beached whales

we've been seeing these stickers on cars lately saying "beached as bro" and were really confused about what it meant. that is until we went to noosa this weekend and malakai explained it all with this video

soccer and hailstorms

TWO THINGS.





one: i was starting to feel old and slow, so i joined the summer soccer league here. it is 6 a side. i am pretty sure the whole of byron shire is playing on a team. it's fun, but i am unfit. i also haven't played soccer since high school. this basically means that i can only juggle for like two seconds before dropping the ball. perfect.




two: i have never been so frightened for the safety of my car and small children like i was today. hail the size of golf balls were denting cars and breaking rooftops. i was outside, stuck in a partially covered gazebo/awning type thing when the hail started to come down. it was the loudest, most amazing thing i've ever seen. it was so crazy to have beautiful sunny weather turn to icy hailstorm weather.

From Last Import

this is the nursing home i am doing my prac at in suffolk park during the storm.

From Last Import

american things...

it is quite interesting trying to follow what's happening in america (debates, financial woes, palin interviews) from australia. basically garrett and i try to watch videos, read articles and read papers trying to understand what's really happening. 


mostly, though, i have been trying to learn through a comedic eye...

Caring and spring things...

so i started a new job a couple weeks ago. nursing-ish type job. actually my official title is Care Staff Employee. i'm a glorified babysitter/housemom for 75-96 year-olds. i work at a place called Feros Village in byron bay. it's actually really a great way to solidify the things i am learning in nursing school such as why people take anginine. why we should put on lotion all day everyday. have you ever seen an old school 96 year-old sunbaker's skin? you'd wear lotion/sunscreen everyday if you have. 

but really, i sort of love the oldies. they have wild personalities (many due to various levels of dementia). and even wilder shades of blue hair. amazing really. 

sadly, though, i had my first experience with death as a "nurse". i even had to take vitals to see if any life was left. a paramedic ended up coming to confirm our ideas that no, the 93 year old was gone. freedom. release. pain and sadness for some. 

on a happier note, spring is finally here (after a seemingly long long long winter...i may die in santa cruz this winter). warm breezes. snakes. snakes and more snakes. bugs. really strong northerly winds. and the expectation of summer. camping. uni finishing. and putting away my 4/3...yes i've been wearing a 4/3 in byron. crazy i know. 

anyway, it is weird to be feeling spring things and smelling spring smells in september, but i say bring it on. sunshine and flowers...

From Blogger Pictures

Splendour video clips

i figured it out...

splendour in the grass

splendour was this past weekend. it's a music festival in byron bay. 

i have never seen so many drunk 18 year olds wearing wayfarers in my life. 

despite the crowds, the cold, the long walk to the field from garrett's, it was really a lovely festival. 

highlights:

delta spirit

band of horses

the polyphonic spree

cold war kids would have been a highlight if it wasn't so crowded that garrett and i actually left to watch band of horses because we couldn't even enjoy watching them. too many annoying drunk youths. 

sigur ros. seriously, go seem them if you haven't already. they were amazing. 

other surprisingly notable acts/moments/things:

wolfmother

vampire weekend

nimbin chai tent

guzman y gomez burritos

byron bay organic donuts (as always)

drinking at the beachie with adam in between festival time. 

randomly running into people we know in the midst of the 20,000 others we didn't know.

watching people (like ellie) scramble to collect cans on the ground to recycle them and get free drink tickets. brilliant idea splendour. brilliant. 

now i'm back at uni. tired, but really pleased with the weekend. 

...i tried to upload a couple videos and post them on youtube so i can put them on here, but i haven't quite been able to convert them. i'll figure it out and post them later...

skidney

so a couple weeks ago garrett and i went for a short vacation to sydney. it was freezing. fun. and a really good taste of city life. being in byron for too long creates this weird longing for tall buildings and concrete (weird, i know). anyway, it was good. we saw things. ate things. experienced things. 

we saw the opera house (of course)

we met garrett's step-brother down there. he is classic. great hair...

we also drank a lot of coffee. 

this was a cool fair trade coffee shop in glebe.

sydney was good, but now i really want to see melbourne. there were pockets of goodness in sydney, but apparently melbourne is full of op shop/coffee shop galore. 

random acts of farming...

both garrett and my housemate, bec, are studying permaculture here in byron bay. 

here's a couple videos. one is a diploma school project...permablitz...the other is a project of garrett's. 

bec is the one being interviewed in the beginning...

i really miss this boy...

and his mom and dad

he's finally big enough to wear the pirate towel thing...

and he's wearing the byron bay kombe shirt.

cowboys and injuns???

so we went to brisbane a week or so ago for a friend's birthday party. it happened to be a fancy dress party. cowboys and indians. how appropriate?

i have come to realize that australia is quite politically incorrect, actually. coon cheese. jap pumpkins. redskin candy. gyp rock. i'm sure there are more. 

anyway, here are some shots...

it was hannah's birthday. she was pocahontas.

then we walked around. 

this was our friend, carlee's, house. it's lovely.

it was really nice to go to the city and get out of small byron for a bit.

next week i start my practical. this means i spend a week wiping oldies

bums and feeding them.

should be interesting. 

8 hr days at a nursing home and not getting paid. livin' the 

good life.

on a high note i bought two things this week that make me 

really happy.

1. black ballet crocs (which i never thought i would own)

2. redback work boots.

oh and i bought tickets to splendour in the grass (i am soooooo excited to see sigur ros)

polyvore

thanks to raya i am now obsessed with this website.  go to it yourself. it is really fun. i love all these things...

haven't i read this before?

i'm reading to kill a mockingbird that my lovely friend, ellie, lent me, but as i read each page, i seem to know what's going to happen. i don't even remember what the book is really about, or what will happen later in the book, but as each scene develops, it seems really familiar. so have i read it before? maybe. 

anyway, i really like this line.

there are some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one...

and i still complain...

this is where i live. it's beautiful. but it rains. a lot. 

and i mean flooding. monsoon. there are some days 

that look like this, though. it may be crowded. it may 

be dangerously crowded actually but i love it.

byron bay

it's my home for the next three years. my school is 

only 30-60 minutes inland through amazing green 

pastures. farms. villages. i would hate driving over to 

san jose every day for school, but i really don't mind

this drive (at night it is horrible, though).

school's going well. i'm still getting used to the 

different grading scales and all the other random 

things that are so different than any other school 

setting i've been in. i've met some great people. my 

roommies included in this. i live with three other girls, 

although we haven't really had many days when it is 

only the four of us in our house. we seem to have guests 

at all times, which is great, but a bit tiring. but please, 

if anyone wants to come, please do, and we'll have some 

good times. i live with a girl from san diego who is getting 

her equivalent of a teaching credential at southern cross 

university (where i go). she even lived in santa cruz for a 

bit, too. small world. another girl is from adelaide in south 

australia and she isin the same program that garrett is doing 

(permaculture, farming stuff). the other girl is from cairns, 

which is up near the great barrier reef. she went to this school 

called SAE which is some kind of sound and engineering place.

these are the people actually paying for the house we live in. 

here are some fun people who've been here lately.

besides all the lovely people that come to visit, playing

in the surf, buying lots of chips (french fried), and drinking

lots of ginger beer, i do go to school.

it's good. not too much work, but enough. i work six nights 

a week at a vietnamese/western food restaurant, so i don't 

have much time to hang out. enough time to get some surf in, 

though.

here's a pic of our boards (garrett's, mine, and rachael's).

so basically byron is great. it's been beautiful the last few 

days, although really crowded (it's a long weekend) i am 

really enjoying the sunshine as we slowly approach winter. 

i have felt a bit overwhelmed lately, a bit stressed, but am 

starting to figure it out. i'm poor, i'm busy, but i am having 

a good time. that is really what matters.

tomorrow turned out to be kind of a shitty day

have you ever thought that things just couldn't get any worse? i have and did tonight, today, yesterday, but alas they have gotten worse. each moment really. 

let's recap my day. leave hilo in the pouring rain (all my luggage is wet) and sit next to a crazy hawaiian lady on the way to honolulu who only talked about how her family came from warriors and she would sometimes even stand over her husband at night and stare at him when finally he would wake up and ask her what the hell she was doing and she would just say, "i'm just thinking about how mad i am at you right now". yep, crazy lady. 

then i get to honolulu with all my a million bags and try to get up to departures through these small elevators with my longboard. not very fun or easy. finally i get to air pacific check-in and they tell me that they "took the liberty" of booking me on a honolulu to sydney flight on hawaiian airlines, and then a domestic flight on qantas from syd to brisbane. great, i think to myself, not at least i won't get stuck in christmas island or fiji and i WILL meet jeni and hannah at the airport in brisbane on time. so i get everything checked in (my millions of bags and surfboard that they charge me a total 160 bucks for), and i board the plane ready to just get to australia. 

little did i know the fun was just beginning. after 10 long hours of flying (but i almost finished the book bess), we landed, safely-esque and i noticed rain. lightning. etc. so of course sydney has this law that if lightning strikes 5 km near the airport they can't move the planes. so we sat in the plane, in the lightning for over an hour. by this time i knew i was missing my connecting flight, but i wasn't too worried, i just figured i would get in a little late to brisbane. i go through customs, collect all my bags and meander over to oversize baggage and wait for my boards to come out. which they never do. i waited for a long time, hours it seemed, and nothing. i file my complaint/missing baggage form and finally, finally am getting out of customs and about to hurry over to domestic qantas area and get on the next flight to brisbane. 

so i rush over there and they are closed. literally i can't even get in to talk to someone. i take the elevator up to international airlines to talk to someone from hawaiian and no one is there. apparently sydney sucks and they also have a law that makes them have some curfew at 10 the airport closes. wtf. really. so i start to cry. i'm tired. dirty. emotional. knowing that i can't get ahold of jeni i call hannah's mobile and tell her the good news. i email jeni, no response. for all i know jeni is still a this moment waiting for me at the brisbane airport. horrible. 

i gave in and got a hotel room at this dodgy place near the airport for 147 a night. ridiculous. and i don't even know if i'll get reimbursed for it. oh and i had to buy some 5 buck cable for internet and then purchase internet on top of that. so lame. needless to say, i am stuck in wet, sketchy sydney (at least i'm not stuck at the airport with all my luggage), waiting to see if jeni catches up with hannah or stays in the brisbane airport all night, trying to figure out when to take the $3 shuttle back to the airport in the morning to get the hell out of her. 

oh australia, i'm here. 

tomorrow is a new day

the last four days here on the big island of hawaii have been miserable. not because of what i have been doing or who i've been doing it with, but because of the absolutely horrible weather. i'm not exaggerating when i say that last night i thought our house got struck by lightning. i was awoken by a bright light that was shaking our house. apparently the lightning struck less than a mile away. the other day we were trying to go see a movie and a friend of mine called to say her car died. ya, her car died trying to get to her house through a pool of standing water in the middle of her road. we went to pick her up in my mom's 4-runner and literally water was coming on top of her hood as we basically were driving through a three foot deep puddle. needless to say we almost stalled, twice. 

i've finished packing. i leave tomorrow. i'm just hoping that i can fly out of this place tomorrow. it's crazy to think that i have been waiting so long for tomorrow to come. not only is it the start of a quasi-new life  in australia, i get to see jeni baer as well. 

byron bay here i come...

eggers

It was easy to become a better human. First, I spoke in a monotone. I could not be excited and could not be upset. I was a visitor from elsewhere, Russia maybe, and found everything amusing, interesting, but only slightly and even then, solely from and anthropological standpoint. I was not sullen; I was predictable. I walked at a normal human pace. I rode my bicycle at an optimum speed, a practical speed, without standing up on the pedals, because to do so would imply urgency. At school events I would clap when others would clap but I would not cheer or yell. My phone calls were brief and to the point. I set the receiver down gently; I walked the stairs not quickly, not slowly; I brushed my teeth for fifteen minutes because that was what my dentist, who i admit now was not sane, suggested; I kept my head level because tilting seemed to imply too much interest; I did not pass gas or pick my nose; I washed myself thoroughly in the morning and at night. I thought of the least emotional walk I could engineer, and decided that it required minimal arm movement and long even strides.

you shall know our velocity

adventures in kauai

so yesterday i was on the big island of hawaii, exploring. my mom took noelle, leanne, and me to the volcano. since we were flying out last night to kauai, we didn't really have that much time to explore. after going to the only winery there, testing their variety, we played at a black sand beach ate some crap food, then made our way to the volcano. with time running out, we run to the edge of the cauldron to see this...

then we found the lava tube. unfortunately three japanese tour buses found it as well. attempting to quickly view this tube, we have to pass the japanese tourists. noelle leads the way constantly saying, "on your left", as we leave those touring maniacs in our dust. i'm sure they thought we were crazy, i even heard one girl laugh at us. but hey, we passed them all and walked through the lava tube in record time.




then, today, in kauai, we had the craziest day. we went to this place in wailua state park area that houses irrigation tunnels. they are old tunnels that still have rushing water in them and lead to really cool waterfalls basically in the middle of the mountains. unfortunately we get there after driving on crazy dirt roads that they filmed in jurassic park and we find the water levels are like a foot too shallow. of course we went anyway and we had body boards and we laid on them and held one another's feet. we kept hitting the bottom and it was pitch black in the tunnels for like two minutes. spiders hanging over our heads, tree branches blocking the tunnel, boulders under the body boards. it was crazy. we also kept hitting the sides and scraping our hands. it went forever and finally we get to the end of the first tunnel and we try to climb out and look for the path back to the waterfall we parked at.




well, there was no path where we came out so we had to go through the second tunnel. we really didn't want to go through because we were getting cut up and it was so cold in that water. after searching for any other option than entering the next tunnel, we realise there is no such option, and we head into the dark tunnel. in the middle of this tunnel we see an opening and look for the path. we used our body boards to trail-blaze, but alas, none was found. we are crazy. finally we go through the rest of that tunnel and find the path finally. as we are walking back on the path, we realise that this is where they are hunting boars and we see boar tracks and dog tracks and we have to be quiet so people don't think we are boars. on the path we see a stomach and intestines lying on the ground covered in flies. we were stepping in thick mud, hoping we wouldn't get shot by a boar hunter.





finally, we find our way back, rinse off the mud, hike to the car, travel back down the crazy trail/road, heading towards lihue to go to this place that has saimin, which i don't like at all. it is like top ramen but more ethnic. they have really good teriyaki chicken, though. i basically put all the soy sauce and hot mustard and chili sauce in the broth of the saimin noodles and it wasn't too bad.




then we go to this place kipu falls, jump of the waterfall, watch the tourists, leave, go to kealia beach, swim. get a rice dream ice cream sandwich at the health food store in hanalei. and finally return home after being lost, freezing, hungry, and feeling quite adventurous (probably not unlike survivorman).




good times.
can't wait to see what tomorrow holds.