One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Today was spent diving on the Great Barrier Reef, which was....in a word.....AWESOME.  It was my first time scuba-diving, and I loved it!  Except it made me feel kind of like the plastic scuba figures people put in fish tanks.  That's what the reef initially felt like for me, was an oversized fish tank that I was swimming in.  I was doing ok sea-sickness-wise until we all had to get our briefing for scuba, meaning that I had to stare at this guy and not at the horizon, which was.....bad.  I held out as long as I could, but had to go outside at the end and try to recover.  Bleh, not fun.  Once I got in the water though, I felt fine.  Cairns is awesome for the fact that it is the middle of the Australian winter and it is 77 degrees outside, with incredibly warm water.  YAY.  

We did all our "learn how to not suck at scuba" exercises when we first got in the water, and then finally set out following our instructor around to look at stuff.  He would occasionally stop us all and tell us to kneel down on the sand to either check our air levels, or to point something out.  At one point he went and kind of shoved some sand over, and a little stingray flew out and swam away!  So cool!  Later this MASSIVE fish came swimming over, that apparently comes over every time this group dives, and was letting everybody touch it and grab its face and steer it around and stuff.  Kind of weird, but cool at the same time??

On my second dive I saw a giant sea turtle that I swam along with, both sort of staring at each other questioningly....Then apparently the Scottish guys I was diving with breathe way too much, so they had to surface early b/c they were out of air, but my guide took my back down solo anyway to check more stuff out.  He took me into this trench and my first thought was "swim OVER the trench, not THROUGH it".  Curse you, Finding Nemo, for permanently altering my perceptions of Australia!!

I did find Nemo!  He was hiding in an anenenememone.  Standard.  So then on the boat ride back, I....passed out.  Look, you can only be in the sun for about 8 hours straight without getting a little sleepy, and when you add in the whole....gently rocking boat....you get bedtime.

Flying to Darwin tomorrow, and apparently have to get to the airport at 11 for my 1 o'clock flight?  I hate JetStar.  Get to Darwin a little after 3, will probably drop my stuff off at the hostel and roam for a while before sleeping again.

Thus far, have been perfectly content traveling alone, and am loving life in general.  I am SO excited to make my way to SE Asia, even though the Bokator master in Cambodia won't email me back.  I'm gonna get his number and call him up.  No joke.....

18 hours.....3 cities.....what?

So my night spent in Sydney was pretty good.  I got relatively lucky in that my hostel roommates just didn't return during the night, so I didn't have to deal with being awoken or awkward introductions or any of that stuff.  I set my stuff down and went to walk around downtown, and surprisingly got my bearings back almost instantly.  My hostel was in a really great location since it was right next to the central train station, and not too far from Darling Harbour/Circular Quay.  Since it was about 9:30 p.m. when I set out, I just decided to pay one last visit to the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, which were really beautiful at night, and just enjoyed the vibe of Sydney on a Saturday night.  I then returned to my room, did a short workout and stretched and then passed out.

My sleep was a bit interrupted though as the window wasn't sealed very well, and my blanket wasn't very heavy, so it was pretty chilly, but luckily I had to get up early to catch my flight to Cairns anyway.  I marched my way to the train station, hopped on the train to the airport, and then....got stuck.  For some reason, my flight to Cairns didn't even BOARD until the time it was supposed to leave?  That was annoying....

The flight was pretty good though, and I had some episodes of CSI still loaded on my computer that kept me entertained during the whole thing, then waited a billion years for a taxi from the Cairns airport to my hostel, only to discover that my hostel was closed from 12-4.  I landed at 2.  ARG.  But it was ok, I walked over to the mall and got some food and hijacked internet to keep myself entertained (I didn't want to move too much since I had my pack and backpack).  

And now I'm at my hostel, resting and prepared for the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow!  I'm so excited!  2 introductory scuba dives and snorkeling!  And SUN!  Finally warmth and sun!  It's been so good (except the humidity, but I'm southern, I can deal).

Anyways, time for a much needed shower, and rest before getting food and passing out.  Updates tomorrow! 

A Fond Farewell

I have spent five months in Melbourne.  And it is now over.  Where did the time go?  Someone here put it very well, in saying that they couldn't remember when we went from saying "we still have this much time left" to "we ONLY have this much time".  This is one of the most amazing countries I have had the pleasure to visit, and really hope I can come back soon, possibly to live for good.  

I have met some of the greatest people here, especially from jiujitsu.  I am gonna miss my girls team SO SO much.  I learned so much from them, it's amazing.  Last night, Robyn told me that from the way I was rolling, she would have promoted me to my orange belt if she had the power.  It felt really good to hear that from someone like her, who is a really sharp, really technical fighter.  I feel like my game has completely changed, but I won't really know until I get back to Berkeley and am on the mat again.  July is gonna be really hard to spend so long away from training, so I'm gonna have to really focus to stay sharp on my techniques.  I will always remember what I've learned from everyone at GZ: Carmen, Robyn, Jardi, Ann, Chris, Richard, Carrie.  EVERYONE.  I will miss training.

So after five months in Australia, what have I learned?

1. Everything is better with an Australian accent

2. Pack light

3. If you can survive New Zealand in the winter, you can survive ANYTHING

4. Melbourne weather can change faster than a Vegas showgirl

5. Souvlaki is best consumed at 3 a.m. after a long night out

6. Microbiology is hard no matter where you take it

7. Emus were spawned by pure evil

8. Seeing kangaroos never gets old

9. There is no shame in sleeping for 14 hours straight

10. No worries

Sydney tonight, Cairns tomorrow until the 31st, Darwin on the 1st.

Updates to come

Less than 72 hours left....

I can't believe this is over!!  I have less than 3 days in Melbourne.  And they are ALL going to be BUSY.

In the next 2 days, I have to take my final, run an errand with Stathi, print out my flight itineraries, have my very last jiujitsu, boxing, and kickboxing practices, my farewell dinner with the BJJ girls team & Carmen, my last night clubbing in Melbourne, ship my bags, clean my room, send all the care packages I have accumulated, ARG!!!

At least I'm relatively on top of my traveling?!  I have set up my driver for Cambodia, booked my Great Barrier Reef trip, emailed my Athens couchsurf, and my Thailand kickboxing gym.  *phew*  So much to do!!  I feel like I'm going to be going at hyperspeed for the month of July, and once I return to the states, I will CRASH.

Also on my to-do list, find out if I can get in to the UCMAP summer camp, which starts 1 day after I get back to Berkeley.  I'd hate to have to spend 4-5 days bumming around Berkeley without mat time, since I've been itching to get back to YMD since.....I left?  Also I apparently have to take care of my telebears while.....in Cairo.  Hrm....that'll be interesting.

So much to do, so little time.  Next update will hopefully be before I leave, otherwise.....Sydney, probably.

No More Churrooooos

So I spent pretty much the last week locked in my studying cave o' doom, depressed about life since I couldn't go play in Melbourne :(  My BMB final wasn't too bad, but I definitely could have done better on it.  The bad part came with my neuroscience exam, however.  The questions were pretty vague, and context dependent, so picking the single "correct" answer was pretty hard :/  But now that it's over and done with I just have microbiology to focus on.  I'm hoping if I set a really strict study schedule for myself, I'll be able to both study, go to martial arts, and have some playtime in Melbourne too.  

More and more I'm realizing what an incredible city Melbourne is.  There is just so much to see and do, and I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface....I will definitely miss it.  It was SO weird to have to say goodbye to Christine last night :(  It's finally setting in that my time in Australia is pretty much up, which makes me sad.  I really do love it here, and hope I can move back at some point....

I spent today out with Melissa, Camille, and Nancy, which was good fun.  We wandered around downtown for a bit, then went to check out the Shrine of Remembrance, which is the Victorian state war memorial, which was really really cool.  The Australians have a really huge amount of respect for their soldiers, so it was neat to visit, and watch the police take down the Australian flag at the closing of the shrine to the bugle calls and whatnot.  

We took a quick break to go bundle up in some warmer clothes, and then headed down to the Docklands to check out a fire-festival, but unfortunately we got there too late, but we still had a good time wandering around the area.  Afterwards we headed up to Lygon Street to visit San Churro to get some fresh cinnamon-y churros with melted dark chocolate. mmmmmm

I then said goodbye to Nancy and headed back home where I am now attempting to cram as much clothing into my suitcase as possible, and draw up a tightly-wound study schedule....

11 days left in Australia :(

Traiiiiiiins

The past few days have been hectic, but good fun.  After getting back from New Zealand, I unfortunately had to seal myself in my dorm room to crank out my two papers that were due on thursday, which, despite my best efforts, were complete crap anyways, but they're done, so that felt good.

Everybody went out for a post-first week of finals celebration, which was hilarious, as usual.  We met up with a bunch of Christine's friends from jiujitsu who are CRAZY!  We hopped to 3 different bars, and met....interesting people.  The last bar we went to had several people dressed up in costumes, so I think we missed the memo or something, but seeing some guy dressed up at Hitler was.....awkward?  Not as awkward as the guy wearing the bed-bug outfit though.....he was wearing a MATTRESS.....in a CLUB......weird....

So when we woke up the next morning, we all FINALLY went to an Aussie-rules football game between the Western Bulldogs (WOOO!) and the Brisbane Lions.  It was nice to sit and gossip with the girls while watching the game, and all in all, had a good time watching the Bulldogs whoop up on the Lions BIG TIME.  The score was something like 113 to 68.  Ouch.....

On the way to the game, apparently a bunch of Melbourne Uni students thought it would be hilarious to dress up like ZOMBIES and march around Federation Square, so we got off the tram to what is pretty much my worst nightmare (I constantly worry that I will be caught in the middle of a zombie-horde unprepared).  It was REALLY funny though to see people slowly wandering around and groaning.  This one guy walked onto the tram tracks in his bloody zombie costume and marched up to the front of the tram, grumbling "braiiiiiiiins" at the tram driver.  Classic.

Then as we were walking to the stadium someone pointed at Flinders Street Station (the HUGE train station in Melbourne) and said "TRAIIIIIIIIIINS".  PRICELESS.  I laughed for a good 20 minutes about that one. 

Today was spent at the QV hunting souvenirs etc. to get my last round of shipments out the door before....I'M out the door.  WEIRD.  Have a final tomorrow also, and another on Friday, so it'll be a busy week.....arg!

Land of the Kiwis!!

Oh man, sorry for the lack of updates, but I spent the entire last week in New Zealand, and it was AWESOME!!

Day 1:

Stathi said he'd drive us to the airport, but was convinced we didn't need to be at the airport super early, so he dropped us off about....an HOUR before our flight was supposed to leave, so we had to awkwardly get pulled out of the line to check our bags and sprint to get through customs (apparently you have to go through customs BEFORE getting to NZ, and then again upon arrival, it's weird...)

Then we arrive in NZ, and forgot to print our itinerary for our return ticket, which apparently New Zealand customs didn't believe that we were genuinely planning on leaving after a week, so we had to sit and wait while they called Qantas to check our return flight.  Embarrassing?  Yes....

SO we finally get out into Wellington, and the weather is.....gross.  We picked up our rental car and decided to head up to Taupo that night (about a 5 hours drive) because we were going to go bungy jumping up there, so our night pretty much consisted of getting that far.

Day 2:

When we woke up, we for some reason decided that bungy jumping would be a good way to start our day off, so we drove over to Taupo bungy.  When we got to the bungy place, holy crap nerves set in!  I looked out on the platform which was over this lake, and it finally registered in my brain that I was about to....jump OFF with nothing but a rubber band on my feet pretty much.  

We had to stand around for a while to wait for the weather to clear (theme of the trip), but then we finally headed out to the platform to get ready to jump.  There was this one guy in line in front of us, and he got all strapped in and everything, but as he was ON the platform chickened out and couldn't do it, so I got called up as the FIRST jumper of the day.  EEK!

So I'm standing out on the platform FREAKING OUT as I'm about 150 feet over this river.....

"3....2....1...BUNGY!" My brain couldn't decide if it wanted to keep my legs locked out, or to jump, so I bent my legs to jump as I was leaning forwards, but I guess fear took control of my muscles and I didn't extend the jump, so I sort of just......toppled.....but I made it off the platform!  It was SO scary to feel COMPLETE freefall in your entire body, but it was really fun!

As we left, we were going to drive to Rotorua to Zorb (rolling down a hill in a giant plastic human hamster ball...) but on the way, actually got clipped by another car, which then proceeded to drive off!  Hit and run!  Arg.  Luckily I wasn't driving/liable, but it was still scary, and we had to drive to Rotorua to instead file a police report.  Not as fun as Zorbing I think....

So that sort of killed the Zorb mood, and we just drove up to the northern coast of the island and collected ourselves that night.

Day 3:

We returned to Wellington that day (long drive), got a replacement rental car, and I got to meet up with Courtney!!!  Oh MAN it was so exciting to see a familiar face from home!!  I still can't believe we managed to meet up in NEW ZEALAND!  So we wandered around Wellington for the night, and planned out our next few days.  She wasn't free for a bit of the trip, so we opted to cruise around the North Island to track down sites where they filmed Lord of the Rings, until she was free to come around with us.

Day 4:

We set out the next morning to check out Mount Victoria with Courtney, which is where they filmed the scenes with the hobbits in the woods with the black riders.  The top has an AWESOME view of Wellington, which was so pretty, and after checking that out, we wandered the woods for a bit looking for the sites, but failed to find them :/

We dropped Courtney off in the afternoon since she had interviews to do after checking out the Te Papa museum for a little bit, then we drove off to hunt more LOTR!  We arrived in this place called Otaki where they shot a bunch of scenes with the hobbits fleeing Bree, and saw this really cool canyon in the middle of nowhere, which was pretty sweet, and then drove to Matamata for the night.

Day 5:

We signed up the next morning for a tour of the Hobbiton set in Matamata, which turned out to be super cool!  New Line cinemas apparently required all of the sets to be destroyed as soon as they were done filming, which is why the set only has the frames of the hobbit holes left over, but it was so neat to check it out!  We roamed around there on our tour for a while, then at the end got to watch a sheep-shearing demonstration?  Weird.  Oh New Zealand....

Later that day we made our way to Tongariro National Park where Mount Doom is located, but due to shoddy map-work, were unable to find a way INTO the actual part to get to the base, so we only got pictures from afar.  Curse you Mount Doom!  In our attempt to get into the park, we turned onto this road which apparently lead to a ski-resort, but began as gravel....then rocks.....then deep sand....yeah we opted to turn around before our rental car died....that would have been BAD.

Day 6:

After stopping in Wanganui for the night, we went to check out Rivendell, which was pretty much just woods, but again was really pretty and was neat to hike around in.  On our way back to Wellington, we checked out the park where they filmed Isenguard scenes and where they shot some of the Anduin river scenes too.  SUCH a nerd :D  

Once we got back to Wellington, we met up with Courtney and her friend again and grabbed dinner at this really tasty Indian place before turning in for the night and preparing for SKYDIVING!!

Day 7:

We woke up WAY too early, grabbed Courtney, and drove BACK to Taupo for skydiving, except on getting there, the weather looked.....bad.  REALLY cloudly, going through spurts of rain.  Not what you want to see when you're running out of time and want to jump out of a plane....So we ended up just riding around the Taupo area killing time for a few hours hoping the weather would improve.  We did stop at this glass-blowing place where Courtney and I watched a SUPER cool demonstration and had some good talking time, before heading back to the skydiving place with fingers crossed....

When we got there, they said we could wait around for LONGER to see if the weather cleared up.  We didn't have much other option, since we had come too far to give up at that point, and finally there was a break in the weather and they said we could jump!

SO we got suited up and were tingling with nerves, and climbed into this tiny tin-can of a plane and climbed up to 12000 feet, connected to our tandem instructors.  I AGAIN was the first to have to go, so they slide the door of the plane open, and we are ABOVE the clouds.  EEK!  I shimmeyed over to the edge, gave one last frantic look at the camera, and tumbled out of the plane!  It was really scary at first because you feel yourself in complete free-fall, but once you hit your terminal velocity, you just feel like you're floating, and it was so cool!

Then my instructor pulled the chute and we got to parachute down through the clouds and cruise around on the air currents for a bit checking out the awesome scenery from 4000 feet over Lake Taupo!

A pretty sweet end to the week, I must say.  All in all, New Zealand was great.  It's a beautiful country, and I enjoyed getting to wander around in nature for a week and getting my adrenaline rushes and seeing Courtney :D

Now it's back to the real world of.....papers due on thursday etc. etc.  ARG!