Hello Hello!
Week 8 of classes is over. Whoa! Week 8? How in the world have I already gone through 8 weeks of school? It seems like just yesterday I was in Sydney for orientation. Time is flying by! Not sure if I like that yet or not.
Before I forget! I want to wish my little brother, Tony, a Happy 17th Birthday (again)!! Love you bud!
So, this week at school was the 2nd half of midterms so I was very busy writing papers, staying up late, and pulling my hair out (no I didn't actually pull my hair out) from frustration trying to get footnotes to work on my Australian History paper. I eventually got it figured out thanks to one of my TV1 teachers. (Thanks Kristian!) All in all I survived midterms and went to celebrate with a weekend full of fun!
For the past few weeks my TV1 class has been working hard on our magazine show. Ours is called Wednesday Night Live. We are shooting the whole thing this week and next week, but here are some pictures from set up last week.
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| Attempting to get the couch out of the editing room |
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| putting the legs back on the couch |
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| Brooke, Danica, and Ariane hanging out in the studio |
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| Part of the set |
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| Oops... |
Thursday night consisted of going to the USA vs. ROW (rest of the world) basketball game. USA lost unfortunately, but a few of us, in true American fashion, cheered as loud as possible and were the loudest fans at the game. ROW has nothing on us in terms of loudness, literally. After the game I met up with my friends Laura and Sarah and we went down to Surfer's Paradise (this is the bar and nightclub scene of the Gold Coast) to a place call Waxy's Irish Pub. They had $2 Budweisers until they ran out. It was lovely drinking American beer because Australian beer is kind of crap. It was a lot of fun and I'll defiantly go back.
A few weeks ago my friend, Laura, went hiking in the Burleigh rainforest by herself and was taking in the views at the first lookout spot when this huge black and yellow spotted snake come over the rocks and towards her while she is sitting the bench. She booked it out of there so fast because the snake was bigger than a full grown boa constrictor. Laura told me this story before wine studies and I told her I wanted to go hiking in there and she said she would go and hike it with me. So, on friday I met Laura and Sarah in Burleigh and we went and hiked in the rainforest. Laura was freaking out as we went in because she did not want to see the snake (we didn't see the big black one). We went to the spot where she saw it and were afraid to go past because we didn't want to see the snake. Literally, everything we saw in the forest made us scream. It was kind of a disaster. Anyway, a random Aussie guy approached us and started talking to us and hiked up the rest of the way with us. We made it to the top and took in the sites and it was gorgeous! I even got to see a whale! It was jumping out of the water too! It was so cool. Didn't even think about the snake when we were at the lookout, but then we started to make the trek down and that changed. Our random Aussie friend, Damion, was going to go and check out another lookout spot that you had to climb over stuff to get to, so Laura, Sarah and I were going to go back to the top look-out when I saw this huge brown snake with a checkered pattern on it. It was a little over 3 feet long and just chilling on some rocks. I saw it first and yelled Snake! Snake! Snake! and booked it to the top lookout (why I didn't go to the exit I have no idea why). This snake was huge. After seeing it we got out of the rainforest as quick as possible. I'm not going in anymore rainforests for awhile.
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| On the walk to Burleigh |
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| Kookaburra |
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| Heading into the forest. |
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| At the top look out |
On Saturday, my roommate Lacey and I went to the Burleigh Brewing Co. in Burleigh Heads for an afternoon of beer tasting and touring of the company. It was really cool! I've been to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in St. Lousi, MO and the Burleigh Brewery is about 500 times smaller than Anheuser-Busch. Everything at Burleigh is done by hand, except for the bottling process which is done by a machine. While touring we got to taste 4 of the beers they brew. Now these Australian beers were by far the best Aussie beers I have tasted (it is probably because they are brewed by an American who moved to Australia). They were so good! My favorite was the HEF. It is a german lager which has banana and clove flavors. It is delicious!
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| HEF beer |
On Sunday, my friend Laura and I went to the Good Food and Wine Show in Brisbane. It was a lot of fun and we tasted quite a few wines and sampled a lot of delicious foods. It was cool tasting the wines because I was able to pick out the different flavors and grape variety in some of the wines (guess the wine studies class is paying off!) After that Laura and I went and walked around Brisbane for a bit before catching the train back to the Gold Coast.
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| South Bank, Brisbane |
This past weekend has been a lot of fun. Not sure what this upcoming week/weekend brings, but I'm sure it will be something fun! I'll leave you with this picture of the sunset taken from my balcony. Enjoy!
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| The sunset from my balcony |
Later Gators!
<3 Melissa
