Recount of My Day at the GBR

I’m now finally in Australia! After waiting for what felt like weeks upon weeks I am here. I’ve actually only been at my Uni for a little over a day now, so I can’t really tell you what it’s like just yet. But, I can tell you that from what I’ve seen of Australia so far, I love it!

For the program that I came to Australia with, we had a program introduction in Cairns before heading down to our university. Their goal was to let us get to meet other Americans that were studying with AustraLearn as well as give us a few briefings on what life in Australia would be like. We had three sessions about Australia and then we had two excursions, one to the Great Barrier Reef and one to a place called RainForeStation, a nature park.

The Great Barrier Reef was really amazing! If you know me at all, you must know that I’m pretty petrified of water I can’t see into and of being eaten by a shark. To your surprise then, you should learn that I scuba dived and SAW A SHARK! Before scuba diving though, we started out with just snorkelling. It took me a while to get used to the whole putting your head under water in order to breathe. I actually had to try three times before I was finally able to master it. When we were jumping in the water there was a squall going on so it was raining and the water was really choppy. Like I said, three times. I got in the water, freaked out, got out, jumped back in, freaked out again, got out, and then the third time after jumping in I finally realized how to work the whole breathing thing and I was on my way! I wish I could tell you all how awesome it was to look down at all the sea life. I legit was saying ‘Wow, Awesome’ and ‘Cool’ to myself. There were fish everywhere, of all colours and sizes, and the coral came in every shape, colour and size too! I don’t really know the names of any of the stuff that I saw, but I remember that there was a giant brown disk like coral and then of course there were sea anemones!

Scuba diving is where I got to see things really up close, like the shark. I panicked a bit at first right when we went two feet down to make sure we would be able to do it, but I sucked it up and decided there was no way I wasn’t doing this. As we dove, we had to equalize our ears and they taught us a way to blow the water out of your mask. We saw a Nemo, got to hold a 4-legged starfish, a sea cucumber, and of course the shark. We also saw these tendril like things that I guess were part of the coral. With the shark, our diver at first showed us the tail, then brought us up one by one so we could look at the rest of its body…I’d say it was at least 5 or 6 feet long. I wish we would have been able to dive deeper or stay under longer, but unfortunately that was not the case. I think that if I ever get the chance again, I’ll go scuba diving for sure. Note: this does not mean my fear of water is gone. I’m still frightened, but not as much as I was before.

We went snorkelling in another place that was closer to an island. The first place we snorkelled, I’d say the coral and sea life was about 10 or 12 feet below you. This second place, it was maybe 3 feet, and some places were even closer. I’m pretty sure that I kneed a coral in the face, because I have a giant bruise on my knee now and I seem to remember kicking something. Me and one of my friends went on a search for turtles but we didn’t see any – she and I ventured out way far. Remember how I said that my fear wasn’t totally gone? Well, we had these floaty things that you strapped around your tummy to keep you floating, and one part was the pad and the other part was the strap. Well, I put the strap around my back so the pad was protecting my tummy so just in case any sharks attempted to bite at me I would have that little extra padding to protect me. There was some awesome sea life in this second place too – there would be what looked like a mini field of tentacles of some anemone or plant/animal like it – and it looked like it was just blowing in the breeze. We never found the turtles, but we saw a jet black sea cucumber, a bright blue star fish, and we’re pretty sure we saw a barracuda. It was kinda far away, long, skinny, and you couldn’t see it from the top of the water…needless to say we swam away from there. The only problem was that there were little mini-stingers in the water. I got stung on the lip and I thought to myself, ‘no, I’m making this up, I’m not actually getting stung.’ But then I got stung on the arm (we were wearing these really super hot stinger suits – I’ll find a picture of us in them just so everyone can see how amazing they were) where my suit had a cut in it, and then again on my neck. The same thing happened to everyone else too, so I was not just imagining things. When we were closer to the boat, there were these giant fish that some of the crew were feeding…they would throw some chum out and then the fish would speed towards it and snap it up in their giant mouths (they had these blue lips too). Of course, the crew threw a piece right in front of me and Marissa as I was looking down in the water…that fish swam STRAIGHT at us and then flipped away. We got out of the water after that.

On the boat ride back, the crew tricked us into drawing on our faces. They said that we were looking sort of burned and that they would teach us an Australian trick of using zinc to prevent any further sunburn. I don’t know if anyone knows, but zinc goes on like the Burt’s Bees stuff with the red cap, so it seemed like they were face painting us with these sticks of chapstick-esque consistency stuff. The one crew drew some lines on one side of my face and called it an east-meeting-west type of thing. He was very proud of himself. There’s a picture of it somewhere, but I’ll have to find it (I didn’t take any pictures myself this entire time. I’m lame, I can’t even believe it myself).

It’s now 2 in the morning and I’m actually pretty exhausted. I woke up at 730 this morning and did quite a lot. I’m posting this now just to give everyone a little peek at what I spent half of one day in Australia doing. I’ll write soon about my trip to RainForeStation and then what life here at the uni is like soon. Tomorrow I’m going to the beach – someone here told me it’s so gorgeous I’m going to pee myself. Hopefully I’ll be able to contain myself, but I’m really hoping it’s super pretty. I’ll make sure to bring my camera along this time. I don’t start classes until March 2 so I’ll definitely try to post again before then and include information about my classes, schedule, where I'm living and whatnot else.