i'll never rest

first, some pictures from adelaide:

adelaide was certainly relaxing. it was nice to be in a house (that had a kitchen!) with people who are basically extended family. that being said, i've spent the past few hours looking at everybody else's facebook pictures... scuba diving the great barrier reef, sky diving, camping, road tripping, 4 wheeling, sailing, snorkeling with sting rays, bbqing, seeing a million cool animals, cage diving with sharks, watching the sun rise... i went shopping. needless to say, i'm a little jealous! it also reaffirmed how blessed i am to have experienced so much in the world already. living on my own, away from the suburbs in foreign and new and challenging places has helped me grow so much more than staying home and playing it safe ever could have.

i am in desperate need of an adventure or some sort of excitement in my life. it is hard to be on such an incredible, different and amazing continent and not see any of the cool parts. instead, i've seen kmart from a city bus and bar after same old bar. i've lived in australia for almost 3 months now and have seen the ocean twice. something is severely wrong with that.

i want to walk through this doorway. i want to open my mind. i want to pledge my allegiance to all i can find. i want a car that will crash through the barriers to a road no one knows. i want to feel less control, want to bend and i want to land far from home.

the revolution of the earth around the sun is the perfect lesson of how it should be. so if i cannot learn to journey and return, to never rest 'til i've seen all i can see...

i want to learn a completely new language, one i don't understand. i want to help someone lost, someone helpless, with the strength of my hand. i want to come to the base of a statue built before they counted the years, and there i'll fall with my face in my hands and cry and feel their hope in my tears.

the revolution of the earth around the sun is the perfect lesson of how it should be...

train rides and pastures colliding... colors and customs i've never seen... i know... i will stumble but time is precious my friend.

those who journey can easily understand. the more they see the more they'll learn, the more that they will be. so this i swear to you and this i swear to me, i'll never rest 'til i've seen all i can see.

i want to know where the strength of a person lies, in their past or their future. is it in the way they hurt or they love themselves or is it all an illusion? i want to crawl from this skin that i'm painted in... body, please let it give. i want to find the creator of all good things and ask what it means to live. --brendan james

this one's for erika :)

so, i've been prompted by erika to update my blog so that she doesn't have to work on her nursing paper :)

i'm currently in adelaide, where i've been for the past week. the week before break was exceptionally hectic trying to finish bio and chem projects. however, i managed to get everything done, so i've been able to relax over break!

the night before i was supposed to leave, timmy and rob decided they needed to stay up alllll night so they could say goodbye to me in the morning. would have been so sweet, except there's a hole in the wall between rob's room and my own, so them staying up=me staying up! i don't even know why union bothers putting walls up. i think i fell asleep somewhere around 3:48 am. and then woke up at 4:00 am to grab a taxi and head to the airport. what sort of moron schedules a flight for 6:30 am!? me, apparently.

break has basically consisted of me being a lazy bum. the weather has been FREEZING and rainy, so unfortunately we haven't had any beach time. but i've worked out everyday at the saies' super nice gym (and bummed out in the steam room, sauna and hot tub!), gone out to delicious meals paid for by susan (we went out to an amazing tapas dinner last night that included STINGRAY wing. i feel like i may be shunned from marine biology), and gone shopping. every. single. day. yes, i have been shopping 6 days in a row. i'm actually looking forward to going back to brissy tomorrow because it means NO MORE SHOPPING! my shopping stamina is far from impressive, so i've been dying a little bit.

for the first time in the history of my excessively long college career, i actually am missing college a bit. i rescheduled my flight so i could get back early... how bizarre is that?? i'm so used to being around friends from college that being away, even for a week, has been a little lonely! however, the people i'm missing most are also the people who will be leaving me in november, so i suppose i just need to get used to it.

let's see... sorry this isn't a very long post rika! i don't have too much to update. i'm SO EXCITED to go to sunshine coast next weekend! this week is going to be really crazy leading up to it, but the weekend should be epic. bbqs under the stars, falling asleep to the sound of the ocean, birthday cake and tequila at sunset, sunshine and beach time during the day! just have to make sure i can get us all there safely... ahhh!

alice and i are about to head out and get some chocolates from haigh's (i may have gained like 14 kilos this week) and then go to the grocery store to pick up stuff to make dinner tonight. we're having MEXICAN! mexican food doesn't really exist in australia, so i'm super excited to have tacos for the first time since getting here. i'm in charge of the guacamole :)

i'm gunna live the life sipping on tequila, night after night, dreaming of the moment where everything looks right. a little bit of love goes a long way tonight. would you like to meet me there? we'll be dancing on the sand. --wave

so busy!

saturday, september 19, 2009.

8:55 pm (i have to remember to put the actual date/time since the timestamp is wrong!)

sorry i've been so delinquent about updating since i got here. things have been so incredibly busy!

i've got 2 big projects and a big online chem quiz (that may take me about 79 hours to complete) to finish in the next couple days, so life has been pretty stressful as of late.

however, in exactly one week i'll be in adelaide! i'm looking forward to getting off campus for a while, being in a house, and not having to eat college food!! i planned my flights a little poorly, so on saturday morning i'll be waking up bright and early and departing for the airport at... 4:15 am. i hope this week goes by extremely quickly. once i finish my biology project, hopefully by wednesday, it'll be easy going until finals. which, strangely enough, are coming up exceptionally quickly.

the first weekend back from break i'm headed to the sunshine coast with kate, monnie and shanna (aussie girls), dee (from malaysia), dianne (from the states) and the boys from the netherlands. sleeping under the stars on the beach, surf lessons, bbqs, celebrating rob's 21st birthday... it's going to be amazing. hopefully we'll make it there in one place... we rented a minivan (i thought my minivan driving days were over, but sadly they seem to have made a reappearance) and i'll be the chauffeur for the weekend. keep in mind i'll be driving on the opposite side of the road. should be interesting. i may need to ask for some driving lessons in adelaide...

oh, the fireworks we went to last weekend were AMAZING! definitely the best i've ever seen. they set them off from boats in the river, bridges and surrounding buildings. they started the show with 5 jets doing cool tricks right above us. it was admittedly a little scary seeing them weave around skyscrapers the day after 9/11, but it was pretty cool. apparently they have an even bigger fireworks show for new years, so i'll definitely have to plan to be here for one of those!

i can't believe i've already been here for 2 months. we've only got 5 more weeks of class until the semester ends! then we've got a week to study and finals for a 3 week period. time has been flying by. it's been a lot of fun, but i've definitely been dreaming of africa recently. it's been SIX months since i left tanzania, which is pretty mind-blowing. the more time that goes by, the harder it is to believe it actually happened or to remember all the "life lessons" i learned while i was there. although i'm finally getting back on track with school, i can't help but feel as though the important things are falling off track. it's hard to remember aids orphans exist when most college conversations revolve around beer, boys and parties. i do miss africa and the feeling of doing something that mattered more in the long run than organic chemistry does.

anyway, i'm going to keep this post short. i got about 4 hours of sleep last night so i'm totally crashing. dianne and i introduced some other internationals to america's greatest college pastime: beer pong! i don't think they loved it, but there's still plenty of time to change their minds :) from there, we went to a super tacky club for a while. i came back early and finished/submitted a bio lab report... at 3 in the morning! when everyone got back around that time, i went over and hung out with everyone until about 5. i may be getting too old for this as i seem to be struggling to recover today...

i've been given the chances, but i've burned some bridges up. i've had a million excuses why i self destruct. but this time around, i'm a little more ready now. i'm a little bit older, a little more figured out, this time around. i see what i want and i've had a taste. i'm aware of the sacrifice it's gonna take. i ain't afraid of failure... it took a while to find it, but i'm back again. this time around i'm a little more ready now. --david nail

the silence isn't so bad 'til i look at my hands and feel sad 'cause the spaces between my fingers are right where yours fit perfectly... drenched in vanilla twilight, i'll sit on the front porch all night waist-deep in thought because when i think of you, i don't feel so alone... when violet eyes get brighter and heavy wings grow lighter, i'll taste the sky and feel alive again. and i'll forget the world that i knew but i swear i won't forget you. --owl city

waiting for the ferry before the fireworks

the pre-fireworks show!

dee, me, dianne, kate

rob trying on my jacket :)

umar, timmy, me, oskar

i'm (still) learning... (v. oz.1)

... how much i love... but how sometimes difficult it can be... to constantly be surrounded by people from all over the world. it's SO much fun in that things are always entertaining and you get to hear stories from all sorts of backgrounds. however, the "how do you say _______?" game gets old pretty fast. we played it for about 4 weeks in fiji before we were all finally like, "just shut up. if i say it differently, don't even tell me. i don't care." i reached that point about 4 days in here. apparently what i eat is "weird," my clothes are "weird," how i say ______ is "weird," the way i do laundry is "weird." the list just goes on. my average dinner table has people from at least 5 countries at it, so i swear half the conversation consists of, "wait. can you repeat that? i have absolutely no idea what you just said. speak more slowly." it's pretty entertaining when people accidentally switch languages, but it is sometimes exhausting to have to listen so hard!

... how i definitely need to learn how to speak more than one language. most of the kids (who aren't from the states or australia) here speak at LEAST 2 languages. i know a guy from switzerland who fluently speaks 7 languages. he informed me that that was nothing... as his flatmate at home speaks 9.

... how much i despise chemistry. seriously? when will i need to know what enthalpy is? never.

... how i definitely should have just started at school in australia. would have saved 4 wasted academic years.

... how lucky i am to not have to be looking for a real job at home right now.

... how to compulsively check the exchange rate between the US and australia. exchange rate was 1 USD:1.14 AUD this morning. bad news. if it ever reaches 1:1, i will cry.

... how to maneuver public transport. i still hate it, and it never goes 100% according to plan, but at least now i can read a bus timetable.

... that american guys are way more appealing than australian guys. i came here thinking that i'd find a hot aussie surfer to take home, but the longer i'm here, the more unlikely i think that will be.

... that americans get a bad rep for being rude, pushy, loud, stupid, fat and obnoxious. however, i'm going to go ahead and say that we look pretty good compared to some other nationalities. i think it's due to the fact that we tend to be overly polite and PC, but there are definitely some people here who were clearly raised in a completely different culture. for example, elbowing me in the boob and telling me to "get the f#$& out of the way" so you can get a hot dog faster than me in the lunch line? so not okay. making fun of bartenders, laughing in their face and telling them they look like dr. seuss characters? also not okay. telling someone they look really fat today? yup, not okay. the americans as a whole here are actually quite polite and friendly. keep it up guys!

... that uq REALLY loves group projects. too much, in fact.

things are extremely busy right now with the mid-semester break coming up, but they're good. i gave a group presentation on monday which my prof called "brilliant" :) this weekend is the brisbane riverfire festival, so they're setting off fireworks from a bridge in the city, which should be exciting! then next weekend some of us are headed to the gold coast to spend the night and hit up the beach. the following 2 weekends i'll be in adelaide visiting family friends, and then a group of us are going to stay at kate's house at the sunshine coast for a weekend!

i got my toes in the water, ass in the sand, not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand. life is good today. --zac brown band

red bull, vodka and cucumbers don't mix

so tired.

it has been a very interesting, sleepless week.

monday i had my first tennis match! it was actually pretty fun. my team members (2 aussie guys) are really nice. 2 of the 3 team members show up each week and play a doubles match and then each of the 2 teammates plays a singles match. i nearly peed my pants when i realized it was going to be me and 3 guys playing, but it went way better than i expected. i lost my singles match 6-4, but we went to deuce on every single game and had some really good points. i also had some pretty amazing shots, if i do say so myself :) i think the boys were pretty surprised.

tuesday was allie's big birthday party. to make a long story short, we were bussed to cloudland, one of the nicest lounges in brisbane. a friend of mine, monnie, got in a bit of a shouting match with the bartender over a spilled $17 cocktail and got kicked out by security. unfortunately, i was sober and standing closest to her, so i was the lucky one who got to make sure she got home safely. i was at the club for less than 12 minutes. i guess i was lucky that i hadn't ordered an $18 margarita yet. in her drunken stupor, monnie convinced timmy and me (timmy was such a gentleman... decided to escort us home and make sure we both got back) to walk from the valley to the city and take a bus, as cabs were $40 to get back to uni. having never been to the valley, i assumed monnie knew what she was talking about when she said it was just a "short walk" into the city. an hour and 35 minutes and a trip to hungry jack's later, we finally made it to the bus stop. about ten steps into our walk, i had to take off my heels and walk barefoot. yup, i walked barefoot through a big city for an hour and a half. the cuts on my feet are still healing. it was definitely disappointing as i was looking forward to a great night out, but timmy ended up coming over and we were joined by the remaining bromance members, kate and dee when they arrived home. i was planning on an early bedtime, but everyone ended up staying until almost 4 am. miraculously, i somehow made it to my 9 am the next morning. i was pretty impressed with myself.

the rest of the week went pretty well, although extremely hot! it hit 95 this week... twice. they call this winter? HA! supposedly this is the hottest winter brisbane's ever seen. oh, global warming. i've spent many an hour this week sitting in my underwear, plopped directly in front of my fan. my room is on the sunny side of the building during the day, so i wouldn't be surprised if it was well over 100 degrees in here during the late afternoon. i've basically been one big, melty, dehydrated mess this week. if only i didn't have this whole class thing cramping my style, i could've spent the most perfect week at the beach!

i'm not sure if it was the heat, or lack of sleep on tuesday or the fact that i spent an hour in the health center waiting room filled with swine flu patients on monday, but i've been feeling a bit under the weather recently. headachy, sore, outrageously tired, ugh. so of course the ball did not go down quite as i had planned.

yesterday afternoon's lunch was atrocious. since i was chatting and excited about the ball, i ended up only eating cucumbers with a little bit of hummus without realizing it until later. on top of that, trying to dry/straighten my hair at 3 pm in a room that's 100 degrees resulted in losing about 5 pounds in sweat. let it be known that drinking vodka red bulls at 5 pm on a cucumber filled, dehydrated stomach is pretty much just a terrible idea all around. jack came over at around 5 and we hung out until the busses left at 6:45. at maybe 6:38 we started taking some pictures in the hall with people. unfortunately, my door got closed and locked us out, leaving our ids, cameras, phones and keys in my room. i had to call security and have them book it to the office to get me a spare key. we had to run to catch the bus, but luckily we got there just in time.

the ball was held in a beautiful venue. we stood outside drinking champagne and talking for a couple hours before dinner was served. by the time dinner was over, i felt so gross that i was basically just ready to go to bed :( luckily shanna knows how to have quite a good time, so she danced with jack and entertained him for most of the night. poor guy. i definitely wasn't a very fun date.

busses took us back to union around 11 to change for the after party, held at a bar in the city. i was planning on staying behind and having jack go with shanna, but at the very last minute i decided to go. it was pretty chill. they have a rooftop bar and you can see the skyscrapers around you. we sort of just sat there talking, so it wasn't very exciting, but i was glad i went. i was less glad when a guy decided it would be cool to just start groping my butt. guys in australia are pretty disrespectful and forward. i've already had my boob blatantly grabbed and squeezed and now my butt grabbed in bars. i once saw one guy walking ahead of me in a bar who just walked up to girl after girl after girl and grabbed their chests. it's disgusting. it felt pretty good to elbow butt-guy in his giant man-boob :) that's what he gets for grabbing my butt... and having bigger boobs than i do.

jack, oskar and i left the bar around 2, made a stop at hungry jack's (dinner was delicious, but a tiny piece of salmon+2 pieces of asparagus+a piece of chocolate isn't a great way to end a night filled with champagne), and then walked to the bus. i think i ended up falling asleep around 5 this morning. at 8:30 i woke up to the lovely sounds of my neighbor's techno music. part 3 of the ball occurred today from 10-2, so people were up relatively early. union residents dress up in crazy costumes, get on the bus and head to a bar to continue drinking and partake in what's known as "recovery." i decided to indulge in my own form of recovery (read: bed), sans fairy wings and rainbow tights.

hopefully i'll get an early bedtime tonight as i pretty much feel like death. i'm just hoping it's dehydration and not swine flu. i will be severely pissed if i get swiney because the health center made me sit next to a boy coughing all over me... for an hour... just to pick up a piece of paper with my graves' lab results on it.

the next few weeks are going to be crazy busy with homework. i can't believe it's almost september! how did that happen? i have group projects/papers due in all of my classes before midsemester break and a group presentation next week, so that means lots of pointless meetings and extra research. i also have lab this week and 2 online tests due before break, so my to-do list is a bit daunting. however, i am still loving it here and have decided that the 5th time just may be the charm.

peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. --unknown

your journey has molded you for your greater good, and it was exactly what you needed it to be... it took each and every situation to bring you to the now. and now is right on time. --unknown

me and monnie

oskar, me, kate, jack

me, timmy, umar, rob

me and oskar

my lovely date, jack. hopefully he wasn't too bored :)

smile like the sun

it has been SUCH a long week! it felt like it was supposed to be friday by monday afternoon... and then continued to feel like friday on tuesday, wednesday and thursday. however, not having bio1020 was absolutely fabulous :) even though it was only one class, the amount of stress that's been lifted in my life is tantamount to if i had just dropped 19 classes. 3 classes seems far more manageable right now.

on friday we went back out to the gold coast for some surf lessons! to say it was a transportational nightmare would be a grave understatement. it took us 7 different segments on busses, cars, ferries and trains and 7 hours roundtrip. shanna, a brissy native, drove 3 other girls out. it took them an hour. unfortunately she only had room in her car for four, so the bromance and i trekked out via public transport.

we started by waking up at 6:30 to hit up breakfast before we left. from there, we had to sprint across campus to catch the ferry in time. from the ferry stop, we walked for about 15 minutes to get to the train station... and of course ended up having to sprint to catch the train. the layout of the central train station is quite bizarre, as you have to go up... and down... and back up... and back down heaps of staircases to get to the platforms. after sprinting up the world's steepest staircase and accidentally elbowing a woman in the boob, we made it onto the train right as the doors were closing. the train ride takes about an hour and fifteen minutes, so luckily i had time for my heart rate to slow down and the sweating to subside. once we got to the train station, timmy had to refill his "go card" (like a debit card for public transport), so we waited for him to reload it... and subsequently missed the bus. we had to wait 29 minutes and 55 seconds for the next one to arrive as we literally got to the stop right as it pulled away. we entertained ourselves by playing some soccer... and i tried teaching them how to spin a ball on their finger. we finally got on a bus, got off at our stop, then had to wait for shanna come to pick us up with the car to drive us to the beach!

the day was sunny and warm, without a single cloud in the sky. however, my dreams of dropping out of school and becoming a professional surfer were quickly dashed--i suck. i think the highlight was the wave that simultaneously annihilated me, ripped my top off, and smacked my board right into my forehead. we had a lot of fun though and oskar and i are determined to be super good by the end of the semester! it was pretty cold in the water, so we each lasted about 20 minutes before we were sprawled back out on the sand working on our acquisition of skin cancer. the sunscreen i bought gave me a nasty rash the last time i used it, so i made the mistake of going sunscreen-less. i now look like a tomato, but it was so worth it. hopefully it'll have turned into a tan by the time the ball comes on friday! we had lunch at a little cafe by the beach... turkey, avocado, brie, cranberry jam, and cucumber sandwiches + mini cupcakes... mmm, so good.

the trip back was even more eventful. we walked for about 35 minutes to the bus station. it should have taken maybe 10, but of course we got lost and ended up trapped in the loading docks of some store. once we were in the generally right vicinity, rob's bladder decided it needed to make a stop, so he ducked into the little boys room. the rest of us walked a few extra steps to check out the bus timetable... and realized that the bus we needed was parked right in front of us. we couldn't just leave rob, so we let it go... and had to wait 30 minutes for another one. we spent the half hour wandering around nearby in search of margaritas. no luck. we finally got on the bus and arrived at the train station. as we were getting off the bus, we could see the train pulling into the station. so we booked it up the stairs, only to realize that dianne, for some reason or another, has yet to buy a gocard, so she physically had to go to the window to buy a ticket instead of just swiping a card. and, of course, we had to wait for her so the train pulled away as we stood on the platform, sadly watching it go. 3o minutes and an emergency ice cream stop later, we were on the train headed home. we got off at the wrong station and ended up having to walk for 30 more minutes to get to the bus station.

man. so goes the story of my life here in brisbane!

saturday i had class in the morning. we heard a guy from the queensland brain institute talk about the brain structure of bees and how it can be applied to robots. at least, we were supposed to. he had an extremely heavy indian accent, spoke faster than i do, and trailed off at the end of each sentence. i think i was asleep within 12 minutes. when i woke up from my little nap, i realized that 2/3 of the class were also asleep. which equals about 400 kids.

the remaining 6 hours and 14 minutes of this weekend will be devoted to cranking out my religion paper, due tomorrow at 9 am. definitely should have done more yesterday!

i can't wait for the weekend (and my paper) to be over and for the week to start! on tuesday, there's a big birthday party for a girl named allie. she rented a bus that's going to take us into the valley to hit up a club for the night. friday is the big union ball, which is going to be amazing. girls are going all out... booking spray tans, hair appointments, manis/pedis... i, on the other hand, am currently debating whether i can get away with wearing flip flops. haha.

you make me smile like the sun, fall out of bed, sing like a bird, dizzy in my head. spin like a record, crazy on a sunday night. you make me dance like a fool, forget how to breathe, shine like gold, buzz like a bee. oh, you make me smile. --uncle kracker

me and the bromance before public transportation got the best of us

i love having a waterproof camera!

the beach :)

goodbye bio1020!

hello! sorry i haven't updated all too recently, life continues to be crazy.

this weekend was pretty chill... went to the gold coast with dianne, which was wonderful. it was so nice to finally see the ocean. it's been way too long... i was in severe withdrawal after fiji! we took a ferry, train and bus to get there/back, so it was quite a traveling adventure. 6 hours roundtrip, in fact. i had a big paper due this morning, so i ended up just staying in and working on it the rest of the weekend. i finished it a whole 17 hours before it was due... which is actually a personal record. i don't think i've finished a paper that early since... possibly 4th grade. haha.

i hung out a lot this weekend with 3 guys from the netherlands. they're so funny :) they could totally pass as triplets... they all study computer science back home, are studying geology here, go running together, go out together. it's adorable. i've started referring to them as "the bromance." it was nice to branch out a little more this weekend, for sure.

it's only monday, but my week's already hectic. my first tennis match was tonight but it was raining! by some miracle, i managed to make a tennis team (b1... not too bad seeing as how i haven't legitimately played a match since i was at cc!... it goes a, b1, b2, c), but i'm actually sort of relieved it got canceled as i have far too much to do.

i've got both my chem1020/bio1040 labs this week and getting ready for them is extremely time consuming. it seems as though the chem1020 lab manual has been written in a foreign language... ah! labs wouldn't be too bad if they were supplementary to the class, but unfortunately they're basically their own entire class.

even though i was invited to the last one (and you usually only get invited to one/semester at most), i was invited to another formal dinner, so i've got that on wednesday. i'll finally get to eat good food... although i have to wear a dress... AGAIN! man, it's turning out i needed to bring about 45 cocktail dresses over.

the BEST news of today (which made up for the world's worst blood draw this am... the lady took it out of the side of my wrist! plus i had to wait in the waiting room filled with tons of swine flu patients coughing all over me) is i'm dropping bio1020 and only taking 3 classes this semester! it is just too much to be doing 3 labs at once, so i'm pushing it back to next semester. it does mean that i have to take a summer class or 5 classes one of the semesters i'm here, but apparently there are classes that are field based that only run over midsemester break, so i'm down with that! having been to cc, the thought of smushing one class into a couple weeks isn't nearly so daunting as it might be to others. see? the college sampler plan works in my favor yet again. this means that i only have class for 6 hours on tuesdays and 5 hours on thursdays! still quite a lot, but such an improvement.

i don't have class this friday and nobody else ever has class on friday, so a group of us are headed back to surfer's paradise for the day for SURF LESSONS! so excited. shanna is a big surfer, so she's giving us free lessons and we're all going to rent some boards. unfortunately, the reason i don't have class on friday is because i have class at 9 am on saturday morning (so unbelievably lame, i know), but pish posh. i've got a lot of big assignments due next week, so i have to be sure to get all of my homework done early in the week since my weekend is shot.

not this weekend but the next weekend we've got the big union college ball. we take a bus to a golf club and have dinner, drinks and dancing and stay out all night! a guy from my religion class, jack, is coming as my date, so it should be a party. haha i'm excited to hang out with someone who doesn't live at union! my classes are all so big that it's hard to meet people, so i've been pretty confined to people living with me so far... which would be fine except they're all leaving at the end of the semester!

i'm headed into the city SOMEtime this week for lunch with carolyn annnndd... you guessed it: dress shopping for the ball. it just never ends. carolyn has a lot of upcoming travels that i'm excited to hear all about... including a trip to fiji! there were tickets on sale for $350 USD, but sadly i am unable to take advantage of them. i may ask carolyn to take me as her carry-on. i am determined to get back asap!! it is my ultimate happy place... so close, and yet so far...

off to do more lab prep. why people choose to go into chemistry as a career is completely beyond me.

also, i promised to include race pics, so here they are (there aren't many)... oh and i added more pics from this weekend/the gold coast (including a picture of "condom kingdom," a store we ran across near surfer's paradise) to my old album so i'm adding that link too:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035476&id=30001879&l=80d97fd4e1

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034902&id=30001879&l=934765d5ae

you made my frown turn upside down and now my worries are gone. i'll be out of my mind and you'll be out of ideas pretty soon, so let's spend the afternoon in a cold hot air balloon. leave your jacket behind, lean up and touch the treetops over town. --owl city