Japan's Earthquake / Tsunami

So I'm sure by now everyone at home has heard the news of Japan's earthquake... it's absolutely devasting!
Fortunately the Tsnuami's or bad weather hasn't hit Australia and all of the warnings have been lifted, but it has affected lots of places all over the world, and my thoughts go out to everyone that has been affected...

I've been told that I should write smaller and more frequent blog posts, so that's what I'm going to try and do from now on...

School's going well - really starting to feel the heat of assignments and stuff but it's all good...

I hope everyone at home is doing well - and I'm sure I'll be talking to everyone soon!

The Gold Coast / Surfers Paradise / Quicksilver Pro Surfing Competition

Ok so a couple of Tuesday’s ago we decided that we wanted to go to the Gold Coast for the weekend because there was a surf competition going on. So we all planned it – 16 of us decided to go we booked our hostels and we were ready for it. On Thursday we found out that the surf competition had been cancelled because the weather was bad and the waves weren’t good enough… Darn… Well we had already booked our hostels and everyone wanted to go anyway so 10 am we met at the bus stop and jumped on the bus to the train station. The Gold Coast is about 2 ½ hours away from us, so we took buses and trains to get there.. The train cost us $2.99 to get there – crazy eh! The one thing that is probably cheap in this country.. So we finally got to our destination – got our hostels sorted out and we were ready to go.

We toured around a little bit down to the beach and grabbed some lunch and stuff, and then headed back to the hostel. A few of us had decided that we were just going to hang out there for the night and then we were going to go out Saturday night – well that plan didn’t fall through.. During the day we had broken into groups and the one group who still hadn’t showed up yet said they had a surprise for us when they showed up… So in they walk and said that they had purchased all of us Pub Crawl tickets for Friday and Saturday night for $15 and a free drink (of chocolate milk of course) at every bar! Well that was pretty good because our hostel offered us the Pub Crawl for only Saturday night for $30.. so the group that decided to stay at the hostel got ready pretty quick.. so that’s what we ended up doing for the two nights we were at the Gold Coast – the bars were insane! ‘Vanity’ was the bar that we were told to check out the bathrooms.. I found that a tad strange – but the bathrooms had red toilets, there were shelves in the stalls so you could put your clutch, camera, whatever else you had in your hands, down and not worry about them…  there was a girl in there straightening people’s hair, doing their make-up it was nuts, and entire section that had stools and make up mirrors… the catch phrase of the bar was “Vanity – because it’s all about you” haha…

So then on Sunday we decided to give the surf competition a try the website made it sound like it was looking good.. The competition was an hour away on a city bus so we got up early checked out of the hostel and headed to Coolangata… We arrived – and there it was tons and tons of people were on the beach, posters everywhere, Quicksilver and Roxy signs everywhere, surf competition was a go! We all decided to get some brekky cause we were hungry and then head down to the beach! We got to the beach – found a spot and camped there the rest of the day..  We had surfer’s run through our group, around us, everywhere – we managed to get some pretty close photos.. We even had ‘Kelly Slater’ run right past us – who apparently is a pretty famous surfer – in fact right now he’s rated # 1 in the world! It was pretty sweet! We hung out there for the day – took a dip in the water (where the surfers weren’t surfing – but were surfing past us). It was a pretty awesome weekend, and I’m really glad the surf competition was a go on Sunday – because that was wicked to see!  When we went to the catch the bus back to the train station we realized we were in a different state… we were right on the boarder… so far I’ve been in Queensland and New South Wales, haha… We had to cross the street to catch the bus so we caught the bus in NSW, and there is an hour time difference from one state to another! It was weird… So back home we head – we all have sun burns / tans – and big old racoon faces with sunglass tans! We were wiped… but it was an awesome weekend! Maybe one day I’ll take surf lessons…..

The Australia Zoo!

“I went to the zoo
Just the other week
Saw the kangaroo
Had a talk with the chimpanzee
He said, "Hey brother, if you want a thing that's hip. Do the bearcat."

Ok sooo I know I’m behind on the 8 ball again – but there is thing called “school” that is really ruining my social life, and my ability to update my blog whenever I want… However here’s the big update…

So like every other tourist attraction, in my opinion, the Australia Zoo is overrated. It cost $50 to get in! But I guess the animals need to be fed and the workers need to be paid so fair enough, I had to go at least once right… I’m not going to lie it was pretty cool to feed the kangaroo’s and the elephant – Sabu…. Oh and I SAW A KOALA…. Finally – actually I saw tons and tons of koalas! I even got to pet one – I opted not to hold one because of the extra fee of $20 – but I got to pet one! I actually learnt a lot about them too – did you know that they sleep on average 20 hours a day – and that’s because they eat Eucalyptus leaves which are really difficult to digest… so therefore they sleep a lot. But when they are little joeys their moms have to feed them a form of bacteria (some sort of poo) so that their stomachs can handle the Eucalyptus leaves –hmmm I think I’ll pass thanks…

There were tons of animals there – otters, alligators, crocodiles, red panda’s, dingoes, kangaroos, elephants, tigers, Koala Bears – oh my…. And the list goes on and on… We watched one show that involved a crocodile, a snake, and tons of birds! The birds were flying crazy all over the place there were parrots, pink things, white belly eagles… all kinds of birds… and really bright green ones that were sooo fast and sooo loud, they would swoop right in front of your face, you could hear them fly by they were so fast, but they were kind of annoying… Then the second show we sat through was the tiger show – it was “fun time” for the tigers… Basically if they wanted to play they would, if they didn’t they would just sit there and watch, which is what the male did – kind of typical eh… haha.. They were playing with homemade toys, and the trainers would get them to jump in the water right in front of the glass, then they’d play against the glass in the water, it was fun… The four of us decided to sit up in the last row – well much to our surprise we had a little friend… there was a pretty big lizard that was hanging out behind the seats and every now and again he’d pop out and walk towards us…. We shooed him away because there was a little girl beside us who wasn’t a big fan… so then a short while later he came back just down the row from us.. haha there was this guy that pretty much freaked out, he grabbed all of his stuff and practically ran to the other side… scaredy cat! One lady had her purse open behind her, I thought for a second the lizard was going to jump in… Can you imagine! Oh my I would have thrown my head back and head my belly in laughter… ha ha ha… now that would have been funny – I don’t care who you are..

Well that pretty much sums up the zoo – overall it was a good day! But I don’t plan on going back anytime soon!