laleri

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 03:52:24 GMT

I'm home! After 32 hours I made it. Despite the general incompetence found at every baggage claim, jeez people, just take two steps back! But anyway, my last few days in Australia were good. Brisbane was sorta boring so I headed out to Surfer's Paradise to lie on the beach. Unfortunately it was cloudy the whole time. Sydney was a fun city. Did the harbor bridge walk, checked out the opera house and the aquarium. I headed out to Manly beach for a few days and finally got my tan. I also took a surfing lesson! That was tons of fun, I actually surfed a few times. I could definitely see myself surfing if I lived near the beach. Back in Sydney ran into an American friend, Bryan, from JCU and hung out with him for a while. I went to a play in the opera house, somewhat random, often confusing, but funny. Then on my last night in town, Bryan convinced me that I just had to stay out all night since my flight was early in the morning anyway. Had a good time, but it ended up meaning I didn't really sleep for about 50 hours. Now I'm recovering from the jet lag and looking forward to christmas!

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 23:42:54 GMT

As I get ready to head back to Australia, here's a quick run-down of New Zealand.

Things NZ has a lot of:
Snow-capped Mountains
Glaciers
Bright blue lakes and rivers
Mossy forests
Green pastures
Waterfalls
Rain- up to 30 feet a year in one place I went!
Scenic routes- the whole country is a scenic route
Dead, and presumably live, possums
Sheep
Bungie jumpers
Japanese tourists in bucket hats

Things NZ is lacking:
Skim milk
Radio coverage
People that I know
People that know me ( I got a little lonely after Morgan left, but I still had fun)

Things that I've done in NZ:
Driven around most of the South Island
Gone to Christchurch
Walked in Arthur's Pass
Hiked on Franz Josef Glacier
Gone to Queenstown
Sailed on Milford Sound
Hiked to the base of Mt. Cook
Seen a Kiwi, and a Kea (the world's only alpine parrot)
Taken hundreds of pictures
Seen lots of beautiful places
Had a good time

Things I've learned:
Always bring your raincoat
It takes more than an hour to go 100 km, even when you're travelling at 100 km/hr
Make sure the heater is plugged in before you go to bed
Sheep are really, really stupid

That's about all I can think of for the moment, sorry, but you'll have to wait for the pictures. One more day in NZ then off to Brisbane and Sydney. Can't wait to be home.

School's out!

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:57:57 GMT

I'm done, I'm done, I'm done! Took my last final this morning, and I think it went fine. It was an essay exam so who knows how I did, I definitely got something at least semi-intelligent down for each question, and it turned out to be questions that I knew a bit about. So hopefully that works out. All day today I've been packing up my stuff, turns out I've got a lot of it. I don't know how I got over here in the first place, but now that I'm shipping stuff home in tiny little boxes it seems like more. Another one of my good friends went home today. She had a major luggage dilemna last night when she realized she was only allowed to have one bag and she had two huge ones. Luckily I had already been doing research on shipping stuff since I knew I was going to ship one of my bags. I ended up packing up one of her suit cases in boxes and shipping it for her today.

Now I've got 2 more days in Townsville before I head off to New Zealand for 11 days, Brisbane for 5 and Sydney for 5. I probably wont be updating while I'm away. But just to wrap this semester up: It's been awesome, I've had a great time, met some wonderful people, seen some beautiful scenery and visited some really cool places. I'm looking forward to being home Dec. 23, but I'll certainly miss this place. Hopefully I'll make it back here some day...

Exam week, anything but exams!

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:22:17 GMT

So, let's see. What have I been up to these past couple of days. Tuesday I went to the top of Mt. Stewart, which is a mountain I can see out of my room window. I got an awesome view from the top, could see all of Townsville and out to sea. Mt. Stewart is sorta owned by the army, there are all these signs along the road about "active laser fields" and "unexploded ordinance". I had to laugh at the laser field signs, what does that even mean? Anyway, they pretty much shouted that if you went off the road you would blow up. I stayed on the road. After that I finally made it to the Museum of Tropical Queensland. Thankfully I got in free, cause it wouldn't have been worth any money. They had a huge exhibit on the Pandora, some ship that apparently sank at some point in the past. I went through the exhibit backwards by accident and was really confused about the whole thing. Probably would have been better in the right direction. A major question I had: What the heck is the Pandora, and why do I care? This was answered in the first few feet if you went the right way, or the last few if you did what I did. They also had some fun kid science and physics exhibits. I can throw a tennis ball at 70 km/hour, Matt could do 110. I am also not tone deaf, and I learned that big bubbles rise much faster than small bubbles. And a bunch of other cool things, thankfully there were no actual kids there, so we had all the time in the world to fool around with all the exhibits. The last thing of interest in the museum was some really cool fossils of sea creatures. Amazing how modern bivalves and other shell fish are just small replicas of the ancient ones. Just wanted to take the fossils with me, but I think they would have frowned upon that.

Wednesday I had my first final. It was the photography one, so I was severely undermotivated to study. Not really sure how it turned out, but who really cares. After the final I went to Billabong sanctuary. Saw a lot of cute koalas and wombats and kangaroos. Also some turtles and big crocadiles, pretty much the usual.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and the Ashes. A bunch of us went to one of the frisbee guy's houses and watched the Ashes, which is a big Australia v. England cricket match. Cricket is sorta cool, mostly long and slow. They didn't get an out for the first two hours. When I got there I asked who was winning, they said Australia. It wasn't until later that I found out that England wouldn't bat until the next day! Crazy, crazy. Thanksgiving went well. The food was good and it was mostly chill. I ended up carving the turkey, good thing I've watched my dad and new a bit of what to do. No one else had any clue, but I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.

Friday I went to the Yongala! It was absolutely amazing, definitely worth the wait, the boat ride and the money. The Yongala is a passenger ship that sank in a storm in 1911. All 122 on board died, so it's a mass grave site and a historical ship wreck. Since 1911 it's been slowly taken over by coral and animals and is considered one of the best wreck dives in Australia, if not the world. I totally agree. On our first dive we saw 5 sea turtles! Up close and personal, too, you could reach out and touch them if you wanted. Also an amazing variety of soft corals and big fish. On our second dive we saw a 3-4 feet diameter Marbled Ray. It swam less than a foot from me, it was so graceful and had these little yellow fish riding its bow wave. Also saw a Moray eel up in the anchor well at the bow of the ship. Definitley one of my favorite dives and I only got a little sea sick.

Today I took my second final. It took 3 hours and covered a lot of information. I'm pretty sure I did well on it, I certainly studied long enough. Now it's time to get to work on my last final and start packing up my room. Lots of stuff to do in this next week.

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 03:39:55 GMT

It is so hard to study here. Finals aren't going to be easy, but there's so many other things I'd rather be doing right now. And my Yongala trip has been canceled twice now, we're scheduled for Friday and hopefully it will come through this time. I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I have a week and a half left in Townville. It will be hard to leave, I've made a lot of good friends here, some of whom I may never see again. And that's a sad thought.

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 07:36:32 GMT

    Yesterday I took a day off from study week and Matt and I went to Jourama falls. It's about 2 hours north of Townsville and is sorta on the edge of the rainforest. Sadly, the overlook was closed so I only got to see the falls from far away. Instead we went swimming in some of the rock pools and had a good time doing that. I got to see a bit of what the rainforest is like, but it hasn't been very wet this year. It was soooo hot, I continue to be amazed at the intensity of both the sun and the heat here, and it's not even full summer yet! I got a light sunburn from being in the sun for 30 minutes, and I already have a good base color. I'm really not used to having to worry about sunscreen all the time, I don't know how pale people survive in this country.

    I registered for classes at 11 pm and got somewhat screwed once again. The seniors had already filled one of the Bio classes I really wanted, so that changed my whole plan and I was scrambling at the last second. I've got some of the classes I wanted, hopefully I'll be able to stalk the one I didn't get and it'll work out in the end. Also, the anthro class I wanted is apparently only open for freshmen and sophomores, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't that way when I WAS a sophomore cause I couldn't get into it last year. So now I've got to get an override for that one. All very frustrating, I was hoping that this year would be different than past years, but it appears that the whole point of registration is to screw people.

    Spent a few hours working on my paper today, and got quite a bit done. I'm about a day ahead of schedule on it, and I realized today that pretty much no matter what I get on it I'll still do fine in the class. There went the motivation to really work hard on it. I'm still going to put work into it, I'm not very good at half-assing things, but I'm not stressing about it anymore. I also sent off my Monroe proposal to a faculty adviser. I'm really disappointed in the whole Monroe thing, I wanted to do something related to biology, but the structure of the proposal makes that nearly impossible to do. I wish that the monroe project was still the BS fun thing it was in the past, I'm willing to lose the extra money if it meant I got to do what I wanted with it.

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:53:56 GMT

Speeches, ok, not speaches.

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 02:05:47 GMT

The Valedictory Ball went off without a hitch. The shoes were uncomfortable, the dresses were pretty and the speaches were minimal. The food was really good, too. We got there about 6 and they served drinks in the lobby for a while. We sat down around 7 and listened to about 15 minutes of speaches and then got to eat. After we ate there was a few more minutes of speaches, desert and dancing. Seemed like everyone had a good time and I'm glad I went.

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:32:17 GMT

Classes are officially over. Man, this semester has just flown by. I've got three weeks left here at JCU and so many things I still want to do. This coming weeks is a study week, so I'm planning on just doing local Townsville stuff that I never got around to instead of traveling. Then two weeks of exams after that, three exams total. Tonight is Valedictory Ball, the Uni Hall end of the semester semi-formal. I'm hoping it'll be a good time, a bunch of my friends are going so it should be. Uncomfortable shoes? Bring it on!

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 06:12:39 GMT

It's been a long week. I had a big paper due at 4 today, that I worked on for more than 30 hours. Hopefully I'll get an Ok grade on it.
In other news...
Last Saturday Morgan, Liz, Ben and I went to a D or S costume party. You had to dress as something that started with a D or an S. I went as a Dork, Liz as Daisy Duke, Morgan as Dry, and Ben as a streaker. Our costumes were all pretty funny and it was a cool party. Ultimate Frisbee had playoffs on Monday night. I had friends on both teams that were in the final, so it was really win-win for me. On Tuesday night (Halloween), Frisbee had a costume party. I went as a mad scientist, I teased my hair out and put tons of hair spray in it. It was huge! My friend Katie was laughing the whole time she was doing it because she knows how much I care about my hair. It took me 20 minutes to brush it after I washed it the next day, but there doesn't appear to be any lasting damage. Liz went as Bride of Frankenstein for that party, she made her hair into an afro, which was pretty awesome. A good time was had by all. Next week is the last week of class here, I'm going to spend this weekend planning my post-school trips and relaxing after my horribly painful paper.

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:20:20 GMT

I'm an advanced scuba diver! What a great dive trip. Liz and I went on this trip together, we were dive buddies. She was a good buddy, lots of other people on the trip were not good buddies. We boarded the boat around 8 pm on Friday night and started the boat ride out to the Great Barrier Reef. It took us from 9 pm til 6 am to get there. The seas were kinda rough. I was very seasick, even though I took medicine and everything. That aspect of the trip was horrible, I was sick nearly the whole time I wasn't diving. But the diving itself more than made up for it. I saw my first reef shark, it was only about 2 or 3 feet long, but I'm fine with that. No worries about it attacking you, with a shark that size. I also saw these giant hump-headed parrot fish. They're the biggest member of that family, about 3 feet long. Their teeth were huge! We did a night dive and I saw some lionfish and a bunch of other stuff I've never seen during the day. It was weird to be out there at night with just a flashlight. When I looked back at the rest of the group it was like a scifi movie, beams of light shining down all over the place. Now that I'm advanced my next move is to make it to the Yongala. That's a world famous wreck dive that you have to be advanced to do, so I've got to do it before I leave Australia.
Sadly there was one casualty on this trip. My beach towel. Rest in peace butterfly-towel-with-my-named-sewed-into-it-that-I-got-when-I-was-10-years-old. We've been through a lot together. I know you've gone to a better place... My towel flew off the boat in the middle of the night. Despite being pinned with three clothes pins. It really just wanted to be free.

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 03:19:29 GMT

    I had a great weekend around Townville this weekend. On Friday night a few of us went ice skating. Funny to come all the way to Australia to skate. The rink was the smallest rink that Ive ever seen. It was almost a square, so we were practically skating in a circle instead of an oval. They also seemed to have a hard time keeping the ice frozen, there was a layer of water by the end of the night. But we still had a good time, and no blisters! There is a whole bunch of highschool aged kids that apparently go skating every Friday night. They all had their own skates and the staff knew them by name. Glad I am not that age any more.
    Saturday I just did work all day, but at night we went to Greekfest. It was pretty cool, got some good food. That was the best part because the dining hall food was horrible that night. I also saw some interesting performances of traditional dancing and that sort of thing. My friend Katie got recruited to dance on stage during the belly-dancing performance. That was hilarious, I got some good pictures and video.
    Sunday I went sailing curtesy of a boy named Stu on the Ultimate frisbee team. He is a big sailor and got to borrow one of his friends boat for the day. He took a bunch of us out and it was awesome. We left the marina at 8:30 in the morning and sailed to Radical Bay on Magnetic Island. It was a beautiful day, sunny, not too hot, just enough wind to sail. I got a bit sea sick and didnt quite make it to the bay without hurling over the rail, but it was still a nice trip. Once in the bay we jumped off the boat and swam to shore, played some beach Ultimate, threw the disc around in the water, lay on the beach, and splashed around. Doesnt get much better than that. While I was swimming I got bit by some sea lice and started freaking out that I was getting stung by jelly fish, even though its not that season yet. Imagine my relief when they told me they were harmless. We ate lunch on the boat, and Stu and Ben climbed the mast and jumped off into the water. I thought they might kill themselves, since climbing the mast for Stu involved using hands and feet like a monkey. Climbing the mast for Ben involved being pulled up on a rope by the other guys. I guess hes not as monkey-like as Stu. They both survived the jump, and of course thought it was great. Around 3:30 we started sailing back to Townsville. About half an hour into the sail we saw a huge sea turtle right by the side of the boat. Sea turtles are so awesome, I am happy every time I see one. We all got a bit sunburned, my first burn in Australia. I guess now I understand why they say not to be outside between 10 and 2. I guess 8:30 to 3:30 might not be the best idea. My burn isnt bad though, so no big deal. We finished up our awesome day with Pizza Hut.
    And now I am back to class, not nearly as fun. Getting my advanced scuba certification next weekend.

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 05:29:48 GMT

I finally made it up to Crystal Creek yesterday afternoon. Liz, Ben, Matt and I all made the hour long journey up there. We stopped at the Frosty Mango along the way and has some really good sorbet. Crystal Creek is a swimming hole in one of the National Parks. There were rocks to jump off of and rock slides and all kinds of fun stuff. The water was the perfect temperature, cool enough to feel good on a hot day, but warm enough to get right in without feeling uncomfortable. I'd been wanting to go there for a long time, so I'm glad I finally made it.
Today, unfortunately, I had work to do. I went to the Townsville Botanical Gardens to take pictures for my photography class. How is it that the class that was supposed to be fun, but isn't, the class that doesn't transfer at all back to WM, and the class that I have the worse grade in, is the one that takes up the most of my time? And I had such high hopes... Oh, well. It was so hot sitting at the bus stop that I actually got a sunburn and a bit dehydrated. Let me tell you, Australia is a harsh land! I can't wait until I no longer have to depend on buses, I spent more time waiting for the bus than I did taking pictures, a sad state of affairs.

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 07:11:14 GMT

And another week down. I realized this week that I'm going to have a ton of stuff due at the end of the semester, all at the same time. So, my previous plan of pretty much taking friday, saturday and sunday off every week is definitely not going to work. It's getting to be crunch time on several papers, as well as on my Monroe project. I made some progress today on a couple of things, and I'm sure I'll be alright. Studying abroad is getting to have a bit too much "studying" in it...

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 04:11:48 GMT

I'm back from the semester break! What a fun, but tiring trip it was. I think I need a little vacation to recover from it.

We flew into Melbourne on Friday the 23. The flight wasn't bad but we got in really late so I was extremely tired. Our first night there we had a really rude hostel-mate. He came in drunk and started playing music at 2 in the morning. We told him to shut up a couple of times and finally around 2:45 he went to sleep. Our frist full day in Melbourne we just sorta wandered around town. We stopped in at a little camera museum which had hundreds of models of cameras from the beginning up through the present. After that we stopped in at St. Paul's Cathedral for a few minutes before heading over to Federation Square. The Square really doesn't fit with the part of town in it's in. It has really modern architecture that reminds me of post-apocolyptic movies but is surrounded by historic buildings. I think it was an eye sore, others think it's "daring and exciting". Next we walked over to the National Gallery of Art Victoria. They had a big exhibit on Picasso as well as art and sculpture through the ages. I realized that I still can't appreciate Picasso, but I enjoyed the Gallery overall. They had a lot of beatiful paintings and sculptures.
    Sunday we spent the day shopping the markets. We went to the Victoria Market in the morning, it's a famous daily market with hundreds of stalls. We spent 2 hours there and barely made a dent. Bought a couple of souvenirs as well as a few things for myself. Sunday was a really rainy, cold day with sudden downpours. So we were trapped at Victoria for a little while before we headed down to an arts and crafts fair down by the river. Bought a couple more things there. After that we took the train to Rippon Lea Historic House. It was a Victorian era mansion with a large garden. It was pretty nice, the tour was short but sweet and the gardens were beautiful. I forced Liz and Katie to let me take some pictures of the three of us using my tripod, they laughed at me. In the evening a friend from elementary school, Chris Miller, who is also studying in Australia this semester and just happened to be in Melbourne came over to join us for dinner. It was fun seeing him again, and it made the world seem like such a small place.
    Monday morning we left for the Great Ocean Road. This was my favorite part of the trip. We rented a car and drove out there. The Road itself is a scenic, two-lane road that runs right along the coast. There was wonderful ocean and inland views, and I took a ton of pictures. Along the way we stopped multiple times at scenice lookouts as well as in little towns we passed. We also stopped at the Cape Otway Lighthouse and went up to the top. It was quite windy up there. Another exciting side-trip was the Otway rainforest fly walk. You walked throught the rainforest on elevated walkways about 100 feet up in the trees. It was raining during our walk, funny thing in a rainforest. Some of the trees were bigger around than I am tall and were hundreds of years old. During our car ride we started playing a game called "hey cow". In this game you yell "hey cow!" at a cow as you pass by and if it looks you get a point. Because I had strep throat I could not participate and Liz definitely came off as the ultimate winner of this game. She actually started a mini-stampede at one point. Late in the day we finally made it to the Twelve Apostles. They're rock formations that stand out of the sea and they were really beautiful. We watched the sunset from a formation called the arch and then drove to a hostel. I drove the car for a while during the day, the whole wrong side of the road thing didn't cause me any trouble. I was just sad to be missing the views while I was behind the wheel.
    Tuesday we turned around and headed back the way we came. Saw all the views from the opposite direction, some of them were even better taht way. By afternoon we made it to Phillips Island. We went and looked at some more formations called the Nobbies. They were home to tons and tons of sea gulls. It's a gull breeding ground so there were also a lot of babies. If you looked through binoculars you could faintly see some Australian Fur seals on one of the far islands. It was a beautiful area, reminded me a lot of pictures I've seen of Ireland. As sunset approached we went to watch the Penguin Parade. Every night hundreds of little penguins, all under a foot tall, come out of the ocean and walk to their burrows on land. They were the cutest thing ever. They came out of the ocean in small groups and waddled up the beach. They would get about half way, see all of us and run back to the water! They did this a few times before they finally worked up the nerve to break for the sand dunes. Sooo cute! We drove back to Melbourne after that.
    Wednesday I went to the docter then headed to the Old Melbourne Gaol. Crazy aussies don't know how to spell jail. It was sorta cool, sorta depressing. Had a bunch of stories of executed inmates and artifacts in the cells. After that I walked down to the river and waited for Katie and Liz to finish up in the aquarium. Went up to the 55th story observation tower to get an aerial view of the city. It was cool, but it would've been cooler if I knew more about the city. In the evening we went and saw a ballet called Raymonda. We got really cheap tickets for great seats, and it was a good time. I'd never seen a ballet before, now I feel so much more cultured :-P. Got to get dressed up and sit on fancy velvet seats in a nice theatre.
    Thursday we did the Melbourne Zoo and the Royal Botanical Gardens. The zoo was supposed to be great but I don't think it could compete with the one in DC. The highlights were seeing an echidna and a platypus. They were both so cute and goofy looking. That pretty much completes my list of Australian funny-mammals that I needed to see. The zoo was pretty intense, it was public shool holiday and there were hundreds of screaming kids running around. Hard to stand... We spent about 4 hours at the zoo and then went to a tea house for tea in the afternoon. I'm really starting to enjoy tea here. After tea we took the tram to the Gardens. They were so quiet and peaceful, a nice contrast to the zoo. I really enjoyed seeing all the plants with little name tags and seeing so much green. Townsville is really dry and brown, but these gardens were green and lush. I felt rejuvenated after we left. That was our last day in Melbourne.
    We left early Friday morning to go to the airport to head to Ayers Rock. Another uneventful flight, saw Uluru and the Olgas from the air, that was cool. After we landed we picked up our bags from the single carousel, they only had 2 gates, and headed to the camp ground. Set up our tent and booked the shuttle to Uluru for that afternoon and for the Olgas the next morning. We hiked the base trail around Uluru in the afternoon, it was really hot, I can't imagine being here in the summer. Uluru was an amazing sight, it's just a huge rock smack in the middle of miles of flat ground. The rock was so red and the sky was so blue. The only bad thing was these annoying black flies that swarm your head, thankfully they didn't bite. We took about two and a half hours to do the hike and then we were transported to a lookout to watch the sunset. It looked just like it does in all the pictures. We got back to the campground after dark, made dinner and got ready for bed. The stars were awesome. The brightest I've ever seen, now I can understand why they build observatories in the desert. Every star was visible, and so was every constellation. I saw Orion as a man with a bow for the first time, and I only wished I knew more constellations. Figuring out the tent situation was pretty hard. The tent was definitely large enough for the three of us, but our bags were another matter. They ended up having to spend the night outside, but it didn't really matter since there wasn't even any dew.
    Woke up super early again on Saturday to go to the Olgas at sunrise. Our busdriver was a mean lady, who was late, so we ended up missing the first part of the sunrise. It was still nice, though. After a few minutes watching the sunrise we went to do the Valley of the Winds hike. It was much better than the one around Uluru, took you up hills and between the rock formations. I thought the Olgas were much better all-around than Uluru, I don't know why they're so much less famous. The flies were even more annoying here, but I survived. I'm glad we got started on the walk early, it turned out to be a really hot day, pushing 100. Once we got back to the campground we just snoozed and read in the shade for the whole afternoon. It was too hot to do anything!
    Slept in on Sunday then flew back here to Townsville. A really fun trip, although my least relaxing vacation ever.

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 05:33:58 GMT

Heading off to Melbourne tonight for our semester break! So, there wont be any updates for a while, but tune in next week for all the details of our trip!

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 02:42:32 GMT

Sorry about the pictures, folks. Had internet trouble last night, I'm working on it now.

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:06:12 GMT

    Hello out there faithful livejournal readers! Sorry it's been so long since I updated, but there was nothing going on and then I was busy having an absolutely amazing time sailing in the Whitsunday islands.
    Last Thursday I took the Greyhound bus from Townsville to Airlie Beach. It was my first experience on Greyhound, and while I don't really have any complaints it's definitely not going to be on the top of my list of favorite ways to travel. The ride was about four and half hours, mostly due to our hourlong stop at a gas station/restaurant. Apparently standard opperating procedure, but I mean c'mon. I pretty much just napped on the bus ride down, there isn't a lot between here and there and practically nothing to see. Just a lot of sugarcane and fields of tall grass with cattle or horses. I spent the night at a Hostel in Airlie Beach, where several of my roommates came in at 4 in the morning, drunk, talking loudly and then shushing themselves while continuing to talk loudly about how they should quiet down. I didn't feel bad when my alarm went off at 6:30 and I took a shower and banged around in the room.
    Friday morning I headed for the marina at 8 to see what my new home at sea was going to look like. I was sailing on a boat called the Kiana, it takes 14 passengers and 3 crew. I met the other passengers on the dock and I was the youngest person there and the only one travelling alone. There were 5 Brits travelling together, two British couples, 1 German girl, 1 crazy old foreign lady of unidentifiable origin, me, and two canadians from BC. I got to be pretty good friends with the 5 Brits, two of whom were on a 10 month world tour, the other three were visiting them for a few weeks. The crew was a divemaster named John, the skipper named Brent, and a hostess named Ainsley. They were all nice and excited to be going back to sea since they were coming off a two week vacation.
    That first day started out cloudy and cold with occasional downpours. Thankfully the boat had a covered sitting area so I didn't have to go below and risk the horror of sea sickness. As it was I spent a fair amount of time with my eyes on the horizon. We motored out to our first island destination, passing other islands out in the rain and fog. The sky started to clear in the afternoon and we prepared for our first dive/snorkel at Hayman Island. We were diving fairly close to shore in about 30 feet of water. Sadly, visibility was absolutely awful. The windy conditions of the past few weeks had reduced it to 6-10 feet, which is the worst conditions I've yet experienced. However, I'm of the opinion that a bad day of diving is better than no diving at all, and I still got to see a lot of great coral and fish, I just had to focus more on the stuff right next to me instead of looking far away. We saw a big Napoleon Wrass named Elvis and a huge school of bait fish. The bait fish were cool, you could swim right through the school and see them dart away.
    We spent that evening and night in the same bay and watched the sun go down and the stars come out. The sunset was really brilliant with the scattering of clouds left over from earlier in the day. The stars were the brightest I've ever seen, it's too bad I only know two constellations down here in the southern hemisphere. It was a breezy and cool night so I didn't spend too much time on deck and I went to bed early.
    Saturday morning dawned partly cloudy with a good forecast for the rest of the day. First thing in the morning I saw a huge sea turtle about 10 feet off from the boat. That's the first wild sea turtle I've seen down here! We left Hayman island at 7:30 and set off to our next destination at Hook Island. As we motored on to our next destination we saw humpback whales sporting off in the distance and lay in the sun as the sky cleared by mid morning. At Hook Island we did 2 more dives. Visibility was pretty bad here too, about 15 feet, but on the first dive I could hear whale song! It was really cool to hear them off in the distance. Sound travels so well through water. I also saw an amazing variety of hard and soft corals, that were absolutely spectacular even with the bad vis, and a bunch of brightly colored small fish.
    In the afternoon we went on our first sail. The wind was blowing really hard and the seas were rough and I had my worst afternoon of sea sickness of the trip. I didn't actually get sick, thankfully, but I spent a lot of time clutching the rail and watching the horizon. We saw some dolphins really close to the boat and they went and rode the bow wave, just like in the movies. After our sail we anchored near another island for the night. The stars were even brighter here, but the night was also colder and I was really tired.
    Sunday morning we were up at 6 am as we headed off for Whitsunday island, home of Whitehaven beach the whitest sand beach in the world. On our way over there we came upon a mother humpback whale and calf. I think we surprised them because they were only about 30 feet from the boat as they hightailed it out of there. We could see the baby frisking around once they got a safe distance away. The whale migration has been really amazing, seems like I've seen a whale every time I got on a boat around here. We also saw a couple more dolphins and a turtle once we arrived at the island. It was a beautiful ride to the island, blue, calm water. Once we landed on the beach we climbed a trail up to a lookout to get our first view of Whitehaven. The view was spectacular with tourquoise water and dazzling white sand. Next we hiked down to the beach. It definitely lives up to it's reputation, the sand was white as snow and soft as powdered sugar. I've never seen its like, and I don't think any other beach will ever be able to compare. The water was clear shallow and we saw a ton of rays. Don't worry, I stayed clear of them. We spent about 2 hours on the beach taking pictures and laying around. A bunch of the women were using the sand to polish their jewelry. Unfortunately, I'd left all my jewelry back in my dorm room so it remains unpolished.
    In the afternoon we sailed back to Airlie Beach. It was a much calmer day and I didn't feel sick this time. I even spent about 20 minutes out on the bow of the ship, as far out in front as I could get. And that was the end of my fabulous trip. I spent the rest of the afternoon putzing around in Airlie, buying postcards and such. My bus didn't come til 8:30 so I had about 5 hours to kill, and I got a bit bored. That's the worst thing about buses, the waiting...
    Now I'm looking forward to my semester break trip to Melbourne and Uluru next week, busy, busy.
    Make sure to check out the pictures from this weekend!

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 13:39:00 GMT

We've got our semester break plans finalized!
Here's the plan:
Fly to Melbourne night of Sept. 22
Tour Melbourne- 23-24
Drive the great Ocean Road and see the Dandenong Ranges- 25
Visit Phillip Island and see the penguins- 26
Stuff in Melbourne- 27-28
Fly to Uluru the morning of the 29
See Uluru in the afternoon- 29
Kings Canyon- 30
Visit the Olgas- morning of the 1st
Fly to Townsville- afternoon of the 1st
I know it seems really heavily planned out, but you know me. Actually leaving the 27th and 28th open for whatever we find in Melbourne is a big jump for me, but I'm sure we'll find tons of stuff we never even thought of. Perhaps surfing? Only two more weeks, and I've got the Whitsundays next weekend. I'm sooo excited! Now I just need to get through my first exam on Monday and try to resign myself to missing Ultimate on Thursday night :-( I guess visiting the Whitsundays will be worth it, but still a tough trade...

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 13:19:31 GMT

    I've got my first real paper due tomorrow. 1000 words for my photography class! I'm so bitter...
    It's the full moon again, and I was just thinking today how weird it was that I've already been here so long. Last month I was out on Maggie Island for the full moon, this month I'm just hanging around in Townsville. Hopefully I'll get some kiteboarding, frisbee golf and beach time in this weekend. My stupid paper prevented me from going to the beach today, but I got to play Ultimate in the afternoon. Played for the first time with my new cleats, and whew what a difference. I just felt so much faster, and I was able to turn a lot better, too. Maybe I'm not as slow as I thought I was. I think they'll be a good buy, especially considering how cheap they were. I'm feeling nearly better after my strep throat event. I'll be good as new in no time. Hopefully I'll be able to avoid getting all the other plagues that are going around campus.
    For everyone at WM... I'm still waiting on pictures of most of your rooms! Don't just leave me hanging.

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 10:31:11 GMT

I have strep throat and I'm not very happy about it. Hopefully now that I've got some medicine I'll start getting better. I've never been sick in what feels like the summer before, it's sorta a weird experience.

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 04:31:02 GMT

    It's been raining off and on since Friday night. A nice cool rain with heavy downpours and light drizzles. I've been enjoying it, although it does make me wish I had an umbrella. Yesterday we had the University "cross country" as part of an inter-dorm competition called Fisher Shield. They made us all get up at 6 am by playing loud music and setting off the alarms in the building, it wasn't really optional whether you got up or not. Pretty harsh. Then we did a 4k. I walked it, some people ran, the top 20 people of each sex earned extra points for their dorm. And everyone got a point for finishing. Pretty much the only reason people participate in this is so that they can go to kegs on the lawn in the afternoon.
    Kegs on the lawn is an outdoor party with beer and punch, inflatables and other types of games. It was raining pretty much the whole time for it, made me think of the Fourth of July party up in Vermont. We still had fun despite the rain. They had a slip-and-slide that a lot of people were getting really into. No injuries, thankfully. After Kegs, I had the Ultimate Frisbee Pub Crawl. The theme was Rubik's cube, you had to wear 6 different colors and trade with other people so that you were eventually wearing all one color. I went for green and ended up finishing first. So that was a lot of fun, too. The frisbee kids are all really nice and have a good time in everything they do. I'm glad I joined the club.
    So, a pretty busy weekend. Now to do some homework and try to dry out my clothes from yesterday.

When it rains it pours...

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:22:59 GMT

I had a whole series of firsts today...
    Liz, Morgan and I all took our first kite-boarding lesson, and we had an absolute blast! Our instructor, who was a kid that goes to JCU, picked us up around 9:30 this morning and we headed for the beach. Our lesson was supposed to run from about 10 am to 2, but there was absolutely no wind this morning, contrary to the forecasts. So, we sat under a tree in a beachside park for a few hours waiting for the wind to pick up. It was a gorgeous day, and my other options for the afternoon included homework. Needless to say, I wasn't opposed to hanging out at the beach all day. We were just about to give up and reschedule when the wind picked up around noon. Kite-boarding was back on! The lesson started out with learning how to set up and fly the giant kite. This thing was huge, probably around 18 feet. We spent an hour or two getting those basics down. Then we flew the kite out in the water and let it just drag us. It was like the best body surfing ever because there was no huge wave crashing around your head. We weren't able to try the board out today because the wind got too strong, but our instructor was nice enough to schedule us for another two hour session next week so we could do that. We watched him ride around for a little while, saw how good we could be someday, perhaps. You could tell the lessons weren't about making money, they were about making people fall in love with the sport. Which I could be on my way to doing...
    A group of us decided to go to the North Queensland Cowboys Rugby game this evening. This was my first time seeing rugby in real life; the Cowboys are the local pro team. Tickets to get in were really cheap, we sat on a grassy hill behind the endzone. The whole game had a very highschool football game feel for me. There was a bunch of young teenagers strolling around checking eachother out, but also a bunch of families and somewhat drunken adults. It just really didn't seem like a pro game to me. I think I'm maybe getting the hang of rugby, I at least know when and how they score now. The game was fun, but it was the last home game of the season, so I won't be going back for more.
    While we were at the game I saw the first rain I've seen since coming to Australia more than a month ago. Of course I had left my rain jacket in the closet in my room, it never rains here! I got pretty wet as it rained off and on throughout the game. Though I was happy to see rain- I'd been feeling a bit parched- I wasn't happy to have it while I was sitting in the grass at a rugby game. I guess mother nature really wanted to mess with me today.
    And that was my adventures for today, here's to more Australian firsts as my trip goes on!

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:53:48 GMT

    Every week the Townsville Yacht club runs a free sail on Wednesday nights at twilight. You just show up and put your name on a list and hopefully you get put on a sail boat. My friend Morgan and I went last night, and had a great time. This was my first time sailing, and I'm proud to report that I did not get sea-sick at all. The boat we went on had like 9 people on it, so I didn't have to do any of the work of sailing. I just sat back and relaxed and changed sides of the boat when they told us to. I think that's why they take us, movable balast. Since I had never gone sailing before I was really surprised at how far the boat tips with the wind. Sometimes it felt like we were about to go all the way over!

    We sailed a triangle from the port in Townsville out to Magnetic Island and across and then back to the port. Saw a pretty nice sunset, and watched the stars come out. The moon was pretty small, so the stars were really bright. I would definitely go again. Hopefully this is just a small taste of how great my Whitsunday trip is going to be. That's coming up fast! I took a couple of pictures on the boat, check them out.

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 04:19:48 GMT

        After a series of minor disasters I've got spring break scheduled. My friends Liz and Katie are going with me to Melbourne and then on to Ayers Rock (Uluru). We're going to spend 6 days in Melbourned and 3 at Uluru. We pretty much just have our flights scheduled, but that was the first major barrier. Now we need to figure out what we actually want to do while we are there. The disasters had to do with a credit card that didnt want to work, but thankfully I got it all cleared up in the end.

        I also booked my trip to the Whitsundays. I'm going September 15th through the 17th on a ship called the Kiana. Three days, two nights sailing, snorkeling and diving in paradise. I'm really looking forward to that trip, even though I have to go by myself. That will be my first real travel completely on my own.

        On Friday I went to the new town pool down by the river with a couple of my friends. It's a really nice pool, not just a big rectangle, it had several levels and a little waterfall/fountain thing. The water was a little cool, but as the weather gets hotter I'm sure I'll be making my way back there. Yesterday I spent another great day on Magnetic Island, snorkeling and laying on the beach. My friend Morgan and I headed out there on the first bus and came back in the evening. The weather was perfect, the water was calm and clear and there was practically no one else there. Just wonderful.

        On the homefront, I miss everyone who is moving back into WM this weekend. The first few days at school are always my favorite. Everyone better send me pictures of their rooms once they're set up! Especially those who are living in Jamestown, they sound pretty snazzy.