I'm Home!

Well, not really. I was home for about a week, running around seeing people and packing again. And now I'm in San Diego for the summer. Currently living on a couch (this sounds familiar) because the apartment I'm taking doesn't open up for another few weeks. No worries, I think it was Calvin's dad (of Calvin and Hobbes) who said it best... "it builds character."

When in Melbourne... Say Melbin'

I've spent the past few days in Melbourne, the last stop on my tour of Australia, and really the last stop before I head back to the states. I have a day in Auckland to close out my empty bank account and try to jam all of the things that I've managed to accumulate during my travels (aka...the reason my bank account is empty) into precious little space.

Melbourne's a pretty fun city. The central business district is contained in a rectangle that, while rather large, is crisscrossed on almost every street by trams that run pretty frequently. Until, of course, you're trying to get home from a bar and realize that at that time of night, they only run once an hour. And you just missed the last one...oops.

There's lots of "stuff" going on in Melbourne. In addition to the standard museums and the like that you might expect to find in a city of this size, there's plenty else to amuse. This past weekend was the beginning of a jazz festival, so there were several places around the city where big bands played live music for everybody to enjoy. I'm not really a huge jazz afficionado (more of a jazz... un-afficionado) but it was pretty cool to just hang out with a book and enjoy the effort that everybody was putting in to create a nice atmosphere.

There was also a big photography convention, with all the major players in the photography industry showcasing photography things... But entrance wasn't cheap so I didn't actually go inside. But that was ok because outside of the convention hall, they had set up a big exhibition of some of the best photographs from the year for the rest of us (cheap, backpacking, hostel-staying) public to view and enjoy.

And then I went to an AFL game... The AFL is the Australian Football League, but it might as well be the "kick the stuffing out of the other guy" League. When people say that rugby is a violent sport, they clearly haven't been exposed to AFL. There are basically 3 rules in AFL... and I don't remember what they are, because I'm pretty sure that nobody followed them. I guess it's sort of like soccer, in that you try to put a ball through some posts. But when the ball goes down, it's like a 3rd grade soccer game, with 15 people scrambling around the ball, which bounces in all the unexpected directions (as oblong-shaped objects are generally wont to do) until it skitters out to some lucky guy standing around the outside. Then there's a lot of hitting, some slapping, probably some name calling (I was too far away to hear) and some more testosterone-fueled actions designed to prove superiority and machismo. In all reality, it was a bunch of fun to watch and if I had any clue about who was playing, I probably would gone crazy like the rest of the fans.

Everybody I know who has spent any major period of time in Melbin' really likes it. I know there's supposed to be great shopping here (despite my amazing boy scout skills, I DID manage to get utterly lost in a mall complex), I just missed the comedy festival, and they have lots of cool sports events. They recently had the world swimming championships here and the commonwealth games... so eat your heart out, sports fans. I just didn't have enough time to explore everything, but I guess you never do. So before long, I'll be home, eating lots of peanut butter (without getting wierd looks), my mom's home cooking, and heading back into summer! See you soon!

Swimming with the sharks...really!

My trip up the east coast of Australia ended in Cairns, where after a few days of lounging about in the resort pool, I bade farewell to the group that I had traveled with for two weeks. It's amazing how much fun you can have on a bus with people that you've only just met. Some highlights include... sneaking up on people while they're sleeping and taking pictures with us in the background... using the vibrate function on Rowan's phone to make people think that we were shaving their heads (and getting their reaction on video camera) ... quoting "Anchorman" and "Borat" for hours on end (it's boring, but it's my life). These are a few pictures of the resort pool:

My next two days were spent at the ProDive training center, where I learned all about how to be as fishlike as possible. Mornings were classroom time with lots of theory of diving and sciency stuff like that, but we got to get in the pool during the afternoon and practice skills. That was amusing, but the real fun started on the 3rd day, when the van picked me up at 6AM (yes, 6AM) to take us to the boat, which was to bring us out to the reef.

ProDive has almost exclusive rights to three areas of the reef, so their dive sites are much less trafficked than many of the other sites around the area. The weather was sunny, the seas were calm, the visibility was amazing. On one dive, you could literally see over 70 feet underwater (that's a long ways!). I saw all kinds of cool stuff, sea turtles as big as a dining room table, reef sharks (not the dangerous kind..."only" 4-6 feet long), true clownfish (more commonly known to the general public as "Nemo," and all sorts of other varieties of fish that would blow your mind.

Diving on the reef is great - you feel like you could be a bird, flying over some forest on another planet. You can control how you move vertically within the water just by controlling your breathing. And you can also follow animals around in a manner that just isn't available to snorkellers.

We also did a few night dives...kinda scary. Nighttime is when all the freaks and geeks of the reef come out. Sharks are more active, fish change color, lobsters come out of hiding, and the beady eyes of cleaner shrimp reflect your flashlight beam. There's something creepy about shining your flashlight on what looks like plain coral, and seeing hundreds of pairs of eyes staring back at you. My first night dive was with my open water class group, so the 8 of us went with an instructor. Between the great visibility in the water and the 9 flashlights, there was plenty of ambient light in the water, so it didn't really seem that dark. I think we scared everything away too... the only thing we saw was a big lobster.

But the next night, I hopped onto another boat (to stay an extra day - my boat was going back to Cairns), and so just went with two other people, one british guy and a crazy dutchman. The crazy dutchman REALLY wanted to see sharks, so he was the first one in the water. We slowly followed and made our way down to the anchor blocks and followed him off into the night. 3 flashlights in the water is a LOT fewer than 9, and all the wildlife that we had scared away the night before decided that it was time to come out and play. We saw 3 sharks that night, several turtles (one HUGE one that apparently is around 130 years old, and is named "Brian"), a pufferfish the size of a football, and got well lost and disoriented. But somehow the crazy dutchman pulled some wierd manouveres and got us out of the reef maze and back into the open water, landing us right back underneath the boat.

13 dives over 4 days found me back on land with an earache, and the constant feeling that I was about to fall over. Apparently, once you've been on a boat for a few days, trying to walk on land becomes very challenging... the feeling is especially intense in the shower. Hopefully the plane ride in a few hours will go smoothly! :0) My trip is starting to wind down... just a few days left in Sydney and Melbourne before I take off back to the States... just in time for summer!

That's amAZing

I've come to realize that people misuse the word "amazing." As in, "Those shoes are amazing!" or "This piece of lettuce is amazing!"

Amazing is being rocked to sleep on the deck of a boat underneath a full sky of stars, after a day of visiting Whitehaven beach, commonly ranked as one of the top 5 beaches in the world and snorkeling in water warmer than what you find in your bath tub.

Amazing is seeing a spider as big as your hand

Amazing is spending a few nights on the largest sand island in the world

Amazing is the power of the 1-inch long Irukandji jellyfish, strong enough to kill you and nearly invisible. That's why we wear full body stinger suits when we go swimming... respect the ocean.

So now I'm hanging out at a resort in Cairns, getting ready to do a dive course out on the great barrier reef. It's wierd to think that I'm coming home in just a few weeks. Of course I can't wait to eat home-made food and go to a real supermarket and not nearly get run over every time I cross the road (they drive on the wrong side around here), but I have seen so many TRULY amazing things that it'll be sad to say goodbye.