Outside Lands

This is a post about my fabulous time at the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco and how I saw so many of my favorite artists like HAIM, Tom Petty, The Kooks, Grouplove, Chromeo, The Killers, and EVERYONE ELSE IVE EVER WANTED TO SEE EVER OH MY GOSH

Just kidding.
This is a post about how I got snapchats, texts, facebook messages, and photos of all of those fabulous groups at Outside Lands, which basically took place in my backyard in the States. And how ENVIOUS I am of everyone who got to go while I sat at home listening to an Outside Lands playlist on Spotify.

Just kidding again.
This is a post about the amazing things I got to do instead!

I started playing in a new frisbee league this week! Monday nights I play with some other UQ students against Brisbane folks.
Staying in shape while I'm here is so important to me. Since I've basically been eating and drinking whatever I want in an attempt to soak up the Aussie foodie scene (ha. ha.) it's really important to me to work out every day as well.
Frisbee is great because it's a social way to work out, but I also am obsessed with the gym. Shout out to best gym buddy ever, Hannah, for inspiring me so much this past summer in the gym (check out her blog, happyhealthyhannah.blogspot.com #SHAMELESSPLUG). I LOVE lifting and would probably do Crossfit if I had the money to do so. I like Crossfit and other programs like that because I'm tired of working out to "lose weight," I wanna work out to build muscle! Skinny is not my look, I've decided, so I'll aim for fit and strong.
The past few years I've lived with skinny people. Just naturally skinny folks. Heck, have you seen my best friend? She could live on brownies and cake batter and still be a twig (A really good looking twig. Love you Skidders <3). That really did a number on my body image freshman year, not going to lie. It is only post half-marathon that I've realized I could literally run for 5 months straight and not be skinny. It's only more recently I've become okay with that. EMBRACE THE CURVES AND THE MUSCLES. Because I'm not supposed to be a twig, and if I was, I wouldn't be able to do what I love-eat whatever I want, drink whatever I want, and play my favorite game ever.
My roommates here all play sports too. Bridget plays water polo, Martha is a triathlete, Carol and Sydney play lacrosse, and Courtney is just a workout FIEND. Sunday Martha had her bike on the trainer in the living room, which basically means the back wheel is put in a machine that turns your real bike into a stationary bike. She let me try it. I was on there for like probably 20 minutes before I just COULD NOT do it anymore. Cyclists are impressive! If you're a cyclist, be impressed with yourself. Damn.

Me dying on the trainer

So, yeah, that's sort of irrelevant to Australia, but anyway. Staying in shape while I'm here. Yes. Good. As I eat a brownie. That's my point. Right. Moving on.

Wednesday some pals and I spent a day at the races! We were told to avoid Ekka as a whole-that's the Royal Queensland Show, equivalent to a pricey county fair-but we went to Mekka Wednesday. It was very....Coachella meets the Kentucky Derby.
We started the day with a pancake breakfast with friends at our house, which we've dubbed the Pink Palace.

The website said there was a dress code, so we put on some fancy dresses, shoes, and hats/flower crowns (thats the music festival bit. Everyone wears flower crowns instead of nice hats. I wore nothing on my head because I looked like either a child about to be christened or a total poser with one on my head...awkward.) and went off to the race track!

Me, Reina, Courtney, Sydney, Casey, Jess, Jake, and Martha

It was INSANE. This is apparently one of the biggest 18+ events, because it was a million uni kids all dressed up running around in high heels drinking too much. So many girls looked like they were going out to the clubs. But a blazer does wonders for a guy, let me tell you! More guys should wear blazers. And short shorts. That's what Australia has taught me.

Some of my friends placed bets on the races just for funsies and so we actually watched a few of the races. I really don't get horse racing, but this is the only "sporting" event Aussies will actually cheer for, so the crowd of rowdy kids went WILD.

There were a few djs and stages around too. It was really mostly just fun to get dressed up, people watch, and hang out with friends all day!

The shoes were definitely worth it, but OH MY GOSH did my feet kill Wednesday night.

Thursday was full of studying, working out, and packing for...

a weekend in Bryon Bay!!

....in the rain.

Yup, winter decided to be wintery the weekend we were at the beach.

I was totally okay with some rain, because I love gloomy weather, and I get to the beach all the time at home. I realized I totally take that for granted, because some of the kids on the trip had NEVER. SEEN. THE OCEAN.

I can't even imagine that.

The rain did not deter us, though! We still fit in plenty of fun stuffs. My housing group-Semester in Australia-took around 70 kids, mostly Americans, for the weekend. They bussed us there and back and set up activities for us all weekend.

Friday, on the way down to Byron, we stopped at some surf outlets for a bit of shopping. There were amazing deals, but they only gave us half an hour. Those of you that have been shopping with know I can literally spend an entire day in Nordstrom alone, so having 30 minutes to go through unorganized discount boxes at four different surf shops was basically impossible. I pretty much gave up. I did get a cheap rash guard though, which will be good for when I go to Heron Island for research once it becomes summer.

After the outlets we headed down to Coolangatta, where Bridget, Martha and I spent a few days earlier this semester. The three of us really fell in love with the town and were stoked to go back. We visited the same coffee shop and hung out on the same beach and weirdly felt at home there.

Go With the Flow Cafe

I'm artsy. Also that's like root beer. Don't worry.

Then we made our way down to Byron Bay! It was slightly gloomy when we got there, but not raining. We checked in to our hostel and Martha and I went down to the beach to take pictures and throw the frisbee around.

We walked down to the point, where we could climb up a rock and see dolphins and whales out in the water.

That night we had dinner and drinks with our group before going to a local pub to hang out.

Saturday morning, Martha and I went kayaking! We had gotten to choose which activities we wanted to do on Saturday, so some kids went snorkeling or diving, some went surfing, others went skydiving...

we chose kayaking.

Yeah, that being adventurous post last week? All lies.

No not really! Skydiving is just too far out of my comfort zone. And my wallet zone. 

So Martha and I were kayaking buddies, in a group of about 30 kids and 3 guides. We struggled to get out past the waves because upper body muscle is neither of our strengths (is that a pun) but with the help of a guide we paddled out to the group.

It was hard work, man. Martha got really seasick, and I was definitely feeling it too, but since I was in the back of the kayak I absolutely had to keep paddling. So basically, I got the best arm workout of my life. It was so difficult to stay going in a straight line! Whatever muscle my right arm may have is significantly stronger than my left-thank you frisbee-and so we kept turning to the left and having to struggle to turn around to follow the group...

but I SAW A TURTLE.

A GIANT GREEN 150 YEAR OLD TURTLE.

He popped his head up about 10 feet in front of our kayak. The guide pointed him out and he swam around underneath us for a while. We also saw whales out in the distance but most of these few hours was spent trying not to flip over or throw up.

And then we did flip over.

Yup, on the way in I completely forgot everything they said the person in the back should be doing to not flip and we went FLYING. It was even more hilarious because we were the first kayak to be sent in, and once we were in the water the kayak flew over out heads through the wave. The life jacket was doing such a good job of keeping my torso afloat that I couldn't get my feet to the bottom, and the stupid helmet slipped over my eyes so I also couldn't see the shore at all...

basically I flailed around for a minute or two until I realized I could stand.

Me and Martha while we were still stoked on this 

Most of the group had gotten relatively seasick, so they had biscuits for us, and hot chocolate because it was actually freezing once you were out of the wetsuit.

The rest of the day was spent shopping around and scoping out the town. It actually started pouring at some point, so I busted out the new Patagonia rain jacket (#fratagonia #patagucci) and we found some cool stores. My favorite was a little health food store and bakery that had the most delicious macadamia brownie in the world.

 We even visited an art gallery. Mom and dad, you'll be so proud.

Sunday morning it had cleared up! Of course, the day we're leaving...but we had the morning to explore, so we hiked up to the lighthouse, which is at the most eastern point in Australia. "The first place to see the sunrise." Which we would have done had it not been rainy and gloomy.

We walked down the beach first, and since it had been really stormy the night before and TON of stuff had washed up on the beach. There were a million of these little guys:

And I GEEKED OUT because I knew what they were! The other week I wrote a short paper on these guys for my marine science class. They're called velella, and they're polyps that just float around the ocean, driven by the wind. They're a super bright blue because of the way their pigment reacts to salinity. SO COOL.

The hike was beautiful. Rocky coastlines are my favorite.

After reaching the top, we climbed back down the hill and onto some rocks that stuck out further, so we actually were as FAR east as you can possibly get.

Definitely my favorite spot I've been to since I've been here. It was super windy but it felt so amazing to be out on the water with the waves splashing up and yeah I've been to places like that before at home but being the one thing that was furthest out to the east was such a COOL THOUGHT.

On our walk back we saw more whales and dolphins!

We left Byron, and on the way back to Brisbane we stopped at this little town called Nimbin. From the way it had been described to us, we thought it'd be similar to Berkeley-a little funky, but overall relatively normal...

nope.

To use Martha's description, it was as if "Berkeley's People's Park had grown three times bigger and become economically self sufficient."

Before we got off the bus the guy in charge told us it was Australia's marijuana capital. Chill.

We were only there for an hour, but at least 10 different people asked us if we wanted to buy drugs or "cookies" from them.

Disclaimer: we most definitely did not.

It was cool though, I guess. Funky weird little town in the middle of nowhere. I bought a headband. Success.

aaaaaaaand that's my dose of adventure for this week! It was a really fun weekend and things should be much calmer this week...yay studying...ha. ha.

Also I am still obsessed with Tim Tams.