Tropical Australia?

I’m in Brisbane.

I took a plane from a podunk airport outside of Melbourne to the Brisbane International Airport. On the way, I spent two hours “conversating” with the people sitting next to me; I found out their husbands are real-live cattle rancers from the outback. I wanted to meet them. Badly. How cool would THAT be? REAL LIVE AUSSIE CATTLE RANCHERS IN THE OUTBACK.

Anyway, I took a train from the airport to a bus, which I took to the University of Queensland campus. David spent forever driving around in his “yute” looking for me (it turns out I was at the OTHER cricket field. Who knew!) and we spent the rest of the evening at his parents’ apartment and at his “borrowed” apartment with a german friend of his named Careen.

That’s about all that happened. Most of it was just hanging out… not much else to do with the storm lighning-ing the crap out of the city.

Then this morning, something creepy and terrifying happened. I was attacked by a huntsman in the shower.
It disobeyed the number one “big spider rule”: do not put yourself on Thomas without his permission. Penalty for this crime is instant death. Or as close to instant as I can make it.
In this case, it took a little bit to get it off of my arm and onto somewhere where it didn’t matter if it was squashed flat. Then I squished it with the shampoo bottle that it was hiding on originally.
It now sits brushed under the washer (who keeps a washing machine in their bathroom?)

The rest of the day (so far) has been walking around UQ campus with Careen while David worked. We saw heaps of stuff (or is it “heaps of things?”) and I photographed almost all of it. It’ll be on facebook eventually.

Now that David’s done with work, we’re going swimming. In a pool; not the ocean. The ocean (and river, apparently) is full of Bull sharks at the moment, and we’re stuck with the parents’ pool.
Ah well. I’m having a blast so far. Hopefully the ocean isn’t TOO full of sharks that I can’t swim ever…. Hmmmmmmm…

More updates as we get them.