Great Ocean Road/Ballarine Penninsula

So I realize I just posted but I'm going at it again because this is different subject matter and I don't like to jumble everything together. Last week from Monday to Wednesday we had an international student orientation trip to Lorne which is a little tourist town on the coast. We were camped out there because all the hotels were filled up due to the fact that the Ocean rescue competition was being held there that week as well. It's a big international event that we didn't get too see much of because we were kept occupied elsewhere. Team Canada was quite prevelant though; we just kept seeing those guys all over town. While on the trip I tried surfing and lets just say God knew what he was doing when he placed me in Kansas. It's quite fun and a hellova workout but I would need many more sessions before I could conquer the ocean. I did manage to stand up once for like 1.4 seconds but no one caught that on camera - so I guess believe me if you want. I also did beach yoga which was nice but not very exciting to write about. There were some retired Australian couples also camping out and some of us int'ls had a good time visiting with them. One couple owns a pretty big ranch and when they heard I grew up on a farm they invited me out to visit etc. So we'll see what happens there. We also then did a tour of the Great Ocean road and I don't believe there was one single straight mile on the whole darn thing. Beautiful scenery but as I was quite tired (see previous posting on birds in Australia) I did fall asleep for some of the time despite the rolicking motion of the bus. If you want to see any pictures of this, let me know and I'll email you the link.

Since we've been back I've gone into Geelong a couple of times and wandered about trying to get an idea of where things are in the city etc. I have vague notions of where things are and where I need to be, but I'm still always amazed when I actually get where I want to go. I stayed overnight with another K-State student who lives in town and we walked down by the waterfront at night. It was really nice because it wasn't as cold as it usually is in the evenings and people were out fishing all along the edge. It was a relazing way to unwind from the day and I think it would be nice to live in town just so you could do those little things without having the hassel of riding the bus to get there.

On Saturday there was also a little day trip around the Bellarine penninsula. It was nice but they tried to get us around to so many places that we didn't have much time at any of them. We stopped in the town of Queenscliff for ice cream and it seems like a nice place to live. I didn't see any traffic lights so I think it must be quite small. I'd like to go back at some point and just wander around town doing nothing in particular. We also went to a golf course that is notorious for having kangaroos out in the middle of everything. This is basically the whole reason I paid $15 to go on the darn tour and it turned out to be quite anti-climatic. There were two kangaroos and they were hiding behind trees. We couldn't even get off the bus either, so the whole kangaroo thing didn't really meet expectations.

Since then O-week has started. This is a big week long orientation event where you can sign up to join all kinds of clubs and things and I try to see how much free candy I can get. This will require yet another post because I don't want this one to get too long.