Monday on Maggie

Right now is our mid-semester break, which is basically spring break, since it's spring right now. So our destination of choice was Magnetic Island, which the brochures say is "the only island on the North Queensland Coast with a delightful blend of untouched National Park, a resident population of about 2,500 and a variety of holiday resorts." Magnetic Island, or Maggie as it is lovingly called by the locals, is a island about 20 minutes off the coast of Townsville, and is roughly half the size of Gloucester, although most of it is all junglely and such, people only live around the shores for the most part.

We booked a hotel on the island from Monday to Thursday/today. On Monday we packed our bags with all the essentials for holiday travel, namely clothes and a bathing suit, yea we're ballsy. We got to the ferry around 2 or something and off we went. Twenty minutes later we were on Maggie, and it was awesome, palm trees everywhere, stupid annoying birds flying left and right, topless cars, little scooters buzzing all over the place, and not a single person on the beaches. That was one of the first things I noticed. I felt that there should be a lot of people at the beach since we were on the Australian version of Hawaii. But we shrugged it off, and headed off to check in at our hotel.

Like all tropical and islandy vacation spots hotels lined the shore, tall and modern, inviting and chic, (also really expensive) ours however, was hidden in the woods (bush) and down a pretty sketchy looking road too. However our hotel was anything but sketchy it was really nice actually, especially the restaurant and pool, and the lobby was pretty awesome too; all open air. We got our room key and headed off to find our room. Instead of a really tall building our hotel was like a huge labyrinth of ground level rooms, kinda like 30 motels all spread out across an acre of land, with tropical plants and tree in between. Apparently the hotel people thought we were important since our room was part of the executive suites, although it still looks like your average hotel room, except this one had soap/shampoo/lotion/conditioner/shaving cream/hand soap dispensers on the bathroom walls. Once we unpacked and got settled in (threw our bags to the ground and collapsed on the bed for 5 minutes) we decided to find a grocery store to get some snackage for our stay.

We walked about a mile to the nearest grocery store, called Foodworks and grabbed some apples, a big bottle of Coke, Shapes (seasoned crackers), and a bag of Snickers. Everything was kind of expensive, but were on a island so what are you going to do? On our way back we stopped at some little souvenir shops and looked around a bit. Did we get anything for you? Who knows? Maybe we did, maybe we didn't, you're just going to have to wait and see. So by the time we got back to our room it was about dinner time, and not knowing where any of the restaurants were, we decided to go to the one that was at our hotel. Remember how I said the hotel was anything but sketchy? Well the restaurant looked like a five star French bistro, and needless to say we felt a tad under dressed and awkward being there, especially since there were no other people there. So there we were at this super fancy, crystal glass, white marble floor, giant chandelier having restaurant, all by ourselves in the middle of the place dressed like beach bums. thankfully the restaurant wasn't as expensive as it looked and we got a beer/meal/dessert combo for only $25, which was awesome, and the food was even better. I had the most delicious fish I've ever had in my life (hyperbole warning), it was basically like if Godzilla and Captain Planet joined forces and performed a rock ballad in my mouth. Emily got this Greek chicken and salad which she described as the best meal she's had since she's been here. And if we thought that our taste buds just had the night of their lives, dessert was about to rock their world. And beyond. Unfortunately the English language does not contain the words needed to describe our desserts. The only thing I can say is that we had tiramisu with vanilla ice cream and a chocolate and orange cake, and it was legendary.

After a mindblowingly good dinner, we headed back to our room for the night, to plan the rest of our trip. We ended up watching Marley and Me on TV, but Emily didn't want to watch Owen Wilson cry, so we turned it off and went to bed. Emily thinks I'm too verbose, so I'm going to finish the rest of it later, I think I'll do one post everyday for each day we were away. So tomorrow I'll post the events of Tuesday.

Don't worry we're still alive

So I kinda forgot about this thing for the last two weeks...sorry. So here's a summary of what's been going on, don't worry it's not that exciting.

First thing, I'm part of an intermural ultimate frisbee team here at school. My team is called the Tye-Dye-Hards, and so far we've been undefeated for 5 games, Woo! Games are every Wednesday at night so we don't die, from dehydration/sun poisoning.

Both of us have also joined this musical concert thing that goes on once a year here. It pits all the colleges(dorms) on campus against each other to see who's the best in 5 different cattegories: musical theater, band, instrumental, dance, and chorus. We are doing Wicked for the musical theater part, I'm the Wizard of Oz, and Emily is in the chorus, It's not really that impressive, I think Emily sings more in it than I do. For dance we are both part of the hip-hop team...yea that's right, we're going to dance hip-hop, and don't worry we'll make sure the video never leaves this hemisphere. And finally for chorus, we're singing Under Pressure and Sweet Disposition a capella. The whole thing is next week, and we're not really ready yet, so we've been practicing all week and even more this week.

Aside from that, we haven't done anything interesting. There's not much to do in Townsville, especially on the weekends since everything is closed.