I tried a famous Gloucester "thick shake", which was delicious :)

Saturday was the Gloucester Show, which is a big event in town. People wait for it all year long. It reminded me of a carnival or a fair. During the day there was horse jumping, wood chopping contests, etc.

It had rides and food stands with typical carnival food.

Fun fact: cotton candy here is called fairy floss!

One of the farmers let Autumn and I take a picture with his bull. He was huge (even though it doesn’t look like it in the pictures), and he was still young and not yet fully grown. He had a ring in his nose and everything.

We spent a good portion of the afternoon at the show and then Tamara took us around town to some lookout points to see the views. It really was beautiful up in the mountains; there was so much undisturbed land and everything was so green.

Later that night we went back to the Gloucester Show with Tamara’s whole family. In addition to everything they had going on during the day, they also had car drifting, the smashup derby, etc. The smashup derby seemed to be the most anticipated event by everyone. The show was wrapped up with a small fireworks show.

It was nice to visit another town, especially one out in the country in New South Wales.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I spent this St. Patrick's Day exploring the city of Brisbane, Australia! It has been on my list of cities that I want to travel to, and since Autumn and I had no plans for the day, we made a spur of the moment decision to just go. Everyone had been telling us how easy it was to get there so we figured, "why not?!" Brisbane is located about an hour north of Ashmore. We figured that we would take this opportunity to, if nothing else, learn how exactly to get there.

We thought it would be simple, but boy were we wrong! We woke up at 7am to get an early start and hopefully have a full day in Brisbane. We left our apartment with enough time to walk to the bus stop and catch the bus to the train station. As we were sitting and waiting for it, we saw a bus pull up on the other side of the road.. our bus!, and before we could even react, it was pulling away just as fast! We certainly would have caught it if we had just been on the right side of the road. However, I am still not sure how you know which side of the street a bus is going to pick up and drop off. We looked into when the next bus was going to come, and since it was a Saturday, it wasn't coming again for another two hours. We agreed that we couldn't sit around waiting for it and waste all that time, so we decided to call a cab to take us to the Nerang train station. When we got there, we weren't sure exactly what to do. We got in line to ask if all we needed to do was swipe our 'go cards' (which we had done) or if we needed to buy a ticket for the train. Once we got to the front of the line and asked what train to catch to get to Brisbane, the man smiled and pointed to the train that was right next to us that was just leaving! So now we missed the bus and the train by seconds. All we could do though was find the humor in it and laugh. We had to wait a half hour for the next train to Brisbane. Once we caught it, it took about an hour, making fairly frequent stops along the way. The last stop was at a town close to Brisbane; everyone had to get off and then you were bussed to your end destination. We were let off at Central Station. At this point we were tired, hungry, and feeling a little defeated, but as soon as we took a look around, we realized how awesome the city looked and we became super excited again! We were let off right by a memorial building with an eternal flame inside. There were also lots of statues around this area; it was really pretty. We decided to grab some lunch and a coffee at a cute cafe across the street. After the perfect pick me up, we asked to be pointed in the direction of shopping! We made our way to the main streets and we spent the afternoon browsing through numerous outdoor shops, as well as stores inside the mall.

It was really cool that we were exploring Brisbane on St. Patrick's Day because the city was filled with festive people, dressed in green, celebrating the Irish culture. There were Irish music performances going on as well. It gave the city a really cool vibe.

The weather turned on us later in the afternoon, and making our way back in the rain was not fun. We had to catch a bus to get back to the train station, and then catch the train back to the Gold Coast. Since it was raining, and "the tracks were wet", we had a very long delay on the way back. What should have taken about an hour, ended up taking two hours. Since we were so delayed getting back to Nerang train station, the busses were no longer running. We had no choice but to call a cab again to get home. I don't think this would have normally been a problem, but since there was a local Rugby game that evening and since it was also St. Patrick's Day, there were a lot of people waiting for cabs. It also wouldn't have been a problem if the cabs were consistently coming and going, but none were coming at all. We called a couple of times for one, as did other people, but no cabs were really coming through. After over an hour's wait, we finally got one!

We ran into unexpected delays and setbacks, and some bad weather, but we still had an amazing day and I am so glad that we went! This spur of the moment day trip gave us an experience, some good laughs, and the chance to explore a new city. We plan on going back to Brisbane again and staying for a few days and nights so that we can see and do more of the city. Now we know how to get there and back, and hopefully we won't run into the same problems next time; although it made for a funny story and great memory :)

One Month Mark

This past Wednesday (March 14, 2012) was Autumn and I's one month mark of arriving in Australia. I can't believe how fast the time has gone already! We had uni all day and then we made a nice dinner to celebrate.

On Thursday (March 15, 2012) I was finally able to meet up with my friend Erica from back home. Erica did the same exchange program two years ago that I am doing now. She loved Australia and also met and started dating a guy while over here. After the program was over, she went back to Orlando to finish school and she eventually moved back here and is now living with her boyfriend in Mermaid Beach, Australia! She picked me up and took me to Broadbeach, which is an area that I hadn't been to yet, but had been wanting to check out. We walked around for a bit and then grabbed some sushi for lunch. A lot of sushi restaurants here are based around a conveyor belt of small plates that just go around and around, and you grab what looks good and what you want. You then pay per plate at the end. It is a cool concept and it was fun, but the sushi wasn't as great as it is back home.

Exciting news: Autumn and I have booked our flights to Melbourne (pronounced "Melbin" here) during our mid-semester break from uni. Our American friends, Chris and Andrew, that also live at Nexus Place, are coming too. Melbourne is apparently a really "rad" city and everyone here has such great things to say about it. I am really looking forward to it!

"Uni"

While everyone back home is enjoying Spring Break, I am just finishing up my second week of classes in Australia. Everyone here calls school/college/university simply "uni". I was finally able to put together a pretty awesome schedule. I only go to uni two days a week, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They are long days, but it is worth it to have five day weekends!

The classes that I am taking are International Food and Beverage Management, Special Interest Tourism, Tourism Operations, and Event Marketing and Sponsorship. In Australia, for each class, you have to go to a lecture and a tutorial. Lectures are an hour and fifty minutes long, and tutorials are only fifty minutes long. The lecture sections are much larger and you basically listen to the convener of the course go through powerpoint slides. The tutorials are much smaller and much more interactive. Tutorials are taught by the section tutor and you discuss readings, work on assignments, etc.

Something else that is different here is their grading system. They don't go by A, B, C, D, and F. They instead go by High Definition (HD), Distinction (D), Credit (C), Pass (P), and Fail (N). I am aiming for all HD's :)