AUS6- No Dramas

The past few days been challenging. I cannot remember a time that I have ever been as mentally and emotionally exhausted as I am at this very moment. I finally move in the QMB in the morning and am so excited to finally have a place to unpack my giant luggage and have my own place to stay.

Last five days I've stayed in rooms with no less than 6 people in bunk beds and communal restrooms that are either down the hall or in a different building across the way. Prissy Brooke is really tired of living that life.

I had no idea how out of shape I am for daily life over here. The hills. My God. The hill-y terrain. Granted, I am still carrying all of my belongings so that does make it worse but it is as if you are on a constant stair climber. I have easily walked an average of 8-10 miles a day here. My legs were already jello and then I headed to surf camp. Surf camp was AMAZING. I loved it. I met so many people. Lets see if I can remember all of the nationalities.

German, Switzerland, Netherlands, Singapore, China, Denmark, France, India, American, Brazil, Norway, Austria, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, and Brittain.

What blew my mind the most was just sitting there are hearing all of these people from thousands of miles away all communicating via english. My favorite thing to do was to just sit and listen to all of the different accents. I can't help but be impressed of how well these other countries enforce a foreign language. Everyone's english speaking was very impressive to me.

So the weather was pretty much the worst thing ever. It was 34 degrees F which was about 1 degree C. You better believe I had a mini freak out when i saw that the temp was 1 degree. Celsius Brooke, Celsius. Of course, when I switched it to Fahrenheit I didn't feel much better, haha. So surf camp consisted of arriving friday night, being sorted into bungalows, and crashing. We woke up Saturday for "brekky" (breakfast) which was basically toast and a couple of cereal options. Yes, there was vegemite. No, I did not try it. Give me a few more weeks y'all. After brekky, you put on your wettys (wetsuits) and head down to the beach. These wettys are kept outdoors behind the showers so just imagine having to run out of your bungalow in your bikini in 34 degree and raining weather to go put on a skin tight suit that has been marinating in the cold wetness over night. Not pleasant. Cold misery behind, I jogged to the beach and got ready to learn how to surf! I got up on my first try (beginner's luck I am sure). All in all, we had two surfing periods on saturday and one on Sunday. Sunday had much better weather. The sun finally came out to play and that when most of these pictures were taken.

NO DRAMAS!

Turns out I am not completely terrible at surfing. Granted, we had rather large foam boards, but I did get up multiple times and even successfully nailed a 180 turn! what what! I also had about 1,005 nose dives and "don't let me die" moments. All-in-all a success, right? The waves were soooo strong with our large cross wind that it was very difficult to get back into the water after every run. My board smacked me a few times and I think half of the Pacific went through my nasal cavity.

This was one of the "tricks" they taught us- The Budha!

The Wombats in Wettys

This was gnarly one-footer y'all

The funniest thing to me that I learned on surf camp is that I have a very un-identifying accent. I had many wrong guesses to my nationality. People thought I was Irish, Dannish, Aussie (that person was smoking crack), and Canadian. I was told that I was not American as I wasn't as loud as "they" are. I had to explain that all of America is not boisterous and stereo-typical northeastern-ers. Everyone was very curious of Louisiana. I told them all about Mardi Gras, our football culture, and cajun cuisine! I even learned how to say Bon Apetite in Dutch! It is so fun to say. If I knew how to spell it, I would insert it here, but alas....

Bungalow 10 ladies

surfer brooke!

I had gone to the grocery store here just to have a look around and "give it a go" (big aussie saying). It cracked me up. Everything is named in a shorter and in a cuter way. Cookies are biscuits here and are called biccys. So if you are having a chocolate cookie, such as a timtam, it would be called a choccy biccy. Their soy milk is called "soy milky".

They have pop tarts! They have heinz ketchup! A bag of cashews was $11 (that is a little "nuts", eh? hahhahaha) . A small bottle of water is about 3 or 4 dollars. All the radio stations are playing our popular music from 2012.

Oh! I should probably explain the title. No dramas is basically the surfers' lingo for "no worries". It sounded so cool with their accents. I am definitely taking that back to the states.

7/21/15

#AustraliaTrip