4 girls in Heals, Pushing one Taxi Van!

Alright! Where to begin? Lets start with the hassles of my trip so far! On my flight from Sydney to Gold Coast the Airline broke BOTH of my new luggage which I was using for the second time. On my big suitcase the handle does not come up, on the smaller suitcase there is about a 5 inch slash in the back of my suitcase. I didn't notice this until I got to my Apartment because they delivered it straight there for us. This was last Friday when I noticed that my luggage was ruined. Since then I have been trying to get in contact with the Airline and everytime I call, eventually someone hangs up on me. So I have yet to figure out this problem, but will be calling every day until I get new luggage.

On top of my luggage, my digital camera broke yesterday. I bought my luggage and digital camera on the same day, they are about a month old and are already broken. :( I emailed best buy because I didn't know how to call internationally and got a email today telling me they will reply by Monday with an International number for me to call. My camera is on Warranty so I can get it fixed I just don't want to wait until then because I will be traveling. I am going to ask for them to send a temp. camera for me to use while they fix my current one. I have no clue whats wrong with it, it just stopped working. The lens is stuck out, even though my camera is off. Then when I try to turn my camera on the screen just flashes on and off. I thought maybe it was something with the battery but I charged it all last night and it still isn't working. I will keep you all updated on these, but don't expect any new pictures soon. :(

Now onto my story (which relates to the caption of this blog). Last night we decided to go out to Surfers again (which is where all the bars & pubs are) since our last time going out was not such a great time lol. It was Sean (my roommate), Caraline (who is from Canada), Kat( who is from Australia), Beth (Rhode Island), and me! Caraline, Kat and Beth are all roommates which is how I met Kat and Caroline. Anyways, we started to get ready around 9 and our cab got here around 10:30 or so. When we got to surfers we went to a bar called shooters. Everyone was saying it was such a bad club, but when I got in there I really enjoyed it! There were a lot of chairs to sit in, and a pretty good sized dance floor.There were strobe likes all over the dance floor and a live DJ as well.

Dancing here is completely different then at home though. Australians dance SO funny and they don't even care. Even the DJ was dancing like that, it made me laugh. They basically look like they are hoping around in circles, throwing their hands every which way.

After shooters we went to Cocktails & Dreams, which was completely packed! Kats boyfriend works as a bartender there so he gave everyone in our group free drinks for the night, but I think each person only had one drink. We were only at cocktails and dreams for about 30 minutes before we left because we could hardly move in the place.

By that time we had been out for about two hours and all of the girls were ready to get home because our feet were killing us from wearing heals all night. However, on our way to get a taxi we made a pit stop in Hollywood. All I was told by Kat was that it was free coverage for girls and so we all decided to go there. Well what Kat didn't tell us (even though she knew) was that it was a strip club haha!Kat wanted to go there because she had only seen one strip club and was curious what others looked like. My first experience at a Strip Club was in Australia. However I was actually really surprised! The club was really nice and they stage where the girls danced was nice as well. I am pretty sure some of the dancers were drunk, but whatever lol. On the other hand I was very surprised by some of the things the girls can do on a pole...takes strength haha.

After leaving Hollywood we then went to get a cab. We got one fairly easy and on our way home the guy tells us he has to stop for gas. Well he drove through 2 gas stations, but neither had the type of gas that he needed. So he decided to make a stretch for it and drive us home. Well Australia has a LOT of hills, so going up was hard, while going down was easy. On the first hill we didn't think the van would make it at all, then to our surprise he did. We then coasted down the hill, and there was a red light at the bottom of the next hill. Well our taxi driver decided not to stop for a red light so he could keep his momentum to get up the hill. Halfway up the hill the car runs out of gas. We tell him we will push the Van, even in hills if we can get our cab ride free (lol you have to work the system on way or another!!), but he decides to keep trying to go up the hill.

TO our surprise he makes it up the next few hills, and coasts down them and completely ran out of gas right outside of our apartment. I swear every time we take a taxi we will have some sort of story!!!! On the bright side he didn't charge us the entire amount, only half which came out to like 3 dollars each.

We got home at about 3 in the morning and all completely crashed out.

Then to my surprise this morning the boys cleaned the dishes! They weren't in the sink but we decided we were going to clean the ones they gave us before using them so that we could make sure they were clean. When I woke up this morning the dishwasher was already running, so yay!

Love you & Miss you all!

Oh Mr Sun Sun Mr Golden Sun!.

So today was a good day! I woke up and went over to Beths and we cooked Tortellini for lunch, which was amazing! After lunch we went to the front office and we bought a pass for $70 that gets us unlimited access until July to three amusement parks (Wet n' Wild, Sea World, and Movie world). I am excited because I have never been to Sea World and have heard Wet n' Wild is a really fun water park! Normally one day entry to ONE park is $70, and the pass we got is normally $320..needless to say it was a steal!



After that we changed and took the bus down to Surfers Paradise to hang out on the beach, what a fun time! The beach was crowded in one area but we moved just a few minutes away from the crowd and basically had the beach to ourselves. Even the crowded areas weren't to crowded. The water was so warm and you didn't have to worry about any seaweed getting in the way at all! The waves would get a decent size and crash down, perfect for body surfing along the waves! We were at the beach for a few hours just relaxing and having a good time.





After the beach we came home and just hung out for a bit. When I got back to my dorm I had a new roommate moving in. Sean (the Australian roommate) still lives here but the girl who use to live here completely moved to another apartment complex closer to school. When I got home Austin was moving into her old room. So now I live with two guys, one is American (from Cali) and the other is Australian. They are both laid back but having two guy roommates will be interesting. However I hang out at Beths apartment most of the time which is all girls, so I can still get my quality girl time in. :)

No worries mom my bedroom locks so I am nice and safe, and so is my stuff. lol

I just finished enrolling for classes. I am taking 4 classes which back home would only be 12 credits, but here it is equal to 16. Which makes it so I am still perfectly on track to graduate next Spring, Crazy huh?

My School schedule looks like this:

Monday:
9:00AM - 10:50AM Popular Music&Cultural Context
11:00AM - 12:50PM Introduction to Multimedia Computer Lab

Tuesday:
1:00PM - 1:50PM Introduction to Multimedia Lecture
2:00PM - 3:50PM Introduction to Marketing Lecture
6:00PM - 6:50PM Introduction to Marketing Tutorial

Wednesday:
2:00PM - 3:50PM Genealogy of Rock and Pop Lecture

Thursday:
NO CLASS

Friday:
NO CLASS

Which means four day weekends every week!!!!! Which works out perfect for traveling around Australia. Yay! Also on Tuesday I have a two hour break that I can spend in the Library working on homework every week. My classes are very random subjects but whatever I don't mind.

Now I am headed to bed because I have Orientation tomorrow at my school. I will reply to everyones emails tomorrow afternoon, sorry for the delay on that.

I posted new pictures of the beach to Picasa for you all to view!

Love you & Miss you all!

Pictures & Video!

Ok! So I have decided not to use photobucket anymore and am going with a more organized photo storage called Picasa. The link to my pictures is: http://picasaweb.google.com/ChelseaTaylor77 It organizes it albums so it is easy to understand and you can also leave comments.

I am still trying to figure it out myself so if for some reason you can't see the pictures let me know!!!

Love you!

P.s. Scroll Down a few post and you will see pictures, I also added a video at the end of the post of Aboriginal Dancers, Enjoy!

What a night!

OK well let me start off by saying I am exhausted right now but wanted to right thia while everything was still fresh in my mind. I will tell you about my day and then my crazy night!

My day started off good, I woke up at 7 because that is what time they had us wake up at Orientation so now it is a bad habit. I ate breakfast and took a shower, then Beth and I decided to go shopping and get some essentials for our Apartment (she isn't my roommate but lives diagonal from me). We walked about 3-5 minutes to the bus stop and waited there for a little less then thirty minutes. We got on and told the bus driver we were headed to Australian Fair and he said that was just fine. So we get on the bus and we are just talking and looking outside the bus to get a look at our new home. We get to a stop and he is not moving the bus for about 3 minutes and we think he is just waiting for passengers to get on. Then the bus driver looks at us and asks where we were going to so we repeated Australian Fair. Then he kind of laughs and says "this is it. We are here." haha so we were completely clueless we were there, but next time we will remember.

We went inside and went to Kmart (which is inside of the mall) and got all of the stuff we needed, such as sheets, pillows, blow dryer, etc. We then had to take the bus home and we carrying 3 large bags each which wasn't to bad walking out of the mall and on the bus but we definitely noticed it when we had to walk 15 minutes back to our apartment! Oops! Next time we will remember to pack light!

Then we hung out and ab out 10 of us decided we wanted to go out to Surfers Paradise tonight, which is where all the bars and pubs are. So then story begins.

We all get a Maxi Taxi (which is like a van taxi thats really cheap if you have 10 people, like 2 dollars each) and we decided to drive to the village (which is about a 15 minute drive away) to meet up with some friends before heading out. We get in the van and as soon as the driver pulls away from our apartment it starts to downpour. You remember how I said in the last blog bad weather follows us? IT IS STILL TRUE! We decided it would just be like a 10 minute rain shower like it was the day before and continued on to the village. Well the taxi drivers here like to rip people off. He took us a complete round about way to make the fair larger (which we wouldn't know if we hadn't had an Australian with us) then the Taxi drivers drops us off and says we should be able to get to our location from there. Well it turns out you USE to be able to, not anymore. So we had to walk in all of our nice clothes (and heals might I add) 15 minutes to the right place in the pouring rain! By the time we got to the village our hair was soaking wet, our shoes were covered in mud, and our clothes were dripping wet. It was a nightmare. SO we get to the village and head up to our friends apartment. We hang out there for 30, call a taxi and head downstairs. Well turns out there were 30 other people downstairs waiting for a taxi and ours never came. We would call the cab company to ask where it was and they would hang up on us. The taxis here are horrible!!!!!!


So we ended up waiting two hours outside for our Taxi to come and finally one gets there. We decide to continue on to Surfers Paradise but by that time everyone had changed their mind and decided not to go out. It went from 16 people down to 4. The Taxi Driver picks up 3 other people and starts to drive to Surfers. Along the way he decides to inform us there is a per km rate, it is a set rate of $140 which came out to $20 each for one cab ride (making our cab fair so far $23 each). Finally we get to surfers and are like lets have some fun finally!

So we went into Omalleys which is a bar that doesn't have a cover charge and has a live band playing. I ordered a Vodka and Sprite because I was clueless what else to order. We hung out there but left within 30 minutes, before I had even finished my drink.

We then went to Beer Garden and hung out there for about 40 minutes before finally deciding that our heals were telling us to head home. That cab driver drove sssoooo fast I thought I may crash, another thing that happens a lot in Taxis (and buses) here in Australia. At the end of that cab ride we each had to pay $7 making my cab fair for the night $30 dollars, ridiculous right? I spent $6 on one drink all night (that I only had a half of), and $30 in cab fair lol

What a night my clothes and hair are still soaking from the stupid rain!. Now I am headed to bed because I can hardly hold my eyes open after this night!


Night!!!

P.s. Here is a link to look at pictures! For those of you who have facebook/myspace these are the ones that are already uploaded on those websites.

http://s704.photobucket.com/albums/ww48/chelseataylor77/

Will tell you in future blogs when I post new pics as well!

Love you!

Welcome to Australia!

OK, so first thing first I’M HERE! :) I have a lot to write about because I have been so busy the past week I haven’t had any time to write in this dang thing. I guess I will start from the beginning! I got to LAX and had a six hour lay over which I was clueless what to do with my time. It ended up being a good thing my layover was that good because I got lost in LAX and had no clue how to check into my next flight to Sydney. I landed in US Airways which was terminal one, and had to find my way to Quantas which I had no clue what terminal it was in. I walked from terminal one to terminal three (and back to terminal one) about four times before asking someone for help. That would be me and my stubbornness. So finally I ask someone who works there and he tells me it is in terminal four, so all that time all I had to do was walk one more terminal over lol. So that adventure of me people lost took about an hour and a half. Good way to waist time and not be aware of it!! So then I went to Quantas and checked in, originally I had a middle seat. I asked the guy if there were any window seats open and he said he wasn’t allowed to change my seat, and then handed me another ticket that was a window seat and winked at me. He then continued to rip up my old ticket so there wasn’t any proof of the change he made. Haha!!!

My flight to Sydney was not bad at all. It ended up being about a sixteen hour flight all together. We had really cool touch screen televisions on the back of every seat. They offered basically everything from television, to movie, to shopping…it was pretty darn cool! I watched high school musical 3, which took up about two hours of flight time. Honestly, the movie wasn’t that bad either lol. After that I took an Ambien to knock myself out and slept for about 8 or 9 hours. Once I woke up I watched two and a half men for a couple hours and the what do you know, we were in Sydney!

Sydney is gorgeous!!! I had no clue that Sydney would be as big as it is, and yet so beautiful. The beaches were like something out of a movie and the entire city is filled with trees. Our orientation spot was at Narrabeen Lake, which had a bunch of cabins for us all to stay in. In my cabin there were 9 beds (in bunk beds, and triple bunk beds) for us all to sleep in. Our room also had a mini kitchen in it that we didn’t use once because they served us breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily. The best thing about our location was it was a 5 minute walk from a gorgeous beach, which we went to daily. The first day at orientation we really didn’t do much except for get to know one another.

The second day we woke up had breakfast and then went to the zoo. The zoo is the prettiest zoo I have been to yet. Only down side was that it was raining. Bad weather seems to follow us wherever we go. We were all bummed because we didn’t expect our first view of Australia to be cloudy and raining…we expecting sun, sun, sun! We had a tour around the zoo for about two hours and then made our way down to the ferry boat. Our boat was huge, it was pretty much a yacht for us all to go on a tour around Sydney Harbor. We saw the Opera House and The Sydney Bridge, followed by downtown Sydney, a nude beach, and a castle. Sydney seems to be a very random city. On our boat ride the sun finally decided to come out and man oh man the sun is strong here! Basically everyone got sunburns regardless of how many times we put sun screen on.
The next day we went Surfing, which was a blast! I officially suck at it, but will be going again while I am here! I want to at least stand up once before I get home. It is so much harder then it looks. Surfers have a nice body for a reason, they are using every muscle in their body! I didn’t get any pictures of myself because I was to busy surfing so I will try to do that some time in the next four months. I am proud to say that out of a group of 40 people me and two other girls were the last ones out there. The boys gave up pretty easily lol.
After surfing we went back to the camp and me and the girls from my cabin decided to go on a hike around the beach. Simply gorgeous, yet very painful…surfing and hiking right after one another will make your body soar! That night we saw Aboriginal dancers and it was very interesting! I actually volunteered to learn one of their dances in front of the entire group. It is not a dance move I will be taking to the club any time soon though lol.
Then yesterday we had to pack up, say our goodbyes to everyone going to different schools and head to Gold Coast. It was the fastest flight ever. We literally had to the seatbelt sign off for five minutes before it got turned off for landing. Remember how I said earlier bad weather seems to follow us? Well when we got to Gold Coast it was a downpour! Nothing like a little rain to move into our new places! Our apartments are really nice! I live with one Australian guy and one girl who is from New York.
What I love most about my apartment is we each get our own room and bathroom, and our bedroom doors lock so we can have our stuff nice and safe. The rooms are pretty big, I have a full size bed and a walk in closet. Only downside is the distance from school. I think I will be buying a cheap bike to ride to school instead of relying on the bus system.
Six of us went down to get pizza last night (which is literally right downstairs) and were very pleased to see how cheap and good the pizza was! Not to mention you can get two cans of soda for 2.50 and the cans here are larger then back home. There is also a grocery store, Chinese place, sushi, liquor store and a blockbuster literally downstairs. We went to the grocery store which was an interesting experience because you have to put a dollar coin in your cart in order for it to unlock, then once you return your cart you get your dollar back. Us being use to free carts were completely clueless how to get the carts unlocked until a friendly Aussie told us how to work it. Then at the check out you have to pay for grocery bags, which surprised us as well. After going grocery shopping we had a barbeque so everyone here could meet one another and so far it seems like everyone will be really cool! My neighbor is from Holland and actually studied abroad at ASU two years ago, and lived in the same dorms as I did…crazy huh?
There are a few things I have learned so far. Australians are very conservative and won’t use things if they don’t have to. For instance every electrical plug has a switch so you can turn it on and off. So that way if nothing is plugged in you are not using any electricity. Then the apartments don’t have AC/Heating (which I am trying to adjust to) and they suggest four minute showers. Also the toilets (every toilet I have seen so far) has two buttons with a circle symbol over it (half full is for #1, completely full is for #2). That was when you flush you can use minimal amounts of water as well. Also, everyone who told me the water would flush the opposite way, you are wrong. It doesn’t flush clockwise or counterclockwise. It just fills it up and flushes at once. Kind of hard to explain but I thought I’d let you know. :)


So that is my adventures so far! Nothing else to write except for I am taking a shower because I am not use to humidity at all and my skin is so sticky! Love you & Miss you all!
P.s. I went an hour behind now that I am in Gold Coast so instead of being 6 hours behind you guys (and a day forward) I am now 7 hours behind you.

P.s.s. I am setting up a photobucket account so I can just have a link up for you to look at all pictures which will be easiest! Love you!

Time to get a move on!

So one week today I will be having a going away dinner at olive garden with 20 friends of mine. Right now it just feels like I am going to be having a fun friend get together. Actually..it feels like I am just getting ready to leave for one of my usual trips to Cali, not like I am leaving to another country. I am sure it will hit me soon!

I leave one week from Sunday and still have some last minute shopping to do. I am going to the bank today to get Australian Dollars and some Travelers Checks!

Nothing else really to report for now!