Alright well this is my first ever journal entry about anything so I can't guarantee it's going to flow well or even sound good.

So let's see here...its Friday the 25th of July and I got to Australia on the 15th so I have some caching up to do. I'll start with leaving home. Packing was very bittersweet because it was a constant reminder of how I was going to be leaving home for such a long time. Nikki and my mom helped me pack, which was nice but i kept getting really sad when I looked at Nikki because I could see the pained look in her eyes and it made my heart just drop. I thought it was gonna be hard to remember these feelings but thinking about it right now makes me feel them like they just happened. So anyway we finished packing and then Nikki and I made a photo album with a bunch of pictures of us so we would have some mementos. Wow I really miss her.

Ok well let's move on to the plane ride over here. What a nightmare! So I flew from Columbus to Dallas and then had to rush to catch another plane to LAX. Then I was supposed to have a 7 hour layover in LA (which sucks to begin with) but then our flight was delayed and I ended up having to sit in the airport for like 12 hours! Then we finally got on the plane and I was seated next to these two little girls and their mom. They were sleeping almost the entire flight and one of girls kept laying on me and kicking me. It was actually really cute. Their mom kept apologizing but i told her not to worry about it because I didnt really care. So long story short we missed out flight to cairns and had to take a roundabout way through brisbane and it just extended the travelling and was really annoying. So now on to some fun stuff; I'll quit complaining about the flight.

So we got to Cairns late at night and had to be up early in the morning to go snorkeling/scuba diving at the great barrier reef. We were staying at a really cool place called Gilligan's backpackers, which is apparently the biggest hostel in the southern hemisphere! It was a really cool place..plenty of bars and restaurants right near it. So anyway I stayed in an 8 person room with Dan, Richard, Chris, Theo, Brian, Logan, and Peter? We had a long debate over what Peters name was cuz hes really quiet and nobody knew his name. Anyway, I get along pretty well with Richard, Brian, and Dan. Logan is pretty fake but the dude's got game I wont lie. So we got up early in the morning and met down in the foyer to go to the Catamaran. Russell, one of the Australearn coordinators, was our guide to the boat. What a crazy guy, he came here like two years ago to study for a semester and he ended up just staying to finish his studies and live in Australia. I'm sure that happens to alot of people. It was a pretty cloudy day so when we got to the boat everyone was wondering if we were gonna be able to see anything in the reef. It ended up being awesome. So I decided to scuba dive and it was worth it. What a cool experience. The most notable creature we saw was a sea turtle. It was just chillin in the reef and I tried to get it to swim out but it wouldnt. After the scuba dive, which lasted for like 30 minutes, we got to snorkel around by ourselves. I didnt see anything really crazy while snorkeling but Brian said he saw a shark! Lucky b****** lol. It would be scary to see one but it would also be really awesome. So after the snorkelling we had lunch and then went out to another little reef area to snorkel some more. This reef was much cooler. It was like an island in the middle of the ocean. If you swam out to the end of it it just dropped off into the open ocean. Just like in Finding Nemo. I saw some big ass fish toward the outskirts of the reef and a bunch of crazy lookin fish who were all sorts of colors. Such amazing wildlife lives out here. Im pissed i didnt get to see any rays or sharks tho! So the boatride back was hellacious. It was really windy and rainy and over half the people on the boat got seasick including me. I almosts yaked but I didnt so thank god for that one. Prolly shouldnt have had all four of those beers before the trip home...didnt really help.

Ok well im gonna leave it at that for today. I got alot of catching up to do I know...how much detail are you supposed to go in with these things anyway?