A Rosella! I took this picture in Toowoomba a few weeks ago.

A tree frog! This little guy lives in my friend's bathroom.

On The Road Again!

Hi Team,

My roommate Sonja and I are currently in Melbourne. We flew here last Thursday and have stayed with a friend in town. It's got great public transport, awesome vintage shopping, people with style, lots of good food, lots of live music, beautiful architecture, and it's not too far a drive into nature. We're leaving Melbourne this afternoon and will be spending the next two days driving the Great Ocean Road. In Australia you have to pay per MB of internet usage, so I won't be uploading any pictures whilst on the road, but I'll give updates whenever I can. We've rented a car and after driving the Great Ocean Road we'll head to Canberra, then to Sydney, then back to the Gold Coast. Only 17 more days and I'm home! Miss you all.

Mid-Semester Break!!

Now that I've got some time to sort through photos, I want to tell you about my mid-semester break adventures. I arrived home with over 500 photos, more than 25 mosquito bites, and a tan that makes it seem like my butt could glow in the dark. Too much information? Maybe.

I started my trip in Cairns on the 24th of September. Cairns is in the northern tip of Australia and was about a 2.5 hour flight from the Gold Coast. I spent 6 days hanging out in and around Cairns, which is a backpacker's haven with $2 meals at the pubs, a ton of hostels, a great walking path along the waterfront, and lots of amazing nature to explore. 



 

Cairns doesn't have a beach, so a lagoon was constructed at the waterfront to give everyone a place to hang out and cool down. In summer time, the weather in Cairns frequently reaches 40 degrees or more!



One of my favorite photos from the trip. There was a festival going on at the waterfront, and both this little girl and I got our faces painted.



I scared the camera out of focus.

One of my favorite spots in Cairns included the Night Market, which is open every night from 4:30 pm to 11 pm and has cheap asain food buffets which go on half price after 9 pm. I also really enjoyed Rusty's market, which is a farmer's market full of beautiful locally grown fruit and veggies and was luckily just around the corner from where I was staying.

Cairns is also one of the best places in the world from which to see the Great Barrier Reef. Of course, I took full advantage of my proximity to the reef, and spent a whole day snorkeling and diving at the outer reef, and I have a few hundred underwater photos and a sexy wetsuit tan to show for it. (I'll put up a bunch of my underwater photos from my Great Barrier Reef dive in their own post). Cairns is also within close proximity to the Daintree Rainforest, so I spent a day driving along the coast and up into the Daintree National Park where I saw some of the most amazing, enormous trees.

Gorgeous vines and trees.



I spotted this guy digging french fries out of a garbage can at a rest stop.

I also took a day drive about 3 hours into the middle of the country away from the coast where I really got a taste of what the outback is like. I saw lots of small, secluded towns that could only be reached by dirt roads and were populated by cattle farmers. I even saw a kangaroo!! That wasn't in the Zoo!! And we didn't run it over in with car!!

"Falling in love rocks"



Mossman's Gorge



After my time in Cairns, I jumped in a campervan and started heading down the coast. (Down means south, and the further South you get the colder the weather, which seems to go against my instincts).

I think I've bombarded you with enough pictures for now, and I've got numb-bum, so I'll share pictures from my campervan travels in another post.

Done! Done! Done!

I'm done my semester! Got all of my essays in, and now I'm a free bird. I've spent thepast few days of freedom going back and forth between the beach, the pool, and the couch -- it's been glorious. Now that I've had a few lazy days I'm starting to yearn to travel and explore a bit. My roommate Sonja and I have planned a trip to Melbourne for November 24th. We'll stay in Melbourne for just under a week, and then take 2 weeks to drive the Great Ocean Road and then back up the Coast to Brisbane, hitting up Sydney on the way. We're still trying to get all of our planning done, but the more we find out about what kinds of cool things we can see along the way, the more excited we're getting.

Since I last posted, a couple of fun things have traspired:

First, I had my birthday!

I invited a bunch of my friends to come over for a BBQ and some drinks, and then we headed out to dance. I really enjoyed the party, and best of all, my roommate Tessa made two pies for me! One pecan and one caramel nut. They were delicious.

Second, the Gold Coast hosted their annual V8 Supercars race. Our apartment building is located right along the race track, so we got a front row (and free!) seat to all of the action. Unfortunately, we also had to listen to the noise of the car race all day, which, let me tell you, is A LOT of noise.

It's been getting warmer and warmer here. The days are now consistently about 25 degrees at the peak of the day, which is more than warm enough for me. As much as I love the heat and the beach, the sun here is really strong, so I try to keep out of it as much as I can. I think I'll be really happy to escape the heat by the time my flight home comes about. However, not sure what my body will think of going from +25 to -25....

Boring Stuff

Hi Team,

I've been slogging through essay and exam season for the past two weeks, so please excuse the lack of posts. Friday is the last day of classes, and I have 3 essays due this day as well. The essay topics that I've taken on are really interesting, but a lot of work. Once I'm a free bird again, I'll be sharing lots and lots of photos and stories with you.

In the meantime, here is my theme song:

Coolangatta Beach Day

Coolangatta is a suburb about an hour long bus ride from where I live. It's known for its great surf and beautiful beaches, so a group of about 40 of us exchange students decided that it would be great to have a beach weekend there. We spent the day riding the waves, soaking up the sun, and listening to music. Then in the evening, we all spent the night at the same hostel and went out dancing together. One of my favorite Canadian bands, Hey Rosetta!, will be touring around Australia in the next few weeks, and they're playing a show in Coolangatta. Of course I bought my ticket a long time ago, and got to check out the nice venue where I'll be seeing them. They're playing the day after my birthday, which will be a pretty nice present.

 Here are some cool pictures I took at the Coolangatta beach with my friends.



Coolangatta Beach




Catching some waves



A friend we made on the way to the beach



Excited me with a poster for the upcoming Hey Rosetta! concert.





Tuckered out on the bus after a day of sun.



Midnight Pie

This travel blog is starting to turn into a food blog. I find I've got more time on my hands here than I usually have when I'm at uni in Canada, so I'm spending my free time doing a lot of baking. I think food is so beautiful, so I just can't help myself taking and sharing pictures of what I've made. Hope you don't mind.

I had a brutal few weeks during mid-semester exams, so after dragging my weary self home after my last exam, I couldn't help but celebrate my freedom from an overbearing workload by baking a pie. (I'm a pie girl, not a cake girl. But don't call me a tart. Hah!). About a week before this midnight pie event, I discovered a fruit and veggie market that sells their produce for at least half the price that the supermarkets sell their produce at. I bought an entire flat of 15 of those small plastic containers of strawberries for only $10. Yum!

Thus, I found myself at 10:30 pm starting to roll out pie crust and mix up the innards of a strawberry-rhubarb pie. As it turned out, I had just enough flour to make the pie crust, but not enough to dust on the counter top to keep the crust from sticking as I rolled it out. I couldn't get my pie crust off the counter-top, so ended up having to press fragments of crust together in the bottom of the pan using my knuckles. I also realized after mixing up the egg wash that I didn't have anything to brush the egg wash onto the pie crust, so I had to use my fingers, and unfortunately you can tell. But when that pie came out of the oven just past midnight, I didn't care that it looked kind of crappy -- it tasted sooo good! Besides, if my Grandpa Venour had been there, he would have said that it was going to look worse where it was going.

Aussie Music

I made friends with an Australian girl named Jaki who is really into the same genre of music as me. One of Jaki's favorite musicians, Andy Bull, came to the Gold Coast a few weeks ago, so she and I went to the concert together. The show was held in this teeny tiny bar not far from where I live, and there were only about 60 people there in total, so the concert was really intimate and fun. I bought Andy's EP and cannot stop listening to it. He sounds like a girl when he sings, but he is definitely a dude. Check him out!  http://www.myspace.com/andybull  My favorite song is called "Dog".

Pie in the Sky!

I was invited to a BBQ for a friend who was celebrating his 10 000th day on Earth, and I decided that pie is the best BBQ desert so I baked up these babies for the celebration.  I'd made this pie once before after seeing a reference to it on Dinner with Julie (http://dinnerwithjulie.com/) which is my favorite food blog and source of recipes. Julie is from Calgary, and hosts pie parties and get-togethers that I can't WAIT to take part in when I've moved home. The recipe I used, however, came from good ol' Martha: http://www.marthastewart.com/343295/raspberry-custard-pie . I'm totally in love with this pie, so I think I may have to make it monthly (at least!).  Thus, I will gladly bake this pie for anyone, anytime, anywhere.

I tried to get artsy with my pie shots.

Whales!

I saw humpback whales jumping out of the water from my balcony today. It was soooo coooool!!

Rainbow Cake!!!

My good friend Maike turned 22 this past weekend and threw a potluck birthday party at her apartment. I've been on a major baking spree lately, and decided to endeavour to make this impressive-looking rainbow cake that I'd seen on a few food blogs. I was really thrilled with the end product, and thought I might toot my own horn and share some pictures with y'all.

The cake is just a basic vanilla pound cake recipe.



I divided the batter into separate, equal portions and dyed each bowl of batter a different colour using food colouring.

Each bowl of batter had to baked separately, although I have seen other food bloggers pour each bowl of coloured batter one on top of the other to make a marbled rainbow cake. This also looks pretty cool.

I layered the slabs of cake, putting vanilla buttercream
icing in the middle.

The final product! I covered the rest of the cake in undyed buttercream icing, then used my icing piping bag to add a little pizazz!

I was really, really excited for Maike to cut into the cake. I think the best part of making this cake is the reaction you get from the person who cuts it open.

I think it looks so beautiful!!

Canada vs. Australia Rugby

The Rugby World Cup starts on September 9th in New Zealand, and in preparation for the World Cup, Canada and Australia played a match here on the Gold Coast. Forty of us exchange students got organized and bought tickets to the game. There was a surprising number of Canadian fans at the game, and all were dressed to the nines in flags and red and white painted faces. I spent the whole afternoon the day before the game searching for face paint, and couldn't find any! So I decided I was going to try to make my own face paint out of cornstarch, face cream, and food colouring. Unfortunately, I couldn't make the facepaint red enough, and ended up painting my face with and subsequently washing off a big pink maple leaf. I didn't even have a red shirt or sweater to wear to the game, so shamefully settled on using my red lipstick to paint a small maple leaf on my cheek.

Canada actually didn't get their butts kicked, which was good, considering we Canadians don't have the rugby culture that they have here in Oz.

When the game was over, many of the players greeted fans and gave autographs on the field. There was one particularly cute Canadian player who my roommate decided I needed a picture with. His name was Connor. He was very cute indeed.

Housewarming Party

Two weeks ago, my roommates and I hosted a housewarming party for our beautiful apartment. Collectively we baked three cakes and about 4 dozen cookies and brownies to serve at the party. We also served tea and hot chocolate. My favorite baked good was a chocolate layer cake that I had invented about a week earlier. The cake has orange rind icing in the middle and is covered in whipping cream -- really yummy! I also really loved the sugar cookies that we iced in all different colours.

There is another group of 4 exchange students living on a different floor of our building, so we decided that we would jointly run the housewarming party. Thus, guests spent the first few hours at our apartment indulging in baked goods, and then we headed downstairs for pizza, chips and drinks. Someone brought a guitar to the party, so later in the evening we all took turns passing the guitar around and singing. All in all, the party was a great success, and and a perfect excuse to bake until I dropped!

Australian Damper

As I mentioned in my last post, half-way though last weekend's horseback riding trip our group stopped for tea and bread. The bread that we had was traditional Australian damper, which is a simple unleavened bread that was common fare in the bush because the ingredients could easily be carried around. The damper we had was warmed up in the fire for us, and was delicious with jam or honey on top.

This evening I was craving something to nibble on, so I thought I'd try my hand at making damper, since it's so easy and quick. Here's the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

• 2. cups self-raising flour (I only had plain flour, so used that and added a teaspoon of baking powder)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 - 1½ cups milk
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons butter

Mix together flour, salt, and sugar. Cut in the butter until fine crumbs form. Add milk slowly and mix to form a soft dough. Knead lightly on a floured surface until smooth. Shape into a round loaf, brush with milk, and cut a cross in the top.

Bake at 375° F for 30-40 minutes.

The bread is very dense and is really, really good smothered in butter and eaten warm. Apparently the drovers in the outback used to make this dough, wrap it around sticks and cook it over the coals of a fire. Damper is still frequently made by Australians for dinner parties and get-togethers.

Give the recipe a try and let me know what you think!

Horseback Riding

I went hoseback riding in the hinterland yesterday with my roomates and a few friends. The landscape that we rode through was so lush and different to what I was used to. We trekked through the forest, where all sorts of exotic plants and trees were growing in abundance, and there were tiny colourful birds flitting all over the place and calling from the treetops. Halfway through our 3 hour ride we stopped to "boil the billy" (boil water for tea over a fire) and have some bread and jam. My horse's name was Jag, and he had a beautiful polka-dotted bum, and was a good listener.




Boiling the Billy

  



Me, Weibke, Siri, Sofie, Sonja, (Anna - photographer)

 

Jag's polka-dot bum




Some of the lush vegetation

 

Whale Rescue!

Just a few weeks ago I was on my balcony greeting the day when I noticed a kerfuffle of some sort going on just down the beach from where I live. Curious, I threw my running shoes on and headed towards the big crowd. I discovered that a baby humpback whale had beached itself overnight and the crowd surrouding him was watching as a team of experts did what they could to get him back into the water. About five minutes afer I arrived, the calf, with much help, did in fact make it back into the water, and he was guided out to sea to be reunited with his mother.

Here's a link to an news article with some pictures and more info, if you're interested:

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/rescuers-are-working-to-save-a-baby-humpback-whale-that-has-beached-itself-at-surfers-paradise/story-e6freoof-1226110640129

My New Apartment

Just last week I moved out of my homestay accommodation and into my own apartment! My new apartment is right on the beach and in the heart of Surfers Paradise. Surfers is basically the city centre of the Gold Coast because it's where many of the restaurants, bars, and funky hangout spots are.  My apartment is a 2 bedroom, two bathroom space on the 23rd floor of a building equipped with an indoor and outdoor pool, indoor and outdoor hot tub, sauna, gym, and tennis court. I share the apartment with 3 other international students, which means that each of us shares a room with one other girl, but so far we are all getting along really well and our bedrooms are big enough that we still feel like we have our own personal space. We have a breath-taking view of the ocean from our living room, and I feel really happy and relaxed in my new space, and super lucky to be where I am. 

Here are some pictures of the apartment so you can picture where I'm at:

 The front entrance.Living Room -- note the view!

Built-in bar

 Kitchen

Dining Room

View from the balcony

 Night-time view from the kitchen window

My roommates! From left to right: Sonja (German), Anna (German), Tessa (Dutch)

This weekend was our first weekend all together, so I baked a chocolate layer cake with orange rind icing in the middle and covered in whipping cream. It was pretty yummy, if I do say so myself. There's another group of our friends who just moved onto the 12th floor of our building yesterday. Those girls haven't had their power turned on yet, so we're going to cook dinner all together at our place today, and then watch Australia's Next Top Model on T.V. while drinking sparkling wine.