Brisbane!

Hey folks -

Arrived safely in Brisbane yesterday afternoon after a flight I remember almost nothing of as I crashed after having spent the whole night awake, hanging out one last time with the Currie Hall gang all together (we had to catch a cab to the airport at 3:30 so it was definitely worth it). I managed to make it to the rendezvous point with Morgan safely and all in one piece, and it was very nice to see a friendly face in a new city - and finally another Seattleite!

After a couple hours at Morgan's we took off to go see a cricket match. Being Americans naturally we knew nothing about cricket so we were very fortunate to be with her friend Aran, who is Irish-Scottish and actually could explain it to us. The game we went to was a 20/20 match, which is a condensed version that only lasts a few hours as opposed to three days like some matches do. In the spirit of trying to jazz things up, they played rock music and had giant flame shooters that burst out jets of fire whenever a big play happened - which, even in the spruced up version, wasn't too often. I was extremely tired at this point and actually dozed off a couple times during the match. But overall it was a fun experience, I started to understand most of the rules and it was a fulfilling experience.


Later last night we went out to West End, the artsy part of Brisbane, and had a couple drinks and met up with my Currie friends Billy and Alison, who had been in Brisbane for a few days. Had a pleasant hour or so with them then walked back to Morgan's house and crashed - first time I've been to bed before midnight in a while.

Today, it was a lazy morning but Morgan and I made it out to the cultural centre around noon, where we saw the natural history museum (pretty cool) and met up with her friend Rachel, an Aussie who goes to UQ but will be studying at UW starting winter quarter.


Just outside the museum - yay Brisbane!

We had lunch and went to a gourmet cupcake shop, where I had a totally delicious blackberry mud cupcake with a pretty little flower on top. Awesome.



The girls also took me to see some of the city, which I am enjoying a lot so far. It's a fair bit bigger and has more of a hustle-bustle feel to it than Perth, and being almost in the tropics it's a lot greener/lusher.

Story Bridge in the background, Brisbane river along with me, Rachel (on the left) and Morgan (on the right).

At 6:00 we went and saw the new Harry Potter movie, which I actually liked a lot, and then had dinner and met up with some more of Morgan's friends in the city for a bit, where we went to an arcade and had fun with air hockey, DDR, shooting zombies, etc. Also a bit of fun climbing on statues outside the courthouse.

On our way home there were two ringtail possums ambling along a telephone wire, mom with baby riding piggyback. There are a TON of possums here, and they apparently fight all the time at night and wake people up.

And that's all from Brisbane at the moment. We have a trip planned to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary tomorrow, plus hopefully a peek at the University of Queensland campus, and then on Wednesday it's off to Cairns!

Take care at home all! And go Huskies, praying for a win over Cal next week...