Brisbane Forest Park
On Thursday, my Australia's Terrestrial Environment class took a field trip to the Brisbane Forest Park and Mt Jolly. It was a pretty fun trip. The day started around 10 am when we took a bus to the park. The drive was about an hour. We were driving along the side of a mountain/cliff so it was a littler nerve racking. The worst part was when the driver cut a corner too close and slammed the side of the bus into a rock. I swear I felt the bus tip a little toward the edge and everyone went absolutely silent. We all felt a little uneasy after that experience.
Once in the park, we went through two different types of forests. We saw lots of eucalyptus trees and also a rainforest. It was quite beautiful to be walking along the trails, but we were busy with a 12 page packets, so I was focusing on filling out the answers most of the time.
After we got done with our tour of the forests, we drove to a wildlife sanctuary. There, we got to see lots of cute animals! I saw snakes, turtles, birds, kangaroos, walabees, and a platypus.
The day finished with tea and scones on top of Mt. Jolly. The view was absolutely beautiful and it was a good way to end the trip. We headed home around 6 pm and everyone on the bus was sleeping the entire ride home.
Mila's Birthday
The next day, I spent the majority of the day getting stuff ready for Mila's birthday. She did NOT want any sort of celebration so I, of course, tried as hard as I could to make as big of a deal about her birthday as I could. I decorated my deck with streamers, baked her a cake, and made her a really cute picture frame with a lizard on it (she has a weird obsession with lizards). That night, I had her come over so I could sing "Happy Birthday" and give her the cake. Although she didn't show it, I secretly know she enjoyed it :)
Surfer's Paradise
The next morning, 5 of us left for Surfer's Paradise in the Gold Coast. It was me, Mila, Bethany, Suzanne and Alyssa. It took us about 2 hours and $5 to get there. We arrived at the bus station and our "limo" from the hostel came to pick us up. It was the ugliest limo I have ever seen, but it was hilarious to ride in. We arrived at the Sleeping In Backpackers Hostel and were immediately offered a chance to sign up for "The Big Night Out". We jumped on the opportunity to do something fun (since it was Mila's real birthday) so we all signed up to go. We spent the day on the beach. The highlight of the day was that Mila and Alyssa had to be rescued by the life guards because they got stuck in the rip. It all happened so quickly! In literally 5 seconds, I looked behind me and saw that both of them were over 10 feet away from me. Luckily, they didn't get eaten by sharks :) Later, we came back to the hostel to get ready for our night. When we went to the lobby at 8:30, we were presented with cowboy hats, glow sticks, and passes for free drinks. We started the night drinking goon (Australian version of franzia). The party bus soon arrived and everyone loaded onto it. The entire bus sang Happy Birthday to Mila!! It was so awesome to see her as the center of attention because she hates it! We danced until the bus arrived at the first bar. The rest of the night continued in the same fashion. There were about 200 people that signed up for "The Big Night Out" and it was cool to meet people from all over the world. That night, for some reason, I met a lot of Irish. Their accents are very difficult to understand and I realized I prefer the Australian accent-sorry Lisa:-)
The next morning, after getting hardly enough sleep, we got up for our surfing lesson. It was 2 hours long and we started with the basics. We learned about the different positions and ocean safety. We started out just learning how to ride the wave into shore. After, we learned how to steer and lastly, we learned how to jump onto the board. I was able to get up for about 5 seconds before getting thrown into the water. Surfing is such a workout! My entire body was sore the next day-arms, butt, stomach and neck! Also, my swimsuit snapped in the middle so I had to quickly buy a new one before taking off my wetsuit top to avoid flashing everyone. The wetsuit top was skin tight and clung pretty tightly to my body so it was a very uncomfortable situation. After our lesson, we chilled on the beach until it was time to go home.
As for this week, nothing too exciting has happened. I had 4 assignments due so I spent quite a bit of time on schoolwork. I leave for Melbourne on Thursday, and I am going on a 2-day tour of the Great Ocean Road on Saturday/Sunday. I am very excited to leave Brisbane by plane! I will take lots of pictures!
G'day mates :)
