I've finally returned from my week-long orientation trip, and we've already done so much - I feel like I've been here forever! Monday, we left Cairns, stopping at the Tjapukai Dance Theatre and the SkyRail on our way North to Port Douglas. The Tjapukai Dance Theatre is an aboriginal cultural center, where we saw a video on the history of the aborigines (with the English invading and killing the people), a performance on the creation stories of the aborigines, and a dance performance (in which we all had to get up and sing and dance along). After the shows, we went to different specialty areas. First, we had a didgeridoo clinic - it's so much harder and more complicated than I had expected. I knew you had to use circular breathing (breathe in through your noise as you breathe out through your mouth to make a continuous sound), but in addition to that, you add tonguing and throat noises to make different rhythms and to mimic different animal sounds. Next, we went to a talk on aboriginal food and medicines - to make bread, they grind up poisonous Black Beans, soak them in the river for 4 days to remove the poison, and then make dough and bake it into bread-like food. How did they come up with this recipe? Trial and error. They must've lost a lot of people in the process! Finally, we all got to throw boomerangs and spears and got our faces painted with traditional ochre face paints. After Tjapukai, we went on the SkyRail, a small gondola up a rainforest mountain side that ends in Kuranda, a tiny tourist town in the mountains. The views were spectacular, and they did a great job explaining the different types of forest as you travel up the mountain. After a very busy day, we drove into Port Douglas, "the most up market place we'll go during our trip," according to Tony. Bill Clinton vacations there, for example. It was very nice, but we didn't spend much time actually in the city. The night we arrived, we went for a quick swim at the beautiful beach, ate a huge dinner at our hostel, and all crashed.

The next day, we went to a nearby aboriginal community that offers tours of the forest to tourists. Our guide, Robert, took us through their land, explaining the different plants and their uses as well as parts of the aboriginal culture. After our tour, I got to try my first didgeridoo - so hard! The noise I made just sounded silly, but after a few tries, I can now play for about 5 seconds. It takes a lot of air, and I'm not good at buzzing my lips correctly. I'll have to keep working on it. After our tour, we walked to Mossman Gorge, a beautiful gorge where we ate a picnic lunch and went swimming. We then took a walk through the rainforest, again stopping to identify every plant. I saw my first wild lizard - a Boyd Forest Dragon. They have huge hind legs, and hop on them very awkwardly. We again spent the night in Port Douglas.

Wednesday, we went to the Rainforest Habitat, a wildlife sanctuary in Port Douglas. It was great! We saw tons of birds, some of which I hadn't yet seen. I love the colorful Rainbow Lorikeets, and although we do see them everywhere, I got a really good, close-up look at them. I also got to pet Glen, the koala, and feed the wallabies and kangaroos. There were a few kangaroos with joeys - so cute! That afternoon, we drove to Yungaburra, a small town in the Atherton Tablelands, west of Cairns. We stayed in a very friendly hostel, On The Wallaby, where only a few other travelers were staying, so I actually got to talk to the workers and travelers there (unlike our hostel in Cairns that's very big and full of unfriendly people). It was great talking to them and hearing all about their travels and adventures. It makes me want to go travel the world when I finish school. We'll see. In the evening, we went platypus spotting, and I saw 3 platypuses in the wild! After a delicious Aussie BBQ dinner, I went night canoeing and saw tree kangaroos, pademelons, wallabies, and a bandicoot. The stars were also spectacular!

Thursday and Friday were pretty low-key (finally!). Thursday we had our "drop-off," an exercise that all SIT programs do, where students are individually dropped off in different small towns so they can independently explore and get to know the native culture. I was dropped off in Atherton, the biggest town in the Atherton Tablelands. I walked down the main street, but me being me, I found a small park and sat there most of the day. The people all seemed very busy - set on running off to work and whatnot - so I got too intimidated to try to approach anyone. I still had a very nice day, though. Friday we left Yungaburra to return to Cairns, stopping at the Curtain Fig State Forest for lunch. Friday night we went to Reef Teach, the classroom we're using in Cairns, for a lecture on the Great Barrier Reef by one of the workers there.

Today, we took a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. After getting a little nauseous on the boat ride out, I felt much better once I climbed into my wetsuit and jumped in the water. I'd never been snorkeling before, so it took me a while to get the hang of it, and my mask was fairly leaky (although it was probably my fault). But it was amazing! We snorkeled at three different sites along two reefs, and it just got better and better. By the end, I had seen tons of brightly colored fish of which I can't name all (including some nemos!), some huge parrotfish that I could hear chewing coral under water, sea cucumbers, a sea turtle, and a white tipped shark (don't worry, it was very far away!). All in all, a great first day at the reef. I can't believe I'll be doing that for a week straight on Lizard Island next month! One downfall - we all forgot how much the water reflects the sunlight, so we now all have watching wetsuit sunburns on the backs of our arms and legs. Oops, I guess we'll learn sometime!

Now I'm back at my hostel in Cairns. Tomorrow I get picked up by my homestay family, whom I'll live with for two weeks while studying around their neighborhood and in Cairns. I hope I get a fun family!