Travel Blog Posts
Gold Coast Titans Rugby Game
Published: October 7th 2008Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Gold Coast
September 22nd 2008
On Sunday we went to our first rugby game! It was the last of the season for the Gold Coast Titans. Their stadium was brand new this year, but we can't figure out if the Titans are a new team or if this was just their first year in Skilled Park. We got pretty good seats and sat behind someone who briefly explained rugby to us to the point where we sort of knew what was going on. We had all purchased shirts the weekend before at the fair so we looked like we belonged! On the first bus we needed to take, the meter to take your money was broken, so we got a free ride. Then, at the bus stop where we needed to transfer buses (which was a really neat shopping center we're ... read more
September 9th 2008
Last weekend we went to the Gold Coast Show, which is basically what we would call a fair at home. There were rides, animals, games, lots of food, performances, and giveaways. It was held at the show grounds right by the Uni campus. We went on Sunday afternoon, which was the last day it was held. The first 2 nights of the show had fireworks, which we could see from the apartment. We were told it wasn't anything to get too excited about, but we had a lot of fun and were able to find t-shirts for the Gold Coast Titans rugby team, which we had been looking for in anticipation of going to a game the following weekend. We had fairy floss (cotton candy) and lunch and walked around the grounds and did a little ... read more
September 9th 2008
Here are some pictures from our campus at Griffith University. It is considerably larger than Baker, with 13,000 students (I think?) but the campus is pretty compact so you can make it from one side to the other in less than 10 minutes, which is good since professors here (all of Kristens) tend to go over their alotted time by 5- 10 minutes (EVERY time!), making it difficult to get the the next class on time. Class sizes are pretty large in lectures and smaller in tutorials and every class requires both. A tutorial is run by a TA or grad student and is basically time to answer questions and cover what the lecturer didnt get to in his/her powerpoint. Cheyenne has at least 1 class every day, while Kristen only has class on Monday and ... read more
September 9th 2008
Sorry its taken so long, but here are pictures of our apartment! After we moved in, it got pretty messy pretty fast so the reason these are being posted now is that we just had room inspections and did some major cleaning for those. Since its now spring here, I guess that was our Spring Cleaning! So far, Cheyenne and I have the 3 bedroom apartment to ourselves, which has been wonderful so far! But 2 of our other friends who live at Metro and who had empty third bedrooms have recently gotten roomates, so we're starting to anticipate that the last room will be filled soon. In Australia, they do the rent by the week, instead of monthly. This means that we could get a whole variety of people living in the "guest" room, and ... read more
August 6th 2008
I was lucky enough to have my parents and sister come visit and to be able to spend some time travelling with them. I don't have class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and they were getting into Sydney on Tuesday morning so I got an aiport transfer (which picked me up at 3:50 am!) and took a flight from brisbane to Sydney at 6 am to meet their flight coming in around 7:30. It took them awhile to get through Customs but they eventually made it through and I was really happy to see them. There was confusion with our airport transfer but once it picked us up we headed through the heart of Sydney to our hotel, from which we would see the Sydney Harbor Bridge. We statyed in a historic area called The Rocks, which ... read more
August 6th 2008
We live right next door to an Aldi's grocery store, which has very limited selection, so Chey and I decided to walk to a nearbby shopping center called HarbourTown that we hadn't been to but the owners of our apartment complex recommended. There is a Woolworth's there, which is more like the grocery stores we're used to. One of the owners offered to drive us there and then gave us directions to walk back, which included a shortcut through a park. After we finished all of our shopping and had lots of bags, we started the trek back home,w hich was supposed to be a 20 minute walk with this shortcut. It gets dark pretty early here so when we came out of the grocery store it was pitch black and we didn't know which way ... read more
July 26th 2008
Since we had nearly a week's time to kill before classes started we started researching trips that were too long to do on a weekend but were short enough to do in the space we had. We really wanted to go to the Outback but airfare was much more than we had expected and we couldn't get a good deal because we were only booking our tickets one day in advance so our travel agent on campus suggested Melbourne. We looked into some of the tours and airfare was almost 1/4 of the price so we booked the trip on Monday afternoon and left Tuesday evening, pretty spontaneous! Tuesday night our flight got in around 11:30 and we got to our hostel, The Nunnery, about an hour later. We booked the hostel under our travel agent's ... read more
Our 1st Trip to Surfer's Paradise
Published: July 19th 2008Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Surfers Paradise
July 19th 2008
After getting settled into our new apartment (Cheyenne and I live together in a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom fully furnished apaprtment, we're waiting to find out who our 3rd roomate will be) we ventured out to Surfer's Paradise, the nearby beach people flock to for great waves. Although it gets a little chilly at night, the sun keeps things really warm during the day. Apparently the ozone layer doesn't exist above Australia so the sun is even more powerful here. On Thursday one of the apartment owners, Michael, drove Cheyenne, Lindi, and I down to the far beach of Surfer's and then we did a little exploring. Afterwards, Cheyenne and I walked to Australia Fair, a shopping center that's something around 12 or 13 floors high. Some of the floors are higher up from the previous ... read more
Leaving the U.S. and Program Introduction
Published: July 17th 2008Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Cairns
July 15th 2008
We went to Cairns for 2.5 days when we arrived in Australia for a program introduction through Australearn, the program that set everything up for us. We had informational sessions everyday and stayed in a hostel. We were lucky to stay in the same room, but it was extrememely cramped! Also, our luggage didn't make it to Cairns with us initially, but we had it late the first night. We visited Rainforestation where we learned about Aboriginal hunting methods and tools, and their rituals, and we got to watch them dance and throw a boomerang. During their dance they chose people randomly out of the audience and Kristen was chosen to go onstage and learn some dance moves. Cheyenne got a video, so look for that in the video section! We also got to mingle with ... read more
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