Brisbane cont.

Brisbane was great.

I didn’t do all that much touristy stuff, because it wouldn’t stop thunderstorming, but I still had fun.

Where did I leave off? Oh yeah.
David, Careen, and I went to a pub Friday night, and it was an interesting experience. The band downstairs was WAAY too loud and the band members had obviously had too much to drink beforehand. We went upstairs.
Upstairs was cool; the music was all 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s music. It was fun to watch people goofing off, but then the dance floor filled up with older-than-uni-student people being creepy, weird, and stupid. We went back downstairs.
The stairs themselves were an adventure: I stepped on the front half of the step (something that apparently everyone else knew not to do) and instantly my foot slipped on spilt beer, and I was surfing down the front edges of the wooden steps.
At the bottom, I ran into the waiting arms of the bouncer, who seemed impressed that I had stayed upright while careening down the stairs. Little did he know that I had only had one [very watery] beer and therefore was about a zillion times better balanced than the average bar patron.
The music had deteriorated downstairs. We decided to leave and give our eardrums a rest.

We left and got slurpies at 7eleven.
Classic.

We got off the bus at home at about 2. The three of us talked for a while about bush turkeys and ibises and tarantulas and Indian trees and then fell asleep. Careen crashed on the couch in the living room.

Saturday, we woke up late-ish and Careen left for work while David and I went to the big shopping district downtown (or, in Aussie slang, “in the CBD [Central Business District].” They seriously have no idea what I mean whenever I say “downtown.”), where we both did a lot of Christmas shopping. And a little personal shopping, too.
I bought some shirts.
It felt weird spending money. I’ve been exclusively saving for so long and now I’m in spending mode. It’s weird.

We went home to change clothes and shower, and then left for David’s family’s apartment; the “staging ground” for the night’s activities.
We loaded up backpacks with food and blankets and headed out in the blazing sunshine for the Christmas Festival back downtown.
There’s a really neat way to get around using public transportation in Brisbane: CityCat. It’s a public transit catamaran. As in a boat. On the river. It is unspeakably cool. I took pictures.

At the Christmas festival, it started raining. Hard. In fact, it was raining harder than I’ve ever seen it rain since Costa Rica. Unfortunately for us, the festival is an outdoor event. The stage and the band were dry, but they were concerned for the safety of the lighting and camera operators, so they postponed it until the brunt of the storm passed. That took about an hour, during which someone in our little church group went and bought all of us ponchos. I was already completely soaked (and still uncomfortably hot), so I just saved mine.
Finally they started the music.
It was amazing. They had a big choir in the back and a big pit orchestra that accompanied everyone, and then a bunch of different soloists/groups/artists who came up and sang or played. One guy in particular was a mind-bogglingly good trumpet player/trombone player/pianist. He was accompanied by a female singer who was also stupendous. It was the highlight of the night for me.
We didn’t end up getting home until about 1, and then David and I watched 21 (which is a good movie, btw. I was skeptical, but it’s actually very decent.). After that, I stayed up talking to Charity, Ruth, and Esteban until about 4:30 or 5.

I was awakened by my alarm at about 8. Church. I had forgotten about that.
The church is called “Christ Community Church,” and is Presbyterian.
Despite my lack of sleep, I woke up well enough to thoroughly enjoy the Church. It was about 80% uni students, and they had a pretty unique way of structuring their service. First was praise and worship, followed by a break, where everyone headed upstairs for morning tea. Everyone was ridiculously outgoing and wanted to know who I was and where I was from and how did I find the church and how did I know David. It was pretty nice, but very hot and stuffy because the air conditioning had broken down.
Then everyone piles back into the sanctuary for the sermon. This particular Sunday, the message was followed by Communion.

After coming home, David and I discussed what we would do in the afternoon. We could go to the Gold Coast beach (a bad idea considering it had spontaneously started thunderstorming again) or we could go to the koala sanctuary and get our pictures taken while cuddling koalas (a possibility) or we could go to South Bank and swim and wander around looking at tourist attractions. We decided on the last, simply because David needed to finish some important correspondence and I needed to sleep. So mid-afternoon we set off and had fun looking around and goofing off and talking.

We returned and Careen came over and we had dinner. After dinner, David fell asleep on the couch, I fell asleep on the table, and Careen hijacked my computer and checked her email (the internet is out at her house. Something about lightning).
After a while, I woke up and we talked.
Then she left and David tried to wake up. He didn’t really make it all the way. After a few minutes we both gave up on trying to stay awake and went to bed.

That’s about it. I woke up and caught a bus, then a train, and then a plane home.
All in all, I’d like to come back and see the beach (and SCUBA) and go to the wildlife reserve and cuddle pandas, but it was a good trip. Well worth it.

Now I just have a week before I leave for the states. I’d better make the most of it…
I also need to finish that movie.

David and I swam at a pool on South Bank after the rain stopped. This was a special pool, though. The “edge” was a beach, complete with sand. The bottom of the pool was entirely covered with a thick layer of sand as well. The water was conditioned with a mix of salt and chlorine, and was disturbingly warm. It was like a beach without the overpowering taste of salt and the risk of dangerous creatures. It was like a pool without the overpowering taste of chlorine and risk of scrapes on the bottom of the pool. It was perfect.
~Thomas