Magnetic Island

Last week a friend and I heard about a trip that another college was doing to Magnetic Island, which lies 20 minutes (via ferry) of the coast of Townsville. We found ourselves lucky to be included in the group despite it not being a Uni Hall trip, and tagged along for a day of fun. Although I expected it to be a day of hiking, exploring, and possibly snorkeling it ended up consisting mostly of bumming around the beach - which is all good fun, but was not what I expected. The best part of the trip was before we got to the beach when we discovered a small waterfall, under and above which were picturesque wading/bathing areas (I say bathing as there was enough room to sit in the water, but not enough to actually swim). Sadly, that is the extent of my story here, there is not too much to tell, but here are some fun pictures to satisfy your curiosity!

As we were leaving the main land:



























Magnetic Island itself:




















































These were murals on the wall of the building I sat in while we waited for the ferry to take us back:

Passionfruit Gelato Must be Sent by the Gods

Last Friday my friend and I decided that enough was enough of O Week, and headed down the the beach rather than attend the scheduled event, which, like everything else, revolved around drinking. The Strand is the stretch of Townsville that lies tangent (not a strict definition of tangent, I simply like the flavor of the word) to the ocean, and is a long pathway that connects several beaches and restaurants. Sadly, the swimming areas are limited until April due to stinger season (stingers being deadly jellyfish), but there are areas in which people are allowed to swim that are netted to keep the jellyfish out.



The Strand itself:








In the background is Magnetic Island, a popular destination for visitors of both the tourist and non-tourist strain.


Wild cockatoos!


If you look really closely, there are crabs all over the big grey rock near the bottom:


This was one of the netted enclosures where it was safe to swim.


Just as we were about to settle at one of the nets, my friend and I spotted something that I can only describe as an oasis. Just ahead of us on the strand was a rock enclosure. Rocks closed off the whole area and sea water was filtered in, giving one more peace of mind than flimsy nets. Needless to say, we headed over to this tiny paradise despite the seagull that kept dive-bombing us.






















And then there was this little guy. I don't know what he is, but he was adorable!


Also, I got passionfruit gelato from one of the ice cream places along the way. It was ridiculously delicious.

O Week

It has occurred to me that I have been here for over a week now and the only post I have put up was the one about my journey. Well, now O week (orientation week) is over and it is time for another post.

If I had to pick one thing to tell you about Australians after being here for a week and a half, it would be something to the extent of "wow, can they ever drink." I mean, I heard that they could handle their alcohol, but I feel like most people would be dead of alcohol poisoning by now. Perhaps it isn't even the amount they drink in each sitting, as it is the amount of sittings they have, that amazes me. Every night I have been here so far, there has been a party. A very, very drunken party. I went out twice before deciding that I was done for the week; and I didn't even get smashed! I don't know how they do it. Maybe I'm just a lightweight.

Despite my culture shocked ramblings, the past week and a half have been, for the most part, good. Last Sunday marked the beginning of O Week; a time when all "freshers," as they are called here, must wear clothing to show their college pride every day, as well as a "name tag" of some sort everywhere they go (unfortunately, international students are considered freshers as well, even though most of us are in out third year!) A college here is not the same as a college at home. Rather, here there is a University, and within a university there are several colleges, which are the buildings in which people live. So essentially, a college is a dorm. The biggest difference between a U.S. dorm and an Australian college? The competition between the colleges. Certainly people in the U.S. have loyalties to their places of residence, but that is nothing to the college spirit here. I believe, however, that a large part of that difference is due to how the sporting events work. In the U.S. university teams play against other university teams; there are extreme rivalries between certain universities for that reason. Here, however, there is no competition between universities; instead, the competition is between the colleges within a university. My own college, University Hall, is bitter rivals with George Roberts Hall, who stole the Fisher Shield from us last year (I believe the fisher shield is won for being the best at several different sports rather than just one.)

Regardless of what college one lives in, though, all freshers were required to wear fresher items for the week. For Uni Hall, each fresher had to purchase a Uni Hall t-shirt ($15) with the following commandments printed on the back:
1.) Thou shall respect Saint George thy first Dragon Slayer.
2.) Thou shall embrace the spirit and the ways of the Uni Hall Dragon Slayer
3.) Thou shall worship fish 'n' chip day.
4.) Thou shall take a knee before thy GOON bag.
5.) Thou shall shag The Reaper then pass it on; deface The Lion; and steal The Bus.
6.) Thou must 'SLAY' before claiming thy fair maiden, knight, princess or peasant.
7.) Thou shall not pike before the sun rises over The Tennis Shed.
8.) Thou shall honour thy FOSSILS.
9.) Thou shall bleed GREEN and GOLD.
10.) Thou shall bring the FISHER SHIELD home in 2010.

Incidentally, the Uni Hall mascot is the dragon slayer; far more awesome than any mascots I know of at home (our colors are green and gold). Goon is the nickname for really cheap boxed wine here; I believe that The Reaper, The Lion, and The Bus are rival mascots; and Fossils are upperclassmen. One of the requirements of O Week was that we wear either that shirt or an item of green or gold each day, as well as our "name tags," which were not so much name tags as they were paper chef's hats that we had to wear everywhere. I suppose it could have been worse, though; one of the other colleges had their freshers wearing bibs.

I must admit, O Week was pretty much about drinking and hazing. This whole experience is about new things; new people, new hobbies, new ways of socialization; so I tried at first to join in. I went twice to a tavern, and didn't mind that atmosphere at all. It was very relaxed, nothing high energy. I tried a drink called the Illusion and was, for a short while, convinced that there was absinthe in it (what other kind of alcohol is bright green, after all?) - however, after three glasses of it and zero effect on my sobriety, my resolution was not so firm, and upon looking it up when I got back to my room I learned, no surprise, that it was not. The drink, however, was delicious, and as I am one to drink for taste, not for alcohol content, it worked out perfectly for me. I went to a club with some American girls and a few Australians one night, too. It was fun - the boys here dance much better than American boys. I was impressed. They actually dance, rather than surprise-grinding-against-your-ass. But those three nights were plenty for me, and those were probably the calmest ones!

I haven't minded sitting in my room, though, and I certainly haven't minded missing most of the hazing (though they claim that it is not hazing as it is not forced, in the U.S. it would TOTALLY be considered hazing.) I was only subject to 1.5 hazing events. The first was on the second night of O Week. All of the freshers were on our way back from a presentation, but as we reached Uni Hall the Fossils rounded us up to "teach" us the war cry. I'll put it up here when I can find my copy of it. Overall, that experience wasn't too bad, though it was rather intimidating. The other event was one that I escaped the worst of. Wednesday night/Thursday morning at 4am it was apparently a good idea to run screaming through the halls, waking up all the freshers and dragging them out of their rooms in order to march them around campus and have them shout the war cry at the other colleges. I woke up for this, but refused to go, choosing instead to pretend not to be in my room. I'm rather glad of my decision, especially as, at the end of their march, the fossils dumped flour and water on all the freshers.

In the long run, I was more nervous about O Week than I needed to be. I met a lot of people, though a surprising amount of them are actually Americans, and there were a few events that were fun. Two days I skipped the planned events entirely, though, as I had my own agenda to go to the beach and Magnetic Island, respectively. More to come on those trips later, though; this post is already too long.

I flew so far into the past, I ended up fifteen hours in the future.

When I left my family to go through security at the buffalo airport, the only thing going through my mind was “Why on earth am I doing this? This is the stupidest idea in the world.” It didn’t really hit me until then, I think, how much I was leaving behind. Going on this trip could change me forever; what if it changed me so much that going back home wasn’t like going home at all?

Regardless, I was too far in to turn back at that point. Fortunately, by the time my plane arrived, my excitement was mounting, and my despair receding.








This was my route:


My first flight was on the smallest plane I have ever seen. Well, maybe not ever, but that I had ever seen for public transport. I could barely walk down the aisle without my head hitting the ceiling, and it was only three seats wide. The shortness of this flight was about comparable to the shortness of the plane, and it seemed like we were arriving in Chicago only minutes after we took off.

By the time we arrived at the Chicago airport, all the doubts that had crossed my mind back in Buffalo were gone. I felt, for the first time since I decided to go, in fact, that this was undoubtedly the right choice. Where else could I possibly be meant to go with my life? What about all of the things I would miss if for some stupid reason, I did not go? I wouldn't get to swap stories at Allegany this summer, or know what it was like to go over seas. In a way, I think that the enormous size of the Chicago airport contributed to my excitement, but I had no qualms with it, whatever the cause. I must have walked half a mile to get from where I landed to where my next flight took off. Everything was new, exciting, and shiny. There was even a back massage station that I passed!

I met a girl there who was on my next flight (to Los Angeles) who was going to study abroad in Brisbane (my next stop after LA) and we chatted; it was nice to talk to someone who was in the same boat as me, and the ease with which we spoke was inspiring (especially since one of my biggest worries about going was that I would be unable to make friends).

Soon afterwards, though, I really began to feel the fact that I was running on only two hours of sleep. I tried to sleep on that 5-ish hour flight, but others were not on the same schedule as me and their awakeness prevented any sleep that I may have obtained. The LA airport was about as small as the Chicago airport was big, and my next flight, from LA to Brisbane, was as long as my first flight was short. I must admit, I don't know exactly how long that flight was (I have been too lazy to do the math), but I believe it was somewhere around thirteen hours. Thirteen grueling hours of turbulence when I tried to sleep, a person sitting next to me who inevitably elbowed me in the side every time I did manage to fall asleep, and a seat to small my ass barely fit in it. (Granted, I am a large person, but really, you'd think that the seats on international flights would be a tad bit larger, even the cheap ones!)

By the time I made it to Australia, though, it was completely worth it. After purchasing my first bit of Australian food (from a Subway in the airport- not so original), and spent most of my six hour layover sitting outside the airport. What can I say? It wasn't the greatest view, but it was warm, and the sky was blue, and I had time to venture a little ways away from the door and find some not-so-natural, yet pretty, landscaping near a parking lot.

The flight from Brisbane to Townsville was gorgeous. Looking down from a plane in the U.S. gives you a view of squared off blocks of brown, grey, and dull green. In Australia, there is nothing but emerald and the occasional winding road or river intertwining with the trees. I only wish I could have taken a picture that did it justice, but every one I tried to take dulled the colors, left the details out, and had a sheen from the window that I tried to capture it through.

By the time I made it to Townsville, I was semi-delusional from lack of sleep and somewhere between exuberantly happy and extremely depressed. (Though this picture was actually taken in Brisbane,
I was so tired that I couldn't even smile properly.)
There were probably about ten other people that came in on the same flight as me, and we made it to James Cook University, and my place of residence for the next several months, University Hall, with much more ease than I expected. So far, everything is looking good. Although exhausting, my travels were safe and, in hindsight, not so bad. I've already met quite a few people,though my current challenge is remembering their names, and have tentative plans to go out for the night. Even adjusting my sleep schedule is turning out not to be so bad.

"Headlights Look Like Diamonds"

I have never been inspired by the moon before. Certainly I have looked at it a great deal, often favoring the mesmerizing sky over awkward conversations, wild nights, and my own thoughts; yet last week as I sat on the bus bound for Erie, PA (a layover on my way to Pittsburgh) at six thirty in the morning, I felt an insatiable urge to tell people about it. My initial instinct was to write, of course, but at the time I was running on two hours of sleep, and I have never been good at odes. Instead I told Alex about it when I arrived in Pittsburgh. He was unimpressed. I do not blame him, especially as it was in the midst of exhausted bantering on my behalf, but the urgent need I felt to tell people about it remained. I needed to be the medium for portraying the largeness with which the moon hung just over the housetops as it set that morning. People say it is beautiful to watch the sun rise, but I would argue that watching the moon set has it beat.

I only watched for a half hour, perhaps less, through groggy eyes. It slipped in and out of my sight, sometimes falling behind the bus, or else just out of reach as it hid behind structures, both natural and man-made; but for the most part it skied along hills, rooftops, and roads with perfect form. I have never seen the moon, or the sun, take up quite so much room in the sky before. I suppose it was the effect of the atmosphere warping it as it prepared to leave my time zone, yet I couldn’t help but feel as though it wanted me to look at it; it wanted everybody to look at it. A red hue tinted it orange, telling us to harvest whatever odd crops we had in that cold month of January, and somehow it seemed to be telling us something much more.

Or maybe the case was simply that I was on a bus at six thirty in the morning. I always feel strangely inspired, perhaps even strangely important, when I travel in busses, cars, vans...anything that moves because of wheels on the ground. Planes, on the other hand, I have never been quite so find of. My dislike of air travel is not a matter of fear. No, I have many other reasons to dislike the fastest way of travel that civilians can afford. Primarily, they make my head feel funny. I have only flown a few times in my life, but every time, without fail, my head doesn’t feel right for days afterwards. Secondly, however, I dislike airplanes because they are a pain in the ass. Sure, security is a hassle, but that is the least of my complaints when it comes to the difficulties of flying. Did you know that many airlines require a $20 fee for checking even one bag? If you want to check a second, it’s $30 more. I’m no good at packing light, so my goal now is to fit four months worth of clothing and other living necessities in one bag that does not exceed 50lbs (plus a carry on).

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You’ll have to excuse if I have a sudden change in tone. My plan was to finish and post this entry before leaving Buffalo, but as I am myself, that did not turn out the way I had planned. I am currently in the Chicago airport, sitting on the floor next to one of only two outlets I have seen. You’d think there’d be more! In any case, I’m going to try to resume what I was previously saying before telling you of my newest adventures.

I failed at keeping it to one bag under 50 lbs, by the way.

Regardless of what I am feeling now, when I began writing this my intent was to portray my feelings before I take this most tremendous leap. My visit to Pittsburgh, and then back up through the state to Meadville made everything seem final, yet inconclusive, at the same time. I had to say goodbyes, some to people that I may never see again, others to those I knew I would. It is truly strange to only be able to live one moment at a time when there are so many moments behind you and so may moments ahead of you which blind you to where you are now. I realized this as I nuzzled goodbye to Alex; briefly, quickly, as we were parked in a no parking zone. I realized this as I hugged Jenna for the third time, vowing that we would one day be roommates again. All we have are moments, hopes, and memories. Nothing more, nothing less.

As I prepared to leave, I did my best to focus on hopes, because memories, even good ones (especially good ones) made my eyes sting uncomfortably.