Can I get a woot woot for employment!

Guess who has a job?  You guessed right!  It's only a few hours a week...but it's a job.  My house-mate, Chris, is the executive chef at a hotel here in town and managed to get me a gig helping with the breakfast shift.  It's an early, early shift (5am!) but it pays $23 an hour; a rate I simply cannot pass up!  I have trained two days now and will be flying solo for the first time tomorrow.  Wish me luck!  Basically I take the brekky orders from the guests (there are only 22 rooms, so it's no massive prodiction) and make/deliver it to the rooms.  

Australian breakfast is weird.  It's heavily influenced by the Brits and half the items they have a choice to order I have no idea how to make.  For example, you can get spaghetti and toast  for brekky.  Or baked beans, bacon (which is different to US bacon), and toast.  Odd, hey?  Just like the brits they are also fans of cooked tomato in the morning.  Odd.

Another thing to note, most hotels are focused more on the restaurant aspect.  If you're looking for a place to eat in an unfamiliar town, you look for a hotel straight away.  Quite different than in the US.  There are a few places (like Holiday Inn) that are strictly meant for accommodation here, but not most.  The hotel I am working at, the Dalrymple, mainly houses groups of workers here in Townsville for construction or some other trade job.  The awkward part of my job falls in the delivery.  There are hatches on the side of the room wall that I open up (right into their room) and place their brekky tray on the table.  Some of them are sitting at the desk waiting while other are still lying in bed staring at you.  haha.  The lot that's in the hotel at the moment will be here for the next 3 months, so I suppose I better get used to it!  It was just a bit weird doing it for the first time....

Fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly tomorrow! 

autumn is in the air!

The temperature has finally started to decrease (slowly) and the rain has been less and less.  That means the wet season is over and winter is just around the corner.  Sunshine and cooler temps for the next 5 months?...yes please!

Looking out your window and seeing this makes studying seem a bit less horrid. :)

mid-semester break

And the weeks keep flying by!  Although, as they fly by the work piles up.  The past couple of week have been a realisation of how I may or may not have been a bit slack with my work thus far.  After my NRM field trip it was a week filled with work work work!  Within that week I had 20% of my entire semester marks due.  Almost like doing an entire class in 4 days!  Thankfully mid-semester break was the following week.  I was definitely in need of one...

I had no plans for mid-semester break, which turned out to be a good thing since I knew I needed to catch up with my studies!  And also because my roommate had a weeks of festivities planned for her 21st birthday.  Eight days of Emily!

We started the celebration a day earlier than break with day 1 being uni club!  It was a JimBeam sponsor night so the club was filled with white cans of pre-mixed beam and cokes as well as free goodies like headphones and and bags.  I personally don't like Jim Beam so I didn't participate in that.  I did, however, wear my friends headphones all night....just to add to the look.  And we're talking large, airplane traffic headphones.  It was like dancing with a neck brace on.  hahahaha.  Some people are just born awesome. :)  The ride home was the highlight of my night though, Jordan leapt into the taxi (face first like super man) only to  realize the taxi driver had reclined his seat for a little nap.  Within a second his "flight" was abruptly stopped and down to the floor of the cab he went.  I about peed my pant.  It was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time...and I was the only one that saw it.  SO freaking funny!

Day 2 was bludger at uni, except it was a weirddd week.  Normally it's filled with live bands and a chill crowd...but this week was like a rave.  Crazy techno (the bad kind) music, twirling glow stick balls, people in medal headdresses, and a guy dancing like a melting elephant/gorilla.  I'm telling you...weird! At first we were all mesmerized by the crazy dancing and fire balls, but eventually we were just creeped out.  Luckily by the time we had reached our limit more people had showed up and we could escape the colorful flashing lights to socialize.  It turned out to be a really fun night after all (with a little help from our friend Jaegermeister).  We came back to Wulguru (past midnight, so it was officially Emily's birthday) and decided to jump in the pool...in our clothes.  It seemed like a good idea at first, something "crazy and spontaneous", but once my jeans were waterlogged with some not-so-warm water and weighing me down to the bottom of our deep deep pool I was regretting it.  I quickly hopped out, took a nice warm shower, hit the hay, and looked forward to sleeping on on my first day of break!!

Day 3 was Em's actual birthday so that evening her sister and friend came over with some pizzas and a massive homemade colourful fish cake.  It was delicious!  After that we were off to the rodeo!  They had been advertising it all over town so I expected it to be a massive event, but it was actually pretty small scale.  Though, I'm being unfair and comparing it to the national rodeos that travel throughout the US.  Regardless of the size it was still a blast!  Nothing like bucking broncos and bulls.  It was also an interesting new crowd of Australians that I had never seen before hahaha.  They really came out of the woodwork for this event.

Rodeo crew!

Day 4 was a trip to Magnetic Island, the island off the coast of Townsville.  It wasn't the greatest day and I'm trying to conserve my spending, so I opted to skip out.  I stayed home and attempted to get some work done...but ended up being lazy on the couch watching the finale for Biggest Loser-Australia.  Cut me some slack though, I was on break. :)

Day 5 was meant to be golfing, but the weather continued to be uncooperative...so another lazy day at home getting (or at least trying to) some work done.

Day 6 (we're on Tuesday now) was filled with school work during the day and cheap tuesday at night.  Tuesday was not only part of Emily's week, it was also my friend Jacob's actual birthday.  So we all met up in town and celebrated the night away.   Em/ Jacob both had a pretty epic nights...but I guess you only turn 21/24 once!

The next day was a break from Em's 8 day celebration (thankfully for her hahaha) so I met my friend Vitto down on the strand for a nice day at the beach.  The weather still wasn't perfect but it was nice to get to the water.  My house is nestled in the "mountains" and I tend to forget that I'm actually located on the coast!  

Thursday was another break from 8 days of emily, so I used that time to really crack down on homework.  I had a massive essay due the first day back from break....and it was rapidly approaching.  I did however take a break from writing to go grab some Indian food with Emily.  We had been talking about our love for Indian food for weeks and finally decided to crack down and get it.  It tasted so delicious!  Oh how I've missed it.  The place up the road from me in Arvada was downright amazing, and I must say the dish I had here in Townsville was not half bad.  I tried mattar paneer, which was similar to my favorite saag paneer dish but in a roganjosh sauce....my other favorite dish.  mmm mmm mmmmm!  After that we drove up Mount Stwart behind my house and had a look out over Townsville at night.  Great view!  It was really neat to see the city at night from that high up.  I'll definitely have to go back during the day to see the ocean and Maggie in the distance.  I was hoping to see a snake on the way up, but no dice.  Just heaps of cane toad, an owl, and a wallaby-like animal.  Maybe next time!

Friday was back to Emily's celebration and it was time for some footy!  We went to the North Queensland Toyota Cowboys game.  I really like rugby but not knowing the rules makes things very confusing.  It is so much more fast paces than football.  When they tackle the guy down (with no pads!) they just get right back up and continue going.  I don't get why it's not big in the states, it's aggressive and fast paced....perfect for Americans! haha.  I drove to the footy game and realized on the motorway that it was the first time I had driven my car up to 100kph (62mph) lol.  After driving 80kph (50mph) around town I felt like I was on a rocket ship!  It's not that much of an increase but it sure felt like it when driving.

The next day was the final day of Emily's b-day week, numero ocho.   The week of celebration ended with a barbie at our house.  People came over in the late afternoon where we cooked some sausages and cracked open some beers!  A nice chill afternoon. :)  Then the boys went and collected a small forest of firewood for the bonfire we had planned later.  They literally rocked up with the ute full of huge branches and trunks haha.  We creatively unloaded the forest with  (working up quite a sweat) and decided to follow it with a dip in the pool!  After we had cooled off it was time for some more beer and some bonfire.  It was a really great night.  The perfect end to an already fun week!

Sunday was ANZAC day.  There was a big Aussie rules football game on tv but unfortunately I was stuck in my room writing my essay.  :(  I snuck out to catch a few minute of the game but it was wayyy more confusing then rugby...so I just walked away before it made my brain hurt any more.

Since ANZAC day fell on the weekend we got Monday off as well.  An extension of the break...woo!  The best part is that we get another holiday next moday, which means two 4 days weeks in a row.  Heck yes!  But, just like the actual ANZAC day I was cooped up writing my essay all day.  If you're ever curious about  sugarcane farmers being unfairly blamed for coral decline on inshore GBR reefs I'm your gal!