Spring Break- Cape Tribulation

We arrived in Cairns to hot hot heat and sun! It was fantastic. Our hostel was quaint and we immediately searched through brochures of things to do. The first day trip we were able to book was Cape Tribulation National Park and Coastal drive. It was really beautiful.

We set out early and drove to the national park for bush walking, lunch on Cape Tribulation beach and Alexandra Lookout- considered a view of where the rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef.

We also took in a view of The Low Islands, where Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray. There was so much beautiful scenery in the rainforests and trees that looked like they were from Jurassic Park- it turns out they were! Some of the trees were thousands of years old and grow only 1 centimeter each year.

We were also able to swim in a fresh water river- which was a highlight for me being a girl from Lake Erie. It was glorious.

The day finished with a drive back down the coastal road at sunset, stopping at Rex Lookout as the clouds started turning purple. It was a great way to start off our trip :)

Easter Break Approaches!

Happy Almost Easter!

Here in Australia we get TWO reading weeks- the one this semester is for Easter Break. Last semester I took off to New Zealand for 8 days and now I'm heading to Cairns in Northern Australia and the Whitsundays.

Me and my British friend will be leaving on Saturday afternoon and returning on Monday. We are very excited to swim on The Great Barrier Reef. Also, the more north you go in Australia the hotter it gets, unlike Canada. My tan is starting to fade as the weather here gets colder so I cannot wait to throw on my bikini and spend some more time in the sunshine!

I'll be blogging when I get back so you all probably won't hear from me until after the trip. But rest assured I will fill you in :)

Teddy Bears and Gender Stereotypes

This week my friends and I went to Build a Bear- to build a teddy bear obviously!
The whole shop is quite a performance. You pick a 'skin' of sorts of the bear colour and shape you like. Then an employee holds him onto a long metal pole that shoots fluff into him. It can be soft, medium or hard to the touch. Then you put a "heart" into the bear. Most are red satin ones, however, for $10 you can make yours have a heart that beats when you squeeze it (probably the creepiest thing I've ever heard/felt).
Then it's time to close your eyes, make a wish and give the heart a kiss (humiliating for over 20 year old girls), but we went along with it.
Now it's time to shop for your bear- and here is where my problem began. Is my bear a boy or a girl?

They had sports outfits, princess dresses, male and female versions of everything- I had never seen so much pink and baby blue in my life. The girls I was with b-lined for the pink fluffy sparkles, but I was torn. Why can't my teddy bear just be a bear? I chose an Australian themed t-shirt- something cute and basic that reminded me of my time here. It also says "hug freely" which I love. I picked a black bear cuz I dont have one that colour.

I neglected to chose pants, glasses, shoes, cell phones, leashes, an ipad or sports equipment for my bear- it's a bear of simple needs. And my favourite bear has only worn a bow tie his whole 14 year old life.

And now came the problem: Is your bear a boy or a girl? What are you going to name it?

I don't know... I wanted to name it Tim Tam after the tasty cookies here in Australia (and I have a reputation for naming all my stuffed animals after flavours- i.e. chocolate, vanilla, walnut, strawberry, cherrycheesecake and now Tim Tam).  

I feel like I'm too old and too educated now to want to define things by gender. I've always been an advocate of gay rights and all the issues involved with that community- now this bear was giving me a crisis! People have been guessing that he's a boy because his name is Tim Tam, he's wearing  t-shirt so he's a boy, but she's fluffy so she's a girl. It's a freakin teddy bear!

*Lightbulb* a teddy bear I will use to educate my friends- meet my GENDERLESS BEAR- shocking, I know. I refer to this bear as an it- or by it's name Tim Tam (TT for short). Point- pink does not mean girls, pants and t-shirts don't mean boys. If more people think they way I think maybe I wont have to have a mini meltdown in Build A Bear ever again.

I want to teach my kids this too one day. You can like WHATEVER you want to like, REGARDLESS of your gender. That's important! Be comfortable, not conforming.

I learned a lot that day at build a bear hahaha. But seriously, these are the things I think of. 

Tim Tam- Halle Beary- Kiki

Tower Parade- I will survive

Last week we had our residence tower parade. My residence is divided into 12 separate buildings with 3 floors each. For the parade party we had to dress up in the theme of our tower (mine is Mardi Gras) and then do a dance for the rest of the tower. The dances were judge by our tower Warden and some other people affiliated with the college.

I was given the lucky task of designing a dance for our tower to the songs of Mamma Mia and I will surive and then teaching it to the 20 or so other people that wanted to participate. We all got together the night before to practice and then when it came time for the parade... WE WON!!

It was so awesome to get the recognition- and we were really the only tower with an intensely choreographed dance. Here it is on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUpHrp7XRvE

It was really fun and getting dress up goofy was great too. Here are some pictures of the people I live with.

The guys, dressed in their best!

The girls :)

Future Music Festival Melbourne

Hey readers!
Sorry I've been slacking on the blogging lately. My course work has taken off at full speed so I've been very busy. I've switched out of my terrible internship class and am now in a much better online publishing class (how perfect right?) I am now a writer for upstart magazine http://www.upstart.net.au/2012/03/05/meet-the-new-upstart-team-3/

I wrote my first article on an amazing electronic music festival I attended with my british friend and a friend from the states. We had an amazing time. It was an all day event from 1:30pm until 10pm at night. I had the most sore feet in the world, but it was worth every minute. Here is my article from that event: http://www.upstart.net.au/2012/03/13/put-your-hands-up-future-music-festival/

And here are the photos! I got to see Jessie J, Gym Class heros, The Naked and the Famous, Tinie Tempah, Fatboy Slim, Skrillex and Swedish House Mafia- what a day!

KONY 2012

"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything"- Peter Marshall

Ladies and Gentlemen, my heart is sad and my brain is angry. After viewing the video for KONY 2012 
http://vimeo.com/37119711 seen here, I was really inspired by the group Invisible Children. I'm not going to really explain the video, because I hope you all watch it for the information.


I am a mediocre activist. I like peoples pages on facebook, I sign up for petitions and give my email, and I always sponsor my friends in their runs and races and fundraisers against cancer, or anything else that plagues the world, $20 here and there to help. It matters to them, so it matters to me. But now I am sad that not everyone can get behind me and this cause that I think is so important. Friends that I've supported want to be cynical, want to be experts. They post videos and blogs and articles about holes in the plan of Invisible Children. They want to be right, they don't want to act, don't want to change and I think that is taking the easy way out.


I think that Invisible Children did a really great thing. They have worked up to the goal of getting noticed and their issue getting noticed. It has also undergone changes over the years it took to get a following and get action from the government. However, all this attention has seemed to place more responsibility on the group than they really have. The group wants to motivate the U.S. government, informed leaders and experts, to help people in need. How they help is up to them, as it always has been. People are having to dig so deep to shit on this campaign- criticising the financials of the organisation, saying that the Ugandan people are safe, that the information is out of date, that Kony isn't a big deal anymore, that they have EXAGGERATED his crimes.


 I think it's great to bring awareness to an issue that hasn't got a lot of attention, maybe then more educated people will come up with a plan. Maybe then Kony and others can be stopped. What's wrong with that idea? People who are supporting them and their video aren't claiming to be experts on Uganda; they are not claiming that they've always cared- because we didn't know before. We are more aware now and hopefully will become increasingly aware. Cynics in your cozy little bubble, you don't have to change, but maybe butt out of criticising those who do. No plan is perfect. I REPEAT, NO PLAN IS PERFECT. All the money and all the resources in the world cannot come to a perfect conclusion because human beings have a choice on how to act, but the point is, they can act.


I don't think that everyone has to agree with the STOP KONY campaign, hell, they don't even have to like it. But I don't think that it's simply good journalism to promote both perspectives. I don't think that that kind of "balance" is necessary in the reporting. These people are trying to do something good, to make a change about an issue THEY care about. If you don't care about it, and if you don't have a better plan, then please, I'm begging you- shut the f&^% up.


I want to believe in the good, and the possible, and maybe even the naive. I want to believe in the kids, and change and safety. When I go to sleep I have my own bed, I have a door that locks. Appreciate the simple things you have; and there is nothing wrong with trying to help others to get the same.


This is not my eloquent arguement against the criticisms, although I do have some of those too. This is my call for people to think positive, take the hard road, because it's easy to fight for the status quo- after all, it's take Invisible Children 8 years to change it.
You don't have to stand for this, but for God's sake stand for something.


If you read to the end of this I'm impressed.

Canadian Charm

I decorated my res room this week. I used old postcards and birthday cards as well as the flag I bought for the rugby world cup in New Zealand last semester. Then I went to target and got a bedspread and matching pillow case for $15. It made my bland room a lot more cozy and a bit closer to home.

They are always looking for ways to keep us busy here on residence. Each Thursday night is the local campus pub, Eagle Bar, night. This week was particularily rowdy because of a blow up fight ring they had in the beer garden. Here is a picture of two of my Aussie friends going to battle!

This was my outfit on Thursday night

Finally, this friday night we had a family dinner taco night. Out of the 6 people that came no two people were from the same country- pretty cool!

First day of Classes

UGH! What a long day!


Classes for me began today after the bar night last night. I was a good girl and in bed by 1:30 to get up for my 10am class, however, living in residence finally took it's toll.
A few of my floormates who did not have an early class crashed in giggling around 4am. It's a good thing I love them dearly or my floor would be short a few students haha. Needless to say I was dragging my bum to class at 10am. I also got up way too early at 8:30 for fear that the shower would be occupied. Evidently I'm the only one stupid enough to have a class the morning after the regular Tuesday pub night, and was ready a full 40 minutes early for class. 


My class is Journalism Internship which begins at 10am and finishes at 1pm. However, this class only runs for 4 or 5 weeks before we are set off on our own, meaning after that time I won't have anymore lecture, great! Unfortunately, my prof, making the most of his free time, has TRIPLE booked our class time. Meaning he teaches from 9:30-10:30, shows up to our class half an hour late, and then leaves another house early at noon for his other class. It was very frustrating and you could tell he was a flustered as we were about the whole situation. Not to mention my classroom is a little bit like this:

There was room for 20 of us, and 45 showed up! People we sitting on desks and the floor practically on top of one another. I guess it was a good unintentional ice breaker. The final cherry on top was that the prof proceeded to hand out 5 different sheets of instructions and then read them aloud to us. I find it so funny that we are assumed to be master's students that haven't yet learned to read. Sigh- the first week is always like this, hopefully next week will be better.

My last class was really enjoyable though, it's called The Working Journalist. All of our assignments (if they are good enough) will be published here: http://www.upstart.net.au/

I'll let you know if anything I do gets there. We get to interview several journalists (which we have to hunt down ourselves) and write about them. We have to turn in a piece of writing almost every week, but I'm up for the challenge and am looking forward to doing less academic and more practical writing.

My goal for the journalist interviews is to hunt down the big players that no one thinks will give an interview, hoping that they will throw me a bone- I am thinking of making my first target Rick Mercer- go big or go home! Plus I want to add some Canadian stars to the list of Aussies and Americans that have already been interviewed. Last semester someone interviewed a guy from RollingStone- highly impressive.

Well the days of sleeping in are officially over and I'll be sitting my over achiever bum in the library tomorrow morning! Wish me luck!

Hot and complaining

Good morning Canada!
it's still Saturday night here- well technically sunday morning at 12:45am and it's SUPER HOT!
Check out my new youtube video that was made in a deliriously hot state. Enjoy the cold, and send me some snow!
http://youtu.be/ugEwEz0h_o4

Bars and Beaches

Orientation week finally comes to a close tomorrow. Classes start on monday and I think everyone will be glad and find that relaxing compared to all the daily activities we've been doing lately.
The most recent activities involved a "city tour" - also known as a pub crawl- last night in Brunswick, which is a trendy bar area just outside the downtown core of Melbourne. We packed up into buses and dressed our best. It was a great night out and nice to see everyone cleaned up instead of dirty or scribbled on.

Me and my Aussie friend :)

The best dressed guys in the bar (and two of my buddies) from Mexico and Brazil

If you went to pee first in the the bar you had to get the toilet seat around your head! I held it all night!

The main group I hang out with- Latvia, Sydney, Saskatchewan, Kiwi, Melbourne and me!

The bars we went to were more pub style and the last two had a band, then we all packed up on the bus and went back home, with smiles and sore feet.
The next morning we were up early to take public transit to the beach (with walking and waiting it takes over an hour and a half) but in 40 degree heat we were happy to be on air conditioned (AirCon, if you're an Aussie) public transit.
St. Kilda beach was packed and the water felt amazing and cool. However the sand was so hot you had to run across it!

Me and my friend who lives close to where I grew up- we both swam in Lake Erie at Port Burwell beach as kids and are now swimming in the Ocean in Australia together!

Me and my friend from Russia, shows how clear the water is in Port Phillip

Russia really wanted a coconut because she thought that there were be vendors selling them like in Thailand, simply because we were on a beach and she saw palm trees. When we came back with one we bought from the super market she was very surprised!! We used a friends cork screw to open it and drink from it. It was a pretty creative move and the milk was delicious!

Wish me luck on classes this week! 

Orientation Week- my poor liver!

Hey everybody!


So I haven't been blogging because I'm been in the middle of a very busy Orientation Week in my residence. I'm living in Chisholm College at La Trobe University. It's known for having a mixture of international, second year, and first year students. I've met some amazing people and participated in some really fun activities.
Here is my most recent Vlog after our scribble party:
http://youtu.be/35jVlfaVeLQ


On Friday I arrived and got all moved into my tiny res room. Fighting jet lag my goods friend Detroit took me to the mall to buy food, toiletries and cooking supplies that I couldn't be bothered to bring from Canada.
Since then I've been to a Toga Party, a Scribble Party, and a Moat Party. Which has been really fun and a geat way to get to know people.


The people on my floor are really great, we have a few aussies, a guy from Latvia, a girl from Russia, a girl from California, a girl from Amsterdam, and me!

my Korean friend and i at the scribble party

Sneaking into the other college party in my toga

Feeling short at the carnival

The moat party- basically a party down by the moat on campus

Classes start on Monday!

Up in the Air

Hey everyone!


Wow, I can't believe I only wrote one post in January, sorry about that. It was a relaxing and mostly uneventful month. To catch you up a bit, the last little while I've been spending time with family, babysitting my adorable neighbours, and most recently spent 10 days in Mississauga helping my bff move himself into a new apartment.
Now it's time to get packing again! I figure by now my suitcase should be able to pack itself, but alas, here we go.
The goal for this time around is to bring less junk. I'm sticking to clothes, accessories and electronics this time around as I left my pictures, jewlery and toiletries in Australia for the past few months.


A few changes this time around for my second and final semester, the most important being that I will now be living in Chisholm College residence. I'm hoping this will give me the opportunity to meet some more people as a lot of my friends last semester were only on exchange and have therefore returned to their respective countries. It's going to be weird going back without them. Some of us are still there though and living in res will allow me to be closer to them, campus, hopefully a student job, the library and of course, the parties. Not to mention what I'll save on cab fare and public transit every week (probably about $50 AUS).


Another thing I'm going to be doing is creating Vlogs to go along with my Blogs. For those of you who don't know what Vlogging is, it's creating videos about what you're doing and stuff. I'll be writing and posting links to Youtube where you can see me have probably a 30 second chat about what's going on and give you a tour of the area and stuff like that. So if you go to www.youtube.com and look up Land of Aus 2012 that is my channel! Here is my first short video: 
http://youtu.be/TCpEzTPRGBI


Also here is the Youtube channel I'll be posting on that you can subscribe to:
http://www.youtube.com/user/LandofAus2012/videos

So tomorrow (technically today) is the day! I fly out of Toronto's Pearson airport at 6:50pm and land in LA 5 hours later, then I head off to Melbourne, where I will arrive the morning of Friday, February 17th. I can't exactly say I'm looking forward to this terribly long flight again, but I am pretty excited about new releases for in flight movies! I'll try to update the blog as I go along and let you all know when I arrive.


Thanks for reading, and I promise there will be many more posts to come!

The Joy of Doing Nothing (Im not dead)

Hey readers!


Happy New Year to you all! How was the party? How have the resolutions been going? I hope everyone had a great time.

Me, BFF, my best friend from 1st year Uni, and my high school friend on NYE

Life has not been blog worthy lately, but I feel like you may have thought that I had died in a freak Amish cart accident and decided to update you on a home sweet home life. 
Recently my bff that I was shacking up with in Ottawa has found a fantastic new job in Missisauga that literally came about over night. This meant that we had to have his birthday/good bye party on Friday Jan. 6th, recoup via advil and a lake full of water on Saturday, pack til we passed out on Sunday and on Monday drive the 6 hours to the GTA (Greater Toronto Area for all of my foreign readers). It was an absolute whirlwind. Bff is now staying with his oh-so-kind uncle until he can find a place of his own, which I will promptly invade. 
For now we are spending weekends together and during the week I am sitting at home, trying not to spend money, which, lemme tell you is no small task. Hence, here is a world travellers turned couchpotato's guide to doing nil.


Step 1) Sleep in as LATE as possible- the day is then shorter and you have less time to fill with the following mindless activities

Step 2) when you wake, check Facebook, Twitter, your personal and school email, read other people's more interesting blogs and then repeat
Step 3) get out of bed and brush your teeth, being a slug is no excuse for poor hygiene- that and my mom works from home so she has to smell my aweful breath if I neglect this step

Step 4) flick through the TV guide and see what you want to watch- I highly recommend Slice, HGTV, and TLC as they are reality stations that offer real people doing things like renovating houses, buying homes and getting married. You will become an expert in these activities while also enjoying a bit of drama, and feel like you are kind of learning something without watching the news and feeling disappointed in those who we allow to steer cruise ships these days and other sad scenarios.
Step 5) eat leftovers, lots of leftovers
Step 6) paint your nails, read children's books, and baby sit your adorable next door neighbour
Step 7) eat dinner with your family and then go back to steps 2,4 and 6 until it is time for bed.


All in all the time off is not so bad. I'm absolutely exhausted from travelling all over the place recently and am catching up on good reading and indulging in cable, which I dont have any other time that I am not at home as it is expensive.


Looking forward to updating you all with more exciting tales in the near future. I have potentially very exciting news but I wont blog about it until it's a sure thing- cue the cliffhanger! 

Also, it's my dad's birthday today, Happy birthday Daddy xox

The date for me to return to Australia is February 15th!