April 20

I woke up super early for a Tourism Industry breakfast. It was the Welcome for Queensland's new Minister of Tourism, hosted by the UQ School of Tourism and the Queensland Tourism Industry Council. I had been invited by one of my professors to represent the school and ask the new Minister an educated question. I developed two questions last week and sent them. One was about sustainable tourism with the increased cruise ship market at the Great Barrier Reef and the other was about helping Queensland tourist operators after the affects of the recent flood/cyclone. I preferred my first question, but wasn't sure if it was too pointed/attacking. Luckily, it was the one chosen. I dressed up and headed down to the convention center. Two other students were also asking questions (one classmate of mine and another undergraduate student) so I chatted with them for a bit. This "mingling time" was supposed to be a networking opportunity, but I ended up talking to students and professors the whole time. Whoops. I was really looking forward to talking with the professor who invited me, but he arrived late and left early, so oh well! I sat between the School of Tourism Coordinator and my professor from last semester (who will also be my final report advisor).

The breakfast was only OK - it was a frittata filled with way too many vegetables and onions, etc. And it had a glob of ketchup and mayo on top! Aussies are so weird. The Minister gave a speech and stumbled a couple times which took the pressure off of me! Phew. Then I was the last to ask a question. The others didn't really follow their script, so I tried to just "talk" through my question instead of read it verbatim. Probably a mistake since I felt like it stumbled a bit, but others probably didn't notice. I shouldn't have used the microphone because I can project my voice, but instead I held it just a bit too far away from my face, so it cut in and out. OH WELL! Whatever. Others asked some questions that weren't prepared just regular Q&A, then that was it.. We met the minister and took a few awkward photos where I think I ended up being in the center of the photo - haha!

I walked a kilometer to the busstop which was a mistake because my heels gave me blisters, then came home and changed clothes before my class. Headed off to class which was a short day! Whoo hoo! Then, I printed out my huge paper, the biggest paper I've ever written!! By that time, my parents met me on campus, so they came with me to turn in my paper and then we ate some lunch at the food court, visited the lakes and took the bus back to my house. I gave them a tour of my house, and we sat around for a bit trying to decide what to do with the evening. We decided to go to the movies and see Biutiful, so we headed to the Barracks and got some dinner. Lina took a break from studying and came over for some coffee and got to chat with my parents for a bit more, which was nice! Then we saw the movie. It was OK. Kind of a lot happening in it and all of the story lines were kind of shitty - nothing really good happened! =( I shared a cab back to my parent's hotel to drop them off and then took it home.

My mom tried calling me to make sure I made it home safely, but my phone was still on silent from the movie, so she kind-of freaked out and tried to get ahold of EVERYONE. Embarrassing!! Oh well.