Graduation

I finally got the chance to talk to the guys on my floor. Such a great opportunity:) I miss them heaps. When I did talk to them they told me that it is the final week of school and they have begun cramming for finals. I miss that and everything that comes along with it...late night food runs..energy drinks..late nights with no sleep...mariokart...late night runs to keep you awake..So many of those i've been so accustomed to for so long (3 years) and to not be there for the final go around and graduation...it's a really bittersweet moment. Hopefully they lived the moment up for me.

Good times

All of the A.S.Cer’s went on a trip; A trip to the Outback. This is the legit place with red dirt and heat that you’ve probably seen pictures of all the time. We left school on Monday the fifth and it was a so-so day. It was raining most of the week before and the forecast for the upcoming week was for more rain. We left the school Monday afternoon and we could see the sunshine on the horizon but we never knew when it would reach us. The drive was a gorgeous one. We drove past the Blue Mountains and saw a great view of Sydney and of what lay ahead of us. Two hours into the drive we had a lunch break and we all had the chance to stretch our legs. We get back onto the bus and I finally have a window seat in the front after many rides in the back of the bus in the aisle. I’ve been staring out of the window for about three hours now and my eyes are getting heavy again…(I tend to fall asleep very easily during car rides. Not so much when I’m driving though…) I’ve been searching the landscape for kangaroo for two months haven’t seen one yet even though others have…and boom! My heart skips a beat, I forget to breath, and I scream at the top of my lungs “KANGARRROO!!! KANGARROO TO THE RIGHT!!!” I look at the tree line in front of my window and I see a mob of 10~15 kangaroo grazing on the grass and I finally feel as if I am Australia. We end the first night in a city that I don’t remember the name of and 12 of us decide we want to play some ultimate Frisbee. Turns out that there is a park around the block from the motel that we are staying at and we play there. In the middle of the field there is a tractor. That’s right. A huge, farming tractor sitting right in the middle of a field. But it was a great game nonetheless. Towards the end of the game we could see lightning and hear the thunder roll in and became fearful for the rest of the trip. As we walk back to the motel after our game we talk to the owners of the place and they tell us that this is the first time that the city has seen rain like this in 100 years. That isn’t a typo. The next day we wake up and get back on the bus where we receive the news that the road to Burke (the place where we’re supposed to go) is flooded and we won’t be able to get there. We are supposed to make it there at the end of that morning, Tuesday. When I hear that news I am devastated. That is one of the main reasons I came here and being the first class not to go because of rain did not go over well. We make it as far as we can, Cobarth, and we spend most of the day at a museum there that focused on the Gold Rush of Australia. Not really what I wanted to be doing on our “Outback Trip.” We spend the night there hoping that the rain will stop and the sun will come out but that would never happen. We fall asleep to the raindrops on the roof of our rooms and we wake up to more news of the roads being flooded and no one really knowing what the new plan will be. We wait for a new plan in the dining room of the motel (which had very great food I should add. The dinner we had the night before was 30 bucks a head. Multiply that by 40 heads…they made a heaps load of money the two days we came. Because of us they actually had to put up there no vacancy signs.) and somehow Ian, the legendary driver, Melanie and Kimberly our ASC teachers know another place where we can go. Our new destination is Mt. Marunthumble. It took us another five more hours to get there but we did make it to the red ground of the Outback. We get off of the bus; look around and there isn’t too much to see. We look at the rooms and on top of our bed is a mattress covered in red dirt and cobwebs. At this point I almost broke. I was so close to being totally fed up with being out there and not doing what I thought the perfect trip would be. We end the night with a spaghetti dinner and a plague of locusts fell upon our campground. They leapt into our juice, leapt onto our plates, into our food, leapt down the shirts of so many people and down my pants. They were literally everywhere. They even jumped into our campfire while we sat around hoping the clouds would part so we could see the night sky, but it would not happen that night either. The only thing that saved the night was the life stories we began to tell each other. These were basically our testimonies but hearing what other people have gone through totally brought us closer as a group. We wake up Thursday morning with the sun on our faces. And we’ve all been rejuvenated. We eat egg in a basket thanks to Ian and start the day off with a bang. We were staying on 35,000 acres of property and the guys who own it took all of us out on a ride on the back of their Ute= truck. The ground was still wet so the roads we traveled on were still muddy so when we drove through the puddles we were all splashed with mud. AND IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! The Ute I was on was termed the party Ute because we were screaming at the top of our lungs any song that we could think of. Not to mention how crazy we went every time we see a kangaroo. We saw so many kangaroo riding around in the Ute. The best story I have from the back of the Ute is the two roo’s we see hoping right next to our Ute. We slow down a lil bit so they can get ahead of us and one of them does get ahead of us. We begin following that one and letting the smaller one hop behind us and over the fence. So there is a roo in front of us on the road and a fence to our immediate right. We’re flying, and screaming, “you can run you can hide but you can’t escape our love.” All of a sudden she tries to jump the fence to our right and she failed, but kept on hopping. A few feet later she tried again…and failed. This time her tail had too much of the road and we ran it over. And I have it all on video if you wanna watch it on facebook=-)

Identity Crisis pt. II

So another thing i've been thinking about lately. Well not really thinking about but a kind of reality that has hit me recently...people look up to me? Really? That is something that i never expected to tell the truth. For the longest time I never wanted anyone to look up to me. I'm not a role model, i'm not a saint, i haven't saved anyone's life, why would anyone look up to me?!? One of my roommates, Trevor (who takes awesome pics btw) recently said that he looked up to me when it comes to the relationship that i have with my girlfriend and that took me by surprise. I've never done this before...this is my first relationship and i'm trying not to screw up to royally and i'm a role model because of it? Another aspect that has taken a while for me to get used to is age. I'm one of the "older" people here both in school and age. I'm graduating next month :-O and not to many people here are above sophomore status and over 21 and that's weird for me. Most of the time I have been the younger or youngest person to do something and now to be an elder statesman of a group, I don't know how to react. People automatically look towards the elders just because they are elders...I still think i'm a youngin but maybe it's time to accept the role...i dunno just throwing the content of my mind out there..