Microfilm Scanners.. Whaaaaat???

ok ok SOOO! i have been in the library since like 8:30 this morning and its like 12:30 right now BUT i have this huge paper for my 'history of the invasion of the aboriginal nations' class due soon and i need to get it done by wednesday aka TOMORROW so i can have my unit assessor go over it with me.  soo i was looking for primary sources for my paper cus in order for this class to count for history credit back home at cal lu (and i REALLLY want it to count! cus if it doesnt count, that means i took this really dumb HARD class that is NOT FUN AT ALL as an electiveeee) i have to use mainly primary sources from the time of the event aka newspapers/magazines/personal accounts anything as long as its from the source. 

ALRIGHT sooo i was on the catalogue and i found all the newspaper articles that i need for my paper and i went downstairs where it says the newspapers/microfilm (what the heck is THAT?!) are and i found SHELVES and SHELVES of these liiiiiitle tiny white boxes.. that im assuming must be the microfilms?? (still have no idea what they are at this point).  so i find the particular little white box with the label of the first newspaper i needed, i opened it up and inside is this blue miniature movie film roll looking thing and im like... uhh coooooool? what do i do with this?! andd sooo im walking around the downstairs of the library (which is totally random btw no one ever goes down there and everything is just cluttered in random places) and im searching for a machine that looks like it will read this mini blue film roll and i finally come across the oldest looking machine i can find tucked back around this dark corner near the fire exit and lo and behold was the 'Cannon Microfilm Scanner 300 II'... once again.. coooooll??? I DONT KNOW HOW TO USE THIS!!! haha.. 

luckily there was a photo diagram of how to use it hidden behind the glorious machine and i thought.. "brilliant! this is exactly what i need! i can do this now!".... WRRROOONNNGGG!! i figured out how to turn it on.. and that was about the ONLY thing that went flawless.. the first time i loaded the film i didnt put it under the glass plate so when i pushed the device under the reader i jammed the film up in the reader.. round two i realized that the film had to go under the stinking little glass piece and i got it under the reader and i the picture was upside down and it jammed AGAIN cus i didnt have it running over the write gear... THIIRRDD time i realized that the image was upside down not because there was a button that i needed to push but because i really did infact load the film UPSIDE DOWN! haha and then i got it running over all the right gears and it was smoooth sailing from there :) .. needless to say 10 newspapers/film rolls later, i am a microfilm scanning EXPERT! :)

while i was shuffeling through articles i came across this poem that was submitted to the newspaper in the poetry section written by a prison inmate and im putting it in here then i am going back to work :)

Don't Quit

When things go wrong 

as they sometimes will

When the road you are trudging

seems all uphill

When the funds are low

and the debts are high

And you want to smile 

but you have to sigh

When care is pressing you 

down a bit

Rest if you must,

but DO NOT QUIT

Life is queer 

with its twists and turns

As everyone of us

sometimes learns

And many a failure

turns about

When he might have wont 

had he stuck it out

Don't give up

though the pace seems slow

You might succeed 

with another blow

Success is failure

turned inside out

The silver tint

of the clouds of doubt

And you can never tell 

how close you are

It may be here 

when it seems afar

So stick to the fight

when you are hardest hit

It's when things get worse 

that you mustn't quit

RC Crosswell

Canningvale Prison, Western Australia 

Guirraween

SOOO i just got back from my outdoor education trip to guirrawwen national park/ bald rock national park... and it was AMAZING we spent 4 days 3 nights in the bush and "walked" (the aussie word for hiked) over 50K with our 45lb packs def not the easiest thing ive ever done.. but quite possibly the coolest... at least until my outback trip this coming saturday :)

day 1:

we had to be on the bus by 7:45 to take a three hr bus ride northwest to guirraween where we passed through towns full of "real fall" trees that were orange/yellow/red and all the kids from the east coast were super stoked because fall here at uni is just like fall in so cal.. colder than summer and just a little warmer than winter.. no crazy colors or falling leaves. so that was cool to get to see those towns full of colorful trees THEN we actually got to camp.. and it was raining. but on an off.. it wasnt too bad. we started of with a short walk to our first campsite and set up camp then we went on an off track section (aussies and their off tracks MAN! when they say off track they mean it! i feel like i would DEF get yelled at for this kind of thing at the national parks back home).  our leader took us into this gully that was FULL of ferns!.. yes ladies and gentlemen i was in a "fern gully" haha and everyone got all excited about that.  i saw a baller huntsman spider that looked all fuzzy and i got all up in his grill and took a pretty good pic of him and his eyes look all cool and stuff.. umm i cant remember seeing any other wildlife other than that and birds bugs the usual. but there werent that many spiders DEFINITELY not as many as in meebunn bia.. but we were in ferns up to our chests and practically over our heads at points. not on a trail. just kind pushing through it hoping you didnt step on any kind of creature in the process.. it was a total jurassic park moment i was waiting for a velociraptor to abduct me at any second.  then we came out of the gully and it was pretty much dusk and we made dinner then went to bed straight away because it was so cold, and because we had to get up for sunrise

day 2: 

the rain stopped and the wind dried up mt norman (the granite mtn that we didnt get to climb day 1 because the granite was too slippery from the rain) so we got to scramble to the top after a rushed morning to catch the sun rise.. the most beautiful red sunrise i have EVER seen. i was sooooo glad that we didnt try to get up mt norman the day before because it was basically just a granite slab that you scale up till you get to the top and hope that you dont slip in the process and take out everyone below you. then our leader made us gum tree tea (just the fallen dried up gum tree leaves from the ground boiled in water) and it was pretty good... THEN!!!! we went caving. and when i say caving, i man CAVING! we were on our stomachs pulling ourselves through cracks with head lamps covered in dirt through a channel in the boulder that had been made through erosion of water after it rains and streams down mt norman. (i just found out from a girl on the trip before mine that a boy in her group had to be dug out of the end because he got stuck because the hole was too small).  then we also went caving like we climbed around down into a mess of boulders and around to see different rooms that had been made of the piled up boulders (a lot more climbing and less contorting/squishing).  then we walked some more by this point our leader had us orienteering our own way, we were given a grid reference, a map, and a compass and we were supposed find our way.. our leader would stalk us in the bush to make sure we didnt die but other than that we were on our own, if we walked the wrong way (which never happened of course :) because we are expert orienteers) he would follow us the wrong way and laugh every minute of it.  we had lunch at the underground creek (dont ask why its called that cus i have NO idea cus it looked pretty above ground/normal to me) and we got a chance to jump in... and i did.. andddd it was BY FAR the COLDEST water i have EVER been in!!! to the MAX.. oh MAN!! and it was ORANGE!!! from all the tree leaves it was wierdddd you jump in and look up and you expect to see sky but it looks like there are flames above your head. THEN we started our first off track of the day using magnetic bearings to our from pt A to B and we were crossing creaks/climbing boulders/charging forests left and right till we see our FIRST australian kangaroo just haning out in a grass plain... soooo tight!! :) ahhh :) then we finished that off track and our leader met us there (he was a stinking EXPERT STALKER he would leave after us watch us the whole way and then always bet us there.. WITHOUT us seeing him.. what the heck?!) then we started our second off track where our bearing lead us DIRECTLY in the middle of to herds/packs of kangaroos.. these things are like 6ft when they stand up mind you.. soo we kept on our way walking though the two herds where at the last minute all but a few would hop off and the real big ones would stay behind and look scary (one even started hopping all curious toward us and it was pretty cool/scary haha) but yea just on that grass plane alone there were like 8+ different herds of them all grouped together and we went from seeing our first AU bush kanga to 50-100 all with in 1/2 an hour it was AMAZING.. not to mention the setting sun in the background.  

day 3:

we basically did most of our hiking day three we climbed a couple peaks on the way saw some sweet views of where we started to where we had come.. CRAZY to think how much you can walk in one day.  this is also where we crossed over from guirraween national park over into bald rock national park.  we stopped at a campground for lunch where i saw my first kookaburra up close and lemme tell you they are WEIRD looking birds! (pretty fiesty too one girl in the group before had can of tuna in her hand and she was holding it as she was eating her cracker and a kookaburra just swooped in and yoinked some tuna out of the can only to grip of it as it flew into another boys face.. fact or fiction i dont know but either way i def enjoyed the story haha) we also had our first and ONLY toilet of the trip other than that we had our trowel and a roll of toilet paper and i will leave it at that.  our trip commenced at south bald rock where we once again scaled the granite slab and when i say slab i really mean 1200 m tall BOULDER to watch the sun set.. beautiful. then we came back and had dinner then our leader showed us a few constellations you can actually see the full orion (same one you see in the northern hemi) for about an hour after sun sets before it heads behind the horizon.. then i was asked by a girl in my group that lives in boston if we saw the same stars in CA as they do in MA and i nearly died.. along with our group leader.. then we went to bed

day 4:

sunrise on south bald rock again.. gorgeous.. ALMOST as good as mt norman day 2.. more caving.. the a little of both the crawling/squeezing/dragging and the climbing.. we saw GLOWWORMS.. only like 10-15 not the planet earth kind :) ahh i LOVE AUSTRALIA! umm then we did our last off track of the day and headed through this REALLY thick brush/forest trying to find this creak and we were preeeetty lost because we were getting impatient and we just walked instead of following a magnetic bearing which takes FOREVER!!! so we were trying to orienteer feature based.. but the forest/bush was too thick to see anything sooo that was a failed attempt from the start so we just continued walking and we happened to hit this creek that we were planning on hitting and following down to the destination and we thought we were WAYY off track and 60 seconds later we hit the destination becuase we happend to hit it exactly where we were planning on hitting without even trying.. after we thought we were completely off track.. a COMPLETE God send. sooo LUCKY and then we finished out or walk back to the start to complete our 50+k adventure around guirraween and south bald rock and we were off to good ol' lismore :) where i came home ate an apple, granola bar and an ENTIRE pizza and now i am going to bed :)

all in all it was a complete success to the max :)

Race Day

sooo this past saturday was lismore race day and we all went to the horse races and it was REAALLLYYY fun! ahh i LOVE/MISS horses!!!! the uni made us brekkie at like 9am and we all got up ate brekkie then got ready in our dresses and we had to wear either a big floppy hat or hair piece of some sort like a feather or a flower or SOMETHING then the busses came to pick us up at 11 and take us to the races! it was really fun they would have a horse race then this live band would play and the uni put on games to keep us entertained in between the sets of races.  we played tug of war and our team TOOOOTAALLY lost haha but it was really fun! ahhh and i got to see horses!!!! :).. although these horses were really tall and SUPER fit and i like my horses medium sized and FAT! haha :) but they were still awesome to look at.. and the jockies were pretty funny too! there was one that legit looked like that dobby elf thingy in harry potter! ahh.. other than that i have spent like 395820958203958029538239058 of hours in the mac lab making my flash video for classssss.. ahhh im SOOO CLOSE to being done and i just want it all to be OVER so i can have FUN!.. im going to guirraween tomorrow for outdoor ed.. 4 days 3 nights 50k most of which is uphill i hearrddd.... but it will be a BLAST!!! and i am taking lots of pictures :) 

ohh yea ive also watched the entire first season and half of the second season of the office in the past two days.. while cleaning my room/doing uni work and i love every minute of it :)

ANNNDD!!! CINCO DE MAYO FIESTA ESTA NOCHE HAREMOS BURRITOS MUY DELICIOSO

SNAKE!

soo i have been spending ALLLL my time working on this flash movie for online animation but it will DEF be worth it when i finish! :) and it will feel really good to be finished when that day comes haha but anyway i was walking home after working on my project and i saw my first australian snake in the wild!!! AHHH right?! it was SOO fast! and it was like matte really dark blue grey that was almost black... it was only like a metre though it wasnt very big but it still scared me! hahaha and today i was walking through the porch of the exchange office for students from asia (they have this entirely different program for studying here they dont go through study abroad) then i walked down the stairs to the other side and on the set of stairs was this HUGE water dragon climbing right up the stairs and when i went one way it went the same.. needless to say i TURNED AROUND cus i was NOT about to walk past that bad boy haha ohhh man! he was HUGE! and i kinda made a scene cus i was TOTALLY not expecting to see a stinking 3 foot lizard in my path so i turned and to the people next to me standing on the porch and was like "DO YOU SEE THIS?!" and they just looked at me as if they didnt know english but im sure they actually do and they just wanted me to make an even BIGGER fool of myself haha :) thats alright!

protest.. haha

blah blogging is soo hard to remember to do! but quick update in the life of rachel:

jonathan came to visit me! and we went to sydney! and i was SOOOO stoked because i didnt think i was going to be able to go and it was AMAZING to be able to see the opera house! ahh sooo awesome!! i FINALLY felt like i was in australia!

.. its been RAINING NON STOP!!! ahhh 

i have 5 papers, a 3 min online flash animation, and a photo project to do before school is out.. in 23 DAYS!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!

a few other americans and i went on this field trip today for class (history of the invasions of the aboriginal nations) we were supposed to wear the aboriginal colors (yellow red and black) and meet for tea at this aboriginal cafe down off the river just outside of town to walk some historic walk somewhere.. didnt know that we were going to be walking this historic walk through the center of town, faces painted, chanting protest cries for the return of indigenous land, at the front of the group holding this 2 metre long aboriginal flag with three other american girls... haha umm it was an experience and i think i will end it with that :)

last but NOT least!! pretty much the reason why i had to get on my blog and update:

I GOT A PACKAGE TODAY!!!!! from the coolest kid EVERR!! :) 3 packs of graham crackers! soooo stoked! needless to say i am DEFINITELY set on the graham for the rest of my stay in australia!! thanks friend!! :)

RRAAAIIINNN!!!!

sooo there has been LOTS of rain lately!! i woke up a couple nights ago and it was pouring harder than i have EVER seen it in my LIFE it was AWESOME!!! sooooo AMAZING! anddd today i had a presentation and so i was up in the computer lab at 7:00am making my powerpoint because my class started at 8:00am (i had already planned it out so it didnt take long) and la la la i made my power point no worries got back into my room.. no worries.. brushed my teeth.. no worries.. grabbed my backpack.. BIG WORRIES!!! it started POURING FURIOUSLY!! soo i grabbed my trusty neon yellow raincoat! that i JUST bought for outdoor ed that i havent gotten to use yet! and good thing its HUGE cus i just put my backpack right inside it! soo it wasnt really raining anymore but about 1/8 of the way down the hill to class it POURED!!! and its like stinking flooding everywhere haha and im walking in my neon yellow tourist raincoat running to class in sopping wet jeans haha ohhh man it probably looked ridiculous soo yea its about a 1/2 mi walk in pouring rain and im all.. "all right all right its okay cus everyone is going to be wet too".. WRONG!!! everyone in my class is aussie sooooo they all drive to class cus they dont live in the colleges (dorms) so i get into class and they are all DRY!!! haha ohh man it was amazing but now my pants are SOAKED! but its just the tops of my leg! so my backs of my legs are dry.. well down to my knees they are dry.. knees to toes my legs are wet all around haha :)

Peanut Butter

soo its a rainy friday night and we are all just sitting there relaxing and noah (my awesome roommate) says to me.. "i reckon you wouldnt be able to finish an entire jar of peanut butter in one sitting" and im all "bring it! right now! lets goo! do you have a full jar of peanut butter?" and next thing i knew i was sitting there with a mouthful of peanut butter, a spoon and a jar of the stinking stuff in my lap.  the rule was i had to do it in one sitting.. (aka i wasnt allowed to get my fat butt of the stinking couch i was sitting on while i did the deed) it was a crunchy home brand 550g plastic jar of goodness.  the only thing was i had JUST finished dinner and for dessert i had about two teaspoons of peanut butter with raw oats and honey so i already had my fix of the glorious stuff but a challenge is a CHALLENGE! so about approximately 1/2 a kilo later i was done and i felt like death.. haha my neighbor meghan said my face even turned white.. but no worries! i didnt puke i just went to bed and woke up super lethargic and im still alive and well writing about it to you today! :)... needless to say.. i havent eaten any of the stuff since :)

Meebunn-Bia

Sooo i wrote this last week but i never posted it!:

Soo i JUST got back from a three day field trip with outdoor education.. BEST TIME EVVEERRR!!! it was sooo amazing i loved it!!!

Day 1:

we left school at 6:45 am and it was about a two and a half hour bus ride to Meebunn Bia and when we got there we met our two leaders that took us around Meebunn for the rest of our time there.  they were amazing and got us pumped playing icebreaker games and stuff.. then we hiked for while and we got to this pretttttty steep hill/cliff-ish thing and there was a trail that went around its basin BUT we hiked STRAIGHT up it (no trail no switchbacks no NOTHING) and ate lunch on the top.. then we hiked straight back down the other side down to the trail that wraps around the basin and hiked some more (obviously AU as the home of the worlds most deadliest spiders and snakes means nothing to most aussies).. then we did this low ropes course.. then more hiking.. then we set up camp (two tarps one on the bottom and one on the top held up by these metal poles).. then another little walk.. then a high ropes course which was the best one ive ever seen! and it was sooo hard! it was awesome and i was the first person to go on it!.. then we went on the "flying fox" which was this huge zip line (at one time was the longest zipline in all of queensland or something like that but its def not anymore)... then DINNER!!!! :) then bed.. a possom came into our tent in the middle of the night and i used my special screaming skills to scare it away haha... OH YEAA!!! and our drinking water at camp was this water from a tank that caught all the rainwater but it was kinda dyed orangish brown from the contact with eucalyptus leaves AND was full of mosquito larva..like literally there were like 10-15 larvae in each 1.5 L water bottle it was pretty sick haha AND aussie mozzies are BIG and large mozzies= LARGE larvae.. BUT atleast we had a toilet.. well it was a drop toilet but at least it was inside a shelter

Day 2:

we woke up then started our navigation portion.. each group of 4 people had a compass a topographic map and 15 places that we were supposed to find.. it was AWESOME!! we basically had to follow rivers and contours of mountains and use our compasses to find our way around Meebunn Bia it was sooo fun! but the grass here is pretty POKEY and scratchy and even though i was wearing tall socks it really kinda hurt because.. once again.. we werent hiking on trails!! i dunno what's with these aussies but they for some reason they dont mind drifting off trails and walking through knee high grass (poisonous creatures and all).. i did walk STRAIGHT into 2 huge golden orb webs face first in my mouth and all.. but other than that no close calls.. after our navigation we ate lunch packed up camp and hiked up the HUGEST uphill portion of my life to our second camp.. we set up camp.. this one just had a toilet on a platform down this trail with no walls or barriers just a free standing toilet in the middle of a trail (kinda awkward).. then we ran up this awesome hill to see ROCK WALLABIES which are suuuper cute! and reallly rare too i guess! and we saw this AWESOME sunset!.. then we came back to camp and ate dinner and went to bed but the ENTIRE time we were being harassed my stinking possums!! BUT in AU possums are cute wayy different than the opossums back home.. they were all up in our stuff ALL night tho and they didnt care about humans like i could have pet them and they wouldnt have cared.. it was KINDA ANNOOYYYINNGG!!!.. AND!! this one ran across the top of our tent (this time it was two tarps one on the ground one draped across a rope that was tied to two trees) and the possum ran across the rope in between the trees and it was SOO LOUD and we all freaked out cus it sounded like something was attacking the tarp hahaha it was preeety funny when we figured out what really happened

DAY 3

we got up at like 5 to see the sun RISE this morning.. i really didnt think it was worth it for the entire first part.. then after a while the sun actually began to peak over the mtns and clouds and it was SOOO AMAZING best sunrise ive EVER seen! sooo awesome! the clouds were prefect and  the view was perfect (we were on the same mtn top as the sunset and its this hill with a 360 degree view of all around Meebunn) ahh it was amazing then we ate lunch finished cleaning up the camp then went on another hike to this OTHER ropes course and we did this double decker ropes course with an attached "umbilical cord" from our harness to our partners harness that was only like 3 feet long so it was SUPER hard to get around ANYWHERE because you were always getting tangled!! my partner and i were the first people to go.. we were completely confused as to how to go about getting anywhere and we ended up being one of two groups out of the 6 to actually finish AND we had the best time too! 3 minutes faster than the other group that finished! i was SOOO proud of us! cus it was SOOOO HARD!!!... then we went to this other free fall element where you jump off this 40ft high platform into a free fall but then get caught with this pulley system.. amazing! i screamed like a little girl im not gunna lie haha :) then we came back to base and got all of our stuff organized and i was washing dishes and i happened to sit in this green aunt hill and i ended up with like 10 aunts in my pants! and while i was scooping them out one of them bit me!! and it hurt SOOO bad!! (its kinda like a bee sting and it gets all swollen and everything haha)

storm/ mt. warning

okay okay i have been told by a billion people it was time for a new blog entry and i guess you guys are right! haha :) lets seee yesterday there was this storm that came out of NO WHERE and all the winds were turning kinda circular and the clouds were spiraling and turning this turquoise-ish color (like the color of shallow tropical ocean) and apparently when it gets all the way to green that means it is going to hail and so all the aussies had to go move their cars so their windscreens (windshields) wouldnt get shattered.. then it kinda just rained little spurts that werent even that intense and it didnt get much worse than that so it was kindda reallly funny! haha BUT! the storm SOUNDED sooooo cool all the booming winds it was awesome.. we have had a couple lightening storms too recently which were pretty cool.  THEEENNN out of no where there was this AWESOME rainbow! it was a full one too! with a double ring at times! it was super funny tho because the rolling green hills here totally remind me of the shire in Lord of the Rings (and aussies even classify regions as shires they would be equivalent to our counties i thinkkk) but anyway this super bright awesome rainbow just ended in this little village of houses over on one of the hills nearby and it was too funny! the rainbow was soo bright tho that it turned the sky this yellow orange color like the oclor of smoke during a brush fire.. it was AWESOME!! and shortly after was probably the best sunset of my life :) as far as ther business goes besides the weather.. i climbed mt warning this sunday and it was amazing! it was this lil rainforest walk (they dont use the word hike here) 8.8km one way but the last part was just these good sized rocks to boulders that you had to climb up for a while (and obvi we are in the rainforest so they are wet and slippery cus they spend most of the day inside a cloud) so there was this metal chain to hold onto as you went up and down it so you wouldnt slip cus it was fairly steep.. but thats pretty much it! :)

Quicky Pro

soo i went to the quicky pro this weekend with my friend jenna who lives downstairs but actually resides in valencia! (she lives the closest to me out of anyone else ive found so far) but anyway the quicky pro is a surf competition held up on the gold coast sponsored by quicksilver and basically what happens is you sit on the beach and watch professional surfers do really cool tricks all day.  (welll at least the person that is unskilled in the art of surfing (me) does that) but it was awesome! we saw the women surf on friday and then the men on saturday.  we even got to see a guy from ventura surf a prefect 10! and i am well aware i know absolutely NOTHING about surfing but his ride (i dont even know if that is the right word to use haha) was definitely impressive! the beach was so beautiful up there the water was so BLUE and WAARRRMMM but anway i took some really cool pics up there and i am going to try to post them within the week but it takes up a lot of my internet quota and i am already almost out and it doesnt reset for another 20 something days! unlike those greedy americans with iphones that get unlimited access everywhere they go all the time..

FOOOD

ok so im obviously an awful blogger BUT ive decided to try and give it a go again... i ate fried calamari (apparently it was a really nice and expensive steak of it) and it was absolutely disgusting.. actually thats not true.. it wasnt that bad.. but i still didnt like it enough to take another bite and i had FRUIT CAKE last night for supper haha it wasnt too great either.  ive decided the best food they have here is cadbury chocolate and i must say it aint to bad! and i also found out that they dont sell cilantro anywhere and that must be why the mexican food here doesnt taste quite right it was really funny my friend went into the grocery store to find stuff to make salsa and when he asked where the cilantro was he just got this funny blank stare in return.  when he asked for jalapenos he got a .. i dont know what that is.. ohhh a "jala(with the j pronounced)-pen-oh".. obviously we are a little further from mexico than i have realized (but maybe they just arent as common as i thought? since my spell check is showing up with a misspelling for jalapenos trying to change it to the Galapagos..) they also dont have graham crackers here! and the marshmallows are all vanilla and raspberry flavored.. AND the starbursts arent little squares of taffyish candy they are little gummy characters and you can get little babies or snakes and stuff like that but no plain "normal" starbursts.  as you can tell by the context of this blog nothing to eventful is happening in the life of rachel ferguson australian edition but i did go to bible study last night and it was a blast! :)

Photobucket

i just made a photobucket that has allllll my pictures ive taken in oz so far and i will keep updating as i keep snapping.  the link is photobucket.com/rfaustralia and when you open the page it will look like there is nothing there but no worries the link has worked you just need to look at the left hand side of the page under "Albums" and those are all the albums i have created thus far

SNAKES!!! / first day of school!!

two days ago i went to this wildlife sanctuary and i HELD A SNAKE!!!! it was soooo scarry!!! then i held a koala which was much less scary haha but it did smell really bad and its fur is suuuper corse and dense! i also got to pet kangaroos and the females are REALLY soft! some of them even had little joeys which was pretty cute.  we also saw this croc that was suuuuper long and then a bunch of other australian animals.  

today (monday) was the first day of classes! i was so excited to finally start school since that is what i'm doing here studying abroad.  i had online animation which is a class on adobe flash and we have one 2-3 minute final movie due at the end of the semester with a bunch of other little preproduction projects.  after online animation i had digital photography which should be awesome! i actually have the lab for it in a couple hours.  AND i just learned that they are actually suppling our digital SLRs sooo i didnt really need to by one of those lil buggas back home but i will use it for other things im sure.  tuesday i have outdoor education and wednesday i have history of the invasion of aboriginal nations... then i have a break thurs, fri, sat, sun... :).. hard schedule aye? BUT i am in the library right now, not necessarily being studious but at least ive found it! its actually amazing and its got this great view with a cushioned ledge that im sitting on as we speak.. or i guess as i type..

Contact info

i finally got an address!

Rachel Ferguson

C/ International Office

PO Box 157

Lismore, NSW 2480 AU

ANNDD a new email address

r.ferguson.23@scu.edu.au

i ate kangaroo today! and i ate vegemite last night and i have to say the kangaroo was 395802958235 times better than the vegemite.  

finally here!

so it took me 28 total hours of travel time.. boy was that an interesting surprise! but i finally got here and that is all that matters! :) i have 5 awesome roommates 4 are from australia and 1 is from massachusetts.  when people told me southern cross uni was in a rain forest they really meant RAIN forest! it rained a lot in the beginning but it started to clear up yesterday.  everything is so green though and there are trees everywhere it is awesome.  there are all kinds of interesting birds too i havent really seen any of them yet but you can definitely hear time! some of them sound like monkeys! haha yesterday i went to byron bay with all the international students and it was AMAZING the water was pretty the sand was SUPER fine and the waves were"awesome" according to the locals.  it was really funny to watch all of us go into the water though because the currents are much stronger here than they are in ca.  i didnt see any sharks which was probably the best part of my day haha.  we went to this little fish and chips stand and i ate dim sims.. and i still have no idea what the heck it was and im not too sure i want to know.  i still dont have an address but i will soon and i will definitely put it up here when i do!

Aukland Air Port

howdy from the new zealand! :) ... welll i guess howdy prolly isnt the right word out here haha BUT i just landed in Auckland and i am waiting for my flight to brisbane then after that a bus ride to lismore then im FINALLY HERE!!! my flight actually wasnt that bad! i slept alot and watched a few movies (including HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3!! ) the auckland airport is pretty tiny and im thankful for that because i was kinda afraid of missing my next flight but thats not gunna happen. theres a chapel here in the airport and i thought that was kinda cool! i was scared to go in because it was through a series of really big heavy doors but i went in anyway and decided if someone yelled at me i could just blame it on the fact im a foreigner :) despite the fact i am wayyy across the globe they still insist on playing miley cyrus all over the airport which i oddly found to be comforting haha... wellllll anyway its kinda gloomy here in auckland and i think its supposed to be raining in lismore BUT ill start posting pictures soon..hopefully!