Wrapped Up!

After graduation I stuck around for about a week - celebrating and packing up my life for the last ten months!

November 27th - I made the trek back home and after 31 hours of transit I finally made it home! Everything went smoothly - no delayed flights and no lost baggage! Thankfully frigid Canada welcomed me with +10 degree weather (I guess it could have been a lot worse) but trust me when I say - +10 is flippin cold!!!

Anyway thanks for following along with me on my adventures over the past year..... and here's to a brand new chapter in my life!

Graduation!

After 20 weeks of class, 12 weeks of placement, and an amazing 10 months of travelling around Australia - it was finally time for our graduation!

An amazing celebration with great people! We all managed to cross the stage (and nobody fell) and celebrated in style our accomplishments of 2011! Congrats and good luck to everyone in the future!

 We did it!

Aboriginal People celebrating with us!

After we presented Sharon with her gift for all of her great and hard work!

 Finished! Five years of University wrapped up in memories!

Birthday Celebrations!

Ok soooo kind of delayed but I figured I would finish this off once and for all! Everything ended up going well - I finished my prac with a bang and enjoyed my last couple of months visiting Australia!

Before that all happened Novemeber came with a few birthdays to celebrate! One included Keri's and a masquerade ball! So much fun!

The next was mine - we decided that we wanted to go up to Beerwah (about 45 minutes away) to go to a country bar. We hadn't been to a country bar since we had been to Australia so we figured that this would be a perfect opportunity! Only country isn't cool like it is back home..... all we saw was rat tails and mullets! There were maybe 20 of us in the bar - however 16 of us came for my birthday celebrations! The band was pretty good - but when I requested 'Fishing in the Dark' they had no idea what that was..... oh boy.... and then when they went on break inbetween sets the bar played the Keith Urban CD on repeat!!! Yeahhhh quite the experience - it was a blast though! Thanks to everyone who came out and those who took the time to plan it for me!

 The group - Pre!

 Some pre-drinks and cupcakes!

Prac Update!!

I have finished my first week of prac! It is 100% completely different compared to my first prac - everything about it - is different... but that's a good thing. The year 2's are sooooooo sooooooo SOOOOOO busy - and I find myself completely exhausted by the end of the day! However I am enjoying it! Looking forward to the next 5 weeks...

That's pretty much it - now that prac has started I don't really have much of a life - so no exciting things to update you about... If something comes up I'll let you know!

I hope everyone at home is doing great! Can't wait to see you all in about 6 weeks!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Ooopppssieee! I guess I forgot to update my blog once a week again..... But in my defense it's been a bit of a whirlwind with prac starting again - and besides I feel as though nobody reads my blog anymore - so I don't mind if I'm delayed updating it...

So thanksgiving just passed.... and we (Canadians) all celebrated an amazing Thanksgiving... two Mondays ago (October 3rd) we had our first Thanksgiving dinner - a few people were leaving the next day for their rural and remote placements - so we had a combination dinner of saying goodbye and thanksgiving dinner! It was potluck and Delicious!! We had a little bit of everything, turkey and stuffing (of course), sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots and so on! Lise and I were in charge of dessert - we made 'TimTam Cake' and apple crisp - so good! This dinner had an Aussie twist - we ate on the beach!! So amazing!!

Beautiful Turkey! Zac and Lindsay

Lyndsey and Me!

Zac carving the turkey - with the beach in the background!

Our dessert - TimTam cake and apple crisp (yumm)

The Gang!

Then the following Saturday - we enjoyed a second Thanksgiving dinner... This time there were many Europeans that were invited who had never celebrated Thanksgiving before - so it was really exciting for them! This time we gave $10 to the chefs and they made everything - again we had quite the assortment of food! It was also amazing!!

Gang # 2

Both dinners were awesome - and it was great to celebrate with so many amazing people!

I'd also just like to say congratulations to Melissa and Sean on their wedding day! Another wedding I wish I could have been home for - but the pictures looked amazing and it looked like an amazing day!!

September Holidays 2!!

Blog – September Holidays 2!

On Sunday and Monday, Shannen and her Brother spent some quality time together by going shopping on Sunday and then went to Movie World on the Gold Coast which is like Warner Bros Studio, so I did homework – which I promised I wouldn’t update you about soooo moving on….

On Tuesday we decided to have another beach day – imagine that! This time we went to King’s Beach in Caloundra (aka Beach # 2). I have never been to King’s Beach but I believe Shannen and Andrew had been there before. It also was such a nice beach!! It’s too bad it’s a good 20 minute drive because I love the beach at Caloundra!

So that was Tuesday – on Wednesday we had been planning a big day. Every Wednesday and Sunday the coast holds these markets called Eumundi Markets – which are like the flea markets that used to be on at home. We knew that we had to get there early in order to get a car park and be able to walk around. So we left home at 7:30am and got there shortly after 8am. The markets were amazing! There were so many little shops and cheap gidgets and gadgets – it was awesome! Reminded me of the old days of the flea markets… unfortunately we were so busy shopping – we didn’t take any pictures L

Oh well….. after we were shopped out at the markets we decided to go to Noosa. I’ve already spoken about Noosa at the beginning of my time here in Australia because we went there for Lise’s Birthday but it was still awesome! Noosa is such a quaint little town – it’s very touristy though but it’s fun.  So we got there and did some (more!) shopping and then grabbed some lunch and then it was time to hit Noosa Beach (aka beach # 3 of the holidays)

haha and then Shannen got pooped on!! Sooo funny!!

Delicious! ps. note the tan eh eh...

I hate birds because of Australia! But this one is kind of purddyyy

Once we got home from Noosa we were watching the news and apparently there were sharks in the waters we were swimming in! Fantastic! There were 12 sharks and they were only 400 meters off the shore. We had noticed that there were a strange amount of helicopters flying over but never really paid much attention – apparently as soon as we left the beach – the beach was closed! It was actually pretty scary because on the news we could see the sharks swimming really close to the shore and just ahead of them there was children playing in the water…. Good thing they got everybody out of the water before anything happened!

On Thursday we decided to have a relaxed, sleep-in day, which also involved… oh you guessed it a beach! Once we got going we went shopping for an hour or two and then we headed to Mooloolaba Beach (aka beach # 4 of the holidays!)! Where we spent the rest of the afternoon, well more like entire day, relaxing and soaking up the sun! It was awesome! It was so relaxing just being on the beach and not really having too many concerns - 4 beaches in one week – I think we pretty good! It just goes to show you I didn’t have to spend lots of money or travel to enjoy the beaches of this gorgeous country!

Shannen and Andrew headed home (back to Gladstone – about 5 hours north of here) on Friday so I had some time to catch up on some homework because next week is going to be a whirlwind of assessment! So I’m happy that I got ahead of it before time runs out! Overall it was a great holiday!

Ps… Here’s a little side note for everybody – 2 months today and I will be home!!! Crazy how fast time flies!

September Holidays 1!!

Ok so I slacked one week.... and a bit – but I was doing so well!! Annnddd… I’m updating now – so that’s all that matters!!

I just had a week of holidays and although not as amazing as my previous holidays it was still pretty awesome! This time around I just hung out around the coast – did some homework and went to the beaches… Well the homework part really isn’t all that fun – and I know you don’t want to hear about it – so here’s the beaches update!

Well first of all – Shannen’s (my ‘flatmate’) brother was up all week so we were the terrible threesome all week! Our first activity of the holidays was spent climbing Mt. Coolum. Yes it is classified as a mountain – but it’s pretty small and not that intimidating – besides it has gorgeous views once up at the top and it was a gorgeous day for a little exercise. Ok well it was a little hot (first day of the hot snap and beginning of summer weather at 33 degrees) but we managed! We packed a nice lunch of chicken and ham sandwiches to eat at the top and we started our trek!

Our Reward at the end of the trek - a Carmello Koala and a Pineapple Juice - yumm!!

After our hike – we headed to the beach. Since we were already in Coolum we went to the beach in Coolum (aka beach # 1) – none of us had been there before so it was a new beach for all of us! It was gorgeous – weather was awesome and the beach was awesome!!