Hello all,
I hope you are all going well. Everything is amazing here. From the first hour we got here our program had us busy with all sorts of cool activities around the city. For the first week we had an orientation with some other students studying in a town 3 hours south of us called Townsville. This was a pretty interesting coincidence being that two other girls I knew from my school were going to Townsville so we got to have the same orientation week. We all stayed in a nice hostel just a few minutes from the city. The first day we took a trip out on a huge Catamaran boat to the Great Barrier Reef. It was absolutely amazing. I did two dives with some amazing dive masters that really knew their way around the reef. We saw Giant Clams that were every color you can imagine, we saw some Reef Sharks and even a turtle. I tried to tell it the East Australian Current was the other way but I don't think he could understand my accent. (Mariah will probably be the only one who gets that reference). When we finished our second dive we actually swam to a near by island where we took all our gear off and got to snorkel a small patch of reef where we saw a blue spotted sting ray (not the kind that kill Steve Irwin). The water was so warm, it felt almost like a bath tub but the island kind of smelt cause it was a bird sanctuary. When we had finished we were served lunch which was really good. I got this meat stuff on rice and I didn't know what kind of meat it was so after I finished I found out it was lamb so apparently I like lamb. We let the sails down and power sail back into port. I manage to not get sunburnt so I call it a victory.
Day two we help this crazy old conservationist lady plant some trees that provide the fruits eaten by an endangered bird called the Cassowarry. To call this animal a bird is like calling a Koala a cat (in my opinion. This 'bird' is like a mixture of an ostrich, a turkey, and a unicorn... I don't really have any pictures of it yet but if you have seen the movie UP it is like the bird in that only with a horn. I'll try to get a picture of it soon.
The last adventure we went on with Australearn was to a kind of zoo thing called Rain Forest Station that had tons of animals native to Australia not to mention some aboriginal dancers and a place to learn how to throw a boomerang. Oh yeah you'll get to see the video. This place also had Kangaroos just hopping around. Of course I fed the kangaroos, and yes we were allowed to. It was a pretty cool place with everything from giant Crocs to tiny koalas named Tim Tam.
So far everything is amazing here and I am having an awesome time. I will try to post a new blog every week to let you guys know whats going on. Love you guys!
Cheers,
Caitlin
