Perth

Yesterday, we ran around Perth like chickens with their head cut off. It was the last day of orientation and the day of the "Amazing Race". There were 7 teams that were put randomly together with a leader and we went for a scavenger hunt around the city of Fremantle and Perth. It was like 103 out yesterday, so EXTREMELY hot to be running around a big city. We just have to find certain land marks in the city and take photos with them. The team that got in the fastest and most accurate would win. My team started off pretty well, but we soon fell behind when we realized that staying on the air conditioned bus was far more fun than running around a big city in extreme heat. We took a bus to a pub and got some drinks at the air conditioned pub. My team came in dead last and set a new record. You get penalities for cheating and what not and my team got so many penalities that it put our overall ending time at 12:30 tomorrow. We had the most fun though. Today is definitely a beach day all day. Anything to get out of this heat!

Fremantle!

I finally made it and I am no longer living out of my suitcase! whoohoo. I have been here since Saturday, but wasn't able to move in until Monday. I stayed in a pretty sketchy hostel, but it was alright because I was with the 5 other guys that I have been traveling with. We definitely met some interesting people there. We finally got to move in Monday and it feels amazing! It is like 95-100 degrees here every day and it barely ever rains. The beach is about a block away from my dorm so I have been there at least twice a day every day. It is a definite must in this heat and the fact that my dorm doesn't have air conditioning. Minnesota summer has got nothing on this summer. Good thing this heat doesn't have humidity that comes along with it. I am able to sleep at night though because the nights cool down a lot. I just leave my window open and my fan blowing on me. The town is very cute and bigger than I thought it would be. Since I have been traveling around this area for about a month now, I have gotten used to the culture here. It is now instinctual to look the opposite direction when crossing the street and it has gotten easier to understand the lingo. For example, in NZ they used the word 'Choice' for the word 'Cool', so instead so saying "That's cool!" they would say "That's Choice!" Everywhere we go we hear people say either "cheers" or "no worries". Those are the two slogans people use all the time. My goal is to learn Australian by the time I head home in four months. :) I am not yet used to how expensive everything is here. For comparison, a $7 mascara in the States is $20 here and a $12 Liter of Smirnoff is $37.99 here for a .75. It is Crazy expensive!

We have had orientation for the past few days. Just listening to people talk about our classes and guiding us what to expect for the semester. Yesterday, they intimidated us pretty hard core about classes. People here take classes solely towards what they are majoring in. So in my Theology class, I will be in a class with all Theologians and only 10% of the class are allowed to obtain an 'A'. She also said that if you get an A in your class you might as well go get a PHD because it is basically impossible. I thought study abroad was supposed to boost up my GPA, not hinder it. That kind of freaked me out. Also, she said that a whole class could be based off of like one paper or one test. We will get homework to do, but it will be for our own sake and not for the sake of turning it in, so we have to motivate ourselves to get it done opposed to the motivation that a due date would give us. I am taking a Philosophy, Theology, a Fine Arts, a History, and the class I have with my CSB/SJU Prof. One class is 3 hours long and only once a week, so I get Thursday off which is nice. Also, my classes don't start until about 1:00, which is also nice. Although, I do have a 8:30 am class on Fridays, but that is with everyone here, so we all have to wake up that early every Friday. This semester will definitely be interesting as to how my grades turn out.

Last night we already had an incident. My friend Heather on the trip went down to the beach and into the water. She was stung by a fish down there and her whole leg was throbbing. She said it felt like there was shooting pains going up her leg. She couldn't sleep through the night, so they took her to the hospital this morning and she got meds for it. She is on a lot of pain killers and is doing a lot better now! It was scary when it happened. That was our excitement for the night.

Today was orientation day, or "O DAY" as everyone says here. They closed down the streets of Fremantle and we marched behind a band as we paraded around the streets of Fremantle making noise for the start of a new semester. The was a band playing and concession stands and different events every where we could sign up for. Apparently O Day is a big day in this town. We still have one more day of Orientation. They said we have a scavenger hunt ahead and something called the amazing race. We'll have to see what these consist of. Well it is extremely hot and I am sweating just sitting here, I am off to the beach.

Cheers! <3

Sydney Zoo!

We made it to our last leg of our travels... SYDNEY! It is a gorgeous city and it finally hit that I was in Australia once I spotted the Sydney Opera house. One of my friends on the trip has connections and got us some free nights at the Marriot. I am living the high life. We are on the 26th floor of this super sweet hotel that overlooks the sydney harbor with the bridge and the opera house. Once we pulled up to the hotel, the doorman took our bags, brought them up to our room, and told us to go get drinks at the free bar while he stuck our stuff in the room. The room is pretty high class and sweet. I am not really sure I am liking this high life too much. Everything is too proper. haha. Yesterday I went to the Sydney zoo and spent the whole day there. It was really soo much fun. We witnessed two big gorillas getting it on. I didn't realize gorillas celebrated Valentine's Day so publicly. haha. We went to a seal show and watched the seals do some pretty sweet tricks. Tomorrow we are headed to the beach! Should be a good time.

Going out with a Bang in Sydney

Sydney has been a lot of fun! Like my last post, we went to the Sydney zoo and then the next day we went and toured the Sydney Opera house. That was actually really really sweet. My thoughts walking through that place was that the Grand Ol Opry had nothing on it. I wish I could have performed on that stage; it was freaking AWESOME! The next day we headed to the beach (Manly beach) and it was a picture perfect beach. The atmosphere was sweet; we liked it so much that we even headed there the next day too! We bought a multi pass for the week which allowed us to take the ferry to the zoo and the ferry to the beach as well as the buses around town. Sydney is such a cool place, it kind of reminds me of New York City with how many people that walk around this place and how much activity goes on.

Today was our last day in Sydney and we decided to go out with a bang. SKYDIVING! I actually wasn't that scared at all, SURPRISING! I think bungee jumping prepared me a lot for skydiving because bungee jumping was 10x more scary. Weird that it was, but the ground comes up on you a whole lot faster when you bungee and also you have to jump by yourself instead of with an instructor. It was Jaclyn, sara, me, Joe, and Eric that decided to skydive. We woke up at 5:30 this morning and headed out there. We were the very first group of the day to go and man, were we excited. When we were in the plane, we tried to scare the other girls so we started to rock back and forth in this little plane. The pilot purposely jolted the plane down and then back up again to scare everyone and then yelled out, "I'm in control of this plane". They liked to scare us and joke around with us the whole way up. One of the instructors yelled out, "I'm colored blind, so make sure you point out the difference from the land and the shore line". Funny guy. It actually didn't scare me at all, he was just trying to get the other girls freaked out. MAN was it a cool experience. I would do it again in a heart beat!

So we have done bungee jumping, skydiving, white water rafting, snorkeling in the great barrier reef... I don't think it can get much better then this. Next on our agenda is Fremantle for school! Goodbye sydney and hello Fremantle. This vacation had been an experience of a lifetime. I will take these memories with me forever. <3

The Great Barrier Reef

We just got back from our 2 day/1 night snorkel trip to the Great Barrier Reef and it was absolutely amazing! We did 2 snorkels yesterday and 2 different locations and 3 snorkels today even before noon! We woke up today at 5:30 am to do our first snorkel of the day at 6am. It was early, but the water woke me up pretty fast. We saw all sorts of creatures ranging from some cool looking fish, Sea turtles, sting rays, jelly fish, and even sharks. The sharks that come into the Great Barrier Reef are not very dangerous. They basically just come in to cleanse themselves. There were little things that sting in the water called sea lice or sea glass which are basically just mini jellyfish that sting. I got stung in the face a few times it just feels like an uncomfortable stinging sensation. I did not have any sun screen so I got burnt SO bad. It was the first nice day we have had here without the rain so everyone got pretty burnt. Joe (a guy on the trip) got advanced certified for scuba diving. I didn't do scuba diving because of the time and money. Snorkeling was still a blast and we saw a lot of cool creatures! One of the coolest things I saw was a bright blue star fish. There was also a gigantic clam that was between 80 to 100 years old. The reef was fairly damaged from the recent cyclone Yasi. The instructors said that it is actually healthy for the reef and will regrow just like a forest fire. We are going out tonight in Cairns and then we are off to Sydney tomorrow to meet up with even more people from our school there.

Rainforest

We got into Cairns late last night. We are staying in the Cairns Queenslander on Lake Street in Cairns and we told our taxi driver to take us to the Queenslander on Lake Street and, little did we know, there were two of them on the same street. The first place the Taxi brought us was really sketchy and pretty sketchy people running around outside. The girls looked at each other and were ready to switch locations right then. Luckily, we come to find out that it wasn't the place we were staying.

Today we decided we wanted to head to the Rainforest which is about a 2 and a half hour drive. Renting a van was a lot cheaper than any carpool out there. We figured since we had been watching traffic in NZ the past 12 days that driving on the other side of the road would not be that bad. If I was driving, I would have been so scared, but we but a boy in charge of driving the 12 passenger van the whole way there. That was an interesting experience in itself. It was a 'group effort' every time we changed lanes. Addison got the hang of the driving after a while and it wasn't actually all that bad. It did get interesting when it started down pouring here like crazy and the roads started to flood out. When we were driving in the flooded roads, the water would spray up well over the van. We started joking that the cyclone wasn't over for how much it was down pouring. The damage here isn't as significant as I thought it would be. We can definitely tell that there is damage, but I thought it would be worse. They call this time of year the "rainy season" and every other time the "less rainy season" because it doesn't stop raining here.

We couldn't get into the gorge because the road was too flooded, but we put our van on a ferry and went across the river into the rainforest. We drove around there for a bit and then got out and walked around the actual forest. We bought some pretty sweet ponchos and went exploring. We didn't really get to see any cool animals because of the amount of rain, but we did see a few really cool looking spiders. Nothing too exciting. It was just cool to go exploring around the rain forest. The water in the river was like a chocolate brown color, which was disgusting. We were told it was because of the rainy season, and we were guessing the cyclone had a lot to do with the debris in the river.

Even though our trip for tomorrow got cancelled because the big ship got wrecked in the cyclone, we found another night trip for even cheaper that we can go out on. We will be picked out tomorrow at 7am to get shipped out to the boat. We take a smaller boat to get to the big ship and it takes about two hours to get out there. We have about 6 dives tomorrow and I have no expectations. I am excited for the adventures tomorrow will bring. Every day seems to be a new experience and our group gets along really well.

Goodbye NZ!

So I made it through my 21st birthday. After the whole bungee jumping experience, there wasn't a lot of adventures left to do. We basically spent the rest of the time hanging out. On Monday we watched the Superbowl at a local sports bar. Mom told me to keep the bar blogging to a minimum, so mom... this is where my day ends on this blog:) It was sad to leave the town of Queenstown. I loved the town and it amazed me every single day. We met some really sweet people there that we ended up hanging out with a lot during our experiences. It was also nice meeting up with Gavin, McCarty, Leslie, and Matty on our trip. Now we are at the Sydney airport and off to Cairns. Our snorkel trip got cancelled because of the damage the cyclone did to the reef. BUMMER! I have full confidence that we will find other fun things to do in Cairns. We just rented a van and are going to drive 2 hours to the rainforest. The ladies and the men are splitting up into two different hostels. It just ended up working out better that way. Well Cairns, hope you're ready for us:)

I'm Alive

Thursday night we decided we should probably book our white water rafting and bungee jumping soon, so we went to the rental place to book and they basically said the best time to go is tomorrow morning for rafting and bungee in the afternoon. I was already freaked because I thought I would have had more time to mentally prepare myself. It all just happened so quickly. We had friends from our group that finally arrived into Queenstown so we wanted to calm our nerves and show them a good time! We just went out to various bars, but our night ended on the early side because of the early morning.

I went to bed around 2:00 AM and 7:00 AM came way too quickly! My first thought waking up was "I just went to bed" and my second thought waking up was "Holy crap I'm going to die today". We walked to the bus stop and boarded the bus to head down to the rapids for white water rafting. The bus ride was actually the scariest part of my day. It was about a 30 minute bus ride through the mountains on a old mining road that was tiny and it was as big bus with a trailer carrying two rafts. The mountain went straight down too, no need for seat belts. If we crashed we would fall to our death anyway. I felt uneasy and unsafe the whole way down. We finally made it to the rapids and, if you can believe it, the level 5 rapids were the most relaxing part of my whole day. It was a lot of fun and we all looked so attractive in our wet suits and helmets. They had about 6 different rapids down the river and each rapid had a different name. One of the rapids is only 4 months old and formed after the last hurricane. They call it After Shock which was probably the best rapid there. One was named Jaws and the one after was named sequel. They described it as the movie is awesome, but the sequel is less intense. There was one named Holy Shit, one named Surprise and one named Toilet. They all fit their names perfectly!

 Once we got done rafting, we had an hour for lunch and then headed to the bungee jump. When we were registering, they made us sign "toe tags" most likely to freak us out even more then we already were. The suited us up and sent us on our way to the bungee. The platform is suspended in the air between two cliffs on cables. All the boys go first because of weight. We had to jump heaviest to lightest. I was really angry because I wanted to be the first one to go. The anticipation is the worst part. I went out there with the boys, but then I still wasn't able to jump yet because there was another group of people coming out that were heavier then me too. They have to switch ropes for the next weight class. So all the boys got to jump around the same time and then they had to send the boys back because there can't be too many people on the platform at once. Luckily, they allowed Eric to stay with me until my jump, which helped calm my nerves a bit. I finally was up to jump and everything went so fast I didn't even have time to think about it. The best advice I was given was to not think about it and make sure you just jump on 3 without hesitation. I did, and It was well worth it! The feeling felt amazing and the adrenaline rush is like a drug. I want to have that feeling again! The scariest part is when you fist jump off it feels like there is no rope attached and I am just jumping to my death. I don't think I was able to breath until I was back up onto the platform. The recoil was pretty sweet because I couldn't tell which direction I was facing. After you jump and you are just hanging there upside down, you have to pull your foot cord to release your feet so that you can sit in an upright position while they pull you up. A lot of people weren't able to get the foot cord pulled, so they were pulled up upside down. One guy told me it felt like he was a pig in the slaughter house. That was one of my fears, that I wouldn't be able to pull my foot cord to release my feet. When I finally pulled it, it felt like I was releasing myself from the cord instead of just releasing my feet. I hung on to the foot cord for a bit just to make sure I didn't release myself from the cord. Riding back up was one of the coolest feelings. I just got to sit back and take in the scenery while I was pulled back up the cord. Hands down, one of the best experiences I've had! Still looking forward to the next adventure we have in store.

This is the cart we went out on to get to the platform.

Bar Crawl

So yesterday was a gorgeous day! It rained in the morning and then it was hot and sunny. We walked down to the beach and hung out at the beach yesterday afternoon. All the boys got sun burn pretty bad. Typical boys. Unfortunately my camera broke yesterday. It's pretty annoying having a suitcase that broke and now a camera. I bought a new suitcase yesterday because I needed one, and I looked into buying a new camera, but it was around $400-$500 for a camera. NOO THANK YOU. We have 8 cameras between the 9 of us now. I think I'll survive until I get to Australia where I can get one maybe duty free at the airport or something. I have to hold off for now.

Last night we entered into a Bar Crawl. The motto was Why walk when you can crawl? haa. We went to six different bars and had a free drink at each. One of our stops on our journey was an Ice Bar called minus 5. The whole bar (including the walls, glasses and seats) is made completely out of ice. It was AWESOME. At each bars, there were some games that were played for drinks. At one of the bars, there was a pull up contest on the celling. A guy winner and a girl winner were granted a drink. I tried and did one pull up and no girl wanted to challenge me so I won the drink with one pull up. :) Last night I had a blast and it was one of the best times I had in a while. The landlord here is getting kind of fed up with our group though. We are a loud group in general, and have been warned twice to quiet down. He made a stereotypical comment to us that Americans have bigger houses than the people here so we are used to talking louder compared to here where they have little houses that are all basically on top of each other. I guess it is just a difference of culture and we have to get used to it.

Today it is raining extremely hard, we are all just relaxing and having a super chill day. I think we are still going out tonight. Four more people just got here from the group, so we are going to meet up with them a little later and go out tonight.

We were going to head to Cairns after here, but we are probably going to skip it because of the hurricane. We have some friends over there right now that had to evacuate, but she is back at her place now. We aren't sure the extent of the damage there and no one can fly in there until after the 6th. We are still trying to figure out now what our travel plans are going to be after here. We'll probably decide in the next few days once we figure out the extent of the damage in Cairns.

Mountain Climb

So yesterday, we took the gondola up to the top of the side of a mountain and ate at a restaurant at the top. Gorgeous view and good food! On the way back down from the gondola ride, a townie got into Sara and my gondola. We started talking to him and he let us know where all the good parties are for the week. Last night was a Camo party at club altitude so me and the girls found some camo hats and hit the town. It is actually hard to meet any townies because there are so many foreigners here. Even a lot of the people that work here are from different countries--mostly people from Ireland and Germany. 

Today, we decided to climb a mountain. The girls didn't want to do it because it was going to be extremely demanding. So it was just me and the boys climbing the mountain. It was 5735 Feet high and a very demanding rock climb. Boyy, am I feeling it in my body. It took us a total of a little less then 8 hours which is right around the time it should have taken. The view was breathtaking and cannot be described with pictures or words. It was extremely worth beating my body up over this mountain. I am not sure what we have planned for tomorrow. I'm sure it will be another exciting adventure. I have a feeling my body is going to be aching for the next few days at least! 

I felt so small looking down at the earth.