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!