Surfing into Finals and a Sinus Infection

I'm actually kinda proud right now. I'm only a week behind in posting my activities here! This is pretty impressive considering my past track record with this stuff. Last weekend Dickinson took us on our last group trip to Byron Bay. Byron is basically a sweet surfer tourist town and it was a freaking blast! I had recovered from my sunburns for the most part and the weather was great all weekend after another week of ran. Ann wasn't able to come with us sadly because of some lame excuse like her parents were visiting or some likely story so instead we were treated to a lovely tour guide Gayle, working for Byron Bay Skydiving.

They picked us up good and early so after a short two hour drive we found ourselves in a great beach town. We then proceeded on a beach walk along the Bay up to the lighthouse which is supposedly the Easternmost part of Australia. Cool I suppose but really not overly exciting. We went to a brewery called the Buddha Brew for dinner (steak!) and to top it all off, the beer was actually really good! And since we were there during happy hour it was actually some of the cheapest beer I've got at a bar since we've gotten here. Win-win situation right there! Afterward we went to a pub called Cheeky Monkeys where we spent the night dancing on tables and other good fun.

The next morning we all pulled up and got ready to go surfing! We got to the beach wearing our wetsuits and carried our surfboards out and just stared at the waves. Side note: those surfboards are way heavier than I realised, I now understand why surf bums are so freaking jacked. Looking out at the waves I couldn't imagine actually getting up on one of those crazy things. But our instructors had us doing the silly "Jump Up" routine on the beach and next thing we knew we were heading out into the water. Tried a couple times to get up on my own with pretty epic failures ensuing. The instructors came around and helped us out by shoving us off and letting us know when was the right moment to get up. All of a sudden, I was surfing! In about three seconds, I went from being terrified of the smallest little waves to wanting to seek out bigger and sicker waves! This led to a good mix of larger crashes (my knees are still pretty skinned up from bouncing along the bottom) but also some really sweet rides. After what felt like an hour, it was time to pack up... Lame.

After lunch we then continued our fat camp training by going out on a sea kayak expedition to see whales and dolphins. Honestly, it wasn't all that fun though maybe it just paled in comparison to the surfing we had done just a few hours prior. We got out into the water and paddled like maniacs not quite sure what we were doing (we didn't know about the whales and dolphins) and then all of a sudden someone pointed and we could see dolphins jumping up in the waves mere meters away from us! They left after a couple minutes later though and it was back to just plain exercise. After another 30 hrs of paddling Megan and I were pretty tired of just floating out in the water and not seeing anything of much interest. Our wonderful tour guide had basically abandoned us so we decided to turn back in ourselves. About halfway back we hear some whistling and turn to see some frantic waving. Thinking they had spotted a whale or something we turned back only to find out that the guide was upset at us for leaving. Whoops. Surprise surprise though they were just turning back anyway. Reentry to the beach didn't go so well though... First wave came up and knocked us sideways and flipped us pretty quickly and we had to swim to shore. Apparently it helped fix Megan's seasickness so I suppose it had some benefit?

We went out to another place called Cocomangas which wasn't quite as cool as the first pub but still a good time for sure. The next morning some of the girls went out skydiving which I had been considering but it was simply way to expensive and I promised myself I would do it sometime in the next few years. We went all around the town that afternoon and enjoyed a nice barbie on the beach before we had to say our goodbyes to Byron.

The next week commenced studying or at least after a few days I managed to start studying :P I had two finals and a paper which as of now I have completely finished! However, over the weekend I started getting an increasingly painful toothache and was having some serious allergies. After finishing my last final this morning I went to the dentist and the doc on campus to have my fears confirmed, I had a lovely sinus infection. $100 later I now have antibiotics and nasal steroids to help me out but I'm looking forward to a fun couple flights tomorrow morning (or rather 8 hrs from now!) when Taylor and I fly to Alice Springs where we'll go on a backpacking tour around Uluru. We're super super excited for it. I can't remember the last time I went camping and now a few days out under the stars in the Australian Outback sounds amazing.

Getting up in a few hours to catch a ride to the airport and I'll be pretty much incommunicado for a good week at least. The final countdown is on and is ticking down fast. Uluru trip, back to Brizzie on Saturday for our Farewell dinner with Ann, flying out to Melbourne the next morning, back to Brisbane on Thursday and then flying back home on Sunday the 21st. Its insanity. and I need to stop thinking about it and just enjoy my last couple weeks here!

Here's some pics as always:

Pretty sure this lil guy speaks for himself

Not a great pic, but you get the idea

Pro on land

Taylor, Trevor, and myself

Lobster Status - Pt 2 The Day/Week of Recovery

So getting back from Heron was a bit of a bummer, we'd had a blast and it also meant that it was time to get back to school, woohoo! The first week flew by and we actually had our last class for Australian Marine Environments, apparently they realised that this was class that kids were basically taking for the cool trips and with them over, what was the point of further class? Anywho, like I said class was class but the big things I was looking forward to was a string of 3 good nights out, the usual Thursday night at a pub, King's Conclusion (themed Heaven and Hell), and lastly ICC Recovery.

Thursday night was a typical night out with the Cromwell folk. Dancing, drinking, ice cube fights broken up by security, all around good times ya know? Fuster and I hadn't initially planned on going to King's Conclusion because we'd assumed that it would be dominated by the all guy's colleges King's and Leo's. Then a couple of our friends informed us that this was the mentality of most of the other guys, thus producing a wonderful ratio of girls to guys. So we got tickets.

Good choice on our part, Conclusion was a blast! We dressed up as devils between the sheets (wore a bed sheet with devil horns) which not to brag too much was an awesome costume that required minimal effort. Can you guess who came up with the costume idea? :P In Heaven was a great band from St. John's while down in Hell lay the bar and a DJ bumping some dance tunes. Being the white boy that I am, I found myself much more at home rocking out in Heaven than on the dance floor in Hell. It started to rain a bit but by then most of us were having such a great time we didn't particularly care. The band ended their set before we were ready to go so we found our way back down to Hell which ended up being a good time as well. By the time they ran out of drinks and they started telling people to go home, the entire place was Mud City. Some crazy kids were literally slapping their shirts into the mud to make it splash for a good 5 minutes...

Got up earlyish the next morning to get ready for ICC Recovery which was themed Incredible Childhood Cartoon Heroes so Fuster and I went as Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble complete with plastic clubs. This was where the destruction of my epidermis begins. The weather for the past week had been cloudy/rainy so we weren't expecting Saturday to be any different. Wrong. It was gorgeous. Good thing right? Yes/No. Yeah for good weather, boo for stupid me forgetting sunscreen. Not til we had arrived at this golfcourse overlooking the Brisbane River and plopped down with our first beers did the thought occur to me that crap, I am screwed in this sun. Faced with inevitable sun burn I did the only thing I really could do, I pushed the thought aside and made sure I had a good time to make it worth it.

Apparently it is college tradition at Recovery events like these to put food coloring into your drink and then spit it on each other. The idea had naturally grossed us out when we first of it but we went in with the mentality that if someone should start doing it to us we'd of course have to return the favor. Enter the Dickinson females. Taylor and I were idly enjoying our drinks and some convo with some other Crommie folk when all of a sudden we were attacked by the Ninja Turtles! However, rather than their typical sais, bo staff, nunchuks, and katanas they came at us with colored goon! Sans any food coloring of our own the Flintstones duo was helpless against their onslaught.

Later though we managed to get our hands on some dye and then the battle was on. Next thing I know there is red, blue, and yellow beer and goon flying everywhere and we are covered head to toe in it. Moving past the slightly gross nature of the act, it was ridiculously fun! We ran into a couple of the other Dson guys and for the rest of the day sneak attacks occurred over and over again. Also available was a huge bounce castle with ginormous boxing gloves. Of course in order to maintain our manliness the guys had to duke it out. Thankfully with the aid of alcohol, large boxing gloves, and the general insanity of jumping around in a bouncy castle trying to box I was able to hold my own ground.

The entire event lasted about 6 hours and was an absolute blast. When we got back to Cromwell we promptly passed out and didn't wake up until 7:30. My first waking thought was oh man I am in soo much bloody pain. Taylor and I both got up and all I could do was stand there shaking muttering about how much pain I was in while all he could was stare at the lobster I had become. The pics I took of it didn't turn out particularly well and I can't say I'm too proud of the way I looked so I shant be putting them up.

I don't want to spend the rest of this post complaining about the pain caused by my own stupidity but just to put things in perspective, for the next four days my existence was basically made up of eating, sleeping, and watching South Park when I couldn't fall asleep. Though it made for a great excuse not to go to school! Within about a week, the pain was pretty much gone and I would ecstatically say to people, "Look what I can do!" whilst jumping around and waving my arms in circles. I was pretty darned happy to be able to move painfree let me tell you.
Anywho, enough writing, time for a couple pictures!

Me and my two ninja turtles, Megan and Maia at ICC Recovery

Fuster and I with a couple Crommie gals, Jamaica and Nacho at Conclusion

Much Ado leading to lobster status pt.1 - Finding Nemo

Well many an adventure has occurred since my last post. When we last left our protagonist, he was on his way to catch a ride to the paradise, I mean research station, at Heron Island. This turned out to actually be a claustrophobic box on wheels, aka a coach bus, in which I was unable to get much sleep but with my good friend Solitaire and an iPod full of music I managed to make it through the trip to Gladstone. A well rounded breakfast at Maccas and a new pair of sunglasses later our group found itself on the long awaited ferry to the island! We played card games to pass the time and before we knew it, Heron Island was spotted on the horizon.

We were met at the dock by the first group that had been there and the excitement on their faces got us all pumped up despite our exhaustion from all the travel. The tide was starting to go out and our prof had promised us a snorkel on our first day so we quickly got ourselves suited up and headed into the water. I'd never snorkeled before so I was a bit unsure but it was actually pretty easy to pick up the basics. It was an amazing experience, there seemed like there was nothing but the second we got our heads under the water there were fish, coral, and other lil critters everywhere! Even saw a little Nemo out there, which is of course whats more important than anything else right?We were supposed to be thinking of ideas for a research project but I was too busy looking at the cool stuff all around...

I could go on for ages with everything that we did on the island but I'll try to condense it for this blog post. The food was actually quite good aside from the dubious custard that showed up three nights in row. We knew it was leftover night when we our dessert was jello (they call it jelly), custard, and ice cream. what the heck!? Anywho, the weather the first few days wasn't all that great but we managed to make the best of it. Our project was going to look at the little gobi fishes that lived in little holes in the ground but the wind was making pretty serious waves that we simply couldn't deal with. So along with most of the other groups, we had to change our project. What to you ask? Well like mature college kids that we were, we decided to study the excrement of holothurians, aka sea cucumber poo. It was the best of both worlds, it was not only an easier project but there was an endless stream of jokes to go with it!

We took every opportunity to go snorkeling and it was well worth it. Stingrays, sharks, and turtles. Enough said right there I dare say. The only real disappointment was not seeing Bruce and the other sharks saying, "Fish are friends, not food" during our snorkel to a boat wreck. There was supposed to be a night snorkel, but the weather didn't allow it so instead our tutors organized a marine biology trivia night for us. It shouldn't come as any surprise that of course, myself and the other awesome Dson folk took first place and won a bottle of wine!

On our last night, the weather had cleared up a bit so we went out to the beach and stargazed for hours. Everything was so beautiful and serene on the island you couldn't help but have a great time. Sitting on the beach watching sunrises and sunsets over the ocean horizon were some of the best I've ever seen. The sea turtles starting to mate on the beaches were simply amusing though. There was one particularly unfortunate couple that kept getting flipped over by the waves that had us in stitches for a good ten minutes at least.

Turtle sex aside, by the time our last day came around we were sad to say goodbye to the island. Its not an experience I'll soon forget, thats for sure.

Now for some photos from Heron Island and other places for your viewing pleasure!

This is Maia, Taylor, and myself at the World's Greatest Overlook in the Hinterlands

Sunrise

The triumphant Dream Team of Trivia Night

Going BALL-istic all the way to Heron Island

Its been a crazy past few weeks (nothing new there really) and I've got loads to update on. Two weekends ago I travelled up to Hervey Bay for our Ask Weekend with the other Lockley guys and all of our partners for Ball. It was about 5 hours of travel but my friend B1 has an awesome house right on the beach that definitely made the trip well worth it. The gals had already had a bit to drink on the ride so we were all rearing to get our weekend started by the time we finally arrived.

We quickly unloaded the two cars (the third would come later because a couple of the people had exams to take that day and ran out to the water and played out there for a good few hours. The water got a bit chilly for us so we went inside to get some dinner and to play some good old drinking games (Taylor and I had been put in charge of those since being the resident Americans it was assumed we had an extensive knowledge of them :P). The next day a few people had to go back to college because of school/work obligations but the rest of us spent the start of the day lazing about watching TV and laughing at the pictures from the day before.

Eventually we managed to corral the energy to go outside but since it was low tide we had to walk a good couple kilometers out to even get to the water. B1 and Boomer taught Fuster and I how to play a backyard version of cricket which was alot of fun as well. We had a fire that night on the beach and we introduced our Aussie friends to the best version of s'mores that we could create. Apparently they don't have graham crackers here!? So we had to improvise with some cookie/cracker things I figured would do the trick. And their marshmallows are about the 1/3 of the size of ours so we had a bit of difficulty roasting them over the fire but we made it work and everyone was quite happy with the result.

Took us about 9 hours to travel back because of troubles with the train schedule but it was all well and good as I got to converse with B1 quite a bit. He's a pretty chill guy and we had endless chats about the weekend, his friends who had visited us and the shenanigans they used to have, and he taught me quite a bit about how the Australian government works. Needless to say, its got some similarities to American government but its got quite a few interesting distinctions (a part from being a part of the commonwealth of course). People vote for parties and not the candidates that the party endorses so if a party is voted in and they decide they don't like what the candidate is doing then they can oust them for somebody new. This happens even to the Prime Minister, most recently Kevin Rudd having been replaced by Julia Guillard.

Anywho, thats a whole conversation and a half to itself that I shant be getting into now. This last Friday we had our Ball and everyone first gathered in the Dining Hall for some predrinks and hors d'oeuvres. Everyone was up in their finest and looked absolutely amazing! It was still a secret at this point as to where we were going but we piled onto the buses and eventually found ourselves at the Rydges Hotel downtown. An elevator took us up to the top floor where we were greeted by waiters with champagne and the most beautiful view of the city and the river that I could've imagined. There was a live jazz band playing, two balconies, an endless stream of wine, beer, and champagne, a delicious meal of steak and potatoes, an amazing brownie type dessert, basically a phenomenal evening all around. I sadly didn't have my camera but others got pics and I'll be sure to get some up once I've gotten them myself.

The next morning we all got up early for the day after event called Recovery, basically a fun hair of the dog kind of idea. Everyone got dressed up in absurd clothing, started drinking out on the front lawn and then hopped on a bus to a local pub called the Down Under, aka the Dunda.

Sunday I travelled down to the Gold Coast with Fuster and Jeeves where we stayed with our friend Mussels. We had really only expected a ride down there but she and her family were wonderful enough to let us stay with them and Mussels played tour guide to us through Tuesday (now). We were well and knackered after two solid days of drinking but we managed to get out Sunday night to enjoy the beach a bit. Monday avo we went out to the Hinterlands (bushland = country) where we drove up into the mountains and did a fair bit of hiking. The Gold Coast and the surrounding area was actually a massive volcano some 20 million years ago but has since eroded leaving a web of rivers and a circle of mountains. We went to a place called the World's Best Lookout which though a rather immodest name it offered a spectacular view of the entire area. We also went on a 4km walk around a sweet waterfall before having a nice picnic lunch in the park. After an afternoon power nap we went into the city to get dinner with our friend Echo on the beach. We also ran into another Cromwellian Towel, who was having dinner with his parents.

Its been a busy past few weeks with class, trips and such, and it continues tonight. I'll be leaving for Heron Island in bout an hour and will be up there for bout five days snorkelling with the fishies, turtles, sharks, and such! Should be a great time and there'll be plenty of pics and stories once I return at the end of break. Until then, I bid you all adieu!

Ugh its sparkling water!

So I started this post a good week ago but forgot to post it... whoops! Anyway, here it is now:

Saturday marked the beginning of Brisbane Festival, which is basically just three weeks in September with a bunch of random concerts, theatre performances, etc. semi-organised throughout the city. The real exciting thing was the fireworks display to kick it off Saturday night, known as Riverfire. Met up with Taylor and Megan at South Bank and we decided that we had a pretty good spot right where the City Cat stop was. We were promised an aerial show at 5pm but unless one helicopter appearing for about 2 minutes is something to get excited about, it was pretty lame/nonexistent. So we chilled on the waterfront for another couple hours waiting for the fireworks and watching the area fill up with people thousands of people.

Eventually 7pm rolled around and any doubts that the show wouldn;t be worth the wait vanished instantly as a F-111 jet flew overhead and performed a "dump and burn". Basically the F-111 has its fuel tank located behind its afterburner so literally the jet dumps some of its fuel which is ignited behind it in a gigantic stream of fire! People complain about it being wasteful (which it most certainly is) but I have to say it was freaking awesome to see this jet all of a sudden disappear into a gigantic fireball cruising through the sky! Supposedly this will be the last "dump and burn" performed in Australia as the F-111s are being phased out of their air force and its also mad expensive/wasteful.

Then began the actual fireworks, accompanied by a soundtrack. Not sure if I'm just that much of a country bum but I had never seen fireworks that were actually synchronized with music so between having just seen the flying fireball and this new novelty I was already blown away. Every public event in Australia is begun with an acknowledgment of the "rightful land owners", the Aboriginals, so the first music that was played was a beautiful Aboriginal song. Very nice and all but I couldn't help but be amused by the irony considering it was following a performance that consisted of burning fuel and blowing up tens of thousands kilograms of fireworks over a river. Thanks for the land guys, we're gonna go blow some shit up over it k? The comparisons to America never end!

But in any case, the fireworks display itself was easily the best fireworks show I have ever seen. There were 6 barges (3 of which we could see from our spot) shooting off fireworks from the river, fireworks being launched from the bridges crossing the river, and even fireworks being launched off the tops of the skyscrapers downtown! The F-111/ball of fire cruised around at different parts as well. Best free entertainment I've had here/possibly ever.

Afterward we realised that getting onto the City Cat back to campus was not going to be easy as we'd thought despite being right next to the stop. There were literally thousands of people waiting to get on and the system wasn't even running because apparently the river had become clogged with people watching the fireworks from their boats. So after about 40 minutes of indecision, we decided to fight our way through the crowds and get some food since it was after 8pm and none of us had had dinner. Taylor had remembered some pizza place so we grabbed that and chilled in the grass. This is only the second or third time I've had pizza here but I have to say, it sucks. Apparently Australians don't believe in sauce and there's just something about the pizza itself that just isn't great. It confuses me because the Australians I've talked to get excited about this chain called New York Slice which sells good old American pizza. So why they don't just all make good pizza, I have no idea.

The next morning, Taylor, Maia, Megan, Liz, and I got up earlyish to check out the "French" Sunsupper Breakfast. Basically we were pumped for a free breakfast that wasn't at college. We got to the Goodwill Bridge where it was being held and got excited because they were giving away free water and we were all really thirsty. Little did we know that it wasn't plain water, but in fact sparkling water. There was a big line for the food and I had had to go to the bathroom for some time so I volunteered to take all 7 of our bottles (we'd taken a few extra, we were THIRSTY) and dispose of them while they stayed in line. Didn't find any recycling or rubbish bins on my way to the portapotty so the people to go in after me were probably pretty confused by the bottles that were taking up half of it! The event itself wasn't quite as cool as I'd expected but was still good. Basically the gave out free croissants, strawberries, yogurt, and cheese, had some really good sidewalk chalk drawings of French places/paintings, and we bought some crepes (decent) before making our way back to college. Spent the rest of day doing homework, woohoo!

Monday brought the usual class, homework, and our last two basketball games. Got our butts handed to us by International House which was a bit demoralizing as they're not usually good at sports but apparently that wasn't the case for basketball. I had contemplated going to the gym between games but ended up staying for the ladies game, GREAT DECISION! It was their last game and they didn't really have anyone who was good or had played much ball before and they were fully aware of it. So they instead decided to just have a good time with it. Memorable quotes included "IMA GET ALL UP IN YOUR GRILLS!" (Bounty jumping around like a crazy) and my favorite came from the ref, "Foul is on... Giz!?" That put me in a good mood for our next game against Kings (one of the all guys college's), which we knew we were going to get spanked in whether we liked it or not. Was a little worried at first because we had mysteriously lost some players and were down to four. Then Kplus showed up to save the day so we had a whopping five players, one of whom didn't even know the rules. Despite this, we held our own and played a decent game.

One final note, My pics from Riverfire and the dump and burn didn't turn out too well but I recommend just doing a youtube search. It'll be well worth ten minutes of your day to check them out a bit!

Peanut Butter and Vegemite!?

I'm getting pretty used to hearing that on a daily basis. The Australians are very happy that I am one of the few nonAustralians who likes (in my case, love) Vegemite and despite the fact that they pride themselves on using it in strange combinations, I've apparently broken the limits by creating PB & V. Thus, every morning when i make my typical bfast of toast with PB & V and often an egg or two on top, I'm met with awestruck faces and "You eat peanut butter AND vegemite!?" Yes, yes I do. And its freaking delicious thank you very much :P

In other news, it is now September. Holy shiznit. One of the girls on our program actually counted it up and we've been here over 50 days now. On one side this is cool because I definitely feel like I've fallen into the rhythm of school life here but it also means that our number of remaining days is rapidly dwindling. With that in mind, my recent dilemma has been trying to figure out where I can both afford and have time to travel to. Places on the list of possible travel locations include: Tasmania, Melbourne, Uluru/Ayer's Rock (the huge red rock sticking up in the middle of Australia), Cairns, more NZ, Singapore, etc. etc... Basically everywhere and anywhere which is causing me some prioritization issues. That and I won't know what free time I'll have during the exam period cuz we're at a bloody large university that doesn't post exam dates and times until freaking october. But as the Aussies say, "She'll be right" and I'll get it all figured out... eventually.

Aside from that all is going well. We've reached that point in the semester where there are all kinds of assignments due and my procrastination is catching up with me but its nothing I haven't dealt with before. People are getting more and more excited for Ball here at Cromwell now that there are only three weekends of Asks left followed by Ball. Fuster and I were invited to our friend Boudjoo's house for a weekend over midsemester break but unfortunately its during our trip up to Heron Island. Other than that there's not all that much to report. Finally won a basketball game, sang "Party in the USA" with the other Cromwell Dson folk at karaoke last night (we rocked it), going to be accompanying Impulse on the song "Stars" from Les Miserables on Tuesday, and hopefully jamming with a couple guys sometime next week. Just gonna keep on rocking down under!

Kiwis and Squeaky Sand

Soooo I fail at updating this regularly but I'm at least going to attempt to catch up from my last post here. To sum up my kiwi adventure, I had a hell of a great time and hope to find myself there again someday. Had my first bball game Monday night which considering basketball's popularity here and the state of our team went pretty well. We played better than I think any of us expected and only ended up losing by a few points. Got two games tomorrow night, which I'm sure we're going to rock!

The week cruised by pretty quickly as usual. Got to see Taylor play in his first rugby game Wednesday night and other than a long overdue haircut nothing overly exciting happening until the end of the week. Friday morning, Fuster, Shazza, and I boarded a bus to the Moreton Bay Research Center on Stradbroke Island for our first research field trip for our Australian Marine Biology course. Jeeves and a few other Dson girls had gone the prior weekend and had brought back rave reviews of beautiful beaches and constant feedings so we were pretty pumped. We had ended up going out to a club the night before so after hopping on the bus at 7:30 I slept for the majority of our 90min bus/ferry ride to the center but once we got there it was go Go GO!

The weather was absolute crap and on the beach it was even windier and colder with some intermittent rain but we all braved the elements to go out while it was still low tide. We were broken up into groups of 8 and went out with PhD students who showed us all the cool things to be found in the sand, seagrass, and rocks. We were literally fed every three hours so of course despite going in and out of the cold I was quite happy! Just before dinner we went out during high tide to do some seining and actually were able to catch a bunch of different fishies as well as a male and female sting ray which were doing ummm male/female things prior to us catching them. Sorry!

The next day was nonstop research: we formulated a hypothesis that on the pipes running into the water we would find more different species the further away from shore you went, created an experiment with random sampling to test our hypothesis, analyzed the results (we were right of course :P), and then had to create and give a powerpoint presentation to the tutors and other students. We did all of this in ONLY 10 HOURS!!! By the time we had made it through the the last presentation I basically walked back to our room, flopped into bed, and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning (Sunday/today) we roused our tired selves, got some bfast, packed up, and headed out on the bus to Point Lookout to do a gorge walk along the shore. Found out that Moreton Bay is home to the largest permanent population of bottlenose dolphins and is a popular spot for whale watching! The views were spectacular and we actually saw a few humpback whales playing around out in the distance. We stopped for some delicious homemade gelato (I had passionfruit cheesecake along with strawberry mango cream!) before heading to the beach. The sand was some of the whitest and most beautiful sand I've ever seen and was so fine that when you stepped in the dry areas it actually made a squeaking sound! It was a bit chilly because of the strong winds coming off the bay but I allowed myself to be coaxed into swimming around in the water for a bit before relaxing in the sun and "tanning".

We didn't have anywhere near as much time on the beach as we would've liked but eventually it was time to head back. Before long we were back at Cromwell College and Fuster and I had to catch up on what is called Ball LineUp. At the end of September, Cromwell is going to have its ball, called Ballistic this year, which is basically like a sort of prom/formal. Each semester the guys and gals take turns with which gender will do the asking to ball and this time around it was the guys turn. Basically what happens is that all the guys lined up to ask to bring their preferred partner. The catches are that people were allowed to start lining up nearly a week ago, though only a few guys started that early. Most started lining up on Friday or Saturday so for most of the weekend there was a line of guys chilling in the hallway outside of the room of the guy, Randy, who was in charge. Now people weren't expected to stay there the entire time, most guys worked as a pair taking turns standing in line so they could have the option of eating, going to uni, etc. So by 4:00pm today when the asking actually started, most of the Cromwell guys were lined up, aside from Fuster and I who only got back from Moreton Bay just after 5. This actually worked out alright for us, because although we missed all of the fun of lining up we arrived after the line was completely gone and simply had to walk in, take a look at the list of remaining girls and make our pick. Despite being so late in the process, we were quite happy with our partner choices.

So now all of the Cromwell guys have their partners but the gals currently have no idea who asked picked them and I'm not entirely clear on the details but we'll be giving them clues and such for awhile leading up to Ball. Some weekend before ball, Fuster, the other Lockley guys, and myself will be taking our dates on a little trip up to either the Sunshine Coast or perhaps even a bit further north than that. As I said, the details of everything are still quite fuzzy for me but as things progress I'll be sure to update things here.

Continuing on with the busyness of this weekend, after picking dates for ball, and having dinner, I went to my first Dancefest practice. Dancefest is going to be sometime in the first week of October where each of the residential colleges will put on a dance and I'm assuming there will be judges and a winner of some sorts. Anyway, I am about as white as they get when it comes to dancing and prior attempts at taking part in a dance line have been compared to a mentally challenged bird of some sort. Nonetheless I feel like I did fairly well and it should be a lot of fun.

Anyway, that about catches things up though as always I know I've left thousands of cool things out and will be kicking myself about them for the next few days saying I should blog about them but in two weeks when I get around to actually doing my next post I'll kick myself for not being able to remember them. Buuuut so it goes I guess! tomorrow the Dson crew is going to have coffee with Ann, which is always fun, then back to the crazy thing called class, then my two basketball games! In summary, its barely after 9pm here and I'm bout set to head to bed. Night y'all!