swimming on an Easter birthday

It appears that over half of April has flashed right by and I haven’t made an entry in a few weeks. I would have put something up sooner, but my school gives an internet quota each month and I guess I’ve been online a lot without knowing it. So I can either buy more or wait until May 1st when I get recharged. Out of principle but mostly cheapness, I was going to wait, but no one is willing to let me use their internet so I was forced to buy some.

This month has been something though. I finally finished my first major assignment of the semester yesterday (a riveting paper about the rabbit in Australia) and I celebrated my 21st birthday! It was a good time. I had a party night to bring in my birthday and free drinks galore to complement it. Don’t worry though, I didn’t even try make it to 21 drinks. My actual birthday was fairly relaxing. Unfortunately, I had to attend class, but afterward I went out to dinner with my two friends. Still I think I might have to celebrate my Australian date (august 4th) birthday, when I get back to the states just for kicks.

On my birthday weekend, which also happened to be Easter weekend, I went sailing on a maxi boat. Me and 28 other people went cruising around Whitsundays for 3 days and it was…not as good as it could have been. Call me spoiled, but there was only a half a day of sunshine during our entire trip. Typically, the views around the islands are gorgeous and many of them are featured in calendars and on postcards. However, majority of our trip was spent either under the rain cover or in raincoats.

Still, the one day that we did have sunshine, I got slightly sunburned, seasick, and some of those postcard worthy pictures. We went to a place called Whitehaven beach where the sand is just about as white as paper and the water is as blue as the sky. The water surrounding the ocean was chalk full of wild life too. I saw a half a dozen sting rays swimming almost directly past my feet and when I got back on the boat we spotted a massive sea turtle, who looked as ancient as the sea itself!

I also took the opportunity to go snorkeling each day that we were out on the boat. The first day we went out was during low tide. I ended up going too close to the coast and practically started hyperventilating because I thought I was going to crash into a huge mound of coral. I did end up smashing into some other part of the reef, only to find out later, that what I “destroyed” was actually all ready dead coral. I swam back to where most of the group was swimming and swallowed a huge gulp of seawater because I thought one of the people snorkeling was an eel!

My freak out snorkeling experience aside, I saw some amazing stuff. I caught some spectacular “aerial” views of angelfish, schools of a zebra looking fish, fish that looked flatter than pancakes, fish bigger than my face, and rainbow fish (that the best I can do with description). I also spotted a giant clam the last day we went snorkeling. I only wish I had purchased an underwater camera, but I’m going to save that for the full blown Great Barrier Reef.

The crew on the boat was also a good time. One of the deck hands made fun of all the safety precautions she had to go through and the captain made funnies wherever he could about things that we could and couldn’t do on their boat. The skipper showed us a few games that tested out sea legs and our personal boundaries with strangers all for the sake of fun. So all in all, despite the mostly dreary weather, I had a blast sailing and I can’t wait to go again.

When I wrote the majority of this entry I was at a hostel in Melbourne, where I will be spending a four days and nights exploring the 2nd largest city in Australia. Then I flew off to Australia’s smallest state of Tasmania. Awesome aye? Lastly I'd like to give my cousin Katie a shout on her birthday. Happy Birthday cousin!