Cairns!

I don't know how much I want to do this right now, but I'm going to do it anyway and fill you all in on the trip that was Cairns!

First of all it was amazingly great. The weather was lovely, it was actually warm, a bit humid and sunny all three days! It started with an early morning plane flight that Ann Marie and I couldn't take any longer by the time we left Sydney for our connecting flight to Cairns. We made it though and all was good. I made it through the jerk next to me taking up heaps of space with his stupid elbows...

The first day we just chilled and kind of checked out the city. We got about $24 back from the hostel each because STA had booked us for three nights instead of 2. This we used as an excuse to spend more money. Basically we shopped for things not really needed and then for food that wasn't really needed either, but we did it anyway. I think Ann Marie and I are are a terrible combination when it comes to shopping in the sense that we are just bad influences on eachother. The shopping trip was good, it was all rather funny especially when picking a color towel (neither one of us had remember to grab a towel), she wouldn't let me choose black, so I chose purple and she was pleased.

Our second day consisted of spending the whole day, a very beautiful and sunny day, on a sailboat and snorkeling in the reef. We went on the trip with the Passions of Paradise boat and crew who were all completely awesome and good fun. The ocean was beautiful and the hills/mountains all around were amazing as we left the dock. We did two dives and both were amazing. Ann Marie and I both had issues with our snorkels at the first spot but were able to get them working so that we could enjoy ourselves. THe first spot was Paradise Reef, the second was Upolu Cay. Both had heaps of coral and sea life to see. At the second spot we swam to a little island and chilled there for a bit. Needless to say we got a lot of snorkeling in and also heaps of time just sitting on the boat soaking in the sun and taking in the wonderful views. I don't know how else to explain the gorgeous-ness that was our day. Ann Marie made friends with Simon one of the crew members who was heaps cool. We got back and we walked around the city more and spent more money that we shouldn't have. Got dinner and ice cream. Ann Marie ended up buying almost 21 postcards! Haha. this again is where we are bad for eachother, we let eachother spend too much money. We were completely pooped from the day and laid around most of the night and were out by 10 pm, again.:-)

Our third and final day in Cairns began with us not wanting to get up once again, but we did anyway. We checked out and all that good stuff and then we went on a half day excursion. We did some horseback riding in the rainforest. IT wasn't real rainforest, it's kind of low on the rainforest scale but technically it still has some of the qualities of one, which we learned from one of our guides Glenn. He was awesome. He was adopted by aboriginals and lived in the rainforest for something like 13 years! The best thing he had to say was what he learned while living there which was the concept of "no worries". If you're worrying, you're not living life. The horse ride was really neat. I had never ridden a horse before so it was really cool to experience it for the first time. Nope, girl scouts or nothing I was involved in ever took me horseback riding. My horse's name was bob tail. He liked to stop every once in awhile, but otherwise he was cool. After that we went back to the hostel and chilled until we could get a ride to the airport. We sat in the airport and some how when I tried ordering a flat white with a vanilla shot, I got a flat white with no vanilla and then a "vanilla milk shake". I was so confused. The "milk shake" was terrible and I tried to put some of it in my flat white. I was too nice to go back and say that they fucked up so I just drank both drinks. It was kind of a waste of $7. We were really good on the plane to Brisbane. We had our cosmo and we had some energy so we kept ourselves fairly busy for that whole trip. We even had a chat with the lady next to us. We got off in Brisbane for a couple of hours, had a shit dinner, and then waited for the flight. The flight seemed to take forever...we got really tired and cranky again, but we finally did make it to Adelaide where Ann Marie's boyfriend Nick was there to pick us up!

Overall I had an amazing trip. Ann Marie and I had a great time and we got along really well which was awesome. I'm sad that we hadn't spent more time together before this trip because she is so awesome and that this trip is where I really got to know her because we have to leave eachother in two weeks! :-( She's awesome and we've already made plans to get together when we are back in the states. :-) Oh the wonderful joy of making friends!!!

Anyway I'm pretty buggered now and I'm amazed that I made it through this post alive, but hopefully it explains most of what went on. Hope you enjoyed reading that one. It's great to be back in Adelaide except that it's freaking cold and rainy! :-P ah well... I love this place no matter what!

cheers!

smuder

One Last Trip

It is already 1am here on what is now Sunday morning and I'm getting on a plane one more time to go to Cairns. This is my last trip, my last travel in Australia. I have barely any money left so I can only afford one more trip. I am pretty bummed I never made it to the outback which sucks, but it gives me reason to come out here again some day! Yeah the whole outback part is kind of a let down. :-(

Anyway I am fulfilling Lauren Soderstrom's command of needing to see the Great Barrier Reef because I am in Australia! Cairns will only be a three day trip so nothing too long, but Ann Marie and I will be able to fit in a trip to the Reef. That is pretty much the reason for our trip. I am getting bummed that there are places that I have not been to and have not seen. There is just too much to do and see here! And I only have so much more time and only so much left for funds. But it is definitely not a complete loss. I will be so happy to come back to Adelaide after my trip and be able to spend time with the wonderful friends that I have made. Oh and possibly study for an exam in there too ;-).

Many of my American friends will be leaving on the 26th so when I get back I plan to spend as much time with them as possible and with the Aussies that Iwill not be seeing after I leave. I think about this stuff everyday and it's getting harder and harder to deal with. These are great friends I have made and I don't know how I can leave them, but I know that I have great people waiting back home for me. No worries, I have many many plans already for the people here. We have already agreed to call and write (even when drunk. i mean... ok yes I did mean that). We already have visits planned for the Aussies to come to the U.S. and us to go back. We have plans to meet up somewhere in the U.S. for different celebrations or just for the heck of it (us Americans). We have all these plans but I still worry. We have talked about emails, and messengers and phone numbers...I hope that none of these get lost. We have plans and I definitely plan to keep them and see them through.

Well maybe I'll catch some sleep before I head off in the morning. Only a few hours left. Still have to get up early to call a taxi to get us to the airport. oh joy! I'm very excited for this trip. I can't wait! I'm looking forward to some warmer climates up north too! :-) I probably won't write until I get back.
cheers!

em

I am BATMAN!

Alright so I went out to see Batman this evening. OK well friday evening it's now early Saturday. Anyway... I LOVED it! I don't think I talk about this much but I am a HUGE Batman fan! It was always my favorite cartoon, I used to watch the old tv show with Adam West and I've now seen every Batman movie! Batman Begins was wonderful. Christian Bale did a wonderful job at being Batman. I'm not quite sure if they made the story fit together with the first Batman movie. What do I mean by this? Well the Joker was actually the guy that killed Bruce Wayne's parents in the first movie but in Batman Begins they make it look as though the guy who killed his parents died in the very beginning after he tried to get parole or something. Not sure. Whatever. I think too much about it. But really, I do love the movies and was very very pleased with this film. It wasn't really anything like the ones Tim Burton made with Michael Keaton, but I was still very pleased. Yay for good movies! Oh and of course the good friends who accompanied me to the movie! :-) May I also say that Cillian Murphy was wonderful as the scary doctor/scarecrow. He's the lead in 28 Days Later, and I think he's a great actor but he doesn't really get noticed. I think he was also in The Girl with the Pearl Earring but he only had a small part in it I think. Oh and I was actually also fairly pleased with Katie Holmes in the movie. I was actually convinced she wasn't Joey Potter from Dawson's Creek. I was happy, she didn't ruin the movie for me. Sometimes they pick crap women for these movies.

"I am BATMAN" (anyone who has watched enough celebrity jeopardy's from SNL will find that funny... anyone? anyone? Bueller? AJ you should at least be able to find it funny)

So besides my crazy batman-ness the day was pretty good. I spent most of the morning in bed relaxing and then got our for a run with Amber and then threw the frisbee with Blair. YAY! She talked me into going to some party tomorrow (Saturday). Meh, it's for Dutchy's girlfriend. Dutchy is a frisbee player, who I don't even feel like I know THAT well and I know his girlfriend even less so I think I might feel weird going. The rest of the day I tried to read for a bit and then hung out with Mel. We decided to watch Wayne's World before tea. We didn't get to finish but we were both reminded about how hilarious that movie can be. ( "I'll have the cream of sumyoungguy" -- Mel's favorite quote it seems :-) ) A group of us went to theBatman movie after tea and then I spent the rest of the night in Mel and Jess's watching random movies on tv. Overall a day well spent. Tomorrow's plans are not plentiful...I have kitchen duty in the morning and then will probably be packing for my trip to Cairns. I leave bright and early on Sunday morning. 6am flight! blah! I plan to sit and read for most of the day or maybe sleep!

cheers!

em

random news

It's early in the morning here in Adelaide on Friday. It's about 1am. My thursday was great. I slept in, I chatted with Beth and Cagney for awhile. Later I went to lunch with Sunny. Just me and Sunny. It was rather nice to get a chance to just sit and talk with him (he's been busy studying all week and I haven't seen him much). We had some great food and great conversation just about life, friends here, and all that. Oh and how I'm leaving in two weeks and how we'll all be BIG messes when we say good bye. Anyway... the rest of the day was spent being lazy and writing in my journal mostly. Later after an interesting conversation with Kareem and then Tea, Jess and Mel every so kindly let Amber, Bec and I watch tv in their room. This is all i did all night and it was soooo lovely. Mel, Jess, and Bec ended up going out to the Banque for some drinks and Amber and I stayed back watching Batman Returns, getting ourselves ready to go see the new Batman movie tomorrow night. Another thing on my mind... Bec has been thinking about throwing some of us a little party. I guess mostly for Ben, Amber and I because our birthdays are all in the summer and we won't get to celebrate them here. Bad news is that her planned date is the same as that of the one Chantal decided on for throwing a frisbee party for some of the americans who are leaving. Overall I'd say I'm screwed.Bec wasn't happy about this news so now I have it on my hands to figure out if we can switch things around. UGH!

I'm sorry that this is not a very exciting blog post but as I was sitting here checking my email before I headed to bed I got an email from my dad. It was actually an email from my mum that he forwarded. Sad news appeared. My mom's uncle Dewayne passed away on Monday the 13th. The funeral is this friday. It's sad to learn this information while overseas. I am hoping that mom is doing alright and the rest of my mom's side of the family. Dewayne had some form of cancer. I don't remember what kind, I just know he had been getting treated for it for some time now. He was a great guy. I think i used to be scared of him when I was little because he was kind of big and always had long hair and a long beard. That never changed. I'm wondering so much what home is like right now and how mom is doing and how my grandma and auntie mary are all doing. mom is going to Duluth thursday and kyle and dad are going up friday. It's all kind of weird. Don't know what to do or what to think about the whole situation. I haven't had a family member die since my great grandpa did when I was... oh i don't even know how old i was. all I know is that I didn't know what was going on. My other grandpa's brother died, and I think my dad's uncle did too some time since then, but I didn't really know them. Wow how depressing can I be? I just needed to get these things out. I'll stop here. no need to say any more. If you do it and think it helps, pray for my family. Thanks.

much love,
em

lazy day

Well it's bee a few days since my last post and what have I been doing for the past few days? Oh, nothing too exciting. Seriously it's been a whole lot of me finishing up that last essay I had to write and now it is finally done! YAY! I am officially done with essays! I am now allowed to sit on my butt and do absolutely nothing until my trip this coming weekend and then my essay on the 27th! The days before the essay was due were spent well. Sunday I spent time researching and writing a bit and then watched the movie Chocolat with some friends. Such a good movie! loved it! great story! After that I spent time in my room with Bec eating pizza and then we were visited by Shannon, Sarah, Cagney and Drakey. Needless to say not much more got done that night. Monday was spent writing all day and I actually went to bed early that night even after going to the Grace Emily, and got up a bit late but managed to finish my essay before 4 anyway!

The turning in of my essay was still well celebrated with a pint of pale at unibar. Beer tastes even better when you have one after turning in a dreaded assignment, and also when it's free. Yes I didn't even have to pay for my beer, Shannon was kind enough to buy me the beer as a reward for completing my assignments! It was Sooooo Good! :-) The rest of the evening was well spent by just sitting around. Oh the concentration that takes up! haha no. I watched Office Space with some mates and then Secret Garden and Never Been Kissed. A random range of movies but a well spent night nevertheless. It was nice to hang out in Jessicas room for most of the night. Later Joe(another american) played some tunes for a bunch of us in Jessica's room. Jessica is going home for a couple weeks before next term starts and she won't get to see Joe again because he'll have left before she gets back. :-(

Today was my laziest day ever since the beginning of the semester and it was wonderful! I got up to have breakfast but went back to bed after that. I just laid in bed all morning until lunch time. After lunch I actually got my butt up and went to Uni with Ann Marie so we could book our trip to Cairns. We're only going for three days but it should be fun. The most ridiculous thing was the cost of the plane tickets! ugh! Anyway we are happy we finally got our act together and booked a trip. Yay for us! Tonight will be spent well with frisbee possibly and then pub night. It's kind of cold and wet out so I'm no so sure how excited I am to go to frisbee and get cold and wet but I didn't go last week so I might as well. After frisbee I think I will go to pub night which I have not done in ages!!!!!! Anyway that's about it. Nothing too exciting.

I just had to add this last bit and say thanks to Mel, Schwarz and D for sending me great comments. Oh and no worries Mel and Schwarz. I'll watch out for Sunil :-)

Wildlife Park with Will...

Yesterday I spent the day at Cleland Wildlife Park. It's up in the Adelaide Hills and so it was about half an hour bus ride. I met up with my friend Will at the bus stop and we went from there. (this is American Will who used to go to Luther--frisbee player). The day looked like it was going to be really nice. It was a bit cloudy but the sun was peeking through. So we rode up into the Adelaide Hills and once we got up there it started to look a little bit more cloudy. We got to stop at Mt. Lofty for a few minutes to try and check out the view of the city but you really couldn't because of the clouds, which completely rolled in just as we were leaving. The bus then took us to the wildlife park. It rained for a bit while we were on the bus but stopped soon after.

The wildlife park was great! We sawe heaps of great animals from Australia. Kangaroos, which loved us when we gave them food. I had about four around me at one time that i was trying to feed. Will was nice enough and took pictures for me. We actually got to see a wombat that wasn't curled up and sleep in its hole. Saw a tasmanian devil, and got to watch him be fed. Saw all sorts of wallabies, some red kangaroos, some little animals that we weren't sure what they were, possible bandicoots. Will also tried to feed the Emus but they were not interested. They are scary looking animals. There was this animal called a Euro that looked pretty much just like a kangaroo. Saw a dingoe and a koala (actually saw it move! they are never moving when I've seen them.) Saw some cool birds, snakes, one of which actually moved, otherwise we assumed they were all dead, and we finished the whole park in like 2 hours. thing was that we had to kill another hour or so because the bus wouldn't be back until about 4:20. It was pretty funny because Will had said that it would probably take us four hours to really get through the park and see everything. I guess it would have taken longer if we would have sat in line to get a chance to hug the koala but I wasn't game to stand in line. So we got some food and sat and talked for awhile. Caught the bus again and went our seperate ways home. Overall a good afternoon. It was nice getting to hang out with Will and have a chat with him all day. Most of which I guess I did the talking. It was nice to talk about home and talk about MN and Luther and have someone know what you are talking about. Like when I asked Will as we passed a mongolian bbq place if he had ever been to one and he responded with "Khan's Mongolian BBQ off 494? yeah." YAY! love that place!

So one would think that once i got home I would eat tea and then go to do my homework, and get started on that essay of mine. Well I went to tea, had a chat with Amber and Sunny, then fell asleep, woke up at 10, 11, 2:30 and then just went to bed and got up about 8:30. Sunny, Amber and I were supposed to watch a movie later after Sunny and I had done some homework, but that didn't happen. heh. oops. Anyway, today I will hopefully get most of my research done so that I can type away tomorrow. I just need to actually sit down and concentrate!:-)

much love,
smuder

2 down, 1 to go...

sigh of relief! The labor studies essay is done! Finally!!!!!! I had the intentions of never going to bed last night but I ended up catching about 3 hours of sleep and spent all morning and afternoon hurrying to finish up the paper. I'm actually kind of mad that i had to rush it because I wanted it to actually be good. I ended up with about 20 pages! maybe a bit less, 17 references when I was suppose to have 20 and yeah, I don't know what else is wrong with it. probably heaps, but I can't be bothered to figure out what is still wrong with it.

The relief and joy that i experienced from handing up this assignment was SO great! it was sweet as... I then spent a couple of hours at unibar with a great group of friends and enjoyed myself for those two hours. We basically got kicked out because a concert was going to be happening and we had to have tickets for it and so we all departed into the rain a bit drunk some of us, and some of us still with beers in hand. I insisted on jumping in the puddles and amazingly i did not wipe out while running around on the sidewalks. Ben and Shannon headed to a movie and the rest of us got some food. mmm mmm good. Hungry Jacks cheeseburgers, how good are they?! especially for 2 dollars?!sooo good! I shamefully had three! :-P yes I am a fatty. Really badly lately actually because I keep eating food and don't need to. I ate a whole bag of chips last night, had three pepsi colas, and quite a few tim tams. Fatty right here. The rest of the night I spent chilling with most of the group that had gone out for food. Once Mel got back from work a few of us decided to watch Sex in the City. This show... funny... entertaining. yep those are the words that I have to explain it. Now it is a debate of whether I should just hit the sack or maybe go visit people again before I do so. I'm going off to Cleland Wildlife park with Will tomorrow and am heaps excited! He is a big fan and has suggested it to me allllllllllll semester!

by the way, I am a big fan of my mate and neighbor Lucy. She just got back from work and stopped to say hi, and to tell me she can spot my smell. Apparently it is a good smell though, like shampoo. :-) haha. she makes me laugh. Anway, overall good night, ok day...the paper is handed in and now I have one more to go. My last assignment is for politics. Hopefully it's not too crap when I hand it up on Tuesday. i can't wait to be done with writing essays!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel like my move to spend the day at the wildlife park is not the best plan, but I got to get it in sometime!

much love all!

em

not holding my breath...

Philosophy Essay done and handed in!(It's not the best thing I've ever written but I guess it will do. Here's hoping for another Distinction, but I'm not holding my breath) One down two to go! Labor studies is due tomorrow...can't wait to get that sucker in! I'm a little scared about it just because I did so poorly on my first essay. I could really use a good mark on this one. I don't want a terrible grade for the class.

So anyway I get my essay done fairly early today and what do I do? Do I work on my other essay due tomorrow? No. But I did clean my room a bit, made my bed, spent too much time at lunch, then finally got my act together, walked down to Uni with Bec and LJ, walked to Rundle for some juice, stopped at a travel agency for Bec (LJ found a weekend surfing trip... i really want to go! we might do it!!) and then walked home. Now it's a matter of do I take a nap before tea or work on my paper for an hour and a half? Eventhough I haven't done any work since lunch time I don't feel that bad about it. When it's 2 am and I have heaps of writing left to do then I'll stress! I've decided that getting crabby about all the work I have to do just doesn't help the situation. Instead I choose laughter, humor and goofy-ness! :-) I choose to be ridiculous! HA!

Other thoughts... the other night while sitting in Shannon's room listening to Bec talk about Judaism, I found the need to pry and ask her if drinking and getting drunk was considered a sin in Judaism. What I found out was that it's not at all, and that they have a celebration, or a holiday in which they are to drink heaps. I could try to tell the story of why they do so but i would do a terrible job at it, so just take my word for it. I found this all very interesting and so I was thinking just yesterday that maybe I should become Jewish just for that. It's a terrible reason but then I wouldn't have people telling me I was doing something I knew was wrong. Or maybe I still would, I guess I would still get people who think Judaism is the wrong religion telling me I was a sinner still. Well I'm not really going to become Jewish... it's terrible reason to become Jewish just for that one holiday to drink. Now I sound kind of like an alcoholic. hmmm. I also don't think I have the drive or the ability to become an actual practicing Jew. Mad props to Bec for being one!

I could keep going but I will stop. Time to work on that huge assignment! Wish me luck!

cheers,
em

Swans, too much work, too little money

Wednesday is already here and what do I have to show for it? An introduction written for my philosophy paper and a few sections of my labor studies paper written. UGH. The philosophy paper is due tomorrow afternoon. I probably could have done more work yesterday but instead I spent most of the afternoon with Ann Marie (another american) planning a trip to Cairns. The scariest thing is that this trip is going to cost me HEAPS! at least $700 AUD which I do not have! I shamefully wrote an email to dad asking for money :-P My parents are great, because they love me enough to give me money to keep traveling and living here in Australia.

On to happier topics... Monday night I forgot to write about, but it was heaps good. Sarah (Tiny) insisted that we get a group together again and head down to the Grace Emily. She also told American Dave that he was going to play at the open mic. She's very persuasive like that :-) So we got a group of like 10 of us to go down and watch Dave on his guitar. Open mic nights are great at the Grace Emily. There are always so many talented musicians that get on stage. We stayed until about 1 am watching people on the mic. Shannon, Amber and I walked home together while most of our group caught a ride with Sarah's friend Joel. I was in such a good mood all night -- just very goofy so I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Our walk home was very entertaining. We took a little detour and walked down by the Torrens (lake that is shaped like a river) and there we stopped to watch the Swans and their babies in the water. To say the least...it was precious and "So Good" :-) Most of us spent the rest of the night up late in Shannon's room chatting again til about 5am.

Yesterday as I said was a pretty crap day... it was a beautiful day outside but I just didn't get anything done! I did however go back to the spot where we had seen the swans the night before and found them there again. The best was when this older man came by all the birds kind of flocked to him. He had bread crumbs for them and it was as if they knew him by sight. It was neat! I intended to do work after tea but I fell asleep twice! After taking a walk and having a chat in Shannon's room and then the dining hall a couple of my neighbors joined me Bec and SHannon in a chat. I finally kicked out the remaining two Bec and Brad(my next door neighbor--we call him Cagney or Cags usually) at about 2:30-3:00. Now to start off Wednesday... it took me an hour to wake up this morning. But I am determined to get things done. I also have wash to do! ugh! Have the philosophy essay due tomorrow and then labor studies due friday. I have weekend plans for Saturday but hopefully I will still get my politics essay done on time for Tuesday. Ugh!

A Footy kind of Weekend!

ok so wow...that last post was pretty long huh? no wonder no one reads these!
Alright, so... know how I was going to do all that apologizing and talking with Bec? Yeah, it kind of happened but not really how I wanted it to because I haven't shared all the other things I wish to share with her. But on to other things in life....

It's been a footy kind of weekend! Saturday night we were suppose to go to the footy game but it ended up being sold out so we couldn't get tickets that night.:-( Instead Mel, Amber, Bec and I decided to sit and watch the footy in Mel and Jess's room. It was great. It's such a fun game to watch and I wish that I had a way to watch it when I go back home. The Adelaide Crows smashed Essedon (forget where they are from) so it was an exciting game but then we just knew that the Crows were going to win so our attention kind of shyed away from the game. I ended up kind of falling asleep on Mel and Jess's futon while Mel got ready to go to work and then I finally went to my own room and hit the sack by midnight-ish but not without receiving a few hilarious text messages from Mel. My favorite was the one I found when i woke up in the morning stating that Shannon Schwarz is a drunken bafoon. :-)

More Footy happened yesterday... Glory Glory to Aquinas!!!! It was the Grand Finals for the college footy teams. Both Aquinas chicks and blokes were competing against St. Marks college down the hill. I was quite unhappy that I never got put in to the chicks game but it sucked even more that we lost! sigh... The girls were soooo bummed and it was pretty sad, but we didn't stay sad long because we had the blokes to support! And they kicked some St. Mark butt! (We don't like St. Marks much. There is quite a rivalry with them) The rest of the day/night was pretty damn good and was full of people drinking it away. The guys all buzz cut their hair, which I hear made quite a mess.
Well there we go... that was a bit shorter than usual. No need to take forever. Not only that but i have work weighing on my mind. much love to all!

cheers!
em

p.s. D-- thanks for the comment :-) you're a hilarious girl!I sure hope people stop insulting you!

All apologies, being bold and comics

so I have a lot to say...
Let me begin first with this notion of "all apologies". Ah yes, lyrics from a wonderful Nirvana song, but today it is kind of my theme and probably has been for awhile. Apologizing. I feel like I don't do it much except for the occassional "sorrys" for small little things, or when someting bad happens to someone and all you can think to say is "sorry" even though you have nothing to be sorry for because you didn't do anything to make it a bad situation. Again I don't find myself in many situations where I feel like I need to apologize for what has happened but today I have found a reason to actually apologize to someone. I've been a bit of a dickhead lately to Bec and so after missing her music night performance because I was out with other friends, and after feeling guilty, then not guilty, mad, sad... everything I whinged about it all for awhile, went to bed and now think I should say something. I think my issue was that I felt like I catch all the flack on this kind of stuff, and that I have been given almost very high standards in the mind of Bec. I love Bec, she is my dear friend and although I have my times where I am annoyed I still find joy in hanging out with her and I also find a wonderfully interesting human being. But i am going to stop being a dickhead and I am going to be a real friend and talk to her about what's on my mind and tell her sorry but that I do not feel guilty for having a fun night still. I hate feeling guilty. I just felt like a jerk.

To give a bit of background...last night was music night here at Aquinas College. We have many many talented musicians that were performing. Anyway, after footy practice (our last before the grand final) I went out with some friends to the unibar and just had a blast hanging out. We of course were bad with time and I didn't go back to Aquinas until a little ways into the second half of the Music Night. I left the pub feeling guilty about Bec's performance but was still able to enjoy myself and just smile while watching others show off their talents. We spent the rest of the night just hanging out and I think overall I talked and maybe yelled a bit too much because now I have a sore throat. UGH! anyway that was the jist of my evening from yesterday. Tonight I was meant to be going to the Footy game but we caught a bit of bad luck and the tickets sold out a few days ago. Our plans now are to watch the footy on tv maybe and just hang out. There is a frisbee party tonight too but I doubt i will go. It's for a player's birthday and I don't know him that well and I really can't have a big night of drinking or anything because of the footy game tomorrow afternoon! I am so excited for this and can not wait for the game. I hope I get to play! I'll be pissed if I don't get to!

On to the topics of being bold and comics. In what i consider my spare time (which has really been time that I just don't want to write my papers) I have been reading Shannon and Shannon's comic online Cheesebandits. I find this so entertaining because the humor in their comics is definitely them! Does that make sense? It's just that I know they are like that and their sense of humor is great on both ends. Reading it also makes me wish I was talented enough to be that witty, artistic and funny. Maybe some day I will be and will start a comic myself... I was thinking this today because of the conversations I have had recently with Davina. We can be pretty funny together sometimes. Lately her and I have talked a lot about religion which always seems to come up in conversation with us. She has been through a lot with religion stuff, mostly in a bad sort of way. People just never seem to understand her and she always seems to get the dickheads that don't make religion sound good because they are too absorbed in telling you that you're a bad person for the things you do. This is just ever so ridiculous! Doing this kind of thing does NOT make people want to become Christian or whatever relgion it might be. Two of my most favorite things that have been said to her were when she was told she had "issues" for having been out drinking one night and along with this one came the statement from the same person that they couldn't see why she would drink and get a bit drunk when she "knew what she was doing was wrong". Ahem...she's 21! she's allowed to drink! oh and the other favorite thing that has been said to her lately was the one about how this guy just couldn't find a datable girl(there are options but...) because " most of u girls just aren't bold enough in where you stand" We got a laugh out of this one. Yes...insult someone, that will get you a girlfriend ;-).

But seriously, I guess I am not the most BOLD person, but really what does one mean by being bold? I have my beliefs, and I stick by them. They may be all around the place; bits and pieces of different sets of beliefs, but I will always be ready to tell you what I think about certain things. Now if bold is to be defined as being one who goes out and preaches their beliefs to people (that's alright, i guess, i mean yeah, let people know what you think) and then tells them that their beliefs are no good enough or that they are believing the wrong thing, than I am sorry, that's crap. Again go for it and preach what you may, we have freedom of speech and maybe along with that comes the freedom to be a dickhead, but really... that's not going to get us very far and it's certainly not going to get you anyone to want to be religious, for example. I guess I'll just find my own idea of what bold is (I'm sorry if this has gotten completely off track and no longer makes sense. really... "All Apologies") Anyone who cares... here's a link to the word bold. enjoy! : http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=bold Hopefully it works!

alright I should stop with the rambling. I'm only putting off homework that desperatly needs to get done and a sore throat that needs to be taken care of. Much love to all!

-smuder

"...done, done and I'm on to the next one..."

So I find this title very appropiate, because 1) My brother Graduated today (June 1st, 2005) and so he is done with High School and my whole family is done with the Fridley School System after 19 years, and 2) I'm listening to Foo Fighters. Good lyrics. But yeah... My little brother has graduated from high school and I am so excited for him! I got to listen to it over a pay phone at uni this afternoon after my last class. I actually didn't really hear his name because it wasn't the best of sound and I wasn't in the quietest of places, but I got to hear the excitement and pretend like I could see him walk across the stage. Good news...he didn't fall on his bum as he walked across the stage. I got to talk to him and my whole family (two sets of grandparents included) on the phone after I made it back to Aquinas and got on the phone! Yay I am so proud of my brother. He is done and we are all excited!

I also got to talk to my old soccer coach/ good friend's dad Mr. Falink (Bruce). I will not get to see him again for probably a very very long time because he is moving to Chile on June 27th. Two days after his daughter (my good friend)Ruthie's wedding! He spent last summer in Chile and I got to house sit for him all summer with some friends. He's a great guy and I am very excited for him as well. I hope that I can go down to visit him in Chile sometime for so many reasons! 1) I would get a chance to travel again, 2) I would get to try to use my spanish, which is lacking, but it could be good practice and 3) I'd get to see him again. This is the guy that pretty much taught me how to play soccer back in like 8th grade. I had good times playing soccer and that first year was super awesome. I remember learning soccer with my friend Emily and we always called Bruce, Mr. Falink, just because it irked him so much. :-) He took it all with a grain of salt, we were dorky 8th graders. (yet we still didn't stop after that. All through high school we still did it) Best part was explaining to him that I was in Adelaide, Australia and he responded with "there's a song about Adelaide.." YES! yes there is! 10 points to him for knowing that!

Anyway ...it's been an exciting day so far getting to hear Kyle graduate, talking to the family and Mr. Falink. YAY! Plus it was my last day of class and class was pretty good. Chatting with some of the people in my class after was great, they are such nice people and the walk to uni was so entertaining thanks to the wonderful singing/dancing talents of Beth and Lauren. You would not believe how well these chicas can groove and walk at the same time while listening to Beck.

Things about yesterday...Ugh... nothing special I went to frisbee and had the most random bursts of energy imaginable. I think i was most excited to see Blair and to hang out with her. The rest of my evening consisted of homework, and chatting with mates over coffee. One of the Shannon's told me that for a souvenir I should just bring home an Aussie. I looked at Sarah and told her she was coming home in my suitcase :-) She's definitely small enough...it would totally work! I would love for any of my Aussie friends to come and visit me in the States. Shannon and Anna have both talked about coming to the states next year, and if they do I hope they visit me! or I'll visit them! I love them! I love all the people here!

alright well that's it for now. Gotta jet. time for lunch and heaps of studying!!!!!!! mucho amor a todos!!

-smuder

An Early Farewell

Ok so really I feel like this stupid thing never gets read. And it saddens me( i know there are some people who do read this and I thank thee!) I still hope this gets read once I leave this wonderful country.... and Really I try to be witty and all! sigh...

Alright well I'm going to talk away in my usual way now... I left you all with Monday in the last post, which was not very exciting at all besides hours and hours of sitting in the library finding nothing much for my papers and wanting to pummel the computers! Monday was probably the nicest day in a long time too! The sun was shining, it was nice and warm when I left for uni...it was great! but I sat in the library all day!:-( hmph! I was not amused.

Usually Tuesdays are my days that I loathe, and this one was not unlike any other, except that I did not have my three hour class in the morning starting at 9! YAY! Instead I went to uni fairly early still to try and find more references for my papers. :-P I still had philosophy lecture and a philosophy tut at 12 and 2. I got Mel to thinking that she was going to be Mr. Nigel-no friends because I didn't ruck up to philosophy lecture that early. No worries though I did make it and she was not Nigel-no friends. I think we both got to the point of almost falling asleep and not caring because the lecture notes always go up online and so there's no use to actually copy them down. Along with the fact that it is almost completely impossible to do so because the lecturer goes through the notes quickly. To make the most of our afternoon, Mel skipped her tutorial for philosophy and had lunch with Amber and I instead. Something that was somewhat exiciting , or maybe just a relief to me was that I met with my professor for my labor studies class to talk about the HUGE paper we have to turn in. SHe was helpful and I think I can get on track with it now! WHEW! too bad I didn't work on much of it after that...

Last night I got to experience an early farewell. It was really rather odd, but it was good nevertheless. We had a farewell get together with our IES program. They provided food and drinks. And well after a very long search for the room that it was in i made it there and thought to myself..."who am I really going to talk to?" I mean I have Blair and Amber whom I see all the time and hang out with quite often but there was quite a handful of kids that I never really see or talk to anymore. The night was still good, and entertaining, had a few beers, had some chats with people (which actually turned out really nice), then made my way back to Aquinas. I don't like to think about this whole leaving thing, but it was brought to my attention this morning that I seriously have 1 month left! 4 1/2 weeks! and what will I be doing in that time? -- writing papers, studying, traveling, and hanging out with my mates until they get so sick of me we'll maybe be ready to leave eachother (probably not really)

other things going on.... Kyle graduates today, June 1st even though it's not June 1st back home yet. My little brother...sigh... this is a weird feeling. I'm heaps excited for him! My parents are planning to give me a call from the graduation ceremony. I have class tomorrow morning but hopefully it will all work out. I'll at least get to hear my brother graduate! I hope he doesn't fall on his bum when he walks across the stage! :-) I proudly display his graduation announcement that my family sent over to me, along with his open house announcement and graduation picture. :-) Not to sound too dorky, but this makes me smile. Alright I think that's it for now, must get a move on with the day.

much love,
em

Arrrgh matey!, High Spirits, and Freemartins...

Hello all! First let me say that if you read this blog you should DEFINITELY read the post that comes before this one. My mate Mel asked me to let her write a post on here and I let her. It is really a great post, not just because she says nice things about me, but because she's just hilarious!

So now I'm here to give you and update on life in Adelaide...Let me start with Friday....oh what a day!!!

Friday started with Politics lecture, our last friday politics lecture! YAY! Politics lecture is great because I have met a couple of great people there (and of course it's an interesting subject!). Beth is one of the great people I have met. She is also from the U.S. and hails from the sunny state of California. She is very very hilarious and that doubles when you get her with her roomie Lauren (LJ-She's amazing too. Just as hilarious as Beth and another Californian.). Beth keeps me entertained in class when it gets boring, and she also has introduced me to the wonderful person that is Terri. Terri is an Aussie and hails from the Barossa Valley, not too far from Adelaide(they make wine down in the Barossa Valley). Terri is too adorable to even explain...because I suck with words so you'll just have to take it as is! -- So anyway on to the day... The three of us had class together for an hour and then Beth who has been taking an Anthro class and has had to take notes while observing people asked us to join her at UniBar while she did this and to meet up with Lauren. To make the story somewhat short I went along @ noon, Terri joined us later and we sat there until 3:45 having some beers. Funny how that happens when you plan to do work all afternoon! The talk was heaps good and just overall fun! We even took the time to meet new people and had a jug with them because they had been sitting there just as long as we. After UniBar we had to stop to get Beth's dress that she would be wearing for the Fresher Show. We walked back all silly like for footy practice which was a special practice because it was a Goon practice. Goon is the word that is used for cheap boxed wine. So after every drill at practice we were given a cup of Goon. It was quite crazy and Beth, Lauren and I were pretty silly with tackling eachother and goofing off. After practice and dinner, I got my wonderful Pirate costume together for the Fresher show. Arrrrgh Matey! I was a damn good pirate that's for sure. I used all of my own stuff to make my costume besides the tin foil that I used on my sword. I made myself an eye patch out of string and construction paper and then a sword out of cardboard and tin foil. I'm awesome! :-) The fresher show included a big bouncy castle and heaps of people dressed as pirates, fairies, grandmas, hobos, witches, workmen, army men, goths, nurses, hippies, cowboys and indians. The night proved to be heaps good with fun antics and a good time bouncing in the castle. (I'm sure I could tell you all that happened but that would take WAY too long)

On to Saturday. The High Spirits Frisbee Pub Crawl was Saturday night and it was a blast. I got to hang out with frisbee folk again which was exciting and I got to do it at four pubs wearing a fun frisbee pub crawl t shirt. :-) I had a great time hanging out with Karen, she is so much fun and Blair and Anna too. I could sit and explain who they are like I did beth and Lauren but I'm lazy now... Just take my word on it that they are amazingly awesome girls and that I had a great time hanging out with them. I ended up at Hungry Jacks that night and actually called it kind of an early night after two cheeseburgers. Amber had come along to the pubs so I walked home with her, we ran into friends who had been at Law Ball, and once home we popped in a movie which neither of us really watched, we both fell asleep.

Now onto Footy...Sunday Footy was great! We won! YAY! we played against Lincoln College and we kicked their butts. It was a good game but it's crazy how much we all bunch around the footy and don't create enough space. I really really wanted to play and was so antsy to play, but they didn't put me in until the second half. I didn't get to tackle much but I got a goal. It was great, cuz the passing back and forth between me and my team mates was great down the field and then I got to make the kick which was actually crap but it bounced in awkwardly into the goal! The blokes won in the game after us and so we both will be playing in the Grand Finals next sunday! YAY! That night after the games I did a bit of work, hung out with Mel and Amber, watched a movie, took a nap and read some dictionaries. Yes dictionaries. I was pleasantly surprised with a text message from Shannon giving me the definition of the word Freemartin. I joined in on the fun and browsed through the Japanese-English dictionary and the Latin-English dictionary and then stayed up until 7:30am! Yeah things were kind of weird last night. Our mate who was in the loveliest mood from her musical performance at a pub got some bad news on the phone last night. She has just had a very rough start to the year. If you do, and think it helps and if it's your thing, do pray for our mate.

So this morning after a few hours of sleep woke up, missed breakfast, went to lunch, and headed to the library by 1:30 to get some work done. All I've really done is find articles, which I"m not sure will be that useful or not and am freaking out once again about papers! My professor is going to meet with me tomorrow about my Labor Studies paper which i find will be very good, hopefully this way I'll figure out what she really wants out of it and get the assignment right this time! Sigh... I've stalled enough it it now time again for studying...one more hour and then a break and back to Aquinas for tea!

much love!

smuder

EMILY THE COOL BANANA (AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK OF WESTBROOK)

HEY EVERYONE.

I WOULD LIKE TO INTRODUCE MYSELF, MY NAME IS MELISSA WESTBROOK (SOME PEOPLE CALL ME 'WESTBROOK') AND I LIVE AT AQUINAS COLLEGE IN NORTH ADELAIDE (YES THE VERY SAME ONE THAT EMILY SMUDER LIVES AT), WHICH IS IN THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, AUSTRALIA. I ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE CAPSLOCK KEY AND NOW I AM PROBABLY GIVING THE PEOPLE READING THIS THE IMPRESSION THAT I AM SHOUTING. I APOLOGISE PROFUSELY FOR THIS BUT I AM SERIOUSLY LAZY. EMILY CAN VOUCH FOR THIS. I NEVER TURN UP TO MY PHILOSOPHY LECTURES AND SHE'S ALWAYS LEFT SITTING THERE BY HER SELF LIKE MR NIGEL NO-FRIENDS. AS SUCH I AM SO INCREDIBLY LAZY THAT I CANNOT BE BOTHERED TO HIT THE CAPSLOCK KEY AGAIN TO TURN THEM OFF.

ANYHOO, I HAVE AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL OF YOU READING THIS.

EMILY SMUDER IS ONE COOL BANANA*. NO SERIOUSLY. I MAY BE COMPLETELY CRAZY AND ALL BUT STILL, I KNOW A COOL BANANA WHEN I SEE ONE. AND EMILY IS ONE OF THEM. EMILY GETS INVOLVED IN LOTS OF STUFF OVER HERE LIKE PLAYING AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL. TODAY SHE KICKED A GOAL PLAYING FOOTY AND WHILE I WASN'T THERE TO SEE IT, I HEARD IT WASN'T A VERY GOOD ONE. BUT STILL, THE FACT THAT SHE'S AMERICAN AND SHE KICKED ONE ANYWAY IS PRETTY DARN BRILLIANT. EMILY IS ALSO COOL BECAUSE SHE LETS ME BORROW HER PHILOSOPHY HOMEWORK WHEN I HAVEN'T DONE MINE. EMILY ALSO DRINKS MORE BEER THAN ANY AMERICAN CHICK I HAVE EVER MET (AND IN MY TIME I HAVE ACTUALLY MET QUITE A FEW). FOR THIS I HAVE AN ENORMOUS RESPECT FOR HER (A LOT MORE THAN I HAVE FOR GEORGE BUSH ANYWAY. BUT I DIGRESS). WHEN SHE GOES BACK TO THE U.S. I WILL SEND HER A 6 PACK OF COOPERS SO SHE CAN SHARE THE GLORY OF AUSTRALIAN BEER WITH HER FELLOW AMERICAN MATES.

EMILY IS MY MATE AND SHE IS GOING HOME IN SIX WEEKS AND I WILL MISS HER A LOT.

THIS POST IS KIND OF TRIPPY, BUT I DON'T REALLY CARE. I HOPE I DON'T COME OFF LOOKING TO UNINTELLIGENT. I AM, AFTER ALL, AN ARTS STUDENT.

PEACE AND TREES TO YOU ALL, MY PRETTIES!!

WESTBROOK.

*cool banana - one seriously cool, hip, trendy (any American's reading this may even use the term 'fly') happening thing or person. Can be a descriptive phrase, ie 'hey, that dance you're doing is cool bananas!', or as a testment to the worthiness of ones character, ie. 'That Westbrook chick is not much of a cool banana'.

Goose!

So my intention was to go to Uni early today to get some work done but I haven't made it there yet and it's about quarter of ten. The other part of my plan though is to stay there all day after I finish class at 12 so that I can get some research done. Three papers due in about a week and a half! I'm freaking out!

On to happier topics...The past couple of days have been heaps good for the most part. Wednesday night was Exec Dinner where we had to get formally dressed up for dinner. Other colleges student clubs had representatives come and eat at the high table that night. This dinner was excellent! We got wine at dinner and the meal was just excellent in itself! We also got served our food, no buffet style! Anyway after tea the idea was to go out to a pub because it was pub night, but we weren't going to the Cathedral which is our usual pub, but to some other pub because it was a special occassion. Needless to say I did not make it out again... But it was still a good night. We finished off a bottle of wine in Jess and Mel's room and then headed over to Shannon's where heaps of our mates were hanging out having a few before the pub. Sunny and I sat and sang Ben Folds together, of course with the help of whoever else joined in, but Sunny and I did our best to belt out the songs in a terrible tone (at least I did). This is kind of lame to say again, but I got sick and ended up falling asleep for awhile and when I woke up lots had happened... a couple random yelling fights between mates, and people passing out. It was just weird. We had a little scare with one of our mates that night. After hanging out for a bit more with Amber, Sunny, Shannon and Woody we all headed off to bed. I was down for about twenty minutes when the fire alarm went off in Hannan and Beovich. so 4:30 am we had a fire alarm and luckily we were only out there for a little bit. I have no idea what set it off, not sure if anyone does, just theories that it came from the kitchen.

Thursday was a gloomy gross day and it didn't help that I had only had three hours of sleep. To start the day I had breakfast and walked to Uni with Beth and Lauren(two more American mates of mine -- hilarious girls!). This walk hilarious as because we were all just silly. We all lost it too when I got goose poop on my foot. Not on my shoe, i was wearing chacos, so it definitely got on my foot. We all about died laughing. Later while Beth and I were getting coffee before class there were advertisements for a restraunt called THe Greedy Goose that said "go the goose". Beth thought this was so hilarious and picked one up explaining to me that she would make a sign or something out of it for me because after I goose poop on me she had decided that she would now call me "goose". Class was alright, we were locked out of our room so once we got a room it went ok, but I wasn't much in the mood for class. I walked back home after and thought I was going to get attacked by birds in park that kept flying around me! it was weird as... The rest of the day was devoted to making myself feel better and trying to do homework. I got a bit done, but not heaps. After tea was spent looking for Star Wars Episode 4 so Dave and I could watch it but we gave up after awhile. I then spent the evening talking to Amber and Sunny and then watching Family Guy with them and whoever decided to join us. We had another scare with a mate who fell asleep in Sunny's bathroom. After we got them out and Bec took them to their room we kind of sat there in silence not knowing what to say. I just kept thinking about it and was feeling very concerned. After awhile we got to talking about again and then most of us headed off to bed.

Today will hopefully bring good things, like actually finding research that is relevant to the topics for my papers! here's hoping! It's actually sunny out today so that adds to the day. Tonight is the Fresher show and I get to dress up like a pirate! I'm excited! i think I can make a whole outfit from clothes and stuff I already have! The Fresher show is just a get together where we'll have fun games and stuff to do, drinks, and i guess a big air bouncy thing! woo hoo! It should be a fun night. I also have footy practice this afternoon to get ready for our first real game on Sunday against Lincoln College! I can't wait! It's going to be so much fun... this game is great! One other bit of excitement I received this morning was an email from my daddy telling me all about what's going on back home. New neighbors have moved in next door and dad has been building a deck. Kyle only has two days of school left and then he graduates I think next week! Exciting stuff!!! plus I got more pictures of Kyle from prom :-) what a cute little brother I have.
Some sad news I found out was that the mom of a girl I went to high school with just died the other day. It is all pretty crazy because it mostly happened because the hospital screwed up or something. At least that is the story I was given. Weird stuff.
Sorry to end on a sad note... should have shared that earlier...
much love!

smuder

Tuesday Night League Championships!

Wednesday! Woot! -- alright so actually I want to start with news from yesterday...

Tuesday was kind of a crap day at uni. I finally got the group presentation done which was a relief and we actually ended up doing alright. We missed a few things but otherwise our professors feedback was pretty good. WHEW! The rest of the day at Uni was not amusing. Philosophy lecture was pretty boring which was sad because the lecturer we had is usually pretty good with her lectures. The break in my day was great because I met up with some mates and had lunch and then my last class my Philo tut was not exciting. After a crap day at Uni I was sooooo excited for the evening! It was Tuesday night Frisbee League championship night!!!! YAY!!!!! Our Div 2 team played for 3rd place and won. It was crazy because two of our players got there late and we were freaking out! But things went fine, and the game was good. We had awards after which was really neat. My mates Dave and Allie won MVP for Div 2 (they weren't on my team though) they're both awesome and they both just started playing this year! Again, they are awesome!

Then we moved on to playing Div 1 games. Adelaide Uni (the team I play on and love dearly) was playing for first place against Flinders Uni. Sigh... it was a tough game. Flinders was ready for us and they have a pretty mean game, not to mention very tall and fast guys which helps them out a bit! Some of my mates who don't play div 1 stayed to watch the game and my friends Sunny, Bec and Nina from Aquinas came to cheer us on too! It was so nice to have them there. It was a tough game and I got angry easily especially when I dropped a pass or two, or didnt' make a good pass or two! Sigh... but all in all it was fun, and it was my last game with that team so it was heaps good and I'm going to miss playing with all of them! It was kind of sad but so much fun nevertheless. :-) They are great people and I'm going to miss them and miss playing frisbee with them!!! I could probably go on forever about this but I should stop... It's Wednesday morning and I have homework to do and class to go to later!

oh but i want to share this... I had an exciting start to my day... I first got an email from my mum saying that I had received $300 from a scholarship I applied for before leaving the states! YAY! more money to do stuff! and then I also received an email from Britta and Kim saying they were going to Oregon to see Krista and that they needed her number. So I called Britta and Kim, who were traveling through Wyoming I believe and got to talk to them!!! They already had received Krista's number from Marissa but hey...it was great talking to them!

cheers,

smuder

this is kind of a boring one...

so I'm not quite sure where I left off from last week. Somewhere around Wednesday I think...

Anyway, highlights from the past few days.:

Friday was Tutor teas. If I haven't already explained Tutors are like RAs back in the states. My corridor went with the kids from Gleeson bowling. It was heaps good, I hadn't been bowling in a long time. My neighbor Dusty won the first game in our lane and he was bowling with his left hand, which is not his dominant hand! After bowling the idea was to meet up at a pub with all of the other corridors and hang out, which I did until they started to kick us out because they were closing. While at the pub my mate Fiona started asking me about when i'm going home and all of that, which got me a little sad...but otherwise it was a good night. I got barely any sleep again...

Saturday I was at Uni at 8:30am to catch a ride to Victor Harbor with the frisbee folk. We had a little tourney that weekend. Very laid back and nothing too special, but it was heaps good. We played two games that day and instead of spending the extra 20 dollars to spend the night I went home with Karen (she's great, she was our women's captain for LSD at nationals) and a couple others. I'm glad I did come home. One is because I got to shower and the other is that I was so tired I fell asleep by 9-9:30pm!

Sunday: This day I had set aside for doing work and I got a bit done but not much. I term it as only slightly productive but it was at least a little bit. I ended up watcing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas later in the afternoon and then spent most of the night with Amber hanging out eating chocolate and watching episodes of Friends on the network.

It's now monday and it's pretty gross and rainy today so there's no reason why I would want to go outside, which means I really have no excuse to not do my homework. Big day tomorrow... I have my group presentation for my Labor Studies class. I'm excited to get this over with and I hope that my group does well! I really like my group, they're cool people. I went out to lunch with Selina and Shelley from my group on Friday. Very nice girls. Anyway this will also be the last day I have this class which will be so nice! Now it's on to writing three papers and then an exam with hopefully some traveling in there too.

well this one was kind of boring, but i must be off to start my homework for the day. I do have all day, but really I'll only use so much of it...

cheers,
smuder

'Oh the Horror!' , Hitchhikers, 'Exies', The Races and more...

Alright, now if that wasn't a long enough title, lets see how long I can make this.
To start, it's 4:30 in the afternoon and I should really be doing homework. I get feeling guilty all too often about this. I have a presentation coming up next week and still haven't started any of my three papers due in less than a month! eek! But in spite of all of that, life in Australia is good. Here's what has been going on lately...

Friday the 13th! : oooh creepy. Ok not really because I don't believe in superstition but this day gave us a reason to rent some scary movies and just chill. My mate Jess and I decided to do so and ended up with a group of us that went to rent some videos. What we ended up with was The Evil Dead, Long Time Dead, Desperado, From Hell, The Nightmare Before Christmas and 24 hour party people. We ended up only watching Evil Dead, Long time Dead and Desperado. I realize Desperado is not a horror, and well Nightmare not so much either, and 24hr party people? that was Rick's pick... not sure what it is exactly. After three movies, some chips and beers in Jess's room a few of us watched Donnie Darko in Shannon's room . Creepy, but not horror and well really good. Of course we all stayed up late talking...me? yeah.. way too late! 8am maybe? I'm terrible with getting sleep but once again I can not complain about the conversation...it is worth it.

Saturday: I spent most of the day doing... hmmm good question. I tried doing work i think, then it was a trip to the store, and then participating in Ben's group discussion thing that he asked us to do for a presentation he is doing on globalisation and the media. It went well. I freaked out at Bec at one point about using the word White Trash and talking about class. We'll leave that at that.... Later that evening I went to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with some frisbee friends. It was a fantabulous time. I don't see them much out of frisbee nights during the week so it was nice to hang out and see a movie and then grab pizza after. I enjoyed the movie although I was told after by Will that he didn't think I would find it that funny since I've never read the books, but I still enjoyed the randomness and the humor. I came back to watch the rest of spiderman on tv and then headed to my room for some studies and bed.

Sunday: Another day of footy! YAY! this time we played against the Exies (ex-Aquinians). They didn't have enough chicks to make a full team so I ended up playing for them instead of for Aquinas. It was fun but not a very serious game. I got at least one really good tackle in (against my own Aquinas team mate) which was exciting because I was told I had done well. The day was beautiful! I came back early to do work and then after Tea a bunch of us walked to get ice cream, although Sunny did push me through the park in a shopping cart for awhile. Star Wars Episode 2 was on tv so Mel suggested we watch it in her room (Jess and her are roomies). So group of us ended up doing that for the night. I then debated where to do homework or go to bed....

Monday: Adelaide Cup Holiday. That's right a holiday! A holiday for horse races! How great is that?! Ha Ha... So what do Aquinians do on Adelaide Cup Holiday? We go to the races to get pissed. (what a country! what a city! what a college!) Basically heaps of us got together, dressed up, and went down to the races to drink all day. From about 11-5. These people are nuts, but I love them! I watched only like two races, but other wise enjoyed the company of my many friends that were there. It was a good day, full of quite a bit of nonsense, but good nevertheless.

Tuesday: This is not an interesting day. i spent the whole day at Uni going to class and trying to work on my group presentation. I keep freaking out about this presentation. I just really need a good chunk of time where I'll just sit and work on it! I had frisbee league again, and although our Div 2 team lost it was a fun game and we play for 3rd place next week, our Div 1 team won! That's right Adelaide Uni beat out team Disco! woo hoo! we play in the grand finals next week! it was quite an exciting game! We all played so well! Our heads were in the game and the spirit was awesome! it was a great game!

Now it's wedesday. Had class and did some work and need to do more work. Frisbee fun and trainig tonight, more homework and possibly a movie later. It is pub night, but I doubt I'll go. Too much work and well I'm just too lazy again to go!
much love!

cheers.
emily

Grace Emily, Collapse, Tequila, Coffee, and Shorts that hurt!

Everyone like the title? Good! These are just a few highlights from my week:

Monday: I have no class these days and it turned out to be a rather unproductive day doing homework. I tried working on a group presentation but I am having a hard time getting that together. Monday night was great though... my mates Joe, Jessica, and Louise all performed at an open mic night at a pub called the Grace Emily. They were all amazing! The other people who played were also wonderful! We had a good sized group of people that went to support Joe, Jessica and Louise too. None of them had ever played open mic, so it was a little nerve wrecking for them but again they all did so well! They are all great musicians! This whole experience was awesome! the Grace Emily was really cool, the people were heaps fun, and the entertainment was great!

Tuesday: This is my full day of class which started with my Labor Studies class. All we did was work on our presentations and although I found a little bit more focus on my part of the presentation with the help of my mates in my group I am still freaking out about my part of the presentation. I really don't want us to do poorly! During class though I had my laptop with and I discovered the game Collapse on my computer! Oh joy! This game is so fun but heaps addictive. I've been playing it too much ever since. Tuesday ended with frisbee league. Our division 2 team won our game so we play in the finals? , i think next week! The division 1 team I play on lost, 8-12 but it was a good game. In both games I did kind of crap but they were still good games overall! Can't wait for next week! This was also the night I stayed up until 4am chatting with mates. And although it made me tired I do not regret it because it was some great conversation! ( I love these people!)

Wednesday: Apart from being tired it was a good day. I was excited to go to Pub night, but actually ended up not going. After I finished Uni for the day at 1 my mate Amber and I decided to stick around Uni for a bit and participate in the Uni's attempt to break the world record of the longest Tequila shot! we weren't going to stay but then we saw friends from Aquinas and figured we should join them. Unfortunately we did not break the record. They were looking for 1,050 people but only ended up with 800. It was all really funny. Wednesday was frisbee again which was good and then it was pub night. I had been planning to go, but since I hadn't finished my reading during the day I decided I would stick around to finish it. Plus I was heaps tired from frisbee. When I got back from frisbee my mate Jess was prepared to drag me to the pub. Luckily she didn't actually do so and I ended up in the Dining Hall with my mates Nina, Greatsy and Shannon. We sat there and drank coffee for quite awhile and then I headed to my room for some studying which was hard to do. I couldn't focus on the reading, it was rather boring.

Thursday: This was a good day...no hangover, because I stayed away from alcohol the night before! I had one tutorial for politics and it was good. We got our papers back and I did alright. It wasn't exceptional but it was good. After class I headed to the library to do some research for my next politics paper. It didn't go that well...i spent most of the day and evening trying to focus on some sort of work whether it was my poli paper, philo paper or labor studies paper/presentation. I had the worst time trying to focus my attention on anything! ugh! before tea though my mate Amber agreed to go running with me. I just couldn't stand thinking about work anymore, I was going crazy in my room trying to read! I decided I just wanted to run... anywhere! So we took a forty minute run, well more like a jog and it felt great! Except for the fact that my shorts were rubbing on my leg and have left a huge owie on my leg! stupid shorts! And then after tea I went back to not being able to focus and then ended up falling asleep early but getting some good sleep...

now it's friday morning. One lecture to go to today... and hopefully I will get some work done this afternoon. I really should just lock myself in my room and turn off the computer! Anyway... we'll see what the day brings...

much love,

smuder

Footy

First of all I realize that my last post is labeled for Friday when really it was Saturday that I wrote it. Sorry for any confusion, I forget to change the time and date sometimes to Australia time. lo siento...

Anyway, the weekend is gone and it's on to the beginning of a new week. Sigh... Monday... It's my day off and so far I've done nothing now that it's 12 noon. For once I went to bed early last night at around 11 so I got plenty of sleep but I have not done anything besides eat breakfast, write in my journal and listen to music. I also called home for Mother's Day since it is still Sunday back home. That was a lovely experience though. I got to talk to the whole family because Amanda was over and Kyle actually got on the phone. I got to ask Kyle all about his prom experience...sigh... my lil brudder went to prom. I'm feeling old...

Well the rest of the weekend was good. Saturday I went to a frisbee party at my friend Claire's. It was nothing extreme just people hanging out having a few drinks, eating some food and visiting. It was good because I got to catch up with my friend Blair who I hadn't seen much of during the week. I also got to get to know some frisbee people a bit better and Blair and I had a nice conversation with Chris, who was a frisbee player but doesn't have much time right now to really get into it. Although I think he plays league. He's great and he had much to talk about and ask us about to compare U.S. and Australia differences. I returned from that at about 2 am. Blair and I were lucky and got a ride home from our friend Warren instead of taking the bus or a taxi back. We took the bus to Claire's. We are, what you might call a little bit city transit impaired. Actually we weren't that bad at catching the bus and getting to Claire's although we did miss our stop and had to get off at the next stop which was luckily not too far from the one before it.

Sunday was a lovely day. We had a footy scrimmages on Sunday. Both the chicks and blokes played and it was great. Footy is also called Australian Rules Football. I think I might have described it before but if I haven't, it's wonderful. It's much more fast paced than American Football, has much more running, and is more brutal. We don't wear padding or anything we just kicked and handball it to our team mates to get it down the field and score either a goal(which is six points and is when the ball goes through the two tall poles) or a point (which is one point and is when it goes through the small pole and one of the tall poles on either side). Both of our teams won and the team that we played was really cool. The guys are so much better at footy than us chicks but it's still heaps of fun. It takes me awhile to remember that I can tackle and people can tackle me because I'm used to frisbee being so stop and go and not being and to touch the person. Oh another thing about footy...when you get the ball you can run, but only for fifteen steps, you can keep running if you bounce the ball or touch it to the ground. Otherwise you bump it with a fist from your hand or kick it, kind of like a punt, down the field. The other thing is that you can soccer it (kick it around on the ground) but we try to stay away from doing so. At least on our team, because it's not the best way to play, it's fairly inaccurate and it makes the ball just bounce around. I had such a fun time playing this game and watching the blokes after us. It's a great sport and I enjoy it much more than american football. Hopefully I will be able to find a way to show people back home how the game works. I definitely can not explain it all through a post, and well I don't actually know all of the rules either, but it's great. I for sure am planning on buying a footy to bring home! Haha... new game for us all to play! -- much love...

cheers!
smuder

Sigh...Saturday is finally here. I was so very much looking forward to the weekend ALL week! I know I said I was going to write more because I have been journaling more myself but I haven't even journaled on my own since about Wednesday. I guess I got kind of busy, well not really...probably just lazy. Nothing too exciting has happened in the past few days...

Thursday was nothing special. I went to my one class and it was interesting as usual but it's Aussie Politics and I barely talk in discussion because I don't know what's going on. My mate Beth, who is also American feels the same way, but she at least gets the courage to ask some questions. Our class is really cool, they don't seem to get annoyed with us being dumb and same with our instructor. :-) So it's all good... Thursday night was our pub night. It's usually on Wednesday night but because of basketball on Wednesday we had it Thursday. I haven't been to pub night in ages so I decided to go for once. Only thing is...I never made it to our pub the Cathedral. I went out for drinks at four with my mates Amber, Ben and Tom. We ate, and went out again at 8 to another pub, The British, but had to leave there and go home. I ended getting a little sick and crashing in my friend Shannon's room. But hey, I got heaps of sleep! So it's all good!

Friday felt like Saturday...I didn't go to my lecture. I decided more sleep was a better idea and a bit of homework. We also had some footy training. We have a scrimmage on Sunday, which should be interesting. This game is so awesome! Friday night was wonderful because I didn't go out. I just sat with some mates and watched movies all night. It was beautiful! Of course I stayed up too late again and got up this morning for breakfast. I actually had kitchen duty at 10 so I had to get up. The movies were great. We watched Sin City which I guess has been released in theatres in the states but not here. Some how someone here at college got a pirated copy. It's a weird movie but so good. A little gross, but good nevertheless. The other two were Aussie-made movies. Priscilla Queen of the Desert (very hilarious) and Strictly Ballroom. Anyway, that's all there is to say really. I ended up staying up late last night again because a bunch of us started having a pillow fight basically in Shannon's room last night after our last movie. We are such dorks, but we have fun! Now it's on to seeing what Saturday will bring...

cheers!

smuder

Toe Nail clippings

I've been thinking that I should write in this more because well I've been journaling more on my own time so I figure I'll share some of those things with anyone who actually reads this. I actually get a little bummed that I don't get many comments from people on here, but oh well. On with my life...

Tuesday night was great. I went out to play some frisbee! Tuesday night league is so much fun. I got to play two games last night. One for Division 1 and one for Division 2. Both games were a lot of fun which completely made my night. Our Div 1 team for Adelaide Uni won, which was very exciting. We all really got into the game. We had a white head band that we passed around to people who made a great effort on the field. I actually got it once which was very exciting!! I think that definitely got people going and got them more excited to play well and make good cuts and throws. Overall it was great. As usual a group of us went out for KFC afterwards because it's right across the street. YUM! Nothing like hot chips after a couple frisbee games! No, really, they were very very good! When I got home I was so buggered that I pretty much went straight to bed and ended up falling asleep in my frisbee clothes with my lights on and my door open. I did wake up after a few hours and turned off the lights and shut the door but was too lazy to do anything else.

Today, Wednesday, was a pretty good day. I got up early enough to get breakfast in along with a bit of homework before I went to class for a couple of hours. I ended up coming back after Uni and made myself a yummy grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This was a very crazy idea to the Aussies that were around. My American friend Dave thought it was ingenious though! And it was soooo good! I'm sure I've said this before but they just don't eat a whole lot of pb&j here. Oh and they get confused when we use the word jelly. Jelly is the word they use for Jello. And they just use Jam for what we call Jelly. It gets confusing but pretty funny. Most still think we're weird for liking peanut butter and chocolate together too. After lunch I actually got work done for my politics class and also a bit for my Labor studies class. Go me! It was such a beautiful day out that I went outside and sat and studied with my friend Amber. Sigh... it really was nice out! Just gorgeous in the shade! Oh another exciting thing was I got mail today! A parcel! yay! Mom was very nice and sent me my Five Iron Frenzy cd "The End is Near". This is one of my most favorite bands and I stupidly left the two copies I have of it back in the states! It was so good to pop it in and listen to it though! THANKS MOMMY!

Tonight was more frisbee. A little more low key than Tuesday nights, but it was still good. I kind of had to take charge and teach my team what to do because there were a few new people out tonight. It was cool though and I realized how hard it is to coach people. They were all really easy going, but I was concerned I wasn't explaining things well. Anyway we got through it pretty well. I think we won, but I don' tknow, I don't really keep score.

One last share... I just had a bit of a scare a few minutes ago. People are playing some basketball out on the court which if I were to look out my window, the court is right in front of me. And well even though there is a wall sometimes the balls go over the wall. I just had a basketball hit my window. Not only was it startling, but thank God it did not go through my window like the cricket ball did earlier this semester. The basketball also got the window where my computer is... not good if that would have come through!!! Oh, tonight was also basketball. Aquinas mens and womens teams had games tonight. The blokes lost but the chicks won. Very exciting, but i didn't get to see any of it. Well I think that's it for now. Nothing else going on. Footy training in the morning! ugh! too early to get up!

cheers!
smuder

--oh and I finally found my nail clippers so I got to clip my toe nails today :-) in case you were wondering

$600 less poor!

This is not really that exciting of news, but I just got the urge to write something... Today I was happy to find out, 1. The boring lecturer for Philosophy is done, she only had last weeks lectures! (thank God!), 2. I got my philosophy essay back, first thinking oh crap! a D?!?! but then remembered that they don't give letter grades. The give High Distinction, Distinction, Passes, and Fails. So really I got a Distinction on my paper! WOO HOO! Better than my Labor studies essay by far!, 3. My mommy was kind enough to put $300 in my checking account and...Dad told me he put my federal tax refund in there too, which was another $302!!!! I can now survive two more months of living in Australia with the possibility of traveling! yay!

Besides all of that the day was pretty... mmm crap. Well it was all gloomy out, and I was heaps tired. But that was my own fault for being tired. I didn't go to bed til mmmm 3 am! ugh! This is what I get for wanting to make friends! I finished my work for today so I first watched a movie. I got to introduce the movie Saved to some Aussies! (great movie if you like sattirical movies about religion) After that I decided to visit with Sunny and Greatzy (Greatzy is really Dave Greatz...Americans tend to call him Gretzky) and we decided to throw the frisbee out on the lawn at about 1:30 am. How genious are we?! After that I was entertained by drunk friends who had gone to the pub on a Monday night! geez! The best part was that I got a bed time story! We were talking about kids books and Shannon loves the book "Where the Wild things are" and he had it so he read it for us.

Well that is all I have. Nothing really exciting just something to maybe enterain anyone who reads this a bit. Tonight I have frisbee league and I'm usually there from about 6:30 til 11 or so... So it becomes a long night. It's time for some food, but I hope you enjoyed reading this.

cheers!
emily

a week of recovery...

So the week after traveling proved to be a hard week. I had an essay to work on that I hadn't really started but was actually excited to write. That may sound weird especially if you don't like politics, because it was my politics paper. My topic was on compulsory voting and whether is was anti-democratic (in case any of you really care). And though it may sound really boring, I actually found it really interesting to write about because it is something that doesn't happen in the U.S.

Anyway...I ended up falling asleep at random times of the day for the next few days because I was still so tired. It was no fun to go back to a full day of class on Tuesday where I went to class at nine for three straight hours at first and ended up getting back a bad paper! ugh! Luckily it doesn't mean I will fail the class or anything. Whew! Besides that I was stuck in my room most of the week working on that paper that was due Friday and for the most part it was a good week but I didn't see a whole lot of people because I was in my room so much.

Once the paper got handed in, which took longer than I had wanted because I screwed up my footnotes a billion and one times, I was able to enjoy my weekend. I had a date with some friends at the UniBar at 5. I got the paper in by 4:30 and made it there earlier. I met my friends Amber, Blair, Jess and Sam. This may sound weird but it was nice to sit and relax on a friday and have a few beers. Us girls went back to Aquinas and then we went out with a bunch of people for our friend Sunny's birthday. We went to a pub in the city which was actually not that cool. We had a few beers there and the "bouncers" were weird because they were all around and they made you sit down if you had a drink. We left after a bit, just me , amber, blair and jess and went to get some food. We all ended up crashing in Jess's room to watch a movie but woke up later to hang out in Sunny's room because he was back. My friend and Shannon and I kept ourselves occupied and entertained by trying to do as much as we could to Sunny's room. Like moving things around and putting stuff in the fridge. We also kept ourselves occupied with putting post its around his room and then began writing random words and messages all over them. Needless to say we are dorks because this kept us entertained for hours. Amber, Shannon and I actualy ended up staying up until 7:30 and then finally left Sunny's room.

Saturday was a very low key day doing work and going to bed early, and Sunday was quite uneventful with more homework and just a great day of relaxing. So needless today the weekend was better than the week but overall it has been good, and I'm still enjoying myself. I've decided I'm not allowed to think about going home or about the summer and getting a job and all of that yet. But I know I will have to sooner or later because I will be so poor when I get home and will need the money to get through school. Sigh... there are still so many things I need to take care of for the next year of school! sigh... oh well... I know this isn't the most exciting post but I felt the need to write.

cheers!
smuder

Southwest WA, Perth and Ultimate!

I'm back! YAY! Back in wonderful Adelaide! I truly love this city eventhough those from Adelaide question my sanity when I say that sometimes...Like yesterday. I don't get it, this city is wonderful! Anyway...
Why all the excitement? Well because I just returned to Adelaide Monday night from another week long trip! This time I went to Western Australia. My friend Blair and I traveled together. We flew into Perth Sunday the 17th and spent the night there then headed off for a three day trip pretty much down the coast of the southwest part of WA. It was gorgeous! A billion nice views to see and wonderful people to travel with. We saw a lot of the Indian ocean, great beaches like Meelup bay and Surfers Point along with some HUGE trees like the Gloucester tree (61m high I believe) which you can actually climb, the Valley of the Giants (lots of big trees) treetop walk (very cool), beautiful Nglili caves, had a bird eat out of my hand, almost got blown away by some blow holes and all the in betweens. Like... the bus rides...the most fun was the one going back to Perth. Alex, a guy from England, gave us more of a taste of his musical talents by playing guitar and singing some songs for us. He had shown us a little our first night in Margaret River when he participated in Karaoke. The second night when we were in Albany we chatted with some people not on our trip. Met a guy from Canada and talked to him about his travels. Most of the people on our three day trip were English, there was another girl from the U.S. and two Australians, who were friends of the bus driver. Blair and I were about the only two who were actually still studying. Most of the people on out trip were taking time off and just traveling for, times ranging from 3 months to almost a year!

After our three day trip Blair and I got back to Perth and had to stay at the Ozi Inn. Not the best place to stay. The place we had stayed at that past sunday was completely full. Just for reference, if you ever travel to Perth and need a hostel, try your best to get into the Underground and not the Ozi Inn. In simplest terms, it was a little dodgy. Blair and I got rooms at the Underground the next day because we had friends staying there that would be gone for the night wanting to get away from the hostel for the whole day and so we get their rooms. We were ultra lazy that day (Thursday, 21st) and finally got going around noon to get lunch and then we shopped. That was about the extent of our day. We stopped in a park and went on the craziest teeter totter I have ever seen, and also had fun on some little spinning contraption. Some of the frisbee girls came in that night and two of our other friends were there too so we just sat around and had a few beers with them. Well everyone else had a few more than me. Friday Blair, Rebecca, Amber and I went on a wine tour. There were 12 of us, all girls that went and it was great. I bought my first bottle of wine while on the trip. It was great overall...we stopped at a chocolate factory too! Yum! This is where we discovered chocolate massage oil. That night (Friday) we went out with frisbee friends along with Amber and Rebecca. It was good fun. I tried my first Long Island Ice Tea...wow! that's some crazy stuff!

After all the fun of seeing sites Saturday morning was frisbee time! YAY! We were playing in Nationals! Our ladies team is called the Leafy Sea Dragons (LSD). We had 12 players and we were ready to get our butts kicked, which happened but we still had fun doing it. Ultimate is still gaining ground in South Australia, it's not really developed yet, and considering that this was the first time all twelve of us girls were together playing was probably another factor. We had never all practiced together at the same time! The tourney went from Saturday to Tuesday, but Blair and I left monday during our second to last game for the tournament. We had three games on Saturday, one of which we won!, 2 on the second day, 3 on the third day (by that time we were so buggered) and then there was the one I missed on Tuesday. We finished 7th out of 8. The mens team from SA did pretty well I think, I'm not quite sure actually but I'm pretty sure they won more than one game. It was a great time getting to hang out with the girls and getting to know some more people through frisbee. It was great to see a team from the Northern Territory. They have one team from there and so it was so cool to see a new team starting out. They are a mens team and are almost all aboriginal teenagers. They just seemed to excited to be there and playing. Some of the boys were actually really small so it was funny to see them up against some of our bigger guys, but they still did well.

Overall my trip was great. I realize there isn't much description about this one, but really I should be doing homework right now before I head to uni for a couple of hours so i've laid off on a ton of description.

cheers!
smuder

Tasmania

(This one is long so be prepared!)
Back from the land of Devils (Tasmanian Devils that is)....
The trip to Tasmania was great! First of all it was wonderful getting to see all the IES kids again and getting to touch base with those that I have not seen in a long time and also to learn a little bit more about some of them! The trip started bright and early Saturday morning with a long bus ride to Melbourne. Once in Melbourne we had dinner and then caught a ferry to Tasmania. This was quite an experience...To begin with, before getting onto the Ferry you have to go through security which to me is really not security at all. Compared to lets say the Minneapolis airport or any airport in the U.S. this was like "Easy Mac" (you know the kind you microwave, and how any one can find that difficult or mess is up is beyond me). All they really checked for was fruit. You can't take fruit from Melbourne to Tassie ( you also can't take it from South Australia into Victoria and vice versa). They quick look in your bags and you walk through the metal dector and you're done. Very very simple. The boat was great, and we got rooms which were nice and tiny for four people but we managed. It was much better than having to be one of the people that just had a seat and no room. We arrived in Tasmania the next morning around 7 and got breakfast and headed for Cradle Mountain. Here we took a hike up the mountain to Marion's lookout. It was all very goreous and as we began our walk it was like walking towards Mordor (for those of you who are Lord of the Rings fans.) It was cloudy and chilly and actually began to rain but it was quite an experience nevertheless and it was amazing still! It rained the rest of the night and we all tried to keep warm in our cabins and tried our best to dry out our soaking clothes and shoes.

Monday was again an early morning and had a very long bus ride (about five hours) down to Port Arthur. We basically drove across the state in five hours, which as my friend Blair pointed out to me would barely get you a third of the way down through California. On the way when we stopped for lunch we got to see the Oldest bridge in Australia that was buily in 1823 by convicts. To get to Port Arthur we drove through Eaglehawk Neck which is a small piece of land (I think 100m wide) that connects Port Arthur to the Mainland of Tasmania. Port Arthur was great and is the site of a convict settlement. We started with a museum that gave us an actual convict to follow to find out what happened to them. We then got a ferry tour of the port and saw The Island of the Dead, which is easily explained as a cemetary for the convicts and others that lived at the settlement. All of the stories about the convicts were really interesting to hear. After the ferry we mostly just went from building to building to read about the different parts of convict life. The next morning we headed off for another ferry to take us to Maria Island (pronounced Mariah) which was another convict site. We started off on time, made a stop at "Doo town" (All the houses in this neighborhood had names on their houses that had the word Doo in them. Like "love me doo" and "doo little") and then had some time at the beach by Eaglehawk Neck while our tour guides ran back to the hostel because Susanna ( one of the guides) had forgotten her bag! We finally started off and made a mad rush for the ferry to take us to Maria Island. Luckily we were able to get them to stall and we made it across. Here we took another hike. The day was great, and everything was beautiful! we hiked up to the top of one on the Bishop and Clerk trail. It was hard but it was great. Once we were to the top we all took a break and were sitting in the middle of a cloud so we couldn't see much, but it was still pretty awesome. On our way back down and back to our rooms we saw some wildlife (kangaroos, lizards). The sunset that night was gorgeous and the night was wonderful. We got to try wallaby for dinner! it was really good! It was like a very tender steak! YUM! That night most of us slept outsides instead of in the converted cells. We took an early morning walk the next morning and watched the sunrise which was gorgeous as some really awesome cliffs. We left Maria Island Wednesday morning and were luckily the only ones on the ferry back to the mainland (there were a ton of elementary school kids on the ride to Maria island and so it was packed!) One sad thing that i did see over Tasmania and was even greater of sadness when taking the ferry from Maria island was to see all the tree cutting done. When on the ferry you could see this HUGE pile of wood chips on the shore of Tasmania.

Wednesday was again a wonderful day. We had a stop at a berry farm which was AMAZING! it was a short trip but we all got some ice cream and it was so AMAZING!! I had strawberry and blueberry which was... well words can not describe! it was good though! We then headed to our next destination where we would be hiking and sea kayaking! We split into two groups and my group went hiking to Wineglass bay, which was again gorgeous! When we hiked down to the beach I ended up taking a dip in the ocean with my friends Sam and Sam. It was great and was fun to do as a spur of the moment thing. Walking back all wet was not that great though. The next morning the groups switched and my group got to go sea kayaking. We woke up to rain but we decided that we would still have lots of fun and we did! We got taught what to do and got into the kayaks. Although it was raining the ocean still looked fine. We got out like 30 meters and then it got kind of rough so we didn't get to do the whole trip. We actually never made it that far from the beach. The waves were great, but it was hard trying out best to not capsize! Blair and I were lucky and never did but friends Amber and Jon did twice! After we got back in the girls took a dip in the ocean and then the guys went back out a to mess around near the beach.

We left that afternoon for Devonport again to catch the ferry back to the Australia mainland, but not without a stop in Launceston (Tassie's second biggest city, second to Hobart) where we took a little walk around a park which was home to the longest chair lift of some sort. I'll have to find a picture of it to show. Anyway from there we went back to Devonport where we cooked up hot dogs at a park. Here everyone seemed to be so full of energy and it was great! We also had ice cream with strawberries and different berry sauces that one of our guides bought at the berry farm! Oh it was great, i licked my bowl clean! We got back to Melbourne Friday morning and we headed to a great big breakfast at a place called Greasy Joes. YUM! We then all parted ways. Some people were staying in Melbourne and others were catching flights to Cairns or Brisbane. I took the bus back with Blair and Becky and the guides to Adelaide. Blair and I leave Sunday afternoon for Perth where we are taking a three day tour of Western Australia before we play some ultimate!! It's Saturday afternoon and I've definitely have gotten nothing done like I had planned. Homework needs to be worked on, clothes need to be cleaned, my journal needs to be written in, my body needs a shower and so on... and yet I have gotten none of this done because I went to frisbee and then out to lunch!

I hope you all enjoyed that! I probably won't be on a computer again for the next week so I'll update once I'm back from Perth!
much love,
smuder

Traveling Gal...

Well here I go... I'm off bright and early Saturday morning at about 6am for my first long traveling excursion here in Australia. IES is taking our group to Tasmania for the next week! I'm very excited to go and can't wait to see all the IES kids and hang out in what I have been told, beautiful Tasmania!! We leave Saturday the 9th and will be back on the 16th. I'll be in Adelaide for that Saturday and then after that I take another trip out to Perth with my friend Blair! I'm so excited for the next two weeks! It's going to be crazy not being around Aquinas and Adelaide, I love it here, I'm going to miss all the friends from around here, but I know I'll love the traveling bit!

Tonight is an exciting night before I head off tomorrow morning...I'm going to a Ben Folds concert with some friends and then there is a Frisbee pub crawl that I'm sure I'll make an appearance at before heading to bed at some grossly odd hour in the morning, only to get up to catch the but to Melbourne with the IES folk! That's about all I have for now... I'll try to update while I'm gone in Tasmania but if not, I'll do my best when I get back Saturday! Have a great week everyone!

much love!
Cheers,
emily