Precious Little Baby

One of my very good friends from home that I grew up riding horses with just had a baby! I can't believe we are getting old enough to do stuff like this! Gisele Viera was born on April 21st and weighed in at 7lbs 11.5 oz. I just had to stick a couple pictures of the little bug on here - I can't wait to meet her in person!

This Morning...

I traveled over to St. Lucia again to spend the day trapped in the library, and as I got off the bus this flock of Little Corella parrots was wreaking havoc by one of the lakes.

They look like this close-up.

Ooops I Forgot!

Hello again! I decided tonight to add another post, since I'm exhausted from all my schoolwork and need a quick break!! Only 7 more days till my semester is over!!! I neglected to include a few pictures and videos in my last post that I had wanted to share. On May 10th Brisbane held a 20th anniversary celebration of when the World Expo was held here in Southbank in 1988. I am a huge fan of the Southbank area, and you'd never know it by reading this blog! I can't believe I haven't gushed about it more. The Southbank Parklands, as they're officially known, are located directly across the Brisbane River from the CBD. Southbank has been awarded the best public sector development in the world by the International Real Estate Federation and the world’s best downtown public space by the International Downtown Association.

The area stretches on for about a mile, and is really beautifully landscaped. There is the arbour that I've talked about before that is always covered in wonderful pink flowers (magenta bougainvillea). There are also lots of grassy knolls and the rainforest walk, which is just adjacent to the Nepalese temple which you can see in the video below. Right in the middle is where Streets Beach is located - a man-made swimming beach that is always crowded on the weekends. At night it's lit up and looks amazing. Throughout the parklands there are several BBQ gas grills with covered picnic tables available for public use. These are always crowded in the evenings! On the weekends the lifestyle markets are held on a little pedestrian street near the middle of Southbank. These are always fun to walk through and feature all kinds of local crafts and food. I love Southbank.

So, back to my story! The Expo '88 celebrations were so fun! There was stuff going on all day, including an 80s movie marathon, concerts, river cruises, and lots of street performers. I made it down in time to watch Back to the Future with my friends Jess and Jody.


Later on in the evening, Leah, Jody and I hung out in the international beer hall that was set up at one of the sports bars in Southbank. Lots of fun!! There was a really great fireworks show too.


Afterwards, we were walking home when Leah decided to dare Jody. Neither one of us really appreciated how seriously Jody takes a dare! Leah told her she'd give her $40 if she jumped into the water (at Streets Beach) with her clothes on...

I'm Still Alive!

Hi Everyone,

No, I haven't been eaten by a shark or bitten by a brown snake. I'm still here! I realized today that it's been almost a month since my last posting (and, I have an immense amount of work that I should be doing), so I've decided that you will wait no longer! I have just under two weeks left of classes here, and the work is piling up like crazy. On Friday Jody and I spent all day in the library, and decided around 4PM that we deserved a break. A ride on the CityCat was just what we needed to calm ourselves...so we hopped on at Southbank and rode down to UQ and back. This is how stressed we were at the start:

I really don't have anything new to report, except that last night we had our first real thunderstorm since I've been here! It was very exciting. I walked downstairs and realized that it looked like the end of days outside:

Usually I can see mount Coot-tha from my porch, which is where the sun sets every evening. It was about 5PM when I took this picture, so the sun set as the storm was rolling in. All of the yellow is a huge wall of rain! Everything slowly started to disappear...it was really surreal:

Before the storm passed the city there was lightning all around, but you could still see the blue sky to the south reflecting on the big buildings in the CBD:

This is just a video of what it looked like once the rain blew in and literally blocked the city from view. It was a pretty heavy deluge!