Big Rocks, Bon Iver and Birthdays

These past couple of weeks have been full of fun and entertainment. Now that school has started, it's been hard to find the time to just lounge around or go on adventures. But that being said we still have weekends which makes for a full, fun packed 3 days.

After week one of school, I was able to accompany my good friend Pat on a hike up Hanging Rock. There is a movie about this place that has to do with children getting lost or something like that. I made sure Pat knew exactly where he was going cause, let's be honest, my luck on mountains, not the greatest. It was about an hour drive out of Melbourne to this very beautiful location. The hike took about an hour or

so to get to the top. It was so nice to go on a bit of a hike because I do miss that trek up my local, lovable, Mt Tzouhalem. At the top there were some spectacular views of fields and trees. Man it was fantastic. After our hike we decided to soak in the beautiful scenery for a little bit. We managed to make our way down (only getting slightly lost) and had some ice cream at the bottom. It was quite nice.

Another really awesome event that I was able to attend at the end of the first week was a Bon Iver concert. I had been waiting for this moment my entire life. I couldn't believe I got to go to a Bon Iver concert. It all started when a friend of mine posted that she got tickets for the next evening's show. I immediately searched it online and saw there were still tickets available. I quickly bought my ticket as did another friend of mine and soaked in that the next night I would get to see Justin Vernon and his beautifulness live in concert. And pee your pants. I was so excited! I can't even explain the feeling. The next day, Caity and I took the trek out to the Sydney Myer Music Bowl which is this awesome outdoor venue. We went early because we only had general

seating and we wanted to get a good seat. We also managed to sneak into a very exclusive-- not really-- 85 person general seating. It was a little patch of grass right above the actual seats and right below the general seating field. Yeah, we lucked out. To say the concert was unbelievably, amazingly, spectacularly fantastic would be a massive understatement. Bon Iver has a way with music. Justin Vernon has a way with the crowd. All in all, it was the most amazing concert I've been to in my entire life. The show wrapped up with a fake encore (the music bowl has a curfew which we and the band were unaware of) so Bon Iver pretended to go offstage and come back on which was rather hilarious. He finished off with Skinny Love and Wolves. Night. Was. Made. So unreal.

This past weekend was filled with some birthdays. My roommate Colleen's and my Canadian friend Kailey's. For Colleen's birthday we went downtown to a club called Eve and had a great time. Colleen works at this club so we got special discounted entry. When we got there we noticed there was a runway in the middle of the dancefloor and were told that there would be a male model show. BONUS! That was pretty fantastic and the models were pretty... well... pretty. I spent a bit the night chatting to my friend Sean who did a semester exchange to Canada. We chatted about skiing, snowboarding and hockey for the majority of our chat. I was almost put to tears with how much I miss Canadian culture. Boy, if Australia had snow and hockey I would never leave.

Kailey's birthday was lucky enough to fall on St Patrick's Day so we hit the town for a little Irish birthday celebration. We spent the night at this little Irish pub called the Young and Jackson. It was so fun and definitely my kind of scene. I love little pubs with live bands. Yeah, there was a live band and yeah, we did get to jump on stage with them. The night was filled with dancing and celebrating miss Kailey's 21 years of living. So much fun.

The first few weeks of school have been super fun and amazing. The only downfall is I've been pretty sick pants. I had tonsillitis for the past week and now am suffering from a pretty bad cold forcing me to miss a bit of school (not the worst thing). But I do hope I feel better soon so then I can live out more fun and keep it amazing-as.

O'Week

So it begins. I have started school and my Australia travels are put on hold to do gross school work. I guess I knew this when I signed up for a SCHOOL exchange/ study abroad program. But with all the winging aside, school here is actually pretty nice. I have a sweet campus- Deakin Burwood campus in Melbourne for those who didn't know- and school is so chill here. Almost half the course work of back home. This is my kind of studying. The classes are broken up into tutorials- the Australians call these tuts and every time I say it I can't help but think of people farting, real mature, I know- and lectures. Tuts--ha-- are obligatory but lectures are not. So in reality you only have to go to half of your classes. It is super chill and I love it.

Deakin is one of the most accommodating schools I know. For all first years and exchange students, they opened campus a week early to do some orientation, what they call O'Week. It is a chance for all new students to sign up for clubs and get to know fellow students. They have music, events, vendors, free stuff, bbqs etc. What more could a gal ask for? Among these events were events like a beach party, superhero party, nerd party and abc party. I got to hit up both the beach party and the superhero party.

The beach party was fantastic! We started out the night at a house around the corner. I dressed in my favourite skirt with an equally beachy top and got to express my creativity in form of body paint on my arms. It gave me a good excuse to show off the old pipes for a change. This inspired a long photoshoot on the tram of us pretending to wake up in the ocean, pretend we found out our fathers were black and even pretend David Beckham was a ginger (my personal favourite). It was wonderful. We hit the club for some dancing and drinks and familiar faces. Unfortunately, the back devils decided to attack my back at the end of the night. On the way home I collapsed in the street and had to lie there for a few minutes. My "California version of Sam Trainor" friend Kyle decided to do some meditation stuff to make me feel better. It was a bit weird and out there, but that's alright. It was a good ending to a fantastically fun night.

The superhero party was... how to put this... not as fun as the beach party. I started the night with my friends Brendon, Natasha and Nam at Brendon and Nam's house. We had some dinner then hit the guitar for some jamming. It was so chill and fun we should have just stayed there the whole night. It made me miss my guitar though, forever in my heart Charlize <3. But since we bought the tickets I figured we should probably go. So we did. It was crowded and I was so not in the mood to be in a crowded place. I was dragged upstairs by Rebecca only to meet a guy who was talking to me about killing all Canadian animals before they killed us. Yeah, cool buddy.

Then school started. A bit overwhelming to start but that was expected. The units (in Australia, courses are called units) I am taking are economics, marketing, management and dance. Yes, dance. It is not the type of dance you are thinking of though. The course is called "Body Awareness and Improvisation". Yeah. The instructor basically turns on music and you have to move whatever way your body, mind and soul take you. It is actually quite fun and relaxing. A great little elective to take while I am here. All for fun of course.

Now that school has started, it is time to cut the fun and get down to business. HA! Yeah right. School is so chilled down here I have no doubt that I will still be having the time of my life. Time to buckle down and keep it amazing as.

Kony 2012

This is probably going to be the most controversial post I will ever write. There has been so much going on about this subject and I have so many thoughts on it I need to express my thoughts. Many of you are not going to agree with me and many of you will. Keep in mind this is completely my opinion and I have no intention on swaying any of your thoughts nor do I want to get into arguments with any of you. This is what I think. This is what I see. This is what I feel. You all have a right to your own opinions as do I. Now, with that said, here we go.

To start off, I wonder, how many of you who are reading actually knew about Kony before this whole blow up? How many were aware of what was going on? To be perfectly honest, I was pretty ignorant. I knew that there were child soldiers in Africa and I knew about sex slavery as well. On some level I had an idea of Kony but never bothered to actually find out anything. To sum it up there is a man named Joseph Kony who worked in Uganda abducting children and forcing them in sex slavery and child armies. The group he leads is called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) a group motivated to purify the Acholi people. Since 1986, Kony and the LRA have abducted over 60 000 children, forcing them out of their homes and into the LRA. As of right now, the LRA have moved out of Uganda but that doesn't mean it has stopped. There are still children today being affected by this in other parts of Africa and there are still children being killed. Some children were even forced to kill their whole family. These children don't have a choice with the LRA, it is either join or die and many more are fearing their lives every night when they go to sleep, running from Kony and the LRA. Kony is the number 1 wanted person in the world. In my opinion, no child should be going to bed at night scared for their life. Scared that they will be abducted or slaughtered.

After watching the Kony 2012 video that has sparked so much over these past few days, I was left speechless. I could not believe what I was so oblivious to. Kony and the LRA need to be stopped. The non profit organization "Invisible Children" have been working to make this happen.

Here is where it gets ugly. A lot of you have been posting that people need to do research before they jump into helping Invisible Children. There are many people out there who believe that the Invisible Children fund is a fraud. They believe the the organization is only in it for the money. From what I have read and observed I don't believe this. I think that the Invisible Children are a trustworthy organization who just want to do some good and put an end to a huge problem. They use film and social media to raise awareness and put an end to the use of child soldiers in Kony's army. Let's be honest here, this is what our society is most impacted by. We are a generation that runs on social media and technology. The proof is the the last few days after observing the 70 plus Facebook posts I saw of the Kony 2012 video. This is what we notice and this is what gets us up and moving.

There is also another problem of people mocking the fact that people feel accomplished after posting the video. The freeze frame pictures with text that say "watched a 30 minute video, became a social activist". Here's the thing: because we are a generation that relies on technology, we are affected by the 30 minutes we spent watching the video. Even if you are mindlessly posting the video on your wall you are doing something. The whole point is to raise awareness and that is what is happening. Even if it didn't affect you deeply enough to do no more than just post the video, it would have affected someone else who would have watched what you posted. You are doing more by posting the video than you know. Passing it on and sharing it has made a great deal of a difference because it made that many more people aware of the problem. Like I asked earlier in the post, how many actually knew how big of a problem this was before you saw it? I know I am more educated now and I feel like I need to do something to stop it and I am not just stopping at re posting the video. This has always been a desire close to my heart I have just never done anything about it. A lot of us were not raised in social activism and it takes one video to trigger that desire to help. So yes, watch a 30 minute video become a social activist.

Another problem I would like to address is the fact that people are wondering how this got so much attention when there are equally relevant problems out there. I just want to say, yes there are, but with the Kony 2012 video someone made the initiative to put an end to child slavery with the LRA and was extremely successful in doing so. The 30 minute video made by Invisible Children has had a HUGE impact. Jason Russell took the situation into his own hands and made an impact. I know there are more problems out there just as important, but the fact is, this video was done. This video was made to raise awareness of Joseph Kony and the LRA and it did. Jason stepped up and made the effort to make this known. To make this problem stand out. To make this problem a big deal so it can be put to an end. It all starts with an idea.

So to conclude, I believe the Kony 2012 video was an amazing accomplishment that has already made an impact on our generation and how we live. The awareness was raised and that was the main objective. I am almost positive that if someone were to do something like this for another problem, it would get the same reaction and the same awareness. We are humans, we have trouble doing more than one big task at a time. After Kony is caught and the LRA is taken care of we will continue to focus on other problems. But for right now, it is to stop Kony. Even if you don't support Invisible Children or the movie, you have to admit, it is making a difference. It did what it was meant to do and it did it well. I will continue to stand for this and yes I am going to cover the night on April 20th. Kony needs to be stopped. These children need to be saved. Working together, whether or not it is with Invisible Children, we can do this. Make Kony famous. Stop at nothing.

For those of you who live in caves: