Last Friday, Rachel, JP and their friend from VT who was visiting from NZ where she was studying rented a car! Clearly I stayed far away from the wheel, but JP did a great job chaufering us around the Gold Coast- making a stop for lunch, to pick up Josh at his house and finally, up to Mt. Tambourine. Originally we had intended to do the Skywalk and the Glow Worm caves, but seeing as we are a very slow group we did not make it up to the mountain until 4...the time that everything closes at. Luckily we were still able to do the Skywalk.
This is a path set up at tree top level with many walkways allowying you to walk out into the tree canopies and look out into the rainforest before continuing through on land. It was very pretty and it was cool to see the view from up high as we have walked through so many rainforests through our trip just having to stare up at the trees. Clearly the boys had a good time trying to shake the walk ways, something the signs strictly prohibit. When we had made our way through the skywalk path, Josh pointed out a local pub on top of the mountain that has great views. We went out back and sat outside here for a little while, watching the sent set from the top of the mountain, taking in the views of the Surfers Paradise skyline far off in the distance. Unfortunately it got really cold quickly as apparently this is what defines Australian winters (hot as long as the sun is out, cold without it....mind you cold is still in the 60s?). So we headed back and luckily Josh's house was on the way back where he offered to go in and get us all his "jumpers" (aussie for sweatshirts) so he could then direct us to a nearby place for dinner where we could picnic by the river. Once we had jumpers on it was a very nice night and we all enjoyed pizza by the river in a completely new area of the gold coast (the joys of a car!)! Overall, even though we missed the glow worms this turned out to be a great day!The rest of the week was filled with a lot of work. I would attempt to complain about this but seeing it is about the first time since I have been here I recognize that I probably have no right to do so. The way my assignments fall out everything is due for me in Week 13 (the last week of classes) so while it is a definite plus that I have no finals and therefore a free month of june, having to deal with writing 8 papers in the meantime is a rough trade off! Anyways...this week I had my 1 and only Australian exam in Love, Sex & Truth- my philosophy class. I was a little nervous going in to this class as the teacher definitely speaks above my attention level but as it was all short answer questions I am thinking I pulled it off just fine. Also in this week I pulled off finishing an essay and a class presentation about my next research paper. Leaving my to do list to be the following:
Critical Thinking Research Paper
Critical Thinking Personal Reflection Essay
Love, Sex & Truth Research Paper
Australian History Researh Paper
Rock & Pop Paper
EEEK! This should be a very stressful next few weeks but....no worries right!!?!
Anyways....in between stressing about all of these and knocking some work out of the way, on Friday Rachel and I met Brittney and Julian and his friend from home at MovieWorld, one of the Gold Coast's local amusement parks. This park is essentially a mini Universal Studios and from inside the park could be mistaken for a mini America. American food was everywhere here and the whole park was made around American movies (Movieworld is a WarnerBros themepark). This park was very small but still had a few great rides...a few basically being two as one of their main rides was closed for the day. Initially my favorite ride was Superman- your typical superfast [superman fast] rollercoaster. We rode this ride several times- and of course the front of the ride is much better! Another favorite...Scooby Doo. You may be shocked- I definitely was too. We went into the ride thinking it was a kid's ride and a little fake ride through a haunted house. Before you know it you are being taken up in the dark in what we found out later to be an elevator, pushed out backwards and sent out through this rollercoaster inside in the dark. The first time we rode it Rachel and I were caught so completely off guard that we had a veryy hard time breathing until the ride was over and we got off with tears in our eyes. The girl operating the ride definitely thought we had issues when she saw our reactions. Overall a very fun day in the park.
Our gold coast adventures continued today with a trip into Brisbane for the day for a tour of the XXXX Brewery. This factory is apparently the largest beer factory in the southern hemisphere and produces Queensland's most popular beers. Getting to the brewery provided us with a very eventful morning however. Attempting to follow the translink schedule the train's website planned out for us we left our place at 9 to catch the bus to the train station. However, upon getting there we saw that the website gave us the times for the regular day schedules not sunday and the next bus would make us miss the train we needed to catch into brisbane. Therefore a cab to the train station it would be. A cab which cost twice as much as it should due to the first mean man in australia- good on ya mr. cab driver! Even with these set backs we managed to get into Brisbane by 1030, giving us 1.5 hrs until our tour- which was very good because as we were in shorts and tshirts and the sun was not out...we were very cold! We therefore used this 1.5 to go buy pants! After a quick run to cotton on, and a quick stop for coffee we were back to the train station to discover again the websites poor directions. Again we resorted to a cab. With this cab driver however we discovered aussies's first non-english speaking man- goood on YA mr. cabbie! He could not understand where we wanted to go or the address...nothing. So we jumped out, hailed down another cab and were on our way- making it to the brewery just in time to meet Brittney for our tour to begin! The tour started with a sit down "show" talking us through the history of the company through talking manicans- very reminiscent of Disney World's "Courosel of Progress" which left me singing "There's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" for the rest of the day. The rest of the tour consisted of a walk through the brewery and an explanation of how beer is made, ending in our lunch BBQ of steak, chicken, potato salad, regular salad, corn on the cobb and rolls- a very delicious meal. And of course- the tours main attraction: the beer tasting. We were each entitled to 4 glasses of beer. I tried their new Summer, Gold, Porter [a very dark beer- suprisingly tasted like coffee!] and resorted to another glass of Summer. After getting our full money worth of the tour we headed back out, opting to walk back into the city and walked around Queens St. Mall for the remainder of the afternoon. Another long and successful outing!
I am not very tired and have procrastinated working just about long enough. Between work and planning our travels for the month of June the next few weeks are going to be extremely busy....but don't worry I still plan on going to Byron Bay again next weekend!
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