Time is flying!!!

I can't believe it has been another week already! I wish time would slow down!! Here are the recent highlights:

-Vegemite! I decided last week that I was going to force myself to eat a piece of Vegemite toast every day so that I could like it by the time I leave.  After a few days, I have found that I actually enjoy my Vegemite toast, and have even had cravings for it.  I guess it is an acquired taste!  For those of you who don't know what Vegemite is, here's a link to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vegemite

-Mt. Kiera.  I need to start training for my New Zealand hike, so I asked around to see if anyone would hike Mt. Kiera with me.  Mt. Kiera is right up the hill from Uni, and takes a good 2 hours to hike to the top.  My Australian friend Scott said he'd go, so on Thursday afternoon we ventured out.  During our hike I was drilling him with questions about poisonous snakes and spiders, being what I thought was a paranoid foreigner.  He rattled off names of a few critters but assured me that I would not be lucky enough to see any of them during my short time in Australia.  Fifteen minutes after this conversation however, I was leading the way up some stairs, and all of a sudden a long brown snake, about the width of my arm, quickly slithered away.  Scott told me that it had been a King Brown--the 2nd most poisonous snake in the world.  I WAS FREAKING OUT!  After that I refused to go back down the mountain the way we came up, and we didn't have any more close encounters.  I feel lucky to have seen one, and also to not have gotten bit!  I doubt I'll be training there for my hike anymore though.  The rest of the hike was beautiful.  Neon green moss was growing the the boulders around the trail, colorful wildflowers lined the pathway in spots, and the view of Wollongong from the top was breathtaking.  

-Dinner club.  A few friends and I have decided that each week we're going to eat out at a new local restaurant.  This week we went to a really good Vietnamese place called Mylan.  It was such a nice change from our dinning hall food!  Afterwards we got ice cream and ate it while walking down the coast. I still can't believe that I'm living in a beach town! 

-Royal National Park.  Yesterday was probably one of my favorite days here in Australia so far! Me and seven other friends caught a train early in the morning to Symbio Wildlife Park where we got to feed kangaroos, pet a baby koala, and see other cool animals.  It was on a list of 50 things to do here in the Illawara region, which we're going to try to get through before we leave!  After the park, we rode the train up the coast some more to the Royal National Park and set off on a 7 mile hike through the Australian wilderness.  I was still very paranoid about running into some more snakes, but luckily that didn't happen.  The terrain we hiked through was really variable.  Sometimes we were walking down a dirt road, other times we were hiking through tall grass, and we also had to climb up and down boulders.  We saw a waterfall and went for a swim in crystal clear rock pools.  After our swim the sky got pretty dark and it started down pouring.  We were concerned about making it back in time to catch the 5:30 train because it was the only one leaving the station that day, so we ended up running up these muddy, rocky hills in the rain, just praying we'd make the train.  We made it though, and we were really proud of ourselves!  It felt like we were training for the Army.  

-Tasmania! I booked my flight to Tasmania today with a friend of mine.  We're going to go explore the island for a weekend and I can't wait.  It's supposed to be a beautiful place!  They also have the Cadbury chocolate factory there, so maybe we'll be able to snag a few free samples! :)

That's all for now! I'm going to learn how to surf next weekend, so I'll hopefully have more exciting things to say about that next time!  I hope the weather keeps warming up over there in the good ol' midwest! 

love.love.love.