Updated Announcement:

I'm a really lazy bitch, which means I'll only update my Livejournal from now on. Never thought I'd say that, but Livejournal's just way easier to handle so I don't care about training my rudimentary HTML-skills anymore at the moment. I'm like weeks behind here already anyway and I really don't feel like investing the time to upload everything over here. Especially not since I'm having the busiest time of the semester at the moment. So come over to my Livejournal and you can read and see everything there.
Cheers!

Clothes to send home immediately and never think about again until January:
Long pants
Short pants
Long skirts
Short skirts
Socks
Sweatshirts
T-shirts
Singlets
Pyjamas

Clothes to keep:
Underwear. Although that may become a bit too warm occasionally.

Honestly. If today is any indication of how the next 3 months are gonna be I won't need clothes. Which just proves again that the weather reports here are bullshit, since it was supposed to be 27�C here. Newsflash to the people from ABC, 7, Nine, Ten and SBS: IT'S 27�C IN MY ROOM ALREADY YOU MORONS! And it's on the north side of the house!!! Even though it's windy outside it's at least 35�C. But I shouldn't complain, at least it's not 15�C and raining like in Germany. ;o)

Oh, and by the way: if anybody is interested in the bullshit interview I did for the TOEFL Access website go HERE and read my "student success story"...lol ;o) All the other unis just call it "profile", but nooo, Sahori and I are success stories obviously...lol ;o) I hope that means they can't let us fail courses...lol ;o)

I should work. Really. I should. I need to get that damn competitor analysis done. At least. Not to mention my tactics. But I keep thinking "Oh, I've got another 4 days." Which means I'll laze around until Saturday and on Sunday I'll panic again. That's the way to go. Not to mention that I still don't have a clue what to do for photography.

And another episode of "Some things are better said in German": Ich mach echt drei Kreuze wenn die endlich alle ihre Schei�-Urlaubsfotos haben. Last night almost everybody was over and Josefin wanted her DVD burned. But she didn't want all pictures, nooo, she wanted to pick the ones she wanted. Out of 2000 photos. Which probably would have taken her around 2 hours (not including the burning), but then everybody kinda switched over to my room (while I was watching tv and didn't even know about it) and started a picture-party. Which took them roughly until after 11pm. Argh. Not to mention that Hendrik and Nohad had stopped by earlier that day already and cost me like 2 hours. And right after Josefin left Ashley showed up with 2 dvds. Someone rescue me.

Okay, need to go and find a bigger box to send stuff home. Seems like I'm gonna keep buying stuff, so a bigger box it is!

Nicole's being a bad girl today and is skipping her classes. Why? Cuz I'm too lazy to get up, cuz I don't wanna see Martin, cuz I didn't write the script for TV Journalism and cuz I didn't read the Unit guideline or did the research for pr. Enough reasons? Good. Which on the other hand means I'm not getting my midsemester reviews, which I totally forgot about until half an hour ago. Hm. I'll survive I guess.

I told myself I'll work at home instead of going to class, but I just can't get myself to get up. I have to do some reading and really need to write my competitor analysis for pr (and preferrably some of my tactics, too) and I really need to think about what I wanna do for photography (preferrably nothing, which won't happen, though).

Did I mention we didn't get John Mayer Tickets? Concert was sold out in like 10 minutes. We tried calling, but we didn't even get through and until we could finally get Internet access 10 minutes later it was sold out already. Bugger. We were hoping he's maybe give an additional concert seeing how fast the first one sold out, but nothing so far. =(

I'm sending home my first package with clothes and stuff, and congratulations to me! It's gonna cost around 200 Dollars to send it home. Yippie. =P I mean, I could send it via seamail, which would be way cheaper, but I don't trust ships. I don't know why and I know it's most likely stupid, but airmail feels so much safer.

Okay, I guess I need to get up now, otherwise I'll never get anything done today and I desperately need to get some stuff done.

I could ramble forever today, but taking in mind that nobody probably wants to read a whole novel here (and in all honesty, I've only written down a few notes and barely remember anything), I'll just give you a short rundown of springbreak.

We started out on a great note: our taxi didn't show up. We had booked a maxi-taxi for 2:45am and it didn't show up until 4. Which meant that a)we all got up in the middle of the night for nothing and b)we were damn late for our flight. We caught it, though (but only after the cow at the check-in desk made me give her my newly bought insect repellent because it obviously was flammable - there went my 5 dollars), even had time for a detour through the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Drive Thru (so cool! First KK drive thru I've ever seen) and arrived in Cairns around 9. Flying into Cairns is really beautiful, with the Coral Sea and the Great Barrier Reef on one side and the rainforest, that practically dips into the ocean on the other. Went on to Port Douglas, where we stayed the next few days.

Friday (after lying on Four-Mile-Beach all of Thursday) we rented two cars and went into Daintree Rainforest. Waaaay better than the "rainforest" in Thailand was and we even saw a Cassowary, which is an endangered animal up in Queensland. They only got about 60 in the region left. Admittedly, a very ugly bird, but nevertheless something special...lol ;o)

Saturday we took a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef to do some snorkelling. Of course Nicole got seasick again (I don't even know why I keep on doing those boat-tours, it's the same damn thing everytime), so I spent most of the first few hours trying not to add to the ecosystem by puking on it. I had promised Diana to go on the glassbottom-boat tour with her (since she didn't want to snorkel) and that made everything even worse, cuz the smaller the boat, the more nauseous I get. And that was right before lunch. Let's just say I didn't exactly eat a lot afterwards. ;o) At the second site we went to I contemplated just shooting myself I was feeling so sick, but then a guy of the crew told me I could either be sick onboard and not see anything, or just get into the water and make the nausea worth it. I figured he was kinda right, so I went into the water (even convinced Diana, who's scared of water practically, to try it) and what do you say, no seasickness anymore! =) Snorkelling was nice, but it wasn't as great as I expected it to be. I mean, there were a lot of corals and stuff that I hadn't seen before, but there weren't as many fish as I expected. But it was nice nonetheless.

Sunday we just went to the Markets at the Port Douglas Marina, chilled a bit on Four Mile Beach (well, I was busy staying in the shade since I was already burned like crazy - you can really feel the hole in the ozone layer here) and then went back to Cairns where we were gonna pick up our car Monday morning. Went to Gilligan's (a club) at night, which was just horrible. I had been going out with the group for the past few days, but mostly to pubs and stuff, so it was alright, but that club was just horrible. So I sat around, watching everyone's things and not having fun at all, but of course, nobody cared. Since it was kinda far to walk to the hostel and there are strange people in the streets in Cairns, I didn't exactly wanna walk home alone, so I had to stay until the club closed and people finally started going home. That was the last night I went out with them, by the way.

The whole Monday was spent driving down to Airlie Beach in our new Toyota Tarago (we had to be really creative with the luggage ;o)) and the Tuesday was spent just lying on the beach in Airlie Beach. Well, more at the lagoon in Airlie Beach, since they don't really have great beaches. And we did a little shopping. Only a little, cuz there's pretty much only one street in Airlie. Wednesday we did a 2-Island-Cruise out to Hamilton and Whitsunday Island. Hamilton Island is one big resort, so nothing special there, although the beach was kinda nice. And I took a picture with a koala finally (well, I know I got one already, but this time I was finally allowed to hold it. And it was a baby, too!). On Whitsunday Island we went to famous Whitehaven Beach, which...well...is supposed to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world (I've seen better) with the whitest sand in the world (I've seen whiter). Hmm. In my opinion the Maya Bay sand was better, but the Whitehaven Beach sand squeaked when you walked on it, which was kinda funny. I was counting on going up to the Hill Inlet, which is the actual beautiful part of the beach, but we stopped at exactly the other end, almost 6km away from the inlet, so no way we had time to go there - which sucked majorly if you ask me.

Thursday we got up late and did a Bushwalk to Coral Beach in the afternoon, which kinda sucked, cuz the way was pretty bad and the beach was well...all corals and no shade (but of course, people don't give a shit if I burn to death, but more about that later). Friday we drove back to Cairns, stopping at some waterfalls that were really beautiful on the way. And Saturday we lay around at the lagoon in Cairns for a while before we had to catch our flight.

Vacation with 8 people is annoying. It really is. So I really have to let off at least some steam here. I didn't get dinner for the first 3 days, cuz those girls need an average of 2 hours to get ready for anything. If you're in a small town like Port Douglas, you can't expect to get dinner at 11:30pm for god's sake. So it doesn't matter how beautiful you look, it's good for nothing!!! I think I spent a whole day of that vacation just waiting for them to get ready for stuff.

Nohad is annoying the crap out of me. I once thought she was nice, but she's a self-absorbed, arrogant and conceited little bitch who knows everything better. She's such a drama queen, everything has to go her way, and if people don't do it, she just whines until they do. The only thing she did this vacation was pose for photos ("Take a picture of me! Take a picture of me!!"), whining ("Guuuuys!! But I want to...") and correcting people ("You don't use that word in that context! That word means this and that!") and it became so bad in the end that I was honestly 5 minutes away from strangling her. Thursday we wanted to go out and I thought I'd join them because it was our last night in Airlie. So the girls wanted to go to club again, which I didn't, so I said if it's just dancing and me sitting in the corner again, I can just head back to our cabin, cuz I don't wanna do that again. So I passed the guys who asked me what I was doing. I explained that I didn't wanna go to a club (which they didn't wanna do either) so they said we could just go to a pub and sit down. 10 seconds later Nohad shooed them away from me, dragging them into said club and when they were protesting saying that I didn't wanna go she was all like "Well it's Nicole's decision if she doesn't wanna come." So I went back to the cabin and when the girls came back later (alone, cuz the guys had finally abandoned them) Nohad was all like "Why didn't they go to that club with us? It should have been all of us there!" Oh thank you. Seems like I don't count. Which I didn't. That became very clear on that vacation. Nobody even listened to me when I said anything. And when I got tired of repeating myself all the time Nohad usually barked at me why I didn't say anything beforehand. She even argued with me about what allergies and stuff I have. I might know that one better than she does, seeing as it is my body, thank you very much, bitch. It (and she) may not look like it in the pictures, but it's what's not in the pictures that tells the story.

All in all, it was a nice vacation, though, even though I spent way to much money and I would've done some stuff differently if we'd been a smaller group. I never wanna go on vacation with 8 people again, cuz it just asks for trouble and you have to adapt way to much to what others want.

Pictures are up at the LIVEJOURNAL, so go check them out!

I shouldn't even be here. I know, I really shouldn't. But my laundry's still drying and I can't go on packing before that's done. And my alternatives are vacuuming my room or taking a shower. Both options that don't make sense seeing that I'm probably gonna mess up my room again and I'm gonna be sweating again before I'm done. Especially seeing as we have 28�C in the shade (why go on vacation? We could just go to Bondi or Manly).

Went to the Plaza earlier to get sunscreen and insect repellent and of course I got a whole bunch of things more. A beach towel a skirt, shorts, shirts, pajama pants...and the list goes on. Argh. So much for my praised self-control...lol ;o) And I so need to send a package home. Or probably more like 3 or 4. I was thinking of sending my winter stuff back in October, when I can be fairly certain that it's not getting cold again. I'll just leave one thick sweater and my Nike-Fleece here and send all the other sweatshirts and my jacket or something. Let's see. I'll testpack in October and see how serious it is...lol ;o)

Had a weird encounter of the third kind at Starbucks today. You know how they always ask your name when you order so it's easier to give the right stuff to the right person? So I came in and ordered (I love strawberries & cream! Should've gotten the grande one, but it's so expensive) and talk to the guy about the weather and then he's like "Name for the order?" Look over left shoulder. Look over right shoulder. I'm alone in the damn shop. Even the damn baristas outnumbered me (2:1). Is it really necessary to ask people their names when noone's there? Maybe the heat got to him...lol ;o)

Still waiting for the Cairns Backpacker's guy to call me back. Today they decide to turn around half of our plans and now we're scrambling to get accomodation everywhere. Argh. People. You had like 8 weeks to think about that!! We're only leaving in like 12 hours!!

K, gotta go and rescue my apple roll from the fridge and see if my laundry's done. Until after springbreak. Honestly this time. ;o)

EDIT: Should it worry me that my backpack (the one I came here with) is full when I only put stuff for 10 days in and I'm usually the one who packs the least? How am I gonna get home in the end when that thing is full with 3 shirts, 2 towels and...admittedly, a pillow???? How did I get all my stuff here in the first place???

For June to September posts go to the Archives