Day 5 (AustraLearn Orientation) - Cairns, Queensland Australia Today was my first time scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef! It was AMAZING! Or Ausome! Passions of Paradise took us out on a huge boat with two pontoons that sat in the water. There was a nice air-conditioned deck to with seats, tables, and a bar. That's where we had all of our meetings and debriefings. Outside on the deck there were plenty of places to sit and two canvas covers over two holes in...

Day 4 (AustraLearn Orientation) - Cairns, Queensland Australia Today was our Community Day, which consisted of our entire big group going back up the mountain that we visited for Rainforestaion and the Jungle tour. There is a nursery/rehabilitation project be done to increase the number of Southern Cassowary birds from their endangered 1,500 number. In doing so we volunteered by planting trees that grew the fruit that the birds like to eat. We also helped out in...

Day 3 (AustraLearn Orientation) - Cairns, Queensland Australia Last night was a little rough. The air conditioning in my room stopped working, so it was bloody hot and humid in the room making it difficult to sleep. I only got like 6 hours of sleep. Staying hydrated and putting on suncream is pushed. Apparently there's a hole in the ozone layer right over Australia, so heat exhaustion is the number one killer. Today was the optional adventure day. AustraLearn...

Day 2 (AustraLearn Orientation) - Cairns, Queensland Australia Today was packed full of activities. From what I can tell AustraLearn has broken up all the students studying in Australia into three big groups - one that came a few days before us, my group, and one that arrives tomorrow. In our big group we were broken up into two groups with different daily itineraries. My group, the green group, went to Rainforestation today. We watched Aborigines show us how to...

Day 1 (AustraLearn Orientation) - Cairns, Queensland Australia Exhausted is an understatement of what I feel like right now. I guess the day started on Thursday at 8AM when I got up and took off to Spokane Airport. From Spokane I flew to Seattle, then to LAX, sat in LAX for about five hours, then took the 14hr flight to Brisbane (pronounced Bris-bin), and then ran to my next flight to Cairns (pronounced Cans). It's now Saturday evening. The big 14hr flight was b...