Day 3

Today was an exciting day of adventure!  The day started with a 9am run up the mountains of Cairns with my new friends Will, Frances, and Steph, who all happen to be runners AND live within twenty feet of me--which is very convenient because it means I can just step outside and yell if I want to talk to them.  

The pictures don't do them justice--the mountains are HUGE.

The view from our campus!

Yep, we tried to run up the mountains.  'Tried' being the keyword here.  We actually did quite well at the beginning, running up and down trails, but most of them dead-ended after a short while.  We found a nice trail, but it was so steep that our run quickly devolved into a hike.  It was lovely to hike through the rainforest, which is actually very pretty!  It's winter here, so it's not very hot, and the rainforest isn't very wet either.  That makes it nice for running, but apparently once the rainy season begins the rivers in the forest will flood and possibly get crocodiles?  Only time will tell.

After running/hiking and brunch, we all showered and took a bus into the city of Cairns.  (I technically live in Smithfield, which is about 30 minutes outside of Cairns.)  The city is lovely and clean, although not quite as touristy as I had imagined.  There are lots of small restaurants, shops, travel agencies, and dive and tour booking shops.  LOTS of tour booking shops.  We walked around a bit, checked out the Esplanade and the Lagoon, and wandered around town looking for lunch.

Cairns!  (It was a bit cloudy today.)

The Lagoon is also known as Cairns' 'toilet.'  It's a large shallow sand-filled swimming pool right in front of the bay. which isn't a bay so much as a mud flat.  The tide was out and the mud flat was full of shorebirds and tiny mud crabs.  It wasn't warm enough for swimming (for me, anyway) but plenty of people were out in bathing suits, and kids were playing in the Lagoon.  Apparently Australia has an ozone layer problem and there's still a high level of UV even on cloudy days, so I guess you can get tan on a cloudy day here.  (But it's still cold!)

There's sand in this pool!  I guess the mud flats were nice sandy
palm tree-lined beaches before World War I, when they
dredged the bay.  The Lagoon is nice too, though.

It sure looks nice!  And the water was pretty warm, too.

The lifeguards have such cute uniforms!

I had heard that there would be public barbecues here, but what I had in mind were those crappy ones we have in the states where you have to bring your own charcoal.  Nope, these are WAY better!  You just press a button to turn them on, clean them up when you're done (or use foil), and they're very nice and pretty and clean!  I plan to buy some kangaroo and crocodile meat (which is at the grocery store, I hear, sold right next to the beef) and head back to Cairns soon for my own barbie! 

Today I pulled a Reverse-Asian-Tourist! 

There was also a large marina in Cairns that had some amazing boats and incredible views!

Check out those mountains!  They're huge!

If I was a Bond villain, this would be my boat.

Yes.  I tried to run up one of these today.  Not my best idea ever.

But how can I resist?  They're so pretty!

And then we did a little birdwatching off the Esplanade, mostly because the birds were kinda neat.

What?  Crocodiles can cause injury?  I had no idea!

That building is a casino, I think?  Probably.

Mud flats!  (There's water out where those boats are, though.)

Look at this bird!  Will made some new birdwatching friends
today who called this a Masked Plover.

We couldn't see the sun set from Cairns,
but this view sure was worth the wait.

 All in all, a lovely day!  Yesterday was a long boring day of orientation, full of rules and information on exciting things such as insurance and textbooks.  But I did get a really cheesy mobile phone, AND I learned some important things:

- Using a cell phone while driving is illegal.

- Biking without a helmet is illegal.

- Drinking in public is illegal in Queensland, even if the label is covered.  The legal blood alcohol content level here is 0.05.

- Drunk biking is a worse offence than drunk driving here.  A drunk driver can go home, but a drunk biker will be arrested.  Apparently drunken bikers cause a lot more accidents than drunk drivers. 

- Pay phones are still popular here, and they can send text messages!

It's true!  They send text messages!

Okay, so I guess that last one wasn't very important.  Anywho, tomorrow will either be a visit to the northern beaches, or a more well-prepared hike up a mountain, depending on the weather!  Woohoo!

Day 1

After enduring a grueling 36-hour trip—including five airports, four planes, and one bus ride—I have made it to Australia! I left home at 9:30am on Tuesday and arrived at the Cairns Footprints Student Lodge around 1pm on Thursday. I met some lovely people from various places and walks of life: a Navy officer coming for a large 'practice run' on a ship, a mining engineer moving with his family for work, and a pair of American grandparents coming to see their daughter's new baby with her Australian husband. I also had a very old man come up to me and ask if my water bottle was 600mL—it was actually 500mL, he was a bit disappointed and I have no idea why.

This is the same type of plane they flew in Inception!  And

just like the people in that movie, I managed to sleep for

almost the entire 12 hours!  The guy sitting next to me was

pretty impressed.  We also got a great seat at the VERY back

and because the plane tapers inwards, there were only two

seats in the row, leaving plenty of room on the side!  Yay!

Flying with Qantas was kind of like Christmas.  We got food every few hours, and not some measly bag of peanuts either.  No sir, we got full meals that were actually pretty tasty.  Dinner was roasted Mahi Mahi with a honey glaze sauce, steamed veggies, rice, and a little key lime pie bowl.  For breakfast I got a scrambled-egg-on-English-muffin with sausage, mushrooms, and spinach, along with a little bit of fruit, a yogurt, a muffin, and juice.  And for snacks we got little Harry & David mint chocolate bars!  Yumyumyumyum.  They also had cute little drawings on their safety cards (which I always read because if we crash I want to live):

No furbies, eh?  Did those things even have an off switch?  Were

they ever popular in Australia?  Are they still popular?

I WANT TO KNOW.

Customs did not go especially well. I had two pocket knives in my checked luggage that were confiscated. Apparently there was a bout of knife crime a few years ago and now any knife that can be opened with one hand is illegal. The customs folks were all very nice though, and humorous, which was good because between all my food and illegal knives I spent about half an hour with them. (I got to keep all my food though, so I guess that's something to be thankful for.) They also took my scissors out of my carry-on later. Oh well.

The setting is gorgeous.  The town is called Smithfield, which is a little bit outside of Cairns.  Smithfield is small, dominated by a highway, and surrounded by huge mountains.  The mountains are all covered in trees and the whole place looks very rainforesty.  I'll take more photos tomorrow!

I have settled into my new room pretty well, considering I did it all in half a day. I feel like I've accomplished quite a lot today, actually. I got my student ID card, changed one of my course enrolments (and yes, that word is spelled with only one 'l' here, isn't that strange?), went to K-mart, and found a new running buddy! But one thing at a time.

My new class schedule is four classes:
1. Venemous Australian Animals (cool!)
2. Ecology and the Indigenous Australian People (this one has three field trips!)

3. Biodiversity of Tropical Australia (also cool! And possibly with field trips!)
4. Japanese 2a (will be super easy!)

Because I took so many biology/ecology classes in Bonaire, most of the classes at James Cook had names that were too similar for me to get credit. I ended up taking the Japanese class just to fill up space. Should be pretty easy though! I'm excited!

I arrived with three other students, two girls and a boy, Will. He and I met up coincidentally on the way to the International Student Center, and ended up going to the mall too. On the way we met some other girls, three Americans and a Norwegian whose name I cannot pronounce. The mall is 2km away (that's a little over a mile) and it was quite a walk back with all our purchases.

The Australian minimum wage is apparently somewhere in the range of $18, and when I went to the mall I understood why. Everything is CRAZY expensive here. A box of cereal costs $8, body wash (called 'shower milk' here) is around $10, and shampoos and conditioners about $13. A 60-day box of multivitamins costs $35, and don't even get me started on the sunblock prices. There is usually only one brand of a product, so that's what you're stuck with. It seems very strange to me, since I thought there would be a lot more variety, with Australia being a huge country and all. Clothing and phones seem to be about the same prices, but food and household needs are at least double what they cost in the USA.

My bed and desk.

The common area (which is currently all mine).

The bathroom.  Not shown is the toilet,

which is through a door on the left.  The

showerhead is movable and awesome!

Pretty big for a mini-fridge, right?  We've also got a microwave

and a water boiler.

My housing is actually better than I expected. The place is very clean and the only bugs I've found so far are some ants in one corner. I have a small wardrobe but no drawers, so I'm going to have to carry them back from wherever I buy them, which will be quite a hike. (I'd be more willing to consider hitch-hiking if I still had my knives!) I'm VERY glad that I brought my own sheets and pillow, the ones they gave us are atrocious. I will have two roommates but neither are here yet, so tonight I went running around with Will. It's winter here so it got dark very early, but we had a pretty nice run. It was great to get some exercise after spending all that time cooped up in pressurized metal tubes!

I've added hooks to things!  And my clothes hamper matches

my bedding!  (My grandmother taught me to appreciate things like

good bedding and matchy-matchiness.)

I need more drawers!!!  That hole in the

wall is where an airco unit COULD go,

if I paid more.  But now I get a cool new

bookshelf instead, good trade, maybe?

I love this organizer.  It is awesome.  I

also love that purse.  It's also awesome,

because it reminds me of Indiana Jones.

I have pre-orientation at 9am tomorrow, so I'm off to bed!  (My biological clock has adjusted perfectly!)

Day 109

My last two weeks on Bonaire were SO busy!  One whole week was devoted to publishing Physis, our in-house research journal.  It's not peer-edited work so it's not totally legit, but we worked hard on it and I think it's something we're all proud of.  You can take a gander yourself by clicking here.  But Physis didn't stop us from diving, and I saw a bunch of awesome sites that week, including a site at the very southern tip of the island and two far up north!

Foureye Butterflyfish!

Fuzzy coral.

Basket Star!  This one is all curled up on itself.

Our last week was taken up by three things: tests, camping, and diving.  We had exams on Monday and Tuesday, so on Tuesday night we packed up and headed to Klein Bonaire to go camping again.  It wasn't quite as good as last time because there were lots of bugs, but we got some good tanning time in!  On Thursday we dove at Alice in Wonderland and Oil Slick, neither of which I'd ever been to before, and they were both awesome.  Chris spotted a coney at the end of the dive, then realized that it was shadow-stalking with an octopus!  Very cool!

Our very last dive was on Friday morning, because you need at least 12 hours to get all the nitrogen out of your system before you can fly.  (Ever noticed how water bottles expand when you go up in a plane?  Imagine nitrogen bubbles doing that in your bloodstream and tissues.  You don't want that happen.)  We did a drift dive from Angel City to the Hilma Hooker, the shipwreck we did earlier in the semester.  We followed a chain at Angel City all the way to where the reef ended, and there was the Hilma Hooker looming in front of us!  It was a cargo ship back in the day, so it's fairly large.  We went inside the shipwreck this time!  We entered a hole, swam around some things and came out above; the ship lies on its side so if it were upright, both holes would have been at the same height.  It was really cool, and I can't wait to try shipwreck diving in Michigan!

Bonaire was amazing, and I'm incredibly lucky to have spent almost four months there.  I had so many new and unique experiences, made friends I would never have met elsewhere, and learned more about diving and ecology than I could have imagined.  I can't wait to continue diving, and hopefully I'll be an instructor someday in the near future!

I'm home all summer (yay!), but then it's off to Australia in July and the blog will pick up again when I get there.  Thanks for keeping up with me!

Cheers,
Ashton