Fraser Island

What an incredible week! Such a fun study week (even though there was no studying involved what so ever...which is probably why it was so remarkable! A group of 32 of us left SCU early Monday morning to go to Fraser Island, it took 3 bus trips, a ferry ride, and a train-ish mobile to get us to our resort, but we finally got there after about 8 or so hours of travelling. The island was much different than I had anticipated, but still marvellous. On Monday night we all had a big dinner then just relaxed out by the Dingo Bar.
Tuesday we woke up early to get off on our bus by 8:00 to go explore the island. We had a hilarious tour guide named Karl. He totally made the trip all worthwhile. The bus rides were interesting to say the least, the entire island is sand, there are very minimal roads, and the only roads are actually those directly located by the 2 resorts. All other ‘roads’ are sand, and it is basically like you are riding a roller coaster. So Tuesday we made a few stops on the island, the first of those was Basin Lake, it was a hidden lake down at the bottom of a huge sand dune. The second spot we stopped was Lake Birabeen, which was gorgeous! It is a fresh water lake which allowed for crystal clear water! After we had lunch we headed back to our resort, which was the Kingfisher Bay Resort, in case any of you are wondering, it was really nice, even in the backpacker portion! We all hung around the pool at the resort for the remainder of the night, after eating an aussie version of a taco dinner, I’ll tell you they have a lot to learn!
Wednesday was a big day! We hit a ton of different spots on the island and I even went on a spur of the moment airplane ride over the island! We started our day at the Hammerstone Sandblow, which was really pretty and different than most of the island, which is completely covered by trees. After we all took a few pictures there we left and went for a nice drive along the beach, which is also their local ‘highway’, which is where I, along with a few others, got conned into going on a plane ride, the pictures made it all worth it though, I was able to capture most of the island from above, pretty sweet! Once we landed we stopped at the Maheno Shipwreck, took a few pictures by that then we were off to the Champagne pools, on our way we were able to see Indian Head rock. The Champagne Pools were absolutely gorgeous, I took way too many pictures there but they were all worth it, I had never seen anything like these pools before! Once we had gone for a swim and took plenty of pictures we headed back towards the bus for our delicious chicken wrap lunches, probably my favourite meal over the week, or at least the best balanced! After lunch we headed towards our final stop for the say, Eli Creek, which was absolutely freezing! We followed Karl up the creek on a path way, then we floated down it using our hands to push us down faster, it was a great triceps workout! After our ‘workout’ we laid out on the sand to catch some much needed rays before devouring some delicious cookies and coffee! We then headed back towards the resort to chill at the Dingo Bar for the night.
Thursday was the last day of our tour with Karl, and by far the prettiest day yet. The skies were blue and the sun was shining, we hit up Lake Mackenzie, which is absolutely gorgeous! I wish the pictures did it justice, we spent about 3 hours lying on the beach and some of us even swam across the lake! Between the white sand and the crystal clear water I’d have to say that this was my favourite spot over the whole trip! Once Karl got all of us to finally leave the beautiful beach we were off to Central Station to learn some history about the island, then we went for a subtropical rainforest walk, which was actually really sweet, again I wish that the pictures would do justice to all the amazing plants we saw, and creatures might I add. After our nice walk we were headed back to the bus where we had to say our goodbyes to the amazing Karl and head back to the resort.
Friday, was our day of leisure. After we ate breakfast we were off to the pool to sit and relax for about 6 hours while working on our tans! It was so wonderful to lay back and relax in a comfortable lounge chair! We were on our own for lunch so most of us went down to the Sand Bar and indulged in large portions of nachos, and burgers. After lunch we went back out towards the pool for a few more hours, afterwards we headed down to the dock to watch a beautiful sunset. It was the perfect last day of vacation!
Saturday we started on our long adventure back to Lismore. After 3 bus rides, a ferry, and about 8 hours later we were back at our apartments wondering how the week went so quickly... the saying that time fly’s when you’re having fun is a proven point, not only from my Fraser Island trip but from my whole stay in Australia.
As for updates from SCU, nothing new has really happened since my return, I’ve been working/procrastinating on a paper which is due tomorrow, I just finished up editing it. Now I will sit with my cup of tea and start reading a new book, and await the beginning of the week, to see where my adventures will take me!
How could I forget, one small thing did happen this week, I’ve changed my flights home, I now have a stopover in Fiji from June 5-8! I am so excited for this trip. I will be going with a group of great girls I have met here on our way home, as one last celebration of our times here in Australia! Basically it is our way of postponing our goodbyes, why not postpone them in Fiji! I will be returning to Chicago early in the morning on June 9th now instead of the 6th, but enough talk about coming home, I’ve got 7 weeks of life in Australia left, plenty of time for more adventures! AND two of those weeks will be with my parents! I can’t wait for them to get here!!!!!!
Off to another week, hopefully time slows down a little bit, I feel like someone has put my life on fast forward.

March is already over?

Well, by now it is pretty apparent that my goal to write weekly has failed... so here goes an update of three weeks.. Surfers Paradise was an incredible short weekend, we left Saturday morning early and came home Sunday night. It was two days jammed with shopping, beach, great food and a very entertaining night! The shopping in Surfers was incredible, lots of good deals! I just couldn't pass them up! Even though the weather wasn't the best while we were there we still managed to have an incredible time! Saturday night we went out to a few different places and had great times, all of us feeling very pretty in our new dresses that we had bought earlier that day! Sunday we woke up early and went to an all you could eat pancake breakfast, well worth it! Although, I still haven't ate pancakes, just because it is all you can eat doesn't mean you should keep eating until you are painfully full!

After returning from Surfers, I had to begin on my first assignment, since then I have been turned in one assignment and have spent way too much time on my Peace, War, and International Politics assignment. The topic... American national politics in relation to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how they expect us to write about that in only 1,500 words still baffles me. During the weeks I have taken plenty of breaks to go to a few beaches which are about 30 minutes, one called Flat Rock beach, is probably my favourite (notice the aussie spelling, gah!) beach that I have found so far, it is so gorgeous, and the shore line is filled with plenty of flat rocks to skip across the water!
...
I just turned in my politics assignment, and feeling pretty good about it! We are on our first study break now and I don’t have class again until April 12th, sweet break huh?! I’m leaving on Monday morning with a group to go to Fraser Island for the week; I’ll be back on Saturday night. I’m really looking forward to this vacation, it looks like they have some really cool places planned for us to go to, mainly beaches! I’ll continue to work on my tan!

As for this past weekend, Stefka and I went to Spot X with the Mojo Surf Company and we learned how to surf! It was probably the best weekend I’ve had since I’ve been here. We left late Friday night and were taken on a huge luxury bus down near the Coffs Harbor area, we got our accommodations and didn’t get to bed until 3:00 a.m. We were woken up at 8:00 the next morning for our first surf lesson, we got a quick overview about the tide and rip’s before we went down to the beach where we practiced standing up on the surfboard while we were still on the shore, then they let us all go out to do our own thing! Surprisingly I was able to stand up! It was such a fun weekend! After our first lesson we walked back up to the camp area and had some lunch. After lunch we went down to the beach and get a little nap in before our second surf lesson. At 4:00 we met again at the teaching area where they again handed out our wet suits and our boards and this time we went straight into the water, the waves were great and we were all having a great time catching some good waves, the time went by so fast! When we were done we headed back up to eat some much needed dinner, we had some sort of steak and some pumpkin and cauliflower soup, so delicious!(but I guess after 6 hours out in the sun anything would have tasted good!)
Sunday we woke up at 6:00 a.m and were in the water by 7:00, it was awesome, we were able to surf while the sun was coming up! Such an amazing time, I think that this was my favourite out of the three lessons, I was able to get up on a ton of waves and ride a few of them all the way into the shore! After our final lesson Stefka and I took another much needed nap on the beach, but it didn’t last long because the Australian sun is so strong. I could feel it going right through my SPF 85...thanks mom! Once we decided we had had enough of that, we went back up to camp and got all of our stuff packed up, had a quick lunch and before were headed back to school. Why is it that the weekends go by so quickly? Especially when you are doing something that is so much fun!

Now I feel like I am just rambling about random things, I am really excited about this coming week at Fraser Island, hopefully I’ll be able to work on my tan all week!
Miss and love you all!