JessicaLynn

I am flying home so soon. The last month has gone by so fast and I do not want to leave, but miss everyone at home a lot. Enjoy some random thoughts I have about Oz and life here: Cheers to the ending of an epic adventure across the Pacific from everyone I know. Conny came back from Ayers Rock/Uluru (middle of Oz) with these Games learned in Australia 1. I can see the moon in the spoon 2. A trip around the world 3. 2 up, 2 down, 1 up 1 down I've noticed I really do hear the f word more in one day here than I usually do for a week in the U.S. For example, one day I was walking along the esplanade past the Wharf Tavern/Fridays and there were three blokes ... read more

October 17 - Waking up and having my usual breakfast of peanut butter toast and an orange around 830 a.m. was a great start to the eventful day. Andy, Maria, and I met up with Andy S Paul, and a group of at least 30 other mostly German students at the pavilion at UniCentral. We hung out for a bit then headed over to the bus stop to take the 615 bus to Landsborough train station. After overfilling the bus with standing room only left we were off to the station that only takes 20 minutes to get to. Then the mass of us boarded the train to Brisbane, in our car we had DJ Paul playing German music the entire hour train ride to Bowen Hills station. There was plenty of German karaoke for entertainment ... read more

How to begin describing the wonderous whirlwind of my semester break...there are so many words to describe it yet the most fitting would be AMAZING!! I have been in Australia for over 3 months and just touched the surface of seeing all that this beautiful country has to offer. The main attractions of only one state, tropical Queensland, is just 1,852,642 km² of the 7,686,850 km2 land area of Australia. (It is huge) Well the best way to check out all the glorious pictures of my holiday is to head to my facebook album #1 and then I will be adding the rest of the hundreds of photos that the four of us took in Brisbane, Cape York, Cairns, Port Douglas, Green Island, Airlie Beach, Whitsundays and the travel adventures of living out of a suitcase ... read more

21st August For my birthday it was so nice to check the mail and get a card from so many people, my mom, grandparents, and my friend from the sorority, Moe. After I got ready for the day, my roommates (Maria and Andy) and I met up with Paul, another Andy, and Sarah to go to Maroochydore and Moloolaba beach for the day. We walked all along the coastline, sat and watched tons of kite surfers b/c it was a really windy day. We went out to lunch at a little surfer beach side cafe then went walking along the rocky shore looking for good shells. When it started getting late, we went shopping at the market for dinner, we picked up all the stuff for burgers and a little haloumi cheese for an appetizer, then ... read more

Highlights of traveling to the Australia zoo: -Big yellow Australia zoo bus from the Alexandra Headland beach to Berwah, the city where the zoo is -feeding of the three huge elephants -petting the camel -Crocoseum show with exotic birds flying overhead, Andy winning the monkey impersonation, zookeepers bringing huge snakes all around the audience, huge crocodile feeding - the croc was cranky and refused to leave the arena. -Roo heaven-we sat around with the kangaroos and wallabies, petting them, and watching them just bounce around -Koalas Koalas Koalas! There were so many of them high up in the trees you could find and a large area where they were close enough to the ground to pet. It was so great just to watch them sleep, stretch, and in the afternoon they would wake up for a ... read more

I am back to the grind of classes and keeping busy all over the Sunshine Coast. Last week was orientation "o" week and there was a great opening welcome session presented in one of the great big lecture theaters on campus. There was lots of useful information provided about everything from course material to great tips and offers for travelling around all of Australia (much more important, i think. haha). There was presenters from the international office, STA travel, and security officers on campus. The next morning was the vice chancellors welcoming session that had a lot of the same information, but more focused on the new upcoming research projects going on all over campus. There was a session focused just on int'l students and a poll taken of the class included 16% Americans and the ... read more