This morning Kat, one of my very best friends here, got on a plane for home. She only had one final, and it happened to be on the very first day of the exam period, so she's headed back to the States way earlier than most people. But still... it's hitting home that this is all going to end soon! All of us feel like Flood Week only just happened and we haven't been here that long.
But in the meantime, there are a few more adventures at hand! Last week we headed off to Tasmania, which has been high on my list of places I've wanted to visit in Australia. It's one of the very wettest parts of the country, and has the reputation for being cold and grey most of the time. We got some of that, but we sure got lucky with the weather in general. Matt was in northern Tasmania the same time we were in the state, and it never stopped raining the whole time he was there.
But we were in the south of Tasmania and got lucky. I flew into Hobart with Bianca, Ryan, and Katie Friday evening. Nina, Bailey, Tricia, and Jenny flew out at the same time, but were staying in a different hostel than us. Richard, Sheila, Lauren, and Peter were already there when we arrived, and Noah flew out the next morning. So that adds up to thirteen of us in a loosely-associated group - a very appropriate Colgate number, I suppose!


Noah and I hadn't exhausted our nautical fix, so we headed to the Hobart Maritime Museum. It was a great small museum with an abundance of model ships and a very nice man at the desk who seemed incredibly excited to see people our age interested in a museum. We even found the stuffed rat planted for children to find on an underwater suit, and he gave us temporary tattoos as a prize.
We headed back to the hostel, did a bit more walking around town, and then grabbed some dinner. We were sitting in the hostel common room when Lauren, Sheila, and Katie returned from a bike-riding day. Lauren walked in first and said "don't worry... but Katie has crutches." Apparently they biked for a good five minutes or so, hit some gravel, and Katie flipped over the handlebars, cutting her knee to the bone. They proceeded to spend the rest of the day at the emergency room. Fortunately Katie's a trooper, and they got their money back for the bicycle rentals. But as I had mentioned, very little goes on in Hobart after five, so we once again hit up the Scrabble and the hearts and watched a movie with a bunch of other people in the hostel, which had the dual purpose of occupying us and not requiring Katie to walk.
Sunday morning started a more adventurous section of the trip. We all packed up our stuff, and Bianca and I walked about fifteen or twenty minutes to a little family-owned car rental place that was willing to rent to people under 21. I ended up being the driver - my first time driving a rental car, and my first time driving on the left-hand side of the road. Bianca and I quickly realized that Hobart is even worse than Boston in terms of random one-way streets everywhere, so it took a long time to get back to the hostel. But we made it, and she and I and Ryan, Richard, and Peter piled in and headed out to Woolworth's to buy food for our next five meals. By the time we left Woolie's it was pouring rain - perfect conditions to learn to drive on the left. Fortunately Richard and I bought a large dark chocolate bar to split, so I had something to keep me going. I had a tendency to drift to the edge of the road and could not for the life of me remember which side the turn signal was on, but otherwise it wasn't too bad. Later in the trip I let Bianca and Ryan drive for a few minutes each just to try it, and they had the same problems I did, so it must be fairly common.


The rain started to let up after we'd unpacked our stuff, so we drove about 20 minutes back the way we came to Eaglehawk Neck to see the tessellated pavement. This was one of the things I most wanted to see in Tasmania. It's an area where the sea has eroded incredibly geometric vertical jointing into a pavement that for all the world looks man-made. The sun came out while we wandered around the area. Then we drove back up the road, stopping at short walks and look-outs along the way, seeing the Tasman Arch and some truly spectacular cliffs. We then drove back south, past our cottage, and walked down to see Remarkable Cave.


It was getting dark by the time we left the cave, so we headed back to cook dinner. Home-cooked spaghetti! And we even lit the candles. Then we felt classy, and had access to real wine glasses (a true novelty for college students), so we sat around playing hearts and drinking sherry and eating dark chocolate. Peter wanted to go on a ghost tour of the historical sites in Port Arthur, but the rest of us opted out, so we dropped him off and then headed back to the cottage. We melted the dark chocolate and dipped bananas in it and then mostly fell asleep on the couches while watching a movie.
This was actually Halloween night, and it seemed wrong not to do something, so the Lauren-Sheila-Noah-Katie cottage had a party after the tour. We made a pass at dressing up (I wore Richard's clothes and an eye-patch and was a pirate, Bianca wore Ryan's clothes and was a boy, and Ryan wrapped himself in plastic wrap), but we were all tired and didn't stay long. So we went back, and I enjoyed the best night's sleep I've had since I got to Australia. In the morning we cooked eggs for breakfast, and sadly packed up and left the cottage.


After the hike we stopped at very small, family-owned chocolate factory, and then it was time to head back to Hobart. We made ourselves dinner, had another quiet evening, and headed for Wollongong early the next morning. I could very happily have stayed several weeks in Tasmania!