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 Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:48 pm
Ehmagod! So! Tomorrow I leave to spend 5 months in Australia!! Exciting, right??
My study abroad adviser told us that its a very good idea to keep a journal, online or in an actual journal, about our journey. I dont keep irl journals but I do keep online ones. So I was all "OOO! I'll keep one on gaia!"
I was going to do it in my actual gaia journal, but then I remembered that only like 2 people read it. And what is the point of keeping journals if you arent attention whoring? I mean I guess for some people they keep journals for other reasons, but thats not for me.
SO! I decided to just keep track of what I do and all my super fun adventures in I Am Me. And I know you all will LOVE reading about it, because HELLO who doesnt want to read all about my life? 4laugh
I'll start it when I get there and I can tell you all how amazingly fun it is to spend 23 hours on a plane biggrin FUN TIMES IM SURE!
OH! And it is my goal to send out as many postcards as humanly possible from every new place I go, sooo if you want to join my postcard mailing list give me your address plz.
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:57 pm
HAVE FUN AND TAKE SO MANY PICTURES!
IM me on msn and I'll give you my address :3
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:00 pm
Oh s**t I forgot to give you my addy. Do you have an AIM? I want to IM it to you.
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:27 pm
OMG you have to send me postcards!! See the plural! Plural! Haha.
I'm going to miss you on the internet, haha. I hope you have fun, I know you will. Remember if you see a wallaby you have to rename it after me, Matthew or Gthb is acceptable. xDD
Have fun! I want you explore everything! But be careful, so many poisonous animals and spiders. EWWW spiders. Ew.
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:45 pm
GtHb poisonous animals and spiders. EWWW spiders. Ew. PLATYPUS. PLEASE NAME A PLATYPUS AFTER ME ... biggrin Spiders ... Did you know spiders the size of a textbook are normal there? (j/k) But srsly watch out.
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:32 pm
The pink is going from 1600+miles long to 8700+ miles long. Siamese im going to miss you. You best send me almost the most postcards.
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Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 11:42 pm
OMG! SO! I'm in Australia!!! YAY FOR ME!!!
I dont even know where to start with this update, because there has been so much going on.
The flight pretty much sucked. Not suprising. It wasnt as bad as I thought though. My mommy took my phone before she left me at the airport, so she could use it for business while I'm away. I think I'm a bit addicted to my blackberry....it was no fun not having it ;_____;
Of course there was a crying baby on both my flights. Not cute. Good stuff though - THEY WERE PLAYING HSM 3 ON THE PLANE biggrin I watched it twice, once on each flight, and I also watched little Miss Sunshine.
After practically dying on the flight I met this girl Susan who was going to the Warranmbool campus. She is really fun. Our driver dropped us off at Subway to get food. We learned that Aussies call American cheese Old English cheese. We also learned that we should look to the left when crossing the street, not the right. We almost died, it was cute. I still have that problem, a week later. It is REALLY hard to get into the habit of looking to the left. Now I just dont know where to look ever so I look both ways, which I guess is good.
Three guys arrived the same day we did, we were all put in temp housing. Then we went out with Ally for shopping and dinner. She's the international exchange adviser, she is really fun and really nice. I was really, really, really sleepy during dinner and went to sleep as soon as I got back to school. But I was really happy because I did manage to stay away until 9pm and we had gotten there at 11am so yeah I had to stay awake for a long time.
The next day we did banking and bought cell phones. I got an australian bank account, ANZ. Z is pronounced zed here. And phones...omg D: I got Telstra pre-paid and it SUCKS. Apparently it cost me $21 to text home. We bought phones at Kmart and didnt get to set them up until Saturday, and we didnt have internet access until today, so I had to contact my parents somehow because it had been 4 days and they didnt know if I got here ok so I figured I could text them because the brochure said it only cost $0.50. LIES
Then for the next few days we all just hung out. More international students showed up. There are a shitton of Americans, one person from London, a group of 7 from Hong Kong, a few from Switzerland, Holland, and Germany. One from Chile. A couple Canadians. It was fun. We went to the city. Geelong is a little city and the campus is a 10 min bus ride away. The bus costs $2 to ride. Speaking of $$$ they have colorful bills here, made from wax-like something instead of cotton and wool, all the bills are different sizes, and they have $1 and $2 coins instead of bills. They dont have pennies, they round everything up. And the $2 coin is the tiniest which I think is stupid because that makes it the easiest to lose. Anyways Geelong is fun. Except all the stores close at 5pm! Which is highly inconvienant
After a few days of just hanging out we left for our beach orientation trip! The first day we went to Bells Beach, its famous or some s**t but I've never heard of it. We took lots of pictures. Then we went to Lorne and got our rooms. There were 200 people on the trip, from all 3 campuses. We took up 3 hostels. Lorne is the prettiest place EVER. There were cockatoos all over! And there were parrots, and trees, and prettiness. I shared a room with 4 people, but then we had a really tiny room and I ended up switching to a bigger room that was meant for 5 people but ended up having 8. There were 170 girls on the trip and only 30 guys, so no hott boys sad We had dinner at this restaurant overlooking the ocean. We didnt get to choose our dinner, they did it for us. I ate fish for the first time ever! It was gross. It was snapper or something. It tasted like watered down chicken. And I kept thinking about how it was fish and how fish is gross and that probably didnt help. I sat at a table with kids from Melbourne who I hadnt met yet. I met tons of people on the trip.
Then everyone got totally wasted and I went with Maria, from Chile, and the Hong Kong crew and hung out in their room. The next day we took surfing lessons! I can not surf for the life of me. It is HORRIBLE. I couldnt even get far enough past the waves to get to the bigger ones to try surfing. But whatevs at least I tried. Then we had beach yoga. Omg yoga hurts sooo much @____@ I have 0 arm muscles. THEN after 2 hours of surfing and 1 hour of yoga was the 2 hour forest hike. And half of it was uphill. Really, really steep uphill. Did you know the rivers in Australia are mostly black? Its not because its dirty, its because the Eucalyptus (sp?) leaves fall into the water and bleed out staining the rivers. Its cool. The views were breathtaking and s**t on the hike. We saw a kookaburra bird but that was the only animal sad Oh! And I saw a tiny little snake.
After the hike was dinner at the same place and then drinking games. I dont drink, so I hung out with Maria who also doesnt drink and the hong kong crew. The 5 girls from Hong Kong dont drink but the guys do. It was a ton of fun though hanging out.
Then the last day. Everyone was dead tired. Not surprising seeing all we did the day before, plus the fact that the majority of them were also hung over. We drove part of the Great Ocean Road. Its really gorgeous. WE SAW A WILD KOALA! It was in a tree. We saw it while we were driving and so all the buses pulled over so everyone could get out and take a look. Everyone took a bunch of pictures. The koala was so cute!!!! It was a brown one which was weird because I thought they were all gray. It was looking at us all "wtf kind of crack..." like. IT WAS SO SO SO SO CUTE!!!!!!
Then we saw a bunch of rocks and no one cared because we were tired/hungry/hung over. Then we went back to school. We got back at like 4pm and I went right to bed and woke up at 7:30 this morning. I was soooo sore omg it was HORRIBLE.
TODAY. WE GOT INTERNET. THANK GOD. It is sooo hard to be here without it. I mean in one way it was really nice not having internet, and not having phones, and not really having tvs. There are no tvs in the rooms, and the tvs in the common rooms only get 5 channels soooo yeah. No tv this semester. But on the other hand, its really hard to have 0 communication with home. I was thinking coming to Australia would be no harder than going to Vegas, which wasnt hard at all. But in Vegas I could go online the second my friends left and talk to everyone at home. If I felt like it I could call my parents at the drop of a hat. But not in Australia. Calling home is a huge b***h and costs a lot of money, even with calling cards. I havent managed to call home yet. And even with the internet with the 16hr time difference being online at the same time as your friends is hard.
Plus! Internet costs money here D: Everything in Australia is super expensive, its horrible. You get a $15 credit here for the internet to start with, then you can buy more credit if you run out. This is what it costs:
Receiving a short, single paragraph email message - 0.0012 cents, or 1.2 cents per 1000 emails
Receiving an email message (longer, colours etc.) - 0.0025 cents, or 2.5 cents per 1000 emails
View single web page with graphics - 0.054 cents per page
Graphic image (e.g. JPEG format 900x550 and 16-bit colour) - 0.012 cents or 0.5 cents per 42 pictures
QuickTime Movie (size will depend on resolution and length) -1.2 cents to 12 cents
Streaming QuickTime Video over internet - 0.012 cents per sec or 0.72 cents per minute - $4.89
Large software download (e.g. Windows service pack/upgrade) - 36.5 cents
Deakin expects $15 to be enough money to last a semester. I can see it being enough to do school work, for commuter students. But what about those who live here? D: There are 5,000 students at this campus and only 447 who live here so I guess they just forgot about us. OR dont want us wasting time online. But online is the only way to talk to people at home sad IT IS NO GOOD. gonk
Oh well. I'll just have to keep adding money to my card. Whatevs.
And that is pretty much all I've been up to in the past week. Except not, but its a good enough summarization. I'm too lazy to upload pics right now, plus God only knows what that would cost *roll* sooo I'll probably do it later.
I'm also too lazy to proof read this so if there are mistakes get over it biggrin
I MISS YOU ALL TONS AND ILU!!!!! heart heart heart
And postcards cost $2.05 each to send to the states so I'm not going to send them all out at once, so it may be a while before anyone gets one. Sorries!
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Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:59 am
Though some parts sounded dull, it looks like you're having fun. xp
By the way, how do/will you get the money to survive, or am I really that dense and don't know that $15 will last...? (If I'm not wasting your money already.)
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Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 4:48 am
Sky BIue Though some parts sounded dull, it looks like you're having fun. xp By the way, how do/will you get the money to survive, or am I really that dense and don't know that $15 will last...? (If I'm not wasting your money already.) I dont know im going to have to learn how to save money D: I have $2,500 left over from loans that will hopefully last me the whole time, plus $700 from my tax return. They dont have meal plans in Australia like they do in the states so I'm going to have to buy my own food which sucks. I want to get a job, but seeing how I'm only here for 4 months no one will want to hire me, plus if I have a job I wont have time to travel the country like I want to. I dont know how I'll pay for internet. I think I'll just try to cut back on internet time, and see how long the $15 lasts. Maybe it will last longer than I think it will. Hopefully it will.
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Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 7:10 am
I tried to read the novel you wrote. I DID!
but I got up to the part where you were all "ohh, I'm such a dumb little twit I only look one way before crossing the street"... HOW MANY TIMES DID PEOPLE GO OVER THE SAFETY TIPS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL????
"Stop, Drop and Roll"
"Never Talk To Strangers"
"Don't eat the hairy cheese"
"Look BOTH ways before CROSSING THE STREET!!!!"
African Lizzie knows ALL about the safety tips. talk2hand
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Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 7:47 am
Nymphiedora There were 170 girls on the trip and only 30 guys, so no hott boys sad Told you that you should have brought me. Then there'd be at least one. cool Nymphiedora TODAY. WE GOT INTERNET. THANK GOD. AMEN. Nymphiedora Plus! Internet costs money here D: Everything in Australia is super expensive, its horrible. You get a $15 credit here for the internet to start with, then you can buy more credit if you run out. This is what it costs: Receiving a short, single paragraph email message - 0.0012 cents, or 1.2 cents per 1000 emails Receiving an email message (longer, colours etc.) - 0.0025 cents, or 2.5 cents per 1000 emails View single web page with graphics - 0.054 cents per page Graphic image (e.g. JPEG format 900x550 and 16-bit colour) - 0.012 cents or 0.5 cents per 42 pictures QuickTime Movie (size will depend on resolution and length) -1.2 cents to 12 cents Streaming QuickTime Video over internet - 0.012 cents per sec or 0.72 cents per minute - $4.89 Large software download (e.g. Windows service pack/upgrade) - 36.5 cents And it probably means very little gaia gonk D; Its like those shitty hotels. Nymphiedora I'm too lazy to upload pics right now, plus God only knows what that would cost *roll* sooo I'll probably do it later. I MISS YOU ALL TONS AND ILU!!!!! heart heart heart And postcards cost $2.05 each to send to the states so I'm not going to send them all out at once, so it may be a while before anyone gets one. Sorries! I should really sign up for a postcard. >w<; ick at everything costing money.
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Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 8:06 am
Siamese, I actually agree with Buzz. You always check BOTH ways.
BUT OMG SIAMESE IT SOUNDS LIKE SO MUCH FUN. Except for no internet, boys, tv, or boys.
What the ******** are you going to do in your free time?
Edit: OH AND SIAMESE, ELI SAYS HI
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Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 7:57 am
HEY NYMPHIE TWIT!!!
I need your address ASAP!!!! gonk
Like I need it 2 weeks ago!
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 3:30 am
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:02 am
I AM SO JEALOUS OF YOU AND YOUR BEACH. :<
Cool Pix. Watch out for Michael Jackson and the Koalas.
@postcard k, I'll do that when I get a chance
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