Jade Down Under

Tuesday was a pretty mellow day. Melissa went to climb Castle Hill, which is just short of a mountain, and I wandered around campus getting some necessary things done. I bought some stamps to send some postcards and such to Canada and they cost quite a bit; $1.35 for a postcard and $2.05 for a letter. I'm quickly realizing how expensive Australia is.

In the afternoon I had a welcome session with all the other International students in the Graduate Diploma program. There were about 15 of us. Two for U.K., 1 from the states and the remainder from Canada - mostly Toronto; two from Ottawa.

After the meeting Melissa and I headed to Stockland once again for groceries and general shopping. I picked up some dollar store items, plates, glasses etc. and we headed home for a lovely dinner.

Today, being Wednesday, started early again with Melissa waking up at 6am to make a phone call...
Class begun at 9am and lasted until 3:15 or so. The walk to class is about 15-20 minutes and luckily we (my new friend Liz and I) walked on one of the short non-raining moments. It absolutely poured all day today. We almost have a chill in the air now.... but I'm still in shorts and a t-shirt... that's the kinda chill they get in Townsville; the temperature is almost bearable.

During our class info session we were informed that we would be starting placement in just over a month and we are not guaranteed to be anywhere near the school - perhaps an hour and a half bus ride!! Liz and I are going to see if we can get placed together so we can travel together. I'll have to wait and find out.

Anyhow, that's all for today folks. Talk to you tomorrow!

In the morning we were greeted by our Wall-e friends again. This is the baby, ain't he cute?


But we were also greeted by a fire truck. Apparently alarms go off fairly often around here - usually false alarms. Melissa had a good time taking pictures and waving at the firemen.

Off to the Reef HQ we went. We acutually wanted to go hang out by the Strand but it wasn't the greatest day - it is their rainy season - so we settled on the Reef HQ instead. THis is the biggest indoor reef in the world. It cost $25 to get in but it's an in and out day pass. We stayed until we had seen it all and for a souvenior I picked up Minty, the albino turtle who I believe, is now dead. He's a cuddler though.

It's DORA!

Jellyfish. They were in a dark tank so you could see them illuminated.

Here you can see some of the fish!

Sting-ray. All he did was swim round, and round, and round.

It's Mr. Lobster

I don't know what to say about this one - he was huge!

Hello there.

Oh no! She's been eaten alive!

Isn't he pretty?

Here is some of the colour. The picture does not do it justice. It's bright and beautiful.

Star-fishy.

Me making more animal friends.

Melissa and I went out to lunch at a place called Jamacia Joe's. The waiter, who was very smitten by our accents and my asking for ketchup (as he was from Saskatchewan) gave us a free beer to taste. He was cute as well!

Some Tazmania choices.

My lunch. Barramundi fillets with chips and salad. What is Barramundi???

The view from the restuarant was awesome. Yeah, awesome is a VERY popular word here - it's sounds 'cool' with the accent. Anyhow, awesome it was...

One thing Melissa just adores is the drive-thru beer/liquor stores. This doesn't promote drinking and driving at all, does it?

Kris, here's the black ones. Also, we saw some white cockatoos as well. I'll have to post those pictures later. These black cockatoos are everywhere, and they are very loud. It's funny watching them eat (when they come onto the ground) because they are sooooo massive! We have nothing like this at home! The white ones have bright green feathers on their heads.

Cool tree.

This is the pier. It's rather unique as it's a fisher's dream. The wood slats have holes drilled in them so fishermen/women can leave their rods in the holes and walk away. This also helps each person control more than one rod at a time. I took this picture for you Kimmy.

I believe I already mentioned that it was Aussie Day. We saw these guys multiple times throughout the day carrying thier garbage can full of beer back and forth on the Strand. Apparently it's okay to carry beer in public down here - no one seemed to care if it's not allowed. These boys invited us to join them for a party night but.... we went home.

Aren't they sexy? They asked us not to put this picture on facebook!

These guys were yelling out ratings as the girls walked by. We got an 8.5 and a 10.... don't I feel special.

Then we met this group. Smothered in green and yellow paint they were playing cricket right on the strip, and road. Melissa, always the joiner, decided to give it a shot!

After this shot the cops came and the game had to end! Apparently hitting cricket balls into the street is an illegal thing to do, who knew? The guy in the white shorts asked the cops if we could hit it one more time because we're Canadian, they didn't respond but drove off. There were no more hits made.

So after waiting what felt like a decade we finally found a bus. It turns out, like Sundays, holidays are not the greatest time to try and catch a bus. We finally made it and were home around 8-8:30 in time to eat and go to bed.

Monday is offically posted!!

I posted some of my pictures earlier today but Melissa had some good ones so I thought I better put these up as well. She is a camera person so I let her take most of the pictures. Here ya go!

This was Melissa and I leaving Toronto. See the smiles? The colour in our faces? This is how you can tell it was early in the flights. It gets uglier from here.

In Chicago we had a bit of a layover and looked for things to do. Behind this sign was an Asian gentleman who let out a huge fart (butt cheek lifted and all) as Melissa and I walked past. Not good.

This was on our flight from Chicago to Tokyo - obviously still glowing-ly happy.

In Tokyo we had to look for things to do so we found this sculpture that looked interesting. After we took the picture we noticed what it was called. See below.

Very fitting for the two of us.

This was on the same flight. Those masks really are a good idea. Luckily I didn't get sick. There was 400+ people on our plane. It had two levels.... I've never seen a two floor plane before!

In Tokyo airport. I've already complained about the food in an earlier post so I will say no more about that. I think the menu was designed for the white folk as instead of a regular menu with words it was all plasticine meals! Not appealing.

WTF is this??? I don't think I can aim that well...

We are almost in Brisbane!! From this point I believe it was still another 2 or 3 hours. The diagram is a little off. I had a really good (but really bad) picture of Melissa and I but she thought we were too ugly and wouldn't let me post it. We were really tired and I think the picture emphasized that. Guess you'll have to use your imagination. We were ugly.

Once we landed in Brisbane we had to catch a train at the Domestic Airport where Virgin Blue was situated.

Let me tell you, it was hot!!

Onto our fourth and final flight. My head was aching, my body was screaming for a bed and a shower but luckily the flight was short and sweet.

I had written in a previous post about our airport pick up woman. She dropped her flag twice and insisted it be picked up. The first time I got it but the second time she was on her own; especially seeing as this road was VERY busy.

Here's the flag!! She kept laughing because we took so many pictures. She was a riot.

This is the view coming up to my residence building. All of Townsville is surrounded with these large hills/mountains. Melissa climbed one of the them!

Almost at the residence building. It's back in the bush, sort-of.

This mama greeted us when we arrived. You can't tell in this picture too well but she has a little baby in her pouch. Right after this picture was taken the baby came out to also say hello. They have been greeting us each day ever since!

This is my residence bulding - Rotary International House. This is only for International students and is made up of many building 'blocks' with 6 or 7 residents per floor.

Once you walk into the building this is what you see. The lights aren't on because apparently no one really uses them. It is hot here so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. A little scary at night time.

This is the communal kitchen; we are supposed to share everything but I bought a lot of my own dishes and glasses - something weird about sharing all that stuff with a bunch of strangers.

This is the T.V. room. I haven't really been in here much - I believe there is only a couple channels, hardly worth watching. We do have a good sharing server so everyone on campus can swap movies, music and such.

This is one of the showers. There are two but the other one is a wheelchair accesable shower. Mom, I bought my flipflops, AKA Thongs!