19/1/09

wow, i can't believe my first week here is already over.  classes start today, but i have a really rough life and don't have classes mondays or fridays.  so i start classes tomorrow.  i have one from 9-11 and one from 4-5.  wednesday i have class throughout the day from 8 am until 8 pm.  thursday class from 4-6.  i don't know what i'm going to do with all my mondays and fridays...  today i am meeting with the student travel agent to talk about going to sydney for mardi gras.  the school offers a package that includes transportation and lodging and all that stuff, but i went on a trip with the school yesterday and didn't love being in a tour group.  having to wait around for other people and meeting at scheduled times isn't really my thing.  so a bunch of us might get together and just have a go at it ourselves.

the trip i went on yesterday was to byron bay, about an hour bus ride from robina, which is where i live.  byron is kind of an old hippie town... it sort of reminded me of key west.  aka i loved it.  we took surf lessons in the morning, and then got to walk around and do a little shopping/people watching in the afternoon.  then we took a hike up to a lighthouse, which is the easterly most part of australia.  then we stopped at a pub called the beach hotel, which i guess is really famous although i'm not exactly sure why.  but there were heaps of people there so it must be a pretty big deal.  at the beach hotel we ran into our surf instructors from the morning, and they told us we should stay and hang out.  apparently sunday afternoon is a really big party time here.  we had to come back to school with the tour group of course, but he invited us back and said we could stay at the surf shop so i think that's definitely going to have to  happen.  

so now it's time for reality, classes and such.  it's going to be very interesting to see how classes work here and professors and stuff like that.  not too many big plans for the week so far.  the school is hosting a pub crawl in surfer's paradise tomorrow night.  and some aussie boys we met with a car said they were making a trip to nimbin this weekend (nimbin is, apparently, the amsterdam of australia, whatever that means...) so we might tag along with them.  we'll see.