The Uluru/Kata Tjuta Tour

Today is The Queen's Birthday, which Australia celebrates the way it celebrates all national holidays: by shutting down public transport and everything else that any Uni student could conceivably want to do. I suppose it's for the best, because it gave me a chance to sort through my pictures and also study a little for my final final.

(I think my other three finals went pretty well, but my brain is a little mushy right now.)

So, as advertised, I went out to Alice Springs and Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park for the End of Semester break.

Our Greyhound was scheduled to leave at 7 am on Sunday the 30th, which is before the regular buses start running even on weekdays (the saga of my disgust with public transport in Townsville continues), but fortunately one of the (American) girls in my classes was going on the same trip and had found a ride, so I walked to Uni at 5:30 in the morning and we all (there were three other girls, total) went to the Greyhound terminal.

It's a LONG bus ride to Alice Springs... in the vicinity of two days. We stopped quite a bit, for lunch, dinner, refueling, bathroom breaks, dropping people off/picking people up, etc. We switched buses at Mount Isa and Tennant Creek, and slept a lot.

The girl I got the ride from and I spent a lot of time in gas stations, where we made a discovery: Australians don't believe in price tags. I think only one of our stops featured price tags, and not on everything. So when we felt like buying something, we had to walk up to the counter with it, say "how much is this?", find out that it was ridiculously overpriced, even for gas stations ($3-$4 candy bars), and put it back.

We stopped at one place that has a lot of giant statues... somewhat inexplicably.


We got to Alice Springs early on Monday, way before our hostel's check-in, so they sent us to wander around the town. They suggested we visit the reptile house, which has a very impressive collection of snakes and other reptiles. They also suggested we visit the Royal Flying Doctor museum, but it cost like, $7.50 for a tour, which was too much for a tour that didn't feature poisonous snakes.

The Scarf lurks outside the Royal Flying Doctor!

Eventually we wandered back to the hostel...

I knew that it was winter in Australia, but nobody told me that parts of Australia actually get COLD during winter, and certainly nobody mentioned that the desert gets cold even during the day. So I only had one pair of jeans and my hoodie with me for warmth, and the hostel wasn't heated. So I was freezing! Someone lent me a blanket the first night, so that was OK, but still. I don't understand why the rooms weren't heated, given that it is decidedly cold for half of the year.

Early the next morning the Rock Tour (our tour agency) picked us up. They were very insistent that we have 3 liters of water on us for the hike on the first day, which I would understand if it was the middle of summer, but it was way too cold to worry about losing that much moisture. Personally, I think they were just after the money, since they sold giant water bottles at the agency. (I don't recommend this tour company very highly... they also didn't really provide enough food for the 21 people on the tour. It was a cheap tour, but how does one package of salami for 2 group lunches work out?)

Uluru is about 5 hours from Alice Springs, so we set off... and our bus broke down about an hour into the drive, and it took them two hours to send a new one. Our guide had come down with a cold that morning, so he was in a miserable mood for the entire trip... also, I just found him kind of obnoxious in general; he was bossy and being ordered around for three days gets REALLY old really fast. He also rushed us the entire tour, not just the first day, even when we were making good time. I finally got so annoyed with this that I called him out on it. He didn't take very kindly to it. I'm not sure if he's always this annoying or if he was just sick. I was sitting behind him, so he didn't pay much attention to me when I wasn't arguing, but the poor girl who had to sit in the front passenger seat looked so fed-up...

Also on the tour were a quite a few British kids, a German couple, a French man, and a woman from Hong Kong... There was one Australian woman, and a few others whose nationalities I can't remember. The two girls who had grabbed a ride with my friend had been moved to another tour, so it was just my friend and I representing the Americans.

So, Tuesday, after we got the new bus, we headed to Kings Canyon, which, as the name suggests, is a canyon. It's a huge one (I think the guide said it was bigger than the Grand Canyon, but a lot of the stuff he said turned out to be BS, so take what you will from that), and very pretty. We climbed to the top and walked around the rim. It's really an odd place... it looks like some kind of other planet. The top of the canyon is mostly bare red rock, with these big dome-shaped formations. (The domes are called The Lost City because they look like ruins... they also have some spiritual significance in Aboriginal culture.)


You'll notice a lot of grass/greenery in all of my pictures. As luck would have it, this year was the most rain that this area has had in 50 years. I can't say that when I pictured my trip to The Outback that it would be green and cold, but on the other hand, I will assuredly never get the chance to see this area like this again, because it probably won't be this way again in my lifetime, so that's pretty cool.

The Garden of Eden is a watering hole at the foot of the canyon, where the rock starts to split. Even in dry years, it has water in it, so it's naturally a pretty important place.


We spent the night at a campsite nearby. We got Swags, which are these odd Australian sleeping bag things... they're canvas, with plastic bottoms, and have a little foam mattress in them. You snuggle up in your sleeping bag, zip the swag up, pull the hood over your face, and sleep. They're so you don't need a tent. Also, they're surprisingly warm and comfy, so I wasn't cold at night, at least.

Of course, it was a different story when our guide woke us up at dawn so we could get to our next campsite on time. (We didn't have breakfast until we got there, either. I was not the only person Not Particularly Happy.)

Wednesday, after breakfast, we went to Uluru National Park and went through the Aboriginal Cultural Center there, which was very nice (no pictures- not allowed).

So, remember how naive little me of February said that I thought Australians have a pretty respectful attitude towards Aboriginals? Yeah, that was a lie. A big one. Let me tell you about Uluru. It's home to a number of sacred spots, (only one of which is actually called Uluru, but that just happened to be the name that stuck) and traditionally boys would climb up it to become men. The Aboriginals were only recently given back the land (actually, the Aboriginals were only recently classified as humans under Australian law! That's right, it was legal to hunt them until 1959! Classy, Australia!). Right, where was I? Oh, yes, they were given Uluru back on the condition that they let tourists climb it for the next 99 years, because it's a big tourist pull and source of revenue. Apparently, if the climb is closed due to conditions for 1/3 of the year, they can close the climb permanently (but keep in mind this is something that our guide said, and a lot of the stuff he said was certifiable BS). There are signs all over the place giving tourists all the reasons that it's disrespectful to climb it, but they can't really stop them. Also there aren't any signs at the actual site. I suspect the government won't let them put any up.

Mmm, defiling sacred sites. Good clean fun.


The girl I was with and I didn't climb it (well, actually nobody in our group did, but there were some who kinda wanted to), and we both agreed it was pretty deplorable of the Australian government to keep it open. (We did watch a couple climb this, then watch the guy climb back down, get water, and climb back up to his waiting girlfriend, and that was romantic enough that we decided they were OK. No one else.)

We did a walk around part of the base, and the guide told a couple of Aboriginal stories about the different places... which was one of the few things he did that I really enjoyed... I get the idea that the stories are his favorite part. I wish I could remember the names involved, but... well. I at least tried to summarize them in the photobucket.

After that we drove to Kata Tjuta. Uluru is the largest single exposed rock in the world (I don't remember the world... Obelisk?) Kata Tjuta is just sedimentary rocks stuck together, and therefore not as impressive, but I think it looks pretty awesome.



We walked halfway through the Valley of the Winds track, so we see the whole thing, but we still got to see a decent chunk.



After that we watched the sunset over Uluru (Well, no, we watched Uluru as the sun set behind us, but close enough). It's a big tourist draw, so there were lots of



Back at camp, we played Eat the Box, which is a game where you have a cardboard box and you have to pick it up off the floor with your mouth without your hands touching the ground. Each round you rip a little more off the box. It was barrels of fun, especially since we were playing around a campfire and the best position for the box often involved leaning towards the fire. Also Team UK had bought some marshmallows, so we roasted those.

Fun fact I keep forgetting to share: Australia does not have the concept of a s'more. 1) They don't have Hershey's, they have Cadbury's, which is not the same, 2) their marshmallows are strange, 3) THEY DO NOT HAVE GRAHAM CRACKERS. Other American students have done some research into this and reported to me that the closest they have are digestive biscuits, which, if you've had one, you know are nothing like graham crackers.

The next morning we woke up before dawn to watch the sunrise over Uluru with breakfast. In theory that sounds great. In practice it was freezing, we were tired, we didn't have the means to make hot breakfast, and it was generally not worth it.

Afterwards we did the full walk around Uluru, minus the bit we did on Tuesday. It was a really nice walk, with the sun still coming up on the rock. Also there were some dingos howling in the background! I took a few pictures, because it was beautiful, but not too many because it's basically a bunch of photos of a giant rock. Don't get me wrong, its a nice giant rock, but it's still a giant rock. There are also some cave paintings in some of the caves, which are pretty cool, if only for how bright they are given how old they are.

We stopped briefly at Not Uluru (can't remember it's real name) and the salt flat next to it, basically to grab photos. I mostly liked it because we got to climb a red sand dune, and red sand is so beautiful. It looks unreal (I say that a lot... I suspect Australia isn't a real place.)

After that, we stopped at a camel farm (which also had an emu, kangaroos, and some llamas). My friend rode one of the camels, but I was fine just watching. There was a baby camel that wandered up to the store and made distressing baby camel noises. They also had a tame dingo, which I got to pet... I'm still a little uncertain that dingos are a distinct species... I have yet to see one that could prove it wasn't just a skinny dog.

We got back to our hostel in the afternoon, hung out, then met up with the rest of the group for dinner at a bar that I think is run by the tour company. Our guide had recovered by then and bought the whole tour a few pitchers of beer/wine for putting up with him, so I'm inclined to think he was just having a rotten week. Also the musicians at the bar had a digeridoo and played, among other things, "Don't Need No Education."


Our hostel put us in a heated room, which was nice, and the next morning my friend left to catch her flight home. I hung out in Alice Springs/ the hostel for a day, mostly studying. The other two girls got back from their tour (which sounded incredibly more awesome than mine- I was jealous), and we all caught the bus to Tennant Creek.

We get to Tennant Creek at 2 am, and the local hostel picks us up and gives us a room. It was a really nice hostel... not that it was fancy or anything, just comfortable. They had a huge collection of pet birds outside and a nice rec room with a kitchen and a TV and some DVDs and paperback books.

We went into town to see what there was to do, and came back with the impression that Greyhound has a deal with Tennant Creek to drop people off there for the day so that they can get some kind of revenue. We walked about a mile out of town to get to the Tourist Info place... which was connected to some mining museums. They cost to get in, though, and we didn't care enough to pay, so we just wandered outside and looked at their collection of old mine equipment, most of which was pretty rusty, but interesting.

We stopped at the single grocery store, with the logic that we would get bored and hungry on our upcoming 25-hour bus ride. I bought a bag of chicken-flavored potato chips (they're delicious! Don't judge me!), cookies, and more candy bars than I should have. (On the ride back, all three of us discovered that we had overestimated our ability to eat on the bus, and the last hour was to become a struggle to choke down all our junk food.)

We spent the rest of the day reading the paperbacks left by other backpackers and talking to the housekeeper/owner(?). I was planning on studying for my first exam... but the Celtic mystery/historical fiction I picked up proved more interesting.

We also made a journey to a place called (someone)'s Pizza and Fat Kebabs for dinner, because I had a coupon and I refused to pass up the opportunity to eat somewhere with "Fat Kebab" in its name. Pretty good pizza, I would recommend it if the Greyhound drops you there for a day.

Around 9:00 pm we made our way to the bus stop and started on the long road back to Townsville, eating our chicken-flavored chips and Cherry Ripes. By 7 pm on Sunday, we were back in the terminal. One of the girls had a ride set up, so we piled into his car and he took us to McDonalds... which frankly I was too sick from eating an entire bag of Chicken Chips to handle, but the cheapest thing to do was get the Secret $5 Meal, which is a cheeseburger, fries, and a sundae for $5. (In AU that's cheap). I still have the sundae in the freezer... I suspect that McD's ice cream was not meant to be re-frozen, so I think I'm going to throw it out.

Next day I was up at 7:30 to go to my Plant Survival final... which I think went pretty well, especially considering the circumstances.

Well, what with everything, I can't say this was the mind-blowing Most Awesome Trip of my time here, but it was still a lot of fun, and I'm glad I went!

The Photobucket contains all my pictures of Alice Springs and the snakes, King's Canyon, Kata Tjuta, Uluru, Fake!Uluru, the Camel Farm, Tennant Creek, and other misc. places from the journey. I had some hiccups uploading them, so they aren't all in order, but the captions should tell you what's what.

Health and Safety

I was going to wait until I had some good pictures of my various bruises (on this, more later) to show you before I updated, but it turns out that my father sends me frantic emails if I don't update at least once a week, so here we are.

Well, after my last update I went to anime club and paid for my membership (it's $5 for a semester, don't worry too much about my finances), and then proceeded to foist myself upon the people there- as you do when you're a socially-maladjusted recluse who is concerned about her networking skills.

Several times in the past they've told me that they all go to Macker's after the club meetings... Being an American, I assumed this was a bar, because if you're legal to drink and you're at college why the hell wouldn't you go to a bar on a Wednesday night after watching Black Lagoon? Being American, I was also wrong- Macker's is McDonalds. Apparently everyone calls it Macker's, which kinda weirds me out because of all the various shortenings of McD's that I hear on an everyday basis, this is a new one.

So I have been to an Australian McDonalds and will probably be going back again every Wednesday night, so if I find any weird menu items I'll let you know. They did have a little McCafe or whatever they're calling them these days separate from the rest of the cashiers' stations, which had a variety of pastries that I'm pretty sure they don't have in American McDonalds, but keep in mind that it's been years since I've been in a McDonalds that wasn't either in Marietta or alongside the highway, so maybe that's what all the high-class Mickey D's are doing these days.

The major differences I noted where that they have fewer menu items (no Chicken Selects )-:) and no dollar menu, because *nothing* costs an Australian dollar... even though an Australian dollar is not all that different from a US one...
I also apparently should check out the KFC's here, because they have weird sandwiches that home KFCs do not offer and which sound pretty tastey. Yeah, yeah, I'm lame.

Right, so I hung out with the anime club, and they're pretty cool and seemed not-too-annoyed at me, so that's well and good. A group of them went paintballing this Saturday, so I finagled a ride out of someone and tagged along (my housemate was so jealous).

Actually, he offered me his leftover Chinese takeout for dinner on Friday, the reasoning being that he was going out of town for the weekend and it'd go bad before he got back. Turns out it went bad earlier than we expected, so I spent Friday night with food poisoning. So that was the start of my weekend. Promising.

Paintballing first thing the next morning was fun, though. We ran around in full-body overalls and heavy-duty facemasks in the hot Australian sun and shot each other with balls of paint. The rule is that you're only hit if it breaks on you, which didn't happen to me all that often, although I got hit a lot. The thing is, if they don't break, they hurt a lot more. I've got some fantastic bruises. The best one is on my elbow. I'll take some pictures before it heals and I stop looking like an abuse victim.

Sunday morning was my weekly Skype chat with MoHo. Always a good time, even if it leaves me a little homesick for the remainder of the day.

Grocery shopping today after I update. I bought a bag of vegetables from the Uni "Student vegetable co-op", which claims to provide students with enough vegetables for a week for $13. I had high hopes for this program, but... eh. They gave me a bunch of bananas (which I'm allergic to), a honeydew melon that was starting to rot on one end and still wasn't ripe on the other, one onion, and a bunch of potatos and carrots. I've been making really good soup with the potatos, carrots, onion, and some chicken bullion, but I'd rather pay just a little extra and pick my own vegetables. I'm also not sure it would cost me more, when you factor out the stuff that I didn't eat.

So all in all, a pretty good weekend. A little painful, but pretty good.

Classes and Accents

Busy week. I've had all my classes now, and they look pretty good. The timetables here are crazy... I blame JCU.
I'm not very impressed with JCU's organizational prowess, as you've probably noticed. There was no reason whatsoever that they couldn't have given us international students our logon information before we arrived (as they did for the domestic students), so that I would have known what classes I was registered for, when they met, what books they required, etc, but they didn't. As a result, I didn't receive an email from one of my classes about registering for discussion classes, and also I didn't bring The Secret Garden or The Golden Compass with me, so now I may have to buy them all over again.

Anyway, JCU's timetables are very difficult to follow- classes typically meet two hours a week, and these two hours can be at different times and in different rooms. One of my classes meets at 1:00 on Wednesday and 3:00 on Thursday, in different rooms in different buildings.

There are three types of class sessions here- lectures, tutorials (which are like discussion groups, I think), and practicals (which are science labs).

It's not a big deal if you don't stay for the whole practical, either. I have two practicals scheduled at the same time (granted, one of them only meets three times the whole semester), and neither professor seemed to think it was a big deal. They also tell you that if you have a lecture in the middle of a practical to just leave, go to the lecture, and come back. Compare this to MoHo, where skipping a lab without a doctor's excuse is an automatic fail for the course.

Also, we're required to wear labcoats in the labs at all times, so I now own a labcoat, and it's sexy in the way that only science can be.

So, my classes are as follows:
Plant Survival and Climate Change: (Meets Tuesday and Wednesday at 9:00, plus a very optional prac on Tues from 10-1.) It's mostly about plant adaptation and less about global warming than my advisor at MHC and I hoped.... but it's still interesting and something that's probably pretty useful, and I'm excited about it. Instead of labs we have a week-long field trip during spring break, where we go out to the desert and look at acacia trees.
The professor who's given our lectures thus-far (and there are I think three all together) is a middle-aged guy with a long braid. He came to lecture on Wednesday wearing a bright green shirt that said "You can't drink all day unless you start in the morning," cargo shorts, bright red and black striped socks, and leather clogs. I just thought you should know.

Rainforest Ecosystems: (Meets Wednesday at 1:00 and Thursday at 3:00, plus a practical that meets twice all semester) I'm really excited about this one. It's more plant ecology stuff. We take two field trips to the rainforest, one of them all weekend, and it looks amazing.

Marine Plants and Algae: (Meets Wednesday at 11:00 and Friday at 10:00, plus a practical on Friday afternoon that meets every week). This is the only 200-level (intermediate) class that I'm taking, which would worry me at MHC but here things seem a little easier. Anyway, this is mostly about algae and identifying them... so kinda like Invertebrate Zoology all over again, but without Stan. How did I make this mistake twice?
Actually, it looks like it'll be fairly doable (I did survive Inverts, despite my constant whining), and algae is cool.

Children's Literature: (Meets Thurs from 12:00-2:00, plus an hour of tutorials) Well, you see, it's impossible for non-majors to get into Children's Lit at MHC and I'm an English minor who wants to read kids' books all the time. But the course looks interesting and fun. They're reading a lot of Australian children's books that I haven't heard of before. Next week we're doing The Coral Island as part of the historical children's lit unit. It's about three young men who get stranded on a coral island and have swashbuckling adventures, as all healthy British boys of the 1800's dreamed of.

I talk a lot more about my English and history classes than my science ones, I've noticed. I guess I just figure humanities are more entertaining to the general population.

(I told my Children's Lit prof that I was an international student, to explain why I hadn't gotten her email, and she got very nervous and now smiles really widely at me when she sees me. My other subjects tend to draw international students, but I don't think this one does very often. Also I think she thinks that English is my second language.)

Also went to the anime club on Wednesday. It was fun, and the people seemed nice, so I'll probably keep going. Met an American student who's in my Marine Algae class, and we hung out, despite my conviction that I wouldn't get along with any of the other American students.

One of the guys at the club got really excited when he heard me speak and asked where I was from. It's weird having someone say "ooh, an accent!"when you talk to them, especially when they say it in what you consider a thick Australian accent. I still haven't quite gotten to the point where everyone else sounds normal and I sound weird.

Although, sometimes when I start to talk I realize that I'm going to pronounce things differently than the person I'm talking to would. It trips me up. I also still haven't gotten used to referring to MHC as a university rather than a college (a college here is a dorm. A school is a high school.)

Oh, and one of the other guys at anime night told me my accent sounded very Vancouver. So I can pass for Canadian if I ever have to.

CeeCee's Grocery Store Adventure

Yesterday was an exciting step forward in becoming a Real Grown-up Person.

I had a tour of the library, which is currently under construction but otherwise seems pretty library-like. On the tour were a couple of the American girls that had been on the welcoming bus with me- they told me how sorry they had felt for me when I got dropped off at a motel alone in the pouring ran (rather how I felt). Then one proceeded to tell me that her room wasn't air-conditioned and was full of bugs, and also that Australia doesn't have the same anti-hazing laws of the US. And since they're at JCU for the first time, they've been getting hazed. Also the drinking age here is 18, so this usually involves booze. Apparently they made a freshman who was allergic to wheat chug some beer the other night and the kid ended up in the hospital. (She said it's more the guys- the girls watch and feel belitted.) So I'm feeling a lot better about being off-campus.

I'm not really here for the culture at all, anyway, I've noticed. I mean, I'm sure Australia has a lot to offer and a cool history and all that, and you study abroad to expand your horizions and become a global blah blah blah. I'm honestly just here for the plants. And as a bio major I feel nice and justified in saying that.

Which isn't to say that I can avoid culture, which brings me to my real topic, which is my first grocery shopping trip.

The grocery store is just a bus ride down the road (it's a little bit far to walk), and it's part of an enclosed mini-mall (which probably has something to do with how hot and sticky it is down here all the time), which includes a dollar-store type deal (except not because nothing in Australia costs a dollar), a hair salon, an eye doctor, a pharmacy (which sells the same stuff US pharmacies do), a café, and a donut shop.

I really do know better than to go shopping on an empty stomach, but... well...

First off, fruit is in-season here right now... as compared to Ohio, which according to what I've gathered from facebook statuses, is currently buried under about four feet of snow but bravely continues to have classes.

They also have more fruit than the US. The papayas are huge (which I guess isn't odd if you're from, say, Georgia, but I'm not). They have fresh figs and fresh dates, for reasonable prices. I think Giant Eagle (my home grocery store) had figs once, and they were $4 a pop. They had something called "dragon fruit", which I intend to eat at some point just because.

The fruit is a little smaller here, too. I bought some peaches and an onion, and they were tiny. I suppose Australia does more organic? Maybe?

(I also bought some navel oranges, Product of the USA, and felt very very silly about it.)

The deli is cheaper than pre-packaged meat here... something that was difficult for me to figure out, because all the weights are in kilograms, so the signs say "Black Forest Ham- $24.85 kg."

I'm still not very comfortable with Australian money. An AUD is worth slightly less than a USD, and also things are just a little more expensive here in general (possibly because I'm used to rural Ohio prices). I'm also not used to shopping for one, so I can't really gauge how much I should be getting just in my own language. And I'm really bad with the metric system.

It's pretty embarrassing. For one, I knew they used the metric system here (and everywhere else- the US just likes being difficult ‘cause we're mavericks). For another, I'm a science major. We never use anything but the metric system. I'm perfectly comfortable with the metric system in lab. In fact, I'm really fond of the metric system in lab. (Except temperatures. I never did figure out Celsius. I don't need to know it here because it's always only one temperature, and that temperature is "sweltering".) But it turns out that when you're shopping in a different measuring system, you really do need to know how to convert between the two, or at least have a vague idea of what the conversion rate is.

I ended up going to the prepackaged meat, finding a package the size I wanted, checking the weight (100 g), and ordering that much of the deli ham. 100 g is a lot of ham, as it turns out. Also $3.75 a kg for peaches isn't really that expensive.

Weights aside, I had to cope with the product differences, which is a little daunting, too. Of course, part of the problem could be that I'm used to small-town grocery stores that don't carry anything too exotic, and Townsville is a fairly large city where you expect more variety. They had little single-serving cups of tiramisu in the yougurt section, and I do believe I will have to look into that some time.

They keep the eggs on the shelves, as compared to refridgerated, which makes sense because the store is air conditioned. (I'm keeping mine in the fridge, but we don't use the AC where I'm staying.) Also, all the eggs are brown, which makes me feel very gourmet when I use them. (Eggs, by the way, are the best thing ever if you're cheap and living alone.)

The major difference that can't be attributed to population was the candy. I noticed this earlier, but they don't have Hershey's here- they have Cadbury's. So the good news is that Cadbury creme eggs are readily available this time of year.

Cadbury's makes hot chocolate mix and candy bars, too, as it turns out. I picked one up (a "dairy milk bar" which I think means milk chocolate), and it was pretty tasty. They have a lot of flavors and different candy bars I'm uncertain about (including ‘bubbles", which I think are like poprock chocolate?), and chocoholic that I am, one of my goals to experience Australian culture is going to be to eat as many of these as I can without having a hideous allergic reaction, so more on candy as I get to it.

On the Welcome Bus, the other girls (who had all been in Australia for a few days, sight-seeing) were munching on these chocolate cookies called "Tim-Tams," and they all assured me that I needed to try them. So I picked up a package, and let me tell you, they are the richest cookie I've ever bought in a grocery store. I don't quite know how to describe them. They're two crisp milk chocolate cookies sandwiched together with what tastes like chocolate Oreo filling, then covered with chocolate frosting. I can't eat more than one at a time, and yet.. they're strangely addictive.

I only bought enough food for the next couple of days, since I got there and realized that I was never going to survive without a very detailed grocery list. Last night I had a ham, cheese, and onion omlette... which is also on the menu tonight.

I've found a couple of really cool cake-related blogs on here, and I was going through hoping to find some recipes for myself, but they're mostly gourmet, fancy type things (or else pastries. Or both), which I'm in favor of, but... I'd like to see a blog that's just new things for singles on budgets- stuff that's cheap, easy, different, and serves one person. It probably already exists somewhere, but if I ever get my act together, I may start one. I mean, looking at fancy food and drooling is nice, and trying to make an awesome cake from time to time is fun, but when I have to plan a menu for the week and I just want food that tastes pretty good and isn't too unhealthy, I don't really have a practical resource.

So, my culinary nerdery aside, it's raining really hard today... probably because I want to take my laptop to Uni today. I was going to take a self-defense course, but it was just a fun filler thing to do, and I couldn't really bring myself to catch the bus in the pouring rain at 10:00, so that's that. I can't wait for rainy season to be over.

Bus tour and plant pics

Last night my landlord/roommate asked me where Ohio was. Ohio is the only state that belongs to absolutely no region. It's not really in the north, it's not really in the south, it's not really on the east coast but it's not really the midwest. It's not really part of Appalachia (although, most people in AU don't know where or what Appalachia is anyway). It's just there. So I've got a map in the back of my planner that I showed him. I'm sure he didn't really care, but it's the only way I know to describe it.

This morning on my way to the next phase of O-week I stumbled across two stray dogs- a shiz tsu and some kind of mutt puppy. They followed me for a while, which was a bit worrisome as I was headed for a major highway and the puppy seemed exceptionally unafraid of cars. Fortunately they found a house with a dog in the backyard and left me to bark at it- so here's hoping the owners were home and called up the number on the tags. (I still don't have a phone- it's getting increasingly more annoying.)

Took a bus tour of Townsville today, courtesy of the student travel association. REALLY pretty downtown (sorry, no pictures- my camera doesn't like working in vehicles). The museums have free admission to students, so that's on my to do list. I need to make some friends so that we can hang out there some weekend. (Actually, what I need to do is import friends from home that I *know* would enjoy being here, but I suppose making friends is an acceptable solution.)

Missed signing up for a chocolate-eating contest at noon. Which is fine, but just know that I would have nailed it. The winner ate 4 chocolate bars in 3.5 minutes. Amateur.

Here are my Excited-American-Botany-Nerd pictures:

Weird mushrooms:

Trees with really cool bark: (these guys are everywhere.)







These were growing alongside the highway on my walk back to my motel. I think they're what my advisor would call "trashy".

More Orientation. Also Clotted Cream.

Last night was an orientation show (w/ free sausages, which is what got me there). I ended up sitting next to an older woman named "Bev" who's going back for a degree in something (the music was kinda loud, I couldn't really hear what she said). Anyway, she has a car and offered to give me lifts if I ever need them, so here's one friend that it would be to my advantage to keep in touch with. (INTJs do not do 'friendship' without a valid reason. Or maybe that's just me?)

There was a speech and performance by an Aboriginal elder (I got one picture, which will eventually be up). Australia's very respectful of Aborigines... kind of a "So, we screwed you over and took your land, and now that we've sobered up, we're really, really sorry about that. No, really, we are. We're going to make sure that everyone knows you were here first and have you at opening ceremonies for schools and all that. It doesn't make up for it, but..." As compared to America, which says "So, we screwed you over and took your land... if we let you open casinos, will you shut up about it?"

Then there was a comedian-type guy pretending to be an American professor... his accent was pretty atrocious. I've never heard anyone from Australia attempt an American accent before. It's really... bizarre. I don't know how to put it. He also made a couple of Arnold jokes, so I knew then and there that he wasn't from Sacramento, in any case. (Alisa assures me that nobody in Sacramento makes Arnold jokes because it's too depressing to them.) Anyway, it turned into a long show about drinking in college and making good choices and seek help if you need it and all that. It was actually pretty entertaining, but it was SWELTERING out (the guy had to keep toweling himself off), I was getting eaten alive by mosquitos, it was about 2 hours long, and it was nothing I hadn't heard before because I've done this whole orientation thing before and I know my way around college. It's getting a little frustrating, to be honest. Sure, the computer sites are set up a little different and have different names, but it's still the same thing as Mount Holyoke.
Did learn ONE new thing: Apparently peeing on people's lawns is a serious problem here, because the guy saw fit to mention that it's a bad idea.

Bev gave me a ride home, which was nice 'cause it was dark out and I wasn't super-sure how to get back home. My landlord/roommate was going to bed when I got there, but he says he might be able to set up a bunkbed for me this weekend, so Saturday is furniture-assembly time! He's very helpful. I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to talk to him a bit more this week, 'cause right now I feel a little like a very sketchy houseguest.

Today I stopped at the student coffee shop and got tea and a scone with clotted cream and jam. This was exciting for me, even if it isn't particularly for you. I've been seeing a lot of stuff around that I'd previously only seen in the British baking cookbook that Micah got me for Christmas (which, among other things, insists that Americans call blueberrys "huckleberries"). There seems to be a lot ofwhipped cream flying around. I kinda just want to live here forever. Or until my heart explodes.

The Anime Club had a table out today, and they seem very enthusiastic (I've decided that the VP is basically their Hannah, but don't tell him that). They said they're watching Black Lagoon this semester, so that should appease you guys. Let's face it, the fastest, most comfortable way for me to make friends with people is to hunt down some reasonably well-adjusted anime nerds, and I don't have a lot of time here to spend making friends any other way.

Also, they gave me a bottle-holder-thing from their sponsor, GameTraders Stockland... which is probably a branch of GameTraders Robina, which, as devotees may recall, is where Yahtzee
gets his blackmarket games. So I've already accumulated some gaming cred for when I get back to the States.

That's all for now, sorry, no pictures. I've got some, but it's a pain in the neck to add them to an entry and I just don't feel like it at the moment.