the champions of grampians

1132 am july 9th

3 days after my last blog...still have no internet access so i don't know if i can exactly call this a blog. it's more of a 'dear diary' sort of jiggy.. speaking of the word dear, it's kind of like that dear abby article that talked about the twins alicia and amanda. weirdddddd. not that the internet audience knows what i am talking about. or at this point cares, this is supposed to be about australians and kangaroos and didgeridoos.

so i guess a lot has happened since the plane ride. i landed safely and soundly in australia with all my luggage in tow. luckily for me on my flight from sydney to melbourne i met this girl kristen who i found out was in the same program as me, so that was pretty sweet. it helped to know that i had someone to get through what i figured to be the hardest part of the trip (thus far?): finding my way out of the airport. we got into melbourne on time and both cleared customs (which was remarkably pretty easy? not that i had anything to hide. except for the drugs). we found our togoto dude and he drove all of us into the city, giving us advice about melbourne and offering handy dandy australian sayings..of the favorites: "colder than a mother-in-law's kiss" and the tale of politicians who "lost the unloseable election" after building the mcdonald's-esque structure leading into the city.

we got to the miami hotel and met up with three other ies kids and went out to lunch with them. we found a small cafe along errol st and munched it up, then came back and showered. oh my god. that shower was GLORIOUS. you will never know what i mean until you travel on planes for 24 hours straight, arrive in a strange city knowing no one, walking in cold and rainy weather but are able to wash away all your worries with some streams of hot water and victoria secret shampoo. i mean, the shower was okay. i guess.

we met liz and luke and went to a meeting about the program, then went out a pub afterwards for dinner. i ended up with a pot of pure blonde..after an embarassing experience with the bartender. it might take a while to catch up on that whole slang thing. i thought i had it down. nope.

woke up the next morning to leave for the first field trip, to grampians national park about 3 hours west of melbourne. along the way we stopped at this winery for lunch (delicious!) and a wine tasting tour. i guess the tour was kind of cool besides the fact that i didn't know what the man was saying. wine isn't my forte. we tried a bunch (no black puma) which all tasted great, or at least as great as my unrefined wine tasting skills could go. definitely was a cool exeperience.. it was like all of a sudden, civilization! after a 2 hour ride into nowhere.

so we got to the park later than we thought, unbagged all our stuff, ate dinner and basically crashed at 10pm. early but still later than our previous night of 8pm. slowly but surely that jet lag will disappear.

it's 1145pm right now..im basically just trying to stay up to my birthday (in case someone calls). i guess i'll be super depressed if no one does. anyone? anyone?

everyone is asleep now though so i feel bad typing so loud. im gonna finish this up tomorrow on the bus ride home...

today was great though. roos, bike rides, rock climbing, abseiling, more roos, 6 desserts, a singing birthday candle, victoria bitter. and it's not even midnight yet.

good onya, mate.
me