Pictures.

I've created a couple public albums where I can dump photos for you all to look at. I'll also add whatever photos I collect from other people that you might not be able to see on Facebook or elsewhere. It's entirely possible that I could run out of room in these albums before the end of my trip, but I'll worry about that when I get there.

Click here to see pictures!!!! :D

Check back regularly to see if I've added any new ones. This way you can see more than just the few I choose to put into my actual blog. :)

Today was/is a lazy day. I might go out and find something to do tonight, but more likely I'm just going to chill out until bedtime. First day of orientation week is tomorrow. See you on the flip side. :)

Much love,
Morgan

P.S. I just bought a bike, lock and helmet from the girl who's moving out of my room for $40 ($35). I love getting cheap shit. It's pretty great.

Day 10: "Mountains" and the Beach

Today was a day of gorgeousness and pictures. I checked out of my hostel early this morning, met up with Emil and got picked up by Joe, and after a quick stop by the house, we headed out to Glasshouse Mountains to meet up with Joe's friends. The "mountain" we ended up climbing was called Ngungun, and it only took about twenty minutes to get to the top. Call that a mountain???

It was one of those hikes where you have to put in very little effort for a big payoff (the best kind). Halfway up, we found a pseudo-cave, which I assume was some sort of lava tube, and of course I climbed into it. So did Emil. We were the only ones in our group.

Then we went on to the "summit", which can hardly be called a summit because never should it take twenty minutes to get to the top of a mountain. The view was absolutely spectacular, though, since the surrounding country is so flat, and I took about a million pictures. We spent an hour at the top, just delighting in the scenery and finding cool places to take even more pictures. The best ones are on Emil's camera, though. I'll try to steal them from him later to share with you.


Once we'd finished with the mountains, the whole group stopped for lunch at a tavern/bar, and then we went out to Bribie Island to see the Pacific Ocean. It was absolutely gorgeous, and it was kind of nice to know that all you lovely folks were on the other side of it.


Oh, and there were some ninjas.


And a car.

:) Love you all!
Morgan

Day 9: The Oath

Look at that, people. This blog post gets its very own title. Whoa, man.

I don't know how many of you have noticed, but I have a countdown on my blog. Those numbers are clicking down to the very moment that I step off the plane in SeaTac airport in December (in a perfect world, where there are no delays). That means that, from this moment, I have approximately 156 days to see and experience as much of Australia as I possibly can.

Additionally, now that I've found all-inclusive housing at a screamingly low price where I won't even need to pay for transportation on a daily basis, I can live on the housing allowance my parents gave me (including food) without tapping into my inheritance money. This means that I have a rather large sum of money to spend on said experiences and traveling opportunities without a whole lot of worry about running out too soon.

Of course, I'll have to save a large portion of that money for the final 4 weeks Russell and I plan to spend traveling around, and I'll need to set aside a sizable amount for my mid-semester trip to visit him in Perth, but I'm still left with more spare funds than I'm use to having. This means, essentially, that I can afford to do whatever I want.

So here's the plan: from now on, I say yes. Yes to everything that anybody suggests that I do, anywhere anybody invites me to go, anything that anybody wants me to try. If I'm invited to a concert, I say yes. If someone suggests surfing lessons, I say yes. If somebody wants to go watch a lecture from some obscure professor I've never heard of, I say yes. If I'm invited bungee jumping or sky diving or on a four-day trek out into the middle of the outback in a rented Winnebago, I say yes. Because I can afford the price, but I can't afford to miss the opportunity.

There are some obvious exceptions to this rule. No drugs, nothing that would betray my relationship status, and nothing that will get me killed. But everything else is on the table.

Additionally, I have to seek out at least one thing to do every week that is worth blogging about. So far that hasn't been a problem, and hopefully it won't become one, but just in case. :) And you all can hold me to that.

That's my plan, and I'm sticking with it, starting yesterday, when my new roommate invited me to go bushwalking (read: hiking) with him and some of his QUT friends in the Glasshouse Mountains. So that's what I'll be doing tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have some lovely pictures for you all.

Much love,
Morgan

Day 7

Greetings strangers! I have wonderful news. I believe I've found a place to live. I'm not 100% sure, because there's another place I have to go see tomorrow, but I visited it today and it's fantastic.

The guy I'd be renting it from is a guy named Joe, who's a Chinese immigrant who's now a student at QUT working toward his doctorate. He's quiet, but very nice and easy going and fun to talk to. The other roommate I didn't get to meet, but she's a German girl who goes to UQ. The room is medium sized and cozy, and comes with more drawer/shelf space than I could possibly fill considering that I have to bring everything back home in a suitcase, and a single bed next to a window. It has this huge basement/garage where there's a bunch of other furniture, blankets, electronics, bikes, balls, tennis rackets—all of which I'm free to use whenever I feel like it. I don't even have to buy linens. Just take my pick of what's in the basement, wash it, and settle right in. The internet is wireless with unlimited downloads (because, as I just discovered today, in Australia they limit how many MB you're allowed to download per month, just like minutes in a cell phone plan), so I don't have to worry about overusing it. The living/dining room/kitchen (it's all one big room) is small, but very cozy, and the decorations are simple but colorful, just the way I like it. The bathroom is clean. There's a rudimentary basketball court outside and a washing machine downstairs, as well as a pool table. The spare beds/couches stored down there also mean that I can have people sleep over without worrying about having enough space for them (I'm looking at you, Russell). It's about a 15 minute walk from campus over the “Green Bridge,” which means I'm guaranteed to see the river every day but I won't have to spend a ton of money paying to take the CityCat, and rent is A$140 with everything included.

So I have to go see this other place tomorrow, since I've already arranged it, but I think this is what I'm going to stick with. Right now the previous tennant still has her stuff in the room, but Joe says that he'll make her move it all out before Saturday, when I have to leave the hostel, and he'll even pick me up and drive me over so I don't have to haul my suitcase across Highgate Hill. He even gave me a ride back to my hostel so that I wouldn't have to walk in the dark. How awesome is that?

I'm feeling very optimistic about this, as you can clearly tell. I'm going to sleep on it, because I don't want to jump too quickly, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to sleep much better than I have been. Excellent.

And now, because my last post was so short and I'm bored, a few observations I've made since arriving here:

1. In Australia, they do not believe in roads that make sense. At all. Not only are the roads twisty and strange and going off in directions that no road has any business going, but they are only very rarely labeled, so it's quite easy to wander along the wrong street for a mile before coming across a road sign and discovering that it's not the road you thought it was. This goes doubly for intersections. Rather than simply having a post at each corner clearly labeling the roads, they might, if you're very, very lucky, have a single sign in the middle of one of the roads, strategically placed so that you cannot tell if it's talking about the road it's parallel to or the one it's perpendicular to. Your only option, as far as I can tell, is to be psychic and already know which road it's referring to. Thus, the road sign is rendered effectively useless, serving only as a smug reassurance to those who already know where they're going.

2. In Australia, doctor's offices have to advertise. With billboards. I can't count the number of signs I've seen that say something like, “Sick? Come see Dr. Anderson! He's a trained physician!” Seriously, guys? You're going to base your medical care on advertising? The same goes for dentists and optometrists. Additionally, they don't have pharmacies around here. They have “chemists.” It took me a good four or five days to figure out that's what they are. They're often located right next door to the doctor's or dentist's, usually with the exact same style of sign, as though they went into business together, which they probably did.

3. Finally, in Australia, they don't believe in dryers. Everything is hang dry. Sure, you can find dryers if you go into a laundromat where the tourists wash their clothes, but I've seen a lot of private residences in the last few days and not one of them had a dryer. Instead, they all have these metal contraptions in the back yard that look sort of like a sideways windmill, with the pole in the middle and the arms spinning about a few feet off the ground, and between them are these wires that you hang your clothes on. I find it hard to believe that people don't simply waltz into strangers' back yards and take whatever they think looks good, because it would be incredibly easy to do. I find it a bit distressing that they don't believe in dryers here. It may sound weird, but I can already tell I'm going to miss the warmth & smell of clothes fresh out of the dryer. Plus, if anybody's ever tried wearing jeans that were hung dry, you'll understand my concerns in that department. So not comfortable.

Well, that's all I've got. Hopefully the search for housing is over, and now I can settle in, relax and prepare for the real adventure.

Love,
Morgan

P.S. Now, as I'm posting this, the following day, I would like to report that I decided to get the place. Yay for having somewhere to live!

Day 6

Hello! Today was a day filled with many exciting things. As you may remember, I was going to go to the beach today. That did not happen. Instead, Emil called up and suggested that we go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary instead. So, I met up with him and some of his hostel friends and we bussed it out there, and spent the day chilling with some kangaroos.

Emil spent most of the day taking pictures of them with his fancy camera.


I thought that this post would be more exciting. As it turns out, going to the sanctuary doesn't make for a very good story. We wandered about, saw some emus, some dingos, some koalas, some birds, some wombats. Then we went to the gift shop and Emil put on a funny hat.


Then we trekked back to campus and have spent the last couple hours looking for housing. I have another place to see tonight, possibly two, and another on Friday, assuming the ones I'm trying to line up for tomorrow don't work out. I'm suppose to be out of my hostel by Saturday morning. Wish me luck!

All the best,
Morgan

Day 5

Exciting news, everybody! No, I didn't find housing, although that would be exciting. Rather, I made a friend! Like, a real, live, actual friend. He is from Denmark and his name is Emil and he is awesome.

Here's how it happened: I got up this morning and got ready to go to campus, and Ann told me that she was very sorry, but she couldn't make it because she had to go see another house right then. I shrugged it off, promised to tell her if I could get a card so that she would know before she made the trek, then headed out.

I arrived on campus and sort of meandered up to the student union building, passing a large group of kids all holding these white plastic bags, one of whom looked surprisingly similar to my friend Tanner. I arrived at the union building, and at first I was tempted to log on to the internet before I did anything else, just to check for messages from home, but I decided to exercise my willpower and instead went straight to the student services office. I had barely stepped in the door when the lady behind the counter was like, "are you a new student?" and I was like "...yeah." Then she shoved one of the white plastic bags into my hand and told me to follow the flock.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I took my goodies and tracked down the group. By the time I found the correct room, most of the people were already there, and my choices in seating were either all the way at the back, or next to the Tanner lookalike. I chose the Tanner lookalike.

I know what you're thinking, but I did not speak to the Tanner lookalike. I thought about it, but we were being talked at by a nice lady, and it would have been rude. Instead, I just absorbed all the information I could, and once the session was over I headed back to my pizza cafe with the intention of logging on and continuing my search in earnest.

This plan was short-lived, however, as moments after I'd settled onto the couch, the Tanner lookalike came waltzing up the stairs from another part of the building, looking very much as though he wanted a plug. Figuring that the universe was trying to tell me something, I invited him to use the plug I was using and sit with me. We proceeded to spent the next couple hours talking and laughing and comparing housing listings. He even got to talk to my parents, because they logged on to skype while I was sitting there. In those two hours, I learned many things about him, but one thing more important than the others: he is the perfect friend for me.

His name is Emil. He is from Denmark. He's a physics/engineering student who's studying here for six months, with the plan to travel around more afterward before going home. He's really in to science fiction and fantasy, and one of his favorite books is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. But, most importantly of all, he'd left his girlfriend behind in Denmark, and they'd broken up before he left, and he was still rather upset about it and feeling lonely with no one to hang out with. Seeing as that is basically exactly how I feel, although I didn't break up with my boyfriend, we ended up being able to sympathize with each other really well. It was nice to get to talk to someone face-to-face instead of over the Internet. We got lunch and made plans to go to the beach on Wednesday. I'm excited.

In the meantime (tomorrow), the quest for housing continues!

Much love,
Morgan

Day 4

As I'm sure you all already noticed, I managed to actually post my blogs! Finally. Geeze.

I hope you all enjoyed my sunrise pictures. I drug myself out of a very cozy bed to get those for you, because the jet lag is starting to wear off and I'm finding it harder to get up in time to see the sun rise. I may not keep it up for many more days. Especially since I stayed up far too late last night watching A Very Potter Musical (which you should all see), since I remembered that I had the entire thing on my external hard drive and I wouldn't need an Internet connection for it.

So I woke up early, photographed the sunrise, then spliced all the pictures together for your enjoyment. :) Then I took a shower and got ready for my second venture out to UQ, this time to search for housing in earnest. On my way to the university, I found my first Australia four leaf clover. Huzzah!

I wish I could say that my first foray into house-hunting was successful, but I would be telling a big fat lie. I spent the first couple hours on campus sitting in a pizza shop where there were plugs available, and the store workers (also students) were more than happy to tolerate me. After I remembered how to navigate the housing website I'd been using, I lined up three places to go see.

I found place number one with little difficulty. The guy who lived there—Jag—texted me very clear directions (which he could do, because in Australia you're allowed 918 characters per message. Why 918? We may never know), and it was a pleasant 10-minute walk away. The outside of the building was super cute, so I had high hopes when I went up to the open door and shouted to see if anyone was home. Jag came right down and invited me in, and the first thing I noticed was the smell. The place smelled. Not, like, really horribly strongly, but the odor was distinct and I had to fight the urge to immediately walk out. Jag was nice enough, and he showed me the bedroom and the side room that was also available for my use. Interestingly enough, the side room was bigger than the bedroom. Considerably so. They really should have been renting that out instead. In addition to the smell, the kitchen and hallways and bathroom were all excessively filthy, and that's coming from me. I'm not exactly a neat freak, but that place was gross.

I politely told Jag that I would think about it, and high-tailed it away from there.

Next on my list, I had to walk back to campus, and then across the expressway bridge to the neighborhood across the water, where I was suppose to meet a guy named Ashok (the landlord) about renting a room in his place. On my way there, though, I got very lost, despite the meticulous directions that I had written out for myself before leaving campus. I sort of kept wandering around, hoping to come across a street name I recognized, when a lady pulled up in front of me with two other students (a french couple) in the car and asked me if I was looking for housing.

Why yes, I was, I told her, and she suggested that I hop in the car and look at the place she was taking the other two students to. I didn't have any better ideas, so I got in and headed over with her. Her places were really cute, but too expensive for me and also pretty far away from campus, so I told her that I wasn't going to be able to rent anything from her. She was totally chill about it, and took me back to a train station, where I called Ashok and told him what had happened, and he offered to pick me up and drive me to the house. While I was waiting, it started to rain a bit, which I actually enjoyed. It's too hot here.

The place Ashok was renting was also super cute, with this awesome pond/bridge in the back yard and fairly large rooms, but it was also far away and hard to get to, and the other three bedrooms were occupied by all guys, who were also all international students. One of them was in the kitchen when we walked in, and Ashok told me he was from Ghana, so of course I had to make the obligatory World Cup reference about them beating us and he sort of just rolled his eyes at me. Yeah. Hahaha. Very funny.

I told Ashok that I wasn't comfortable living with three guys I didn't know, and he said that he understood, and then proceeded to spend the next ten minutes showing me around the property even more and going on at length about what nice guys they all were, and how the house is really more like a family, and he wouldn't stand for any funny business on his property. I smiled politely and commented on his garden and then leaped at the chance to escape when his wife offered to drive me back to the end of the bridge, where I could find my way again.

The third place I was suppose to see, run by a guy named George, had some scheduling conflicts, so now I'm suppose to go back there tomorrow.

Now thoroughly discouraged, I headed back to campus and settled down in an offshoot of the same pizza cafe as before, though in a slightly more private area, and spent over an hour talking to Drew on skype and recharging my batteries for the long trek back to the hostel. The great thing about campus is that my internet connection there is both free and totally functional, and I'm not the only one taking advantage of it. It's hard to find open plugs there, even on a Sunday.

As I was leaving campus, I was rewarded with an absolutely gorgeous sunset. I took several pictures of it on the way home, both on campus and from the CityCat, but no panoramas this time. The CityCat moves too quickly for that.

In other news, I have three totally new roommates today, and one of them is a girl from France named Ann-something (she says to just call her Ann), who is also here to study at UQ, and is also looking for housing. She speaks English really well, though sometimes there's a little bit of confusion, but I'm starting to suspect that she's one of those people who is just so very, very nice that it's almost shocking. Not that I have a problem with that, or anything. :P I suggested that we head over to campus together tomorrow to get student ID cards and double-check administrative stuff. She said she wasn't planning to do it until next week, but agreed that it was a good idea to get it done early. We're heading out at 10.30 AM, so that I have time to check in on my bank account in the morning.

My other new roommate is a dude named Johnny who's about 40 years old and missing an arm. Hostels, huh? He had all sorts of advice about finding housing, most of which both Ann and I were already tapped in to, but the sentiment was appreciated.

The third one is a lady from Melbourne named Marie who's here for work. I haven't spoken to her much, though, so there isn't anything else to report.

Much love,
Morgan

P.S. So I have my US phone with me, on airplane mode, mostly just to use as an alarm. Originally I was going to shut it off after I got an Aussie phone, but it hasn't been charged since I left four days ago and the battery hasn't gone down at all. Now I kind of just want to leave it on to see how long it lasts. It's amazing how much power calling/texting can suck.