Day in the life of...

My 16th birthday remains my favorite birthday by far.  No, I wasn't one of those spoiled girls with a giant birthday bash costing more than a wedding or a small house.  In fact I would hate being at one of those parties let alone be the center of one.  Too many people.  My 16th birthday was my favorite because my parents took my sister and I along with two friends to New York City for a weekend.  One of my dad's friends had a house in New Jersey at the time so we all stayed with him and caught the train into the city every day.  The best part of the trip was being in the car with my friends. Throughout the eight hour drive we passed the time by making up stories about the people we passed.

Fast forward to this past week and I found myself bored on the long bus ride home, stuck in rush hour traffic in Brisbane.  In my boredom I found myself making up stories for the people around me.  One particular guy was especially interesting probably due to the tattoos all over his body.  Here is a snippet of a story/description I made up for him.

There is a boy on the Brisbane 345 bus, no not a boy but not a man either.  He's at the in between where he's trying to be a man but not quite fitting the mold yet.  Tattoos crawl across his body and gages stretch his earlobes twice their original size.  His body is an echasketch of rebellion.  He doesn't like rules, even though he knows they're in place for a reason.  Across his knuckles "live free" is scrawled in old type print and I can't help but think to myself, 'maybe he should visit New Hampshire'.  

There it is.  A little taste of my bus ride.  I'm sure this will not be the last time I will make up these stories.  I think their good writing exercises and it passes the time during a long commute alone.  Maybe I will make this a thing.  Who knows.  It was definitely fun.

Lamington's in Lamington and Other Updates

It's about time I updated on what I've been up to Down Under.  Last time I wrote about going to the Gold Coast and briefly mentioned Lamington National park.  Well Lamington was amazing.  The rainforest is so different from anything you will ever experience if you spend your entire life in the Northeastern United States.  There are so many sounds, smells, and everything is so unbelievably green, compared to the current state of my wintery Maine home.  When we first arrived I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy myself.  This was probably due to the down-pouring rain that soaked me through within the first ten minutes of being in the park.  That would dampen anyones day (no pun intended).  However, I soon realized that if you are going to see the rainforest, and I mean properly see the rainforest, it is best to do it in the rain.  You cannot imagine how beautiful the fog is as it filters out the distant trees of the undergrowth but here are a few pictures that will give you an idea.

The weeks after that were pretty crazy.  They included three exams and a paper, hence the reason I am just now getting around to this post.  After those crazy weeks I took a flight to Tasmania which was unexpected to say the least.  We landed in Launceston on a friday to fresh fall like weather, which was a relief after the 100 plus degree days in Brisbane.  Shortly after getting to Launceston, though, we learned that the place has no public transportation on the weekend.  None.  Then we attempted to rent a car and failed miserably.  (Do you know how difficult it is for under 21 year olds to rent a vehicle?  I thought I had escaped the problem of being underage when I left the states).  So in the end we spent two full days in Launceston going to a gorgeous gorge and a weird little zoo.  It wasn't what we planned but still fun.  (One more day, though, and I probably would have gone crazy).

Then I was off to Girraween National Park for another excursion.  Unlike Lamington, Girraween is getting frighteningly close to the desert in the middle of Australia.  You can literally feel all the moisture get sucked out of the air as you travel west over the mountains and away from the shiny coast.  That being said it was beautiful and we did have plenty of slightly brown water to drink.  I also faced my fear of heights and climbed up possibly the steepest and scariest mountain ever, the Pyramid.  It's basically like climbing up and down a 45 degree angle of pure granite.  I only felt like throwing up once during the whole climb!  After that we piled on the bus to head back to Brisbane and back to mountains of homework but somehow I don't mind.  After all I have less than two weeks left in this beautiful city.  I want to enjoy it as much as I can.

xoxo

Also if you haven't had a lamington you should really try them.