britnikress

I've just finished my 2nd of 3 days in Sydney! It's really nice here. The city isn't huge, at least it doesn't seem like it to me. All the things I want to see are really close together which makes finding them and getting around really easy. I got here yesterday at 6 am. The first thing I did was climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Then I went to the aquarium and the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbor. After that, I got a tour of the Sydney Opera House, at dinner on the opera house steps, and saw The Taming of the Shrew in the playhouse. It was excellent. And a super long day! I fell right asleep by the time I got back here at 11:30 from the play. Today I got up at ... read more

So I went on my big trip up north! It was amazinggg. The first day we left Perth city bound for Kalbarri. We took Highway 1 to get there and apparently this highway goes all the way around the continent in a giant circle - 17,000 miles! On my trip there were three other Americans, a Scottish girl, a Japanese girl, and a Korean guy. The tour leader was Australian and he was excellent! He knew so much about everything we saw and was so friendly - it was fabulous. Our first stop was the pinnacles. These are super cool. They are limestone peaks that were formed by seashell being buried deep underground. The seashells turned into limestone and then once all the soil eroded away, the limestone peaks were revealed. The second stop that day ... read more

Now I can write a little bit more about my trip since I am back and well rested! So the first night I got there I just got a quick dinner and went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning I had a day planned for myself, since the rest of the people with the orientation program weren't getting in until the evening. So I went on this historical train ride, called Kurandas, up into the mountains. It was so beautiful. It's rainforest up there and so I got to see so many cool plants and trees. There were waterfalls along the way as well and we went through a bunch of tunnels and learned the history of the railroad. Then when I got to the top there were the markets and such that ... read more

I went to the Great Barrier Reef today!! It was very cool. I went snorkeling and got to see tons of coral and fishies. They were some cool colors too - bright green, orange, brown, blue, etc. The coral was all kinds of weird shapes and so shallow my fins would hit it as I swam over it. The water was really rough so it took a lot of energy to swim around though. It's also fairly far away from the main land. We got up at 6 am, ate breakfast, and got ready to go. We got there at 8 and got on board. Listened to a lot of talking about safety procedures and such and got underway. We didn't get there until 11:20ish. So I got in then and snorkeled around. Then ate lunch ... read more

I'm officially in Cairns! I got here on Wednesday (last) night about 7:30 pm. I got dinner and ice cream and took a shower and went to bed. I got up really early and took the Kurandas train up into the mountains. It's an historically train and it was awesome. I got to see a ton of great landscapes/environments. There were really pretty water falls coming out of the mountains as well that I got pictures of. I walked around the markets/village of Kurandas for awhile and then took the Skyrail back to the bottoom. That was creepy because you're just in that little gondola while you ride all the way to the bottom. After that, I saw an aborigine dance and learned about their culture. I tried throwing a spear and boomerrang as well and ... read more

Time for my daily Sunday post! Classes for the semester are officially over. I don’t think I’ve ever had a semester go this fast in my life. I took my big test on plant identification on Thursday. It went okay. Still have a final I have to take in there as well on November 4. Two more finals November 2 and November 9 and then I am free. I’ve spent all my time since Thursday studying and studying since I’m leaving on Wednesday to go to the Great Barrier Reef and coming back just in time for my first final. It seems like I have so much to do. I’ve made a million study guides and typed up a bunch of stuff so I can take it with me and study while I’m gone (all the ... read more

Another week has begun! I went to the store again today. I bought a frozen pizza because it was onsale. I figure I’ll attempt to make it sometime this weekend when I’m busy studying for finals. I say attempt because the oven thing in the kitchen is really weird. It kind of looks like a portable oven. The one time I tried to turn it on I couldn’t even figure that out and then someone else came along and did it. Haha. It probably won’t be that hard; I really didn’t put that much effort into it the last time and we had just gotten here. So I got that, chips yogurt, and juice. I’m so balanced. Hopefully that’ll be the last trip to the store I have to make while I’m here. But I say ... read more

To continue on with my countdown - 5 weeks left! 18 days left in Perth; 15 days left in Australia (days I’ll be traveling). Time is really breezing by. I can’t believe how fast it’s going, as usual. This part of the year is really difficult though, with all the assignments. Today I turned in a major paper for one of my courses. It doesn’t have a final, so after class tomorrow it’s done for good. I also did my big presentation with my 2 Australian group members. It went fairly well, we were all kind of nervous so it was a bit choppy, but we got through it. My big plant collection project was supposed to be due today, but he pushed it back to Thursday (which I needed the extra time - so I ... read more

Happy October! Only 40 days left in Australia for me. And only 25 of those days will be sent here in Perth. It's kind of exciting, but also very sad at the same time. Today I was reviewing random things like Australian terms for things. Like Jello is Jelly here and Jelly is Jam. Other things like that, I'm sure I've written about it before. So, classes flew by this week. The weekend was fairly boring. Stayed in the entire time and watched movies/did work and went to bed fairly early. But, I've at least gotten some things done. I'm pretty sure my evil floral study is finished. And by finished I mean I picked all the plants I'm going to pick and wrote some stuff for the 1 pg paper that goes with it. I ... read more

Well, the last full week of September has passed and I finally have some new things to write about. I've been going on walks through King's Park (which is huge, like 1,000 acres) and taking pictures of plants - some are really cool, others are just pretty. So I'll put those up. Finally gotten back into school a bit. They back load their classes a lot here, which I've discovered from experience and talking with the other girls here at St. Cats. This means that there's tons of work this half of the semester that wasn't here last half, and there was no way to do any of it beforehand, so it's not my fault that I have tons of work to do (meaning it's not from procrastination or lack of work on my part.. at ... read more