Not long now...

So I have now handed in all my assignments and only have 1 more week of lectures left before exams. All of a sudden we seem to be at the end of my year abroad. In just over a month I will have taken my exams, been to Singapore and finally be back in the UK. It all seems a bit crazy. I've been here so long now that it seems normal. I've even learnt to think in dollars rather than pounds! Only now that I'm going to be leaving soon do I feel like I want to stay a bit longer. I think I will definately be coming back to Australia one day. Perhaps when I don't have such a strict budget. I still want to go to the outback and do some more diving.

But, there are a lot of things I am looking forward to at home...








It's going to be a bit sad leaving here though. x

2 Days

This week has been the most stressful week. I've been at uni all day for the last 3 days, had 3 pracs, a massive report to do and now today I have an oral presentation but have woken up with a sore throat :s. I can not wait for it to be saturday!

But at the weekend I did go to Byron Bay which was lovely as always. We stayed at the same campsite we were in for christmas which felt kind of strange. It felt like we were going travelling again. I really liked being back sleeping in the van. I hope I don't have to wait too long before I get the chance to go travelling again. When my student loan comes through I'm going to book a trip to Ayre's rock. I think it's going to be the last place I go before coming home. Which is now less than 3 months away. So I will be seeing you all quite soon :)

It seems strange that everyone at home is breaking up for easter though. If I was in Edinburgh I would only have exams left to do but here I havn't even got to midsemester and feel like I only just started back. I think it was definately worth it for the 3 month summer holiday though :)

Missing you all lots. It'll be very strange to be having my birthday without you all!

xxxxx

Help Japan.

There have been so many disasters recently it seems like it may be the end of the world soon. I sort of wonder if there are always this many and I have just never realised as they have never been anywhere near me and I havn't known anyone affected. Anyway, I have found this:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#!/papercranesforjapan

You should have a look -for every origami crane you make and upload a picture of they will donate $2 to Japan. My first attempt went horribly wrong but I blame the paper. I have since made 2 (1 half made by Ryan before he gave up). Just look on youtube to find out what to do. It's an easy, fun way to help Japan. I think everyone should make at least 1 :).

In other news it is 8 days till my birthday :D

I haven't been up to much at all lately, just been out a few times and uni stuff. I seem to have loads of work to do this week. I have a lab report to write up and a 7 minute presentation on thursday which seems like a long time to be standing up in front of people talking for. I'm not looking forward to it much. I've been trying to get some sort of hospital work experience lately but that's not going so well. I applied to volunteer weeks and weeks ago at the PA hospital but they still havn't sorted it out. Which is concerning as they want you to do a minimum of 3 months and I only have 3 months left in the country.

3 months! I have been here for 9. I can't believe how quickly it has gone. I'm definitely feeling pretty ready to go home now though, especially as I can't afford to do anything here now! I'm looking forward to so many things at home.

This weekend I'm planning to go to Byron so I hope its sunny. It's starting to get cooler here now, which seems very strange when it's getting hotter at home. Stranger than when it was getting hot here and cold at home, I guess that was a bit more exciting though.

Anyway, make a crane it's for a good cause xxx

This and that

So I haven't blogged for a while but I'm also not really sure what I've been doing. One thing that I am very excited about is that I'm going to start volunteering at the RSPCA. I'm going for training on saturday and then will start going every friday. I have to do a couple of hours of admin work, but then I got to do dog walking and animal enrichment activities. I really miss Lexie and Moss so it will be good to work with the dogs :D

Other than that I have been mostly working these last few weeks. My job is getting pretty tedious but at least I should be doing some fun things with the money over summer. I will hopefully be going whale watching in Surfer's Paradise this weekend. And then on monday I'll be going on my field trip to Fraser Island with my Australia's Terrestrial Environment course. It's crazy that it's midsemester already though! I don't feel like I've been here all that long, but at the same time when I think about arriving here that seems like a world away.

Ryan has moved into his own place and got a job where I'm working now. He's going training for it today so should be starting pretty soon. We've been vaguely starting to make travel plans. So far we are thinking that we will go straight to Ayre's rock when exams are over, then possibly visit Alice Springs as well. Then we're going to fly up to either Darwin or Cairns where Ryan will buy a campervan and then we're going to travel all the way down the East Coast. We've heard it may not be worth going to Darwin and I can't seem to find any flights to there from Ayre's rock either so it's looking like we might be starting in Cairns. Which is meant to be amazing for backpackers and it's right by the Great Barrier Reef -so I think I'm going to get my scuba diving certificate there. You can do courses where you live in on the boats which sounds like so much fun! I've always wanted to go on a boat holiday :).

Anyways, things that I have actually been doing...

At the beginning of September the Brisbane festival started. This is not at all like the Edinburgh festival. Everything is expensive so I haven't actually been to any of the events. The opening was pretty amazing though. It's called Riverfire and it starts with a fighter jet zooming between along the river with a glowing ball of fire shooting out the back of it. It was really cool -looked a bit like the sun. Then the river lit up with fire along it (this wasn't actually on the water, there were platforms along the river) and the fireworks started it. But they didn't just come off the river, they were coming off the tops of all the skyscrapers on the other side of the river (we were at South Bank). Then the bridge lit up with a waterfall of sparks. It was all really pretty. It finished with the jet coming back through. I am a big fan of fireworks so this was pretty amazing, especially with the jet. And it was free :).

So the next week I had my fieldtrip to Lamington Park. This involved a 12km trek in the rain. It wasn't a great day. It was pretty much the same as Brisbane Forest Park, except we got to see some heathland as well. There's supposed to be really good views from there but it was so misty that you couldn't actually see anything at all.

Me at Lamington with a big uprooted tree.

The next day I was going on a trip with QUEST to Springbrook -which is pretty much right by Lamington so I was feeling pretty concerned. This actually turned out to be really good though. The sun was out and everyone was much happier. We went to 'best of all lookout' where you can see all the way to Byron Bay. Then we headed to the 'Forest of dreams' where we saw glow worms and fed parrots.

Feeding a parrot!!

We then went to a waterfall where some crazy people went swimming. I was considering it until I heard the horrible screaming noises everyone was making when they got in.

Me from behind the waterfall -slightly damp!

After spending some time there we headed over to this place called Natural Bridge. It's hard to explain but is basically water going through a hole into a cave and somehow this is a bridge... It was pretty too and we even saw some glow worms in there natural habitat. After that we headed home.

Me and Louisa them met up with Guy and Ryan for dinner at a Turkish restaurant. I discovered that I do not like Turkish food. For some reason I thought it would taste like Moroccan food so was massively disappointed. There was a belly dancer though, although she did not roll her belly which we found odd.

Last week we went to QUEST's film night where we saw a pretty odd Australian film called Priscilla Queen of the Desert. It was about transvestites travelling to Alice Springs to put on some shows. Was surprisingly good. We then headed to RE which is a pretty cool bar in Toowong with live music. Was pretty dead by 11.30pm though -people seem to head out and go home earlier in Australia.

This weekend me and Ryan went to Wet and Wild -a water park at the Gold Coast. I bought my first rash vest for it! It's very nice -blue, stripey roxy tee :). However ended up not wearing it as wasn't allowed it on some of the ride. Ryan, Guy and Rich had been the week before but I had been working. But Ryan loved it so made me go even though it was cloudy. It was fun though although they have a ridiculously scary water slide. You go up to the top where the slide is unlocked for you to get in. You get in and are standing up with your back against the vertical slide. You are locked in and then there is a countdown before the floor drops out from beneath you and you fall down at ridiculous speeds. It was so scary that I couldn't even scream! Horrible ride. After falling down you do a loop the loop which you can't even notice due to going so fast. At least it was over quickly. The other rides were much nicer. I especially enjoyed the Kamikaze which involves a 2 seater rubber ring, which you sit in facing each other. It's a bit like a half tube or something. You drop off one side and then go up the other and then again until you slow to a stop. I got straight back on this one it was so good. The rest of the slides were all pretty mellow. It seemed that most of the rides there were either too scary or not scary enough.

So that's about all I've been up to -it seems that I may have done more than I thought.

Love you and miss you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Things I forgot to tell you about.

Hello

I have realised that there are loads of things that I havn't got round to writing about. A few weeks ago I went to Brisbane raceday where I won $10 on a horse! I spent $15 though so didn't actually come off any better, but it's always good to feel like a winner. Races are pretty different here, only the young people go -I don't think I saw anyone older than late 20s. V. different from the UK. Also everyone is only really there to dress up and get drunk. It's a public holiday here for showday so noone had uni and a lot of people go. We ended up getting there really late though, and weren't all that dressed up. Guy and Rich were pretty much the only guys not to be wearing a shirt or a suit and I think I could have done with a posher dress.

Also that week was Ekka which is a 10 day long country show. Me and Ryan went and loved it! We saw the cutest baby goat, I wanted to steal him!


I also found the type of cow I want when I was older.

She was so pretty and so soft and not too big.

There was also a petting area which was an enclosure filled with lambs and calfs and baby goats and you could get food to feed them.

The goats were greedy and tried to push me over.

There were also some strange competitions going on. We saw people racing to chop logs and racing to build a railway.

A couple of weekends ago it was my housemates birthday so we all went to Movieworld. There was the best sccoby doo ride, I could have gone on it all day. It was a bit like Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland but not on water. Well it was the same level of scariness (unless you're Mel and then it would be less scary) and not at all like it really. But reaallly good.

I have also found the best cupcake shop:

And Ryan found his street:

I went on a field trip to Brisbane forest park as well. It was a horrible day though so wasn't all that enjoyable. I did see a platypus though! (at the wildlife centre, not the wild).

Last weekend I went to Byron Bay but that deserves its own post so I will try to do that soon.

Today Ryan fed a bird a piece of pepperoni and he didn't like it because it was too spicy. So he had to go and wipe his beak on a tree. It was the funniest/cutest thing I have ever seen a bird too (not including penguins).

Lots of love
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Lessons

I've seen loads of lizards lately. This one was at South Bank. Me and Ryan also went to the city botanical gardens and saw 7! I was very pleased as I had been looking forward to seeing lizards. We also saw 2 little ones in the front garden and a tiny one on the living room wall!

I started lessons last week and they all seem quite good. The learning style is pretty different from at home though, it seems a lot more group work and communication based and fewer labs. Also the courses are open to pretty much anyone at the uni so although they go into detail they also spend some time reiterating the basics. Although I'm finding this quite helpful as obviously I havn't taken the same courses that the standard student in my class would have. My microbes and human health module seems really similar to content that I've already done at Edinburgh so far, but I figure it may focus on things I havn't done yet later in the term. But so far it has been mainly revision. My physiology and pathophysiology course seems the most difficult, and goes into a lot more detail on really specific areas than what I did last year. At the moment where doing the angiotensin and renin system and its mainly based on recent research papers, with a lot of graphs and figures involved- not my fave! My biomedical science course is quite strange as it is supposed to be the "capstone" course for biomed majors. This means that it is supposed to help with the expected graduate atributes other than knowledge of the subject area. There's no exam for this course but we have to do 3 group projects then individual essays based on ethics, communication and data handling. This one is mainly tutorial based and the lectures occur for a few weeks and then we have a few weeks off from them. My other course is Australia's terrestrial environment which I am taking mainly for the field trips. At the moment we are learning about the history of australia's plant and animal life, so have had lectures on things such as dinosaurs and other extinct animals.

In other news, I have managed to get a job. It's working for the uni social science research department and involves phoning people up and questioning on whatever research study is going on at the time. Examples of topics are the publics' view of police or on racism, so might be interesting. I think I'm going to get hung up on a lot :s The pay is very good though, it's over $24 which is like £14-15 in the UK! I have my training tomorrow then can start doing shifts so I will let you know how it goes.



We went to surfer's paradise on Sunday. I sunbathed and swam in the sea and then went to a hot tub party at Hollie's (from Burtons). It was a good, good day!

An unattractive pic of me and Louisa in the hot tub!

Surfer's paradise is really built up and there are loads of skyscrapers right by the beach, which seems a little wierd when you're sat on the beach! The sea wasn't too cold at all and it was definately warm enough to sunbathe. I'm not very brown yet though. Ryan is a bit brown, but not enough to be jealous of yet. And he gets to be outside all day so its okay. He is planning to move to Surfer's Paradise because it's so good, and it is also conveniently close to Brisbane, only an hour and a bit on the train.

Ryan burried me in the sand at South Bank, he made me tall :)
I also got buried at Surfer's Paradise but Ryan and Guy made me into something a bit different...

Miss you all lots!
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