In Which I Experience Small-Town Australia, The Great Barrier Reef, an Australian Home, and Spicy Food

We stayed in an adorable hostel in Yungaburra called On the Wallaby. It was cute and small and run by hippies and fantastic.

Yungaburra is a tiny adorable town in the middle of nowhere. We went swimming (a common theme when it is ridiculously hot!) and on the way back made friends with a random neighborhood dog that followed us home. He was super sweet. We named him Bartleby.

This hostel fed us and then took us on a midnight canoe trip in a local lake to see wildlife. We all piled into a giant bus (the twelve of us and two other guys) and drove to the lake. Everything was fine until the leader guy started driving on the wrong side of the road, going way too fast and swerving back and forth. Everyone else was screaming with joy and I had a full on panic attack and flashback to my car accident. No fun. He was very nice about it and gave me a hug when we stopped and drove back much more safely.

The canoeing was fun. They had the rule that “ladies go in front” which pissed me off and actually I had to switch with my partner at one point because I needed to be able to steer. I hadn’t canoed since the Boundary Waters last summer and it felt really good to practice steering strokes again. After we switched the night was fantastic.

We saw beautiful stars, the Milky Way was incredibly bright, and I learned a little bit about astronomy from Cameron, one of the guys in my group. We saw tiny wallabies and a water dragon and the guide found a potentially lethal snake on the shore and we each got pictures holding it (he held the head, we just held the tail) which will be on facebook whenever Erika updates it.

Yesterday we drove around the Atherton Tablelands. Not so tabley, actually

And we each got dropped off randomly in a small town with the assignment to find out what we could about the history and environmental concerns in the area. My town was an adorable little place called Malanda. It has the oldest continually operating movie theatre in Australia (which listed Zombieland as “coming soon”):

some fairly interesting shops:

the oldest wooden structure in Australia (or so I've heard)

and a historical Dairy Centre complete with museum (with creepy creepy mannequins and delicious milkshakes).

We had four hours and with two left and nothing better to do I headed off to the visitor’s center. The white Australians working there just sort of pointed me towards the exhibits and left me to it but the Aboriginal coordinator was really excited that I was there and told me anything and everything I wanted to know. As we were talking he mentioned that he happened to know where there were some tree kangaroos and did I want to see them? YES. So he took me out back to the little strip of rainforest behind the center and showed me the exact tree where there were two tree kangaroos (mother and oldish baby) hanging out. They are kind of hard to see, they were very high up and well hidden, but you can sort of see the black face and gingerish body in this picture:

He also took me to where there were green ring-tailed possums much closer to the ground and easier to see:

And we found a goanna (big native lizard) but it was too quick for me to get a picture. Amazing.

That night we relaxed a little. They served us dinner at the hostel, which was lovely spaghetti. With it the owner (Kate) had some chili that she proudly hyped as home grown and said we should try. In keeping with my “Trying New Things” philosophy, I decided I should attempt spicy. I took a tiny little bit on my fork and ate it with some spaghetti.

She did not warn us that it was one of the hottest chilies on the planet. It burned my tongue and when I tried to swallow it it burned my throat and I started choking a little bit and barely swallowed it. I had to run to the fridge and gulp down the rest of the milk and two rice cakes. My eyes were streaming and my face and mouth were burning and if I were a cartoon character there would have been steam coming out of my ears. In short, I almost died. My nose and throat didn’t stop burning for at least a couple of hours and my nose didn't stop running all night. But! I survived! I survived one of the hottest chilies on earth, and that is a pretty huge accomplishment for my poor poor Minnesotan taste buds. Maybe I killed enough of them to be able to handle some more mild spices.

The last day we did some more bird watching, swam in a huge crater lake formed by a volcano, and headed back to Cairns. Then we went to a presentation on the Great Barrier Reef which was really well done.

Saturday we woke up ridiculously early and got on a boat (I never thought I'd be on a boat! Haha sorry that was stuck in my head the entire time. I may or may not have had my arms spread wide on the starboard bow at one point or another. Also they play that song at clubs here! It makes me happy every time) to head out to the Great Barrier Reef! It was the most exciting thing ever. We played Hearts on the boat (I kicked ass!) and every few minutes one of us would start grinning and jumping up and down. We finally got there and went through all the safety talks and got all our gear (let me tell you, snorkel equipment is both comfortable and fashionable) and jumped off the back of the boat. I was treading water for a minute, just excited to be in the ocean and my teacher turned to me and said "Look down!"

I put my face in the water and oh my god it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen! I've taken Marine Bio and TAed for it and watched the Shallow Seas episode of Planet Earth like seventy times but I was absolutely unprepared for how beautiful and other worldly the reef is! My mask kept leaking a little because I couldn't stop smiling and smile lines make a hole between your skin and the plastic.

We snorkeled at three separate reefs and it did not get old. I saw corals in every shape, and color, parrot fish (who are beautifully colored and will let you get right up to them! You can also hear them in the water because they chew up the coral and the crunching carries. Did you know that 40% of beach sand is parrot fish poo?), sea urchins, half-hidden stingrays in the sand, giant clams (one about half as big as I am!), sea anemones with nemo fish in them, a jellyfish (good thing I was wearing my stinger suit!), what may or may not have been a stonefish, butterfly fish, and a maori wrasse! I could go on and on. It was phenomenal! I really honestly can't describe it.

I bought an old school waterproof camera (it actually has film! How crazy is that? But it was cheap and is reusable, so that's good) but without the little screen and the ability to see the pictures right after I've taken them (how far we've come) I have no idea if any of the pictures will turn out until I get them developed. I cannot wait until I get to spend 10 days snorkeling basically all day on Lizard Island. Ah-may-zing!

Yesterday I was brought to my homestay family. They're really nice and I like them a lot. There's just three: Helen, the mum, Hunter, the 16 year old, and MacLean (as in Die Hard!) the 12 year old. I was terrified to hang out with teenage/preteen boys for two weeks but so far they have been lovely and also extremely entertaining. It's fun to watch sibling fights when you are not involved in them, and they are fairly nerdy which is good. We swam in their pool and I made a complete fool of myself playing Halo and all four of us played Guitar Hero together. They've said they'll teach me Cricket which I am excited for, but say they hate Australian Rules Football (they called it "GayFL", charming) so I will have to learn that from someone else.

Hunter is funny. We had a somewhat philosophical conversation tonight which is interesting with a 16 year old. He says "win" or "fail" a lot, which makes me happy and I showed him the Cracked articles that people have been sending me about how much I'm going to die in Australia. He got a huge kick out of them, but sadly he says he has never seen a giant blue earthworm and has no idea where they would be. I'll try to ask Jack tomorrow. Hunter is reading the Hitchhiker's Guide series and MacLean is reading The Hobbit. I feel I have been put in the correct home.

Favorite Host Family Quote So Far:

Helen: Do you want to shut the curtains so the whole world can't see you?

Hunter: I don't mind, I'm awesome.

Win. The only bad things about homestay so far: 1) it is ridiculously awkward to be in someone else's home when they're not there, no matter how nice they are. I will probably get used to this eventually, but it's weird. 2) I must have spilled something sweet on my backpack at some point, because I came upstairs to my new room after a few hours and found my bed crawling with tiny ants, all swarming through the air conditioner onto my backpack. Helen sprayed the room and we emptied out the backpack and sprayed it and left it outside. They disappeared from the room very quickly, but earlier today were still on the backpack outside so I washed it in hot soapy water and hopefully by tomorrow it will be dry and ant-free so I can take it to lecture. Gross. 3) I brought generic Minnesota gifts for my family, but I have nothing appropriate for teenage boys! I have two weeks to get them something, I figure I'll just give them the gifts as a going away/thank you present at the end. Please help: What do boys like?!?!

Sorry this was ridiculously long. I miss you all but I kind of love it here which is really really good. I cannot believe how many amazing things I have seen just in the past two and a half weeks. I’m feeling a lot better about the next three and a half months now, but I’m sure the terror and homesickness will be back at some point. Also I have been 21 for over a month now, in Australia for nearly 3. Crazy. Anyway, I hope you are all having a lovely February so far. I miss you! Now I am going to sleep in my very own room alone for the second time in 3 weeks. Goodnight!