End of Classes, Exams and Endless Fun

Not sure where I left off as its now June 21st the winter equinox here in the southern hemisphere, but I think it was somewhere back right after the last day of classes. On the last day of classes I had to give two presentations. One for my conservation course and one for my rainforest course. I was nervous about both, but they both turned out fine. Conservation we had to present our proposal which was on anthropogenic noise and its effects on humpback whales. For rainforest we had to present a group poster, you know those science ones they have posted up in universities. To celebrate end of classes Saturday after Miranda Dylan and I spontaneously thought to make an abstract drawing, something none of us had done together so we thought it would be fun. We took a walk to the hospital where there was a newsstand shop where for some odd reason they had poster paper and acrylic paints which we obviously bought. Then we went back and after Rhona got back from work we made a crazy creation. We each started from a corner and worked our way to the middle. Everyone was really frustrated with it because they didn’t know what to do, it was kind of funny. But in the end it turned out to really show each of our personalities. Josh even pitched in by adding a “kiss” bug in which he kissed the poster with red paint on his lips and then turned it into a bug. This pretty much took up the whole day and of course we ended it by watching a movie.
Sunday was a study day as we all felt guilty about spending the whole day before having fun. That night however we went out for dinner—Rhona, Miranda, Sameer, Dylan and I. We went to this yummy place called Bennies. I had some kind of thai/indian food with coconut sauce and veggies. It was delicious! It was a pretty empty restaurant, but it was nice to have our food fast. The guy who served us knew Sameer and asked if we were his homegroup. Med students have this thing called a homegroup in which the younger students are assigned to an older student who kind of gives them advice and perhaps teaches them a bit too. I laughed at this as we are obviously all his friends, but this guy thought we were out to dinner for study reasons. Pretty funny, I was a bit offended. He also assumed all of us were under 18. I was like actually none of us are thanks. Anyway enough about that. Next we went to Cactus Jack’s—the traditional place where all uni students go out to eat. Our sole mission tonight was to eat some chocolate nachos so despite all of our full bellies we went and got some. It was such a good move too because they were soooooooooo yummy. I wish we had some of those in America. We all rolled back home.
Most of study week I either studied with Rhona or hung out with Sameer—if I remember right we made a lot of maccas runs (mcdonalds). Sameer got a fish tank earlier in the semester and he’s pretty much obsessed with it, but its fun because he let me come to the pet store with him to get new fish and new supplies to redo the design in it. This was a lot of fun as I haven’t really dealt with fish as a pet in ages. Also did a bit of hanging with the Americans. We did another one of their hell workouts, which I felt the burn from that for two days after, yikees, can’t wait to get home and start going to the gym again! Because I really love movies and I really love my friends, Thursday we had a movie night. There were 11 of us there so we obviously couldn’t do it in my room. So it was kind of like a big event—we ended up doing it in the common room of the main Uni Hall building. I ordered pizza’s and Sameer and Dylan helped me go pick them up. At first we were all going to chip into the price but later I decided that I just wanted to give it to them all as like a thank-you. I think this went over well and I at least felt a bit better about not being able to give them anything really meaningful. We watched this Tim Burton movie, Coraline, it was pretty bizarre just like The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it had a pretty good message. I think it may have been a little out of reach for some people to enjoy but the company was good. The Americans brought oreoballs—and those definitely went over well. Ya team America!
At the end of study week on Friday was the monthly night market in Townsville, seeing as this was our only chance to go we jumped on it. The Americans and Sameer went with me, Sameer drove. It was pretty cool, lots of little stalls set up with some beautiful things being sold or really bizarre things like garden characters that said like bottoms up. I took note that there was cotton candy so we obviously got some of that, it was so good. I can’t wait to get home and have the cotton candy mom got me from the field days! That is if she didn’t eat it! Hehe. Anyway, spontaneously we all decided to go to the movies. We saw I love you, man. This is the movie about a guy who gets engaged but doesn’t have a best man so the whole movie is about him finding a best man. Cute. Sometime that week I took a trip with team America to Flinder’s mall to do some tourist shopping. This was a good highlight because I was able to find some pretty good gifts for all ya’all at home. I also bought some warmer clothes in light of my trips to Tassie and NZ (which so far are serving me well!)
Anyway those were the main things I did during study week. Lots of hanging, far more of that than studying. But surprisingly this is an okay thing I think. Here it is a lot easier to have a social life and an academic life. But obviously it probably suffers in balancing the two. But for me this is okay because my grades are pass/fail regardless so as long as I am getting the information I want out of it, well than it is successful. And I think I definitely got a lot out of my classes this semester. They really were pretty cool, interesting and memorable. Finally Wednesday of exam week my first exam hit. It was my coral reef geomorphology exam. I was so ready to get it over with when it came because I had focused on that the most during study week. I was nervous as usual, but it turned out just fine I think. After the exam I went over to Morgan’s room and we had dinner and watched this show they love, How I met your Mother. It was pretty funny I must admit. Scott’s mom had sent him American marshmallows, so we enjoyed a damn good version of a s’more.
One night during exams I am pretty sure the dining hall staff accidently were handing out meat. Everyone tried to convince me it wasn’t but I don’t know I still feel like it probably was, it was too strangely flavored to be vego. Anyway I was feeling really guilty about it and my friend Josh came into my room to talk to me about it. It was actually a really good conversation. Ultimately it really did make me feel okay about it—whether it was meat I ate or not. We talked for like an hour. He’s really good at reading people and helping them understand things. The strange thing though is that a few days later he stopped talking to me, or when he did it was mean. This went on for a while. Finally I confronted him about it, but he wouldn’t talk about it. It was really bizarre and it really made me both sad and angry because I was leaving soon and he wouldn’t even like talk seriously about it. I guess he is still a bit off toward others back at Uni, but no one seems to know why. On my last night he actually came out to dinner with us—afterward he went with some people to the casino. But to make a long story short—he left me a note that night telling me you know nice to meet you and good luck and stuff. But he also said it was a bad idea to wake him up to say goodbye. I was really hurt and surprised by this, that he wouldn’t even wake up for 2 minutes to say bye to me, when he could obviously go right back to bed and sleep in the next day. This just topped everything off for me with this kid. I was really really surprised by his behavior because he’s 23 and he was acting like a 4 year old. Anyway, I guess I’ll never know what was up with him.
Thursday of exam week one Noor, Dylan, Rhona, Miranda and I went to the strand as a farewell to Noor. It was really nice. We took the bus (just as we did the first week of school) and walked along the strand. We ran in the water playground and took pictures and just had a good time. It was really nice to be all reunited one last time before Noor left and before I left. Fingertips!! I’ll miss them. The morning Noor was leaving we all woke up to say goodbye. They all gave me this ginormous card in which they wrote really sweet things to me. They also gave me this beautiful picture frame engraved with fingertips at the bottom and a cute picture of all of us from the first time at the strand. For Dylan it was his birthday the next day so we gave him a card and a really nice pen engraved with Dr. D. Morris. He loved it so that was great. It was sad to see Noor off, but I knew I’d be seeing her again so it was okay. The rest of the week followed with more goodbyes. Annelise and Laura left a few days later, both med students too so their exams were over in the first week.
Saturday June 13th was Dylan’s birthday. In the AM his med friends had a surprise get together for him outside his room. They invited me and I went with the main girl to go wake him up. It turned out he was in the shower and then when he got out of the shower his grandma called and he spoke to her forever not realizing we were going to bring him to a surprise party. This was pretty funny but in the end he enjoyed the surprise. I got going with the rest of my day because I actually had my second exam that evening. I was most worried for this exam because it was worth 60% of my grade and my teacher gave us crap for notes. He printed out his lecture slides but the information was illegible so it was hopeless. I studied previous exams and made a study guide based on each lecture topic and those questions. It turned out to be just fine. I probably didn’t do super good but I am sure I passed. That night to celebrate Dylan’s dinner as well as another friend from townhouse 1 we all went to cactus jack’s. There were probably about 25 of us in total. It was quite nice. I had the only vegetarian thing on the menu of course, and it was yummy, just not filling. Oh well. It was a lot of fun to be there with everyone it was almost like I had been with these people for numerous semesters. I almost feel like I fit in here better than I did at either Cornell or UNE with the amount of friends I made. It is really sad to have to leave them. I actually seriously considered for a few minutes the possibility of staying. But its just too much to think about and I’ve gotten so far with Cornell I want to finish it. Its too bad I can’t live in two places at once. Anyway back to the story. After dinner at cactus jack’s most of us headed over to Monsoon’s a hangout bar type place. It was kind of boring after a while so some of us---Rhona, Dylan, Sameer, Simon and I went to the casino. Now this was fun. Simon was the only one brave enough to gamble. He ended up winning heaps of money only to lose it in switching tables. But it was cool because he got us free cokes (in cool bottles) and he taught me the rules of roulette or however you spell it. Pretty fun. Then we headed into town because Sameer had to go back to Uni to help a friend (kind bummer) but the rest of us went to the club. Most of the people from the birthday bash were there—but they didn’t want to dance, which was a bummer, but I had Rhona and Dylan my dance buddies for life and they were great. We did our thanggg and Simon and his girlfriend joined for a bit. Then later they left, but Sameer came back. It was fun because Sameer had never gone out with us to a club before so it was cool to be there with him. He bought us all drinks, lemon bitters, it’s some non-alcoholic thing that everyone in Australia loves. This was cool because we went up to what seemed like a VIP lounge to enjoy them—we could watch over the dance floor from there. Finally we decided we had to go back because the next day Dylan, Sameer, the Americans and I were going to Magnetic Island.
Alright, so Magnetic Island! What a blast! We woke up kind of late and ran to the ferry terminal but we didn’t make it in time for the 1030 ferry. So instead, we went to this coffee shop that Sameer raved about and got a coffee and donut. Yummm. And then we briefly walked through the morning markets there before heading back to the terminal. Finally we got over to magnetic island, bought our bus passes and headed for horseshoe bay. It was really nice to be going with a group. I mean it was really nice to go with Rhona alone but its really refreshing to know I have several people interested in hanging out with me outside of class (something not so often to happen at Cornell). When we got there we first just hung out on the beach soaking up some sun. Then Dylan, Sameer and I decided we were hot enough to go for a swim. This was fun—the water was chilly and murky—gave it a little extra something. Then we looked over and saw the group that does tubbing and decided we really wanted to do it too. We got out of the water just in time because I was starting to feel like I was getting stung by something (I guess they are sea lice-yuk!) We went over signed up for a time and soon enough it was our turn. Morgan sat on the boat to be our observer and she also took my camera and got great shots of us. The ride was harder this time than the last time I went, and I’m not sure why. But I flew off twice and Sameer flew off once. It was really scary when I fell off the first time I was like oh shoot I’m in the open ocean aaahhh there could be a shark. That motivated me to get back in my tube fast. The second time I flew off Sameer flew off too, this time for me though I held on tight and my hands never actually left the tube. Morgan caught my first fall on video. Sweet. Anyway, Dylan the only one unsure of swimming did not fall off so that was really good, but he looks petrified in some of the pictures. Hehe. We were all exhausted when it was over. We decided it was probably time for some lunch so we went to this little pizza shop that was playing Shakira music. Afterward we all went over to this giant map the restaurant had and marked where we were from. We decided it was probably time to head back for something else, but unfortunately the next bus was still an hour and a half off. Instead we napped on the beach and took a stroll down it, not a bad way to waste some time. When it finally did come we took it to the Forts Walk, which is a walk through the bush up a slightly elevated slope. This was pretty cool actually because we saw several wild koalas and even saw a baby inside its mothers pouch. Cute—until the mom pooped some really soupy poop onto it. I was in a really goofy mood, but I think this was enjoyed by everyone for the most part. I certainly enjoyed it. Definitely on a high! We had to get back for a 530 bus back to the ferry so we had to cut our bush adventure a bit short but I think we saw enough good stuff anyway. It turned out however that the next ferry wasn’t actually until 640 so when we did get to the ferry terminal we still had to wait a good hour. This was fine because in the distance we spotted some rock wallabies hopping around so I went over to investigate and take pictures. We all just sat, enjoyed the sun set and had a good conversation.
Monday and Tuesday I spent studying for my conservation and rainforest exams as well as packing for my trip home and working out details for my trips around Tassie and NZ. For the most part it was again less study and more of anything else. But fortunately both exams turned out far better than I was expecting and though I was a nervous wreck before them I think that I passed them both. Yup so Wednesday was my conservation exam and Wednesday night the Americans came to say goodbye. We had a little get together in my room to see them off. They traveled to Brisbane where they would fly to Hawaii for two weeks, getting home I think the same day I do. Thursday I spent the day cramming for my rainforest exam and also avoiding studying at the same time. I was up late studying for the morning exam, but when it was over, well it was all over so that was okay. I spent the early part of the day hanging out with Dylan and Miranda, basically they watched me pack. When Sameer got home he took me and the others to the shipping place where I was shipping my one luggage to Sydney to Noor’s place. Then we went to Stocklands to pick up a few things. By the time we got back I had to quickly get the last minute stuff together. I tried to make gifts for my friends, but I didn’t really have a great amount of time to do so. Luckily Grandma gave me American flags that I gave to them, so at least they will remember their American friend. Haha. So that night we were going out for dinner as a farewell to me. It was me, Dylan, Miranda, Rhona, Sameer, Simon, Xu, Erin, her dad and Josh came a bit later. It was really nice. I picked a place we hadn’t been to because hey that only makes sense. It was called the Rhino Bar and basically their specialty is tapas, the Spanish appetizer thing. I ended up getting a meal but a lot of people got tapas and seemed to enjoy it. It was quite an interesting little place. Because I was stupid and stayed up so late studying I was really really tired afterward and though we were planning on staying up and partying the whole night away I decided we should just go back. I felt like a real bum, but I was so dog tired. It was okay though because as soon as I got my contacts out of my eyes I woke up again. We enjoyed some popcorn and just hanging out in our common room. Then I had to get down to business and write up information for my mom so that took up quite a bit of time. After going to the ATM at like 1230 in the morning I said goodnight to my friends and went to finish my own stuff. I would see them soon enough. I should mention that the initial plan for the evening was to go out for dinner in town come back and go to drink the club dry then to go back to the city and go clubbing. The first part was the only thing to happen. But honestly I really enjoyed just relaxing with everyone.