Shopping in Australia

There were three main highlights to the day.

The first is fruit. Watermelon, cantaloupe, honey dew, and pineapple in February!...of course along with apples, oranges and bananas. That along with a glass of cold water tastes 110% better when it is over 90 degrees out.

My academic successes. JCU is no longer offering the archaeology class I was intending to take so I had to do some major searching. The three classes I had remaining left me with no classes on Monday or Tuesday: money in the bank. However, every class I found that I wanted to make my fourth class conflicted with one of those three classes. There are currently two classes I am debating between. Sustainability in Business and Myth and Ritual. Both sound pretty awesome and one meets on Tuesday and one meets on Wednesday; do you know what that means? No class on Monday! Additionally under academic success stories, I am including my pay phone endeavors. I was finally able to connect to home and talk to Mom, Dad, and Chels. It took me trying to first figure it out myself, asking two people, checking the internet, somehow getting a hold of an operator on the pay phone, and then watching the puzzle pieces fall into place. It was awesomeness at work.

Shopping. Jenn, Ashley and myself decided to go to Stockland (or "Stocky"...oi) to get some much needed things. I personally needed to buy my toiletries since I didn't bring them over from the states. The weather was beautiful, the temperature was hot and as always it is in the tropics, it was humid. Why not walk the 5km (3 miles) into town? I was drenched with sweat when we got there. Luckily it was air conditioned (it had "air con"). Everything was way way expensive. I guess that is what I get for studying abroad on the world's largest island. I'm over it. But the highlight was our return...what should I call it, quest? We ironically ran into my Canadian neighbor, Bria, and she was like "take the bus home," so we decided to. But go figure, as soon as we stepped outside of the Stocky mall, it started to rain. Not your average drizzle or mist...no, no, this was welcome to the tropics during the wet season. Intense. We were just chilling under the little bus stop overhang and there was no buses coming. We would see them and then they would turn exactly one block before they got to us. Two even passed us, straight up, didn't even stop. Deciding we had enough of this, and also because it stopped raining, we started walking back to JCU figuring we'd stop at the next bus stop. Lucky for us, the bus driver actually stopped here, we paid the AU$2.60 to the most thick-accented Australian I've met. He was just like "oi this," and "oi that." No idea what he was saying. Take home points: we did make it back safely...and just in time for dinner.