Finals Week

Jun 24, 2006 12:00

In stark contrast to spending my reading week hunched over a sprawling heap of books at Butler Library for 18 hours a day, this time around I spent the weekend before my Finals either lying on the beach or drinking hot cocoa while reading poetry. A friend and I flew up to Byron Bay and spent four days at a youth hostel that resembled the Oregon County Fair. Fittingly, the hostel used to be a commune started by American draft dodging surfers. One can even pay to stay in a VW art bus, a tee-pee, or a yurt instead of a standard room.

In our first full day, we decided to take a tour of Nimbin. This "alternative" town is well-known in Australia for its... uhhh... coffee. Jim, our intrepid tour guide, drove us around in a plain white passenger van with one killer sound system. We arrived at the picturesque village and from the moments we walked off the bus dozens of people asked if we wanted to buy their coffee products. We chose to buy coffee infused cookies and chocolate from these two old grandmas wearing brightly colored shawls. After ingesting the local sweets, we stepped back on to the bus, which subsequently transformed into a roller coaster. The tunes were carefully selected such that every second of the drive corresponded to a song in much the same way as Dark Side of the Moon matches up with the Wizard of Oz. Our last stop on the tour was with a hippy who owns 40 acres of replanted tropical forest. We sat around his property and ate starfruit, sweet lime, macadamia nuts, and a variety of other freshly picked exotic fruits that I couldn't even begin to recognize.

The rest of the weekend was even more relaxing. We stayed up late to watch soccer every night and slept in every day. When the weather was nice, we were on the beach. When it rained, we stayed inside, read, and drank hot cocoa made with Nimbin coffee-chocolate. As Bertrand Russell once said, "Time enjoyed wasted is never wasted time," and this last weekend was enjoyably wasted.
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