Well, we're now in Byron Bay after surfing our way up the east coast of Australia for the past 5 days. Only one word can describe our journey with "Surfaris:" INCREDIBLE!!!! Learning to surf was wondeful, the national parks we camped in were beautiful, the wildlife we saw was amazing, and our instructors/guides were an absolute joy to be associated with. I don't even know where to being with the updates for this past week, so I might have to leave this until tomorrow. I'm exhausted after getting up at 5am for the past two days to catch the sunrise and the best early morning waves. Yes, you heard me right. Jess, the anti-morning girl of all time voluntarily woke up at 5am to do physical activity. That's the kind of hardcore surfer that Surfaris makes ... read more

Warning: Boring update. Mostly only of interest to our parents and Laurel. Feel free to skip. I don't have much to update with today. We got up and headed straight to Bondi Beach, which is the same beach we went to on Thursday. It was INSANELY hot!!! And insanely busy. The occasions where I have witnessed so many people together in one place have been few and far between. All I can say is I'm glad I'm not a Bondi Beach lifeguard. There's quite the history to the Bondi Beach Lifesavers, actually. I think they might have been the first lifeguarding club in the world or something. It's a constant struggle for them to keep the swimmers and the surfers separated, happy, and safe but they do a pretty good job. You're supposed to stay between ... read more

Wow, it's finally started! We just spent our first glorious day in Sydney, and boy was it jam packed with adventures already. I'll try to touch on a few of them but I'm on a shared computer in high demand and I don't have my contacts in, so I'm not sure how far I'll get. Our ferry/bus/flights here were fairly uneventful. Passing through US customs was TERRIBLE. I felt like I was being processed for a POW camp. You just pass from one huge station to another without really knowing what you're doing at any time, and all the staff look down upon you like you're a second class citizen. Yuck. Derek was given an intense screening, which was pretty funny (for Mark and I, at least). The customs guy pretty much went over every inch ... read more

Well, it looks like I'll be using this travel blog. I had tried a different site initially, but I hadn't realized that it was going to make everyone create an account with their site to do anything with it. This one looks good. I'm almost finished taking all my drugs. I've had a total of 5 needle pokes, some of which had combined vaccines, over the past month or so. The past 2 weeks have been particularly fun. I got my last Japanese Encephalitis shot on Wed. Sept. 6th (which apparantly has potentially drastic side-effects, though I seemed fine) then the next day I went to the doctor regarding my infected and incredibly huge, swollen middle finger. I was promptly placed on antibiotics for the next week, which made me feel sick everytime I took a ... read more