Crazy clubs and silver service

Yesterday (Friday) our group (all 6 of us) went to North Stradbroke island (you can look it up if you like - it is south east of Brisbane off the coast). Our group met in Sydney, and 2 of the group went there own ways, one to Cairns, and one to Brisbane, both searching for work. Andrew Bass, (dentistry at Dalhousie) is the one who bought the car in Cairns, and Angela (teacher from Florida) went to Brisbane early. The other 3, Jason, a nomadic type with the bare essentials and in Australia for a year is from California, Agi, from Berlin, came to Australia to learn English, and was in school in Sydney. She met us, then decided to quit and let us teach her. Finally Adrienne is going to do a masters in Criminology at UBC in the fall. She is originally from NFLD, and is 22. Anyway, on Stradbroke island, after taking the hour ferry over, we went to the beach. There are a number of beaches including the cylinder, main beach and frenchman's beach. We spent a few hours at main beach, and I got my first warning from the Australian beach patrol. You may know something about it, but basically these lifeguards train from boyhood to patrol beaches around Australia, and because of this there are very few accidents. Well, I decided to try to swim to the 'big waves' which ended up being pretty far out, and I spent a good 20 minutes swimming forward but going nowhere due to a rip; after which the lifeguard asked for me to stay where I could touch the bottom. I also found a soccer ball in the hostel - I took it and have been practicing my skills - the world cup fever here must be rubbing off. Later that night we went to the clubs. These clubs are pretty expansive - for 5$ cover you get access to multilevel complex with different music playing on different floors and too many bars to count...mot to mention the fact the bars serve alcohol until 5 am. Even going to bed at 3am was tough to handle!

On Saturday (today) Jason and I went shopping for a few items. He needed to fix his camera - ended up formatting his memory card (deleting all his pictures). I bought hair elastics to organize my clothes. After we bought groceries, where I bought 6 (small) bananas for 13.50$! While returning them, it was explained that most bananas are being imported due to the cyclone 6ish months ago. Anyway, after cooking dinner it was off to my first job. I was catering/waiting at the Ronald McDonald House Charity Ball (Brisbane). I worked for 5 hours, and did basically everything. The staff was very friendly (luckily) and helped me out with learning how to carry plates, where to go and what to do. Most of the night I spent serving drinks at my 6 designated tables (wine, champagne, beer, spirits, etc.), this was broken up with running main course dishes, doing break-out bar, coffee and tea, water, as well as clearing. All in all good experience and considering I had no training it went fairly well. Apparently there is work immiediately in Bundaberg picking vegetables (starting Monday) so I may leave Brisbane on the bus tomorrow, or leaving with Andrew on Monday in his car.