Ekka, Byron Bay, QAG, and sportz!

Hello! I can't believe I have officially been here for a month already!! It is crazy how time flies. Well, this was another fun couple of weeks! Let's recap the highlights:

Tuesday, August 12th:

In honor of Robin Williams' death today, st johns had a viewing of Good Will Hunting on a large screen in a common room. I'd never seen it. I thought it was a good movie. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

It was also my 3/4th birthday. Exciting stuff.

Wednesday, August 13th:

Because of Ekka, a Brisbane Public Holiday, there was no uni today! I went to my friends' house and we made pancakes for breakfast! SOOOO YUMMY!!! Anyway, there are a few ways to celebrate Ekka. Some people just stay in bed all day, some people go to a county fair type thing (with pie contests and wood chopping etc...),  but we got all dressed up and went to the Mekka Races (no clue why it's called Mekka tho) and watched some real horse races!! They also had a concert/dj thing set up so that was cool too when we finished watching some of the races. It was quite an experience. Everyone looked so good! Pretty much, everyone wears realllly nice clothing and the girls wear fascinators, which I had never heard of until this, but they are hat accessories with flowers and decorations on them. I was SO impressed with some of the outfits. One girl's fascinator had a fan and mirror attached to it. Like what!? It was unreal. I borrowed a friend's flower headband thing as an attempt to fit in, but I don't think I was too successful. Some of my friends bet on a horse (unfortunately horse #10 did not do too well in race 3) and even though I didn't bet on anything, I totally guessed correctly which horse would win for two of the races (obviously horse #4)!!! Regrets not betting on him, but it's all good.

Flower Power

Off to the Races!!!

found it!!!

WOOOOOO 

actually early enough to get a good not crowded pic!

betting on horses

yeah number 4!!!! yay horsies!!!

Thursday, August 14th:

Today I saw some people playing an extra large version of chess on campus. Strange.

large chess board + pieces LOL

Friday, August 15th:

vid chatting with my girl kvd before Byron Bay!

This morning I got on a bus to head to Byron Bay, a chill beach town south of Brisbane. Unfortunately a theme for the entire weekend ended up being "ugh its raining" but regardless, I still did lots of fun things to pass the time, even if I was unable to do the classic Byron Bay activities that people might usually do there. After we arrived and settled into the hostel, two friends and I (happy mom?) decided to go tour a local brewery called "Stone & Wood." Unfortunately public transportation was non existent and we did not have any vehicles, so our best option was to hit up google maps, pick a direction, and just start walking. Although I am usually pretty optimistic about things, I was visibly less than thrilled to be walking along a highway while it was grey and gross outside. At the same time, however, I was like yolo, gotta live it up so it ended up being a pretty chill walk. We saw some nice foresty areas and some chill road kill.

walking. no clue where we are.

Anyway, much to my surprise, after 30 minutes of walking, we actually found the brewery and made it to the tour on time. I was beyond relieved when we finally walked up a driveway and actually found the place/made it to the tour on time! The tour was awesome, (not only because it was free and they gave us a complimentary drink) but it was a really cool way to spend the afternoon, especially because I'd never toured a brewery before! Even if I had, I'm sure a bigger company would have been a lot different to tour. It was a really small brewing company (they had just opened a larger brewery in a different location, but until a few months ago, this small garage type place was the entirety of the brewing space) that did everything by hand and really emphasized being apart of and giving back to the community. For example, there are certain parts of the grains that get filtered out and instead of throwing them all away, they give it to local farmers for free for them to feed their animals! YAY! The tour guide was super knowledgable and gave us different ingredients to hold (and told us which ones we could/couldn't eat right there) and because all the brewers had already gone home for the day, we got to see all the machinery up close! He described the entire brewing process from start to finish and it was sooo cool. All the machines are operated by people pressing buttons so none of it just does it on its own, which is cool because he said that depending on who is operating the buttons at the time, the beer might come out tasting different. I thought it was an overall super interesting experience.

so relieved we finally found it!!!!

holding some barley (i think) it was yummy

tourrrrr

holding some hops, but we couldn't eat those

had to resist pressing the buttons of the control panel

view of brewery from control panel deck

cheers stone and wood! 

Saturday August 16th:

Today, I spent the morning/afternoon doing a hike to a great overlook at the Byron Bay lighthouse and then just walked around the cute town. Actually, when we started walking around that day I had no clue what we'd end up doing, but randomly (or maybe the other girls knew where we were going) we found the trail towards the lighthouse. We decided to take the woodsy/forest path (more like a hike) instead of just a concrete road path. The entire woods part was stairs which was a struggle but so worth it when we got to the top. There were about three really awesome overlooks. One was kinda scary because to get a good picture you had to stand on the edge of a roof top thingy and ah so scared, but so worth it! Even though it was sorta grey and gross, the view of the light house and ocean and sky was beautiful! At one point while we were walking along, some guy yelled to us "THERE ARE WHALES OVER HERE" of course, as tourists, we started sprinting towards where he pointed. I am about 95% sure I saw one flip its fin or something out of the water and I was like OMG WHALE! It was pretty cool. By this time we were pretty exhausted so we took the normal road back into the town, got lunch (I tried a halumi cheese sandwich for the first time, which apparently is big in Australia) and then walked around the town window shopping and chilling (but like actually, because by this point my sweat had dried on me and I was straight chilling in the most temperature-related way possible).

starting out the hike!

prettttyyy beach

the water was like such a cool color of aqua/blue

Chill overlook (we eventually walked down there)

spotted: wallaby in its natural habitat

light house!

most easterly (eastern?)  point of the Australian Mainland

Sunday, August 17th:

Okay so today's forecast was 100% precipitation all day so of course, after I put all my clothes in storage for the day until we leave, it ends up being beautiful and sunny and blue skies... like are you serious?!  I was not totally prepared for a day at the beach, but whateverrr. First, my friend and I got brunch, and it was so good! We went to a place called the Balcony and we, wait for it....SAT ON THE BALCONY! Afterwards, we decided to walk along the beach for a while. I played in the sand. She took some pictures. Then we spent the rest of the day sitting in a couple of hammocks until I needed ice cream/she needed food. Although it was super unfortunate that only the last day had nice weather, I am soooo happy it did because Byron Bay is actually beautiful in the sun! Well, duh, its a beach town, but still, it was so nice!! Finally, we headed back on the buses and went back to Brisbane! I think that being away from Brisbane for a weekend really made coming back to St. John's feel like home and I had the "omg finally I can sleep in my own bed" moment, so that was awesome!  It's crazy that at this is the one month mark! ahhhh!! where does the time go!

welcome to the Balcony

view from the Balcony's balcony

finally blue skies at the beach! 

hammock chilling (amber is back there somewhere)

so beachy, but really those signs were helpful #notlost

Tuesday, August 19th:

This morning before class, I went into the city and checked out the Queensland Art Gallery. It was super awesome! There were many different types of art, but my favorite part about the museum was that there was a lot of water and nature inside. For example, the floor of one section was just water, and there was vines growing on the walls. Super awesome. There was a small part about Parisian art (made me miss Paris so much!) with lots of miniature Rodin sculptures (throwback to when lived two minutes from the Rodin museusm last summer!) and some Degas models/paintings of the ballerinas. There was also a glass exhibit which I really liked too and overall, I really liked the whole museum! I felt #cultured and #productive that I finally did something before my 2 pm class! Woo! Also while I was there, I got a coffee and sat outside the cafe and relaxed while looking at a cute garden, blue sky and some sculptures they had outside...well, at least it was relaxing until I witnessed a large bird attack a lady and her muffin, at which point she threw the muffin at it, and then the waiter got her a new muffin #drama

some parisian art

indoor water and vines crazyyy

pretty landscapes! 

asian scrolls...pretty chill 

alice in wonderland painting!!

more water...legit right under the escalator!!! 

painful paintings about wounds and injury

me and my favorite painting of the day (idk why i look naked...)

lol loving this original title

such a nice day!

At night I went to the yoga and meditation club and did some yoga and....guided meditation. I don't think I'd ever actually done meditation before, so that was pretty awesome and I met a few cool people at the class too.

Wednesday, August 20th:

The only exciting thing today was that a whole slew of us went to the Johns vs King's rugby game (unfortunately we lost...) but it was still awesome to cheer on the team and see some rugby played by people I knew! GO SPORTZ!

sportz

Friday, August 22nd:

Today I saw The Hundred-Foot Journey, which is the movie about food and france and indians and it was awesome! cinematically great and pretty chill story line too. After that, we found our way in the rain to a Tibetan restaurant and it was delish and yummy and I got noodles and tofu and then on my way home I saw a family of two ducks and about five lil' ducklings walking together! IT WAS SO CUTE!!!!

cute family of ducks!