Home Safe and Sound

Just to let everybody know, I've made it home. Didn't get home until Sunday night which was nearly 24 hours later than I was supposed to due to a messed up plane in Los Angeles, so I missed my connecting flight in Charlotte, but the airline paid for me to get a hotel room so that was nice at least. I'm pretty jet-lagged and trying to stay up all day and sleep at night is very difficult to do, but it's the best way to get over it. It's such a strange feeling being home, but it's nice :).

Goodbye Australia!

This morning I was persuaded to write one more blog entry...so I shall try to do so. I don't have a whole lot to say that I haven't already said. I am really excited to come home...but it really hit me today how much I'm going to miss it here. I had my last exam (which went pretty well I think) and I took my special rainforest path back to the lodge which was nice. The kookaburras and the cockatoos were watching me from the trees and it nearly brought tears to my eyes when I thought about how I won't be hearing them anymore after tomorrow. It's going to be difficult to say goodbye to all of my new friends, as I've said before....but I don't really need to write more about how difficult it is to leave because I think everyone gets the picture. It's hard, but at the same time I am too excited to be sad. I've missed everyone so much and I've been sick this week and I'm sick of studying so that'll make it easier to go home as well. I will always miss the people I met here and the fun times I had...but I am so grateful to have had this experience....saying goodbye is just part of it. Before I went abroad all I heard about was how it changes you and your outlook on life..blah blah blah...and now that I have actually been abroad for 5 months I really see what they meant. I've grown up a lot and feel that I can take on any challenges life may throw my way. I've lived on my own in a country where I didn't know anyone before I went. I've had my fair share of difficulties: social, physical, and mental, and I had to be the one to deal with them. I've met so many people from all over the world and I feel like I'm more cultured now as well. This is getting really obvious and boring though...to sum it all up this past semester has been amazing and while I'm sad it's over I will always have the memories and I'm ready for my next adventure! I've really enjoyed posting some of my experiences on here for everyone to read and I hope that you've all enjoyed them. Can't wait to see most of you when I get back! (I get back really early in the morning on Sunday EST)....it's actually weird because my flight for LA leaves Saturday afternoon and I'm in Albany, NY by Saturday night after 26 hours of flying!..gotta love the time difference!

What a Semester it has Been!

4 out of 5 exams are out of the way and I leave a week from tomorrow. I can't believe it! It'll be so hard to leave this place and say my goodbyes but the thought that my family and friends are at home really helps to keep the tears at a minimum. I'll save the personal emotional sappy mumbo jumbo for my journal.
I haven't been doing a whole lot lately other than studying...but since I have a week off until my next exam I plan to go to the beaches some more and I'm going to the city a couple of times this weekend since it's our last weekend all together in Australia. Last weekend I got to go to a rugby game in the city: Cairns Pride vs Redcliffe Dolphins..the Dolphins won but it was still cool to watch an actual Australian rugby game.
I'll try to make another post before I fly home...I will miss making posts to this blog :(....but when I go on my next adventure (wherever that may be) I will use the same address and similarly record my adventures. I'm looking into volunteering for a year or 2 overseas someplace before graduate school so we'll see where that takes me. Well, time to go get ready for the night markets...I'm going to buy my souvenir boomerang! :)

Chillagoe

I just got back from the trip a little while ago...it was really the best birthday trip I could've ever asked for! I had an amazing time! I haven't posted a long blog in a while so I will write about the most memorable parts of the trip.
I was a bit intimidated at first because when I was waiting for the van to pick me up I realized that I was the only student from JCU going on the trip...so everybody else was attending the Cairns English-Speaking School. That was one of the main reasons I thought the trip would be fun actually...since it would be another one of those "leaving your comfort zone" kind of experiences that I love so much now. Anyways, it was a little difficult at first because I had to meet all new people and I was the only person that spoke English as a first language....but after a couple of hours of traveling with them I had already made a bunch of new friends from Switzerland, Spain, Germany, and even 1 from North Korea. I was impressed by how much most of them knew about the United States and they were very interested in hearing my opinions about the upcoming election and they were also very curious about life in the states and similarly I was able to ask them a lot of questions about their home countries. We had the same tour guide as I did for one of my Port Douglas trips...his name is George and he is hilarious. He's Australian..an indigenous Australian...so I really enjoyed hearing about everything he had to say about the places we visited. He's very friendly and outgoing so by spending lots of time chatting with him I was able to learn a lot about his ancestor's culture and past.
Chillagoe is an extremely small town..we only saw like 12 locals the whole time we were there...it used to be a mining town half a decade or so ago, but once the mines shut down just about everybody left. So now it looks a lot like a ghost town, and a large rusted tower from the copper smelters overlooks the town so it kind of has this eerie feel about it. It is technically located in the outback so the dirt has that characteristic red tone to it and the town is surrounded by the savannah, limestone cliffs/caves, and what is left of the copper smelters. It'd take forever to go into detail about all the experiences we crammed into 2 days, so I won't explain all of them....but basically after we arrived at the Eco Lodge and got settled in we went to a little swimming hole for a dip since it was a very hot day (probably in the upper 80's-low 90's F). After that, we went to the Royal limestone caves where we had our first of two cave tours. We were each given a light to wear around our necks and it was a short walk to the actual cave. It was a little scary at first because it is very dark inside and even though there is a small pathway, large rocks jut out from every which way and you have to crawl through a bunch of small spots and climb up and down ladders while trying to stay with the guide so that you don't get lost in the dozens of different tunnels. I'm not claustrophobic so being inside thigh nooks and crannies didn't bother me, but huntsmen and snakes live in the caves and they eat the bats and large cockroaches...so I was trying very hard not to bump into any of those. If you don't know what a huntsman is it's an extremely large spider...I've seen some here bigger than the palm of my hand (not counting their leg span)...it's not venomous but the bite can still be very painful. I saw a few of them in the cave, but didn't have any real close encounters. Getting to explore a limestone cave was awesome....I'd love to be more descriptive but "awesome" is really the only word I can use to describe it right now. It's one of those things you really would have to experience yourself in order to understand how special it was.
After that, we visited the copper smelters and climbed a very steep hill (which I later fell down) to watch the sunset. Outback sunsets are spectacular so I'm glad I got to see one of them! We had dinner at the local pub...the only pub actually...and I got to sit around and get to know some of the people better. It had been a busy day so once we got back to the lodge we sat around the bonfire for a while and gazed at the stars (I really wish my photos of the night sky in the outback would come out...there are no city lights to interfere with your view of them and it's another one of those priceless experiences) and then went to bed.
The next morning, I got up pretty early for brekky (breakfast in Aussie slang)and watched some of the brightly colored wild parrots flying around the lodge, and then we went for our second cave tour. We had a longer hike to get to this one and we had to scale/climb a bunch of rocks to get there so it was quite rigorous exercise for the morning! The location of this cave as well as the fact that you have to crawl into it through a small opening makes it less of a touristy attraction..so it was cool that it was less-explored. Upon entrance to the cave all I could hear was a whooshing sound and when I looked up there were thousands of bats flying around. The cave guide didn't expect that there'd be so many bats so we couldn't really explore too much further because they would start hitting people in the head if we went through little passages. After that tour, we hiked back to the van and stopped at some Aboriginal cave art. I hadn't seen any in Australia before so I was especially excited about this since I had been learning about it in my indigenous course. The drawings are believed to be 300-400 years old and most of them are of snakes...probably of the highly venomous snakes found in Chillagoe and the outback that we were warned about. George told us some eerie stories about how Aboriginal spirits have haunted him when he has forgotten to ask the Aboriginal elders permission before visiting a sacred site belonging to another Aboriginal group. I'm really interested by Aboriginal customs, beliefs, and culture...so I could go on about it for hours..but I'll stop now..if you ever want to more about anything I have a lot of literature, pictures, and stories about it!
We then went for another small hike to see the balancing rock...I believe they're also called "devil's marbles". It is basically just an enormous rock sitting on top of another...if you saw it you'd think it would topple over, but it seems to be very sturdy! We then went back to the pub for lunch...the lady there even remembered that I don't eat red meat and she made me a special vegetarian sandwich so that was very nice. We had to stop for petrol (fuel) at a place owned by a little old barefoot man that is famous in Chillagoe for his Ford collection. I'm uploading all of my photos as I'm writing this so check them out if you would like to see!...but all of the models are really old so it's a very nice collection. On our way home, we also stopped at an abandoned hotel from 1901 which was really cool because the present owners kept the original decorations in it and they had quite the snake collection...decade-old snakes and a bunch of other critters in jars with some type of preservation liquid. When we got to Mareeba (about an hour from Cairns) we stopped at the golf course because the other students had never seen kangaroos before and there were about 40 of them just lying around there. It had been a while since I had seen wild kangaroos since I mostly just see wallabies around Cairns. We were able to get about 30 feet from them before they started hopping away. We stopped again in Kuranda at a lookout over-looking Cairns, the beaches, and the Coral Sea. Then, I was dropped off at the lodge and made it back in time for dinner!!! ....and that is the outline of my adventure in Chillagoe!

Weekend Plans

I have some weekend/birthday plans now! On Friday night a couple of my friends are going to take me out....it's quite sweet of them because they know that Katie/Dana/I are celebrating together in a couple weekends but they also know that 21 is a big year in the states. Then on Saturday morning I am leaving for Chillagoe until Sunday evening. I don't know much about Chillagoe...just that it is in the outback and has a population of 200 and used to be a mining town. I've done a lot of reef and rainforest things and I fell in love with the outback when I went to Undara so I'd really like to make one more trip out there. We are going to be doing a lot of exploring in the caves and get to see a lot of the pretty outback sights...like the huge balancing rocks. We also get to stargaze which is amazing in the outback because there is no pollution or lights to interfere with view of the stars. Over orientation we learned how to navigate using the southern cross...so maybe I will put my skills to good use. I signed up to go on one of the international student trips and as of now I don't know anyone else who's going..so it'll be an adventure. In my other journal I was just writing about how not knowing anyone really puts you out of your comfort zone which is difficult...but it's those experiences that really are the most beneficial and change you the most....so it's a good thing! I got bored with studying so I wrote in my journal for a couple hours....I wrote a couple things that I kind of like so maybe I'll post them as blog entries if I get hard up for material in the upcoming weeks. I have my first exam tomorrow (in photography) and I'm kind of nervous since it is worth 50% of my grade, but I've studied a lot this week and I think that I'm ready. My actual grades don't even carry over to Saint Mike's...but I have to do well for myself and it'll look good if I want to get into any graduate programs in Australia. Also, today we had the international student farewell meeting. The international student staff just talked to us about how it is difficult to go home and difficult once we get there as well. I had been thinking that it is going to be a little hard to get back into the swing of things because the life style is just so much more laid-back here. They said it's also hard to go back because your friends have moved on for 5 months without you and have shared experiences that you have missed out on....so it's a bit difficult to just suddenly be back in that social network because it's somewhat inevitable that you will feel a little left out. I've changed a lot while I've been over here...so it'll be interesting to see how things fall back into place for me in the states. On the brighter side, they gave us some Aussie souvenirs like a little packet of Vegemite and some yummy chocolate with an echidna on the front! This is really random and probably shouldn't be in this post...but I saw a bunch of wallabies today when I was studying in the rainforest (...literally, there are picnic tables set up in the rainforest that you can study at)...and one came within 6 feet of me and it was pretty awesome. I scared him away when I waved to him though....stupid idea! It was kind of funny though because I scared him and he jumped like 4 feet in the air! :(