Things I Miss & Don't Miss...

Hmm...well I'm mighty bored today. I began to think of all the things I miss from home and all the things I don't miss...here they are!!

I miss...

1. KODY (sorry Mom & Dad, Smack gets priority...if only he knew how much power he holds, he could probably rule the world with it!)
2. My family
3. My Friends
   
4. My wii
5. Papa Johns
6. A bedroom (I live in the living room/kitchen here...awesome...privacy is overrated)
7. My car
8. Fast internet
9. Bud Light...no, actually, American Beer in general (we only have Miller Chill here...of all the American beers, they pick Miller Chill?? But what I'd give for a cold bottle of BL right now...)
10. Qdoba
11. Cable TV
12. A fully-stocked kitchen (pots and pans included)
13. My big bed
14. Limewire
15. Perkins breakfast at 2:00 AM
16. The Brew Crew
17. Being able to see a movie as soon as it comes out...not a month later (Australia is a month behind in the entertainment world...I finally got Twilight! haha)
18. MLA and APA formatting for essays (they use Chicago and Harvard here...2 formats I've never had to use in my life)
19. My slippers
20. The magical card that I didn't see the bill for ;)
    

Wow...I guess I miss more than I realized!

Well, here is the list of things I don't miss as much

1. My Car (I have to walk EVERYWHERE which is undoubfully doing good things for the body)
2. Having school everyday (Culture shock is going to hit me like a brick wall when I start school again at home)
3. The cold weather
4. Strict Deadlines (they are quite chill over here about being on time)
5. All the perservatives in the food back home
6. The dorms...well kinda...I don't miss the dorms themselves but I miss all my friends that are still living in them!

umm....I'm having trouble thinking of others haha I'm sure I'll add to the list as my final two months come to an end!

Spring Break With My Sister!

AHH! Does anybody know how to freeze time?? My trip is going by WAY too fast…8 weeks down, 10 to go. My second month did end with quite the bang though! Sarah made her way down under to spend some quality time with me and it was a blast! We spent a small fortune and packed about a month’s worth of activities into one week and it was totally and completely 100% worth it! Where to begin…

Well…she arrived in Sydney last Saturday morning at 6:20. I don’t know about you guys, but 6:20 is really early for me…hence I was late picking her up from the airport. Whoops. We spend that entire first day walking all around Sydney. I felt like such a local slash tour guide! I basically spent the day showing her why Sydney is my favorite city in the whole world, spitting back every piece of information that I’ve learned about it since my arrival. We piled up about 13 miles of walking that first day.

Sunday was yet another early day…4:45 AM! And I thought 6:00 was bad…pshh! Yeah right. We had an early flight out of Sydney to head up to Cairns. Thank God we had a flight to catch; otherwise there was a good chance I would not have woken up. We arrived in Cairns in the early afternoon and Sarah’s first words were, “We are in Jurassic Park.” Honestly, I don’t blame her for being confused, even though I knew better ;). It really looked like we were in Jurassic Park. Cairns is a smaller tourist city that is literally surrounded by the mountain range called the Great Dividing Range. This mountain range separates the green part of the east coast from essentially the outback and it is beautiful! The mountains completely surround the city and they are entirely covered in trees and rainforests. Cairns is also the home to over 400 crocodiles. Soooo, with the huge valleys and green mountains mixed with today’s modern dinosaur…I see how Sarah got confused!

On Tuesday, we hopped on a big sailboat and headed out to the Great Barrier Reef. I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumors of this magical piece of earth: it’s a location of clear blue water as warm as bath water, full of frolicking colorful fish, slow but relaxed sea turtles, scary but sane sharks, and breathtaking coral. Well…it’s all true! The Great Barrier Reef is as gorgeous as anyone can picture it. TV shows and movies DO NOT do this place justice. Its beauty can seriously only be really appreciated in real life. Fortunately, Sarah and I had this opportunity and we took full advantage. Our sailboat took us to two different locations; one on the inner reef and one on the outer reef. We first went to the inner reef which is supposed to be abundant in colorful fish and sea turtles. We had to wear "stinger suits" which were full body suits that would protect us from jellyfish. We looked pretty sweet in them...definitely could pass as a dolphin trainer for Sea World! I was super pumped to see some sea turtles. That was my goal of the day, to see at least ONE sea turtle, so I was really excited to go to the inner reef first. All the fish mixed with all the vibrant coral was incredible. Unfortunately, I saw no sea turtles and I’m not going to lie…this really disappointed me. But I got over it and looked forward to snorkeling in the outer reef which is supposed to be even more beautiful. We grabbed a quick lunch on the boat (which was much needed…my empty stomach was starting to make me feel a little queasy) and headed out to the outer reef. Sarah and I, along with about 20 other people, jumped right in and went to work taking pictures of the reef. All of a sudden, Sarah was grabbing my leg. She scared the crap out of me! I have a huge fear of sharks and I was thinking Jaws was coming to get me or something! But I looked over and there was a SEA TURTLE! Score!! I threw my swimming floatie over to Sarah and dove under to get a better look. It was better than I’d hoped…I was on cloud 9 after that! We headed back to the boat after probably an hour of snorkeling and started to head back in to the harbor. On our way back, the crew let the sails out and we got to sail home which was really cool. Overall, the day on the reef was quite a success! Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the reef from our underwater cameras. But I promise you will all get to see them as soon as I get home!

Another activity we did was travel up to Cape Tribulation, which is about 2 hours north of Cairns. Cape Tribulation is home to the world’s oldest rainforest…the Daintree Rainforest. This rainforest is two times older than the Amazon Rainforest…and it is gorgeous! The drive up there was fantastic. We had great views of the coast and the mountains. Cape Tribulation is actually referred to the place where the rainforest meets the reef. The rainforest literally goes all the way to the coast and the reef comes in super shallow, so it is a spectacular view. We drove up there with a tour van and our guide was awesome. His name was Roddick (aka Roddy) and he was hilarious. This guy was probably in his late 20s and had a near death experience probably every year of his life. He was full of hilarious stories and heaps of information!

First, we got to hop in a boat that took us down the Daintree River to look for crocodiles! I’m sure you’ve all heard rumors about crocodiles: huge, prehistoric man-eaters with death-grip powerful jaws and razor sharp teeth that can move extremely fast in either the water or on land. Well…it’s all true! We saw 3 of them…one of them being Scarface. Scarface is a 4.5 meter long croc that has no teeth (haha). He was HUGE and had no teeth because he lost a battle against Fat Albert. Fat Albert is another huge croc that is about 5 meters long and weighs 1,300 pounds. He is not only huge, but is actually fat. FORTUNATELY, we did not run into him. We saw Scarface, a smaller female and a little 2 year old croc.

After our crocodile adventures, we got to walk through a small part of the rainforest. Now I’m sure you have all heard rumors about rainforests as well: trees reaching up to the clouds with huge canopies hanging over them, ferns and small plants growing on all these trees with vines hanging down every branch…beautiful birds chirping everywhere. Well…once again it’s all true! The rainforest was beautiful. The trees are super tall and thousands of years old. The vines wrap around all the trunks and hang down from branches. Ferns grow from the trees but not on the ground. Sarah loved the rainforest! We saw a Rainforest Dragon (a little lizard) which was pretty cool. After frolicking in the forest for awhile, we got some lunch and then headed to the Mossman Gorge. The gorge was awesome. It was a spring water creek that we got to swim in. The water was so clean that we could drink it if we wanted. It was also crocodile free which was my selling point! We swam there for awhile before we started to head back to Cairns.

Something Roddy taught us on our guide was that basically, anything can kill you in Australia, and we believed him since he has pretty much lived through all of the following. If the crocs don’t get you, the jelly fish will. But if you survive the jelly fish, a shark is surely going to kill you. However, if you survive the shark, you will most likely die from a snake bite since seven of the top ten deadliest snakes in the world are native to Australia. On the other hand, if you’re lucky enough to live through the snakes, you better keep your eye out for spiders! Alternatively, if you can outrun the spiders, than you will most likely get bitten by a mosquito carrying Dengue fever and die. Nevertheless, if you can somehow live through Dengue fever, a coconut will fall on your head and kill you. Then again, if you are lucky and are wearing a helmet when the coconut hits you, you will get hit in the face by a drunken bird and die (true story!) So, basically, I learned that if I survive this trip, I’m considered one of the lucky ones. Ha! Better keep my eyes peeled for those killer coconuts and wasted birds!

After our fun escapades up in Cairns, Sarah and I headed back to Sydney for her last 2 days. We got to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Saturday night. I really didn’t realize how afraid of heights Sarah is!! Granted, it was dark, chilly, and windy. I suppose many people would be freaked out, but regardless, I made her go in front of me. I had to make sure she wouldn’t run off! Plus, the bridge climb really doesn’t intimidate me and I’m sure she didn’t want to see me skipping up the bridge while she kept a death grip on the rail. Once we got to the top of the bridge, we got to see all of Sydney completely lit up and let me tell you, it was gorgeous. Sydney is a beautiful city in the daylight, but it is 10 times better at night. All of the lights from downtown reflect off of the surrounding water and you can see the city stretch on for miles. It really is quite the site.

Snorkeling on the reef, hiking through the rainforest, and climbing the bridge were our big activities of the week. When we weren’t basically risking our lives, we were laying out in the sun, walking around Cairns/Sydney, and doing some shopping. We ate like kings while she was here. Thankfully, I have been saving up for this trip or else we would have been eating McDonalds the whole time. We had a different menu every night and all the food was fantastic. Not one bad meal. One day we got to cuddle with a koala bear which was pretty cool. He was so cute! We kept ourselves really busy all day and most nights, we would be in bed by 7:30. We had to TRY to stay awake until at least 9:00, which was very difficult since Sarah kept waking me up at dawn!! She sure did screw up my sleep schedule…I keep waking up at 7:30 every morning now!! ;) But, it was all definitely worth it!

Now life is going to seem a little boring. I’m running out of ideas of things to do while I’m here! I have to go through my checklist again:
Skydiving – check
Horseback riding – check
Camping out in the bush – check
Climb Sydney Harbour Bridge – check (twice)
See Opera House – check
Climb the Blue Mountains – check (in two weeks)
Snorkel in Great Barrier Reef – check
Hike in the rainforest – check
See a sea turtle – check
Find out if P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney exists – check
Hold a koala bear – check
See a wild crocodile – check
Survive this trip – check (so far!)

There are some things that I still would like to accomplish while I’m here though:
See the outback
Play with a kangaroo
Bungee Jump
Climb Ayers Rock
Visit the Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin’s Zoo in Brisbane)
Plus visit 7 other cities while I’m here!!!

The picture of Australia that I have on here has a bunch of cities on it. It will give you all an idea of where I’ve been and where I want to go. The green star is Newcastle, my home of course. The pink stars are places that I have been (and cities around them) and the blue stars are all the places I want to visit before I leave. Fortunately, I found out that I’m done with school about 2 and a half weeks before I come home. I’m planning a huge backpacking trip for those couple of weeks. I’d like to start in the south, visiting Canberra (Australia’s Capital), Melbourne, and Adelaide. From Adelaide, I’d like to fly over to Perth and check out Western Australia, and eventually hit up Alice Springs, Darwin, and Brisbane. Ahh! So much to do in so little time! (and with so little money!)

Well…I basically just wrote you all an essay. I’m looking at the word count right now and this is the length that my final paper is supposed to be for my history class…sheesh! You think I could turn this in and call it a day?? Probably not…darn. One thing Sarah brought with her which I did not like was my long lost friend Mr. Homesickness. Crap…I thought I got rid of him years ago! Guess not…to think I couldn’t even survive a sleepover across the street and now I haven’t seen any of you for at least 2 full months!! I certainly miss all of you very much! But, these past couple months FLEW and I know the next couple months are going to go even faster. Basically, I’ll be home before you know it…lucky you! :)

Alrighty, well I hope you all enjoyed reading about my adventures with my sister and I’ll be back to tell more soon!!

Mindy

Camping in the Australia Bush

Hello All!

Well, this past weekend was one for the books, thats for sure! Me and two other girls roughed it out in the bush...and I do mean roughed it! Now I've been camping before...many times in fact! But my parent's idea of camping and the camping I did are very different. First of all, there was no big camper with air conditioning/heat. There was no TV, no gas grill, no fans, heck...there wasn't even food or fire!! I suppose I should start from the beginning...

We went to the Glenworth Valley and signed up to do 4 different activities spread throughout 2 days and camped during the night. We each got to pick an activity that we wanted to do and then we all picked the last one. On Saturday, we went abseiling (cliff repelling) and kayaking and Sunday we went horseback riding and ATV'ing.

We took the train about an hour an a half south of Newcastle and hopped into a cab. Little did we know that the cab driver realized we were "out-of-towners" and decided to take the long way to this Glenworth Valley, costing us about twice as much as it should have. After arriving, our first activity was abseiling, which is basically cliff repelling. It was the activity we all decided to do and it was pretty sweet. We went to the top of these cliffs and got to repel down 3 different spots. The first spot was easy...just going down a slant. The second one was by far the scariest!! It was a straight drop down from the top, so as you can imagine, getting yourself over the edge of the cliff was a little nerve wrecking but fun!! While going down, I got to bounce off the wall of the cliff with my feet. The third one was fun because it started off as an easy slope but then there was another drop off. So we sloped down at first and then at the next drop off, we had to hang upside down to get our heads lower than our feet. After we were positioned correctly, we let our feet drop and then we were just hanging over the cliff with no wall to bounce off of. So we basically just sat there in the harness and lowered ourselves down to the ground. Rock repelling is actually a lot of fun! I get to do it in the Blue Mountains in May!

Our next activity was kayaking. This was Kim's activity of choice, so she got her own kayak and me and Lisa shared one. Kim was really good at it, she does it all the time at home. Me and Lisa on the other hand were terrible. It looked like we were heavily under the influence...driving in zig-zags. Finally, me and Lisa gave up and started splashing each other with the paddles. We definitely failed at kayaking!

Camping was another thing we failed at. We DID have a tent...but it was a little 2 person tent for 3 of us to squeeze in. We bought some firewood from the office, but realized after that we didn't have any newspaper, kindling, or matches!! So the fire was a bust. We also didn't bring any food or water with us, so we raided the vending machines before we set up camp. M&M's and chips were dinner. We had no sleeping bags, no cots, and no mattresses...only 2 little blankets and 2 little pillows. As you can imagine...it was not a comfortable night! All three of us piled on top of each other trying to stay warm...I'm sure the people in the site next to us got a kick out of it! We looked ridiculous. But my parents sure did spoil me growing up!! Even if I had to sleep in a tent back then, I had a cot, TV, and fan or heater in there. I'd LOVE to see them camp without a camper...that would be hilarious.

We were all pretty sore when we woke up in the morning. The hard ground did us no good! So our first activity on Sunday was horseback riding! This was my activity of choice...of course! Got to ride some Bush Brumbies! My horse was Mollin, and Mollin was crazy. We all started off on a tour, but if you had enough experience, you could eventually venture off on your own. My friends encouraged me to do this since it was my activity, so I did, and I regretted it later. The trail ride was gorgeous, walking through the forest and along a river...but Mollin was so stubborn!! A couple times, I tried to stop him to let the others catch up so I could finish up with them, but he wasn't having it. Mollin had a mission to get home, which he made very obvious when we hit the meadow right before the street that lead to the stables. We hit that meadow and he TOOK OFF. Holy cow...I have a lot of riding experience...most of which occurred when I was younger. So this was a little scary...Mollin galloped right under a tree, so I had a mouth full of leaves...awesome. I was the first one from the group back, so I had to wait for Kim and Lisa to get back. But looking back, it was a blast! Another tally on the "Mindy Being Minorly But Safely Reckless in Australia" list!

The last activity for the day was ATV'ing (Lisa's choice)...which we should have done before horseback riding considering none of us could sit down comfortably! Our bums were pretty sore!! But that was fun, we got to go down to a little race track and speed around and race. The track was muddy from all the rain we've been getting down here, so we were looking pretty good when we were done!

Luckily, we pulled out the sympathy card and an employee gave us a hitch back to the train station...so we didn't get screwed by another cab driver. The train ride home was AWFUL. We smelled like horses, we had mud all over us, and none of us could move because we were so sore! Our bums hurt from horseback riding, our arms hurt from kayaking, our hips hurt from the harness from abseiling, and everything else hurt from sleeping on hard ground. But overall, it was a really fun weekend! I wouldn't change any part of it...our stupidity only made for better stories!

SARAH is going to be here on Saturday and I can't wait!! We are spending her first night in Sydney and then heading up to Cairns to check our the rainforests and Great Barrier Reef!! So I'll have some more stories to tell you guys in a couple weeks!! I hope all is well at home (heard about the snow...thats unfortunate) and I miss you all very much!!

Talk to you all soon,

Mindy