Great Ocean Road

Sunrise over ocean

Bright and early, we get up at 4am. We were told the drive takes about 12 hours when said and done and we needed to get the car back on time. It was gorgeous though, by the time we made it to the ocean front the sun was coming up and was beautiful. We stopped about every 20 minutes for a picture oppurtunity, as a result I have way too many picture of almost the exact same view. We stopped in sea side towns for lunch and snacks every so often, and saw the main sights, and mastered my left hand driving skills. Overall, GREAT DAY!

The 12 Apostles

Spring Break in August!

School ended on Friday for a 2 week break, so im headed to Australia. 4 days in Melbourne, 4 days in sydney and then 7 days in Cairns. In Melbourne, I'm traveling with 2 american girls studying in New Zealand too, Andreana and Eva.

Right side driving with Eva as my navigator

I landed in Melbourne on Saturday night, and waited for 30 minutes until the other girls got in. We were planning on touring the Great Ocean Road the next morning and were hoping to rent a car. One problem...none of us were 21 (the typical age to rent). We went to 5 different rental companies before one of the agents finally read the date wrong on my friends lisence...in the agents defense Andreana was born on in december of 1990 and in Austalia the day and month are switched so it kind of looks like shes 21. Regardless we got a car!


Now the only problem. We have no idea how to get to our hostel or drive on the left side of the road. We solved both...eventually. 

Just in case we forgot

Sick? That's not supposed to happen in New Zealand

Got sick over the weekend (it’s that time of year here being winter an all so I guess it kind of makes sense). Regardless I’ve convinced myself that I’ve caught the super bacteria from spending the night in the hospital with my friend… you know the strain that has mutated to become resistant to antibiotics. So I basically took it easy which wasn't too bad becuase it was cold and rainy all weekend. The NZ film festival was playing so I went to see an Irish comedy The Guard with some friends then just went to a pub to listen to band play. On Saturday night, I went to a rugby game and planned some trip details for Australia. And Sunday was a homework day. Which by the way, I’ve been going to UNI for about 5 weeks now and had maybe 3 hours worth of work total, but for some reason this week I have 2 essays and a exam due. I don’t see the logic. I basically had a thrilling weekend of staying in bed all day and going home early at night...Be jealous!   

July 6th, 2011

Lani and I outside of the entrance

Like an idiot I accidently signed up to volunteer on Saturday morning too, but after the last time I was pretty psyched to volunteer again, plus I was scheduled to do AV with one of my American friends Lani, and my roommate Mike, Richie and Niamh were also scheduled to volunteer. Turns out they deleted the AV position all together that day (realizing it was completely ridiculous) and Lani and I were both put on the front booth, taking tickets and handing out beer glasses filled with tokens in the bottom. Somehow by the end of it Lani and I both ended up with about 40 dollars worth of tokens each….which we were quite excited to spend at our free session that night.

Had a great night at tasting all the different brews…by that time I knew most of the bartenders and volunteers so plenty of free tastings at every bar. By the end of the night I had to give most of my tokens to Sam, a guy from UNI who I volunteered with earlier in the day, because I had to catch a concert.

Getting much needed kebabs afterwards...Niamh and I

It was basically an INTERESTING concert. I won’t go into too much detail to save some embarrassment to the other party involved….but didn’t end up see the band, just the opener. But  experienced the New Zealand Healthcare system (no panicking…I wasn’t hurt and my friend was just fine in the end) but by the end of the night I got to experience a New Zealand ambulance (all of which are Mercedes Benz )…my first ambulance ever!... Tried to sleep on a New Zealand hospital chair…had to drink an unimaginable amount of shitty hospital tea to try to stay awake…topped off with a cab ride home at 6:30 to the sun rising over the bay. Overall it was definitely an experience...plus everything turned out alright. All they had were a few stitches and a “minor” head ache in the end.

Beervana: 80 breweries 200 brews

Lani and I infront of the Canterbury bar during one of our free sessions

Westpac stadium hosted a beer festival this weekend so a bunch of us decided to volunteer, if you volunteer for a session you get a free session and a bunch of free drinks (basically our incentive). My first session Friday morning, I was schedule with another girl to do Audio Visual…the head organizer is quite sexist and only chose girls for this position because she thought they would be more mature or something…but anyway our job was to switch slides on a power point which then showed up on screens throughout the festival and record in coming comments via texts and choose which ones to post on the screens (there in lies the need for maturity). Between the two of us we basically needed to press a button every 15 minutes or so…so my job basically turned into helping wherever I was needed.

Volunteer pouring a beer...obviously not me but the you get the jist

 For the first hour I was assigned to stand outside IDing and wristbanding anyone who looked under 25…most of which were older than me in general. I have no idea who’s bright idea it was to give me that kind of authority but I was basically just started to hand out wristbands …I think I looked at about 3 birthdays and then gave up…it a very difficult thing to a) find the birthday on a NZ license or random countries passport and then B) invert the month and day back to what I’m used to then C) calculate if their over 18. My next job I just kind of assigned to myself. I stood behind the Australia bar (just different brews from around the Australia region) and filled in for some guy on break and just ended up staying there the rest of the festival. By the end of it I could pour a quite a beautiful beer from a tap…I would definitely have fun being a bartender.  

That night was my free session but it was horribly crowded and not nearly as much fun as volunteering.