Getting Settled

Edit:  I put up a slideshow on the bottom of the page of some of the pictures I took diving on Tuesday.  I haven't figured out how to move it up on the page or make the pictures bigger but if you click on them it should take you to the bigger image I think.

So we got in to Townsville yesterday and I am finally started to get settled.  Backtracking to last Saturday I had a 12 hour layover in LAX before the flight to Australia.  It was nice to be on a group flight though because everyone else there to meet and wait with.  The flight to Sydney was 15 hours but it was not at all as bad as I expected it would be.  Since we were flying overnight they had all of the lights off so it was really easy to sleep.  It was a huge plane -- 12 seats across or something ridiculous like that.  Each seat had its own TV with tons of movies and tv shows to choose from, and we got a couple of meals as well including free drinks.  Once we landed in Sydney we had to transfer to Cairns, but since we were delayed leaving LAX we had to hurry through customs and only made it to the gate in time as they had already started boarding.  

In Cairns we had a 4 day orientation with AustraLearn and stayed in a backpackers hostel.  The orientation was a combination of doing cool stuff and sitting through boring information sessions.  On Tuesday we went out to the Great Barrier Reef with Passions of Paradise to Paradise Reef and Michaelmas Cay.  It was a 2.5 hour boat ride out to the reef but it was so nice to sit in the sun and the scenery was beautiful.  On the way out we ran into a humpback whale and its calf so the captain cut the engine and they ended up coming to within 15 feet of the boat, it was awesome.  I got to do one dive on each site.  Some of the highlights include a moray eel, rays, a green turtle, HUGE mauri wrasse, giant clams, lionfish, baitballs, and countless other beautiful fish.  By far the most impressive thing was the coral though.  It is like something straight out of Planet Earth.  I wish my pictures could do it justice.  It was a great day and my new dive computer and sea sickness patches worked perfectly.

On Wednesday we went into the rainforest to a place called Rainforestation.  It was pretty sweet, we started off with an introduction to aboriginal culture by learning how to throw a boomerang and play dijiridoo, then went on a military duck tour through the rainforest.  They also had a mini wildlife park with Australian animals in it so we got to feed and pet kangaroos and hold a python and stuff like that.  They also took our picture holding a koala so I'll have to try to figure out how to get that up.  Wednesday night there was a pub crawl in Cairns so a bunch of us went on that, it took us to 7 different bars and there were deals and free drinks at each one.  They had some fun games and event things that went along with it so it ended up being a good night.  Thursday morning we took a four hour bus ride to Townsville to move into school.

We got here yesterday afternoon and checked into our halls (they call residence halls colleges).  The campus is much different than I expected but I like it here.  There are kangaroos all over campus.  The university is a lot more isolated from the city than I thought it would be.   I have a single room with a balcony, which is really nice.  I am going to get a hammock for it as soon as I can.  Since we got there in the afternoon we didn't do too much, just familiarized ourselves with the campus and the bus system going into town.  This morning (Friday) we had a brief international student orientation basically telling us how to set up our online student accounts and register for classes and all that jazz.  Next week is a week of orientation type activities called "o week" so there will be a lot of stuff going on then.  I went into the city with some people and we checked out the boardwalk type park they have along the beach called the strand.  It is about a 15-20 minute bus ride from campus but I think once I get a bike I can get there in even less than that.  Might be headed back out there tonight but we'll see.  Next up on the agenda for the next couple days is trying to fix all the schedule conflicts in my classes and getting a bike.  I'll try to take some pictures of campus/the city in the next few days, we are probably heading out to Magnetic Island this weekend as well.  

-Jeremy