Ice Cream and the O-mazing Race

Aussie terms of the day…

“Jocks” – basically another word for underwear….In context you could say “It was raining so hard that in the time it took me to race the 20 meters from class to my car I was soaking wet all the way down to my jocks!”

“Severs” – another term for gas stations

            If you ever want to make instant friends with 99% of the Aussies you meet, bring along a bucket of snow.  I am not kidding you. Snow is incredibly fascinating. I hadn’t really thought about it before but a lot of the Aussies I’ve met have never once seen snow and one of their dreams is to actually see it fall and walk all over it. Oh, and try describing it! The feeling, the sound, what it looks like… That’s a fun one.  I usually start with asking if they know what a snow cone is and going from there.

            Wednesday was really just an uneventful yet good and fun day.  Market day on campus was cancelled (to all my OSU friends, think of the Beaver Fair in the Quad) due to the excessive amount of rain so a lot of us just stayed at the lodge all day.  Several of us raced out to the store in the late morning during the downpour, grabbed a couple cartons of ice cream, then spent the remainder of the afternoon consuming insane amounts of melting ice cream and watching the Princess Bride and Wolverine.

            Today, Thursday, I actually had some stuff planned and was able to get Elly to take me in to Uni around 12:00 for the beginnings of the “O-mazing Race.” I enjoyed it thoroughly and it was a fantastic way to get to know new people and get to know more of Townsville a bit better! It's basically like the Amazing Race where your team is given a pack of clues and you run around trying to complete as many tasks as fast as you can, yet on a smaller scale and based in Townsville... obviously. :)

Getting on the bus and heading out to begin the O-maxing Race!

            We started off at the “Stockies” shopping center where we were given our first packet of clues and released into the overwhelming hugeness of the shopping center.  We were given 20 minutes to run around and complete as many tasks as possible that included “How many tables are there outside this coffee shop”, “Which store sells fancy stationary”, “How many sushi restaurants are there in the mall”, “Take a picture of your whole team in front of a pajamas shop” and a good many other ridiculous tasks.  That was fun and I think near the end of that phase we started to kind of figure out the swing of things.

            The second stop was at “Flinders Street” which is basically where all the clubs are as well as a number of restaurants, markets, and trinket shops.  It honestly was a very cool little street; very vintage in some ways with a number of restored colonial buildings.  Cool architecture to walk around and see I must say!

            The third and final stop was at the Strand which is more or less the beach front.  There are a good number of little shops and restaurants littering the strip there and again. Very cool and unique area to walk through. 

 

Walking down the Strand

"Take a picture of your whole team going down a kids slide."

            Another thing you will notice is that there are designated areas that you can swim in namely the sections of water roped off with Jelly Nets.  Swim outside those life saving barriers and you run the risk of death by jellyfish.  They take things like that very seriously here.

Jelly Nets!

            After the race I hitched a ride back to the lodge and shortly thereafter headed out once more with some of the lodgees to attend a Christian Union beginning of the year dinner. Christian Union is a sort of club on campus if you will that does weekly Bible studies and a number of fun activities all throughout the school year. It was fantastic to get to meet a bunch of new people, play some fun games, study a short section of scripture in a small group, and enjoy some awesome and free food!

O-mazing race team at the end.  Amazing and fun group of gals :)