"I feel stuffed"

It’s been an interesting 2 days. Friday I got up for a run at 7am which was not easy to make myself do. I went to breakfast and sat with the Americans/Canadians which was good because I had realized the night before that I had no plans for Saturday or Sunday! I found out they were going to go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary which is the biggest koala sanctuary in the world, so I asked if I could tag along and they said of course. After that I had chemistry lecture and then I donated blood—I had signed up earlier in the week. Blood was successful—I really love giving blood for some reason—and I ended up meeting an American and a Canadian girl as we were all three finished around the same time. One of them lives in Indooroopilly which is where the big mall is and the other girl lives right in the city center of Brisbane. Living in the center of the city would be awesome for the shopping/nightlife/convenience but I would probably end up only coming to about half of my classes! I’m quite happy with my living situation right now. Ok so I gave blood, recovered there for a bit and drank a popper (juice box), ran a few errands, and came home for lunch. I had marine lecture after that which was again very interesting. I think that my friend in marine lecture, Charlene, is my best bet for a traveling buddy, but she lives off campus with some other Americans so I don’t know since she’s planning stuff with them. Plus, let’s see, I’ve known her for what, 4 days? Everything is so complicated. Everyone else just comes and meets a few people and that’s it—that’s who they do everything with for the weekends and travel. Or they already know people from home. I think I’m doing the right thing by branching out and making friends with lots of different people from different places, but it is making my life so complicated and I’m beginning to second-guess myself. I know the easy way is usually less rewarding than the hard way. I’ve been trying to remind myself of that every day. I just want to plan my travel so badly now. I’ve pretty much figured out all of the trips that I really want to do and the most important destinations for me, but who knows if anyone else I know/meet will even want to go? And of course spring break is now, um, 20 days away! I want to know what I’m doing and how much it will cost and who I’m going with and when I’m leaving/coming back and…just everything. I can’t believe I still have no plan yet and see no indication that I will be able to make any soon.

SO this is what has been going through my head pretty much relentlessly. I somehow fell asleep for 2 hours in the afternoon despite my racing mind. I got up because the hall was noisy and when I came out everyone was already getting ready for the party that was going to be happening at Cromwell College, one of the others at UQ. I was so happy to be going somewhere that we’d be able to walk back from instead of taking a cab, but I hadn’t realized that it was starting at 7pm! It was a “used to be cool” party and I had nothing to wear so I improvised. I wore my shiny spandex biking shorts and a sweatband and put my hair in a crazy side ponytail. I drew a Tamagotchi with a permanent marker on a white tee-shirt I had (it was actually quite good). And Voila! Oh and I wore some really tacky bright blue eyeshadow of course. Our hall was hilarious all together because we all looked so ridiculous. It ended up being a really fun party and there were tons of people there dressed in everything you can imagine. Almost every guy was wearing those really short shorts and some sort of neon, 80’s-looking spandex. You could pretty much rate the cockiness of the guy by how tight his outfit was—the girls from my hall and I had a good laugh about that!

Saturday I got up and went down to breakfast with Bridgette, a girl from my hall, and saw a few of the Americans. I asked when we were going and it seemed like they hadn’t really even thought about it, but later into breakfast I was told either the 10:10 bus or the 10:40 bus would be likely. I told them to call or text me when we were going to finalize it and went up to my room to get ready. Long story short, I did not get a call, so at 10:40 I called and Amanda says that they just got on the bus.

THEY HAD LEFT WITHOUT ME!

And what was worse was that they didn’t even seem concerned about it, like it was completely okay that they forgot to call me and thus ruined my day. I didn’t know I was capable of being so mad at people I hardly even knew. They said “oh catch the next bus, it’s in 20 minutes.” I was like “NO, actually it’s only every hour.” SO I really wanted to sit around and feel sorry for myself and just be angry but I knew that if I didn’t go today then who would I be able to go with to the koala sanctuary on another day? I decided to be adventurous and make the journey on my own and just meet them there. I caught the first bus fine and got off at the second stop. I was supposed to have 6 minutes before the next bus I needed to catch arrived, but after about 10 minutes of waiting I realized that my first bus had been about 8 minutes late to that stop so I had in fact missed the bus! AND THE NEXT BUS WAS NOT FOR 45 MINUTES. I waited all of that time and that bus never showed but 20 minutes after that one was supposed to come, another one showed. So by the time I got to Lone Pine it had been 2 hours…and remember I left an hour after the group in the first place. I found them once in the sanctuary and after describing my disaster of a journey I didn’t even get sympathy. They all seem so normal but I have never met anyone in my life who would have this type of reaction (or lack of reaction really) to what happened today. Oh, and of course, they had already basically done everything so within 10 minutes I was on my own again to go see the kangaroos because they had already done that. I spent the rest of my time there on my own which just sucks because it would’ve been so much more fun with other people. They called when they were leaving to ask if I wanted to come but I was in the middle of a birds of prey presentation and you can’t exactly leave (or even stand up) once you’re there because there are large predatory birds flying around. They did not bother to wait up for me, which at that point I couldn’t have cared less about, except for that I didn’t really know how to get home. I eventually did get home, but I had to ask someone at Toowong, the station where I decided to change buses this time, how to get to UQ and it ended up that I had to walk a bit to another station, and then I missed a bus because I was again at the wrong station.

I finally made it home and had to try to pretend to everyone who was around on my hall that everything was just great. I mean, I ranted a bit about what happened, but I pretended like I still really had fun even by myself. I guess I did, but I just can’t deal with more excursions like today. I want to be able to be mad at all of them for what they did but I feel so trapped; they are my primary connection to the familiar right now and I don’t know if I can deal with having the link to everything I know completely severed right now. The fact is, I just have to forgive and forget, and the faster the better. But then comes the problem of what to do tomorrow…what I want to do is go into Brisbane and wander around Queen Street, mainly so I can go to a surf shop that is there, but also because it’s a really cool area with lots to do and see. Plus you take the City Cat ferry there which I still have yet to do! BUT so far no one seems to be interested. And I would be perfectly happy going on my own but I don’t think it’d be a good thing for me to spend another day on my own…my self-esteem is dropping by the second haha. I guess I will just see at brekkie in the morning…