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