Goon Tubing! Friday, November 21st

On the last day before everyone heads home, it is a tradition for the Uni Hall students to walk down to the river and go goon tubing. Goon is the cheap boxed wine that we drink, since it is one of the only things we can afford. So everyone brings a tube, and their bag of goon!

Everyone meets up in the DTR, where the RA office is. While I was walking around talking to a few friends, my tube got caught on a nail on the door, and popped!! Uh oh! We were literally going to start walking down to the river in five minutes. What was I going to do?! I did not have time to go buy a new tube, and I didn't know anyone who had one... But luckily Leighton knew someone. His friend had an extra tube that was a smaller sized baby pool. Phew. Thank goodness. You may think I am crazy using a baby pool, but a bunch of boys all chipped in and bought a bigger sized blow up pool and used that. People had such crazy and different floats!

We floated down the river for a few hours and it was so much fun!

Shoe Throwing at Uni

There is a tradition for international students to throw their shoes on a tree on campus before they leave. Once the semester finished and we were packing up all of our things, we picked a day to throw our shoes onto the tree. We first wrote our names on the the shoe, the year, study abroad, and Uni Hall on our shoes. It was really fun to decorate them and write on them. I also wrote USA on my shoes! We then got a bunch of our friends together, and we went to the top balcony to throw our shoes!

I was throwing and leaving behind two pairs of shoes. One pair was the pair that I used the first week I came for the ATV mud tour. I knew that they were going to get very muddy, so I planned on leaving them in Australia. Also, my parents brought over my soccer cleats since I played for Uni, and I won't need them again, so I decided to leave them behind on the tree also!

The one pair landed on the tree on my first try, but the second pair took three or four throws until it finally landed on the tree!

It was such a good time though, such a great tradition. I am so happy to be leaving a part of me in Australia.

     The tree before we threw our shoes on there!                         The shoes I was throwing!

Throwing them!!

I circled where my shoes are!!

Last night at The Tav 11/20

Everything we are doing now is the "last". It is so sad. I cannot believe we are actually getting ready to leave Townsville.

Well on Thursday, there was a big beer pong tournament at The Tav for the Uni students and a bunch of us decided to go and hang out there. It was such a good night. My friend Sanders needed a pong partner, so I was his partner. Although we did not win, our friends John and David did win, and they won $500 cash!! How exciting!

Sanders and I

                                                                                                  Lachy and I

                           Jimmie and I                                                       Anna, Me and Jimmie

                       Sam and I                                                                      Leighton and I

Sarah and I

It was such a nice night at The Tav. It was Hawaiian theme so we all wore our Hawaiian shirts and just made some more memories. I also had to say goodbye to some people this night, and that was so sad. I have met so many great people here in Australia. I just really hope that I will get to see them all again.

The Strand!

How is this possible? How am I going to The Strand for the last time ever? I cannot believe this day is here. I have dreaded this day for so long. I am not prepared to leave The Strand. We have had so many great memories made here, and so many good times spent here.

Andrew, Sara and I spent our last day at The Strand together and it was incredible. It was such a perfect day, not a cloud in the sky. We laid out for a bit, and then took some pictures, and then went swimming. The water was perfect temperature, it was just so nice. The Strand is beautiful.

I loved spending my last day at The Strand with these two!!

Relaxing after finals!

I started my relaxing week by playing some tennis with Leighton. He still had a few more finals, so when he was ready to take a study break, we went outside to play some tennis for a bit. Studying so much gets boring and can make your head spin, so doing something athletic was a great way for him to relax. Well, I wasn't on my A game that day, so he ended up beating me. But I am sure I will beat him another day!!

On Saturday, since some people finished their finals on that morning, we all decided to go out to celebrate! We had a great night.

Since we all needed another day to relax, a few of us decided to go to the river and tan! Andrew, Becca and I walked down a bit further to the rope swing. We have never done it before, so we figured we needed to do it at least once before we left. After climbing up the tree and trying to get the rope for almost 15 minutes, we finally were ready to rope swing! Andrew went first, then me, and then Becca! It was amazing!! We all loved it and kept going a few more times. It was so much fun. Andrew and I also found this sturdy branch, and decided to do a back flip off of it. It was his idea, and once I realised that he could do it, I decided that I wanted to also. It was awesome. Such a fun day with friends!

Andrew rope swinging

Me rope swinging

Becca rope swinging

Me backflipping off the branch!

Andrew back flipping!!

The next party night of this week was Tuesday, November 18th, which was also our friend Natalie's 21st birthday! So we had to celebrate. We all started by hanging out in Siena's room for a while, and then moved to the SCR with everyone else. Because some people still had finals, quiet hours were still on, so this was the only room we could be in and make noise. A bunch of us were in their so it was really fun.

                       

                Becca and I                                                             Carla and I

                                          Alex and I                                                               Anna and I

              Amity and I                                                           Natalie and I

A few of us decided to head into town and hike Castle Hill again. Matt also came with us because he has never hiked it before! It was so a hot and humid day. We all were exhausted and felt so out of shape hiking the mountain. But we did make it to the top and enjoyed the gorgeous view.

Last but not least, my quadmates and I finally took a quad picture. After living next to and across from each other for a whole semester, we finally took a picture! I am so thankful to have had such a great quad. Kim, Caroline and Pat are incredible people, and were such great friends. I loved living in their quad. We were the best quad because Me, Kim and Caroline were all American :)

                                   Back: Kim, Pat

                              Front: Caroline, Me

Finals: Week of 11/10

How is it already time for finals?!?! This semester has absolutely flown by, but every second was so amazing. I had 3 finals and one final paper. I have previously submitted the final paper, and my one final was the week that I left for Fiji, so now I only had two more finals to go, which wasn't bad at all.

I originally was supposed to have a final on Saturday the 8th, but I was too busy skydiving and going to the bar! It usually is a difficult time having finals changed, but Sara and I talked to our professor, and she was able to change the final for just us to the Tuesday when we got back, since we were traveling when we were supposed to have it. We were so thankful that she did that for us.

So my first final of finals week was for my Sports and Exercise Nutrition class on Tuesday. This final wasn't too bad at all. Although we did not prepare nearly enough for it, all we had to do was pass, and I felt like I could do that. And I did!!

My last final of fall semester of my junior year was the following day, Wednesday. This was for Health and Health Care in Australia. I was a bit more worried for this class since we had to memorise statistics, such as about 70% of Australia's population lives in metropolitan areas, and the fertility rate is 1.87, but the replacement fertility rate is 2.1 and so on! So I definitely was not prepared for this final as much as I wanted to be, but again, all I had to do was pass. And I did it! I passed all of my classes in Australia for the semester, and actually did better than I thought I would!

For the rest of the week, I just hung out around campus with the wallabies! Just joking, but not really! One day when we were finished lunch, we saw a bunch of wallabies outside and decided to go hang out with them and take some pictures of them. We also tried to see how close we could get to them without them hopping away, but we couldn't get too close!