Cockroaches, Beaches, Pub Crawls...

Hello Everyone! These pictures at the beginning are of Burleigh Heads Beach.. I am struggs and am not too good at this blog thing yet, but they are a nice opener I think! (I will talk more about Burleigh in a minute). So since the last time I wrote TONS of things have happened. I feel like in order to adequately summarize my life here I would have to write about it every 5 minutes. So, I am now starting week 2 of classes, last week we only had our lectures and this week tutorials have been added. Before coming here I had no idea what that was all about, but basically for every class you have a large lecture (about 50 ppl) and a smaller tutorial (about 20 ppl). Today I had my Australian history tutorial, which was fine, but I am sure things are definitely going to get a little bit harder as time goes on.

So in the title of this post, I had to say something about my little friend that had been living with me in the room the first week...and I am not talking about my 5 foot roommate. As I was folding laundry, sitting on the floor one night, I felt something weird on my leg. I look down and there was a cockroach crawling up my leg... naturally I screamed and swatted him/her away, but then I had to go on a hunt to find it, because obviously I would not be sleeping that night if I didn't finally I found it and killed it all by myself! Usually in these cases I would find a boy to do it for me, but I was very proud of myself for doing it on my own haha. Now, I don't want you all thinking I am living in some gross dorm 10,000 plus miles away from Vermont. Our program leader told us that there may be some roaches in our rooms until they "debug" the place... I thought she was just giving us a warning and it wouldn't happen... apparently I was wrong. On to less disgusting topics, I finally ventured down to the beaches the past two weekends! The first weekend my friends and I went to Broad Beach, which is just down from the world famous Surfer's Paradise. Broad beach was great, but definitely a little crowed. The town around it was pretty cool though and I had a great time in the water (it is so warm)!
This past weekend we had a pub crawl that was sponsored by school. Like any other pub crawl they bused us from bar to bar and we got to see all the different places around the city. I had SO much fun. I met a lot of really cool people and had a great time with all of my friends. Here is a picture of me and my three closest friends here- Maya, Jackie and Taylor.

For the pub crawl there were two groups, one starting at 3 and one at 4. We liked the shirts better (Where's Wally theme) so we decided we would go on the 3. The 4 shirts were black and yellow and made everyone look like bumble bees haha. That being said, after drinking for 12 hours we decided to take it easy on saturday night. Sunday I went with Maya and Taylor to explore a new beach called Burleigh Heads. It was seriously the most beautiful beach I have seen here so far. It was really cute and little and had a local feel and even though it was sunday it wasn't too crowded. After being there for a couple hours with Maya and Taylor I met up with my friend Justin who I met through orientation (he goes to UVM). With Justin I walked down the beach about a mile to a different beach called Miami and we met up with more kids from school and hung out.

Over last week I was definitely battling home sickness. I felt like no matter what I did could distract me from missing my family and friends. I also was talking to all my friends multiple times a day which was not helping me at all. After a very dramatic phone call to my mom, I realized that I needed to stop thinking about everything and everyone at home and live my life here. I know that may sound selfish, but it is seriously making me so much happier. I have also been starting to do more things on my own and not relying so much on everyone else's schedules. I love the girls, but sometimes everyone needs a little alone time to keep themselves in check. It is unbelievable how much better I feel about everything and how much more FUN I am having. This coming weekend I am going to a town called Nimbin. I don't know a ton about it, but I do know that it has a hippie feel and that people love going there. Not only am I going there, but I am also traveling on a bus that has psychadelic colors and flowers painted all over it... its going to be pretty wild, I will no doubt be posting tons of pictures of that trip. The weekend after this one (the beginning of february) Jackie and I are heading to Adelaide. Adelaide is west of Melbourne and I have heard it is a pretty cool town. BUT, we are going to go to this music festival called The Big Day Out. It basically consists of 50 different musicians and I would have to say that I LOVE about 20 of them... I am pretty amped for that and so is Jackie. It's going to be an amazing weekend. Basically from that weekend on through the end of March I am traveling somewhere every weekend. Here's the schedule:
Weekend of:
Feb 4th- Adelaide- Big day out
Feb 11th- Byron Bay- Surf lessons and aboriginal village tour
Feb 17th- Cairns- Great barrier reef scuba and white water rafting
Feb 26th- Here at school- Quicksilver Pro Surfing competition starts
March 4th- Sydney- MARDI GRAS!!
March 11th- Noosa/ Fraser Island- Fraser is an all sand island
March 18th- Mojo Surf weekend- more surf lessons and staying at a surf academy!
March 24th- Whitsunday Islands- staying on a boat all weekend and snorkeling the lower part of the reef
Then I have 3 weeks to go until April 21st when I come home. Most likely I will go somewhere in those three weeks (traveling is becoming an expensive obsession). So, as you can all see I am going to be ridiculously distracted the next two months, which is going to be pretty awesome. I love everyone at home, but I need to start becoming comfortable with being without you guys! I am so excited for what is to come and I will definitely be updating this blog after every trip. Anyways, longest post ever, but here are a couple pictures to leave you with of my campus!