What I have done so far

Since my arrival in Australia on February 10th I have seen and done many things. The first few days I spent time settling in and hanging out around our pool meeting all the people from Uni-Central. After a few days I made my first trip of many to the beaches here in Australia, we went to the beaches in Mooloolaba. When O' week started on Feb 13th things really started to get busy, along with orientation sessions all week there were nighttime activities each night. Monday of O' week there was a welcome barbecue at Uni-Central, Tuesday night was a Karaokee night at a local bar (Tim and I sang "Ice Ice Baby," it was a big hit), Wednesday was a beach party/dance held on campus, and Thursday is known as "Tav" night in which a bus drives us too and from a local tavern frequented by the college students here, Friday we were on our own to find entertainment. That Saturday a group of us went up to a city called Eumundi, where each Saturday local people set up shops and sell Australian goods, after we shopped we took a bus north a little while to a beautiful beach town called Noosa. We spent the remainder of the day making sand snowmen and taking hikes through a state park there. On Sunday all of the International students went to the Australia Zoo, we saw and fed many kangaroos, saw koalas, crocodiles, and many other animals. That Monday we actually started having classes, I only had 4 classes that week so we spent a lot of time around the pool and beaches. Last weekend Tim, Brendan, Katie, Megan, Norbert, and I went to Brisbane via train. We spent the first night bar hopping and ended the night in a local backpackers hostel there. The next day we did the tourist thing and walked around the city, we saw a lot of old churches, some of them being very impressive. After we had our fill of sightseeing we continued south to the Gold Coast, we eventually found a hostel there near Surfer's Paradise, and had a bite to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe. After dinner we went on a bar crawl led by our hostel bartender. The next day we spent the majority of our time on the beach at Surfer's Paradise, eventually catching the train home around 6 pm. Today classes started up in full swing, and with the new month comes the rain, today it rained all day long. Our pool is full to the brim and there is talk of canceling school tomorrow due to the threat of flash floods. We plan on taking it easy tonight and watching a movie. Now that I am all caught up I hope to post each day to keep you up to date on how things are going here in Australia. I miss you all and wish you could be here.

~Andy