Australia!

Well I decided I better write this blog before I forget the little details of our trip to Australia. Our school drama group named REAL (real christian theater) decided to go to Australia this year for our off island tour. We left on May 14 in the afternoon and arrived in Cairns, Australia around midnight.

We stayed at a beautiful hostel. Now I know what your are thinking. How in the world can beautiful and hostel be in the same sentence. However, this hostel really was, they had palm trees and all kinds of other tropical folliage that they had planted around the place. They had a clean medium size pool that even had a little fountain/ waterfall thing that ran into it. The whole set up of the place was very well thought out. Also their personel was very accomidating and helpful. We needed to switch rooms in the middle of our stay and they ended up switching us from one room into two new ones for no extra charge. Also when I had trouble with my scuba plans the girl was right on the ball and got me with another company and had a taxi waiting for me to take me away!

On Friday we had our first school presentation. The school in Cairns is quite small with about 50 kids from grades k-6. However, they also have a very nice and spatious campus. They have a computer for every student! After our performance we headed to the zoo where we had fun feeding kangaroos, watching crocodiles devour meat, and holding Koalas! That night we were graciously feed at the beach by one of the church families and then we went and did one last performance at a nearby town.

Sabbath was actually our busiest day with 3 performance. However, it was great to mingle a bit with the Cairns youth group. We were invited to perform one of our skits on a local radio station, so about 7 of our group when to the station and answered a few questions and did the skit.

Sunday I ended up taking off to do scuba. After my original dive company that I had booked online did not pick me up (they went to the wrong hotel) as I mentioned before the front desk lady ended up getting me with another company. I raced to the dock and got there with only a little bit of time to spare. I ended up doing two dives. The coral was amazing, I touched a turtle and a 4 foot long fish, saw a sting ray, and some huge sea slugs. It was a great experience!

Monday Jaime, Michi (a SDA student) and I ended up heading up to a cultural village where we did a bit of shopping. We met a two older ladies that we helped to find their way up and down from Kuranda ( the cultural village). The funny thing was that when I got to talking to one of them I found out that one of her relatives lived about an hour from where my family do and she had just been up there last summer! That night it was back to the airport where we caught our midnight flight and go back into Saipan at 8:00 the next morning where I ran to class and taught for the day and then went home and crashed :)

It was an incredible trip and I would love to go back again and spend more time exploring! Australia is WONDERFUL!!!!