You're a top bird.

"I don't know! It's a secret entrance!"

I think that sentence pretty much sums up last night. It was like I fell down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. I had absolutely NO control over anything for the entire duration of the night, and as it was one of the first nights of it's kind during my stay in Australia, I feel it must be recorded.

Me and the girls decided to check out Broad Beach because we heard from numerous sources that it had a lot of really chill bars instead of clubs, which is more like the scene at Surfer's Paradise. After a 45 minute vomit inducing bus ride, we get there to find out it's more like a strip of restaurants, or non-bars. All the restaurants are beautiful, yes, but not bars. So we go in this one place that had a Latino band playing with a bongo player and everything, and it had a lot of good vibes going on. However, there was a 50 year old British guy who could've been my father who felt the need to grope all of us. He even went as far as to slap Abby on the bum several times. He was so aggressive and creepy that we all had to leave within 15 minutes. I don't understand how pieces of shit (excuse my language) like that still think it's okay to touch girls like that, but I digress.

So we take a cab back to Bond and head over to Varsity Tavern. There's lots of drinks and dancing and we all have a good time. We meet some guys, have some laughs, no big story there. I met one guy and talked to him for some time and as we parted ways he suddenly screamed at me "THANKS CLANCY YOU'RE A TOP BIRD." Maybe it's because we all had a few drinks, but all of us girls started dying laughing because that's the most awkward compliment I've ever received (at least I'm 99% sure it was a compliment).

Then we decide to go to a hotel bar called 360 and we arrive to find a mob trying to squeeze themselves onto the elevator. Just putting this out there, but I'm deathly scared of elevators, so there was no chance in hell of me getting on that thing with 30 other drunk Australians. As Caitlin, Jackie and I start to leave, I spy a very Gumby looking Aussie disappear behind a camouflaged door on the side of the building. I yell, "Hey! Where does that go?" And he pops his head out with the biggest grin I've ever seen and giggles "hehehe I don't know! IT'S A SECRET ENTRANCE!"

Who wouldn't follow a guy like that? So we follow him and get into the bar with no chance of dying on an overloaded elevator. The bar wasn't worth all the effort and me and Caitlin bounce after a few minutes. We walk by a fight that's going on near the lake but we can't make out any of the guy's faces in the dark.

We get back on campus and decide to sit in the chairs outside of Don's Tavern, which has been closed for a few hours now. We've not been sitting for more than 5 minutes when a bunch of severely intoxicated Aussies walk by us and yell "Look! GIRLS!"

So a pack of drunk dudes decide to pull up a chair and chat with us. All started out innocently enough. They asked us about America, said they loved our accents, asked us what we were studying. It was actually a really good conversation. I got to "plait" or braid one of their rat tails, it was just a good time had by all.

All of a sudden, they start to chant. Now, Australians have a chant for pretty much any situation, and do so at any opportunity. So they start to chant about something and me and Caitlin are laughing and all of a sudden one of them jumps up on one of the teeny tiny tables and starts to rock back and forth. He's a big dude. It was a tiny table. At this, all of his mates jump up and start absolutely destroying the place. There knocking over the tables, throwing chairs, smashing their beer bottles and screaming. It was like watching a pack of monkeys. Then, the guy on the table decides to jump from one table to another, and in doing so kicked me in the head. So I jump up and I start screaming "YOU GUYS NEED TO CHILL THE F*CK OUT. WHAT THE F*CK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU" and so on and so forth.

They start laughing at me and going "Clancy's freakin out! Clancy's freakin out!" And I'm sorry, but when you have two girls and 10 or so very drunk guys, you get kind of scared, because they could've easily done anything they wanted to us. One of the kids starts yelling that security is coming, so me and Caitlin take the opportunity to run. Just as we get to our dorm door, we heard one of them yell "CLANCY WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!" I've never locked a door faster. I always heard that Australians can't hold their liquor, but damn.

And that's how it is here every night! Australians don't just get drunk, they get TRASHED every. single. night. I think they might rival the Irish. I've never seen people drink this way and get so rowdy while drunk. It's kind of a turn off. As I said before, I'm not really diggin the Australian male, and the way they act when they're drunk just adds to that feeling.

Then today I found out that those same guys had tried to rob somebody's friend earlier in the night, and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a good idea to hang out with them. Oh well, lesson learned: Don't let a bunch of drunk Australian guys join you for a chat at 2 AM.

We're going to Byron Bay for the day tomorrow. We're going surfing and hiking and apparently it's a really cool hippie town. I'm nervous about the surfing because I'm pretty sure I'm going to be terrifyingly awful, but I'm trying to be positive.

Also, I most definitely felt more than a twinge of homesickness today :( I'm having the time of my life here, but I just wish my friends and family back home were here to experience it with me.

I have school?

Today was my first day of school here at Bond Uni. I had a class called "Dreamtime to Dust" which is part geology, part Australian history focusing mostly on the Aboriginees. I think my professor is the sweetest old Australian man I have ever seen. He wears his socks up to his knees with loafers and short shorts, I'm in love. We talked extensively about rocks and plates and dinosaurs and all that fun stuff. Surprisingly I found myself pretty riveted throughout the 2 hour lecture, which cannot be said for the rest of my friends in my class. There's something about the Australian accent (like the English accent) which makes everything sound really important and intellectual, it's aiding me in my learning capabilities.

Then I had a break because my tutorials (or "toots" as they call them) got cancelled, so I went to the gym and then got some food at Lakeside. I recruited a new member for my soon to be award winning beach volleyball team I'm assembling, so that was exciting.

I had Sex, Society and Movies next. We had a two hour lecture, then a dinner break, and then we had a screening of the movie Kinsey. My professor is the coolest man ever, he's skinny and very "Bret from Flight of the Conchords" looking. He wears nice slacks with sneakers, if that paints any type of picture for you. I adored Kinsey, it was a really interesting movie.

I just got out of the movie at 9, and then Meghan and I went to get Chinese food at this place in Market Square that didn't know what a crab rangoon was. My heart broke into a thousand pieces. I'm really trying to be healthy here but sometimes you just gotta have something greasy.

I have Magazine Writing tomorrow for 3 hours and I really hope the teacher isn't a Nazi like I've heard. I've been in classes for one day and I'm already waiting for Friday to get here.

PS. Got to talk to my Mum and Tim on Skype yesterday and felt my first twinge of homesickness. Hoping that was just a freak accident since it's only been just over a week :)

first day on an australian beach

Burleigh Beach was fantastic! It started downpouring after about an hour but it passed pretty quickly. The waves here are OUT OF CONTROL. They made the ones in Ft. Lauderdale look puny. I tried to go in up to my hips and ended up getting my legs taken out from underneath me and got the wind knocked out of me. It was awesome. The lifeguards are crazy strict here. They give you maybe a couple yards of beach to play in, and I literally mean a few yards. After that they flip out and tell you that the water is dangerous, which obviously it is if it was able to clothesline me at waist-level.

There was a surfing rally going on further down the beach that was so cool to watch:



I think surfing is such a foreign sport to the east coast in America that I always regard it like an extreme sport. We're going to Byron Bay next weekend to get surfing lessons, I'm probably going to make a damn fool out of myself, but it will be worth it.

Surfer's Paradise tonight, cheers!

Say, "Melbourne." Come on, it's hilarious.

So yesterday was interesting.

We woke up early as usual because none of us can shake off the jet lag, and Ilana, Ashley and I decided to do water aerobics. It was fantastic. It was the three of us an a bunch of old sassy ladies. At first I didn't think it would do much exercise-wise, but after a while I could feel the burn. They make you wear weights around your waist so you don't drown in the deep end, and it feels like you're moonwalking every time you make a move. My favorite part of the whole experience was when one of the old guys introduced me to his friend Jeffrey and he said, "Nice to meet you, I'm the resident lifesaver." Priceless.

We got lunch at this amazing place called Lakeside Grill, where they take our dining plans. Then I tried to set up my webcam and opened it to realize that the CD-Rom was cracked. Bastards. I bought a new headset today so hopefully I can Skype soon. The girls went rock climbing after dinner, which isn't really my style, so I took a nap in the suite. I got ready to go out because there was a beach party at Don's and then buses were going to take us to Surfer's Paradise, and all of a sudden a monsoon hit the campus and all the drunk Aussies outside started running for cover. It's been raining so much here and ruining our plans, I'm getting kind of pissed about it.

I convinced Ilana and Abby to go to the beach party because Don's is literally across the way. It was so crowded there and everyone was WASTED, and not in a good way. We shuffled off into the smaller rooms and met a couple of Australian guys from Melbourne, which I guess you pronounce as "Mel-bin" because they made fun of us for pronouncing it wrong for a good 20 minutes.

We ended up hanging out with them for awhile, and it turned out to be really entertaining. Best two quotes of the night:

"If I were to visit America, I'd see New York City, Las Vegas, and Compton. Do they give tours there?"

and

"Don't mind my mate over there. All he knows about America is the New York Yankess, the Green Bay Packers, and Kool-Aid."

Other things I found out was that Australians think Boston is in the South, which I don't understand. The only American baseball team they know over here is the friggin Yankees, and one guy went so far as to start ranking on the Red Sox to me. I told him to shove it because he didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't like that too much.

Then one of the more annoying guys said, "Americans come over here and think they're the best. Which maybe they are." Weirdest statement I've ever heard, and I don't really know what to think of it, but I think it sums up the feelings that most Australians have. They don't really like America but they're so influenced by us that they can't completely hate.

Ugggggh it's been so gross outside. I guess rain around this time of year is really rare. I'm going down to the pool in a bit or maybe the hot tub. Tonight we're going to this really cute area of town called Market Square to go to dinner and get drinks. It's a newly built grouping of really posh bars and restaurants, so hopefully that will be fun. I've been slacking on the pictures so maybe I'll take some tonight if I'm feeling frisky. Cheers!

"Well, that was the flight from hell now wasn't it?"

Greetings from Australia!

I've been here in this lovely country for five days, and it's already been an amazing experience. It took me four plane rides, seven hours of insane turbulence over the Pacific, and a boatload of time spent not showering to get here, and it was well worth it. The trip here is not for the faint of heart, and I think getting to, say, Mars would be easier.

I'm sorry, I just paused because a bat the size of a small dog just flew my window. Moving along quickly.

For those of you who aren't aware, I'm living on the Gold Coast of Australia at Bond University. I'm in a four person suite, and by pure luck I got put with my good friend and wifey Ilana as my roommate. We live with two other girls, Ashley and Abby, who are really fun and decent people. We have a kitchen, living room, eating area, and a balcony that overlooks the Olympic sized university pool. There are only two suites like this in the whole building, and we got one of them. My life is really difficult. :)

Australia and it's people are absolutely amazing, although I didn't think I would be experiencing culture shock as bad as I have been:

1.) Australia uses "gold" coins which are of one dollar and two dollar value, so it's really hard to remember that they're worth more than the US pennies and to not throw them around as such. They have GIGANTIC fifty cent coins that look like Spanish dablooms or something and weigh like a pound each.
2.) They dislike Steve Irwin intensely. Well, at least the guy at the Circuit City imposter place did. He also said Americans were "flashy," and when I said that he just took a dig at our country, he had no idea what that meant.
3.) They never say "You're Welcome." They say "Cheers!" or "No Worries!"
4.) They're very Americanized here, though they have a love/hate relationship with our country. When we landed in Sydney, all the TVs at the airport were set to the presidential debates that happened in the states, and Hillary Clinton's "tearful breakdown" was on the front page of every newspaper.
5.) All the guys are in ridiculously good shape with the darkest tans I have ever seen, and all the girls are teeny tiny with no boobs and are really European in their fashion.
6.) They drive on the left side of the road, and only take right turns after going through a rotary, which exist about every 2 miles, and the drivers go approx. 80 miles per hour everywhere, but I have not seen one sign of road rage.
7.) Australia is apparently rife with genital herpes and date rape is huge? YIKES.
8.) Apparently Clancy is the name of popular poet here, and I've been reminded of this a couple times now when I introduce myself to people.
9.) Australians are by far the nicest people in the world.
10.) All the bars close really early here and everything is uber expensive. For example, I paid ten bucks to get into a bar last night, but they gave me a free drink at the entrance, but then we had to leave early because last call was at midnight. Like, what?

I've had some lows here while I was trying to adjust to life abroad, but honestly the experience so far has been nothing but positive. I still don't have any money because Sallie Mae is being a huge pain in the ass but hopefully it will all get worked out after I sic my Mom on them.

Also, my roommates and I have planned some trips, and hopefully we're going to Thailand for Easter! I was so against Thailand in the beginning because it scares the crap out of me, but hopefully no creepy guy will plant cocaine on me and I won't get arrested and spend the rest of my days in a Thailand jail, a la Brokedown Palace of whatever that movie is.

And also also, I'll be spending my 22nd birthday on board a huge ship and will be sailing across the Great Barrier Reef. Words can't express how amazing that will be.

Tonight we're going to a beach party and then bar hopping at Surfer's Paradise, where hopefully I can meet some locals and hopefully not get genital herpes.

And just for fireworks and cartwheels, as Stal would say:



Cheers!