A full weekend

Well, this Friday started off a very eventful weekend. After a full day of classes, I went upstairs to buzz my hair down to a shorter length, and when I was about to start, Melanie and Jimmy shouted to me "Do a Mohawk!!" so...I did. I buzzed the sides, and spiked up the middle for a very silly and entertaining hairdo. Next, we all decided that it would be for the best if we went into town for the afternoon/evening/night. After busing down to town, we grabbed some supper at a cafe place that served good sandwiches, then walked the strand for a bit. After the sun had gone down and it was totally dark, the 12 of us or so went swimming in the ocean under a huge full moon. Out on Magnetic Island, there is a huge full moon party every month, so i think we are all going to try and make it to the next one. We all had fun playing in the waves, throwing the volleyball around, and burying a semi-cooperative Chris in the sand. After we rinsed and dried off, we started walking down the strand again until we found the night market out in the oval. I guess it pops up on the first Friday of every month, and the entire mall area is filled with tents and stands selling their wares, souviners, trinkets, food, and anything else worth buying. None of us had much cash on us, so we are eager to head back to that next month as well. I can imagine that i number of you might be seeing some items from the market sometime in your future! On our walk back, a few of us grabbed some delicious ice cream and gellato, and then took the bus back after some very silly frisbee in the street.

Saturday started out very early, since it was the morning of the annual Fisher Shield Cross Country race. For those of you that dont know, there arent a whole lot on intercolliegete sports in Australia, so at JCU, there is a huge, year-long competition between all the dorms and colleges. There is swimming, Cross country, basketball, cricket, rugby, soccer, water polo, and most other sports you can think of. Points are tallied throughout the year, and the winner is presented with the Fisher Shield; a glorious traveling trophy. Needless to say, everyone here in Uni Hall is eager to defend our title from last year. Anyway, everyone was awoken by the fire alarms and megaphones at 6:00 AM to head out to the oval for the start of the race. It was a mass of people that I have never seen so early on a Saturday morning. It was a 5k course, over some pretty varying terrain, including one very rocky hill, but when it was all said and done, Uni Hall place 4 people in the top 10, awarding us some very handsome points. Yours truly placed 6th overall, with a time of 18:20. For not killing myself, i was pretty happy with the time, and it was a very fun race.
After heading back for a nap, we discovered that all study abroad students were invited to a lunch-time Wine and Cheese tasting with some faculty, so a number of us enjoyed that very much. The snacks were amazing, and all tof the faculty was very friendly, and were great conversationalists.
Following that, the rest of the afternoon was filled with a giant party out on the lawn for the residents of University Hall only. It was loads of fun with BBQ, games, slip&slides, and at the end, a huge mud pit, and a mud wrestling. I didn't feel like getting to dirty, so some of us went inside, and chilled until a great evening of celebrating our Fisher Shield Victory wore us all out for the night.
Sunday was a very lazy day that involved mainly doing laundry, and going down to the river to feed turtles.
So far this week, I have shaved off my mohawk, since I have some rather important presentations coming up. I cleaned my room *gasp* and last night, a huge group of us headed out to Cactus Jacks for all-you-can-eat chili, and to celebrate Chris's 20th Birthday.
The rest of this week wont be to strenuous, but this weekend, we are going to the North Queensland Cowboys Rugby game, playing in the Fisher Shield Basketball Tourny, maybe driving to Crystal Creek, and who knows what else. Stay tuned!
Love to you all,
Matt