Butterflies (Turkish), 5/5 stars.
A very beautiful film that falls in the category of laughing, crying, and left wanting more. It's about three siblings who have all not heard from their father in 30 years, but after receiving a call from him and each needing a break from their failing lives, they set out on a road trip back to the village they were once small kids in. They come home to find that their father just recently passed and they are left in his home with only each other to truly grieve with. The siblings grow close to each other as we see them weak and floundering for answers nearly as often as we see them stand up and face their issues head on. The film is about grief, family, and sibling love. Also it's about exploding chickens. I enjoyed it immensly.

Leave No Trace (American), 3/5 stars.
Leave No Trace tells the story of a father and a daughter who are found by authorities after living off the grid for several years. They camp out in a state park and practice drills of hiding from people and authorities. You're suspect at first that they do this because the father is wanted or something like that. There is even this scene where the father sells perscription drugs to some shady guys I a tent. But in reality, it is later implied that the dad is a former veteran and has difficulty living in society.

I say implied because they never specifically say it. Really they never specifically say anything. To say that this film had a script I think would be stretching it. Silence was highly utilized alongside the sounds of nature to convey feeling and there would often be minutes of the movie that would pass without a single word being spoken. This put a lot of pressure on the actors' facial expressions and although I thought that they did fairly well, it wasn't perfect and I found myself wishing there was more script to support them and give me a better sense of what that character was thinking or feeling at given times. After all, there is only so much you can convey with a look.

The plot if the movie was pretty repetitive. The narrative of "live one own, get roped back into society, daughter likes society and doesn't want to leave, dad makes her leave" is repeated twice in the film to the extent that it seems almost copy-pasted. I mean, I understand why they did it. In the end the daughter, Tom, decides to stay and her dad leaves on his own after a long, silent, goodbye. And they wanted to show the change in Tom since the beginning, where she would have gone anywhere with her dad. But the narrative was so long and so implied that it only took about 10 minutes for you to realize it was repeating and that not much would change. And you'd be right.

6/15 - Melbourne there, done that

Adelaide was a lot of fun, even though I was only there for a day. I rented a bike for free and travelled around the city to THE MIGHTY BLACK STUMP, a couple of nice city parks, and the Adelaide city library. I also wiggled myself into an Adelaide library card so I can have access to their ebooks and audiobooks when I fly home. technically, you should be a resident of the county in order to get one, buuuuuut whatever.

Overall, it was a pretty relaxed day. I found myself spending a lot of time in the downtown area where there were tons of street musicians performing and some really cute stores, including a bookstore that was having a going-out-of-business sale and it was 3 for $15 on fiction books.

So, naturally, I bought three.

Which in retrospect was pretty silly of me since I only have my carry on and it's only allowed to weigh up to 7kg for when I fly and it already weighed 6.3kg. But hey! Its still under. Barely. It just now means that anything else I buy (souvenirs, gifts for the fam) have to be small and light. Challenge. Accepted.

But anyway, the last thing I did was watch this really cool street musician by the name of Trav Collins for about 10 minutes before heading back to my hostel. I gave him five bucks and downloaded his EP on Spotify (he's pretty established) because he was pretty legit and it's always been my policy that if a street musician makes you stop, you owe them at least a dollar. That was that though. I went to bed early that night because my flight to Melbourne was at 6:10am.

When I arrived in Melbourne, I wasn't allowed to check into my hostel until 2pm so I had approximately 6 hours to explore the city. Well, try and explore the city. I got a map from the hostel, heard there was free transit around the main city center, and set off!....in the completely wrong direction. I didn't know it at first and I wasn't sure where I had started so I kept thinking that I was on a different street than I actually was on. But after four intersections of being completely lost, I found myself on the map.

A quick aside: in my outdoor education class, one of the things we were required to submit before our last trip was a "lost procedure", outlining what we would do if we were ever lost. Since we were given no direction for this document, I designed mine rather humorously, quoting facts like "87% of mapping accidents occur when walking" and "Acceptance of being lost is the first step towards recovery." The first step in this guide was to stop moving. Dear reader of this blog, when I was in Melbourne, I did not head this advice.

I PRESSED ON! Walking aimlessly, taking tram route blah to destination blah and if I was to point at the map I could confidently tell you that I was either there, there, or there. But it was all in good fun. Even with all my mucking around, I still made it back to my hostel around 1:30 because I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to see that day. So I sat in my room for the rest of the night and read, finishing two of the books I was reading.

My hostel in Melbourne was a lovely place. And by lovely I mean rough. There was a limit to the WiFi you could use every day and I feel like I got off on the wrong foot with the staff. They just seemed real bitter towards me. But I really only slept there and occasionally read there so it wasn't a big deal. I went to the library to download my audiobooks though. I also spent the day seeing the Victoria gardens and the centre for contemporary art. I caught a comedy show at 6:30 that night at a local comics club that was a hoot and a half. The comedians we're all really good and the atmosphere was very casual because it was "new material" night where everyone was trying new bits. Some landed real well, some didn't. But we still got a good laugh out of those ones anyway!

My third day in Melbourne started late because I was tired but still included touring the Royal Botanical gardens and the National Gallery of Victoria. I also got a library card at a city library on the harbor docks (no shame). The place closed at 7 though and I got there at like 6 so I decided to return there the next morning.

So I did.

And proceeded to do NOTHING ELSE that day.

Okay. Let me tell you about this library.

It's not a huge library, only 3 floors of modern architecture with a bunch of glass and wooden floorboards. Very artsy and exactly my style. And despite having three separate eCheckout library Apps, there isn't much of a selection.

BUT. They have, not just an activity room with ping pong and pool, not just a computer space with high-powered gaming computers and top notch design Macs with every creative program you can imagine (gimp, Adobe suite, protools, some 3D imaging programs that I only wish I knew how to use), not just one but FOUR 3D printers, not just a VR gaming space preloaded with a ton of games (including Subnautica, a game I just got hooked to), but also 5 different standalone Midi keyboards and boxes.

So, having arrived at 10 in the morning, I spent 9 hours on one of those drumboxes (a piece called the Novation circuit, retail: $349. I know because I checked) making tracks. I made 5. It was so addicting. But at the end of the day, I had to bid it farewell. I was going to try and record my tracks into protools in the last hour so I could save my work for my own record, but they ended up not having the audio cables (3.5mm to 5-pin) needed to hook the device up to the computer. I did, however, convince the lady at the desk to allow me into the recording space (a soundproof room!) and record the essence of the tracks with my phone and the device's speaker. I'll put those up on this blog later when I have access to a computer.

[Marc from the future here: below is a video with all the tracks.]

Anyway, now I'm in Sydney! I took a 4am bus (3am wakeup, woot woot!) to a 6am flight and I have time to get lost here before my 11am show at the Opera house! I'll be updating again after I head home from Sydney.

Here I go!

6/10 - The final Weeks

These last few weeks in Lismore have been full of lasts, as places often are. Everybody is finishing up the remainder of their school work and getting ready to head home (well...except Madison).

Since my last blog post I went on a trip to Sydney with some friends and we saw the opening weekend of the Vivid festival. I had finished up the last of my music and art project before we left and I'm happy to say that I got exemplary marks on the music and art project alike :) (the grades were posted yesterday).

During the trip we went and saw the lights at Darling harbor, then saw the Opera House the next day after a visit to the Australian museum and the Museum of contemporary art. The Australian museum had a really amazing mamoth exit with a preserved mamoth specimen on display, which was pretty neat! But the true gain from that trip was that Madison bought a little grabber thing with a shark head and named it Calvin. Of course, since I was the one who had the backpack, I carried him around some. Making me the bearer of not one or two, but THREE travel buddies.

I felt pretty special.
Anyway, my friends humored me by letting me wander the museum of contemporary art where there were some pretty cool exibits. There was one painting where the artist used a dice roll to randomly determine each characteristic of each for he dot placed on a painting. It was pretty rad. There was another piece where an artist took heaps of pages out of an astronomy textbook and blacked out every word that wasn't the word "star". From far enough away, it looked like a black sky with just a few white-dot stars, which was pretty cool. There were some other ones and I can go on because I love contemporary art, like the clock that had its seconds set slightly faster so that the day was only 18hours long instead of 24, or the performance art of a guy measuring the entire distance of a walk through a temple with a needle. But like my friends, this talk of weird art may not be all that interesting to you ;)

The next day, we didn't have anything planned except going to Bondai Beach which took all of 2 hours to really explore. So I bought a ticket to a theater production that was happening just down the road from our hostel and spent my night that way. The show was called the Walworth Farce and it was SOOO COOOL. I mean, it might just be that it's been a while since I've seen a theater production but MAN. It was one of the best shows I've ever seen I think. It was all about the stories we tell ourselves and how we bend reality to justify our actions and it conveyed that through this beautiful show within a show happening, two stories unfolding at the same time.

UGH. I loved it. And I wish I could see it again honestly.

But anyway, we headed home the next day and it was back to reality (ope. There goes gravity).

Over the next week we (kindof) wrapped up the DND campaign. We would've kept going a little longer had I not planned another trip that I've begun to call my Ausie City Tour, but more on that in a bit. I finished my last project in Sound Production which I ended up getting an A on! A relief really because the previous projects did not have very good marks. I also studied for the Sound Production exam and did....decently...on it. I mean, I didn't fail. But looking at my grade, I'm a little scared that nobody did well on that exam. Regardless, it looks as though I will at least pass the class and that was my goal since this class was really chalanging for me.

The last thing I had to do was finish up an Outdoor Ed paper that involved designing and justifying your own outdoor program. I spent two days writing it and ended up getting so enthralled by some of my sources (it really only took me so long because I'd end up reading a source because I found it interesting, not because it was really relevant to my paper) that I checked them out and are reading them now. They are about the ethical issues in experiential learning programs and are quite fascinating.

Right. Where am I now? I've been pittering out this nonsensical blog post on my phone because I'm travelling and didn't bring my laptop. I'm in Adelaide right now! And after that I will be spending some time in Melbourne and then Sydney again as a part of my Ausie City Tour. Then I'll be back to Lismore for two days and then back to the States! I was hoping to make it up to Cairnes as well but it just didn't end up working out.

I arrived last night and didn't feel like paying for a taxi to my hotel so I walked an hour from the airport to my hotel. It was in good fun, and I only missed my turn once...well, twice technically...of the three turns I needed to take....BUT I PROMISE I'M COMPETANT DONT BE WORRIED MOM I MOSTLY KNOW WHERE IM GOING.

Tomorrow I head out to Melbourne where I'll be spending 4 days visiting museums and art shows and improv shows and libraries, oh my! And even though I've already been to Sydney I'll be spending four days there as well where I'll be catching the end of Vivid and the Sydney Film Festival! I've currently got tickets to see 7 movies and a percussion ensemble concert which I am beyond stoked for!

The biggest downside of this trip though is that I mostly didn't get to say goodbye to a lot of the people I've met over the course of the session. I get back the 18th and most people will be two days gone when I return. So, you know, if any of y'all are reading this, I've enjoyed getting to know you and if we're lucky I'll see you again! I hope you have a good life and don't forget to be awesome!

5/23 - Creativity strikes once a semester

Whoa.

It feels like a millennia has passed since I last updated, but it's only been 11 days. I mean, don't get me wrong, 11 days is a good lot of time. It's enough time, in fact, for me to have finished 3 (almost 4) more books. #Humblebrag

It's also enough time to finish my Creative Arts visual art and music project! So, if you're keen to check out my silliness in music you can watch either of the following videos

Here's the final video and mix I made for the King of Spain cover I did. We were focusing on the elements of music, so here was my 100 word(-ish) artist statement about the piece and why it was made.

"The pitch and tone colour refer to the highs and lows as well as the timbre of the music. Loose harmonies on vocal parts were implemented to emphasize certain lines of the song and to create a rich, light texture. The backing instruments were likewise chosen to give a “skippy” feel of the song. Tambourine and claps then serve as the main instrumental fundamental instead of more solid drums because of this and guiro and guitar serve as cute flavourings to create a quality like that of a campfire song. The video also serves to demonstrate the layering of the music."

The other song I made was supposed to be contrasting to this one so I kind of did that by picking a slower, mushy song. I initially wanted to try and cover, perform all the parts for, and tape myself singing "seasons of love" from Rent, but eventually decided that was perhaps a bit too ambitious. I didn't have a guitar anymore because I gave it back to my friend Quinn after recording King of Spain so I knew I'd do something with a piano and eventually settled on getting back in touch with my scene phase and covering this cute song from All Time Low that was decently in my vocal range.

Here's my artist statement about that piece, just to give you an idea of why I did this:

"Structure refers the songs organization. This song presents in a Dyadic form where the piano alternates between the A of the verse, with two chords (I,vi), and the B of the chorus with a four chord progression (IV,I,vi,V,[I]). The song builds dynamically, with each return to the B as parts are either added or crescendo to louder volumes, leading up to the climax of the song, the final chorus, that then slows down and reverts to the A before fading away. This is most evident in the bell part where the duration of space between each note is halved between the second and third chorus, increasing the motion, reverting back to slower durational parts when the piece slows into the outro."

To be clear, this is me being extra.

We weren't required to do anything beyond create some pieces that demonstrated the elements of music. Most groups record them playing it with their phone in one take and have it done. I'm just that one dweeb who decided to make a big thing out of it. I did this for a couple reasons. The first of which was because, aside from some frustratingly stressful deadlines, this is a lot of fun for me. The performing, the recording (now that I know how to do it), the video editing; I really enjoy having these kinds of projects and I've always dreamed of filming or performing in a music video...now I'm kind of doing both! Secondly, it helps hone those technical skills in recording, mixing, and video editing. I'm not sure when in my life I will fully utilise these skills, but GOSH DARN I SWEAR AT ONE POINT I WILL. I'm still learning and getting used to Protools especially so stretching this project in a way where I could integrate a use of Protools reaaaaaaaally helped.

I can't help but feel that you probably think I'm bragging. I am. A bit. But that's because I've spent hours working on this and I really like how it all turned out, not because I think I'm special for having done this. I did so much unnecessary stuff for this project. And, honestly, I worry I may have slightly missed off mark on what the project was actually about...buT OH WELL. I really like how it turned out and what I learned from doing this. I'm hoping to make at least one more song & video before the session is out because I have access to such great equipment here and I don't want it to go to waste.

NEXT. Oh yeah, I also did 3 different art pieces for the project. The full justifications, presentation, and artist's statements are here, but I'll just keep it short and post the final iterations of each for your viewing pleasure on this blog.

The Wings of Ra

Matryoshka Universum

"Down Again"

I'm excited that I've completed all this in the 11(ish) days that I've been working on it. More than that though, I'm pretty proud of my work. One of the books I read in the last 11 days was a book called, "How to be miserable" which is a self help book that's inverted in a humorous and pretty helpful way. One of the suggestions for being miserable is to never take credit when you do something good or cool. So I'm avoiding that. I made this and I like it :D I'm taking credit here. Modesty is for times that aren't this one.

I guess it really wasn't 11 days. More like 7. Because in the middle of it I ventured to Girroween national park for my Outdoor Education class!

The trip was overall pretty good. There were some really beautiful sights there and between caving at Mt. Norman (oh yeah. You betcha that's the SECOND mountain I've climbed now), caving at South Bald rock, climbing Bald rock and Little Bald rock, and just the overall camping feel, it was a hoot and a half. It was very cold though and every night we would bundle up in all our clothes and hats and try to sleep. We all went to bed super early each night (like 8pm) and slept in and out because of the cold. Still fun though! There were a few points where we had to just go off trail and climb our way through the woods to get to where we needed to go (which is apparently just something they do here normally. I'm still surprised by it, having spent several summers in parks with strict "adhere to trails" policies.)

So it was a good lot of fun! We got back a day earlier than I had thought because for some reason I was convinced it was a 5 day trip but I was wrong. It worked out well though for me because that meant I had more time to finish the CA project above. 

5/12 - "Geez Marc, it wouldn't hurt to give an update one of these days" - A Procrastination Saga

I've been looking to give an update for a while, but truth be told, I've been pretty darn busy and it's been with a lot of things that aren't really travel related.

Like, you know...class and stuff.

Also D&D.

But that got me thinking that I really should document my progress with my classes as well because I've been doing some interesting things in class! At least interesting to me, and this is my blog so buckle up I'm going to talk about them.

In my creative arts class we have finished up our dance and drama assessment pieces. I got my grades back to find that I got a High Distinction (like, A+) on my dance piece! Which is exciting! And amazing! But also, I got only a Pass (like C) on my drama piece (ouch). Since dance and drama though, we've been moving on to doing work with music and visual art. More on the music later, but the visual art is definitely interesting for me because, although I've done graphic design and photography on occasion, I have little to no experience hand drawing, sculpting, or painting.

(this is my attempt at a halfway decent portrait drawing. I don't think there will ever be a day where I don't draw like I'm still in 2nd grade)

Since we need to do 3 different pieces of art (ideally 3 different styles) for our assessment, I've challenged myself not to do too much of what I'm familiar with and have settled on one drawing based piece, one painting based piece, and one other piece (TBD on what that one will be).

But perhaps I may be cheating a bit because the drawing piece I'm planning on right now involves doing a half drawing/half photography piece where I put drawn angel wings together with a photo of a person.

Like this, but not terribly thrown together in 2 minutes using Microsoft Paint.

The painting I may also be slightly cheating myself on, but I count it as something relatively new. I bought a bunch of spray paints at the store and am going to paint some galactic star painting with them. I've been looking up spray paint tutorials on different techniques using newspapers and bowls and coverings and I'm really excited to play around with it more.

Now, you may be reading this and be mad that I'm just goofing around when other students are doing serious school work. But I did my time, so you know, I'm gonna relish in the fact that, for the second time in my college career, I get to play around with spray paint as a part of a school project (and technically, I've also played with spray paint twice more for work-related reasons). Besides, I AM doing serious work.

My Sound production class has got me pulling my hair out over the projects we're working on and the peculiarity of the content. On April 27th, I spent an entire day in a studio trying to record a small percussion instrument using the microphones and studio equipment. The project goal was to play around with different microphone placements and techniques for recording. It's all super cool, but even though I can now at least somewhat confidently handle the equipment and ProTools, at the time I was LOST AS HELLLLLL. 

Here was some of my recording set up. The instrument I am attempting to record is a small Japanese percussion instrument called a Kokiriko... something I learned after intense googling.

I learned 2 weeks later that these microphones are actually only Cardiod (single directional) and this set up with these mics is about 136% wrong.

But I made it through. If not barely. The next assessment we had for this class was to take a bunch of already recorded tracks and mix them down using ProTools and various plug-ins to work the track to a mix that we found acceptable. "This will be a breeze" I lied to myself. "I won't find this difficult at all."

Long story short, it was difficult. And it was far from a breeze. But! Gotta give the course some credit because after several frustrating hours, I can at least hesitantly add ProTools to the list of programs that I can work my way around without making a complete fool of myself!

Which eventually led me to this! For my music section of the Creative Arts project, I've elected to do two different covers of songs that show dynamics and rhythm and pitch and stuff. I went down to the studio yesterday to test out how I was going to record the first one and ended up spending nearly the entire day there finishing the track because it was exciting and once I got going and editing and punching in recordings, I started to really understand it all! I understood the signal flow, the ProTools things that were useful to me, and the recording became something that was extremely enjoyable! I keep wanting to listen to my personal abridged* version of this song (King of Spain by Tallest Man on Earth) because I'm proud that it turned out good and exciting because the world of recording has always been something I've wanted to get into but never had the time and always had an excuse. Now, I did it! And I like this a lot so I am hoping to do a couple more at least to really hone in my basic recording skills.

*The CA project has to be 2 different songs adding to 3-4 minutes total of music. I shortened the song to about 1 minute and 30 seconds so I have enough time to do the other song. Also, it sounds a lot different in genre because I'm not very good at guitar. Here's the original if you're curious.

The last of my classes to update is my Outdoor education class! Soon I will be heading out on a trip to Girroween National Park on the border between New South Wales and Queensland. We've spent the last few weeks in class preparing for the trip and I'm really excited for it. Also on the 10th we had a test worth 50% of our class grade. It's pretty low pressure, and I think I did pretty well...but still.

The group of people I'm going to Girroween with though are pretty cool and it's going to be a beautiful trip. We leave on the 18th of May and will be out there until around 4pm on the 22nd of May, so it will all in all be a 4 1/2 day adventure out in the wilderness! The biggest thing though is that I need to plan ahead because I will only have 3 days between me getting back from that trip and the CA Art and Music project being due. Essentially I have this next week to plan and execute my Art projects and the other half of my music, which is doable, but a little stressful!

I will be updating my blog next roughly after girroween or after my trip to Sydney the weekend after. Other than that stuff, I've been hanging out with friends, playing a good amount of D&D, and reading some really good books. Since my last blog update, I've gotten into the habit of showing up to movie nights with some friends who are really cool and enjoyable people to be around. Last night we had a family dinner and I made deviled eggs as a snack for everybody to munch on :D Also since my last update, I've finished 5 books (woot woot!).

Tl;Dr: Class stuff. Listen to the cover I made! I'm proud of it and like words of affirmation :D

4/20 - 18 days past: #10daysinBali

Well, there's a lot to cover so here's the long story short (as short as I can):

2-5 of April I was very focused on a project that I was working on for my Creative Arts class. I got crammed for time because of my upcoming trip to Bali prevented me from working on the project over study break. Essentially I did most the writing, storyboarding, filming, and editing in this time. I finished writing on Monday, filmed the entire drama and dance piece Tuesday, Was in the lab all day until 1am encoding and editing the dance piece wednesday, and was in the lab till 6pm encoding and editing the drama on Thursday. I then quickly packed and caught a ride from my friend Joel up to the Brisbane airport for our flight out to Denpasar, Bali the following morning at 5:15am. Thus started our #10daysinbali! and by we, I mean Me, Max, Keller, and Kayla. They were the group of people who were perfectly okay with me tagging along on their trip that they had already (mostly) planned out.

We went to Bali and had a grand time! Our itinerary included:

• first staying in Uluwatu and seeing the Uluwatu temple (day 1), 
• travelling to Senur where we went to a beach that wasn't all that great and met our man Komain who helped us arrange a lot of future transportation (day 2), 
• cooking our own breakfast at our Airbnb because it had it's own kitchen and took ferry out to Nusa Lembongan where we walked to Dream beach (amazing) and Devil's tear (also amazing) (day 3), 
• Renting some mopeds and riding them to Blue Lagoon and Cennigan Island where we promptly went swimming off non-traditional diving boards (day 4),
• Snorkeled side by side with some Manta rays and got really close to being side-swiped by one as well as went to KelingKing beach and got super tired by the hike down and up to the beach (day 5),
• Took a taxi, and then a boat, and then a taxi, and then another boat and another taxi to get back to the Balie mainland where we all promptly crashed (day 6),
• Went to the Tegenugan waterfall and Monkey forest on a moped riding through the busy streets of Bali and then got a taxi to Sideman (day 7), 
• Saw the rice terraces and taxied to Batuan Resto right next to Mount Batur as well as got into watching some Naruto (day 8), 
• Woke up at 3am to climb Mount Batur and ate some food off of the volcano steam vents as well as hiked through the most recent solidified lava flow (about 1920s) (day 9),
• Taxied back to Denpasar where we promptly did very little of anything except some souvenir shopping (day 10)
• Went to the Woterbom water park and then walked to the airport where we caught our 10pm flight back to Brisbane (day 11)

Okay, so #10daysinbali was really 11 days and 10 nights but whatever. I'm trying to be trendy here and #10daysinbali works better than #11daysand10nightsinbali. Sue me.

Over all, there were a lot of places we went and a lot of things we saw. There were some great sites and some very liberating and relaxing moments. In the past 18 days, I've also completed 5 books which has been an amazing feeling. We had a lot of down moments, especially towards the end of our trip, where I did a lot of reading and it was very nice to just get some time to really dive into some books. 

However, I've been thinking a lot about travelling and the aspects behind tourism.

I read an Op-Ed article once (that I can't seem to find again) that had the title something along the lines of "The world is not your self-realization bucket". In the article, the author makes a case against the way people (and specifically, most commonly, white people) travel, saying that people tend to travel with this idea that travelling the world and seeing new and amazing sites and cultures will enlighten them and change them in a way that makes them more wholesome or something. Now, that's not to say that doesn't happen. Finding more about different groups of people in a respectful way is a great way to gain a better perspective on certain issues. Also, getting out of your comfort zone and going somewhere completely new can be a very validating experience and is the basis of most experiential learning programs (programs such as CCM, one I've benefited quite a lot through). But I think there's something inherently wrong with going somewhere with the intention and near demand for that new place and culture and people to teach you something. The world is not there to help you become a better person. People just live their lives and sometimes you just happen to be around to see it.

During my time in Bali, I felt much better about being there when I could simply be an observer and not a participant. I very much enjoyed riding a moped around the roads and seeing people living their lives, playing games, running their shops, and going from one place on the farm to another. I also enjoyed the times spent in the Uluwatu temple or Monkey forest or climbing Mount Batur.

The former, however, was much more pleasant for me.

Sure, the latter was certainly beautiful. The sites made for some amazing Vinny pics and I had some great experiences there. And I'm certainly not going to say that "in order to be a true traveler you must stay away from tourist places and only go to this X obscure hipster area where you get down to RAW f***ing REALITY in the culture maaaaaaan" because that's not it. In the former, on the moped, I observed. And in the latter, in the temple, I participated.

Either way, it's impossible to deny being a tourist in a country or pretend that you aren't one because you are one. And especially in a place like Bali, it's good to be a tourist. The money you spend in those tourist locations actually helps the country economy quite a good lot (that is, as far as I know, given my limited knowledge in economics or the logistics/ethics of tourism). Often times, too, trying to fit in with the locals and deeply rooting yourself is participating and it isn't always healthy, as that's the form of active participation the often feels entitled to being "awoken" by a place and a people.

I'd much rather be the observer.

Now maybe the mindset of observation is a bit toxic too, but for me, being an observer feels far less intrusive and it allows me to potentially see the perspective without feeling entitled to it. I don't always see it too. I didn't come away from Bali with any dramatic new realizations about life and the state of my humanity. I did observe a good amount of poverty and low level development while around on the Nusa Islands, which is something I've definitely never seen to that extent before, but it wasn't life changing. It was mostly sad and intriguing. The world isn't my self-realization bucket and I shouldn't expect it to inspire change in me, just like I shouldn't expect creative inspiration to knock on my doorstep one day when I'm eating lunch.

Now, I do know I'm actually not much of a travel-bug addict and that most the times I even prefer the comfort of playing a game of D&D with friends over the frantic and beauty of travel around the world. And maybe that puts me in a position to not really judge the way that people who actually do really enjoy travel do so. I don't know.

But that aside, I did enjoy the trip. I returned tired and weary from the trip and have spent this week in a bit of a grog trying to get back in the swing of things. I finished up my video project and submitted it Wednesday afternoon (the day after I returned) and have been planning and playing a lot of D&D since! Things are going well, but there are a lot of assignments around the corner that I've got to start working on. I spent all of today taking a day off and will be going into school work all next week.

Wish me the best of luck! If you're interested, here is the link to the finished project of my CA dance project: https://youtu.be/qQ8DLAqRzc0
Also, if you aren't already friends with me on Goodreads, you are missing out. I'm getting really into reviewing the books I'm reading and you should take a look! Also now that I've been reading a lot more, I've been finding that I have more and more to say about each one after I read them so if you ever want to talk about the books I've read or books I should read, I'm down.

4/2 - "Australia is not flat"

Continuing adventures and many more

It's been a while since I've updated! The good thing is, since I've been keeping a more accurate record of everything I'm doing in my bullet journal, I can easily remind myself what I've been doing. Which is super good because anybody who knows me knows that I have a very crappy memory and without keeping track of things, I easily forget what I did last week.

Which is totally why I need this to be my Year of Documentation. 

Anyway, since my last blog post, I've been doing a good healthy amount of stuff. On the 20th, I started my D&D group by teaching four people how to play and running through a first encounter for them. It was a lot of fun and people really enjoyed it so they started recruiting more people and the group outright exploded. Like I did not expect such a high response but we currently have a good 10 active members in our group and a couple more who are hoping to jump in eventually. On Thursday (22nd), a guy named Jared came over to make a character real quick and when he was done he was like, "let's play" and we did a spontaneous session that night with a couple of other people who were free and happened to be around. It was a blast! Even though everybody's characters almost died. But it was all good. People were so excited to play that they scheduled a session for that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So I played D&D for four days in a row which was a ton of fun but partly exhausting. They've been getting super into the lore of the world, so I've been making a lot of stuff for it. So far, as of writing this (4/2/18) we've had 8 DND sessions and we've only been going for 19 days. Geez.

That's not to say I haven't been doing school work (in case you were concerned mom). I've just been free all day on the weekends and my bullet journal has actually helped me better track when I need to do each of my readings. Currently, I'm caught up on all my readings, which is good because I'm leaving for a trip soon (ROFO: Read On, Find Out).

Anyway, this Monday I set out on a trip with my Outdoor Ed class to Camp Bornhoffen which is north of Lismore in Queensland Australia. We took the back road there which was a lot of ups and downs and there were a couple of points where I wasn't sure the bus was going to make it up the hill because it was so steep. With the driver's foot to the floor, we were barely crawling. But we made it through the hills and further along our journey. Later, we were stopped at a bridge where they were doing construction and one of the construction workers came up to us and was like, "ummm...do you know that your trailer is open?" Yeah. The trailer. The one with all of our bags. Every bit of gear we had. Wide. Open. All of us who were on the trip (there was 22 of us) panicked and were super afraid that our bags had dropped out the back of the trailer on one of the hills.

Luckily, all of them were still there. We don't know how long it was open for, but it sure gave us a scare.

When we arrived, we had to cross a creek to get to our campsite. And when I say creek, I mean river. It was a river. About knee deep into rushing water we had to walk across with our packs on. Needless to say, it was a HOOT.

Our campsite had a lot of cow poo everywhere, but we managed. We set up tents, talked with Andre and Paul (our outdoor guides) about expectations for the trip (doing a little psudo-group-contract-thing), did some basic trust activities like jumping off a pole and trust falls and lifting each other, cooked dinner, told some ghost stories, and went to bed.

The next day, we set out to different activities. One was called the high V, where two people went up at a time and stood on two cables that were stretched across like a high wire. In order to stay stable and start walking, you had to lean on each other and trust them to hold your weight as you held theirs. As you walked down the cables though, they got further apart and you had to lean on each other more and more as you walked. There were a couple of people who made it the whole way - you were essentially parallel with the cable when you got to the end - but most people fell some 15 feet in and were lowered down by our belay. As someone who is not too much of a fan of heights, it was scary, but also a lot of fun.
The other activity involved us breaking up in groups with a map and compass and navigating through a farmland looking for little blue markers in various parts of the farm. It was like a little scavenger hunt, but over several acres. It was frustrating at times but I got the hang of it after a few times and that served as good practice for later that night, where we were given a map and compass and told to navigate to our new campsite on the map.

It was on the top of a mountain.

(((Well not the top top. And it wasn't a mountain, as much as it was just really a large hill. But it was steep and I was tired after climbing it so I'm going to call it a mountain god-damn it!)))

We hiked it though and set up camp on a little flat bed at the base of the highest point of Turtle Rock (the name of the aforementioned "mountain"). We cooked dinner and I became the coolest kid in the school because I had brought a small bottle of salt, garlic, and oregano mix that I had prepared to season my food with. I shared it around and everybody seemed to really appreciate it. That night was real great because I got to talk to some people that I had not really gotten a chance to talk to all that much and it was nice to just chill and have a meal with some new-ish people.

The next day, we packed up some of our stuff and hiked up the rest of Turtle rock. we did some exploration in a cave area that is in and around the rock face, and then rappelled down the cliff side. Essentially, the tied a rope to us that we used to descend vertically down the side of the cliff, which was crazy fun! (but also very terrifying) but also crazy fun! At the start it was weird because you had to do a trust fall with yourself to go from your feet on the top of the cliff to your feet on the side of the cliff and you climbed down. We all descended pretty slowly, but then our professor (Dr Steve as we'd begun to call him) showed us all up by leaping down in bounds and getting down in like 2 seconds.

The rest of the day consisted of packing up, hiking back, and catching the bus and going home (this time with the trailer for sure closed. We all checked. Twice.)

After that, the rest of the week and this weekend has been homework and classwork! I've got a big creative arts project due after study break that's worth 50% of my grade so I've been working on it. Unfortunately, I'll be in Bali over study break so I need to do most of the project this week before Thursday the 5th. Which makes the fact that it's a long weekend with everything closed Friday-Monday because of Easter a real pain in my side. I've got everything planned out though. The project consists of creating a 2 minute dance routine displaying a concept and a 3 minute drama displaying a concept. I've got the entire routine and drama planned out (I finished and edited my drama script today and mapped the whole dance a while ago and then also on Saturday) I just need to get in and record it as well as edit it together. I have 2 days to film (because of darn Easter Monday...CURSE YOU CHRISTIAN HOLIDAYS) which is tight but doable. I'm hoping to do some of the editing before I leave to. Which reminds me.

I"M GOING TO BALI FOR TEN DAYS!

AHHHHHHHHHH I'm so excited. It's going to be super rad. I'm going with Kayla, Max, and Keller (2 guys in my D&D group and one other gal who's been doing all of the planning for the trip) we booked our AirBnBs on Saturday (3/31) and then watched some conspiracy theory series. It was a good time. They are awesome people and I'm excited to spend ten days in Bali with them. Kayla and I really want to climb a mountain so we're determined to fit it into our trip.

Anyway, that's enough of me rambling. Tl;Dr: D&D is going REALLY well. I went on a 3 day trip into the outdoors (and tried out my new backpack). I went caving and rappelling and also learned how to navigate effectively. I have a big project I'm working on and Easter is inconveniently placed. Also, I'm going to Bali for 10 days, and I leave this Thursday. WOOT!

3/19 - You shouldn't be surprised

There's a lot of stuff I haven't mentioned on this blog yet. At least, I feel that way. Everything is so different because of the changed environment so my brain is trying to remember everything at the same time. Everything from the walk up the hill (man, what a hill) to the mind blowing lectures in my sound production class. But like, it's unsustainable and eventually my brain just tosses some stuff out to make room for all the crazy new information coming in. Idk. The problem comes because all the experiences are all of the same intensity (no matter how unimportant they actually are) so my brain is just indiscriminately tossing whatever. Like I vividly remember my gym visit last Wednesday, but I couldn't tell you what I learned in my Outdoor Ed lecture on Thursday (fortunately, that's what notes are for). Maybe I'm just real tired right now, but you know, memory is weird so I'm blaming that for now.

Here's a checklist of things that recently have been happening with me:

1. Tennis!
2. D&D group!
3. Surf camp! and the most eastern point of Australia
4. Future trips
5. Theme of my year

1) tennis. THaaaaaaT'S right, I'm playing tennis this session. Well. "Playing tennis" is a bit of a stretch given that a more accurate description of my current skill level is "hitting a ball in a direction that may or (more likely) may not be in the court" But hey, it's not like anybody expected me to be good on the first go. I've learned it's actually quite a delicate art and getting the swing right is really freaking hard. But I'm learning! It's a social sport tennis so essentially it's a intramural and we don't actually play any games. We just play some mock games against each other and hone in our skills while being chill and whatever. It's weekly so we meet for 2 and half hours every week. Tennis is not extremely popular - soccer has about 60 some members, tennis has 5 - but honestly the smaller environment is a lot more comforting. I probably wouldn't enjoy soccer as much for the same reason that I don't frequently enjoy clubs. Too many. Goddamn. People. Sheesh. The guys at tennis are super nice too and they really don't care that I'm a total no0b at it. They understand and are really just excited to have people to play with. So yeah, those are my Monday nights for the rest of the session!

2) My Tuesday nights might soon be taken up by the D&D group I'm starting! I play in one group downtown on Wednesday nights now (I started that last week. I'm playing a bard with a commander complex) but will be (hopefully) starting a group tomorrow. Last Thursday night, I posted on the college dorm page that I was looking to run a D&D game and all were welcome to play. To my surprise, I got a total of 9(10?) responses. All of them have never played before so I've decided this is going to be my ultimate test in my ability to teach the game. Today I printed an extra copy of the Players Handbook materials so I'd have two copies to pass around instead of one. It cost me around $8 to print it...but hey...worth it. We're meeting tomorrow night for our first session and if enough people show, we'll do a flexible scheduling, but if it's only like 4 or 5 we'll probably play Tuesday nights.

3) This past weekend (16th-18th March) I went to Byron Bay for surf camp! We stayed at the Backpackers Inn hostile there and all our meals were included in our trip charge. Now, due to my phone's obvious lack of waterproofing, I didn't get any pictures of me surfing or paddle-boarding, or seas kayaking (WE SAW DOLPHINS) but I think there might be some floating around that I might post on facebook (TBD). I did, however, get these awesome pictures when I went for a walk during our free time on Sunday. We had about 2 hours to kill between our last lesson and our home trip bus, so I decided I was going to walk to the light house in Byron Bay. According to google maps, it was a 54 minute walk. 

And it probably would have been.

If I didn't get lost twice.

But you know. Those extra 12 minutes came in handy and I did make it back in time for the bus luckily. But not before capturing some bomb pics while traveling the beach trail. Below is a picture I took from a bench on top of one of the big hills along the coastline.

 In case, you don't know this. Since High School (Idea cred: Sarah Miller) I have rated benches in various locations based on a set of criteria that I have designed. The highest weighing criteria in my mind is the view that a bench gives you while you sit in it. The bench in this photo is 4/5 stars. It was breathtaking. but on a technicality, I can't give it 5/5. While standing, you get this view. While sitting, the guard rail makes it a little less stunning. Darn safety. Always getting in the way of my perfect bench.

Here's me, awestruck by the beautiful beach. I have my headphones in because over the course of this 2 hour excursion, I also finished my Audiobook. I'm now read 10 books so far in 2018!

Here's the same beautiful beach without my silly face in it. I highly recommend this as a windows background.

And finally, Vinny and I made it to the most easterly point of the Australian mainland! We saw the lighthouse and gazed into the vastness of the ocean. It was a pretty awesome trip.

4) While I was in Byron, I started looking into some trips into the Australian outback for during our study break. Currently the plan is to go on a 6 day trip from Alice Springs to Uluru and eventually down to Adelaide but TBD on the deets. More coming on that soon.

5) Finally, I'm going to close out with my theme of the year. To give a bit of a background, I was listening to my favorite podcast, Hello Internet, and one of the guys mentioned his "Theme of the year" and another podcast he does, called Cortex where he and his friend talk about productivity, goals, and planning...which is super interesting to me. Anyway, these guys are not a big fan of goals like new years resolutions, so they set a theme for the year (eg. Year of Order) and I thought this was pretty cool so I think I'm going to give it a shot. I've already started some things and I think it's still early enough in the year to declare, right here on this blog, that this is going to be my Year of Documentation. 

Maybe not super catchy of a name, but between continuing my One seconds, getting more into journaling, and my data collection on my own mood, habits, and sleep I'm already on my way to taking steps towards this theme. I've just now given it a name now. Year of Documentation. I'm trying out more Bullet journal stuff now too and I really want to get into the habit of writing down all the things I do and the things I think about since, as I mentioned earlier, my memory is a bit shoddy (esp. right now)

tl;dr: Marc plays tennis now. Marc organized a D&D group. Marc learned to surf and went to the most easterly point of australia. Marc is planning more trips. Marc listens to podcasts and wants you to listen to Hello Internet. Marc is calling 2018 his Year of Documentation.

3/10 - Not a lot to say, but something

I had my other two classes on Thursday and man am I excited for school.

The outdoor education class is very interesting in that most of everything we'll be doing in that class is pretty much what I learned from conservation corps staff training but in slow motion. You know, food planning for trips, LNT principles, how to work camp equipment/ set up a tent/ start a fire. All pretty good review I guess. The only thing that's 100% new is that in the Outdoor Ed class, we'll be navigating the wilderness using only map and compass and there are no trails per say where we are going...which is pretty darn exciting!

I also asked the teacher about renting equipment and he told me that, besides the weeks that there are trips, he freely rents out the equipment to anybody who wants it for the weekend so I can easily go weekend camping sometime soon! My friend Max and I are going to make some plans to make it out to one of the national parks near Lismore soon. Max is a super cool guy. He's the first international student I've met who is genuinely interested in board games so we became fast friends and he invited me over to a game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf that he had organized with a bunch of (albeit half-drunk) people. It was a ton of fun and I got to know some pretty cool people.

The other class I had though, was my sound production class. Which, if I'm being honest, is going to kick my ass. It's SUPPPPER theory based and technical and I'm totally green on soooo much of it. I thought I knew some of mic and sound stuff but in reality, I know nothing and this class is going to be intense. Our first class, I took a solid 3 pages of notes on the physics of sound and we did some cool exercises playing with how we perceive and understand waves of sound. He also gave us a tour around the studios and showed us the computer lab where we will do any of our post production. Each of the computers, along with several other fantabulous programs, come installed with the full Adobe suite too so, you know, score.

In other news, I've started a 12 week exercise program that has made me thoroughly sore the past few days. It will get better, but I accidentally skipped doing anything today because I didn't know the gym hours well enough and I did my homework before going to the gym (I was procrastinating going due to soreness) and the gym was closed before I realized my mistake. Silly me....it was cardio day.

In other other news, I got to use my first aid kit tonight. But I guess that's not really good news, now is it? My roommate Alex was holding a glass while running up the stairs and tripped. The glass shattered in her hand and gave her a big ol' nasty cut on her finger. I put some gauze pad on it and instructed her to hold pressure on it for at least an hour. It was bleeding pretty bad so we had to switch out the bandage once or twice but it's under control now. All my other roommates asked me why I was so prepared, I had a first aid kit. I mean, I guess it was for moments like this. Honestly, I figured since I am WFA trained (even though it holds little to know actually authority in a situation) I might as well have the resources to help out. If nothing else, I always have some band-aids at the ready when people need them, you know?

That's pretty much all for today. Not much to report. I have my first real meeting with the Table Top gaming group tomorrow! So that's something to certainly look forward to!

3/7 - It's Time For Some Photos

It's been a week since I updated but I had plenty of photos I've been meaning to share so I figured I'd finally get around to posting. Not that I've been busy! For the most part, I haven't gotten that busy yet and mostly I've spent my days doing one thing for a couple hours and then having nothing for the rest of the day.

I have gotten slightly sick though, which has slowed me down. But that's been recent and it's nothing major. I spent almost all of yesterday (March 6th) in bed playing video games or resting (I also finished my audiobook...I did that while playing video games). I say almost all because there was a two hour period where I went to my first class! YAAAAAYYYY!!!!

It was introductory but it was my Creative Arts class and I can tell that even though the material is all going to be stuff that I'm familiar with in one way or another (the main focuses of the class are introduction to music, dance, drama, and art), I'm going to enjoy it a lot. Our main assessments involve us creating pieces in groups that demonstrate our knowledge about the art itself so basically I'm going to be making some videos throughout the session doing music, dance, and drama pieces which should be a blast!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Pictures.

Thursday night, I went out to the beach at Shaws Bay with the Lismore Christian group where a bunch of us got to hang out, play ninja, swim in the ocean (MY FIRST TIME), and eat pizza (again, with plenty of vegetarian options :)). It was pretty fun and I snapped a killer selfie that will likely stay as my facebook profile for a while.

 Pictured left to right: Me (but you knew that) Kodai, and Eric. Not pictured, but to be pictured in future selfies...

Like this one taken 2 seconds later: Koske.

We had a pretty fun time and got to know some really solid people who even took us to the Big Prawn in Ballina later that night!

Pictured left to right: Kodai, TT, Koske, and Eric. I failed to get the camera angle right because we were kind of rushed so this trick of holding up this MASSIVE shrimp didn't work really at all. Oh well! We tried.

On Friday, we went to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. To be clear, calling it a "sanctuary" is a bit of stretch. It's a zoo. Stop kidding yourself Currumbin. I say this because almost all the animals there are born, raised, and bred to be friendly to humans and are by no means wild or "restored". I mean, I'm not huge on zoos because of that reason but the place did make it really easy to get the classic shots of you with Kangaroos and such. Soooooooooo....

Also, I took many-a photo of a bunch of animals we saw there at the zoo. Including, but not limited to,

a Wallaby,

 a red panda (also known as a "Nature Ninja" which is true as long as you don't fact check that and take me at my word),

 a Lemur (who don't give a fuck),

 a baby croc (he was pressed up against the glass cuz he wanted a hug),

 and a Emu Oh my!

After that, Saturday was a big bus tour in which the RAs gave us homemade Where's Waldo (or "Where's Wally" if you're Australian) style shirts and carted us around from location to location. We stopped at Ballina and Byron bay as two of the stops and we also made a stop at a pub just outside of town. Overall, it was pretty good, and I picked up another book at a discount book store to read (yeah, I'm still staying away from Wheel of Time for now). 

Sunday I went out to lunch with a local family which was a lot of good fun. We sat around the table for several hours and talked up a storm about Sports and stuff. I also took a visiting walk to the Rec center where the TableTop gaming group meets up! I didn't end up playing any games because they were just about finishing up by the time I arrived and it was a slow week but I'll be sure to be there next Sunday where we'll play all sorts of games. I also am signed up to meet up with some guys downtown at a hobby shop for some D&D. That probably makes it sound sketchy but it's not. I just joined a LFG facebook page for D&D in Lismore (not hard to find if you are a nerd such as myself) and checked out the store today.

So yeah...that's pretty much it.

I'll try to be kind of frequent with these blog posts, but I can't promise them all to be very interesting once I start settling into a routine and I don't have as many adventures as my whole flight kerfuffle. For some reason, most my posts get around 10-12 views but the "travel day 2" post has an absurd 117 views. I have no idea why. It wasn't that interesting.

Cheers!

2/28 - Orientation Observations

The last few days have been pretty average.

It's been orientation week and they've been essentially carting us from meeting to meeting where we hear from all the offices and organizations about what's available to us on campus. It's (mostly) all been important stuff to know - like i'm glad we have a counseling services and academics office and chaplaincy and career services and student services and Unilife and and and etc. - but it's just been an information dump and I'm going to end up inquiring about these services on an as-need basis anyway so learning about them now isn't doing me much.

But we have all our meals provided for us so there's that.

Yesterday we got to meet the Mayor of Lismore too! He came and talked to us and had "morning tea" with us ("morning tea" i've found is really just a snack break around 10am that I have yet to see really involve tea). He was a very friendly guy and was cracking jokes at all the right moments in his speech to keep us engaged so I can definitely understand why he's a politician, but he actually studied communications like me and I got a chance to have a good chat with him.

People are very friendly here and I've had some good conversations with some people. I've made good friends with some of the students who have come here from Japan and have been traveling around with them mostly. We all went to do some shopping yesterday afternoon while the pool party started at Orion. There was another party last night, which makes it the 4th night in a row since I've been here that there has been a party in the college (dorm) with a lot of people drinking heavily. I only drank Saturday and a bit last night, but daaaaaaang these people go hard. I talked some Aussie guys this morning that assured me that it's just because I live in the party dorm and it's orientation week so it'll mostly die down once classes start (hopefully). I really don't mind it anyway. It's fun to go out with them occasionally. Plus, there was a room party in the apartment right next to mine on Monday night and when I decided to go to bed my first thought was "oh no, I'll have such a hard time sleeping" and my next thought was the next morning because I passed out in like 5 minutes. So that's good news, I can sleep through a party.

All in all, All is good. By now, I just really want classes to start so I can actually start working on things and have a purpose and direction. Right now, it's been a lot of exploring the different *possibilities* but I've been lacking in any sort of responsibilities, which can be irritating.

Below I've accumulated some miscellaneous observations I've had so far, but were unable to incorporate into full thoughts and paragraphs relating to my adventures because I'm tired.

 (in no particular order):
- Wow I'm tired and I'm finding that jet lag is not a one-time fix
- Fire safety codes must be real different. I've encountered many a exits that are pull doors only and it's very frustrating.
- Even though "barbecue" makes you think of sausages or meat things, Aussies are surprisingly understanding and very prepared for vegetarianism. They always have veggie sausages or veggie patties and it's been quite the relief.
- My dorm is called a college
- Free public transport to down town is really awesome but I'm still terrified to go on public transportation because 3 out of 4 times I got on buses in St. Paul I wound up in a totally wrong area.
- Some Eau Claire people know me simply as "board game guy"
- I don't blame them because I've only been here a few days but I already located and joined the Table Top Board game group in town (they play on Sundays 11am-7pm)

2/25 - Running late 2: The arrival saga

The last 24 hours have been a ride.

I boarded a really janky bus that took me from Brisbane to Lismore. There were three other international students with me but none of them were from Eau Claire or even the midwest. One was from a school in New York and the other two were students from China who were here for a semester. The bus took us directly to the SCU campus dorm that we'd be staying in but we weren't the only ones on route so there were others that were picked up and dropped off at different stops along the way. So essentially, I had time. So I finished another book. I've finished 7 books so far in 2018! so I'm fast approaching the 15 book milestone I set for myself at the beginning of the year. Maybe I'll shoot for 20.

Anyway, it started pouring rain then we had to transfer buses and it was wonky all over, but we made it. They drop us off at the campus dorm (Orion college) and the bus drives away. We look around and the college is several buildings arrayed and spread out along a long path that goes down to the campus. There's a pool outside on one side and there are maybe 40 some people there having a pool party, bumping dance music, and very very drunk. So here I am with a huge camping backpack, a second backpack thrown over my shoulder, and a suitcase in tow and it dawns on me that I have no idea where I'm going. I was sure there would be some sort of main building to check into or something but there wasn't and there was certainly nobody there who looked like they were expecting us. We ended up asking for directions from a guy who was just passing by and he brought us to an RA who then called somebody else who showed us to our dorms.

And by "showed us to our dorms" I mean showed me which apartment was mine, gave me a key and walked away. There was no orientation. No pazz-azz or catching up. Not really much of a briefing on rules or anything. Just...in the room.

There was a pool party outside though. So, naturally, I walked the furthest I could from it. Not really, I just wanted to see the campus and stretch my legs. Plus I was disgusting from my flight and I didn't feel like socializing. I walked down a long hill that led to campus and familiarized with myself with where the "plaza" was. I had been at least told that Monday night there would be a mandatory dinner to attend that would be meeting at the Plaza. Once I got back up the hill the pool party had disseminated (the pool closed at 8pm) and people had started migrating to room drinking.

I walked into my apartment, still thinking to myself, and there were two girls sitting at the kitchen table talking. Literally, my first thought was that I ran into the wrong room then I remembered that the dorms were co-ed and these were probably some of my roommates. So I sat down and started talking with them. We drank some and then hopped off to one of the room where there were more people talking and drinking. Eventually, we even went down town and went to the club. That's right. I went clubbing. Didn't stay there too long though and called it a night after a fun night of meeting people and dancing.

There was a mandatory bus shuttle (for all international students) to Byron Bay at 9am this morning. when I got home I set an alarm for 8am so I could catch the bus.

Turns out though that I had forgotten to set the time right on my phone so it was an hour behind. I woke up just as the bus was leaving. So instead, I went with some of my roommates - two other guys I met last night - and started walking to the Lismore Mall. The buses don't run on Sundays and I was too cheep for a $12 taxi so we walked (it was only 30 minutes). My original plan was to just get some small stuff to hold me over and put it in my backpack but one of my roommates who was with me and is Australian assured me we could just grab some carts and bring them to the University. So we went on a full shopping trip.

But the way back...that was the tricky part. The entire way there we were going down hill so the entire way back was a steep uphill. And my oh my was it an uphill. We said it would be okay (it wasn't). We said it wouldn't be too tiring (it was) so having two shopping carts would be fine (it wasn't). We wouldn't have any issue (we did). And everything would be fine (it wasn't). We drudged up a hill for a good 40 minutes pushing two shopping carts full of groceries. Next time, we're getting a car.

But hey it was an adventure!

Tonight is a barbecue so I'm excited for it. All the other Eau Claire people were telling me last night that they remembered me from orientation (which was a bit heartwarming) and It'll be fun spending some more time with them and the others here. I've reached the first layer of social penetration theory and I very much look forward to exploring more layers with. Especially my roommates who are super cool people.

EDIT: Forgot the Com Theory reference. Inclusion is mandatory.

2/24 - Travel day 2...and 3...and...4? No wait. Just 3.

As requested, a picture of the cool lamp.

In retrospect, it's not that cool, but I was certainly tired enough to be enthralled by it for about 5 minutes in the hotel (the switch to turn it on is on the side of the desk below).

This second leg of travel has been significantly less eventful. There were no more delayed flights. No running through a ridiculously large airport from terminal to terminal trying to catch a flight that was actually not even really a flight anybody was told I would be on. No, I got on the flight to Auckland, New Zealand and then to Brisbane with no issue and had a remarkably average flight.

I mean, I did get some time to walk around LA before I left. Enough to find that everything was at least $3 more expensive there compared to the midwest (breakfast was $18...but that's okay, I had vouchers :) ) I also made a stop by Barnes and Noble and picked up another physical book to read (Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson). I've been ripping through my audiobooks on these flights so I wanted something else to read and I'm still timid about making the dive into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. It's huge. And quite boring at times. But it's also a fantasy classic and I'm told that it's totally worth the drudge. I'll get to it soon I'm sure.

Anyway, by the time I finally got onto my 8:55pm flight from LA to Auckland (yes, I sat in the airport for around 8 hours before boarding) I had finished The Martian (4.5 out of 5 stars). I spent the next 12 hour flight playing a video game, finally watching Thor: Ragnorok (2.5 out of 5 stars), and trying to sleep (1 out of 5 stars). When I woke up I had completely skipped the 23rd (due to In't date line), so I ate on-board breakfast and we landed in Auckland.

Okay, I'm stretching out this story at this point to make it seem like I did something today. The tl;dr is that I finally arrived in Brisbane. I now am typing this while waiting for a bus (I've got another 2 hours to kill) to pick me up and bring me to Lismore. I've slowly learned over these days that traveling involves waiting a long while in a lot of airports. I can't imagine what it's like to have to do this all the time for business or something. Sheesh. But hey, at least this airport has free Wifi!

I'm excited to finally make it to Southern Cross tonight. I had to pay $70AUD for the bus since I missed the free one, but they know exactly when I'm arriving so they'll be ready to catch me up on what I've missed. The only thing is, I think literally all the other Aussie International students from UWEC went on the Fiji trip and have known each other for almost a week now and jumping in late to social life experiences can be scary and a bit ostracizing. But it'll be fine! Just a matter of reducing uncertainty through mutual self-disclosure.

And no. I will not make it through a blog post without mentioning some form of Communication theory. It's my degree and I insist on using it.

2/21 - Travel Day 1

Aaaaannnnd off I go! I set off on my series of connecting flights this morning around 1:30, where I boarded a plane to Chicago that was a quick one hour flight. To be honest, I haven't flown much in my life, but I've found that I actually kinda really enjoy it! The whole process (the checking bags, the TSA check, the flight gates, the boarding, the taking off, etc.) is a logistical process that I think is really cool. Think about it...there are so many goddamn moving pieces when it comes to arranging flights and getting people on board and checked and making sure all of their bags are with them and checked through to each of their destinations. The companies that manage air travel have an extremely complicated logistical task that would put any single event planner or logistics coordinator to shame ten fold. It is very impressive!

I say this also because today, I very much got to witness this logistical machine breakdown as I traveled (at least for me and several other unfortunates anyway). When I landed in Chicago, it was fairly easy to find my gate, so I ate some food and played the waiting game while listening to my audiobook. I had arrived around 3:00pm and the flight wasn't boarding until 4:15pm so I had some time to kill. I actually had far more time than even that though because the moment we were supposed to be boarding they informed us that the plane was having some mechanical issues and that we would be delayed on our boarding. K, right? No. Big. Deal.

Except it was. Apparently, whatever the issue was, they couldn't use the plane and after an extra hour or so of waiting they switched all the passengers to another plane at another gate. Cue more waiting. sure enough, about another hour and a half later, we started boarding that plane. Finally. Buuuuut just to top it off before we left we were delayed on the runway for another 30 minutes. Darn.

It was partially through the waiting when I realized that I was going to be cutting it close between landing in Las Angeles and boarding my next flight to Auckland. "I'm sure it'll be fine," I lied to myself, "I should make it onto the flight". Perhaps what I was really saying was that I hoped I'd make it onto the flight...mostly because I didn't really know the procedure for missing your connecting flight because of a delay.

But hope didn't make me land any sooner unfortunately and three and a half hours later, I landing in California at 8:45...about 15 minutes after my flight had taken off. SO. I went to the customer service desk for United and they rescheduled me for another Air New Zealand flight that was leaving soon. The lady handed me my receipt of transfer (or something, i'm still not sure what it was) and sent me off saying, "you might have to run".

I jogged. Some of the way. Mostly because when I first set out I thought it would be as quick as finding my gate in Chicago. Down this way, up this way, through the hall, you're there kind of thing. As I jogged though, I looked down at a piece of paper she gave me that had directions printed on it. On the bottom, it said simply, "walking from United to the international terminal takes 30 minutes, so plan accordingly" or something like that. I resolved to mostly speed walk because I'm not that athletic.

When I finally got to the Air New Zealand "new" flight I had been "put" on, they seemed extremely confused at the whole situation. As it turns out, they weren't exactly informed on our (there were several other passengers who were with me connecting to the same flight that had gotten rebooked) predicament. The flight was closed. They didn't even have our bags. So, in short, we weren't getting on the plane. For the second time tonight, we had missed our flight (In a sense).

They directed us to go back to United Airlines customer service so we did. "We" being myself and two other passengers - Eric and Mary - that I tagged along with. Eric was in his 30s and was catching a flight to FIJI. Mary was an older woman who was actually stopping in Auckland. We kind of stuck together because we all didn't know what to do so as long as we didn't know what to do together, we'd be more fine or something. We bonded because we shared a group narrative (there's a communication theory attached to that idea but I'm blanking on the name).

Anyway, we made it back to united customer service (which again was a 30 minute walk) and started trying to figure things out. Essentially, it boiled down to the fact that there were no other flights that we could get on until the next day at 8:55pm. Delayyyyyed byyy a dayyyy. Eric did not take it very well and was very much arguing with one of the service reps. and she was getting really heated too so it was getting pretty intense but the woman who was dealing with figuring out mine (there were only two of them) was pretty calm. She was tired though, and figuring out what to do with me was quite the task.

In the end, I wound up with a free night stay in a hotel (I had resolved to sleeping in the Airport if I was going to have to pay a dime), $30 worth of food vouchers, free taxi ride to and from the airport, and a flight scheduled to take me to Auckland (followed by Brisbane) tomorrow night! All said and done? I'm a little bitter, pretty tired, a little sad, partially worried, but mostly happy to have an adventure to start my travel! That being said, I've assembled a short pros and cons list of my current situation.

Con: won't make to Brisbane on time to catch the bus
Pro: Got to stay in a snazzy hotel in Los Angeles with a killer view and a really cool lamp

Con: forgot to listen to my mom and pack a change of clothes in my carry-on.
Pro: The hotel has free wifi I can use to download more books and a shower. I count those as wins.

Con: had delayed flights
Pro: got through almost two whole audiobooks! (The Martian by Andy Weir is so hilarious!)

Con: hotel is under construction and the front door was a little confusing
Pro: breakfast is served inside of a giant tent tomorrow!

PS: Getting in contact with the study abroad office so they know that I'll be arriving late..is the first thing on my to-do list

tl:dr - The airlines kind of messed up and I'm arriving in Brisbane a day later..but I got a free stay in a nice hotel and free food so there's that.

EDIT: I got the date wrong in the Title. Silly me. That's what I get for blogging at 1am.