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! :)