Counting Down

A few things this trip has taught me so far:

1. I'm a very mean person without morning coffee.

2. Frisbee people are awesome all over the world.

3. Wherever you go, there's always someone Jewish (hai Reina).

4. I have to live in California when I grow up.

Basically, skype has stopped functioning, the phone I'm currently using can't handle viber or whatsapp, and I feel so far away from my family and friends and its been a bummer! I miss my everyone at home, and though I will be more than sad to leave my friends here, I've started counting down until I get to go home and hang out with my cat.

Also, I really want my old hair color back. I'm over being blonde-ish.

These past two weeks have been full of (pretending to be) studying, hanging out with my friends, and cooking! I mean yeah, every week is filled with cooking, because your girl has gotta eat, but I made turkey burgers and eggplant lasagne and am back on the overnight oats grind! FOOD FOOD FOOD

Last week we recuperated from spring break with a few movie nights at the Pink Palace. Another night Reina and I went fishing with some friends in the Brisbane River. We wanted to catch a shark.

We didn't.

Me and Reina pretending we know how to fish

I played in a frisbee tournament last weekend! It was a really fun day even though it was like a million degrees. The teams were switched around every game so we were always playing with new people. Definitely not my personal best day of ultimate, but a fun day running around with my friends.
That night a bunch of us frisbee kids went to a birthday party and hung out in NORMAL CLOTHES. Everybody looks 100% different in jeans rather than ultimate shorts and jerseys.

Other than that...Gilmore Girls is on Netflix now, so....

This past weekend we went camping in the Glasshouse Mountains! Glasshouse is an hour or 2 north of Brisbane, just inland from the Sunshine Coast. We boosted it from St Lucia Saturday morning after the boys made us pancakes-screw gender roles amirite ladies-and took the train towards the Middle of Nowhere QLD.
We walked through some neighborhoods and along the roads until we found the trail head.

Da Crew: Reina, Alec, me, Bridget, Max, Carol, and Graham

It wasn't a very long hike, but it was pretty darn steep, and with a bunch of gear on our backs we took plenty of "koala breaks" to try and find the little guys up in the trees/catch our breath. Sadly, we couldn't find any.
Then we got the peak...

WOW WHATTA VIEW
We could see the ocean on one side and rolling hills and mountains on the other. And then we spent some time trying to figure out if there was anywhere in the US that could look like this, and decided that while maybe there are similar views, nothing could possibly feel quite the same.

After a while of staring at the view and taking pictures of each other pretending to be pensive and climbing into the crevices the rocks created, we wandered down the slope in front of the rocky peak into a forest of short little trees which looked exactly like manzanita. After doing a bit of research earlier today, I'm not sure manzanita is native or grows wildly in Australia, so either it's an invasive plant that took root in Glasshouse and flourished or it's another strain of manzanita or just another plant altogether. #ecology

We set up camp on the mossy patches in between the trees where no one on the ridge could really see us...because...it's not exactly legal to camp there. But the boys had done it before, and in my mind, what better place to get arrested for illegal activities than a foreign country? The conservationist part of me kept thinking about what kind of ecosystem we were destroying, but the 20 year old adventurous (HAHAHAHA) part of me was like why the hell not? Because sometimes you have to say yolo unironically and just do the damn thing.

The rest of the day was spent hanging out, throwing frisbees over the trees and trying to catch them before they flew over the cliff (yeah...I make sure to have a frisbee with me everywhere I go these days...), and assuming we wouldn't get caught.

j chillin

da truest homies, of course in a selfie taken by the selfie queen, RayRay

We split up into a few tents and Bridget and I spent the night in ours FREEZING because it decided to rain and become super windy right as we were going to bed. Of course I'm not the kind of person who would have thought to bring a sleeping bag to this country, so I was huddled under a blanket wearing all of the clothes I had brought trying not to wake Bridget up while I shivered. YAY CAMPING
This morning I was the first one up, as I always am thanks to some weird need to have done something productive before 8am, so I hung out watching the rainclouds blow over the mountains in the morning light and all of that good 6am stuff.

Once every one woke up we packed up camp and hiked back down the mountain, smelling and looking about 50 times worse than we had on the way up.
An older woman asked me if we had been camping, and I responded with "Er, no, of course not! We're uh...training. To hike...far..." (run away run away).

I am so happy we got it together to go camping this weekend, because this is what I came to Australia to do-crazy things out in gorgeous nature.
Also, I have amazing friends. Thanks to the guys for teaching me how to camp not right next to your car (Dad, we've never gone real camping....).

Yeah, remember how at the beginning of this post I was saying I'm counting down the days until I get home? Well, I just looked at that number again...
It's 34.
34 days?!?! Are you kidding me??? I had 134 when I got here! WHERE DID THEY GO???
I'm ready to go home, but not quite ready to leave these amazing views and these great friends.
Can I just take the little bubble of a world I've created in Australia and plop it down right next to San Diego?

34 days. Final stretch yo.
(Literally though, finals start in 2.5 weeks.)

Sprang Brake

Monday, September 29th

HELLLOOOOO from Heron Island! I wasn't sure I'd have access to my computer or any internet while we're here, and even though we do, I'm trying to use it really sparingly. Technology detox, if you will. PLUS why would I want to be staring at a screen when I'm in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef??

Seriously, in the last few days, dream have come true. Heron Island is a TINY island, and by tiny I mean like 800 meters by 300 meters. There's a fancy people resort on one side and a research station on the other, and it's pretty much just stretches of beach and tropical foresty business in the middle. AMAZING

We left UQ on a bus Friday night at 11 pm, drove until 8 am ish, and then took a two hour ferry ride from Gladstone to here.
Saturday they fed us and stuck us right in the water. We snorkeled around the dock and the shipwreck and saw SUCH AMAZING FISH. Gonna be real, Finding Nemo is unrealistic because coral is rarely those vibrant colors, but the fish are beautiful shades of green and blue and pink...we also saw a few reef sharks and whitetip sharks which I never thought I'd be close to. AH SCARY
Yesterday was a swim on the north side of the island. The way the current runs and weather hits the island makes the north side really calm, flat, and sandy, so it's a perfect place to swim. After lunch they boated us out through the channel to the edge of the reef flat, where we jumped off in our fins and wetsuits to snorkel for an hour or so. We saw more sharks, spiny lobsters, gorgeous corals, and more species of fish than I ever knew existed.

Last night we went on a night snorkel in the harbor. We were split into groups with a tutor, so it wasn't just 50 kids swimming around blindly. They gave us flashlights and attached glowsticks to the top of our snorkels and we went out to the shipwreck and back. Since the tide was higher than the day before, we were able to swim into the wreck and see the fish and other organisms that had found a habitat there. On the way back in, we saw a barracuda, two green sea turtles, and a squid. The squid literally turned up in our faces out of nowhere, and was such bright pink and orange and WOWEE WOW so cool! It was so frantic about having 5 flashlights blinding it that it almost swam right into Bridget.

Since the point of being here is to do a research project, we're examining the amount of alive coral vs dead coral in the research zone and in the marine park zone. We're expecting that the coral will be more degraded in the research zone, because there's pretty consistent collection and surveys being done. We woke up at 5am this morning to catch the low tide, and got our measurements done for the research zone, so tomorrow morning we'll get up at the crack of dawn again and do the marine park! I actually love being up that early, because it makes the day seem so much longer, and I'm pretty obsessed with this place...
We spent all day today snorkeling and laying on the beach. Bridget and I saw a MASSIVE reef shark and a few stingrays.
This is seriously a dream come true. I have spent the past few days with salt in my hair and sand on my feet and no makeup and 100% outside and no cares except this project but even that is super chill and I LOVE IT HERE. It is so surreal to me that I'm IN THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. I swam in one of the 7 wonders of the world. WHAAAAAAAAAAAT

It's almost dinner time, but I'll hopefully write again when we get back to Brisbane Wednesday night!

Monday, October 6th
Well, I'm finally back in Brisbane. And, I DID write another piece to this blog post on the plane Thursday morning, but, alas, my phone was pick pocketed in Sydney and my notes did not save to the cloud. More on that later...
Where did I leave off...
Last Tuesday on Heron Island we finished up our research, went for another boat snorkel where I swam three feet away from a giant sea turtle, went snorkeling with Bridget in Shark Bay where we saw two  MASSIVE sting rays-at first we were like oh its just a stick in the sand lets keep going WAIT WAIT THATS A TAIL THOSE ARE BARBS WE ARE ABOVE A STING RAY GET OUT GET OUT-and I spent some time alone on the beach before realizing I was actually the only person on the beach. I legitimately could not see another person. HOW CRAZY IS THAT
That night we spent sunset on the jetty and jumped off into the warmest ocean water I've ever experienced.

Wednesday we presented our research, said goodbye to our four new Danish boyfriends-jkjk just the guys we roomed with, #greatdanes-and had to restrain ourselves from running to hide in the forest so as not to get on the ferry back to the mainland. Because after all an amazing 5 days of sun and sand and hanging out in the coolest place in the world, Brisbane was sounding pretttyyyyy boring.

We got back to the Pink Palace around midnight on Wednesday and left for the airport to fly to Sydney at 5 am Thursday. So Wednesday night was a frantic unpacking-packing-sleeping for an hour-caffeinating adventure.
Reina, Bridget, Martha and I checked into our hostel in Bondi Beach and went straight towards the opera house to meet up with our (Aussie) friends Jess and Renata, who were also in Syndey for the weekend. The 6 of us took the ferry across the harbor to Manly Beach, which is kind of tourisy but really gorgeous. We spent a few more hours lying in the sun and taking goofy pics before heading back toward the bridge and opera house for cool sunset views.

And when we were getting off the ferry, in the massive crowd, someone plucked my phone out of my backpack.
In reality it's really not that bad, because there's the mystery that is the cloud that put my Heron Island pictures on my computer, and I just have to order a new SIM card for like $5 and get a phone that will last me the next 6 weeks. It's a BUST though because I couldn't take pictures in Sydney! And it was hard to stay in touch with friends/my group of 4 in Sydney couldn't get too split up because somehow between us we ended up with only 2 functional phones by the 2nd day....SO we went old school and actually MADE CONCRETE PLANS
I never realized how dependent I am on my phone though. I was sitting by myself at one point waiting for my friends and I had nothing in my hands, and I was thinking "wow I must look so lame sitting here alone" because I couldn't even PRETEND to be texting anyone or anything...
Needless to say, this weekend was a good technology detox, even more so than Heron Island, and while I will be keeping this next pone glued to my hand so it doesn't get lost, I won't be using it as much. I've become too dependent on wifi and snapchat. NEW YEAR NEW ME-Chag Sameach y'all!

That night we were all so exhausted from multiple 5am mornings in a row and a combined 4 hours of sleep between all of us we crashed at 9pm. WOOO SPRING BREAKERS GETTIN CRAZY IN BONDI BEACH
Friday we met Jess and Renata on the beach and did a gorgeous coastal walk to Bronte beach.

That night we met them at Jess's aunts house in Paddington, the cutest little part of the city EVER, and had dinner and shopped in the book stores nearby.
Saturday was Yom Kippur, so Reina and I were fasting, but in the morning we all went to the Paddington Markets, which is basically just a really cool street fair.
Then Reina and I headed back to the hostel, where we watched Temple Adat Shalom's Kol Nidre services. Yup, my synagogue in San Diego is so cool that it STREAMS IT'S SERVICES. And since the time change puts us a day ahead, we watched the Kol Nidre services on Yom Kippur, but we both agreed it was better than no services and it was pretty enjoyable.
That afternoon we met back up with Bridget and Martha for an adventure downtown to the Botanical Gardens, which are gorgeous and right across the water from the opera house.

Sunday was spent shopping, sunbathing, and eating around Bondi Beach before flying back to Brisbane that night.

Overall, it was an amazing week and a half and now I have to try and convince myself to focus because there's only 3 more weeks of classes and 6 more weeks in this crazy country! I'm not ready for it to end!!
I've never been so tan or blonde or spent so many days happily being lazy in the sun and ocean.
Here's to SIX MORE WEEKS

Bush Turkey Supremacy

I MISS SINGING.
A cappella doesn't exist in Australia, or at least at UQ, which is LAME because Pentatonix was just touring here and their shows were sold out so obviously there is interest in it.
I would say it's probably because Aussies aren't musically inclined or can't sing, but like...ACDC, Jet, Angus and Julia Stone, INXS-all successful Aussie musicians. So WHY aren't there more students who want to get together and have riff offs like in Pitch Perfect because we all know that actually happens when you put a ton of a cappella kids together (!!!!??!?!?!!?!?!)
I sing around the house but I really do miss getting together with a bunch of people and learning a piece of music and having it sound really great and being so AMPED because voices can do cool things!
Plugging my old a cappella group....scope it yo:

...being honest I have spent a good amount of time this week watching videos of KH, especially the New York ones and the ones from this past spring...great study music, and some pretty hilarious entertainment because NONE OF US CAN DANCE. Oh Kol Hadov.
I also miss my ukulele which is weird because I don't really play it that often anymore, but it's just sitting collecting dust in the attic of the B&B and that makes me so sad! SOMEONE PLAY IT so it feels loved.

So this week was when I finally turned in my massive lab report on Tasmania, finished my paper on the central coast of California-ironic I had to come all the way to Australia to have the opportunity to write that-and started making a conference poster about sea otters. So even though I've had a massive amount of work to do lately, it's all super interesting and relllllatively enjoyable.
To celebrate #oneclasswednesday, Martha, Courtney and I went to this little "raw" cafe nearby where everything is organic and fresh and YUMMY. I had Mexican baked eggs with real salsa and it was a little taste of home mmm so good

Friday Reina, Bridget, Court and I ventured out of the city about an hour to Springbrook National Park. Google maps got us to the bottom of the mountain with a bus or two and the train, but then we were left to find a cab. Which of course don't come to the Middle of Nowhere, Queensland, regularly. We found a tiny general store where the guy was very entertained by 4 American girls trying to get up this massive mountain without  car, and he called us a cab.
The cab driver had no idea where he was going and spoke very poor English but we managed to direct him up the windy road until we saw a sign for the park, and we jumped out on the side of the road ready to see some DAMN NATURE.
Buuuuuuuut we were still far away from the park itself.

So we wandered down the road for a ways, uphill uphill uphill, until we found the "visitor center," which was literally just a hut with a chair inside and some brochures and maps outside the door.
AND some fire trucks, guys directing what ever little traffic there was, and fire fighters lighting controlled fires around the eucalyptus along the trail. I GEEKED out. FIRE ECOLOGY IS SO COOL.

The fire marshal told us it was okay to continue, so we headed down and up and around this crazy trail for about half an hour...

....and then all of a sudden we popped back out on the road, dazed and confused.
Since there were no signs whatsoever we decided to head down the road, joking about hitch hiking to where ever the heck the real hike/parky part was, until all of a sudden we came up on this massive barking dog in the middle of the road that would not move until Reina threatened it with her walking stick.
So we kept walking, came up on a fudge shop, asked for directions to a waterfall we knew was nearby, bought some delicious fudge, and...kept walking.
We must have walked about 4 miles by this point, and very little of it was actually hiking. Most of it looked like this:

And some was through neighborhoods our residential areas.
until FINALLY we find the trail head for the Purling Brook Falls walk. We hiked another 4 miles here.

We descended all the way down to the bottom of that waterfall.

And found a cool pool.

And then had to climb all the way back up and out and onto the road.
We met some cool people and were really hoping someone would have room to give us a ride back down the mountain...but alas, everyone in Australia drives really tiny cars.
So...
we hitch hiked.
IT WASN'T SKETCHY THOUGH I SWEAR.
None of us had service to call the cab company, so we started walking back to the front of the park, sticking out our thumbs every time a car came by. One older man pulled up and asked us how far we needed to go, but said he didn't have room for us.
And then 5 minutes later, the same guy pulls up in a bigger car to give us a lift! It was so nice of him and totally unexpected. He gave us a ride to the front of the park and gave us directions, saying if we caught another car going down either side of the mountain we could get to a train station we recognized.
We stood at the fork in the road for about 5 minutes before an older couple pulled up and offered to give us a ride all the way to the train station! They were really sweet and told us about their lives, and they said part of their property on the mountain is dedicated to rainforest regeneration. So I geeked out again. PEOPLE ACTUALLY DOING THE STUFF I LEARN ABOUT?!?!?! WOAH.
They dropped us at the train station and we made it back to Brisbane no problem.
But how nice are Australian people? In the states if I saw people hitch hiking I'd be like ew no they're probably scary. But not here! It probably also helped that we were 4 girls...wandering through a national park...in the middle of the afternoon...
Still though. I've hitch hiked. Check that off the list.

Saturday I played in a one day frisbee tournament with a bunch of friends from the states. We were trying to get together a whole team of Americans, so we named our team Gratuitous Patriotism, but ended up adopting a few Aussies and a few European guys and a random old American man who's on teaching exchange and let me just say that I have never had so much fun playing ultimate. At home sometimes ultimate gets too competitive and dramatic and I am so relieved and happy to be out here just playing casually but still learning about the game and gaining new skills and meeting new people! Ultimate is a seriously amazing community of people, and I feel like people don't really understand what it's like until they're a part of it. Especially playing over here I have realized that I just like to play for fun, and though I really do want to be great at the game and be on the A team and do crazy amazing things like throw a chicken wing greatest, I don't need to be that person to feel like part of the community and make real friends and form real relationships through the sport.
That was a lot of run on sentences and sap....but it's so true. Half of me is bummed because Pie Queens won't be the same or look the same to me after this semester, but the other half of me is so pleased to have this experience and have my love for the game grow even while I'm overseas.
SAP SAP SAP SAPPY
but also have you SEEN frisbee boys?!?!?! Like c'mon froggles are so real...

Today is just going to be studying, studying, studying, because after this week we have mid-semester break and I will be gone for 10 whole days! The first part is a class research trip to Heron Island/the Great Barrier Reef and I am BEYOND excited. The second half is a trip with my friends to Sydney! I probably won't be able to blog from Heron, so expect a massive blog post in two weeks. Can't waaaaaaaaaait!!!!

ALSO the bush turkeys on campus have been going INSANE this week! They were like up in the trees and chasing each other around the quad and it's been crazy trying to get out of their way and just generally avoid them more than usual.
And then we found a facebook page that posts pictures with captions like the turkeys want to take over UQ and it's hilarious.

WE'RE HALFWAY THERE

woaaah livin on a budget because this trip is makin' me BROKE
yeah I know that's not the song but my brain is fried from studying and watching the Bachelor sooooo...
It's really been 2 MONTHS.
I have 2 MONTHS left.
HOW AM I GONNA DO EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO

Some highlights so far:
-Coolangatta with Martha and Bridget like 2 days after we got here. We wandered around the Gold Coast so jet lagged and still kind of strangers and well you could say that that is a bonding experience
-"snorkeling"
-orientation week and realizing that bush turkeys are the Berkeley squirrels of this campus
-#oneclasswedneday adventures which mostly just include food...like that french toast with chocolate ice cream on top is STILL on my mind
-finding that cool comedy show in the city
-Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary where I was a giant tourist and held a koala
-Pancakes before getting dressed up to go to the races
-kayaking in the rain in Byron Bay and avoiding being sick in the ocean by about 5 minutes
-seeing a green sea turtle. WOW. That guy was ANCIENT. #dreamscometrue
-playing with Disc-respectful at Halibut. Also in the rain, but still just a fantastic weekend
-discovering Tim Tams
-discovering gummy snakes
-discovering that eggs here are orange which makes me worried about what America does to their chickens
-Tone With Todd at the UQ gym. That man has more energy than anyone I've ever seen. But he seriously needs a new playlist. Lifting to Ed Sheeran is weird, dude. Just saying.
-trips to Indro for shopping or, more realistically, window shopping
-Queen Street farmer's markets
-the man-made beach in South Bank
-the Man-B-Que with the neighbors and the hilarity that was Carol and I playing GOF
-getting dressed up for Martha's 21st
-BUML on Monday nights. Frisbee people are pretty much just the best
-Great Ocean Road and basically everything about Melbourne

Things I still have to look forward to:
-Heron Island and Sydney over the mid-semester break
-turning in all of these papers that are currently taking over my life
-the Flight Facilities concert that we spontaneously bought tickets to
-a trip to Cairns...?
-Oktoberfest which will be taking place in the spring not the fall so I don't really know how to feel about that
-hiking trips!
-more frisbee
-more good food
-more good friends

Dawwwwwww. But seriously, these last two months have been amazing. A whirlwind, but amazing. I feel like I've done so much but there's still so much to do! These papers need to write themselves so I can get back to exploring.

So as you can probably imagine, this week was mostly studying again, especially after Melbourne.
It's finally starting to really warm up, so spending all day in the library is a real bummer. The Pink Palace doesn't have air conditioning being in my room instead of the lib is not going to happen, and I'm fairly certain we're all going to melt in about a month or so.
By Thursday we were chomping at the bit to do something outside, so Friday we went to the beach! A bunch of us got up super early and took the train to Surfer's Paradise.

Friday night Reina, Bridget, Martha and I went to South Bank for sushi and to see what we thought would be a cool light show exhibit thing but was actually just two giant stacks of bamboo with lasers projected on to them.

So that was disappointing.

We also did I good amount of baking this week for some study breaks.

Martha and I made a quiche...but we accidentally used a pastry crust so it was kind of weird. I told her I wouldn't tell but I think it's HILARIOUS. Like the time my mom made cookies and they baked so flat we had to throw out the cookie sheets. One of those cooking fails that really shows how skilled you are in the kitchen.

(but actually my mom makes a really good cobbler so not all baking hope is lost)

Chocolate cupcakes with cookie dough inside. The best.

Apparently I have frosting skills CAKE BOSS PLS HIRE ME

This week is back to studying and studying. Hoping to play in a frisbee tournament next weekend so I have something to look forward toooooooooo! The light at the end of the tunnel of lab reports and papers and quizzes...

Thanks for reading my blog for the past few months y'all! I hope it's still entertaining...even though the life of a student gets mundane around the middle of the semester, even when she's abroad.

Counting down till mid semester break!

Melbourne

I've been here for about 2 months now. If you know me well, you know I'm ADDICTED to my google calendar, so I keep clicking through it and every time the box for November 23rd shows up with HOME written in massive blue capital letters, I get a little sad. As much as I miss Berkeley-see my post from two weeks ago-I don't want this whole study abroad thing to end...well, the study bit can end. But the abroad part? NO PLEASE.
(actually my classes are prettttty great. Berkeley, add some damn marine science classes.)
After a week packed with studying and more frisbee, Martha, Reina, and I went to Melbourne for a few days! We were seriously antsy for an adventure after spending the majority of the week in the library writing papers. Insane that it's already midterm season! SCARY that it's already midterm season! I'm in this weird limbo where I know I need to be studying but I also know I want to be out exploring more of Brisbane and Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast and doing fun things on the weekends...so where do we say OKAY ENOUGH let's give ourselves a break?
At Berkeley I think I've perfected giving myself breaks. I don't study on Fridays as a rule, and I have frisbee and Kol Hadov and Hillel to distract me. I also don't have as much of a drive to go out and do things because I'm always in Berkeley, I have time to go into San Francisco and around the bay forever, you know? But I'm only studying abroad in Australia once! I need to go see EVERYTHING! I'm trying to find the balance between working hard in my classes and seeing everything I want to while I'm here.
That's where Melbourne comes in, I guess.
Okay yeah. So Melbourne.
Thursday afternoon we flew into Melbourne. There was the most gorgeous sunset on the way in. Like, Lion King status.

Airports in Australia are SO CHILL compared to America. They didn't check our IDs once, or look at our boarding passes until we got on the plane, or make us take off our shoes and belts or ANYTHING. Crazy. Martha's taking a class on terrorism, and we were walking through the airport talking about her terrorism reader-in America, we would have been tackled and interrogated for even mentioning terrorists anywhere close to the airport. Interesting that Australia has much fewer incidences and interactions with terrorism then we do. Also-GUN CONTROL HERE. So few shootings. Compared to America, where shootings are becoming commonplace. Throwback to the one in the Vons parking lot of my hometown last month. Awful.
WOW what a tangent.
Anyway. Melbourne.
That night we checked in to our hostel, found a random Thai restaurant for dinner, and went to bed early in preparation for...
GREAT OCEAN ROAD.
Friday morning we got up suuuuper early and stepped outside the hostel to wait for the tour bus. There was a family waiting so we chatted with them for a bit. Soon a green bus pulled up and we stepped on behind our new friends. The driver mumbled something, aggressively waved us off the bus, and sped away. Confused, we stood there for a minute trying to figure out who to call or why we didn't get let on the bus, when a white bus pulls up. It seriously looked like a van your parents would tell you to watch out for on the street. The driver jumps out, names all of us correctly, and tells us to hop in.
We were still a little sketched out, especially since we were the first people on the bus, but once we drove through the city and picked up about 15 other people, the driver put on some great music and we were super excited about it all. The other people on our tour were from all over the world. Most had been traveling for an extended period, something I admire people for because I definitely don't feel like I will have the time for that in my life ever...but if my grandparents could see every state capitol and at least 127846217988 of the countries in the world, I can do it too! Starting with checking off Australia. Woot.
Our first stop was a Torquay Beach, where we had morning tea and spent a little while looking at the view.

We stopped a few other view points before heading inland to see koalas in the wild. I didn't get any pictures, because they're basically impossible to see up in the trees, but we did come across some birds who were NOT afraid of us at all...

SUPER CASUALLY landing on my HEAD are you KIDDING
After that we headed up to the highest point on the Great Ocean Road.

Then we went back inland for a short rainforest hike. We saw the oldest trees in the area, which I took pictures of but I don't remember anything about...sorry...

We also saw the 12 Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge, and London Bridge.

SO AMAZING. I'm so glad we did a Great Ocean Road tour, because I have never seen such impressive views.

12 Apostles

"The Razor"

London Bridge

Loch Ard Gorge

12 Apostles

12 Apostles

Friday night we got Italian food in Little Italy, crazy gourmet gelato, and crashed.

Saturday we spent in the city! Our hostel was right next to Carlton Gardens, which is a World Heritage Site and has the Melbourne museum and the Royal Exhibition Hall, as well as really pretty foliage.

Then we headed to Flinder's Lane, a tiny street lined with coffee shops and restaurants. There is a whole alley where artists can legally graffiti, and there was some pretty impressive art.

Next was Federation Square, lunch in South Bank, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

South Bank was awesome! There were so many street performers. We saw some like 7 year old kids singing and dancing like Dream Street, and a pair of guys dressed up like Transformers posing for pics.

Cool exhibit relating audio and drawing.

 MOM DAD YOU'LL BE SO PROUD
We went to the art gallery!
I RECOGNIZED SO MANY NAMES
I GEEKED OUT OVER GLASS PIECES
WOW MUSEUMS. Thanks Grandma Grandpa Mom and Dad for making me/forcing me to appreciate museums when I was a kid.

Then we went to Eureka Skydeck, the tallest building in Melbourne!

Sunday morning we went to Queen Victoria Markets, a massive farmers and flea market in the middle of the city. I didn't snap any pics, but it was so crowded and crazy that I doubt they would have turned out anyway.
Then we got BAGELS. And we all realized we hadn't had a single bagel since we got here. What is that? A JEWISH GIRL NEEDS BAGELS IN HER LIFE.

Overall Melbourne was awesome. It's a very European city, with tons of cafes and outdoor dining and cool bars and restaurants and is just generally a cool city. Brisbane feels much more industrial in comparison.
We also ate reaaalllly well. Melbourne has AMAZING coffee. Thai food, Italian food, burgers...it was all delicious! The bar scene was fun too, but we did not last very long out because we were so exhausted from walking around all day.
So, that was the extent of our trip! It was a blast. I'll post more pictures once I get them from Reina and Martha! Love these girls to death. We had an awesome time together and I can't wait to travel with them again! Next stop: Sydney, over our mid-semester break. Counting downnnnnn

#tinywineglass