A Normal Week

        This week was pretty much ordinary. No storms or cool trips. The weather in Townsville has been absolutely beautiful lately though, which makes staying in town not bad at all. This Saturday and then again on Monday after my morning I class I finally got to take advantage of living on the coast of tropical Australia and went down to the beach. Floating in the ocean on a sunny, 80 degree Monday was a nice reminder of why I decided to spend 6 months halfway across the world from my friends and family. Especially with the rain I was beginning to get a bit homesick, and I was beginning to wonder why I'd thought it would be a good idea to miss out on so much stuff happening at home to come to a random city where it rained all the time. But now that the weather is nice, I'm able to go to the beach and be instantly reminded that no matter how much I love St. Mary's, missing one semester to be able to hang out on a palm-tree studded beach after class was probably a good decision :).

        School is also going well- it's midterm week here but fortunately mine weren't too bad. Volleyball on Tuesday night was fun. So far my team, the UniSlayers, is undefeated! I'm not sure how much of that (if any) is down to me, but it's fun being able to brag about it. It's been a long time since I've been committed to any kindof sports team and it's actually really fun. Tuesday's nights are definitely something I look forward to. In fact my team all gets along so well that we've even started to meet up on weekends to play beach volleyball at the Strand. 

        Work at the cafe at Uni is also going well. I've been assigned to register the last few weeks which I much prefer to grill- far less opportunities to burn myself! The only problem is that they have different names for coffee drinks here (i.e. latte, cappuccino, etc mean different things here) so when people ask me what's in some kind of drink, I sometime have no idea myself. That and the money is kindof hard to get used to. They have $1 and $2 coins here but the $2 coins are tiny. The biggest coins are actually the 50 cent pieces... that makes no sense right?! So I am always catching myself about to give someone the wrong change. The other day though, my friend found some American money in her bag and it looked and felt so weird! I guess I didn't realize how quickly something you've used your whole life can become foreign if you don't see it for 2 months! 

        I've been hanging out more with my housemate Adam, because I decided I need to spend more time with Australians. Although still a student Uni, he is quite a bit older so we don't have much in common but I've been bringing my laptop to the living room to Facebook rather than sitting holed up in my room, and over our computers we talk about random stuff. He's kindof a tech nerd (he's studying IT), and I couldn't know (or care) less about programing and that kindof stuff, and he's pretty equally uninterested in biology, so it's funny, whenever either of us tries to tell the other person about our schoolwork, we just smile and nod. But he's got a good sense of humor and likes to try and get me mad by making fun of America. The other day he tried to tell me that per capita Australians are better athletes and have won more Olympic medals. As if!

        Last Saturday I hung out with another new Australian friend, Leah, who's originally from Tasmania. It was fun getting to stay at her apartment because she has a really nice place with a huge balcony overlooking the city, and we cooked dinner, dyed our friends hair, and watched Sex and City and Charlie St. Cloud. It was like a middle school sleepover but it was fun and a nice break from the usual Saturday carnage. 

        Most of my friends here are still American, which in some ways is kindof unfortunate but in other ways it's to be expected. It's hard to make friends with Australians when you're only here for 5 months and when it's so much easier to relate to other study abroad students because they are experience the same things as you (excitement, frustration, homesickness)  and interested in doing the same things (stupid touristy stuff, traveling). So far I really like the Australians I've met though, and am looking forward to meeting more. In fact, a friend of mine who studied abroad in Sydney 2 years ago has put me in contact with two of his Australian friends who I'm now talking to on Facebook and plan on meeting up with when I visit Sydney over Lecture Recess (Spring Break) in two weeks. They seem really cool and I'm excited to be shown around Sydney by people who live there. 

        Alright well. I'm pretty tired from working all day and I have class tomorrow morning so I will write more later. This weekend is Easter and we have Friday and Monday off so I'm going to the Whitsunday Islands, off the coast of Airlie Beach about 4 hours south of here. I'm doing an overnight sailing trip and going snorkeling and the weather is supposed to be good so hopefully I will finally get to see the Great Barrier Reef as it looks on all the postcards!