Last week on the Gold Coast

Our last night at CBD, predrinks at the Reserve where we didn't know a sole and then to the bar for the very last time. It was packed with law students celebrating the end of their finals and Americans saying goodbye. I had a very unfortunate encounter with a guy who I had only met once and basically was extremely rude to me the entire time (save details for later) luckily I had friends help me get him off my case.




Holly's End of Semester BASH! Our last party at Holly's before we all head home (everyone except Holly). It was the end and yet when I walked in I still didn't know a soul. It was a great time and I got to spend the night saying bye to friends and meeting people I would never see again.

Only starting our walk to the shores and her bottle crashed and burned...not a good start to the night.

                                                           Good bye to HOLLY...

                                                           good bye to SWEDES....

                                and goodbye to GAV, I hope to visit you in Mauritius one day!!
Officially the last night at BOND where I packed up my room, gave anything I couldn't take home to Elin and went out for one last time! The party was Christmas themed so we went all out. I ended up being too tired to make it to Don's for the last time to say bye to everyone I hadn't seen all week, but I was with my girls and that's all I needed.

To Elin and Jane my experience here would have not been the same without you, i'm so happy we got to spend these 3 months together and I cant wait to see you guys in the states in the future!

New Zealand

The place where Lord of the Rings was filmed. That was our destination. Waking up at the crack of dawn to hop a bus to the airport with hopes of having a smoother trip than on our way to Sydney. Unfortunately our problems were a lot larger and more serious. After spending time checking in and heading down to security we were stopped by a rude security guard who said we had to throw out basically half of our carry on luggage. Luckily Colette and Leah were able to sweet talk there way into getting their bags checked on the plane for free. Now that may seem like a tiny problem but what happened once we landed in NZ was very serious. A student who was on our trip from us had problems with his bags as well but talked his way into getting them on the plane. When I saw him in the airport he was speaking with security so I felt bad that he had had such a tough time traveling. That was until I found out what a dumba** he was. According to our tour guide who spoke to the policemen escorting Pat out of customs, Pat had bought a bottle of Duty Free Vodka in the Gold Coast Airport, which was fine until he decided to open it on the plane and drink the entire 5th at 7:30 in the morning. He was so drunk that he was slurring his words and could hardly keep his eyes open. The whole group was so upset because no one knew the status of his return and kept us waiting for hours until we could leave. Our journey started in Christchurch and we were traveling across the south island to famous Queenstown over the next two days. 

Morning shots anyone?! (Aussies and Kiwis are nuts!)








Our first activity was to climb a glacier. We bundled up, and got equipment and hiked an hour up a mountain to get to where the Fox Glacier started. The change in temperature was dramatic and putting the spikes on our shoes and learning to walk in them the first time was a little of a challenge. We walked up the glacier and down into deep pits and through high iced walls, even slipped a few times.

Where we drank pure glacier water yumm...
(Tim, me, Colette, Leah, Matt, Will, Kayleigh, Katey, Vinny, Erica, Natalie)

   


Just casually hanging off the side of the mountain










We continued our drive to Queenstown with stopping alone the way to take in the beautiful sights.

A beautiful waterfall where our crazy driver decided to strip and jump in the water...along with a few other boys. They definitely regretted their decision when our driver dipped Justin's clothes in the water so he had nothing dry to change into.

The largest lake in New Zealand, they call it the sleeping giant. The water is so cold one can only survive for 20 minutes.
(Our driver almost died in that lake a year ago)

Our first night out in Queenstown where our tour guide Matt knew all the bartenders because not only was he our tour guide but he owns the lodge we were staying at.









It was pretty daring to go out that night because bright and early in the morning the group was going bungee jumping. I however had no plans to do so, so I was prepared to take pictures of everyone jumping off the edge. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great, it was rainy and very cold which made it hard to stand out there for hours watching people go but people said it helped with their nerves.

Tim was the first and took it like a man, running off the plat form and doing a superman dive off.

The German girl Mina did a handstand on the edge of the plat form and fell off it...one of the guys Dwight even did a back flip off!

This is about as close as i got to bungee jumping, but i will say i thought a lot about doing it the rest of the trip it actually looked fun....at least a lot more fun that the Nimbus one the boys did over the canyon.







The next activity was the luge. I was very disappointed to find out that it was on cement instead of ice but it still looked fun.

Unfortunately the chair lift stopped and we weren't able to do it that day but we did come back on our day off and it was a lot of fun, especially racing with all the boys.
That night was the bar crawl, 30 dollars to entry to bars and a shot at every door, sounds great in theory, but each bar was tiny, only consisted of the people on the crawl and was just overall not fun. We did run into the guys who were there on their own trip, not used to walking around NZ and running into people I know.

                      I'm a little tea pot!


Sunday was one of the best days of activities, and the worst to not bring a camera on, but I was not about to lose my camera to the NZ rapids. We started with Jetboating, which is a super fast speed boat that is driven on the rapids. You go so fast and the driver gets so close to the large rocks on the side you think your going to get hit or crash! We must have screamed a million times between having close calls and the driver pulling 360s with the boat. After that adrenaline rush we were suited up into wet suits, rain jackets and life jackets and boarded a helicopter which flew us up into the mountains and dropped us off at the top where the only was down was rafting. Ive been rafting 3 other times, but its never been the only way down the mountain, our guide told us it was a 2 day walk back to Queenstown. This was one of the best times i've had because my guide was not throwing me in the freezing water and we could relax in the boat occasionally.We did have 2 scares though, the first was through a class 5 rapid where Rachel fell out of the boat and got stuck underneath it for awhile, it was really scary because we couldn't find her. Luckily she was ok and quite the trooper. The second was going through a dark tunnel, I expected it to be short but it was extremely long and so dark i couldn't see my hand in front of my face. We made it out safely but once we were out our guide started blowing his whistle and jumped out of the boat. A bunch of the other guides ran to the tunnel to rescue someone that had fallen out of the boat in the tunnel and gotten wedged between the wall and the boat. He was ok and our friend Vinny some how managed to break his paddle into 3 pieces, he now has the top of the paddle as a souvenir.
Monday was our day to ourselves, some people did adrenaline activities but Colette Leah and I decided to spend our day exploring Queenstown which meant SHOPPING! Unfortunately none of it was for me, all xmas gifts for the family.

That night we left for a small town called Wanaka, basically a stopping point on our journey back to ChristChurch. We only spent the night but there were several other tours staying at the hostel as well so it turned out to be a pretty good night filled filled with pole dancing competitions, really bad karaoke and musical chairs...and a few boys decided to take a drunken swim in the freezing ass water.
The next day we arrived in Mount Cook where we explored the mountains and glaciers by boat.

Our last and final day in NZ was at a small family sheep farm! soooo adorable but the terrible thing was our homemade lunch which was amazing except they served us lamb and cow....can you say FRESH?

Officially one of the most amazing trips of my life and I cannot wait to back and explore all the other NZ islands!

Sydney

Our trip to Sydney, what can i say? It was only for the weekend and by Sunday morning we were all ready to head back home. We left Thursday night, driving from the Gold Coast to Sydney on a coach bus...with no bathroom. Unfortunately not everyone understood the concept that if you drink your going to have to use the bathroom. We had to stop within the first 30 minutes...and that was only the first of many, especially when someone sitting in the back puked all over the floor. We had to sit and smell it for the remaining 9 hours.

 We finally made it to the hostel, which smelled so bad when we walked in that I contemplated staying at another place. Unfortunately the weather wasn't so great for our first day in Sydney, especially for our walking tour around the city. We walked around seeing different churches, the botanical gardens, and the bench where Forrest Gump was filmed.

After wandering around, we walked our way to the bottom of the city where the Sydney Opera house is. We spent time taking pictures and roaming around the inside and in the gift shop. A few girls actually bought tickets to an Opera that night and said it was very entertaining. With the weather not being so great, most of the pictures came out grey, but we still had fun and it was warm with no rain.

We then made our way to the Harbour Bridge, which is directly behind the Sydney Opera house. Luckily I didn't book the bridge walk because even walking up to the bridge viewing platform was enough of a workout. Stairs, stairs, stairs, and more stairs to the look out location which is said to be half the height of the bridges' total height. Our entire group was up their with us to the platform was extremely crowded and difficult to walk around but we were able to see a lot and get some fun pictures.

We had the afternoon to our selves and were able to walk around the market place, which had the cheapest clothing and costumes, which was perfect for the Halloween cruise! There were about 300 people on our Halloween cruise and dressed up in all types of crazy costumes, it was our group from BOND, students from Griffith and random people who bought tickets. It was quite a time.

Saturday was our big trip to the Blue Mountains. It was a long drive up but really beautiful sights. It was also a lot bigger than I expected, there are small towns, schools and even a college. There's a community so it's not like a national park. We had 4 destinations that we were visiting and had to drive between all of them, gave us all a break from all the stairs we had to climb. We first went to a beautiful look out and then went to visit the three sisters, which were three large rocks that you had to walk down very narrow steps to, which was very difficult because there were a lot of people that day and the stairs could only fit one at a time. The story was that 2 aboriginal tribes were fighting because the three sisters fell in love with 3 brothers from the other tribe, and so they were set in stone. Apparently the sisters bring good luck if you touch them. 

We were told we would be going to a grotto and cliff jumping, but unfortunately that was cancelled due to the weather. Although the weather seemed to be fine. The most memorable part of this trip and probably of all of Australia is that our two guy friends, "The Ryans" called us and said "were on the Harbour Bridge!" They flew to Sydney for the night to surprise us! We were all so stunned and didn't believe them until we actually saw them later that night. We all celebrated by going to a club that our trip was hosting and had a great time...unfortunately filled with some interesting drama. The boys left early the next day and we packed our things up and got back on the bus to go back to BOND but had a day full of activities on the way. We first took a ferry to Manly beach where we were going to lay out and catch some rays but it was very windy and not too warm so we decided to do some souvenir shopping for our families.

We also stumbled upon the cutest 10 yr old who was playing his guitar in the middle of the square and singing a wide range of songs. He was amazing! Definitely going to be famous one day.




Next we drove to Bronte beach and did the famous long walk to Bondi beach. There also happened to be an art exhibition going on so there were art works set up all along the walk. It was really crowded as well, made the walk a lot slower. But the sun had come out and there were great places to take pictures. We also got a lot more gifts and I was able to find one for everyone back home.

The beaches were the last destinations of Sydney and to end the trip the funniest thing happened. A girl went on the Griffith bus to use their bathroom and while she was in there the bus drove off! We were all dying of laughter. Unfortunately one of the tour guides came on the bus and told us that at the last minute he had told her not to do so and had her go to another restroom. But if it had actually happened, our trip would have had the most interesting start and finish!

Springbrook National Park

Another amazing adventure, this time the three girls and Ben took the hour drive to Spring Brook National Park. I figured there would be a lot of hiking, some great waterfalls and views, but I had no idea that it would be so HUGE! I assumed you would park and spend the entire day hiking, but this place is soo spread out you definitely need a car to drive from one destination to another. And I was warned that the drive would be scary, narrow and windy roads, but I still couldn't have mentally prepared especially after the physical party the night before.

 The natural bridge  is a naturally formed rock arch over Cave Creek. It was formed from a waterfall which came beneath the cave and dug a pothole on top until the two joined and created the arch. The cave is also home to glow worms which live inside the caves, but you have to visit at night to see them. (That'll be the next trip)

Next we headed to an amazing cliff. We climbed over the bar to walk out and really get a better view. Crazy Ben decided to lie down and peek over the edge, he claimed it was around 300 meters down. But boyyy was he wrong. I have no idea how high up we were, but im pretty sure I could not see the bottom and when we moved to the look out side, I was very glad to have not looked off the edge of the cliff.

The last stop was the Best of All Lookouts, we obviously had to check it out. It was a bit of a drive and difficult to find but once we got there we knew it was completely worth it.

Great Day and cant wait to go back!

Graduation

Congratulations to Ben!

We are so proud to say that finally  he has gotten his first degree in business. May have taken longer than expected but as a college senior he's still way ahead of me. 
Any excuse to party and the American's are lining up. We dressed to the nine's and started our night at varsity shores, taking pics with the proud graduate. 

 From there the details get a bit hazy from all the goon and the bottle of Marker's Whiskey we got him as a gift but over all the night was a success! Except for the fact we left one important mate home by mistake. Some how in all the craziness we didn't realize our friend Aj was no in the cab with us and we took off without him! Poor Aj came down all dressed and pumped to go to find the house completely empty. To make it even worse, non of us realized until he told us the next day, oops! The group spent the night dancing away at shooter's night club that was themed out for the special occasion.

 Looking sharp as always these boys. Some how most of the group managed to go home together. Luckily Aj and Ry were nice enough to come out at 3 am to pick us up. Perhaps the funniest moment of the night was as we were driving home when someone asked where Ben and Corinna were? And just like a movie, out the window of a cab driving next to us was Ben hanging out the window! Of course Kraig has to roll down his window and lean out to give him a hug. Luckily they did not succeed otherwise we would have had a much more eventful night than needed.

Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

What everyone's been waiting for since we got here, a weekend getaway to Cairns to go visit the Great Barrier Reef. We met the rest of the group that was coming with us the airport and failed to realize that the group was 4 other girls and only 2 guys, 6 girls and 2 guys, things were bound to be interesting. We arrived at the Cairns airport and were to be picked up by the hostel's shuttle. Unfortunately they were a no show and so we boarded the first maxi taxi we could find. We were told that the hostel was only 5 minutes away yet the driver had other stops to make in less than desirable spots in town. When we got to Gilligans it was 11:30pm and the line waiting outside to get into the bar was almost around the corner. We all rushed to get to our room so we could go out and check out the scenery. 8 people in one room with only one bath and shower is not an easy thing to do. I could tell from the start that it was going to be an interesting weekend, given the wide range of Aussie's that our hostel was attracting.

7:30 am Friday we boarded a large cruise ship to head to the Great Barrier Reef unfortunately we were accompanied by 62 other people, something I had not anticipated. It was cold and rainy and forced us to spend most of the morning sitting inside and staring out the window. By the time we had reached the reef the sun had come out and the rain had been chased away. We jumped into the ocean with our snorkel gear, putting our faces in the water to take  a look what was going on. Unfortunately it wasn't too much, the water, corals and plant life were very gray and dull, unlike what i had seen in pictures. And considering I hadn't been swimming in months i was so tired that I could only last in the water for 20-30 minutes. I did however see some different plant life and types of fish, luckily no sharks. We spent the rest of the first stop on the front of the both sun tanning and spotting the water for animals...we were lucky enough to see a giant turtle!

We headed out another 2 hours to another reef spot, a bunch of us were so exhausted from the boat and people getting sea sick that we decided to hang out inside and have a siesta! Those that did attempt to go diving were slapped with an extra 65 dollars for some complicated reason. One of them had ear problems like myself but decided to attempt the skills for diving anyway. He ended up only making it 2.5 meters before having to come to the surface and asking to no longer continue. Surprisingly he did receive a certificate for at least attempting the skills test. Which was quite impressive considering he was swimming directly next to a barracuda who had been attracted to the boat from the fish that the captain had been throwing over board. Ryan freaked out and jumped right back onto the boat. I tried to capture a photo of this, but unfortunately he was already back on board. 

We had a girls night out that night, yet there were a ton of rugby teams staying at our hostel so it was like walking into the lions den. On the other hand we didn't have to pay for a single drink all weekend...even our American boys who were with us. 6:40 the next morning we were picked up in front of the hostel. There were still people drinking in the bar...aussies are crazy!
We had to take 3 buses up to the rafting place. The first stop was the rafting company store 20 minutes away to sign away our lives and pay the surprise 30 dollar national park tax fees. We then had to drive an hr and a half up to a hostel where
we received our shoes and wet suits. Then the last half hour up the mountain to where the rafting began. It was the first time for most of us so we were all pretty excited. We lucked out with a really cool rafting guide who taught us all about the national park and told a ton of great jokes. Unfortunately this one was crazier than others that I had done so I was in for a big surprise. We swam in different parts of the stream, people jumped off cliffs and were even sucked down into different whirl pools where they were pulled under and then resurfaced further down the stream. Our guide even had us purposefully tip our boat, which I got completely stuck under and had to be pulled out. It even happened the second time when we were going over a huge rock and we all fell over board. Luckily we all survived our level 4 tour and made it out only with bruises and a few painful eardrums. Next would be a level 5 which our guide said is a 4 day camping trip in the mountains where the only way to get there is by helicopter!     

 

(Sam, Ryan, Jordan, Kelli, Ryan, Nicole, Corinna, Me)

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

   

FINALLY, we made it to the zoo! Took a few weeks between getting settled in at school and having the wrong date on the groupon, but the day came and it was amazing! Got off to a rocky start at first though. The guys were lazy about getting up in the morning so we took the 12 o'clock bus, the only problem was that I knew where we were going, but not what stop it was. I had the second bus number and the time and that's about it. We don't have public transportation in my town. Luckily the boys were smart enough to be able to  read a map and get us to currumbin. Unfortunately we missed the second bus and had to wait for the next one. By the time we arrived it was 2pm and the ropes course last group was at 3 so we rushed over to get our 2:30 spot.

They gave us some pretty cool outfits to act like monkeys climbing and swinging from the trees. 

  

  There was zip lining...

               And tunnels...

And sooo much more!! (for more pics look on facebook)

Most importantly were the animals, first stop was the kangaroos...

The largest crocodile in the southern hemisphere...

the cutest koalas...

And even a tazmanian devil and a dingo!

   The most important part is that at the end of the day we survived the rope course and got to pet a kangaroo...now if only we weren't late to hold a koala :(