January 11

This morning we had class for a bit, but that consisted of us discussing our preconceptions of Australia. It's interesting that most of them are fairly accurate/partly true. Australia relies heavily on exports, so they try to export a certain image also. I'm not quite sure what exactly they've been intentionally doing... but Steve Erwin doesn't help everyone's conceptions of the average Australian...

We then took a bus and headed for the Gold Coast, which is apparently a combination of Las Vegas and Miami, according to Ronnie, which is based on what she's seen of CSI and Miami Vice.

On our way there we stopped to see Woongoolba, which is a large farming community. It basically looked like Willows but with sugar cane. I think they just wanted us to get a taste of Australian farms, but as TS was saying, all farms pretty much look the same because they've been doing this for thousands of years.

We also stopped by some random area of road where they were clearing the last remaining forests on the Gold Coast. Lots of people are moving to Queensland, so they're struggling to find more and more land for them to use. As a result, most of them are isolated from cities or other areas, and the timber from the chopped down eucalyptus trees is pretty much unuseable. It reminded me of all those scenes you see of rainforests getting chopped down.

The thing was, all of the houses were made of brick, which makes for really hot houses in this unbearable heat. But the developers have some sort of arrangement with the construction people, so I guess they get a really good deal on brick...

When we got to the Gold Coast (which unfortunately, I don't have many pictures of), it wasn't as seedy as I had imagined it to be. It really does seem to cater to the tourists, and I really don't know what their local population is like.

After swimming in the ocean for about 3 hours, we headed back to campus. On the way home we stopped at a pie shop and got some meat pies. It's not a traditional Australian dish, but it's served almost everywhere so it might as well have been. It basically tasted like shepard's pie, only this seemed to be a fast food place.

A butterfly I saw outside the dining hall before dinner.

And still after that, we watched a movie called Getting Square. Ronnie had told us that it meant to get even, but it seems to mean more of getting clean. It took place in Surfer's Paradise, a district of the Gold Coast, and it seemed pretty representative of the place. The Gold Coast wasn't outrightly a seedy place--more like Las Vegas during the day (but without the flashy lights). It's interesting that Wormtail from Harry Potter was in the movie, and if I hadn't known who he was, I would've thought that he had an authentic Australian accent. According to Ronnie, the two are very different, but I'm sure it's easy for her to tell them apart...

Oh, according to Mike, a New Zealand accent is like an Australian one, but they don't pronounce any of their vowels. Fish is "fush." Everything has the "uh" sound.