Visit from Mom, a case of the sickies, and a day with the dolphins!!

What a HUGE week! This whole studying abroad thing is crazy, it’s way more than you can imagine, yet everything you could ever imagine. I think the most incredible thing is how often you keep learning little life lessons, you are continually being shown new things about yourself and the world around you. It’s insane. Amazing. Indescribable really. I’ve had a really positive and rewarding week, and a very difficult one as well. I can’t get over the fact that I’m here, that I’m living this, that I’m so lucky. I’m amazed at the strength and will power that I’ve seen from myself while here. I’m proud of myself, and although a little sick of it, glad to be so challenged. Time seems to be flying by, I can’t believe I’ve been here for two months already, it makes me sad for when the day comes I have to leave this incredible place, oh how quickly you become attached! So what did I do you ask? Well here let me tell you.

Monday was exciting and I’d been looking forward to it since the day I left! My mom came and I got to see her for the day! She was in Melbourne for the day as a stop on her cruise. So I went into Melbourne that morning, way too early, and met up with her. That was interesting in itself. I had my first assignment due that day, so I finished it up the night before, really it was all making it look pretty and figuring out how to put our graphs into the word document. Well, turns out I was doing it in Works and it couldn’t be read in the lab to print it off, or to turn it in online. So it took me forever to figure out how to make it work with my computer, after a call to my dad I finally got it working. Well I was done with it about 10pm but didn’t get to turn it in til almost 1am!! I took about five trips running back and forth between the lab and my unit and Loretta’s unit (we worked on it together since she’s in my class). It was very stressful for me, being my first assignment at uni, they are more stressful to begin with seeing as they are worth 15% of my grade, not just another assignment like back home that you can always gain back the points if you screw one up. Anyway, my point is I was stressed and tired and didn’t get to bed til much later than anticipated. I had my alarm set for 5:15 Monday morning! You do the math, not near enough sleep, especially for being on the verge of sickness. I guess my body decided that was too early, because I very vaguely remember the alarm going off, but don’t remember doing anything about it. Next thing I know I wake up and it’s 6:30! The bus to the train station left at 6:12 if I wanted to get there by a certain time! So I was freaking out, yet again, I mean if I didn‘t get there in time I had no way of contacting Mom and telling her. But I put on my logic hat and figured it out, okay a bus won’t get you there in time, so call a cab. I got ready really fast, good thing I’d gotten most of my stuff together the night before! And by the time I got to the bus stop the taxi was there! So I had to pay $19 more than the bus ride, but I still got to the train station with 3 minutes to spare before the 7:23 train to Melbourne, my latest option I had figured out to work. Phew. So I got there fine, but then had to figure out where the bus stops were, I knew which bus route I had to take, but wasn’t sure where to get on it. So I just walked out of the station, after switching trains to get to Flinder’s St instead of Southern Cross where the train from Geelong ends, and hoped to find it, and I did! I walked right into it. I only had to wait about 5 minutes for the next bus, too, which was perfect. So then I wasn’t real sure where to get off but online thought the intersection of beach and bridge st. in Port Melbourne looked right, so that’s where I got off. It took a bit of a long time because of morning traffic going to work. I went into the local chemist to ask where Station Pier was and they told me, but informed me it was about a 15 minute walk, indeed it was. But luckily Mom called me on my cell phone to see where I was, seeing as I was about 10 minutes late. But I found them and got a BIG hug!!! It was great. It was funny to see so many tourists, they looked like it! So we all loaded on to the next tram back into the city, that was interesting. We got off and walked around for quite awhile. I took them down to the Yarra River to walk along there for awhile til we got to Flinders St Station and Federation Square. Then we hoped on the free city circle tram for tourists. We rode that awhile just to see the city some. I think we got off first at the Victoria Market, then caught the other free tourist tram which was nicer, and got off on the other side of town at the Botanical Gardens and The Shrine of Remembrance. That was pretty cool, it was a WWII memorial and was quite pretty, with an eternal flame and some poppies and a big cool monument building. Then we headed back into the main heart of the city to eat some lunch. We walked around awhile to find somewhere we wanted and saw a lot of cool little places and side streets doing so. We ate at some place called Maori I think, sandwiches and such, it was good. Then we walked over to the Treasury Gardens, a nice little park, and on across the street to the Fitzroy Gardens. I really liked this park. It was so green and quiet and peaceful, right in the big city. We saw the Fairies Tree carved for the children of Melbourne, and the Sinclair cottage that was the original gardener’s, and Cook’s Cottage, as in Captain Cook who came and settled Australia. There was also a really nice conservatory and beautiful plants and flowers everywhere, it was a nice walk. Finally, we started walking back into the city and slowly worked our way back to the tram stop they had to catch to get back to the Pier. We stopped in a little mall to look around and a little café to get something to drink. Then it was time for them to get back! So I got another great big hug and a see you in a couple weeks and I was on my way back to the train station to head home. Whew, this is getting to be a long day, eh? That’s what I thought because I was running on little sleep and I was definitely getting sick, that was the beginning. So I found which platform my train was at, it wasn’t leaving for another 40 minutes, but that was okay. I was waiting to get on the train and it never opened up. There were a whole bunch of us quite upset. I guess they were waiting on another train to come and connect to this one but it never showed up and they hadn’t heard anything. So we all had to get on the already full train on the next platform leaving about 10 minutes after that one was scheduled to. It was quite frustrating. So I had to stand in the little area where the doors to the train are in the first class car, fabulous. I was so tired and we’d done a lot of walking, and now I had to stand for the next hour doing nothing! But I made it, it was a long ride but what can you do. I left Mom about 4 and didn’t get home til about 7 after all that confusion. When I got back I had to walk to downtown Geelong to catch the bus back to Uni, that was a long ride home. Anyway, I got a bit of food and forced myself to stay up for just a couple more hours and went to bed around 9! I was so exhausted.

Tuesday I got up and went to my first two classes, but skipped the third because I felt so terrible. I was definitely sick, it just felt like a really bad cold. (Whew, I’m getting tired typing, it feels like me and the screen are moving around a lot, you’ll find out why later, just thought I’d note it.) So I went back to my room and decided to go into town to get some juice, soup, medicine, and Kleenex. That was good, and when I came back I just laid in bed all day and dozed in and out. I didn’t feel well. Wednesday was worse, I just stayed in bed the entire day, sleeping, driving myself insane, and playing solitaire. I made it down to caf though, and actually ate quite a lot! It took me awhile, but I pretty much finished off my bowl of pasta and plate of salad and fruit and rolls, and my éclair! The boys were impressed with me, haha. My head was hurting with so much pressure and I couldn’t stop blowing my nose. I slept a whole lot each night as well, about 10 hours. It was incredible, I haven’t been able to sleep near that much in forever, I guess you war your body down enough it will react and force you to get better. Well, Thursday I still felt really terrible, even worse I thought. So I got up and went to see the campus nurse who thought it may be more than just a cold. So I got to see the doctor right then and he asked a few questions about what I’d felt like and then checked in my ears and said, oh yeah, you have a middle ear infection definitely. Yikes! I haven’t had one of those since I was a little kid, but then I used to get them often. He asked if I’d been under stress lately as if that’s the only reason I got sick, yep. So he wrote me a prescription and I was on my way. I had to try and figure out my insurance card because I automatically have the Overseas Health Coverage, but ordered the actual card and never got it. Deb, the Deakin International lady, helped me out and got it figured out, but I still have to wait on my card. Anyway, then I waited for the next bus to the nearest shopping center, it only comes a few times a day. I went there and found the Chemist and filled my prescription. That was the best part of the day!! I looked and felt terrible and it took all my strength to make that trip seeing as just walking to class had been wearing me out. However, the pharmacist who came to talk to me about the medicine noticed I wasn’t local and asked where I was from and I said the States. I realized quickly that if I just said Kansas a lot of people didn’t know what I was talking about, so even though I’m sure they can tell I’m from the States, that’s usually satisfactory for them. Well he asked me where abouts so I said Kansas and he was like, no way, you’re kidding! He said when he was just out of Uni a couple years ago he and his friends took a 5 week trip across the US and spent 5 days in Kansas, more specifically at K-State!!! I said, no way, that’s where I’m from!! They knew a couple girls there who had studied at Deakin, this was back in November of 2005 that he was there. I was so excited! Here I was feeling terrible, and missing home more since I was sick and wanted to be comforted you know, and this Aussie has been to my home!! He said they absolutely loved it there and had the best time. That made me so happy. He said they got to go to a K-State vs. KU game and loved it and spent most of their time just walking around campus. They went to Aggieville and loved it and fell in love with “one of your burrito places, I can’t remember…” Chipotle!!, “yes, that’s it right by the Subway there!” AH!! I loved this guy right then, oh goodness I miss Chipotle and really wanted one then! It was great, he said it was one of their favorite places, and he liked Austin getting to see a UT game, oh well, I’ll let that slide. It was awesome getting to talk to this random Aussie about Manhattan Kansas! Made me miss it though! How weird is that, my pharmacist when I get sick down here has been in the same town as me a year and half earlier! Crazy. Anyway, I had to wait another 30 minutes for the next bus back to campus, but I made it back alright, with none of my Kleenex left I’d brought with me, and just a sip of water. I laid down and slept for awhile before our unit function. I actually got up, took a shower, got dressed in real clothes and put on a touch of makeup! It was quite exhausting. I was upset I was so sick for our unit function because otherwise it would have been heaps of fun. Unit functions are put on by each RA, all the units they’re in charge of, in my case two of us (Evatt 1 and 3), get together and have a party with just those people basically. There is supposed to be some theme, ours was “P Party” so you were supposed to come as something starting with a P. I was so worn out that I just stuck on a purple shirt with a powercat on it and called it good. We had a barbeque first at the common room. That was nice, I had two sausages. I guess since I didn’t ever eat much during the day, I got hungry for dinner! It was cool to just have the people from our units around, nice way to talk to them and stuff. It was hilarious what some people came up with for costumes. We have this one guy, Pete, in my unit who always wears jeans and this blue tank top, it’s hilarious, like every single day the same thing. So three of our housemates went as Pete! There was a Purple Persian Prince, that was Viv, the crazy one in my unit, he’s great. And he had his princess, my neighbor Ash. It was a good time. We went back to the other unit and hung out for awhile, it was entertaining watching from the sidelines and taking pictures, but I wish I could have participated a little more, I was just so exhausted. I had to just sit there, it was pretty pathetic. They all went to change to go out about 10, and I called it a night. A little sad, but you gotta do what you gotta do right? Plus, I had to get up early in the morning again and I needed to be feeling tip top!

Why did I have to get up early you ask, because I was going swimming with dolphins of course!! Yay! Yep, that was today. It was an absolutely exhilarating day! It was a little hard to get up because it took forever to fall asleep last night since I couldn’t stop coughing, but it was alright. I wasn’t feeling the best and quite nervous about everything, but very excited. I used money from Mark on this, so it was his Christmas present to me! I’ve never been snorkeling before and I’ve never been a huge water person, so I was a little scared, but the people on the boat were really helpful. We got to Queenscliff and to the boat where they gave all of us wet suits. They were quite thick ones seeing as it was a bit chilly today and the water down here gets quite cold. I’ve never been in a wetsuit either, that was an experience itself! It was so difficult to get on, and then to get it off was almost worse! I had to go to the toilet once on the boat and let me tell you, I’ve never worked so hard to pee! Anyway, so we got on the boat and headed out to sea! We stayed in the bay the whole time we were out. Our first stop was a little manmade reef thing on a natural sandbar. There were rocks around this area and somehow a reef sort of formed there. It was a good thing I was stuffed up and couldn’t smell anything, apparently the birds there were quite foul smelling, as they made nests out of seaweed and their own poo. This was my first time in the water in flippers and a snorkel! I was pretty dang nervous and scared! The lady told us some tips and how to use the snorkel and everything, so that was good. When I got in she told me to stick my head in and look down. I did, and I freaked out! It seems like it’d be easy but sticking your head underwater automatically feels like you’re drowning or something! It took me quite awhile to get used to the fact that I could actually breath when my head was under the water. Plus I kept getting little tastes of the salt water, and that just made me gag. I was very nervous and that didn’t help. The few times I calmed myself down it was amazing, though. I just had to stop and concentrate on breathing and stop worrying about swimming. Our wetsuits acted like life jackets and you really did just float if you relaxed yourself. So when I did that I just floated in the water with my head down and looked all around me. It was absolutely breathtaking. There were quite a few fish really, and ones that I’d never seen anything like in my life, and all sorts of plants. It was incredible how clear the water was, and with the sand right below it was gorgeous. It was definitely a good place to have our first experience because it was fairly shallow and the waves weren’t so strong since we were protected. It was so scary but very awesome. We got back on the boat and headed out to this place called Chinaman’s Hat, a little structure where a colony of seals live. That was awesome. We arrived there while I was in the toilet, so when I came out we were right next to this house of seals! It was pretty neat. There were so many of them! You could see them all swimming in the water as well. This was out in the middle of the bay and the waves were pretty strong here, quite a current. It was a very windy day. They let out this line for us to hold on to so we didn’t float away. I was terrified here. Loretta was a little bit too which helped, we just aren’t the best swimmers and hadn’t ever done this and aren’t huge water people. Anyway, we were some of the last ones off the boat, but we got out there. The one lady took her lifesaver buoy thing and we held on to that while she took us around away from the rope. That was pretty cool. Again, I still had some freak outs, but when I put my head down and looked around, the seals were all swimming around us and below us, so close. I know I keep saying this, but it was truly amazing! I can’t describe it. These wild animals are just swimming all around you and you’re so close! It’s cool to see them from above the water and everything, but it’s a whole different thing to see them right there with you swimming under the water. It’s really almost magical or something, and it’s all quiet underwater so it’s a bit surreal. I loved it even though I was extremely terrified! The worst part to me was getting all that salt water in my mouth, it just made me gag and that freaked me out. Plus here, the current was strong and to be floating there and then see this big wave coming for your face was a little daunting. I was tired from swimming, too, here we actually had to kick and couldn’t just float or we’d be carried away! It was exhausting for me one because I don’t really swim, and two because I still felt pretty sick. Anyway, we headed in a couple minutes before everyone else. I feel bad, I really wanted to stay out there and see more seals, it was absolutely indescribable, but I was just scared! So we headed to the other side of the bay and kept on the lookout for dolphins, as there is no guarantee to see them, you have to help watch for them. We finally found some and it was so exciting. They were cool to see from above water even! I’ve never seen any dolphins in the wild before. They would jump up and swim in front of the ferry that went by us! So there are rules for swimming with the dolphins to try and protect them. One is they can’t coax them over at all with anything, and we can’t touch them. Also, we were only allowed 4 swims, times out in the water, with 10 people out each time. There were only about 20 of us so that was good. There are only about 100 dolphins that permanently reside in Port Phillip Bay so they try really hard to protect them. We also had to just have a free swim, without flippers, and be holding onto the rope the whole time. The first swim was a good one apparently, all those people said they saw a bunch of the dolphins go right under them. We could see them from the boat as well. Again, it was really amazing. I went out in the second swim and saw one dolphin go under the boat in front of us but that was it. I still had just a tad bit of difficulty keeping my head under the water the entire time. We had to come back in and try to find them again and see if we could get a better view. So I went out the third time as well to try again. This time was no luck at all, I didn’t see any in the water with us, only when I looked above the water did I see any of them. So we came back in, drove around awhile to try and find them again so we could try one last time. It was all about patience, we had to go around looking for them and hope they’d stay near us. This time we found them and they all swam really fast away from us! So we followed. They went really close to the shore, I think there was a big school of fish. So there were heaps of dolphins!! We saw so many fins come above the water! It was so exciting! I was so giddy! They’d jump out of the water a bunch too, playing around, doing flips and everything else. It was really awesome. So we found a good spot and Frog, the skipper, yelled out to us, “Go go go, go now!!!” So we all hopped down and jumped in the water. I stuck my head down right away and did a great job of keeping it down, for about the entire time I was out there. It was amazing, absolutely breathtaking and unbelievable!! There were 10 or 15 dolphins swimming right below me, just a couple meters away!! They would swim and turn around and stuff, all right there, so close to us! I couldn’t believe it! It was hard to not smile and scream in excitement when I was underwater! Everyone said that was the best they’d seen above the water as well, they were all jumping up and doing stuff as well. Being underwater with these wild animals was so thrilling!! I don’t know how long we were out there, 5 or 10 minutes is all I think. It was just incredible, truly one of the most amazing experiences of my life! It’s just unreal to be there in the ocean with wild animals that come so close to you and you just get to float there in peace and watch their beauty and grace and everything you can’t see from above the water! Really a lucky thing to get to experience. It was freezing when we got out of the water on the boat, it was so windy and everything. The ride back in was quite choppy, we got pretty soaked with all the waves that kept hitting the boat, we joked it was like the Perfect Storm! That was an experience in itself really. Today was so fun. I’ve never been so terrified, and so exhilarated at the same time!! I was very proud of myself for going out every time, especially the three times so I could see the dolphins, it was totally worth it despite my fear! I feel like that was something I never thought I’d ever do, or I ever could do! But I did it successfully and it was absolutely perfect. Even though I was sick, exhausted, not feeling my best, and then freezing, it was more than worth it. The salt water was pretty disgusting, I gagged a lot today, but you just spit it out and move on. I was really glad I brought my heavy coat for out on the boat, I needed it after we got out of our wetsuits! The gave us hot chocie and biscuits and fruit, it was nice. The crew was fabulous - they were all so nice and helpful. There was this hammock thing off the side of the boat that a bunch of people went out on and rode over the ocean in it! A couple of the guys hung off the rope while we were going, too, it was funny, they got plenty of salt water in the mouth! I can’t believe how clear the water was everywhere we went, it was amazing. The lady on the boat was saying how that was probably the best seal swim she’s been on and a really great dolphin swim, so we were pretty lucky. We came back into Queenscliff and got Fish and Chips which are always delicious, even when I can’t really taste anything! I came back and took a shower right away, that salt doesn’t do anything good for my skin or hair, it was gross. Plus, I was freezing and still didn’t quite feel dry. So that did wonders, then I got into bed and fell asleep for almost three hours! I woke up, it was dark outside, and I was thinking oh no, I’ve slept into the night and now I’ll be all screwed up! Luckily it was only 7:30, and now I can definitely go back to sleep and probably sleep the entire night through until late. I went to visit Wookey 4 just to get out a little bit and they were playing Halo, made me think of the boys back home, it was funny. Of course, they weren’t near as good as you guys are! So, yeah, I had a really great day! I’m not sure if it was the best idea for me to go swim in the ocean with an ear infection and be out in the cold wind all wet, but I have antibiotics, so whatever! It was totally worth it. I can’t describe how breathtaking the whole experience was. I can’t believe I actually did that! Unfortunately, I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures, all I have are a few with the underwater camera, and with that I didn’t even get any of the dolphins because I was so concentrated on just enjoying it while they were there. I’m okay with it though, I was there, I got to see it!!

So, I apologize for the extreme wordiness here! But it was probably the best thing I’ve done since I’ve been here, totally exhilarating. I loved it. I hope you’re jealous. And I hope you leave a comment!! Come on! It’s bedtime for me. Hope you all are doing well and you have an enjoyable weekend. Mine will be relaxing and getting better. I really miss you and have recently been very thankful for all of you. It’s nice to be reminded of how wonderful the people you have in your life really are.


Here are some quotes, I feel like accomplishing things, and like I have things I want to get to, hopefully.

“Set your sights high, the higher the better. Expect the most wonderful things to happen, not in the future but right now. Realize that nothing is too good. Allow absolutely nothing to hamper you or hold you up in any way.” Eileen Caddy

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” Helen Keller


Love, Alissa