Happy Easter

Well I believe this is my first Easter not spent with family, although I will be seeing Andy very early tomorrow morning and in Australia, the day after Easter Sunday is called Easter Monday and it’s a public holiday, so close enough. Good Friday is also a public holiday, but here there are no classes at uni, unlike in the US. So even though Easter Sunday is without family, at least Easter Monday will be, even though we’ll be traveling most of the day.

So, this coming week is my Spring Break, called Easter Break here, since it falls right after Easter. As I mentioned, Andy will be here early tomorrow morning and we are heading north to Cairns in the afternoon. It will be my second tour of tropical Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef and this time should be just as fun. We’re planning on doing some scuba diving for sure and then hopefully visit some surrounding areas like Port Douglas and Kuranda. On the way to Kuranda we will ride the Skyrail, which is basically a huge ski lift that takes you above trees giving you spectacular views of the area. That should be fun, since it’s something I didn’t get to do last time. Other than that we are just going to go with the flow and see what comes up.

I haven’t really been doing anything too extremely exciting lately. I’ve been trying to save money for this trip, with minimal success. I saw the movie 300 in IMAX this Friday and that was really cool, although I will admit, it was just too big. Everyone else I was with seemed to really enjoy it and not have a problem with it and while I enjoyed it, I think I would have enjoyed it more at a regular theatre where I could see exactly what was going on the entire time. I will probably reserve the IMAX for documentaries and things like that from here on out and not action packed movies.

Last weekend, I attended a party that was truly THE party of all international parties. I met and chatted with people from Norway, Taiwan, France, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Denmark, Germany and just a couple from the US and Canada. And that’s just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. But that was really cool and just so amazing to see that many people from so many different ends of the earth all together in this one small house in Australia. Unbelievable!

Also last week, I had my first field trip for my Marine Environment class. We rode around on a boat in Port Hacking and collected sediment samples from the sea bed below. I know it doesn’t sound very interesting, but it is pretty neat to see all the different materials on the seabed and how they change very drastically from place to place. We had to figure out why the sediment in one place was different from another. Plus, riding around on a boat for three hours on a Saturday morning….well I’ll just say that I can think of much worse ways of spending my Saturday.

I also want to let everyone know that The Burninators fencing team began their string of competitions and after the first day of bouts, we are 1-1. Personally, I did ok, I guess. My first bout went to a draw at 3-3 and the second one I did much better albeit against a weaker opponent, winning 5-1. But fencing itself is actually pretty good stuff. I was a little skeptical of it at first, but it’s just so technical that it takes some time to get used to and will only become more comfortable with time and practice. The big end of training competition is only a couple weeks away on April 26. Go Burninators!

It’s hard to believe that six weeks of uni has already passed. I’m just about half-way done with uni, since there are 14 weeks in the session. Week seven will fly by too, because Andy will be in town still and we’ll be trying to soak up as much of the Sydney life as possible before he has to head back to the cold, cold, cold winds of Chicago!

It’s beginning to get much cooler in Sydney as we transition from summer to autumn and eventually winter, but it’s not too bad yet and never will be as cold as it gets in the US. So my days at the beach are dwindling, but that may be a good thing because it will give me time to actually do some studying since I have some assignments coming up and final exams not too far off either.

But I’m not worrying about exams or school for the next week, because I’m gonna be livin it up in the tropics with my big bro!