Party On!!

These past few days have been a blur. Not because they have gone by so quickly, but because I have had a party to attend every night, which means the following mornings can get to be quite rough. In fact, I think this is the first morning I've gotten out of bed before 10am, which is huge for me.

On Saturday night, Derek decided to be the host/cook/gentleman and cook Kelsey, Dave and I dinner. He made the famous Mexican recipe, and we all enjoyed the fresh guacamole, salsa and cheese tortillas. This, of course, was the pre-game meal, as Kelsey, Derek and I were headed out around 7pm to catch the Wallabies rugby game. For those of you who are unaware, the Wallabies are the National rugby team. On Saturday, they were playing Ireland.

                 Enjoying the dinner made for us....a la Derek!

Like the game I attended before, I had absolutely no clue what was happening most of the time, but the atmosphere alone was incredible. There was a huge mixture of fans for both teams, which made for a large feeling of rivalry. I just basically followed along, cheered whenever the people dressed in gold cheered and booed when the people in green were cheering. Easy enough!! It was even better that the end result was 22-15 for the Wallabies!

After the game, we went to Caxton Street, a street right outside the stadium that is literally filled with fans after each game. Here, we chose a bar to hit up some drinks and chill for a bit. I went up to the bar to get a water for one of my pals, along with two other friends who were ordering beers and we ended up snagging 3 free drinks each! How? Well, there were three glasses on the bartop that were just sitting there. It's obvious to us that someone has ordered and paid, but totally forgot about the drinks since after 3 rounds of people ordering, those drinks were still there. Discretely, I motion to Alexa to pick one, I grab the other, and Alexa's housemate Steph grabs the last. We figured if no one was picking them up in the time we were standing there (a good 10 minutes!) that they were not going to be used. So why waste a good drink? I think they were vodka, soda and lemons, but I couldn't tell for sure.

                    Us with our free drinks we scored at the bar!!

After some time at the bar, laughing at the Irish fans singing songs and the Aussie's poking jokes, we decided to head home and sleep. We were all pretty exhausted, even though it was only around 1am!

Sunday night was another party for me, this time out in a southern suburb called Holland Park. My friend, Mel, from anatomy class was hosting a party with her brother, a 4th year pharmacy student. It was a great night, and I ended up crashing overnight there because her brother, Ty, with his pharmacy knowledge brews his own spirits, beer and wine. Needless to say, a couple homemade rum's later, I was in no shape to catch a bus home. Luckily, Mel had plenty of room in the house for me to find a place to crash. Of course, this meant that all my plans for Monday morning were totally kiboshed and as a result, I've been up early this morning to do all the last minute things around the city. I still have more friends to see, errands to run and emails to send....

This will probably be my last post for a while until I can access internet again and update you all. I leave tomorrow morning early for Sydney, meet up with the family, spend a day with them and then we all fly to the Outback on Thursday. We spend 3 days in the Outback, then we fly to Cairns. From here we basically have no plans, a car and 2-3 weeks to make our way down the coast to Brisbane. I promise to try and write as often as I can....I can't promise many photos as I am not sure the internet connections will be strong enough to load them, but if I can, I will.

On that note, I am going to sign off so I can send those emails and get out of the library to finish up errands before enjoying some coffee with friends. It's too hard to say goodbye and I get this sick feeling in my stomach every time I have to do so.....

All my love as always!
xoxo Danielle

The last exam. Then, winter(?) break!

Hello all!

I have to apologize for the lack of posts since my last exam. It's been a couple days, and I honestly planned to write about it the day after, but I had an epic night out after the last exam which will be entirely explained by this post. Prepare yourselves.

                Myself, Abbey and Kirstie before the exam

My last exam was the french exam, worth only 20%. After receiving my final assignment mark in that class the day before, which was 24.5/25, I realized that my mark going into the exam was 76/80. Meaning, if I didn't even show up to the exam, I would have passed with a 76%. Not bad. In fact, I was so nonchalant about this exam that I didn't even open a book to study. Not that I could have really done much anyways. The exam was easy as, basically all we had to do was write the beginning to a mystery novel using the information given to us in a passage that involved a student talking with a policeman about how his bag was stolen. The word limit was 400 words, which is basically a long paragraph. It took me about an hour to write it up, and I left without really making too many corrections. I figure, since studying French for over 6 years, I think my grammar is up to a level where I don't make really stupid mistakes. Besides, I figured that I only needed a 70% to end up with a 90% overall...

                      At the Red Room

This is where the fun starts. The 4 of us from my French class: Marc (the Canadian who married an Aussie and plays hockey) Abbey, Kirstie (2 Aussie's) and myself all headed to the campus pub, the Red Room. Here, we started to drink and play a couple rounds of pool. Our plan, initially, was to have a couple celebratory drinks here, then head home. Well. That plan soon was pitched out the window for another, more exciting plan that involved another bar and some dancing. But before we left the Red Room, a bunch of other mates I had met over the course of the semester, as well as ones that I knew from Queen's, all came to join us at the Red Room to celebrate good friendships, the semester and the end of exams. It was sad as well, I had to say goodbye to a couple friends as they were headed out over the next couple days.

                       Andrea, Myself and Alexa (the Queen's gals!)

Many drinks and a significant loss at pool later, the 4 of us decide it's time to move onto the next venue. After a quick stop at Kirstie's house for some food (they tried to get me to eat Vegemite, again, but I just can't make it work!) we managed to get a ride to the RE. A fancy establishment in the subrub of Toowong. Andrea knows just how sarcastic I am when I say "fancy." This bar is the go-to bar for all uni students, especially on a Wednesday nights when the drinks are cheap and the dance floor is packed. Here, Abbey and I met up with some more of Kirstie's mates and had a blast chatting away with random groups of people and dancing on the dance floor. I also ran into a guy wearing a Queen's hoodie, which totally threw me off guard. I asked him if he was from Queen's, and it turns out, he was on exchange there last semester with his mate! His mate was super drunk and swore that he knows me from Queen's because he remembers "seeing me on campus", but I just went along with it. We had a nice chat about Bubba's poutine, the nightlife and other Kingston things before parting ways. Fancy that a simple hoodie can connect 2 individuals eh?

Around midnight, after about 7 solid hours of drinks (and at this point, I was starting to get sick of the rye I had decided to drink all night - Dad, I understand where you are coming from when you say you can't touch the stuff again!) Abbey and I began to get hungry and wanted to leave to catch the last ferry into the city. Abbey was going to stay at my house as her place was way too far to access by transit that late at night....Anyways, we rock up to the ferry stop and see that there are a whole group of guys waiting as well. By this time, we have started to sober up and really didn't want to deal with a group of drunken boys, so I suggest that we pretend we are French and speak in French to each other.

It worked perfectly. Well, kind of.

The boys did not leave us alone. In fact, they really liked that we were from France. However, my accent was SUPER. I have no clue how or where I learned to speak English with a French accent, but it worked wonders. Abbey and I had to bite our tongues when they talked amongst themselves about how sexy they thought it was that we were foreign, as they assumed we didn't understand a word they were saying! They even were so kind as to help "direct" us in the city and order our meals at Macca's. It was epic. Probably the best fun I've had on a night out. Also makes me wonder if I have an acting career as a French woman in an English country....kidding.

The past couple days have just involved me getting ready to leave for Sydney on the 30th. I'm in the process of picking up assignments from campus, packing up the room, baking up a storm and then attending a couple more parties in between. I'm going out tomorrow night with Derek, Kelsey and the crew to the Wallabies game (the national Rugby team versus Ireland), and then Sunday night I've been invited out to party with the Anatomy friends I made. I'm excited to see the family in such a short period of time, but I also don't want to leave. I've made so many good friends and contacts here, it's going to be tough to say goodbye without shedding tears. Trust me.

               Beginning to organize my life into suitcases

Anyways, I probably should go and run another couple errands before I head home for the evening and get some much needed rest!

Love to all - I'm about a month away from seeing most of you! How crazy is that??
xoxo Danielle

Exams 2, 3 and 4....

Well folks.

I am one exam and 10 days away from reuniting with my family. I'm super excited to see them, but also a little sad because it means that my Australian Adventures are almost over....

This post is a long overdue update on the last of my exams, as well as this past weekend's celebratory party. As you can probably imagine, with 3 back-to-back exams, the night out Friday night was a hairy one....haha!

Exam number 2 was Tuesday night at 6pm. It was my Terrestrial Ecology course, where I learnt about koalas, kangaroos and echidnas, so I wasn't too concerned with the exam itself. Of course, considering what happened the last time around, I left the house at about 2 in the afternoon JUST to make sure I made it on time. And naturally, the bus did not pull over or break down, so I was on campus about 3 hours before I actually needed to be. Oh well, I managed to catch up with Alexa and Kelsey, and we studied a bit together before ordering a pizza dinner and going to write the exam.

The exam itself actually went amazingly well, except for one question. It was, "There is one environmental factor that dictates when baby koalas are born. What is this factor and why does it not affect all koala populations in the same way?" (2marks). I had absolutely NO idea, so instead of writing out some kind of bull**** for an answer, I drew a cartoon. It was of Australia, with a koala up north and a koala in the south. The koala up north was saying how hot it was, and the koala in the south was complaining about the cold. Next to the cartoon, I wrote "This diagram is up for interpretation." I'm hoping I get at least partial marks.....

Next exam was on Thursday morning and this was the Anatomy practical exam. For those unaware of how these exams work, we basically have 70 stations set up with either a cadaver, plastic model or a micrograph photo. Each student stands up in front of a station, we have exactly one minute to identify whatever is labeled on the table and then move to the next station when the bell rings. It can be pretty stressful, but a tutor told me a couple weeks ago that I had to treat it like a game. Have fun, don't panic if you don't know the answer, and don't let previous stations throw you off. It's exactly what I did. In fact, most of the stations I was able to ID within 20 seconds, and I actually had fun with it all. It was a pretty warped game of Guess Who, but I'm sad that anatomy is over with! The best part of the entire experience was one particular station. The question was to identify a structure on the bone that could be palpated through the skin. The bone was the femur, but I didn't remember this from my notes. So, since we aren't allowed to touch the specimens whatsoever, I put down my pencil and test and started to feel up my OWN leg in order to try and guess an answer! It was hilarious because a tutor that was monitoring that station just caught my eye and shook his head at me.....they have probably seen so many weird things during those exams!!

Last exam of the week was the theory portion to the anatomy exam. It was a 50 multiple choice question exam and we had an hour to do it. Unlike my other exams, I really didn't study for this one as much as I would have liked, so I was really nervous going into it. Out of all of them, I think this one went the worst. The first 10 questions were all about the bones in the skull, the sphenoid bone in particular, and I had to guess all of them. Oh well. It's over and done with!

Now, onto the party. Friday night was our epic celebration night out with all my housemates and uni friends. Derek had received strawberry Jello earlier on from his mum, with the strict instructions from Andrea that it was only to be used for shots. So, we prepared these puppies the night before, and broke them out early on during dinner to get the evening started. You can imagine how the night went on from there....

We partied in our house until 9:30, then headed out into the Valley to party at a club called the Met. It played some great music, and we stayed until all hours of the night. Despite a slight scare with us losing one of our friends and then realizing she was actually safe at home, the night was a blast. Yesterday, (Saturday) was a bit rough, but I was nowhere near the shape I was in after my bday night. Still, I took the entire day off, and apart from a Macca's trip for some greasy hangover food, I didn't leave my bed.

                       Enjoying some Jello shots in Derek's room...

                                 Outside the club

                                       Doing shots at the bar
           
Now, it's Sunday and I'm just out getting some internet, catching up on some emails and starting to organize notes for my french exam on Wednesday. It shouldn't be too tough but I do have a couple things to revise....Once my downloads are finished, I'm off to meet up with Derek in the city to grab some groceries before heading back to the house and baking another batch of cookies for him.

I'm off, but do keep in touch and keep your eyes posted for another couple updates before I leave to see the fam jam!

xoxo Danielle

Update on exam numero uno

Hello folks!

This is a quick update on the crazy happenings regarding my first exam yesterday. Caution : these next events are extremely unlike me...

My first exam was yesterday at 2:30pm. I have to catch a bus into the campus, which takes about 30 minutes. In theory, I was going to catch a bus in the city at 1:30pm, arrive at campus at 2pm and have a cool 30 minutes to just prepare myself for the exam. Perfect timing.

So, I'm in the city. I catch the bus at 1:30pm. I'm on the bus, about halfway to the campus when the bus pulls over, and the driver tells us to get out and wait for the next bus. I assume that we are just switching buses, and that our next bus is right behind us. Wrong.

The next bus is not scheduled to arrive for another 40 minutes. Current time: 2:00pm. Exam time: 2:30pm.

I AM NOT GOING TO MAKE MY EXAM.

Brilliant.

For those of you who know me, I am always on time for my exams. In fact, I am always early for my exams.

When I figure this out, that I will be late/I will MISS the exam. I panic, phone Dad and realize he can't do anything on his end. He is in CANADA.

My options: a) Run to the uni. This option will take me about 20 minutes.
b) Catch a cab. I have no money though, so this option is out.
c) Find another bus.

I choose option c). The next bus that comes to the uni arrives at this specific station at 2:15pm and will get me to campus at 2:27pm. 3 minutes prior to the start of my exam. Excellent.

I'm only slightly panicked when I arrive at the room on campus where I am supposed to be writing. Surprisingly, I am not the last one to get to the exam room. I sit down, take a deep breath and start the exam.

Thankfully, the exam is not that hard and all my worries about being late subside within a couple minutes. I'm fully in exam mode and finish the exam about an hour into the allotted 2 hour time slot.

All in all, one exam down, 4 to go. Lesson learnt? Yes. Brisbane transit is not reliable on a Saturday afternoon to get to campus.

My next exam is on Tuesday evening, and it's Biology. I hope it goes as well as the last one did, minus the whole bus thing. Wish me luck!

xoxo Danielle

An exciting hump day.....

Wednesday June 9th, 2010.

A day to mark in history folks.

Danielle got another tattoo.

KIDDING!!

Did I fool any of you? That is actually a photo of my friend Kelsey's tattoo that she got this morning. I was asked to accompany her, so I dutifully quit the studying for a couple hours and we headed out to West End for her to get all tatted up. This was her first one, and it's a pretty epic masterpiece if I do say so myself! I was happy to be able to distract her with my anatomy reenactments to make her laugh, and I think the tattoo artist thought we were on drugs. Literally.

After this tattoo job, Kelsey and I met up with Alexa at a cafe down the street called Three Monkeys. Here, we actually got some work done while drinking MASSIVE bowls (yes, bowls) of Chai Lattes. Yum!

On the way to the tattoo shop though, Kelsey and I saw the coolest thing. In South Bank (the area where they have the built in beach and outdoor pool) there is a wall where you can take and leave various items. This week's theme was Magazines, and the theme changes each week apparently. It's a really cool system where you are allowed to help yourself to whatever magazine you desire, as long as you leave something in return! Brisbane always has really cool and avant-garde ideas like this....sometimes, I wish Canada was more innovative!

Yesterday (sorry, this post seems really backwards!) I helped Alexa out with her practical exam by being the guinea pig in a VO2 max test. Basically, I was hooked up to a ventilator which monitored my oxygen consumption and usage during maximal aerobic exercise. I was on a stationary bike, and every 2 minutes Alexa would turn up the resistance. I had to go until I was fully exhausted/almost puking, and then from the data, Alexa had to demonstrate to the tutor that she knew how to calculate my critical values and explain them to me. Turns out, I am within the 90th percentile of women in my age category, which classifies me as an elite athlete! Funny eh? I also found out the heart rate at which my body stops using oxygen efficiently (aerobic to anaerobic consumption) and when I go out for a bike or run, if I stay below this heart rate, I can sustain exercise for much longer. Interesting values to know, but I have to admit the test was hard as. I was only biking for 15 minutes, but the last 6 were probably the toughest 6 minutes of exercise I have done in Australia to date. I wouldn't volunteer to do the test anytime soon.....

That's about it for the updates. I just wanted you all to know that instead of studying like a normal uni student, I am currently very good at finding alternative activities!!! I'm sure my marks will definitely reflect these decisions...but in the meantime, I'm loving life!

xoxo Danielle

The last weekend of a non-stressful time

Hello all!

Well. It's currently Monday morning, around 11:15am, and I have spent 2 hours in the anatomy lab (already!) studying for the practical exam and reviewing cadavers. Excellent. I decided to take a break from the fumes of formaldehyde to update you on what turned out to be an exciting weekend....

Friday night was pretty tame, I spent the majority of the night studying and getting to bed early. Saturday morning though, I went off to campus to play a couple squash games with some random students, and ended up spending over 2 hours playing! It was one of the few times I have been out this semester, and it was great fun. I'll definitely be playing lots more once back at Queens!

The rest of the day Saturday was devoted to some more studying, skyping with the family and friends as well as catching up on some schoolwork. The evening, however, was a completly different story.

I totally planned to stay in, study and get to bed early. At 7:45pm, both my housemates (Dave and Shiva) told me that I was to "get into my room, put on a dress and get ready to go out." I was really reluctant to go out, but they both were super keen on having me join so I got ready in about 10 minutes and we were out the door by 8:30pm. Our first destination was Glass Bar - a swanky bar where we ordered $20 Long Island iced teas, sat by the bar and drank them slowly. Dave had never had one before, and I warned him that they were quite lethal....but somehow he managed to power through his! By the time we finished, it was nearing 10pm, and Shiva wanted to take me to his favourite club. We booked it through the Valley (the area where all the night clubs in Brisbane are located) and made it to the Metro just in time to avoid paying a cover charge. For the next couple hours, we danced on the dance floor and I had a blast people watching. I have to admit - being in a club like the Met is quite the different experience when you are completely sober. It's amazing how individuals act on alcohol (myself included, I know!) and I was totally entertained by watching all the drunk uni students around me.

At midnight, I wanted to call it quits, but both Dave and Shiva were not ready to leave so I walked home on my own. For those reading, that may sound like a dangerous move on my part, but I assure you, the road I walked along was filled with people traveling to and from the Valley, and it was a well-lit and major road. I wouldn't have walked home (a 10 minute walk) if it was any later, or unsafe. Trust me.

The walk home is there the interesting part happened. I'm about 2 minutes around the corner from my place when I run into a family out on the sidewalk, all of them dressed in suits. I assume it's a wedding and I'm correct. I had to excuse myself to get around the father of the groom, and that's when this one guy asks me, "Have you met Josh?" He was referring to his younger brother, and before I know it I'm invited into the reception, open bar and all. I feel only slightly awkward, since I was totally crashing a wedding reception, but at the end of the night I came out with another Aussie friend (Josh and the rest of his family!) Such a random occurrence, but totally hilarious. I will probably never hear from them again.....

Onto Sunday. I slept in, which was great, and then spent the morning at Starbucks with my housemate Mohammad studying some material. At about 7:30pm, I headed out to catch a bus to meet up with my Canadian friend Marc, who I met in French class. He is here permanently, since he married an Aussie, and he plays hockey. ICE hockey. So him, his wife, his wife's cousin and I went to watch his late night game.

Sammy (his wife) knows quite a bit about hockey, but her cousin Bre, did not. It was Bre's first game, and what an experience it is to watch a well-understood sport (on my behalf) through a complete beginner's eyes. Simple rules like icing, offsides and penalties confused the crap out of her. Especially when the referee had their arm raised for icing, and she's trying madly to figure out who did what penalty!! The sad part (at least for me) is that the quality of the hockey was about the equivalent to intramurals at Queen's. Some good players, some great stars....but mostly shit players who are just out for a skate more than anything. I really wish Bre could have seen pro NHL games live, and REALLY experienced what hockey is. All in all, it was a great night out (especially when Sammy, who is preggers, was craving Maccas on the way home so we had a midnight pit stop on the way!) and really made me miss playing myself. Next year!

I should probably run, since I have to drop off my last french assignment and then hit the books again. I'm going out tonight with Dave for our weekly Zumba class - remember that dance-fitness class I talked about one post way long ago? Well, we've gone every week and I swear it's the most fun $15 I spend weekly. Apart from that, not much is planned for the afternoon, although I may quit studying early to go home and have a quick nap.....the entire weekend and 2 unexpected late nights in a row really did take a whole lot out of me!!

Keep the emails and updates from you ends coming - can you believe that I only have a couple more months till I'm home and see most of you in person?? Crazy!

All my love,
xoxo Danielle

Crunch time!!

Hello everyone!

Well, it's that time of the year again - classes are winding down (they finish in 2 days!), I have a week of no exams and no classes (equaling MUCH studying time) and then it's down to 5 exams in 2 weeks. Funny how no matter the location and despite being on the opposite side of the world and in a very different country, the feeling I get at this time remains the same. It's that stressed out, not sure what to expect, pressure-filled anxiousness. And then of course, just like back home, I am sure that all my exams will go swimmingly, and I will wonder why I even worried about them in the first place. Some things never change.

Not much has happened since my last entry about the Australia Zoo visit. Derek and I have quite the baking system going - he buys the ingredients, I bake the goods and he shares a few with me. In the past week, I made one big batch of Gma Arlene's chocolate chip cookies, which made about 40 or so cookies in total. It took Derek 2 days to finish the entire lot. The only thing holding him back from more cookies being made is a lack of funds that prevents him from buying the missing groceries. But that will change with his paycheck next week.....

I am currently sitting in my last french class of the semester. It's pretty boring - I just came from the last french oral presentation, where I think my group completely smashed. The professors were quite stunned after we finished, and I think (or hope?) it was because we did swimmingly well. Fingers crossed. Speaking earlier about accents, hearing Australians speaking french with their Australian accents is weird. They also all think that I am this crazy french speaker because I come from Canada and compared to them, have a very thick french accent. It's hilarious, and definitely improves my confidence with the oral french.

Now all that's left is one more anatomy class tomorrow morning, followed by some celebratory drinks on the campus pub. Then next week is a full week of studying intensely. I'm imagining many hours spent in the anatomy lab, pouring over my cadaver (whom I have affectionately named Mortimer. My exams are on the 12th (Marine Biology), the 15th (Terrestrial Environment), the 17th and 18th (2 parts of Anatomy) and the 23rd (French). I'll be really happy when the 18th rolls around, since French should not be too hard. I think the house is having a major party on the 18th to celebrate the end of exams etc etc, and that should be fantastic.

I should probably sign off now, since we were just handed a worksheet and are supposed to be working on that instead of listening (and I can't really pretend to be taking notes anymore....haha).

I'll be in touch soon - if studying doesn't kill me first!
xoxo Danielle