So, it’s been a while since my last post. But, before a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t done that much. Mostly I just did school work, went to school, and hung out. Not all that different from back home, so I didn’t feel the need to write about it. Then came Easter break, and then I got really busy for a couple weeks.

On April 20^th, my Dad and Christine landed in Sydney, and then traveled up to Brisbane on the 23^rd. That night, we went to a Queensland Reds rugby game. The Reds won, beating their rivals the New South Wales Waratahs. The next morning was Easter, so we woke up and went to mass at St. Stephens in Brisbane. That afternoon we walked around South Bank, an area of Brisbane that has a lot of shops, and on the weekend, a market type thing. On Monday, we toured around the UQ campus, and took the CityCat ferry around the city. We ended up having dinner at the Bavarian Biergarten, and then I was left at King’s to get ready for my trip to the reef.

Monday night at 11 I got on a bus with a group of people from my Marine Science class to head about 7 hours north to Heron Island. The ride was kind of miserable, as I couldn’t sleep that well. We arrived at the ferry dock at 7 a.m., and then had to wait 4 hours for our ferry. The ferry ride out to the island was pretty rough, most people felt nauseous at one point, and I’d guess almost half of the passengers got sick. Needless to say, when we arrived at the island everyone was pretty happy. The island is really small, only 800 meters long and 300 meters wide, and the only things on the island are the research station we were at and a resort. We were there from Tuesday until Saturday. While there we had to perform a pretty basic research assignment, and create a 5 minute presentation about it. Other than that, we had pretty much free time. The food was amazing, and the weather was pretty good. It was windy the entire time we were there, so we didn’t get to take a boat out to deeper waters to snorkel, but we still got to snorkel around the shallow waters a lot. We saw sea turtles, sharks, rays, all kinds of fish, cone snails, coral, and all kinds of other stuff. At night we went out to the beach, and because there was nothing out there we could see a lot of stars. Maybe the most I’ve ever been able to see at once. It was crazy. Once Saturday came around, we got back on the ferry to head back to the mainland. The ride back was much calmer, with nobody getting sick. After another not awesome 7 hour bus ride, we got back to Brisbane around midnight.

Also on Saturday, Amy, Lenaya, and my Aunt Eleanor arrived in Brisbane. So on Sunday, I woke up and went into the city to meet up with them and my Dad and Christine. We went into the Queen Street mall for breakfast, and then walked over to Riverside to get the CityCat back to King’s. I showed them around King’s and UQ, and then we went back to the hotel. We didn’t do too much the rest of that day, just hung out and chatted. On Monday, my Dad and Christine flew back home, and Amy, Lenaya, Aunt Eleanor, and I, went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I had been before, but they hadn’t, and it was fun to see all of the animals again. I had to write a paper Monday night, and they went to bed early because they had to get up early on Tuesday. I had regular school on Tuesday, but met back up with Amy and Lenaya for dinner. We went to JoJo’s on Queen Street, which was really good. After dinner I said bye to them, as they left to go to the Whitsunday’s for a few days before Sydney. This past week I was back into regular school mode. This week I’m going to be busy doing work, and this weekend I’m going to an AFL game. Then I only have 3 weeks of class left. It’s crazy how fast the semester has gone by, and how much I still have to do before going home. I have Sydney, Melbourne, Ayer’s Rock, and the Whitsunday’s to visit before heading home. I’ll try to post about all of them as soon as I’m back, but I’m going to be busy so I can’t make any promises!