When I Found Nemo

So as you may know, this weekend I went to Cairns, Australia (pronounced "Cans") and took a boat ride to go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. I can easily say that it was one of the best weekend in my life. I'll give you the low down.

Day 0 (Thursday night):
we arrived at the ariport at 11:00pm for our morning flight at 6am because we couldn't find public transportation to get us to the airport on time the next morning for our flight. We just planned on crashing in the terminal and sleeping there. No big, right? wrong. A half hour after we get there, we get kicked out because they closed the airport... which is a strange concept. The guy told us to walk to Maccas about 10 minutes down the street. So there we are carrying/dragging our luggage through the icy cold air walking along sketchtown almost getting hit by cars trying to find our safe-haven at Micky D's. So we get there about midnight, stay up for a couple hours and then some of us passed out.

Day 1 (Friday):
We wake up at 4am, walk to the airport through the chilling air to make our flight at 6am. We check in, get to the terminal, take our flight, land in Cairns. YAY, we made it! We got picked up by our hostel's shuttle, put our stuff down, changed into our swimmers (as they're called here in Oz), and left for the Esplenade. If you don't knwo what the esplenade is, click here. Its like a large pool they put right next to the lagoon since there aren't really any beaches in Cairns (ironic, right?). We spent the day there laying in the warm sun, catching some rays, getting our tan on, getting sun burned, but I mean it's whatever. Needless to say it was amazing. We ate dinner at a restaurant called The Whoolshed (because we got a free meal there everyday from staying at our hostel), then went back to our hostel to sleep and wake up the next morning for scuba diving!

Day 2 (Saturday):
We wake up at the buttcrack of dawn again and get ready to leave for the marina to board our boat for the day. We get there, check in with this mathematically-challenged guy trying to tell us our total. We had to ask to use the calculator from him, tally it up ourselves, and then tell him how we were paying. It was needlessly confusing. Sowe boarded the boat and were on our way! I'll just say the whole trip in general was amazing. The boat was nice, the people were nice, the weather was perfect, the water was warm, there weren't any sharks, the reef was beautiful, the sun was hot, it was GREAT. :] Scuba diving is easily one of my favorite hobbies (if you can call doing something once a hobby). We went down about 30 feet and just swam around with the fishes, saw ginormous clams, held huge sea slugs, took a bunch of pictures and videos, and just had a great time. Its weird to not be able to talk to people at all though. The only thing you can here the whole time is yourself breathing. Its a pretty unique experience. I highly recommend scuba diving to anyone. Its amazing. I have tons of pictures that I'll upload when I'm on my laptop instead of the school's internet :] And yes, I found Nemo. It may not seem like it just because I don't really know what to say, but scuba diving in the Great Barrier really was amazing!!
After the trip, we went back to the Whoolshed for dinner and then went dancing at a place that doubles as a club and a hostel called "Gilligan's." It was interesting, but we had a lot of fun :]

Day 3 (Sunday):
The next day we woke up and went to the factory outlets just outside of Cairns. I bought a $5 dollar cardigan (look at me and my shopping skills). Then we went back to the Esplenade and spent the rest of the day there, watched the sunset, the usual business. That night we had a movie night. We watched "Easy A" which is a bit inappropriate, but a really great movie I thought. Then we packed our bags and crashed.

Day 4 (Monday morning):
woke up, took a tax to the airport, took our 6am plane back to Sydney. From the airport we went straight to uni to class. Kind of a bummer ending to such a fantasic weekend :]