First Weekend in Australia

Hello!  I am just about to begin my 3rd day here in Australia!  I tried my best to blog yesterday morning but I just ran out of time.  I think the first blog was kind of overwhelming so I will try to keep it a bit shorter in length.  Well, we will see.  My first full day here we went to the mall again to do some more shopping for our college.  I think I realized how sick I was the day before because I wasn't able to actually observe the things around me.  The mall is such a different environment than ours at home.  First off a lot of people do not even wear shoes to the mall which is very odd to me.  Before we did our shopping we decided that we deserved some Mcdonalds.  At this point in time I was still feeling sick (not as much as the day before but definitely not up to par) so I just needed something to fill my stomach since I had ate nothing, besides a piece of bread, for the previous two days.  Now I was proud to see a Mcchicken on the menu so of course I had to taste it (I may have to let the Denver Mcdonalds know that even AUSTRALIA has mcchickens.. ha!).  To my surprise, the Mcchicken looked like it was supposed to! In Minnesota it looks like it has been sat on but in all honestly I love it that way.  Anyhow, just like everything else here, it was uber expensive.  This meal would cost me 3.77 back home and I paid 8 dollars and something cents.  I posted a picture below of the "medium" pop they have here.  The portions are quite different.  The taste you ask?  Well, in all fairness I was still feeling sick but from what I tasted..... the fries tasted like fish, the soda tasted like puuuree alcohol (I had to plug my nose when I drank it) and the mcchicken probably would have been somewhat decent if i was feeling better.

Okay.. from now on I will promise to cut the Mcdonalds rants. :) We decided to take a walk into town after we ate so we could go to the goodwill store to find some cheap pans (since everything is sooo expensive).  After walking for about 20 minutes in the extremely hot sun we approached the goodwill store to find that they were closed!  All the stores in town closed at 12:00 on Saturday afternoon.  It was the strangest thing.. and quite an inconvenience, but at least we were able to look around the town.  As we were walking back to the mall we ran across this huge spider (view pic below) and this is normal size for them! So scary.  We were talking to an Australian later and he informed us that these guys are harmless and that they should be your friend.  He said that they eat the insects in your place so you should feel comforted if they are in your place. BAHAHAHA!  But he did say if you find them in your place and you dont want them in there to simply put them on a piece of paper and let them go free because we need to respect nature.  What a nice guy!




After we got back to the mall we went grocery shopping and went to the big W for some more necessities.  The grocery shopping was beyond stressful because everything was soo pricey and everything was so different.  There is not one brand that is recognizable on the shelves so everything I bought is a mystery to me and I am hoping it is tasty.  I would love to have some ramin right now or mac and cheese. um num num.  I found myself comparing the mall more to Ontario, Canada than the United States but I am not really sure why.  They had some great "deals" diapers 2 for 66 dollars, 24 pack of pop 24 dollars need I say more?  I could go on forever about that but I think you all get the idea.  What I found strange also is that the employees check your bags when you leave their store.. honestly.. I really really wish we could do that back home at my store.   That would Rock!! (and no returns!!)

Saturday evening the school held a "dinner" for us.  So of course I went down with an empty stomach in hopes to be filled up.  To my surprise we enter and we get two free tickets for alcohol.  Yes, this is on campus!  Definitely a different atmosphere.  So we got to choose between wine or beer.  Well, drinking on an empty stomach is definitely not the best idea but we had these two drinks in hopes that food would come soon.  I found out that their idea of dinner is way different than ours.  They brought out small apetizers and you were lucky to have gotten any!  I quickly felt like a fish in a fishbowl trying to get a bit of food.  There were no plates or anything so if you had small hands you were short on luck!  After the food was gone it quickly turned into a dance party with old school music from my middle school years but it was still a blast!

The next morning (yesterday) all the international students, and a few Australians, went to Byron Bay Beach.  It was spectacular.  I felt like I was in the movies and I just wanted to continually take pictures.  The sun was so hot that I would reapply sunscreen like every half hour it was nuts!  The sand was hard to avoid so I felt like I was exfoliating my skin with the chunks of sand in my sunscreen.  As disgusting as it was I knew I didn't really have a choice.  I was actually really really scared to go to the beach because of how dangerous the sun is here since there is no O zone layer.  About three hours in I honestly think I was channeling my Auntie Dawn because I just had to get out of the sun and sit under a tree.  Something just didn't feel right so I did not ignore the feeling and sat under a really cool looking tree for a while.  To my surprise and my great sunscreen skills I did not get burnt!  I am so thrilled.  A lot of people got some pretty brutal looking sunburns.. I have been there and I definitely dont want to be there again.  Sunburns are too painful.  Now I just gotta keep my sunscreen skills up to par for the next four months!  Here are a couple pictures of Byron Bay.









After our return we got our last free dinner, which again, consisted of grabbing as much pizza with your hands that they could hold.  The pizza went so fast that none of us really got enough food (but.. i did learn my lesson from the night before so my stomach was satisfied).


Well I still have more to mention about my apartment and campus but I will have to leave that for another time!  We have some orientation things we have to attend to today.. thanks again for reading.. I wasn't feeling too creative today so I am sorry if it wasn't that interesting!

Miss you all

Love
Brookie