Guitly until proven innocent.

Ladies and gentlemen, today, there shall not be a video. Neither shall there be snark, nor blather, nor kidding of any kind, for I have had a sobering experience that inspires in me no desire to joke. Believe me when I say that I can hardly bear the thought of re-living this horror, but in the interest of posterity, I shall tell the woeful tale of the time I took a final at the University of Queensland.

I know what you are thinking, kind gentlefolk: that if I would only study, finals would not be such a burden. Alas, if only it were so simple. You see, it was not the content of the final that has me in such a state; it was the manner in which this University chose to conduct it. So read on, fair listener, and let this be a warning to you, if ever you should consider life down under.

Said final was for my class on Australia's Marine Environment, codename MARS2005, and it was to be conducted in the Heath Room of the UQ Union building, at 8 in the morning on Monday, 8th November. I arrived easily fifteen minutes early, eager to complete the test and move on to more pressing issues, like my final paper for cinema class. I'd been careful to stock all of my testing necessities: pencil, pen, eraser, glasses, water bottle, sweatshirt in case I got cold. I was prepared. In the foyer outside the testing facility, I was greeted by my many peers, and we began to swap travel plans, blissfully unaware of the trials we were about to endure.

Five minutes before the test was to start, one of the proctors opened the doors to glare dolefully out into the throng. "Final exam for International Studies 7068?" she called, more a demand than a question. We looked at each other, startled.

"No," one brave student replied. "We're marine biology students."

The proctor sniffed at him indignantly. "We aren't ready for you yet. There's nobody here from IS7068?"

A moment of silence reigned before another student managed to murmer, "they might be outside."

The proctor let out an exasperated growl and stomped through the crowd, allowing the doors to slam behind her. I glanced at Julie. She shrugged. We waited. Eventually, the proctor came back, this time flanked by six graduate students, all skipping to keep up with her, student cards held before them as though they were warding off a vampire with crosses. At the door, the proctor held them up to exam every card, on both sides, scrutinizing the students' faces.

I took the hint, and dug out my ID card, glad that I'd had the foresight to bring my entire purse rather than just my writing materials. Once the proctor had finished with the grad students, she peered suspiciously out at us and then called our class name, bracing herself as though for a stampede.

Because I was close to the door, I was one of the first to meet her critical eye. I held out my ID card, doing my best to retain a straight face through the trepidation. She scanned the list on her clipboard, scoffed, then slapped a number into my hand, as though reluctant to give it up. A sigh of relief escaped me as I slipped past her, sparing a moment of pity for the fool behind me, who I heard pleading, "...but it's all the way at home. It would take me an hour. Please, isn't my license good enough?"

Thinking I'd made it past the hard part, I studied the room and quickly worked out that the number in my hand correlated to a desk on the other side of the room. I started to make my way across the room, but suddenly found myself face-to-face with the second proctor, also a woman and equally irritable.

"You have to leave your bags here," she said.

"Oh," I replied, stupidly, before turning toward the wall and setting down my purse and bag, reflecting that this meant I wouldn't have my sweatshirt if it got cold. But, in the interest of not breaking the rules, I opted to only take what I absolutely needed: my pens, glasses and water.

Having safely stowed my items, I headed toward my desk once again, but was met by the second proctor. "You can't leave them there," she said. "You have to leave them by the door."

"Oh," I said again, wondering why she hadn't told me that in the first place, but choosing to hold my tongue. I moved the bags, then made my way to my seat, this time arriving without further incident.

The desk was small and wooden, but not uncomfortable. It had a number taped in the corner, as well as my testing packet and answer sheet, and a small purple slip of paper labeled "attendance." I was studying this slip, having neatly set down my things, when the third proctor approached my seat.

"You can't have that water bottle." She told me.

"What?" I replied, too surprised to agree.

"You can only have clear water bottles."

Mine was a solid bright green. I furrowed my brow. "Why?"

"Because it's against the rules. Now get rid of it."

I obeyed, sadly reuniting my water supply with my sweatshirt while trying to think of any possible advantage a student with an opaque water bottle might have over a student with a transparent one. Aside from the ability to store alcohol, which is hardly an advantage in a test-taking situation and could be done in a clear water bottle anyway given the correct variety of alcohol, nothing came to mind. I pushed the thought aside and returned to my seat.

I was now left with only my pencil case and my glasses case, and I thought to myself, "surely there's nothing wrong with these?" I should have known better.

After all the students had filed in, each strictly reminded that this was a TESTING SITUATION and therefore NO TALKING would be tolerated, and any attempt to speak would be taken as an attempt to CHEAT, the second proctor set about reading the instructions.

"Turn off your phones and put them under your seat."

Check.

"Put any items other than writing utensils and glasses under your seat."

Check.

"If there are any paper items among the items under your desk, you must volunteer them now, or else be written down for cheating."

I froze, remembering that there was a paper towel in my pen case and a small sheet of simple Italian phrases in my pencil case leftover from my trip to Italy four years ago. Unwilling to risk getting a zero, I pulled these out and showed them to the proctor nearest me, who studied them and me with an expression reminiscent of a prosecuting attorney at a child molestation case. I shrunk in my seat, holding my breath until she finally relinquished them, begrudgingly admitting that there was nothing on them that I could use to cheat. I returned them to the pile under my desk, chastised.

"Align your seat number, number card, student card and attendance sheet with the edge of your desk."

I did so. The proctor raised an eyebrow at me. I aligned them on a different edge. She nodded.

"Fill out your attendance sheet in PENCIL."

I did so, wondering what the point of having an attendance sheet was when we were about to put our names on a test, but no longer in a state to question anything that was going on. I sat quietly while the proctor rattled through a long list of things we weren't allowed to do, resolving to do absolutely nothing but fill out my test.

"MARS2005 students may not touch their writing utensils during perusal period."

That got my attention. Can't use our pencils?

"Any student caught writing during perusal period will be expelled from the exam room."

Well crap. I can't wait to get out of this backward country.

"Perusal period" started immediately and lasted about 15 minutes. Taking cues from other students, I simply read through the test packet. The questions were all fairly easy, which I found reassuring, but the fact that I couldn't write on the packet was throwing me for a loop: usually, I just plunge right into the test and start marking off answers. Having to wait 15 minutes was more than a little disconcerting.

Then, finally, the proctor announced that we could write on our answer sheets. I set off immediately, but still felt off my game because I couldn't write on the question packet, and therefore I couldn't mark off wrong answers. Everything about the situation felt awkward, and it didn't help that the proctor wandered past every minute or so, pausing beside each desk to stare reproachfully down at the stressed out students.

The end of the test did come, though; I finished with a good half hour left in testing time. When I looked up, though, I realized I had no idea what the protocol for turning papers in might be. The last thing I wanted to do was stand up and get accused of trying to copy off someone else's paper. I kept my head low and watched what the other students were doing, and eventually worked out that the trick was to make eye contact with a proctor. After about five minutes of staring at the proctor's back, willing her to look up, she finally did and came over to my desk. I proudly handed her my test sheet, excited to escape the oppressive room. She looked at me like I was an idiot.

"You have to write your name on the test packet, too."

Exasperation set in. "You mean you can write on the packet?"

She raised an eyebrow at me. "Of course you can. Why wouldn't you?"

She shuffled away, leaving me to fill out my name on the packet, perhaps pressing down on the pencil with a little more strength than was absolutely necessary. When the proctor came back around, I handed them to her. She shook her head.

"You have to put the answer sheet under the first page of the packet."

I did so, not trusting myself to say anything. She collected the packet, cheerfully clucking her tongue at my ignorance. I hastily collected my things and high-tailed it out of the room as quickly as I could, wistfully remembering sunshiny years of frolicking through exam rooms at UW.

And that's why UQ sucks.

Life's no fun without a good scare.

Hello! Sorry this has taken me so long. I sort of took a long time to get around to putting this together. Doh.



And because it's so late, here's a little bonus for y'all:




In other news, Halloween was this weekend! I dressed up as the last girl standing. Observe:


Pretty freaking awesome chainsaw, huh? That'll teach that psycho-killer to crash MY prom... :P

I went to a party close to campus with several friends, including Aran the Warlock, Scarlett the French (Canadian) Maid, Rachael the Cowgirl/Taylor Swift, Emil the Golden Girl and Thomas the OHMYGOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT GET IT AWAY FROM ME!!!!


More photos on the photo dump, including several stolen from friends. Halloween is easily the best holiday. :)

Love and terror,
Morgan

Hundreds of dolphins!

Third time's the charm for getting video footage of N. Stradbroke Island, apparently. :)




Headed out to Fraser this weekend for a camping trip with Krista. Will report back. :) In other news, actual final start in two weeks, and I will be home in exactly two months! Where does the time go?

Love,
Morgan

Finals are suck.

Explanations for this video:

1. Yes, the Happy Birthday sign is still there. It no longer serves any function and should therefore be taken down and thrown away, but I feel sorry for it so I haven't.
2. Don't ask me about the pan flute dancers. I don't know.




Hope you're less stressed out than I am!

Like living in a postcard.

Alright, I know I only just posted a video yesterday but I've finished this sooner than I thought I would, so I figured I'd post it anyway. :) There are a few things the video does not make note of that I feel are necessary to properly experiencing it, however, so here they are:

1. It is BLOODY HOT throughout this video.
2. Most of the inland parts of the island smelled like chicken manure, because of the damn Noddy Turns, which use their poop to cement their nests. This is why we spent so much time on the beach.
3. The island is located several miles off shore, and it is tiny, and there were only about 150 people on it. Isolation? You betcha!*
4. Even though it was the #1 activity, there is no footage of snorkeling or wetsuits. Get over it. Or buy me a waterproof digital camera. :P Otherwise, just use your imagination.
5. There are some random cuts...I don't really have an excuse for that other than that I'm still new to this vlogging thing and didn't always narrate where I should have. Oops.

That is all. Enjoy. :)





Much love,
Morgan

P.S. New photos on the dump, too. Check them out!


*The Research Station shares the island with a rather expensive resort, so there were parts of the island we were not allowed to explore, but we still saw the visitors fairly regularly and I'm counting them here.

It's my birthday!

Enjoy. :)




Much love,
Morgan

Video killed the radio star.

Hello world! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to report on my weekend. After the vlog last week, it was very hard to get motivated for the return to text-format, but return I have (albeit rather embarrassingly late)!

The reason I did not vlog my trip to Stradbroke Island last week is because it was with my Anthropology class, and we were meeting up with some Aboriginal tribal leaders, and they have that whole tricky cameras-will-take-my-soul idea going on, and I didn't want to offend anyone with my amateur film-making. For the same reason, this blog entry will be devoid of pictures. Man, things are just getting duller and duller on Snark & Blather, aren't they? Oops.

The trip was fantastic, though--a lot more fun than I was expecting it to be. Our main guide was a man called Shane, and he was both wickedly funny and deeply passionate about the island, where the Moreton family has been living for generations. He brought along several members of his family, including an adorable little boy named Alfie who kept interrupting Shane's speaking with whatever exciting tide pool creature he'd stumbled across and simply had to show us. We started at a creek, where we had to survey the area for evidence of aboriginal sites, like campgrounds or shell middens. There wasn't much, but it didn't matter--as Shane explained, the space functioned more as a supermarket of sorts, where all the necessary things for living could be gathered and trade communication with other tribes could be carried out.

We breaked for lunch, and my friend Greg guiltily admitted that he hadn't brought any more to eat than a couple apples. This is the same friend who forgot his lunch during the Byron Bay trip who I gave my apple to, so I had suspected that it might happen again and brought a PB&J sandwich for him. He was delighted, and declared me "the best person ever." He now owes me a drink.

Our other stop was at Brown Lake in the middle of the island. Basically, Straddie is a pile of sand over the top of a huge water table, and Brown Lake is at the summit. It's called Brown Lake because, like with the lake I swam in at Byron Bay, it's surrounded by ti trees and the oils soaking into the water have colored it. Because this site is primarily a women's site, Shane left us here in the care of his sister and mother, along with several other women from the family and an even younger boy named Archie, who clearly thought that we ought to be paying more attention to him than to the women. The women explained how the lake served as a beginning place for all of the members of the family, where they were introduced to the spirit-beings for the first time, and that the health of the lake was indicative of the health of the tribe's women. Once again, though there was very little physical evidence at the site, we were told that the significance of the site lies in its function: Brown Lake is one of the most sacred places for the Aboriginal family that lives on the island because it is where their lives begin and end.

As we left, Shane gave us some parting advice regarding Australian sharks: "Be careful," he said. "Our sharks have a sense of humor. They love to pull your leg, and they don't always give it back."

That evening (this was Saturday, by the way), my friend Krista had her 21st birthday party at a Mexican restaurant over in Taringa on the other side of the river. Only about 8 people showed up, but they were all cool (most of them I hadn't met before) and we hung out there for about three hours. The food was way more than I could eat, though, and since Australia doesn't believe in doggy bags, I ended up eating way too much. Everybody did. But that didn't prevent us from trekking downtown via train and getting gelatti in the CBD, which we happily ate sitting just outside of a rather hilariously sketchy-looking strip club.

Sunday I went to see Despicable Me with Aran and Scarlett, and it was pretty good, though clearly intended for a much younger audience than us. We were also blown away by the 3D classes. They appeared to have color-changing lenses, because when we first pulled them out the right one was dark and the left one wasn't, and they later switched, and then evened out when the movie started. My first thought was light sensitivity, but after some experimenting we determined that wasn't it. So yes, cheap 3D glasses stumped 2 undergrads and 1 post-grad student. We're cool.

Apologies again for the lack of vlog on this one. I really do like that format better. I promise there will be some vlogging again soon, because I am leaving for Heron Island on Friday night, where I have been promised night snorkeling, and I am super excited. When next you hear from me, I will be 21 years old, and over halfway through my time in Australia. How crazy is that? Hope all is well on the home front!

Love,
Morgan

P.S. I wandered past a shop the other day called "KGB locksmith" with a hammer & sickle for its logo. Bad taste, or sheer genius? You decide.

Come to Australia!

It's been a long week and blogs are kind of boring, so let's just skip the part where I whine about Australian midterms and watch this here video instead:




:)

P.S. You should also probably go watch this video, because it's awesome.

YOUR MOM's a cultural ignoramus.

Hello, hello, hello! It's been bloody hot and humid this week, and the evenings are almost worse than the days because you just feel disgusting and clammy, so I've pretty much shut myself in my room. Although, to be fair, that probably has more to do with the fact that I am currently drowning in papers than it does with the weather. Seriously, Australian midterms are awful. It all just sort of...crashes down at once. Not awesome.

But, at the moment is it raining, which has made me substantially happier, and I've decided to surface from the depths of academia to give you a report on what I've been doing over the past two days (other than getting really depressed by the topic of my history paper: genocide).

So no, I haven't been the most diligent student and instead took the last two evenings off to do fun stuff, which is probably bad for my academics, but great for my sanity and for you because I have awesome things to report!

First of all, Friday evening I met up with my friend Julie (remember her from the Moreton Bay Research trip?) and we went to a restaurant in the CBD that she loves. It's called "the Pancake Manor" and it's exactly what it sounds like: a restaurant, dedicated entirely to pancakes, 3 meals a day. It was amazing what creative things they came up with. They had chocolate pancakes. Not pancakes with chocolate in them, but actual chocolate pancakes made with chocolate batter.

Julie warned me against those, however, saying that it was a bit like eating an entire chocolate cake on your own. Instead, I ordered the banana & chocolate ice cream pancakes, which were still so incredibly thick and overwhelming that I could only eat half of it. Julie got strawberry and chocolate, and we each topped it off with a shake. Mine was spearmint, which was delicious at first, but wound up tasting a bit like toothpaste toward the end, so I didn't finish it, either.

Once our stomachs were sufficiently bursting with pancake goodness, we trekked across the bridge to the cultural center to meet Aran for a poetry slam hosted by the Brisbane Public Library. I didn't participate in the slam, but Aran did and he did so beautifully, the MC was endlessly entertaining, and there were a lot of other awesome poets there, including a guy named Myles Something (help, Aran?), the spoken word duo Emily XYZ & Myers Bartlett, and these guys:

You can't tell in this picture, but that guy has an awesome ruffle over his butt.

The crowd was deliciously snarky, the judges reasonably objective, and on one occasion an audience member got so excited about a performance that he stripped down to his boxers, gave a mighty "YOWP!!!" and ran out into the street. Once the show was over, Aran and I wandered up to West End in search of coffee, but were ultimately thwarted in our quest, and instead settled for bottle coffee and stick ice cream, which we ate sitting outside the same little library I used for my internet connection when I first arrived in Brisbane. In the hour and a half we spent hanging out on the bench, we made several friends: an old man picking up trash for his shopping cart who though I was Irish and Aran was Jewish, a rather large bat that had a go at the back of Aran's head, and a very drunk man in dress trousers and a button-down shirt, who wandered up to us excitedly, brandishing an opened package of smoked salmon, and earnest announced, "I love smoked salmon! And it's bloody cheap! Only $5!" before stumbling away up the road. Delightful.

This evening, there was an event going on in South Bank called "Riverfire," which is a yearly thing where there are fireworks and a fighter jet does a fuel dump over the crowd. I wasn't 100% on going because I've seen fireworks and I've seen fighter jets and I had a lot of work to do on my paper, but Emil called me up and insisted that it was going to be the coolest thing to happen in Brisbane all year, so I met up with him and Aran and Scarlett (and later Binte and Laeka) at the cultural center, where we secured a place for ourselves sitting on top of a barrier wall at the bus stop.


Ultimately, Emil was right: it was pretty freaking cool. I would try to describe it to you, but I would fall far short, so instead, here's a video, even though it really doesn't do the event justice either, because I didn't get any footage of the fireworks coming off of all the buildings downtown, too:




So that was my weekend. Coming up next: history paper due Monday, cinema paper due Friday, and then I'm taking an awesome trip with the QUEST kids to the hinterlands to see a waterfall and some glow worms! So stay tuned. :)

Much love,
Morgan

As it turns out, it is winter.

I've just gotten back from a long weekend in Byron Bay, and it was awesome! There were definite low points, but all in all, a fabulous weekend with fabulous people. Here's how it went down:

Friday morning, still very tired from working frantically on my Anthropology paper all week, I got up early and trekked out to the bus stop, where I wandered up to a random group of girls who turned out to be my party group for the rest of the weekend--Krista (Wisconsin), Bente and Laeka (Denmark), Anne (Germany, but determined to distance herself from all things German), and Feli (France). There were several other kids I knew on the trip, too, because it was organized through QUEST, which pretty much every international student belongs to. I say "organized" in only the very vaguest sense of the term. We were suppose to go on a 4-hour hike at Mt. Warning on the way there, but the bus set out late and we only had time to do about half of the trek. So, for the first time in my life, I went halfway to the top of a hiking trail. So disappointing.

The view from halfway to the top of the mountain.

Next we stopped off in Nimbin, which is the pot capital of Australia. It's super duper hippy and artsy and feel-good, and almost every shop name has something to do with hemp. In the one hour I was wandering the streets, I was offered pot cookies three times, by three different people. The best part of Nimbin, though, was the museum. It was this tiny little corner shop absolutely packed full of the most random crap like digeridoos, TVs, posters, magazines, sculptures, an entire painted VW van, army memorabilia, a small black-light-lit cave and a million other assorted items. I think it was suppose to be moving forward through time, "following the rainbow serpent" (brightly colored scales painted on the hallway floors), but there really wasn't much logic to it. It was like the people who made it were high or something. ;)


We got to Byron much later than was initially planned, due to the aforementioned "organizing," and checked in to the Arts Factory Lodge, where I was assigned to a room called "Wagon." Basically, they put up some pipes and stretched tent fabric over them and packed it full of bunk beds. It was too dark to see properly when we checked in, so we didn't notice that a couple of the windows were open. This will be important later.

Since we were all starving, the QUEST people scrambled to get us dinner--steak that was slightly rarer than I think they intended, but delicious nevertheless. Although it was a bit of a struggle to cut it, considering that the hostel provided us with only butter knives. Krista took a positive attitude on it, though--"We're working off the calories before eating it!"

A lot of kids partied that night, but I had a rather vicious headache, so I went to bed around 8.30. Didn't sleep particularly well, though. In addition to the usual hostel party atmosphere (i.e. people singing drunkenly until 3 AM), there was a girl sitting just outside our "room" who seemed to be enjoying herself just a little bit too much, When Harry Met Sally-style. Twice I woke up to her screaming excitedly and my bunkmates grumbling that if you were going to fake it, you should at least fake it well. This made it very hard to get back to sleep.

Also making it hard to sleep was the fact that it was about zero degrees in our room. Despite sleeping in my sweatshirt, rolled up in the hostel-provided blanket (with a $10 deposit, of course) with my jacket wrapped around my feet, I still woke up several times just from the sheer cold. Especially on my feet. The rest of my room had the same issue, as did the people in "Teepee" and even the kids in the regular cement rooms. As it turns out, the Arts Factory Lodge is primarily a summer hostel, and though they operate in winter, it never occurred to them to stock extra blankets or space heaters during the winter.

The next morning, I was determined that it would not happen again, so I set about investigating ways to heat up our room. That's when I discovered that we'd had two windows all the way open all night--one by the door, and one directly opposite from it, right where my feet were, so there was a lovely cross breeze going all night long. No wonder.

After a quick breakfast, I went with some kids to the front desk to sign up for surf lessons. Predictably, the surf instructors showed up in a beat-up old van with a small, very self-assured dog in tow, and introduced themselves as "Shawny" and "Sunny." All nine of us piled into the van with them and headed out to 7-mile beach, where the waves were that day.

Greg, excited for surf lessons.

For anyone who hasn't tried surfing, let me tell you: I have so much more respect for surf bums. If I was spending every morning surfing, I would be lazy the rest of the day, too. Surfing is an exhausting sport. Just getting out far enough to catch a wave is a struggle, especially when you have to fight a rip current like we did. I am sore absolutely everywhere. But it was SO MUCH FUN. The actual technique of lining up with a wave and standing up on the board isn't difficult at all, so long as you have the minimum required balancing ability (otherwise, you'd be like Bente, who reported: "I have learned two things today: surfing is hard, and I have sucky balance."), but the stamina required is enormous. Most of the times that I fell off, it was because I was too tired to pull myself up fast enough and lost my balance.

After surfing, we went for a dip in a nearby lake, which is probably one of the coolest natural phenomenons I've seen. The lake was surrounded by tea trees, and all the oil had run off into the lake, turning the water this deep red/brown color. The water was pretty cold, but we were wearing wetsuits so we all jumped right in, and the oil just sort of soaked into our skin and hair, making it all really soft. Krista was delighted with the experience, because the salt made her hair curl, and the oil made it soft.

All too soon we had to climb out of the lake and peel off the wetsuits (a positively herculean task), at which point several of us (myself included) realized we'd forgotten to bring dry underclothes to change in to. Oops. Hello, commando. We also ordered pictures, but we have to wait until Bente gets mailed the disk and then distributes them, so surf photos forthcoming.

We got dropped off in "downtown" Byron, where we got pizza for lunch and then hung around until we had to go back to the hostel for dinner, which was again steak (but much better this time). That night we hung out at the Buddha Bar and got locally brewed beers for $2.50 each (happy hour), and then spent most of the evening crammed into Bente's bed, talking about food, music, Canada, food, surfing, candy and food. We decided that we have to have a pancake party, because Laeka doesn't believe that "pancakes" and "crepes" are different foods, while Krista, Anne and I all firmly hold that she is crazy. Bente had no input in this conversation--she was pretty much asleep, probably wishing we'd get out of her bed.

Wary of what happened Friday night, everyone in my room dressed up in double layers for bed, and we made sure every window was snugly shut. Krista and I both slept in our jeans with pajama pants underneath, which was a rather interesting style for me because my jeans ended halfway down my calf and my pajama pants didn't. But it was well worth it: we all slept like babies and awoke warm and happy in the morning, ready for breakfast.

Sunday we were all exhausted from surfing, so we spent most of the day lounging on the beach. There were some boys playing Frisbee nearby with an incredibly excitable little dog, and it was absolutely adorable so we watched that for a while. Have I mentioned that the sand here squeaks when you walk on it? Only when it's dry. It sort of sounds like denim rubbing against itself. That made watching the dog run that much cuter, because the sand was squeaking. Once we'd had our fill of sun, we ventured out into the shops for postcard and hat hunting. After a solid lunch of sushi and stocking up on TimTams at the Woolworth's, we all had to pile back into the buses and head home.

Krista, Laeka, Bente and Feli on the beach.

All in all, a very successful weekend. The surf lessons were the best part. Some of us are talking about renting boards and heading out to surfer's paradise for a weekend sometime in the next month, which would be totally awesome so I hope it happens.

Much love,
Morgan

Yes, but what about second breakfast?

Hello, hello! Sorry for the long wait between posts. I was going to write one about my trips to the cultural center and the fair last weekend, but never got around to it. So, yeah, I went to the cultural center with Aran. Basically, it's just a conglomeration of museums and galleries all in the same area. We spent a lot of time in the art gallery, where there was this awesome exhibit showing all the stages of old-school Japanese printing presses, with one color added for each frame. Then we judged some of the art in the Modern Art gallery, and Aran discovered his inner bat at the history museum.

Move over, Batman.

The next day, I ended up going to the fair with Eike and Sanja. It was costly, but it was awesome good fun to see all the animals, especially the show dogs.

Puppy has the right idea.

As I suspected it might be, it was pretty similar to the Puyallup Fair, except there were no scones, and there was an entire warehouse dedicated to "show bags," which are basically plastic bags full of a ton of cheap shit, all matched to a particular theme. I didn't buy any of them because frankly it was sort of stupid, but Eike needed to get one for her friend Zah, who was nannying a little girl who wanted one, so we spent a good half hour scrounging through the booths in search of "Glamour Barbie Pack" and "Wedding Princess Pack." Personally, if I had been a kid, I'd have gone for the ninja pack. I did see one little boy with a rubber sword that was bigger than he was. That kid knows what's up.

Cheap shit for sale!

But enough about last weekend. This weekend was even more awesome, because I had my first UQ field trip, to Moreton Bay Research Station on North Stradbroke Island (Straddie for short). I had to get up at about 6 AM to shower and pack and still make it to campus by 7.30, when the bus was leaving. My friend Pishum/Wendy barely made it on time, because apparently she turned off her alarm in her sleep. I hate it when that happens.

It was a gray day, and we had to take a ferry over to the island, which felt very much like home to me, although most of the other kids got a lot of mileage out of whining about it. I don't know what they were talking about. I thought it was gorgeous.

The first day at the station, we trekked out onto the intertidal zone at low tide in the rain and driving wind, which actually did get a bit cold, to get a sense of what was out there. We were suppose to be finding things that interested us so that we'd have an idea of what we wanted to do our research on the following day. A lot of time was spent staring at the sand, and a few brave souls even volunteered to take out a net, with which we caught some rays (a male and a female; our instructor, Kathy, said she was pretty sure they'd been mating when we caught them).


The second day, we had our research projects to do. My group included three guys, Greg, John and Brian, all American. Our hypothesis was that bigger rocks along the rocky shoreline would have a greater variety of marine life living on them than smaller ones. So, basically, we spent a couple hours looking under rocks, and then measuring the size of them by the amount of water they displaced when we put them in a bucket. This method of measuring seemed obvious to us, but Kathy was impressed with our ingenuity and commended us for it later when we were giving our presentation.

Greg and Brian, staging a photo. For science!

With all of our work behind us, the third day--Sunday--was for fun. We packed up and headed out to the ocean side of the island (as opposed to the bay side, where we did the research), where we took a short, easy hike, bought some delicious gelato at a seaside store, then settled down on the beach for a couple hours. Some kids went swimming, but my friend Julie and I deemed it a bad idea due to high winds and thus a high likelihood of freezing our butts off, so we just hung out on the sand instead.

SPF 50 for the pale peoples!

The best part about the trip? The food. Not because it was particularly delicious, but because there was so much of it. We got fed five times a day, which works out to approximately every three hours. It became a sort of joke: "Okay, it's been three hours; where's our cookies?"

As for my immediate future, this week is going to be homework-intensive, because I have my first major paper due on Friday (for Anthropology), but I won't be here Friday so I have to turn it in on Thursday. Time to research and write like the wind! Wish me luck. :)

Much love,
Morgan

P.S. Soldier crabs:

A Waitress Called Sarah

So! Yesterday was Wednesday, and it was a public holiday, although I'm not exactly sure how far the holiday reached--whether it was all of Australia or just Queensland, or even just Brisbane. I'm not sure because the reason for the holiday was rather silly: the fair came to town.

The fair that came to town is called "Ekka" and I guess it's a big deal, and lots of kids got super dressed up in fancy outfits and silly hairpieces and went to the horse races. I did not, as this activity was rather ridiculously expensive and I didn't know anybody who was going anyway. My only encounter with the horse races was when I almost tripped over the legs of a very drunk dude sitting forlornly on a park bench with a giant hole in the crotch of his trousers. I think it's safe to assume that he lost a bet or two.

Anyway, no, I did not go to the fair. Although it is still in town, I'm also not planning on going--it sounds like it's exactly the same as the Puyallup, only slightly more expensive and without delicious scones. Instead, I met up with Emil and Aran and went to Mt. Coot-tha.

First off, just let me say this: I take back what I said about Mt. Ngungun not being a mountain. I do this not because Ngungun actually is a mountain, but because it comes much closer to it than Mt. Coot-tha, and I have to draw the line somewhere. Mt. Coot-tha is basically just a large hill that provides a lovely vantage point for looking at the city. While it's true that you can see the ocean from the top of it, considering how flat the land is, that's not much of a feat. It's also not a mountain because you can ride a bus all the way to the top. A metro bus. One with a normal city route.

We did not take the metro bus to the top, however. We opted to walk up an incredibly steep path to the top, which about destroyed my cardio. I really need to get into shape, because this is sad. Seriously considering shelling out $35 for a UQ gym membership. But nevermind.

We made it to the top in decent time, with Emil fantasizing the whole time about how when we got to the top we were going to sit in the lovely cafe and eat chocolate cake and drink coffee and look at the beautiful view of the city. Aran and I found this precise description of expectations rather amusing, and went on to add Steely Dan music and a blonde waitress named Sarah to the list of Things At The Top Of The Mountain. Much of the rest of the day was spent elaborating on this rather silly fantasy.

Once we'd tired of the summit, we caught the metro back down to the base of the mountain, where there's a botanical gardens. There's also a planetarium, but it was closed due to the public holiday, so we grabbed the children's tour brochure and traipsed through the gardens, reading little factoids and chasing birds and generally behaving like kindergartners.



Part way through, we got distracted by a gorgeous parrot perching in this big open tree, and immediately all the cameras came out and we starting climbing to get a better vantage point. After about ten minutes of unsuccessful photography, Aran opted to spent the remainder of the time in the tree leaping from branch to branch like a lemur. I warned him not to, because I'd already noticed that the smaller limbs of the tree were rather viciously spiked, but he paid no attention and paid the price as well.

There is a parrot in this picture.

Once we'd tired of the gardens (re: the tree), we headed back to the city, greeted by the usual insanely gorgeous Brisbane sunset, and parted ways for a few hours before meeting up again at the RE hotel, where I saw the aforementioned gentleman on the park bench. A couple of my other friends were suppose to be there, but we never ran into them. Apparently they'd called it a night early, which I eventually did as well, although not nearly early enough. I had to get up at about 6.30 so that I could get cash to pay for the upcoming QUEST trip to Byron Bay and still be there when tickets first went on sale (because these things can sell out fast). Needless to say, I am rather exhausted today, and I think I'm going to turn in early. As soon as I've finished this. And made tacos. Because it's my turn to cook dinner.


No major plans this weekend, apart from going to the cultural center with Aran tomorrow (and possibly meeting Lauren there; she has yet to confirm her presence). Oh, and my friends Anna and Pishum (I probably mangled that spelling; she generally tells people to call her Wendy, but no one does) are having a joint 20-year-old birthday party on Saturday. Yay for people who are younger than me! I also have to do some homework for my cinema class that involves a brief analysis of Crocodile Dundee, and since I haven't seen that movie recently enough to remember any of it, it appears I'm also going to spending some time "studying." ;)

Love,
Morgan

She's My Cherry Pie

Guess what I did last night! Go ahead, guess. You're never going to get it. Alright, I'll just tell you:

I went pole-dancing!

Yup, you heard me. The UQ athletic center was having free sampler classes, and one of them was for pole-dancing, which I've always wanted to at least try, so I went. As might be expected, the class was packed with girls. There were a couple guys, too, but their reasons for being there were dubious at best. I met a couple of pretty cool girls, both American: Lauren, from Chicago, and Emily, from California. They were there for the same reason as me: to see if pole dancing is really as hard as everybody says it is.

The answer is yes. Yes it is. It is very hard, and it will make you painfully aware of muscles that you previous never knew existed. Namely, the ones in your wrists.

But it is also incredibly fun! Because there were so many people trying it out, we only got to learn four moves, and we each only got one turn on the pole for each move. Consequently, we didn't actually get to learn very much, but what we did do was such a blast. The whole technique just goes against your natural instincts: leaning, spinning, falling over. It's a lot harder than ballet, that's for sure. I could only manage one of the moves correctly.

I'm considering signing up for the actual class, but I haven't made up my mind yet. It's one of the more expensive activities. We'll see.

Afterward, Emily and Lauren wanted me to go to this Beauty and the Geek party hosted by UQ Union at the Red Room, but all I had was my athletic clothes, making it a little hard to dress to theme. I gave them my phone number and said I'd try to make it back, but when I got home my roommates were having a lively discussion regarding chickens, and I just sort of got sucked in. Ended up spending the evening helping Eike try to convince Troy that America is, in fact, a lovely country, and that he can't base his whole opinion of it on the one week he spent in LA. He also wouldn't believe us that America has normal bars, just like everyone else; he was insistent that all bars in America were like the gay club he'd accidentally visited and had a bad experience at.

As for the rest of my life, I turned in my first Australian homework assignment this morning. Yay! It was just a really simple research assignment for Marine Bio, just to prove that we knew how to access and cite journal articles, but it's still a landmark. It also forced me to figure out how to use the UQ printer system, so that was an adventure as well.

Tonight, Emil is coming over so we can make pizza and watch Akira (an anime movie known for its amazing art; Emil was complaining that he couldn't find anything with better art than Death Note, so I made a little suggestion). Tomorrow, QUEST is having a party at Hotel LA in the CBD that's suppose to be fun, with cheap drinks and a door raffle, so I'll probably go to that. Monday was Eike's birthday, so on Saturday I'm going to West End with her and her friends to celebrate, and then on Sunday there's a going-away party for the basement-dweller that I may or may not attend, depending on what the guest list looks like. So far it's only Joe's Chinese friends, which is a little strange, but they're all nice enough. We'll see. I might just go explore South Bank or something instead.

Oh! Also, I finally have a new battery for my computer! It is beautiful and it works great, and now I don't have to worry about my laptop totally dying if the charge cord gets knocked out. Thanks, mom & dad! :)

Much love,
Morgan

Flunkyball

Hello again! I write this post not because I have fun stories to tell (although the last few days have been thrilling enough), but because I have discovered a wonderful new game. It is from Germany, introduced to me by Eike's overly competitive friend Philip, and it's called Flunkyball.

Now is the part where I wonder to myself why I've decided to write this post about Flunkyball, given that I have no pictures of us playing it and I can't easily demonstrate gameplay, but I'm going to try to explain it to the best of my ability:

To play Flunkyball, you need a tennis ball and a mostly empty plastic bottle, partially filled with water to prevent it from tipping over on its own. Each person playing also needs a freshly opened beer. You split the group into two teams, put the bottle in the middle, then measure off paces to each side, where you make a line and set each beer down along it, with the drinkers standing directly behind.

You then have to perform the Flunkyball "theme," which I cannot possibly describe in a text-only environment, so I'm not even going to try. I'll just have to teach you all when I return.

Then game play starts. The first team throws the tennis ball at the bottle, trying to knock it over. If they succeed, every member of that team begins chugging their beer while the members of the other team scramble to retrieve the tennis ball, straighten the bottle and get back behind their line. When the second team makes it back, they shout "STOP!" and the first team has to stop drinking, and it becomes the second team's turn to throw. This goes on, back and forth, until all of the people on one team have finished drinking.

Every member of the team has to take a turn throwing, so you just move down the line. If the tennis ball misses the bottle, it's the other team's turn. If you tip your bottle upside down after you've declared it "finished," and even the tiniest drop falls out, you have to start a new beer. If the tennis ball hits your beer and knocks it over, you have to start a new beer. You may or may not be allowed to protect your beer to prevent it from tipping over, depending on what all the players agreed on at the beginning of the game.

And that's how you play Flunkyball, a game that I am utterly terrible at, although we were playing it in the dark so that's my excuse. Yes, UW students, we will all be playing this game next year. You can count on that.

In other news, if you haven't already, go see Inception. It's not perfect, but it's more than worth your money for the experience. See it in IMAX if you can.

Much love,
Morgan

Always Remember Your Keys, Children

Well. Last night was certainly an interesting one. I went out with Emil and his three roommates, Chantal and Laura (Aussies), and Georgia (Californian), to the snow party. We didn't leave until around 11, though, so by the time we got there the snow was mostly melted. Emil and I got in line for the tobogganing anyway, but they literally stopped letting people go right before our turn. That was a disappointment, so we didn't stay there long.

Instead, we went to a bar downtown called O'Malley's, which was having a Brazilian night. True to form, every time I met a new person there, they asked if I was Brazilian. I have half a mind to give up and just learn Portuguese. XD We stayed there until around 2 AM, when we decided to head home, but not before stopping at Hungry Jack's (sort of like Burger King). Emil and I both really wanted to get ice cream, but they were out, so I bought a slushy instead. That turned out to be a bad decision. Never have I had syrup from a slushy congeal in my stomach like that before. It was pretty gross.

We all caught a taxi home, and there were so many of us that it only cost like a dollar each. I then walked home from Emil's house, feeling slightly nauseous from the stupid slushy, but reassuring myself that I'd be fine once I made it home and into bed.

I arrive home at 3 AM, only to discover that I'd forgotten my keys. I tore my purse apart looking for them, but to no avail. Considering it was 3 AM, I didn't want to wake anybody up, so I went to the front door to see if maybe it was open, but it wasn't. Admitting defeat, I pulled out my cell phone to text Joe or Eike to let me in, but I got an error message back: insufficient funds. In a perfect storm of events, I'd managed to run out of money on my phone just when I needed it most. But, I did not lose hope: there was still the doorbell. It wasn't the most gracious way to wake somebody up, but I didn't have any other options. So I rang the doorbell. And I rang it again. And again. As it turns out, my roommates sleep like logs.

At this point, I was more than distraught, and I seriously considered sleeping outside, or walking back to Emil's house to see if I could crash on the couch. But I decided to persevere, and set my sights on the bathroom window. This bathroom window:


Even slightly buzzed, my ninja skills did not fail me. I pried off the screen, hoisted myself up the drain pipe and went through that tiny little window head first. I then used all my years of ballet and tae kwon do training to gracefully twist myself around and climb down the toilet to the floor. It was actually pretty impressive, if I do say so myself, because the window isn't exactly close to the floor on that side, either:

All I have to say is I'm very lucky that I'm not any fatter, because I think another ten pounds and I wouldn't have been able to fit. For reals.

On another note: Brisbane girls get so dressed up to go out! I felt silly in my jeans and t-shirt. I guess it's time to buy some heels and a dress or two. XD

Much love,
Morgan

SILENCE!

Yesterday, my friends, was the much-awaited Market Day. I joined about a million clubs. It was pretty fantastic, but ultimately not very exciting to write about. Instead, I'm going to write about what I did last night.

First I went to a bar called the RE, with Eike and two of her friends, Philip (Germany) and Beccy (England). It was this large, open bar with a roof and no windows, and there was an old guy in the corner playing acoustic covers of about every mega-hit from the 80s that he could think of. We'd been there for about half an hour when Emil flounced in with a group of kids he'd met at a dance class, one of whom turned out to be another friend of Eike's who she'd been trying to get to come. Emil was very excited about having learned to salsa, and he showed me the dance step he'd learned, and I promptly trounced him at it. Engineers, you know--they just can't dance.

There were about forty various exchange students at the RE because it was a QUEST event, so I met some girls from Brazil, a girl from California, and a dude originally from Australia who was raised in Miami, who was intent on getting me to join the wake boarding club. I told him I'd consider it, but frankly I think the Brisbane River is not somewhere anybody should be swimming. It might mutate your eyeballs into ping pong balls or something.

Around 11, once the RE had lost its charm, we swam to the Regatta hotel, with Eike and Philip complaining the whole time that it was winter and therefore suppose to be dry, and it was all my fault for bringing Seattle weather to their tropical paradise. Yeah, it was raining that hard. But we made it to the Regatta, where the most amazing thing was going on: silent disco.

You went into the back room (called "the Regatta Boathouse"), and they handed you a set of radio headphones, and you put them on and danced to one of two different DJs both performing in the same room. It was fantastic because you could control your own volume, you could take the headphones off if you wanted to talk to someone, and if you didn't like the music on one channel, you could just change to the other one. The best part was whenever a really good song came on the channel you weren't listening to, and you'd hear all the people around you start singing along to it, and then you'd have to switch channels really quickly to get with the program. The best one was when "What Is Love?" by Haddaway came on, and people just went nuts.


We left the club around midnight, and since the Brisbane public transport system is absolute shit, we ended up taking a taxi home. This is really stupid, since technically my house is about half a mile away from the Regatta, but directly across the river. You have to go all the way west to Campus, or east to the downtown area where the bridges are.

Today I have one class, and then a lot of time to kill until 7 o'clock, when I'm going to a snow party. Yeah, you heard me. Snow party. In Brisbane. We'll see....

Much love,
Morgan

P.S. I feel like I complain about the Brisbane transport and navigation systems a lot without ever justifying myself. So, in validation of my whining, I give you this test:


This is a perfectly average Brisbane street sign. Now say, for a moment, that you needed to go down Hardgrave (the street in question). Based on the information from this sign, which way would you go: straight, or right? Have a guess. I'll tell you the answer later.

Day 20

Well. It's been a while, hasn't it? That would be because I haven't been up to terribly exciting things. I discovered that my insanely cheap bike didn't have functional brakes. That was a fun discovery. But then Emil discovered it as well, and an hour and a half later the brakes were as good as new. He then tried to go home, leaving my house around 11, and then at 1 AM I got a call from him asking if he could sleep on the couch since he'd missed the last bus. I found this very interesting, as at least four buses had gone by since he left, and he'd apparently managed to miss all of them. He says he got distracted taking pictures of the stars. Crazy Danish man.

Yesterday I had my first class! It was a three-hour lecture about Aboriginal Cultural Heritage, but it felt like far less than three hours, which I'm taking as a good sign. I had thought it was going to be a huge class, but looking back I'm not sure where I got that idea. There're about 25 kids in the class, 10 of whom are international students, 8 of whom are from North America. Apparently, I go halfway around the world to meet Americans and Canadians. I did mean a couple Australians who seemed really cool, too.

Then, last night, I spent about an hour and a half talking to my German roommate Eike, who I've seen very little of up until this point because she's been gone, but she turns out to be awesome. She's a biomedical major, doing a research project about magnets at UQ. We're going to this thing on Wednesday where people get together at a bar to drink and make new friends. It's organized through a group called QUEST, which I haven't actually joined yet, but I plan to find their booth on Wednesday at Market Day and join then, along with as many other clubs as I possibly can.

Today, I have 7 hours of class: 1 hour of Marine Biology lecture, then 6 hours of Australian Cinema broken up into three separate sections. I'm pretty sure the first 2 hours of that are to be spent simply watching a movie, though, so it shouldn't be too bad. I'm planning to bring candy and share with my neighbors. People are surprisingly easy to bribe into friendship.

As for extra-curricular activities, I guess there's a festival of sorts going on in South Bank next weekend. I have no idea what to expect from it, but I have been promised free concerts, so it should be worth it. This weekend, I have no plans yet, but I know that the crazy Danish man wants to rent a car and go camping on top of Mt. Tibrogargan, so roasting marshmallows at the summit of a "mountain" is a distinct possibility. :P

Hope all is well,
Morgan

Grafitti

More on my photo dump. Go see! :)

Backlog.

Emil FINALLY loaded a few of his pictures to facebook, so I can FINALLY show you the best ones from our hiking excursion. Prepare to be amazed:

Day 14: Things are Accomplished!

Yes, something large and exciting has been accomplished. I finished setting up my room! And it cost me almost no money to decorate, because I'm a genius. Observe:

And yes, that's pretty much all I did today. I also bought some awesome earrings that look like cupcakes at the UQ market (which happens every Wednesday, apparently). Tomorrow I have a safety information session. I'm hoping I will gain important knowledge from this one. If not, though, maybe I'll make a new friend instead. That would also be okay.

Much love,
Morgan

Day 13: Orientating

Orientations are lame. I feel like I'm a freshman again, being told a lot of really useless information in really corny ways designed to try to make it sound interesting. On the bright side, though, getting lumped in with a bunch of other equally bored students is a great way to bond and make friends.

I got to campus around 11.15, which had me there in plenty of time for the 11.30 lunch. I spotted Emil entirely by accident across the field (his hair is hard to miss), so I joined him and some German girls hanging out on the lawn. This is when I discovered that there had actually been an earlier orientation session as well as the one we were about to go in to, which I had apparently totally missed the memo on. Scarlett (from Winnipeg, Canada) assured me that they hadn't said anything useful at all, and this turned out to be the theme for the day.

We went in to the session, which lasted an hour and a half. The most useful thing I learned there? If you bite off both ends of a TimTam chocolate bar and use it as a straw in your coffee, the chocolate inside will melt and then you can eat it all really fast and it's delicious and they call it a TimTam Orgasm (or, for the more PC crowd, a TimTam Slam). Although I did learn that they have a student blogging position specifically for international students that I may volunteer for (haven't decided yet), and I did meet a pretty cool dude named Gavin, from Toronto, Canada, with whom I traded phone numbers before heading off to the student welcome session for the English, Media Studies and Art History department.

I arrived at the session about five minutes early and struck up a conversation with a girl from Perth named Simone, and a guy from Edinburgh named Aran. Fifteen minutes later, the lecturer still hadn't shown up, so I went to the front office on behalf of everybody waiting patiently in that room and asked what the heck was going on. Turned out, they hadn't told anybody in the department that the welcome was happening. The lady at the desk made some frantic phone calls, and the vice-dean of the department came huffing into the room twenty minutes late and apologizing profusely. We got no useful information from her, either, but she was really cool and chill anyway.

Once she'd finished her hurried presentation, Aran mentioned that he was going to an information session for Arts students in general, so I tagged along because I had nothing better to do. It was also pretty useless, but the lady running it was nice and gave us chips (I'm sorry--she gave us crisps), and I met a dude named Richard from China.

I traded facebook information with Richard and Aran, then headed out to West End to wander about for a while in search of things to cover my blank walls. I had little success, though, because most of the shops were closed. I'll have to go back earlier tomorrow, which should be easy enough, especially if the library tour turns out to be as useless and dull as the rest of the orientating has been thus far.

Just as I arrived home, I got a call from Gavin inviting me over for a beer. He lives about a 1/2 hour walk away, so I went over and hung out with him and his roommate Nick for about three hours, during which time we talked about a million things and watched an episode of Top Gear. Gavin expressed great disappointment with the fact that I have a boyfriend (something I made very clear before agreeing to the beer), so I said better luck next time, and gave him a statistic I heard recently that says that Brisbane has one of the highest female-to-male ratios in the world. I have no idea if it's true or not, having heard it second hand, but either way it seemed to cheer him up.

The route to Gavin's house is creepy, by the way. Especially in the dark, like when I was walking home. It's creepy because the main landmark necessary for navigating it is a cemetery. A huge, dark, old cemetery. I found it delightfully inspiring. Perhaps I'll try my hand at supernatural horror fiction. It would be something new for me.

Just before I arrived home, a sudden movement in the bushes startled me. I turned to look, expecting a bird or maybe a squirrel (what it would have been if I were at UW), and instead I saw what looked like a bush baby. Having googled it, I now realize that it was actually a brush-tailed possum. It stared me down. The experience was rather unnerving (though I still snapped a picture), so I hurried away down the street to my house, where I discovered that my key didn't seem to like the lock on the front door much. Luckily, Troy, my basement-living Aussie roommate, was still up and he helped me get it open.


And now that it's midnight, I'm going to sleep. It's been a loooooong day. Hopefully tomorrow I'll find something to make my blank walls less bleak.

Much love,
Morgan

Day 12: Nightlife, Baby

Alright, it's official. Brisbane is the most gorgeous city ever. Seattle, eat your heart out:



That bridge is called "the Story Bridge." I don't know if that's the official name for it, but that's what I'm told it's called. We drove across it at night on the way home from Ngungun a few days ago, and when he saw the city lights through the beams of the bridge, Emil exclaimed, "it looks just like Star Wars! All you need is some flying sausages!" Of course, I laughed hysterically, and he couldn't figure out what was so funny until I finally regained my composure enough to explain. "Saucers, dear. It's flying saucers."



Spent the day/night with Emil, traipsing around Brisbane, taking gorgeous pictures (as you can probably tell). We went to a bar for a little while, where Emil was delighted to realize that he had the opportunity to buy me my first legal drink.



I then introduced him to the concept of light graffiti, which he had never heard of, but wanted to try immediately. Luckily my new phone has a flashlight mode, so we spent about an hour in a dark park, drawing things in the bushes. Unfortunately, all of the pictures are on his camera. So, once again, you'll all have to wait on those. :)

All the best,
Morgan

P.S. New pictures on the photodump.