This is why I shouldn't be allowed to dance

Friday night I went to a party thrown at a friends house for the 20 April birthdays hanging about in our little community of crazy international students. I was dancing, and there may have been cheap wine coolers involved. And we were about to leave anyways, but I thought, one more dance couldn't hurt.

I have rarely been more wrong. Because about one minute in, my knee dislocated and I fell over. And that was the end of the party.

My friend Tam, while I was freaking out because my tibia was no longer in line with my femur and not underneath my patella, made me straighten my leg and pop it back into place. Someone got me ice. And eventually, I was helped off the ground and slowly hobbled back to my place. Which is where the cheap wine coolers come in because I'm fairly certain that they helped in my mobility that night.

And then I spent the weekend on the couch, with three cushions stacked up for me to elevate my knee (which was about the size of a small bowling ball), bags of frozen peas to keep it cool and my laptop propped on the cushions so I could watch the entire first season of The O.C. I'm a little ashamed of that last bit, but that show is like a religion: opiate of the people.

And that was how I spent my weekend! My knee is better, but stiff. And now only about the size of a softball. OK, maybe a little bigger.

I have a feeling that I'm not going to be going salsa dancing any time soon. Which, by the way, there's a really cool salsa club on Darling Harbour that's free entry on Thursday nights. We went for the first time the night before my knee dislocating.

Moral of the story: NO DANCING.

A small sidenote: my video about living on 40 litres of water for 40 hours is completed and up on the web (which is a little scary for me so please be nice.) You can view it by clicking here.

Missing Posts in Shots.

I am attempting to get back in every one's good graces by posting too many pictures of my latest adventures. I actually just worked on my feature story for class for an hour or so (about blogging, ironically) and it disappeared. Reminded me of Crash Different, because, excuse my language, the file was fucking gone. So I'm posting pictures. Or attempting to.

These first three are of the 75th anniversary of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which was a really cool day. I got to walk across the Harbour Bridge with about 100,000 other people without any cars on it. Which And we got temporary tattoos. In lieu of a huge fireworks display, they opted for lighting up the Harbour Bridge at night, which viewed from Mrs. Macquarie's Chair is quite the sight.

My free trip to Byron Bay was awesome (see pictures below!). The overnight 12 hour bus rides were not. But Byron is a nice little hippie-ville on a great bay. Non-locals call it the berg of "thongs, bongs and sarongs." It's the most easterly point of Australia- up by the lighthouse it literally looks like the Edge of the World. I got to kayak on the ocean and there were dolphins about 10 feet from the boat. I also got to remember how awful of a surfer I am: I can catch the wave, but stand up on the board? I can barely stand up on dry land without falling over. Not that you didn't already know that.

OH NOOSA!! It was a really really great week. I've discovered that the best way to take pictures of myself is to take pictures of my feet, so there seems to be many photos of my feet covered in sand. Saves me the trouble of finding someone else to take my picture. So, I stayed with Rachel, my former youth exchange counsellor and her husband Phil and their nine year old niece, who was also visiting. Noosa has changed a bit, there's a 7-11 there now! And a real shopping mall (complete with Big-W, which is Aussie for Wal-Mart, ick). But I took their niece to the beach with me, and went for walks on the Noosa River (it's still salty and flows inland, which freaked me out when I first arrived) and caught up with host families.

I did go to the Rotary meeting (7 am Thursday morning). I forgot how early that was. OH! A note on those horrific school uniforms. Four years ago, everyone was so reassuring about them. "Everyone will be wearing the same thing, and it makes getting ready easier..." blah blah blah. NOW I heard more than once: "those uniforms from the Lutheran College are so unattractive!" I knew that. I had to wear it for a year. And I knew it was fugly.

So, tonight I'm off to an April birthdays party! Despite my feature story disappearing, I am trying to make a good evening of it. Hope the pics make up for my absence.