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Last Wednesday, during frisbee, I was invited to go to Sydney this weekend to play as “punching bags” against the Australia Women’s National Ultimate Team. This is the girls team that is going to be playing in “Worlds” in August in Vancouver. So today, Scott (another frisbee player) and I drove to sydney, got there about 1, and watched the Australia Masters Team play the New Zealand Masters before we were scheduled to play. Some of the other guys from the Newcastle Team were already up there; they play on the Australia National Mens team, and they had played New Zealand the previous day. At 2:30, our game started. There were 17 women on their team, and we started with 12 guys, although we ended up with nearly 16 by the end.

These girls are fast. I knew they were good, everyone said they were good, but I didnt expect them to be so fast. At one point, I was guarding a girl they call ‘Snail’ (yeah, i have NO idea where that comes from…) and they threw it to her in the endzone, and we were both sprinting for it, and I could not get a lead on her, but I was lucky enough to have position, and we both dove for it, it bounced off my hands just before she would have caught it, and so we were both laying face down in the endzone, with arms outstreched, and she looks over and says “your fast” and i turned and said “me? I think after this point Im gonna go have a nap.” I have never been so tired after a game before in my life. Basketball or anything. I had to sleep the whole way home.

We had a huge variety of players on both teams, ranging from nearly 50 down to 18. All of whom I felt were very good players. And the game was fierce. The game was tied nearly the entire game, all the way to 14’s. Then, by some miracle, our team went up 16-14, and we were only playing to 17, so we thought we had it in the bag, but then they just got even more intense and came back to beat us 17-16. A little disappointing but it was one of the most fun games of frisbee I’ve ever played. Afterwards, we hung out on the fields for a bit, had some snacks, and headed home after grabbing a pizza, that got destroyed.

Now, Im going to bed….

Hey Everyone,

I know its been a few weeks since I’ve done this, but its been absolutely crazy here for the past few weeks and even right now, I am almost too tired to begin to tell all about what has happened. But I am going to try.

A couple of weeks ago, on a Tuesday, Luke, Devin, Ben, Sanna, and I packed up some clothes, a couple of tents, and some sleeping bags, and headed up the coast to the Whitsunday Islands for some camping. Getting there was hard, but so worth it. (Train, bus, train, train, plane, bus, bus, ship) This was probably the coolest camping trip I’ve ever been on. If anyone watches the show Lost, it was kindof like that. Actually, a lot like that, minus the polar bears.

We were on Whitsunday Island, the largest of the 72 islands, but we were completely alone on the island, most of the time. We were taken to our beach via landing craft style boat, our stuff was unloaded on the shore, and we were left to fend for ourselves for 3 days. There aren’t many things I would rather be doing in this world then extreme camping.

The first night, it rained, but our tents proved to be very waterproof, although cooking in the downpouring rain tended to be difficult. Lucky that we had one of the grill lighted and covered before the rain really came down. Lucky that I had a raincoat, although noone was really concerned all that much about getting wet. It was pretty much the only freshwater shower we were gonna get. Luke and Ben just made rain ponchos out of garbage bags. That kinda sums it up. We made hamburgers, which werent all that bad, given the conditions.

The next day, we hardly did anything. We got up at a fairly reasonable hour, like 9, and played frisbee, swam, snorkeled (with not much luck on the visibility) and even had some visitors. And I dont mean people. When we were down at the beach, a 4 foot monitor lizard wandered into our camp. It was fortunate that I was the one to find it, because it only freaked me out for just like 2 seconds because I nearly stepped on it, but then I found out that it was a very chill animal, and after a good many pictures taken of it, I went back to the beach, where he eventually followed me to. The lizard wasnt the only massive animal that visited us that day. Sometime during the middle of the day, I went to use the non-porta-hole-in-the-ground and walked in the door and a MASSIVE spider was on the floor, which promply scurried off under the floorboards. I have never seen an arachnid this big before; at least the size of my hand. Needless to say, the toilet was not the most popular room on the island, even though it was the only room on the island, if that makes sense.

The third day, we went for some hardcore exploring. While we had been swimming the previous day, we saw a point that was much higher than the rest of the island, and that was our goal. Our campsite was surrounded by steep slopes on all sides, so we decided to head straight up from the camp, to keep orientation. And that was quite a climb. But we finally reached the top, and it wasn’t as steep as we thought it looked, and it wasn’t much a view, so I climbed up a tree to see where we were, and when I reached the top, we could see the peak, which wasn’t even close to where we were. So we traveled down the other side of the hill we had just climbed, and, at the bottom, we found a pretty large creek, where we had lunch. PBandJ. So good. So college. So camping. Anyways, at this point it had been a few hours, and the girls decided to follow the creek downstream to the ocean and head back to camp for some more sun and relaxing. The three guys were determined to get to the peak though, but the path up the side of the hill was extremely thick, so we also decided to head down the stream to the beach to see if we could find a better path. Going down this creek was awesome. Waterfalls and massive boulders were everywhere, and as we got closer to the ocean, the forest became very tropical. We eventually made it to the beach, saw our target, and began up the next hill. Nearly halfway up, we came upon a rock outcropping jutting from the forrest off the side of the cliff, and we climbed up the boulders via the vines that hung down off the sides, and took pictures on top of this rock above the treeline. And at this point, it was so hot we decided that it was high enough. So we headed down.

The rest of the trip was spent relaxing, eating mac and cheese, beans, PBandJ, and oatmeal. That was pretty much it for the food situation. Oh, and Lambingtons. Dont ask.

The boatman told us he would be back between 9:30 and 12:30 to pick us up, so we were having breakfast at 9:30, oatmeal, thinking that it would still be a few hours before he arrived, and in the distance, we see a boat bookin’ it towards our island. And someone said, “uh, i think they are landing here.” and then we realized it was our boat. So we had like 2 minutes to pack camp. It was crazy how efficient and quickly we can move when we need to.

I think the pictures will speak for themselves on this trip. So check em out on the photos page.

Last monday, during frisbee, one of the guys on the Newcastle Team invited me to play this weekend in a nation wide tournament held in Bathurst, a city over the mountains from Sydney. We are leaving in two hours, driving five hours, and playing games all day saturday and sunday. Im really excited to be playing in this kind of tournament. I hope it’s like playing in basketball tournaments in highschool. The only thing is that its going to be very cold, maybe even snowing. And I, thinking Australia was going to be warm all the time, didn’t pack accordingly for snow. But if we made it through New Zealand ok then this shouldn’t be that much harder. I’ve always like the cold too.

Also, there is a guy named Stevie from Hawaii who plays on my frisbee team and he is actually part of YWAM here in Newcastle, along with like 60 other kids, and they have this cafe downtown where every thursday, they have open mic night. We went last night and it was amazing, and like 6 people played, including one kid on the keyboard who played flight of the bumblebee. I didnt know you could do that on the piano. Anways, I think now Stevie and I are going to play some songs together next time, so im really excited about that.

Now ive got to run go spearfishing before it gets too dark. See yas lata.

Well, first of all, i know ive been here longer than 10 weeks, but its the tenth week of school and thats kinda how we are judging time here, so yeah… lets start with last weekend.

Saturday:       Last Saturday was probably one of the most fun days Ive had in a long time. I went for a morning run (morning as in like 1030) down on the beach, and while I was there, I saw some friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time, one of which goes to KU. They introduced me to some of their friends and we hung out for a bit on the beach, and after a while, we started hearing really loud music coming from the park across the street. We couldn’t see it because the beach has massive sand dunes, so I went over to check it out.

Newcastle was having a Poverty Awareness Festival. It was amazing. Basically, they were raising money to completely support an entire village in Africa. Not just buying them food, but creating job opportunities so that they could become self-sufficient. This village was so poor that they couldn’t even pay for things like farm equipment, seed, fishing rods, and other basic tools to get business started. Once they have these things, they can work for themselves and make money by trading with nearby villages. Its a great program. And there was an awesome band there. Afro Moses. Basically, a new version of Bob Marley. They played a good bit of Bob Marley as well as their own reggae stuff.

At one point, I was just hanging out in the back and a group of kids about my age came through and I just started to talk with them. After a few minutes, one of the girls I was talking to was like “Can you hang on for just a second? Ill be right back.” And then she went up on stage, took over for the drummer, and played the next song for the band. It was crazy. Then she just came back like nothing had happened and was like “Sorry, where were we?” It kinda reminded me of Maggie. Anyways, that was pretty cool.

When I got back home, the roomies had decided that they wanted to go to the Newcastle Knights Rugby Game. Awesome.

That night we went to some of our frisbee friends house because they were having a get-together party for all of the kids that they had met on Spring Break. (Half of them had gone on a trip through the university travel agency that went all the way up to Cairns and included everything in the trip.) There were a ton of people in that house, and we got there late, but we met a lot of new people and that is always one of my favorite things to do. Actually, after I get done typing this I’m going to go hang out with some of them. I love Australia.

Sunday:           Luke, Devin, and I took Steph and Rach to Caves Beach. (The place where Luke and I went Kiteboarding.) It was really cold, but we swam anyway. It was a higher tide than the last time we went there, and there is one cave in particular that you have to swim through that is my favorite, and it was particularly deep this time. I wanted to play a little trick on everyone else, so I ran ahead to the cave, went inside, and swam down it about 20 meters until there was a little more of an opening and I could hide around the corner out of site. (Basically, the cave is a long, narrow corridor coming straight in from the ocean with one opening pointing out towards the ocean and another pointing towards the beach.) As soon as I heard that they were in the mouth of the cave, a huge wave came throught the cave and I jumped in, riding the current down the chute, yelling like on a rollercoaster, and freaked out everyone. It was awesome. And then I talked Luke and Devin into trying it as well. So much fun. Also, we went to the place previously talked about as the toilet bowl (from the last Caves Beach post) and the water was higher this time, so we jumped off the cliffs beside into the swirling water below. Great day.

Monday:            Cinco De Mayo! It just so happened that the friends I met on the beach Saturday were having a Cinco De Mayo party, and they invited us to join. It was a blast. They actually live really close to us, but they have a back door that opens right into the park beside the beach. Its a fantastic location. So we hung out, played some cards, ate Kangaroo Burritos, and got to know our new friends.

Tuesday:            Tuesday was a long day of class, like usual. And I felt a little sick again, and I had a massive lab report due the next day so Tuesday was slow. The weird thing was, on an everyday scale, Tuesday was a pretty bad day, but I never felt like it was a bad day. I had read some in the Old Testament the night before (a point where God was angry with the nations, and he spent many many chapters talking about his anger, but then at the very end, he says that if they come back to him, he will forget his anger and pour out his love on them.) and I kept thinking about that all day. And I noticed a lot of new things. Everywhere I went (mostly on campus) seemed a little more beautiful than usual. There were so many birds flying around. Not just normal birds, but white cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets, and tiny little finches, and cookaburras that sound like monkeys. They sky was lit up with a bright blue, and the trees seemed more majestic than usual. I came home that night from class and wrote a song about it. Its still a little rough, but basically its like a prayer asking God to not let me become like the nations he had become so angry at. They weren’t necessarily being wicked, they just forgot about God, and sometimes its so easy to get caught up in the everyday routine that God and the beauty of nature gets puts on the back burner. Sometimes its just good to return to the simplicity of what life is all about.

Wednesday:           I woke up early with the intention of surfing, but the waves were bad, so I was a little disappointed. I had my lab at 3, and after that we had frisbee at 8. It was a good game, but I felt like I didnt play very well (I felt slow because of my toe thats still cut up from diving.) and we eventually lost the game by a few points. Oh well.  It was close.

Thursday:             I finally got to go surfing again! It wasn’t great surf, but it was probably the most fun I’ve had surfing because not 10 minutes into it, a pod of dolphins (near 12) swam by. Rather than trying to surf stinky waves, I took off and swam with the dolphins all the way down the beach. They weren’t particularly friendly, or rather, not as friendly as Flipper in the movies, but they hung out around me, just out of arms reach, and some of them swam under me a few times. One even grazed my arm with his dorsal fin. I think they were hunting fish, because they moved in groups of two and all of them came to the surface at the exact same time to breathe. (Im guessing this was to make less noise.) After a while, I got really tired of swimming with them because I eventually swam near a mile (about the length of the the beach plus half way back.) so i headed in.

Friday:            The day was pretty chill, but that evening was swing dancing in the park with the Newcastle Christian Organization. (The ones that run Uni Church.) They called it Semi-Formal-ish, so we dressed nicely, but when we got there, there were like people in suits and ties and I was like ‘well dang.’ but we had fun anyway. There is this little gazeebo in King Edwards Park, usually used for weddings and such, and this is where is was. (Earlier in the year, this is the place where we went to Theatre in the Park.) They had a live band and everything. A drummer, keyboardist, and saxaphone player. My three favorite instruments. I walked through the gazeebo and started talking with some guys, one of whom was the drummer. They asked me all about the States and if I was beginning to understand Aussie Slang and the like. Pretty fun guys. And now I have people to look for when I go to Uni Church again.

Saturday:            We spent most of Saturday on the beach, because it was warm again. Also, a bunch of friends who have never been to bogey hole came over and we took them there. It was freezing in the shade, but always so much fun. A couple of huge waves came through and made it so worth the cold. After that, we went back to Newcastle Beach, laid around for a while (which I cant stand, just sitting there.) and I went and got a frisbee. We played frisbee for a while, then came back, cooked hamburgers, watched the office, and headed to bed. The sun drains me and I went to bed fairly early. Like midnight.

Now its Sunday Morning, I just woke up, and we are meeting some friends for brunch in just a little while, so Im going to wrap this up. That was this week in a nutshell.

So now Im home, getting some much needed rest, and am going to finish typing about the rest of spring break. Im going to pick up after the skydiving incident, so try to stay with me as this might be a little bit long. Ill try to make it as descriptive and fun to read as possible.

So after Skydiving, we had the night in Queenstown, which is a small little town nestled in the mountains known for all sorts of adrenaline packed shananigans.  (Im not sure if I mentioned this or not, but Queenstown is situated underneath “The Remarkables”, which is the mountain range in which Gandolf fights the Balrog, and where the Fellowship emerges from the Mines from. Those are the mountains seen below us in the skydiving pictures.)

The town surrounds a beautifully clear blue lake, which we got some amazing pictures on, and which we slightly disrupted with an early morning polar bear swim. (ie. too early, too cold, too much fun.) After warming up in the shower for at least an hour, we disembarked and drove down a fantastically cool road, winding back and forth in the typical New Zealand way, with mountains on one side and the lake on the other. Our next stop was Te Aneu, a tiny little village that is known as the Gateway to the Fiordlands. Not much to see or do in this town, except for the gigantic mountain range that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction.

We woke the next morning, filled up the car with petrol, (by the way, New Zealand has the same gas prices no matter where you are in the country. How cool is that?), and began our drive up to Milford Sound. The drive there is half the journey, (the drive back is the other half), but seriously, it was nearly impossible not to stop every ten feet and take pictures. At one point on top of a mountain lookout, while we were out taking pictures on the edge of a huge cliff, a Kia (ie. only temperate parrot in the world), landed on the roof of our car. Pictures were taken, of course, but we couldn’t get the thing off our roof. Luke even drove the car around in a circle in the gravel lot to shake it off, but it didnt move. It even leaned over the edge and pecked on Luke’s window as if telling him to stop. Finally, we got him off, jumped in the car, and peeled out, so he wouldn’t get back on top.

We saw gorgous waterfalls, drove through a kilometer long tunnel down into the Earth, and let the car coast nearly 10 kilometers because it was downhill the whole way. After nearly 2 and a half hours, we ended up in Milford Sound. Its a beautiful place, with a population of like 3, a restuaurant, and a Information Center where you can take boat cruises through the Sound. We actually didn’t stay for long, mainly because the waterfall hike was closed due to ‘geological reasons’ but there were also a million sandflies, which inflict nasty, itchy bites that stay for weeks.

The next day, we drove through Dunedin, which is where Lindsay is studying, and we tried to meet up with her and her flatmates there, but never got a hold of them, so we had lunch at an Indian Restaurant, gave the city a little touring, and headed out on the Otago Peninsula, which is right outside of the city. The road there was AWESOME. By far my favorite road, which is saying something for New Zealand roads. It was right on the water. If you made one wrong move, you were toast. Actually, you were wet. Toast is so much better. (Toast became our staple food on the trip. I think we went through 4 loaves in 4 days for 4 people.)

At the end of the peninsula, there is a privately owned farm that gives guided tours over their land. We wanted to see penguins while we were there, so we took the tour and it was a blast. We ended up being guided by the dude who owns the farm, which was really cool, because he knew everything about the place and he was really really passionate about what he was doing. He has created a sanctuary for penguins and seals in his own backyard. We took 8 wheeled dunebuggies over the rough terrain, going up and down hills I could barely walk up if I wanted to, and ended up at a place just 10-15 feet above a group of 30 or so seals. He told us that some days, Sea Lions and Sea Leopards would come up on the beach and snag one of the seals, right in front of your eyes. The girls were sad, because seals are “SO cute”, but it always fascinates me to see nature’s food chain in action. More about that when we get to diving.

We got back into the buggies and went into a secluded wooded walkway, hanging from the edge of the cliff above a beach that ‘no human footprint would ever be found on’. In the distance, we could see the infamous ‘yellow-eyed penguins’, one of the rarest and most endangered penguin species ever. The most ever captured in one photo is 5, and we saw 4 on the beach. Pretty cool. Our guide was so excited to share all about the penguins with us. He was so passionate about what his family was doing that a recent documentary had been made on his land entitled ‘My Grandfather’s Dream’. I think its cool that we met the guy who is probably going to be single-handedly the man responsible for saving the yellow-eyed penguins.

Next stop, Christchurch. The next couple of days would prove to be insane. The group I was traveling with headed out to Brisbane a day before me, as I waited for Lindsay to get to Christchurch a little later on in the day. She had told me that she would be coming in on a certain bus from Dunedin, but I, in my forgetful ways, forgot to write her back telling her I would be there to pick her up. When she left for Christchurch, her roommates asked her if she knew where she was going; she had no idea. They asked her if Sam would be there to pick her up; she had no idea. But everything worked out; we had a joyful reunion, and enjoyed a night of storytelling, cooking, and cards. (which she owned me at. everytime.)

We return the rental car and make our way to the airport. Catch our flight to Brisbane, customs, security, then Savannah Spearman meets us in the baggage claim. (Savannah used to row with Lindsay on the Clemson team.) We tried to find a hostel in Brisbane for the night, but most everything was booked, so Savannah pitched the idea to go to Bond University, where she is studying abroad, up on the Gold Coast, which is only like an 1 1/2 hour train ride. So we did. And Bond is the coolest campus I have ever seen. Every building has such a modern and artisitic flair about it. Even the dorm she lived in was well thought out. There were no big square buildings here. Awkward angles, funny colors, and walls with no point stood out in every direction. Stair up to the library were so far apart that one step between them was not enough, but getting two steps was too many, making infuriatingly hard to walk up them without thinking about it.

The downtown area was much the same; lavishly decorated, small but filled with life. I easily could have gone there. But I do love Newcastle. We went to a couple local clubs, one on campus and one really close to campus, and both were crazy because school had just ended for them, so everyone was out dancing.

The next day, we went to Surfer’s Paradice, a short bus ride from Bond, and this city was equally cool. It was kind of like Sydney, in that it was very trendy, just a lot more laid back. It was a bit rainy though, so no swimming, but the shops were cool, and I introduced Lindsay to Oporto’s, which is fantastically awesome chicken burgers.

Lindsay and I caught the train to our hostel in Brisbane that afternoon, and little did we know, but the the next 24 hours would prove to be one of the most interesting disasters of our lives. Upon arrival to Brisbane, we called up a shuttle to our hostel and they said they would pick us up in bay 14 of the train station. We found bay 14, a van pulled up, and we got in. A little while later, we pulled up at a hostel. Not our hostel. We inquired as to where we were, and they told us we were in the wrong place, weren’t exactly sure on how we got there, and promised that the driver would take us to the place we needed to go. We got back on the bus and drove through Downtown Brisbane during rush hour, and an hour into the ride, I asked the driver how close we were to the hostel, and he looked perplexed and said we were going to the train station. So nearly 3 hours later, we ended up back where we started. By the time we got there, it was after the time there were free shuttles to the hostel, but I called the front desk and they were very helpful. She told us to take the train to another stop, walk 3 blocks to the hostel, and they would refund our train tickets.

(Interesting side story: When Lindsay and I went to pay for the train tickets, I paid for both, and the man behind the counter said “well then. I guess chivalry isn’t dead after all.” Lindz kept making fun of me because little did he know that I already owed her money anyways, not to mention that we would be reimbursed for the tickets. I win.)

We didnt do much that night. We were too tired. We barely even saw any of Brisbane. And we had to get up early for a nightmare flight out to Townsville.  But Lindz and I decided not to waste the day, nor let our misfortunes get us down, because hey, we were in Australia. And we made our Brisbane Airport experience quite memorable. That is, until I got stopped, again, in airport security. “Excuse me sir, but do you have car parts in your bag?” ‘ Uh, yeah, my car in the states broke down and I figured it would be a good idea to fly to Australia to pick up some new ones.’ I didnt actually say that. The security guard, around the age of 15, didnt like the look of my scuba gear, and wanted me to lighten the load of my bag, so we put the regulators in Lindz’ purse. It was ridiculous.

We finally got to Townsville, got to the hostel, settled in, and caught up with everyone. The next day, we went for a swim, or snorkel rather, after taking the ferry to Magnetic Island; the place where Devin and Brittany got certified for scuba diving. We swam in right off the shore to a wreck not 100 meters from land. The water wasn’t crystal, but the visibility wasn’t all that bad, and we had a blast. Except for a little panic attack that I had when my side started burning really horribly and I thought I had been stung by an irukandji jellyfish. (Irukandji are so poisonous that most stings require multiple weeks of hospitalization, yet they are so small and fragile that they cannot be kept in aquariums because if they hit the glass side, the impact would kill them.)

To Cairns: A beautiful City. We arrived at night, eager to what lied ahead, with anticipation that the following day would bring excitement and the fulfillment of one of my earliest childhood dreams; to scuba in the Great Barrier Reef.  We were picked up early the next morning in a van and taken to the local marina, where a massive boat awaited us. Bigger than any I had ever been on. Nearly 30 others boarded the vessel with us on a journey that would take no longer than 2 hours out into the vast expanses of the Barrier Reef. The two hours went by quickly due to a number of briefings and safety speeches, and soon we were suiting up to dive our first out of seven dives. The dive sites for the day were Troppos, Turtle’s Nest, and Sharks Playground.

After the first two dives, we were taken to an even bigger boat; the live-aboard vessel. This boat was so big, they left it out in the ocean because it was too big to bring into port everyday. Three stories, a study, a full kitchen and formal dining area, 25 rooms, two sundecks, and a full staff made this more like a luxury cruise than a dive charter. Someone even said that the rooms on this ship were more spacious than actual cruise lines.

Im going to let the pictures speak for themselves on most of the dives, but I just wanted to put a few things out there about the pics. Most of them dont show the true colors that we could see, which is slightly disappointing. It wasn’t until late in the dives, around the 5th or so, that I discovered that brighter colors could be produced when the flash was on. But I still think they came out great. And there were plenty of pictures taken, so Im only going to put up the best.

Each dive was completely different from one another. Different times of the day, from early morning when the sun was just coming up to near midnight, gave us completely different underwater experiences. In the morning, millions of little fish swarm around you, searching for their early meal. In the afternoon, the whole underwater seems as chill and the lazy turtles we saw, and at night, the waters were filled with much larger specimens, each hoping for an easy meal.

The night dive wasn’t the most colorful, but it was by far the most intense. Ill try to set this up properly. Its completely black outside. There are no city lights because there is no land anywhere around you. Only the moon and stars to light the world around you. You suit up, putting on your gear, and shuffling to the edge with a dinky little torch attached to your wrist. I was teamed up with Michael, who seemed pretty skiddish about what we were doing, so I tried to calm him down by not appearing in the least bit concerned. Semi-hard to do given the circumstances. We jump in and head for the reef, not able to see the bottom, nor the top, except for the extremely bright halogen light the boat is shining into the water to attract bait fish. Bait fish to attract bigger fish, and bigger fish to attract sharks. When you night dive in the reef, big fish come out. I dont know where they go in the daytime, but these things were big. Some nearly 3 feet long. With teeth. And they would follow you. But they weren’t dangerous; actually, they were friendly to us, just freaky.They followed us in a school of nearly 20, and when our lights would shine on anything small enough to fit in their mouths, they would race around us, usually brushing up against our stomachs, and snatch up whatever we were looking at.

We started heading back to the boat, and from the bottom, we could see sharks just on the edge of the lighted areas, just waiting for a fish to get close enough to them before they would swoop in and carry off the fish into the darkness. It makes you reevaluate a lot of stuff when there are sharks between you and your boat.  But we made it back safely. And now we have a good story to tell.

The following day was another early morning. A constant trend on this trip. 7:30 in the morning, considered sleeping in for us at this point, got us on a two hour bus ride to the Tulley River. We planned on sleeping most of the bus ride, but a wickedly funny dude got up and started cracking jokes, and we were up. At one point, he was talking about lunch on the river, with hamburgers, and he asked if any vegetarians would please raise their hands. No one did. “No one? Or maybe your just to weak to raise your hands.” A little cruel, but quite funny, and each of us would in turn get our own portion of verbal abuse throughout the course of the day, since, as luck would have it, that same wisecracking jokester ended up being our riverguide. He was a massive yet jovial fellow, with a knack for comedy, and proved himself to be a master of river navigation, as we barely ever got stuck. Most of his other shananigans will be censored out at this point, but it was quite the enjoyable day; including multiple waterfall, with a backflip over one, and rafting underneath another, and jumping off rocks, and swimming down smaller rapids.

That night was enjoyable as well, as we all just hung out in the amazing cool hostel, ‘the northern greenhouse’, and had a little dance party and karaoke session. Crazy fun way to end this glorious and epic journey.

So thanks to all of you who have read this far, as Im sure it took a while, because it took quite a while to write it. I hope I have recreated what has happened in enough detail to keep you entertained but not so much as to bore you out of your minds with unneccessary tidbits. Now I have to go back to the life of a college student, with less than $12 in my bank account. Hopefully that other loan I applied for comes in soon. Raman noodles can get old quick. It was so worth it.

(The title comes from a roadsign next to a bunch of cows, meant to remind travelers not to speed.)

Queenstown is my home away from home. Its fantastically beautiful here, the town extends up the side of a mountain, the ducks are friendly, the pizzas good, and all of the shops are extreme sports related. If one has the funds, they could bungee jump in three different places, including the tallest in Austral-Asia, skydive from 15000 feet (high enough to require breathing oxygen enriched air while still in the plane before jumping), take a jetboat down the river, cruise the lake while having a 7 course meal, go caving, skiing, river suring, and hanggliding. Guess which one we did. Oh yeah, skydiving.

We signed up this morning to go to 12000 feet ($100 cheaper than 15000), but falling 400 footballfields is quite high enough. Trust me. 2:30 this afternoon, seven of us got into a van and were shuttled out to the airfield. When we got there, there were already people falling out of the sky, which was way more exciting than seeing people do it before, since today we were actually going to do it. (Side story: All of us have been staying on each others good side for the day, because we kept joking that we would drop kick the other person out of a plane if they made us mad, and then realized that on any other day that would be a joke, but for today, that was a legitimate threat. Awesome.)

Luke, Devin, and I were going to go in the plane together, since it held three jumpers at once, and we opted for the photograph package, so each had a photographer, and each of us were attached to a dive master (Mine has been jumping for 23 years. He was awesome. From “the former Yugoslavia.”) so there were nine of us in a plane four feet wide and probably 12 feet long. It was cramped. We took off, and climbed at a steeper angle than I knew a plane could fly, and the view above the mountains was incredible. 10 minutes later, we were at 12000 feet and a little red light came on. Our helmets were put on, our straps were double checked, and the door was opened. 10 seconds later, a green light, and Luke moves to the door. His photographer climbs out of the door, holds onto the side of the plane (yeah, hes completely outside the plane, hanging onto a rail) and Luke’s divemaster throws them out of the plane. Thats when it hit me that this was for real. Devin’s divemaster scoots her to the door, her photographer climbs out, and then Devin begins her decent into the void.

My turn. (I never really felt fear, or even anxiety, just a rush of adrenaline. The reality of the situation never really hit me, even in flight, and maybe thats why it wasn’t scary.) Before we jumped, I turned around to ask my instructor if we could flip a lot, and he told me that in 23 years of jumping, no one has ever asked him to do that. He said “We can try.”  I think he had just as much fun as I did, because we flipped. A lot. When we came out of the plane, we turned upside down and did four backflips. Four is a guess, because I was completely discombobulated. After leveling off, we spun in horizonal circles, which was really really fast, because everything just blurred together. After the spinning, we calmed down and just fell. Fast. (I cant really explain how it felt to jump out of a plane, except that looking down 12000 feet with nothing below you was a little daunting, but I expected there to be a severe dropping feeling in my stomach, and that never happened.) Back to falling.

Terminal velocity is approximately 200 kilometers per hour, or 125 miles per hour. It took us all of 10 seconds to accelerate to that speed. Rollercoasters are like kiddy rides compared to this. After attaining terminal velocity, each 5 seconds we fell 1000 feet. Or 200 feet per second. Thats a football field every 1.5 seconds. We were bookin it. Breathing was almost impossible. Not smiling was impossible. Jumping out of planes seemed impossible until that moment.

The view was fantastic. It was a perfectly clear day, with no clouds (although it would have been fun to fly through a cloud) and we could see for nearly 10 miles before the Earth’s surface curved off into the edge of space. The sky was darker, due to the lack of atmosphere, and I think if we had gone any higher, we could’ve gotten sunburned in like 2 seconds. The water was metallic blue and the mountains were like little hills far below.
Looking stright at the ground created the loudest wind I have ever heard, equivalent to standing in a F5 tornado, and made my smile get sucked back to my ears. Thats going to be a goofy picture.

At 4000 feet, we pulled the chute, and by 3000, we had slowed down to around 30 miles per hour. The pulling of the chute wasn’t as jerky as I thought it would be, since watching videos of skydiving shows the person abruptly coming to a stop, but it was just like a severe deceleration. Not much of a jerk at all, but just a lot of pressure on your legs and chest. Pretty fun actually. We then had a 5 minute float down to Earth, and I got to watch Luke and Devin land below. I guess my guy wanted to spin more, since he suddenly called out “hold on” and we went horizonal in a death spiral. (Its not really called that. I just named it that because we were spinning sideways in a circle, accelerating towards the ground, with the chute getting louder and louder sounding as if it would explode any second.) I guess the dive master I had either realized that I’m a bit of an adrenaline junky myself, or he just wanted to scare the mess out of me, because he had one more trick up his sleeve. We approached the ground faster than anyone should ever do that, and soared in like a missle nearly 5 feet from the roof of the building we began in, rocketed towards the ground, then just at the last second, we pulled our feet up, he pulled the cords of the parachute, and we floated up just a few feet, only to float down softly into a mild jog landing. It was perfect. I felt like I was in a movie the whole time.

So that was my day. Probably one of the best days of my life. One I definitely won’t forget. Now its 8:30 pm and I can barely keep my eyes open. I had to write this before bed so I could remember every little detail possible to make the story worth it. Sorry if it was a bit long, but I intend to use this blog to remember the trip later on, so I figured the more in-depth, the better. I hope it was interesting enough to keep your attention. Mom, I know you said you’d rather me get a tattoo or my ears pierced or something, but at least this is over and you don’t have to put up with it everyday. And this is a much cooler postcard to put on the fridge. Except now I’m hooked and am considering being a professional skydiving instructor the rest of my life. Sweet.

Getting to New Zealand is quite possible the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. The journey there was ridiculous. Lets take a look at what it took to get me here.

First of all, my plane was to leave at 8:50 am on Saturday, and the trains running from Newcastle to Sydney were going not going to be running this particular weekend, starting Saturday morning at 2 am, and I would have had to take a bus early in the morning, which, trust me, is a horrible idea. So I took the last train out Friday night with the intention of sleeping in the airport terminal after checking in. The train left Newcastle station just after 9 o’clock, and I started off the journey reading “The Bourne Ultimatum”, which was a great way to pass the time, until a lady with the five most annoying children on the planet got on the train. One of the children had a whistle that he blew on, loudly, for near an hour, his mother never saying a word to him, and my patience was wearing quite thin. I eventually gave up reading and put in my headphones on loud, barely loud enough to drown out the screeching noises of the kid.

So then I get to the train station in Sydney around midnight and ask a conductor which train is going to the airport next. He says “Why do you want to go there?” I wasn’t really expecting that question, and I didnt really know what to say because I thought it was obvious why one would go to the airport, so I didnt say anything, and then he said “Because its closed now.” And he destroyed my dreams right there. He tells me I should just go back to my place and come back around 5 in the morning. My blank stare for an untold length of awkward time told him everything, and then he says “Your not from Sydney are you?” I tell him no, and hes like “Oh boy.”

Needless to say, I spent that night sleeping on a bench in the trainstation. A trainstation that is not closed off to the elements mind you. There’s a roof, sure, but each of the sides of the building have huge open archways to the park outside, which means arctic winds throughout the night. Im not entire sure how much sleep I got, but I promise it wasnt much. I couldn’t even lay down because of the armrests, so I had to sleep proped up in a sitting position. Then I wake up around 5, get on a train to the airport, move wearily through customs and check-in, wander mindlessly through the terminal, somehow end up on a plane, and once im on the plane, Im suddenly awake. I cant fall asleep to save my life. The flight was quite awesome though, we stayed fairly low for a good bit of the trip, and there was little cloud cover below, so the Tasman Sea was visible the entire time.

Landing. More walking. Huge line. Baggage scan, again. Another huge line. Customs, again. 45 minutes after landing, I meet up with Devin, Luke, and Britt. (I abreviated to save you the pain of reading about boring airport security procedures.) We then get shutted to a rental car place where we had reserved a Ford Focus, which is sweet. We pay, added extra insurance, and the woman made the biggest mistake of here life. She tells us, and I quote “It doesn’t really matter what condition the car comes back in.” We looked confused and asked “Really?” and she said “Well it does, but it doesn’t.” Sweet. We put this to test a day later when we hit a bird (more like a falcon/buzzard) on the highway. It was huge. It was eating something on the road, and didnt decide to move until it was too late. Well actually, it flew out of the way just in time, but then changed its mind and flew back in front of the car. But now im skipping ahead.

Back to the car. Luke drives us downtown for some sweet Mexican food, which was fantastic, but a bit pricey, and we go to our hostel (an old jail) and cook dinner (huge hamburgers) and have the best night of sleep in my life. It was quite restful, but it was merely a facade of sleep since we had to get up a 4:30 in the morning to begin driving to the next place. Queensland. Learning to drive on the wrong side of the road, making wide right turns and short left ones, with unnecessarily bright high beams and dangerously dim low beams, around corners so sharp it makes you dizzy in the mountains, at 5 in the morning is not the easiest of activities, but it will definitely wake you up. And driving here is SO much fun. It might be the huge mountains and valleys, the millions of sheep, or the spectacular sunrise (which made the gettting up early worth it). I drove for 6 ½ hours today, ending at 11:30 am. Upon arrival in Queenstown, an absolutely gorgeous town located in the valley between two mountain ranges and bordered by a crystal clear, ice blue lake, we checked into our hostel, which happens to be right across the street from the lake, and wandered around the small little town. But Ill pick up here in the next post.

So tomorrow we go to New Zealand. Well, everyone else does. I go take a test and sit in class for 4 hours. Im actually leaving Saturday at 8:50 am. But I am so excited. We are sitting in my room right now with everyone going, planning out what we are going to be doing for the next two weeks. Thats right. We waited till the last possible second to book hostels. But its ok. We know exactly what we want to do. Some of my mom’s favorites include skydiving, bungie-jumping, blackwater kayaking (kayaking in a cave… yeah.), traveling to various Lord of the Rings filming places, and camping.

The past week has been pretty eventful as well. My test Monday went better than I expected, although it was still pretty hard. It was three questions and two hours long, and no one in the class left early. Not usually a good sign. So I took my mind off it by going surfing. After that, I wrote a lab report until 3 in the morning, got up at 7 to turn it in, then went suring again.

Usually surfing is relaxing, but this particular morning, I thought I was going to die. I have seen hills in Kansas smaller than these waves. After an exhausting 20 minutes of paddling out, merely riding the waves up and down was enough of a ride for me. I should have know before I went out that these waves were just a bit beyond my skill level considering that there were only 5 surfers out there, 2 of which happened to be my housemates, who have been surfing since they could walk. So after getting owned more times than I care to recount, I decided to hang up my board and grab my camera for some fantastic photos. I swam out with my goggles and floated in the area just before I would get crushed and got some of the best surfing pictures ever. Im pretty sure some of them could be posters for ads and such. Ill post them online after writing this.

Ill do my best to find a place to post on here whilst I am gone, but I cant make any promises, since who knows when Ill be able to get to a computer, or civilization for that matter, for 2 and a half weeks.  Before I go, Id like to thank you all for dilligently reading this. Its cool to know that people care enough to read about whats going on in your life. So thanks.

So I must apologize for not writing in here any more than I have been, but this week has been very difficult school wise. This next one is already proving to be worse, so posts this week might be slack as well. But a lot has happened, and but I’m afraid I must be brief since I have a 25% of my final grade in a test tomorrow that is going to be extremely difficult. Here goes.

This week has been fairly typical in many ways, which is weird to think like that since if I was home, so very little of it would seem typical. Surfing almost every day, no matter the weather, night walks on the beach under a completely clear Southern sky, making Kangaroo Fajitas, public transportation to school, and huge tropical birds in our backyard.

The week has also been exquisitely different in a few ways as well. Mainly, the celebration of my friends Devin and Andrea’s Birthdays. We made a huge pot of Chicken Alfredo, which was fantastic, then went to the beach to hang out and play guitar, and finally went to some of our friends’, from Ultimate Frisbee,  house to hang with them. Quite the fiesta.

Today, we woke up an hour later than usual, since we get to Fall Back, again. We lucky American’s get the awesome privilege of falling back three times in a row. Also, I recently found out, that when we travel back to the U.S., we will arrive there approximately 3 hours before we left. How cool is that?

Also, Kansas played North Carolina today, which was the greatest game of the century! Until Tuesday at least, when they are going to win the Championship. I gotta give North Carolina credit though. At one point early in the game, they were down by about 25 points, and they came very close to winning the game. KU was only able to inflate the score at the end for a larger victory since N.C. had to start fouling for time, and KU made like every freethrow. It happens. I think the best part of the game was that we got to all go down to the bar/pub on the water to watch the game on the big screen. Everyone who was a KU fan was there, mostly other American kids, but some surprising local Australians turned up as well. Great fun.

Now I must go study for this crazy hard test.

As Shakespeare once said “…whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Or to take arms against a sea of troubles…” Thats what I feel like right now.

So umm, not much happened today. Just 6 hours of surfing. I woke up, tried to go spearfishing with some friends, there were no fish, so we switched to surfing. The waves were SO good today that I couldn’t come in for anything. I was so tired and hungry, but I was having so much fun I couldn’t pull myself away.

I’ve found this semi-secret spot (ie. a place where only a few locals go and the waves are good.) and met some really cool people there. For a while, there were just three of us. One of whom was getting ready to surf his heat in Surfest, which is like one of Australia’s biggest surf competitions here in Newcastle. It just started. He doesn’t really know it, but he gave me a ton of great pointers, and by the end of the day, my surfing had improved dramatically. Just watching him was ridiculous. It was like watching a movie about surfers. He would get out there, catch a wave with ease, and then do some crazy aerial 360 of the back end and then be back out there again before I had even gotten out once.

Some of the things I learned that they don’t teach you in surf school.

1. Waves are much more fun to catch if you go through the pipe rather than letting it drop on you.

2. It’s much easier to get out if you don’t swim back the way you came in. (ie. where the waves don’t break on your head.)

3. Duck diving is a little freakier, but so much easier to get through the waves once you’ve mastered it.

The other guy out there was this 60 year old recovering drug addict who has been surfing for 41 years and he told me that surfing was the only drug he couldn’t get off of. I understood about 6% of the words he said to me, but the dude was a sick surfer, so I learned a good bit from him too. After lunch, more surfers came out to where we were, probably because they saw how amazing we (they) were, but they were all nice guys, some of whom were also competing in Surfest. So now I’m in tight with all the pros and they invited me to come out to Surfest to watch them compete. Should be awesome. Anyways, that was my day.

Sorry its been almost a week since I posted last, this week has been kinda crazy. Last Friday started off our first break here, Easter Break, and I was supposed to go on a camping trip for the weekend, but it ended up not working out because a huge rainstorm came through. All of my roommates had already planned to go to Melbourne for the weekend, so I’ve been here in the house pretty much by myself. Some of our other friends were here this weekend, so I wasn’t completely alone, but I used this weekend to get really good at surfing. (Really good is a pretty loosely defined word here, although a guy told me a while back that short boards are for people who have been surfing for at least 3 years, and thats all I’ve had to practice on, and I can actually ride it pretty well. I was happy about that.)

Basically everyday has been the same, rain or shine. I’ll get up around 10, eat breakfast, and go surfing for a couple of hours. Oh, and its a great way to meet locals.  After the salt burn on my stomach gets to painful, Ill bring it in, eat a late lunch, and then usually go spearfishing in the afternoon. Im not horrible at that either. I’ve been catching fish all weekend in hopes that when my roommates get back, we can have a fish bbq. In fact, a couple of guys are on their way over right now to go spearfishing. It’s such a rush! Its more like hunting than fishing. You have to sneak up on the fish, which is really hard considering I cant hold my breath for very long. When you see a fish from the surface, you move back a bit and try to come up on top of the fish from behind a rock or reef. Im pretty used to cleaning the fish now too. I thought it would bother me a lot more than it does, since I used to be so squeamish as a kid, but it doesn’t really gross me out at all to slice out the entire underside of the fish and pour the guts out into a bag. Its actually kinda cool because you can see all the organs and stuff and see how they are all linked together.

So now I’ve got to go get ready to get some more fish for the bbq. I’ll do my best to post more often. Also, I’m going to put up some new pics now.

It finally happened. Its been put off for over a week due to too harsh and too calm conditions, but yesterday was perfect. Luke and I finally got to go kitesurfing. Sortof.

Actually, we got to take a kitesurfing lesson, but now we know how to do it. We were supposed to have the lesson on the beach right by our house, but the guy who gave us lessons said that he thought conditions were much better at a place called Caves Beach. Only when we looked it up did we realize that it was an hour and a half by bus, but we barely gave that a thought since we were so excited about learning to kitesurf.

We got to the beach a little early, so we decided to eat at a really small restaurant that basically serves burgers and fries, pretty common around here at the beaches, but we were definitely surprised when we order a large fry to share between the three of us (Devin came along as well.) and it was like 12 potatoes worth of fries. If you dont believe me, just check out the pictures. It was crazy.

We then met the dude on the beach, who was only a few years older than us, and we began the lesson. We had to wear these harnesses really tight around our bellies, which made us instantly regret all those fries we just ate, but we soon forgot about it. We worked through everything that we would ever need to know if we were going to do this ourselves. Inflating the kite, attaching the lines, reading the wind direction, launching and landing, and basic kite maneuvers. Toward the end of the lesson, we actually got to get in the water to let the kite pull us along. We weren’t able to use the boards yesterday, but we let the kite pull us along in the water on our bellies, which was really fun.

Two and a half hours later, we finished the lesson and the guy (his name was B0) gave us certified Kiteboarding Cards. So cool. So then we decided to explore this beach a bit more considering it was a perfect day and the beach was enticingly called ‘Caves Beach’. After a short, halfmile walk down the beach, we came to some cliffs where lots of people were playing with their children. When we got closer, we realized that the rocks that have landed in the water around the cliffs edge have created hundreds of little tide pools that are just deep enough for little children to play in. We continued to follow the bottom of the cliffs around and the water gradually got deeper and deeper, until it was chest high. We found some more caves, probably about ten or so, and some of them went far into the mountain, and others went through the cliffs and came out in the ocean, so most of the cave was flooded. We decided to venture through pretty much all of the caves, although the one that had waves coming in was a little intense.

When we arrived on the other side, there were a bunch of larger rocks in the water, probably 15 feet up in the air, and we decided they would be cool places to snorkel around. To our surprise, there we so many cool things under the water there. The tides, over time, had carved a deep underwater passageway between two of the rocks that were close together. The cavern was a little more than three feet wide and probably 15-20 feet deep. It was so cool diving down and taking pictures between the rocks, and if you timed it right, you could get pushed along in either direction depending on whether the wave was coming in or crashing on the rocks and coming back out. Using this method, you could go back and forth in the passageway without hardly having to swim.

And there was one more place that was really cool. I dont really know how to describe it except as a giant toilet. The way these rocks were set up, you could stand in the middle and a single wave would come in from two directions, swirl you around, and carry you out the back. We stayed there for almost an hour it was so much fun.

On our way back, we came back through a cave and there were a whole bunch of people on the shore near the rocks dressed up taking pictures. And then we realized what was going on, they were taking wedding pictures. The bridge, groom, bridesmaids, and groomsmen were all lined up in the water taking pictures. It was awesome.

We eventually got back on the bus and headed home. Luke and I almost immediately fell asleep we were so tired, and barely woke up in time to get off the bus. What a crazy day.

Luke and I had a reservation to go kite surfing yesterday (Sunday), but the instructor called us and said it was too calm and the wind wouldn’t be able to lift us, so we rescheduled for next week. Instead, we took advantage of the fact that there were almost no waves, thus making the water clearer than it had ever been here, and Luke, Devin, and I went snorkeling around the breakwater at the end of the peninsula. (The breakwater is a narrow strip of sand that goes out into the ocean from the point and, at hightide, waves come over the sandbar from both sides at the same time and meet in the middle.)

I don’t really know how to describe how awesomely clear the water was, so your just going to have to check out the pictures. But I do want to say that there was a Clemson Fish. (Named this by Luke) It was fluorescent orange and purple, and really hard to get a picture of. So cool. It was a bit cold, but we couldn’t make ourselves leave until almost two hours had passed. I had no idea water could be so clear so close to the beach. In South Carolina, we had to go 25 miles offshore before it got clear. Here, we just walked in and it was perfect.

Last Saturday, we finally got to go to Sydney! We woke up really early, like 7, and hopped on a bus (since the trains were down for repairs) and two and a half hours later, I was waking up on the Sydney Bridge looking at the opera house. After arriving at the central train station, which is HUGE, we met Luke (who had come down the day before) and began our journey to the opera house. Its probably a good two miles north of the train station, and they have trains that run around the city, but we decided to walk just so we could learn where everything is in the city.

The cool thing about Sydney is that there are parks and fountains everywhere. On the way to the opera house, we never actually went through a downtown street. It was all park and botanical gardens. Exotic birds were in all the trees and there was a really cool WWI memorial as well. Soon enough, we came over the top of a small hill and at the bottom was the opera house and bridge. Until then, I had never known that the opera house is actually three different buildings, two theaters and a restaurant, so that was cool. After catching some serious tourist photographs, we started walking down the harbor pathway that leads back towards the city, where we met a friend of ours from Clemson who is studying at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. His name is Ben, but we all call him Moped.

We made our way to the Harbor Foreshore, which is pretty much the most awesome place in a city ever. It surrounds an inlet in the harbor and has all kinds of shops, fountains, restaurants, the aquarium and nature park, a pavilion for shows, a playground for kids, and the biggest information kiosk known to mankind. Im pretty sure the Ancient Aztecs would have mistaken this place for a temple. Anyways, since it was a Saturday, there was so much going on. Upon arrival, there was a voice coming over a loudspeaker, but we couldn’t tell who was talking, so we followed it and arrived just in time to see a speed boat race around the harbor. So cool. And then we saw it, my favorite thing of the day, a Capoeira festival. (Basically the coolest martial arts form ever, AND Newcastle has a class really close to our house, which I’m probably going to end up at.) We were all hungry so we naturally looked for the cheapest place to eat and ended up at this really cool bar/restaurant with rearrangeable furniture and $10 meals.

We then hit up the aquarium, which is one of the absolute best aquariums I’ve ever seen. They have these undersea walkways where you are in a completely glass tube and the sharks, rays, and seals will just float around you and its really eerie. Especially when the biggest stingray in the world is separated from your head by a half inch of glass. There’s way to much to say about the aquarium (given that I love animals so much) so your just going to have to check out the pictures.

There was about an hour and a half before sunset, and we wanted to wait to do the Sydney Tower until then, so we made a slight detour and headed to China Town. We quickly learned that the market of China Town is the absolute cheapest place in the world, so when we go back we are going to get a bunch of cool T-Shirts and stuff, but they were closing down when we got there. But we did get to go in an amazing desert shop, and we got these little doughnut holes filled with the hottest liquid magma sugar imaginable. They were really good.

Then back to the tower, where they have the fastest elevators on the planet, and ten seconds later we were at the highest point in Sydney with an amazing view. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to go up this first, because you could so easily map the city and see everything that we had done that day, but going up at sunset was a fantastic idea.  More cool pictures.

After dinner in a really cool Chinese/Italian pizzeria,  we caught the 10 o’clock train back to Newcastle and got some much needed sleep.

Let me begin by saying that this country is amazing! I love living in this city, but the wilderness is SO much more breathtaking. Last Wednesday, two days ago, I decided that I would go for a run, since my lab was canceled and I didn’t have any classes. A friend of mine who has been to Newcastle before told me that her favorite place here was called Glenrock Lagoon, and ever since I heard about it, I have been extremely curious to find out what its like. So I went. The lagoon is about six kilometers from here, to the South, which was quite a daunting distance for me considering that when I usually run, I go for about 2 or 3 miles and I’m done. But I figured that I would have all day and that I could stop and take pictures in cool places along the way, so I would be fine.

The path to the lagoon was almost as cool as the lagoon itself. From downtown Newie, I had to travel directly South, staying along the coast the entire way. Four beaches lie between downtown and the National Reserve, and the entire time I had to stop and take pictures. At one point, I had to go up a huge hill, one of the tallest in the city, and I knew that I had to find my way down the other side, but I had no idea how to get there since I ended up in a neighboorhood, so I just followed some roads and came to a sign that said that it was the entrance to the Nature Reserve, so I took that path. The path, which was barely more than two feet wide with huge amounts of jungle type plants on each side, quickly opened into a clearing on the top of a cliff overlooking the entire nature reserve. It was fantastic. The city just ended and there was nobody in sight anywhere, except for the six hang-gliders on the cliff with me. I have always been so intrigued as to how you are supposed to steer one of those things, so I just walked up to them and chatted for a few minutes while they were getting ready. Then, one by one, they all just ran off the cliff and floated away.

It is worth noting that the sun is so hot here that the tops of all the cliffs in Newcastle remind me of New Mexico, meaning that only hardy desert plants can grow up there where there are no trees, and there is sand rather than dirt. Traveling down the cliff, the jungle rose up to greet me and I ended up in an extremely dense forest, and then as quickly as it began, it ended and I was on the beach again. A half mile down the beach, I found the entrance to the lagoon. A trail ran next to the lagoon, so I took that and it was probably the coolest place I have ever been. Technically, its not a rainforest, but it seemed like it so much that I could’ve been fooled. The trail was narrow and hardly ever went straight, the air was thick with mist and semi-foggy, wild kookaburras and rainbow lorikeets were flying around chasing each other, and the sound of rushing water was everywhere. A mile into the trail I came to a sign that said that Newcastle was 8 kilometers back the other way. I had no idea that I had gone so far, and was not really looking forward to going back, but the area was just so beautiful I forgot that I was running and never really got tired.

The lagoon itself was very peaceful and was fed by a stream that came down from in between the mountains it was surrounded by. I needed to turn around and head back but I didn’t want to take the same path, so I cut down the bank and into the stream, which was filled with large boulders that I jumped across all the way back to the beach.

The trip back was much longer, because I was exhausted, but still was fun because it was downhill most of the time and I got even more great pictures.  All in all, the trip was almost 16 kilometers, which is about 10 miles, and its two days later and I still can barely move. The farthest I have EVER run before that at one time was 10 kilometers, and that was in the Cooper River Bridge Race. I guess if you have to run, you should do it in a place where the beauty of God’s creation can sustain you. Seriously, I was so overtaken by how beautiful and peaceful this place was that I completely forgot about having to run and breathe right and watch my feet and time myself and everything that goes with running. It was like being a kid again, exploring a vast wilderness all by myself.

I’ve definitely got to go back.

So I’m now officially a surfer. Yesterday, (Saturday), Luke, Jonathan, and I went to a local place, rented boards, and ventured out into the ocean. Well, ventured might be a bad choice of words, since that might imply that it was easy. It wasn’t. The waves were ridiculously huge and we couldn’t even get past where they were breaking, so eventually we abandoned that track and went to something a little easier. We learned it was much easier to just catch the waves right after they had broken and go from there. But it was a blast, once we figured it out.

A couple hours later we returned the boards and came back to the house to get cleaned up for ‘cinema under the stars’, which is a program put on by the city of Newcastle where they set up a huge outdoor, drive-in style, movie theater in the park for free. They have been doing it every Saturday all summer, but last night was the first time we went, and we saw Casino Royale.

After the movie, it was a short walk up to the Obelisk, which is the tallest point in the city, and took some amazing night pictures of the whole city. We didn’t stay there long, since it was cold and windy, and we headed back to the house to celebrate Stephanie’s 20th birthday. Everyone ate way to much brownies and icecream, and when that was gone, we made more brownies and passed out watching ‘The Bucket List’.

Today, we are getting ready to go the beach and then venture down to Charlestown for some shopping. And then church tonight.

Just wanted to say Happy Birthday Anna!!!

A few days ago, I heard about an Ultimate Frisbee Club here at the Uni and last night I was able to participate in the festivities. It was SO much fun! For those of you who don’t know, I have developed quite a love for the sport of Ultimate and it felt so good to play again. There were so many people there too! Enough for six teams to play three games at the same time. I even got to play with three guys from the National Australian Ultimate Team! I learned a lot, and was really excited to be able to keep up with them. Also, I got invited to play in the town league on Wednesday night.

Let me explain sports here really quickly. Uni teams are not that big of a deal, even though they compete between colleges. Everything here is town vs. town and city vs. city. So the Uni Club team is like Intramural Sports at Clemson, and the town league is like the club team at clemson. Its kinda confusing but I’m getting used to it. Its actually kindof a cool system because you don’t actually have to go to the school to participate in the sports.

And then this evening, after my extremely long day of classes, I joined the mountaineering club. Basically, its rock climbing in the schools sports complex, but they also take camping trips in the Blue Mountains and go climbing on the weekends outdoors. The rock wall here is almost unexplainable with words. I thought Clemson’s wall was huge when I first saw it, but this wall put Clemson’s to shame. Actually, it pretty much puts all climbing walls to shame. It’s the second highest climbing wall in the southern hemisphere of the world. Its actually in a fairly small room, probably 20 x 20 feet, but three of the walls are climbable and so about 8 people can climb at the same time. Its almost 80 feet hight. Which is extremely high when your at the top. So much fun, and a great way to relax after a long day. I think this will make Tuesdays much more enjoyable.

And tomorrow I don’t have any class. I normally have two labs, but they only meet every three weeks, so this week I’m off. I think I’ll go surfing.

This weekend was so much fun! We spent a good deal of time at the beach, we explored the town, we went to a nature reserve (kindof like a zoo but with a lot less fences), we cooked lots of good food, and had more surf lessons.

Blackbutt Nature Reserve was incredible. They had a gigantic aviary with a large number of different Australian birds, and even a couple of koalas. In the aviary were some really ugly birds sitting on the railing right in front of where people were standing, and we soon learned that they were not as mean as they looked. In fact, they were raised by hand and allowed us to touch them. If you rubbed their bellies, they would walk up onto your hand and sit on your arm. It was really cool having a huge owl on your arm. Im definitely going back to do it again.

After the aviary, you go on a walk through the jungle, actually above the jungle, on wooden walkways suspended in the air, from exhibit to exhibit where individual bird species are kept so you can get a much better view of some of the more colorful ones. I think the elevated walkways was my favorite part.

Also this weekend, we went to a place called Bogey Hole. Im not sure if I’ve mentioned it yet or not but it is definitely my favorite place here so far. Basically, it is a saltwater swimming pool carved out of the cliff-face by inmates from the Newcastle Prison a couple hundred years ago that continually is getting filled by waves and overflowing into a little waterfall back into the ocean. Not only is it a really cool swimming area, but there are metal pipes, once used for a chain the kept the prisoners from jumping into the ocean below, that you can hang onto near the edge and wait for a huge wave to come, splash up the side of the cliff, shoot way above your head, and come crashing down on top of you. Sometimes they are so powerful that they send you flying backwards into the pool. Everyone should check out the pictures and videos section to get the full effect.

Most of today (Sunday) was spent on the beach. This morning was surfschool, then boogieboarding, a short lunch break at the cafe next door to our house, then back to the beach for some more swimming. This morning, we had some of the most beautiful waves I have ever seen. If you ventured further out than the closest-to-shore waves, they became much larger and were extremely hard to get past. I only made it out there twice today.

So I was sitting on my board, hanging out with a bunch of locals, including a bunch of really old men who were out surfing as well (blew my mind how good they were), and this huge wave comes up. Bigger than any wave I have ever seen. And rather than being like “wow, i should definitely not get on this wave”, everyone was excited and started paddling for it ( I think they are all crazy). So I went for it. And I CAUGHT IT. It was like being on a roller coaster. I was actually boogieboarding inside the tube for a short bit of time, and then I made it out and tried to drift back to the top of the wave before it crashed down on me. But instead of being able to back off over the top, it crashed at exactly the moment I reached the top and sent me flying. I bounced off the water a couple of times, barely able to see for all the water in my face, and I was just hanging on as hard as I could. Absolutely ridiculous, but so much fun!

I think I’ll go to bed, I’ve got school in the morning.

I got pretty red today though, not horrible, just slightly uncomfortable. I only put on sunscreen where my wetsuit didnt cover, and then I took it off after boogieboarding since I thought we were leaving, and we didn’t for a long time. So I’m pretty red.

So today was Wednesday, the third day of classes, and I’ve had all but one and thought I would let everyone know a bit about how things are down under.

The weirdest thing here is that you might have the same class multiple times on the same day. I even have one three times on one day. For other classes, you might be in class for two or three hours at a time. But I think the classes go by a bit faster here because the teachers don’t lecture the whole time. They will give problems and then give a few minutes for the class to figure it out for themselves before moving on. Its actually a really cool way to do things, unless you don’t understand whats going on, and it keeps you engaged and awake.

My teachers are all really fun, but they are all going to be very hard classes. Most of my teachers are native Australians, which is really cool, but I have one that I cant quite understand how he ended up here. He’s like a mix of every country. He’s an Indian man, who grew up in France, and now teaches physics in English with a half french/ half australian accent in australia. And he’s probably going to be my favorite teacher if I can ever learn to understand what he is saying.

The campus is absolutely gorgeous. The buildings are all spread out and hidden from one another in the jungle and they are all connected by little walkways through the jungle, a couple of them even turn into long bridges that put you in the canopy of the trees, looking down and the forest below. That’s my favorite part of campus. Tropical birds are everywhere and they all make weird noises. Some sound like sheep, one sounds like a monkey, and another sounds like a baby crying. We even have rainbow lorikeets, which are one of the most beautiful birds ever.

The campus also has a building where students can hang out between classes, and it is probably the coolest building I’ve ever been in. Its a square shaped building with a hole cut out in the middle with a large courtyard and picnic tables. Inside, there is the bookstore, post office, a coffee shop, a candy shop, campus clothing, a cafeteria, a bar, a gaming center and a computer lab. And, so far, everyday there has been a live band playing the center open area on a stage that is set up in the corner. It’s absolutely fantastic. A guitar player came on Monday, and a keyboard and cello player came on Tuesday. Maybe one day I’ll sign up to play there during lunch. Maybe.

Also, thank you all for posting your comments. It makes me happy to know that people are keeping up with whats going on and that Im not writing all of this for nothing. So thanks.