Koalas and Kangaroos and Dingoes, Oh My!

Saturday, July 26th:

Hi!!! Today (well a few days ago), my friends and I did the ULTIMATE tourist activity in Brisbane. We went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and saw some lovely animals! Even though it is called a Koala Sanctuary, there were also birds, dingos, tasmanian devils, ponies, sheep, chickens, platypuses (or is it platypi? I dont know...anyway), wombats, and my personal favorite....THE KANGAROOS!!!!

There were many little sections of Koalas and they were all adorable! Most of them were sleeping and were in adorable curled up positions. It was like their bodies were made for the to curl up and turn into little furry balls....except they were funny looking because they were all just chilling in these fetal positions but in trees. One even had a stick legit up its butt, which looked kinda uncomfortable but I guess it was fine. They kind of reminded me of the rock/troll people from Frozen because they had that ability to roll into a perfect rock shape but also unroll to walk around and stuff.

so cute all curled up

some baby koalas from the kindergarten

such a snuggly nug!!!

For a small price, we were able to get a professional picture with a koala hugging us like a tree and it was sooooo amazing to hold one!!! The Koala I got to hold was named Cat (or Kat? not sure, I didnt ask for the spelling) and she didn't want to face the right direction so I had to turn around in order for her to face the camera. I silently thanked Cat because I was secretly really, really happy I had to turn because it meant that I could stand on my good side. Hahaha.... oh Cat.

my friend snapped this great (yet blurry) picture

I'm sort of embarrassed by how touristy this is...LOL

After the Koalas, we went to see the Kangaroos. Okay, hold up, this was straight up amazing. We bought food for the kangaroos and then were allowed to go into a large nature area where they all were just hanging out and chilling. I literally cannot get over how calm they were. I always assumed that Kangaroos were vicious, violent creatures but they were totally fine with eating from our hands and letting us pet them. I was also surprised by how their pouches were shaped. I always pictured the pouches as legit pockets outside their stomachs but they are kind of just like holes in their bellies. You could tell which kangaroos had joeys because their stomachs were bulging. and depending on how large the joeys were, some of the kangaroos had a pair of very long legs sticking straight out of their stomachs. I thought that was pretty funny.

This is a kangaroo

Me feeding my first kangaroo!! 

Casually lounging with my new friends 

But you gotta make sure you remember to feed them!

My first kangaroo selfie!!

This is the biggest one we saw!!! Such a boss

You can literally see the joey's legs popping out. UNREAL 

SOOO CHILLLLL

Then we saw some of the other animals that I mentioned above, and finally, went to the "Barn" to see the more farm/barn animals that I was used to seeing before

this is a wombat, i think

a tasmanian devil

the barn...lol

me and sheep

a dingo!

us and a dingo!!! (looks like a normal dog lol)

 After lone pine, we went into the city to a cool underground café cool hipster-ish place called Brew (it felt super sketchy though because you go down a random alley to get there and you feel really cool and hip and local) and got a delicious lunch (I ate it so fast, I didn't have time to photograph it) and then walked around a really popular shopping area on Queen Street. Overall, a really great day!

sketchy alley we took to get to the café

Queen Street Mall in the city

Trip to the GOMA

Friday, July 25th:

Today, my friend and I went to the Gallery of Modern Art (known as the GOMA) in Brisbane. We saw a couple of really awesome exhibits.

What a nice day to go to a museum LOLOL

Before I get to the exhibits, let's first discuss the bathroom situation. So when I first got there, I thought to myself Dang, I gotta pee. So obviously I walked in the direction towards the restrooms. On the way to the bathroom, however, I got a little distracted. Just outside of the bathrooms, there was a dark, square lobby area that was projecting a film on a big blank wall. I decided to take a moment to watch it. I watched for a few seconds, when finally, I realized that it was video of a McDonald's being completely flooded with water, shot from a rotation of various angles and points of view. My first thought was Woah that's kinda cool and interesting. BUT THEN, I thought to myself, OMG THIS IS REALLY MAKING ME HAVE TO PEE (cuz I was legitimately just watching smooth, flowing water filling the whole screen, plus the water fall sound effects were not helping). So unfortunately, as much as I realllllly wanted to keep watching the flooding McDonalds, my body won and I finished my initial journey into the bathroom. While I peed,  I debated whether or not they did that on purpose. Oh, the cruel, cruel curators. Also, the sinks (or lack of sinks) were interesting. Instead of there being a bowl built into the counter top, it was just a countertop that was slanted away from the hand-washer, so it all pooled and drained on the farther side of the counter. Pretty chill stuff.

A video of a McDonald's casually flooding

"Where is the sink?" I think to myself.

Me and Art

The first exhibit we went to an exhibit called Harvest. Pretty much it was an exhibit about food and art, or like, food as art. Or making statements about food in an artsy way. Regardless, it was about food and art. Some of the pieces were very interesting and it was a really cool exhibit.

Harvest: Art, Film, and Fuudz

An original bottle of Coca-Cola?

Photography of food as weapons #SoMeaningful

From far away its art...

...But close up, it's just silver wear and peppers

really cool art piece about introduction to the work place

soooooo pretty!!!!

animals covered in meat/beef packaging...kinda creepy

There was also an exhibit about music and stuff, but I didn't find it that exhilarating. Except, there was a really cool guitar and a line of metronomes all going at the same time (at different beats)...so that was....loud.

Largest guitar I've ever seen

SO MANY METRONOMES!!!

Then there was an aboriginal art exhibit and I discovered that I LOVE basket weaving (actually, allll the weaving was cool). #talent

Woven baskets!!!

Another woven thingy

me and all my woven friends

Then there was a weird video of a woman using a harness on her face with pencils attached to make "art."

Girl using face to hold her pencils...lol art

 There was a really cool piece that was hands on in which you put on head phones and could take a piece of metal (whose other end was attached to some contraption) and touch it to different parts of a spiral on the wall and it would make different sounds at different frequencies/pitches. I looked really silly using this one because it legit just looks like you are trying to listen to the wall by feeling it. So awkward to watch someone doing it, but so cool to use!!

me using art to make sounds

Now we got to my FAVORITE part of the museum. It was an exhibit called "Pattern Bandits" and it consisted of a few brightly colored rooms with cool interactive things to do. For example, there was a hallway with lots of cameras that you could stand in front of and then see yourself on various little screens as a cool kaleidoscopic image. Also, there was a checkered room with a really simple dance party of silly looking people projected on one of the screens. Naturally, I jumped right in and started dancing along with them. Then there was another room with some cool art projects that people could do. Okay, confession: the whole exhibit was for children/families, but whatever. It was fun. No regrets.

I AM A PATTERN BANDIT!!

Cool kaleidoscope hallway

tripppppyyy

me joining into the dance party

I never miss an opportunity to fake DJ

my beautiful art moving onto bigger and better things

After the GOMA, we went to get some smoothies. Sooooo delicious. They also had a bunch of yummy looking desserts so I hope I go back at some point to try them!

such good smoothies that we got in the city

Peanut Butter: Contains Peanuts

Thursday, July 24th:

Today, there was not any orientation stuff that I needed to attend to so first thing in the morning, I went to a QUEST event called "Cultural Day," which in my opinion is not the best name for the event, but #whatever. Pretty much, I got to a field at around 10:30 and there was a rotation of small animals and reptiles that experienced animal holders were holding for us to pet or in some cases, we were allowed to actually hold them! Unfortunately because there were a lot of eager people there, my selfies with the animals were super rushed/sloppy but hey, I did my best that I could do. I saw a possum, a baby crocodile, a type reptile that idk what its called but it had the cutest little hands,  a long lizard guy that was soooo long, and a big snake!!

He was throwing some blue steel my way #modelstatus

me and possum, both a little too eager #LOL

possum has chilled, but I am still too eager

cool long lizard thingy

me and the cool long lizard thingy

the cutest thing ever!  LOOK AT HIS LITTLE HAND!!!

baby crocodile

me and the baby crocodile

me and snake (fav pic of the day)

the snake being getting taken away from me after it got sassy

After that, my friends and I went to a BBQ where I ate a classic Australian veggie hot dog. I guess I forgot to discuss this earlier, but instead of putting their hotdogs on "normal" buns, Australians  simply take regular sliced bread and wrap it around the hot dog. Very interesting. Then, we went to do some random shopping, but first stopped by the large University of Queensland, St. Lucia sign. Pretty chill stuff. We went to the Kmart and Coles (grocery store) at Toowong village, which I guess would best be described as a small mall about a 15 min bus ride away from UQ with a variety of stores.It was a pretty unexciting trip, except for discovering that instead of escalators with built in steps (ie normal escalators), they have just long uphill sliding escalators. It was actually a pretty nice calf stretch, but I could imagine that it could be hard to balance if someone was wearing heels or carrying a lot of bags.

UQ, St. Lucia sign at the edge of campus

Strange, steep escalator in mall

After I got back to St. John's I picked up a complimentary mug that the St. John's office gave all its students. I'm assuming the picture on it is the college's crest or something.

a mug, duh

After that, I went to UQ's fitness center (ie. the gym) and happily discovered that because I live at St. John's I get free membership to many of the gym's facilities, like the weight room and cardio room. Funny story about that. I was wandering around the gym for a little and couldn't find a cardio specific room (like how at princeton we have a room dedicated to bikes and treadmills and ellipticals) but I found one lone stationary bike in the middle of a room with a lot of weights and lifting equipment. I thought that that was kind of weird, but I didn't think much of it and got on the bike for a while. It was actually a really, really nice bike. No regrets. After I finished my workout, I decided I looked legit enough (read: I had accumulated enough sweat) to feel confident enough to finish exploring the rest of the gym's rooms and facilities. That's when I discovered there was an upstairs with THE NICEST 3 rooms full of bikes, treadmills, and ergs. There was even a really comfy looking couch in the corner of one of the rooms. In hindsight, I am sure I looked really silly because it was probably really obvious that I just had no clue that the upstairs cardio rooms existed. YOLO, whatever.

I was really hungry after my workout, so I decided to go to dinner early ( it was sooo good too. I obvi have to eat the vegetarian option and its always so yummy and there are lots of veggies that go with it. also the dessert was like an apricot breaded thingy. so good.) and it was actually really nice because I had a really chill conversation with a few of the ladies that work in the kitchen, so like I would consider us all BFFs now. Hopefully they remember me. (sorry no pics of them, i felt like it was too early in our friendship to snap some selfies)

The only other exciting thing that happened was that I discovered that peanut butter contains peanuts. You learn something new everyday.

Contains Peanuts