Surfing on my turf!!

Oh my word, surfing was amazingly fun and tiring!!! The waves today was so rough that it felt like I was climbing the mountain when going out into the sea! Though that said, it did help me burn off some extra calories~! WIN!

So today as an International Student Ambassador for Brisbane Marketing, we went to Goldcoast (The Spit) to learn how to surf!! We were taught by "Get Wet Surf School" and they were amazing instructors, they made learning how to surf like learning how to walk the dog :D

To start off, getting there from Brisbane City took a while (Goldcoast is not in Brisbane :D) but that said it was easy getting there!! It only took us one train and one bus :D

We started off taking the train from the city which was an express train straight to Goldcoast which took around 50min, after that we boarded a bus to Seaworld which took another 15-20min... And Voila! Get Wet Surf School is there ready to pick us up! 

Getting back was the same but just reversed process... which is still rather simple~

On the way back the train ride was more enjoyable in my opinion because I spent the 50min pretty much just sleeping :) 

Okay at Goldcoast, we got to the beach where we are going to make sail and surf... Unloaded everything and got ourselves ready to tackle the great blue sea!

We got hold of our long boards (Because we are beginners, we use long boards as they are much easier to balance on~) and headed out! 

Slowly you realise how heavy the long boards can be, as some of the girls there were struggling on even getting out there! Cunningly I was laughing on the inside :P But later on I realised that was not a good idea as karma came back at me... While we were out in the sea, Elsa's board somehow made its way towards my hips with a G-force of around 5! Though like they say... No pain no gain... So I carried on making my way out into the sea... paddling further and further away... inch by inch... looking ahead at the waves crashing... FINALLY I made it!

I made it to where the instructors are... where the water was up to our waist :) I stood there for a while, then the instructor told me to quickly jump on the board and repeat the steps we practised on the beach... 

I quickly imaged I was a modern Taiwanese/South African Ninja (Who somehow ended up in Australia) and hopped on the board. Waves came and I repeated the moves, slick, smooth and sexy... is what I thought it was like but somehow the camera told a different story...

When people told me they saw me falling, I was thinking in my mind... You have no idea, I was practising my ninja forward flips!

So after countless times of being awesome on the surf board the instructors decided to empower us by letting us catch the waves ourselves. I definitely felt empowered! But soon left with an ounce of energy as the waves keep showing that they are more superior!

In the end of the day, I lost the battle with the waves today but I will be back... 

I have not lost the war yet!

The experience was definitely worthwhile, with all the other international student ambassadors... I had a blast! 

Aftermaths of the surf session? I will find out tomorrow when I'm rolling off my bed with my muscles all aching :P 

A trip to... Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Okay so Saturday I had to do this IELTS test, English test... (I still don't get why South Africans need to do these tests, I mean... We bloody hell speak English in South Africa!)
This rather pointless, waste-of-time English test ended in the afternoon and after that I was scheduled to head to an AIESEC conference!
For those of you who don't know what AIESEC is... *looks down and shakes head* It's the worlds largest youth organization in the world! I'll blog about it some other day.
Anyways so back on topic...
Saturday night I'm heading down to conference with some other AIESEC members (Derrick, Neysa and Giannina). We drove down there because it is so far and in the middle of no where that public transport doesn't seem to have an interest in.
We made our way down there around 7pm, during our trip we had a great session of sharing music between cultures on the car... I still think my old Taiwanese songs on my iPhone kicks butt!
After some high moments and depressed moments it seems like we literately drove into a cave coz it was so damn dark!! There was no street lights or anything (and here I'm thinking I'm in Australia, a first world country and there's no street lights 1 hour and 30min out from central Brisbane) and slowly but surely fog started to form... This is when we felt like we were batman's car! Though the difference was that I didn't have that awesome costume batman seems to wear all the time.
So the fog formed and we drove even slower but we were confident we knew where we were going coz we had GPS! But we then quickly lost our confidence as the GPS took us to some dodgy area with road that seems to be made up by compressed skeletons with sprinkles of dirt on them. We needed a 4x4 for that road... But nevertheless we persisted... Coz we are AIESECers!! (<-- cheesy and lame huh :P)
Eventually after a rough journey we saw some lights in the distance and I swear it was like those movie scenes. Like you just fought WWII and in the distance you see a chopper to your rescue.
We arrived to the campsite and were welcomed by some ninja crickets chirping away and some annoying mosquitoes singing in our ears. We walked around the camp and realized the reason behind our 'warm welcome' was that a skolling competition was about to start ;) that explains it all...
So the night started there with a skolling competition.
The conference ended on Sunday afternoon and everyone was exhausted... After spending a day there I have to say that place was awesome!
It might be in the middle of no where but that adds to the 'be one with nature' feel. A really great place for a camping destination or just wanting to chill in the woods for the weekend.
The place was Camp Laurence located next to Lake Moogerah. Google it, it's an awesome place! :)
PS: there's a camp fire too! We didn't tell scary stories around it, we drank vodka shots instead ^_^

Hidden Market?!?

Alright so I have IELTS today... The test centre is at Kelvin Grove campus of QUT and while I was there... Guess what I run into! A market!! Didn't know they had a market there on Saturdays! Quite a surprise! I plan to visit it sometime in the near future when I don't have an exam hovering over my mind :P

Fresh markets!

Walking along the Brisbane streets on a Wednesday afternoon, you will come across the markets next to the casino!
There are many things there but I didn't check it out too much as I had to go somewhere but it was convenient enough for me to grab a bunch of flowers for only $5 before I went to meet up with my dearest girlfriend :)
Keen to check it out again sometime to see what else I can plan to surprise her :D

Flip flop flap...

So I'm in Sunnybank and whilst walking around the stores I found this Fishmarket!! I swear it's like hidden!
It's like one of those movie scenes where you open a door and a bright light shines, butterfly flutters outs and a rainbow appears though the difference this time is that there were no butterflies, the rainbow appeared on the scales of the fish and the bright light was actually the smell making my eyes squint so I thought it was bright... Nevertheless it was definitely an eye opener seeing that place! See if you can find it in Sunnybank ;)

My first blog!

Alright so I just realized I can blog with my iPhone (get the Blogger app!) which makes things easier as in the past I've found that I couldn't exactly blog on my comp every night! (maybe coz I have a terrible memory? Hehe)
Besides my awesome memory, stay tuned as I share my stories and experiences while I zoom my way around Brisbane in the vesper with a lovely lady sitting beside me ;)