Red Sandy Sky

I realize that I haven’t updated in some time, and I will give you a full update but I haven’t been inspired in some time. Indulge me.

The sky is red. It has been windy lately, and the red sand of the outback has been blown into the cities. This morning Kylie mentioned that Sydney was red (from the news), and on the way to class Erin and I experienced an orange tinged sky. It was a pale orange that was the color of the taste of Crème Savers.

After an hour and a half lecture, the dust was everywhere. The wind had been blowing the entire time, and the sand came in droves. It sticks in your throat and in your hair and clothes. People had cameras (not just the international students either!) and were taking pictures. The dusty Great Court looked like fog had rolled in and was covering the world.

After Erin and I got back I went back out with my camera to take some pictures. Walking around by myself felt like I was the only person in the world. Cars coated in red, buildings hazy in the distance. I realize that this is a pretty terrible thing to happen, but at the same time I’m very glad that I’m here to experience it.

Imagine fog. One of those days when you wake up to go to class and the world is hazy and the building across the street is dim and looks far away. Now tinge it all with red. That’s Brisbane right now.

Even as I’m writing this I can smell it in my hair, taste it on my lips, and feel it on my clothes. Anyway, I think it is time for a shower. I’ll inform you of my directing exploits in a day or so, promise!

Midterms

It’s that time of the semester, midterms! Here they call them “mid-semester quizzes”. Its been a pretty hellish week and I’m exhausted, but not enough to sleep so I thought I’d update the world on my exploits.

Erin and I had our 3006 quiz on Wednesday, 3005 homework due on Thursday, 3005 quiz on Saturday, and 3004 quiz on Monday. Needless to say, its been fun. We’re through Saturday with only the Monday quiz to go.

The exams here have a pretty constant format. We are handed an exam answer booklet where we write in our names and id numbers. The exams are handed out and there is a ten minute perusal period (what it is actually called! Perusal, what a great word) where no writing is aloud. I actually really like the perusal period, it’s a nice time to get all your thoughts in order and read over the exam before you start.

3006 was not as bad as expected, though not very good. This is the class that Erin and I are missing at least two major prerec courses for. We’ll have to wait to see what happens.

3005 was laughable. We have two quizzes for that one though, so maybe we will do better? Apparently that class is the hardest one of the entire chee course load here at UQ and people try to study abroad specifically to take that class somewhere else. Erin and I transferred in missing at least one prerequisite course for it! GOSH WE ARE SO GOOD AT THIS.

3004 should be the easiest, only time will tell. The material is the easiest but the professor doesn’t like partial credit. He says that in the real world companies won’t care if you had it mostly right. Yeah well, in the real world I will be able to look up anything I need, so there. Neener neener.

Saturday night after our 3005 exam, we decided to go into the city to go to a music festival that was going on in the Valley. We were going to head in and listen, then come back at a decent hour so Erin and I could wake up early to get a head start on our studying. The night was a pretty big disaster. Some highlights: waiting for an hour with a group of about two hundred people for a bus, not even making it to the Valley due to crowds for a Brisbane festival the same night, ripping one of my two pairs of nice fitting jeans (a pretty major tear that is irrepairable) and then almost going to a potentially very fun party. Unfortunately it ended up being about an hour bus ride away.

On the bright side the bus driver was so overwhelmed with the number of people that he gave us all a free ride from the city back home. That was really nice.

When I say overwhelmed, that is a terrible choice of words to describe this man. More like apathetic. The stop we get on in the city is the end of the line slash the beginning. It’s the end into the city and the beginning out, the bus runs in a giant circle. He got to the bus stop about fifteen minutes early with an empty bus and proceeded to walk up and down it twice looking for trash. He then opened the back door and walked around a bit, waiting for the time when the bus was actually supposed to arrive and completely ignoring the huge hoard of people waiting for the doors to open. Talk of a riot or revolution was spread about, but he just calmly pulled out a little book and read a few lines.

I think he had been driving busses for so long that he’d seen it all and knew that it wasn’t the end of the world. When the appropriate time came he hopped back on the bus and slowly took out this box which we assumed held the money for the tickets, then casually taped up a handwritten sign which read “Free rides” and we all cheered.

The doors opened, and the massive push started. I remember being pushed up against the side and having a polite conversation with the girl standing behind me that went something like this

*push* “Oh I’m sorry”
“Oh it’s fine, it isn’t your fault”
“Too many people!”
“I’m just happy to be touching the bus, they have to let me on now!”

You get the picture. When we finally got home, Erin, Kylie, and I were just drained. We sat around for a while then just sadly went to bed. It has just been a shitty week overall.

Oh I forgot to tell you, I got pretty sick around Tuesday. I felt the sickness coming on Monday then woke up just feeling terrible on Tuesday. I felt like a Katy Perry song, hot and cold all day. Have you ever been sick where you feel like you aren’t really fully in your own body? I was that kind of sick. I pumped myself full of drugs (decongestants and ibuprofen!) and tried to shove some knowledge into my stuffy head.

It mostly passed pretty quickly and I was feeling a lot better by the end of the day.

I really really really really really need to go to bed. Last midterm tomorrow and BugFest auditions start. They asked us to bring some warm up games so I think I am going to show them some of the improve warm-ups that Zach showed us! I’m pretty freakin excited, I just have to survive the test first.

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Guess where I went! Go on, guess.

Still no clue? The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, goofs! It’s the world’s first and largest koala sanctuary, in case you didn’t know.

We took a bus into the city then hopped on another which just goes out to Lone Pine. A half hour later, and we were at koala heaven. There were birds


Turtles


Crocodiles


Ponies


And more. We got to see a dog show, two dogs herding sheep. One dog was about a year old and before the show started he kept wandering to go visit the kids and get attention. When called he would sort of look at the farmer guy like “Do I really have to? This is so much more fun!” The other dog was a few years older and knew her shiz-nit. She sat at attention looking intently at farmer guy waiting for a job. She was really awesome to watch. Once the sheep were in the small pen, she would jump and walk on top of them to make sure they were in tight. A few times one on the end would back up and she would stare it down. You could tell it knew it wasn’t supposed to be away from the group and it would scurry back when she gave it the Puppy Death Glare.


After the dog show we went and saw what was, in my opinion, the coolest thing at the Sanctuary. The kangaroos. There was essentially just a huge fenced in field that the kangaroos could roam around, laze about, and generally be awesome.


You could feed them ($1 for a bag of food) or just go up and pet them. The first time we went in, it was pretty hot so they were mostly just laying about taking naps. A few perked up if they thought you had food, but for the most part they were content to laze about. There were some great picture opportunities because they were so chilled out.

After some time with the kangaroos we went and ate lunch and saw a peacock just strutting his stuff around the tables. He didn’t unfurl his tail, but it was magnificent to look at none the less.


After lunch came the koala cuddling. The line was reasonably short so we hopped in. As long as you paid for one picture you could take as many as you wanted, so we put Andrew on camera duty (as he wasn’t holding one) and got a-cuddling. They are so soft and adorable. The one we held was named Gandalf (lulz, get it, Gandalf the Grey?).


We got to see the Tasmanian devils


And dingoes. However, it was at this point that my camera died, so I don’t actually have any pictures of the dingoes. We also went back and saw the kangaroos again. I will probably steal Kylie and Erin’s pictures from the rest of the zoo-fun eventually, but for now this is what I’ve got. OK I have more, but I don’t think this blog can handle 120 pictures of me attempting to hug a kangaroo and take my own picture. Stay classy, folks!

Plays, Visitors, and Internet, Oh My!

Guess who has internet?! THIS KID RIGHT HERE!

I should probably explain. In Australia it is commonplace to have what are called “download quotas”. Basically, there is a limit to how many interwebs you have each month. This past month our apartment went over (mostly due to Erin and me, sorry Kylie!). Once you go over one of two things will happen, either the internet will stay at the same speed and they will change you ridiculous fees or it will become slow. Almost dial up slow. We were a member of the latter group. For the past two to three weeks we have had snail-speed internet which has made things…difficult. Split slow three ways and you get even slower.

Between the hours of 2 AM and noon we would get normal speed, so before class or late at night we would download anything we needed for schoolings to save to our computers and deal with when we didn’t have interwebs.

In other news, The Airborne Toxic Event concert was canceled due to band illness. My money was refunded, but I’m still really disappointed. The venue that it was going to be in was pretty small and I doubt it was sold out so it would have been an epic concert. Oh well, I’ll just have to see them somewhere else.

In other, other news I got some good news on Friday. Last week I applied to direct a one act play in a festival called Bugfest here on campus and I got the one I wanted! I will get to cast and direct the play; rehearsals go for about a month. Don’t worry Mom and Dad; we won’t be rehearsing every night so I will still have plenty of time for my classes and research.

The play is a sort of spoof on Twilight, but it is really about imagining others as real people rather than just living in your own world. The cast is small (3 people) so even though I haven’t directed before I think I will be able to handle it.

Erin’s boo Andrew is visiting currently. He is staying at our place for a few days and we are taking him around to see all there is to see in Brisbane. I moved my mattress into Kylie’s room to give the two crazy kids some privacy for the duration of his stay. The first day he was here we went into the city to get dinner and took the CityCat back. About 15 minutes prior to us boarding a couple fell overboard from another boat, only one got back on. Half way through our trip home they came over the loud speaker and told us that there was someone in the water. We slowed way down and they started spotlighting places on the river looking for him. They didn’t find him when we were onboard and apparently they still haven’t. Pretty heavy, folks.