I'M GOING TO AUSTRALIA MATES!

Hey wassup hello – it’s me again with a final update of my Australian adventure. I want to say thank you to all my fans still reading my cheesy blogs; I love you people. Once we got the room keys to our hotel – yup, that’s right we moved on to bigger and better places ladies and gents, no more hostels !! – we were all shocked. Almost everyone posted a video of their hotel room to Snapchat all simultaneously. There were two queen sized beds for the two of us, we had our own kitchen, and I could actually sit in the shower to shave my legs. AND we had a balcony with an oceanfront view. You already know I slept like Patrick Star in my bed our first night. We were livin it up like VIPs. The area around our hotel kind of reminded me of Cairns – there were a lot of restaurants, shops, and bars within a few blocks of us. Once we landed in the Gold Coast, we changed into our “swimmers” and went straight to the Southern Cross Uni where we learned all about Australia’s surf culture from Dr. ...

Australian Aborigines Our final days in Cairns have been so much fun – we’ve had a few lectures but we’ve gotten a lot of opportunities to explore the shops and restaurants around our hostel and meet some of the locals (and the Aboriginals who are kind of scary). Our hostel is a few blocks away from the Esplanade which overlooks the ocean with a view of the mountains in the background. A lot of people run along the boardwalk or participate in fitness classes on the Esplanade which makes working out a lot easier when you have a view that motivates you to keep pushing through – especially if you’re out there when the sun sets. The Cairns local government funds the Active Living Program which provides free fitness classes for all community members and visitors. We were “highly encouraged” by our professors to try a cross fit kind of class that involved a series of timed circuits that provided participants with a full body workout. I didn’t realize how out of shape I was until I was d...

As soon as we got off the airplane in Cairns, it felt like a completely different world than Sydney. The weather in Sydney compared to the weather in Cairns is like comparing New York to South Carolina in the winter – y’all do know it’s winter in Australia right? We went from wearing pants almost everyday in Sydney to being hot in shorts in Cairns. (I packed all the wrong clothes…but is anyone surprised?) While we are in Cairns, we’re staying in hostels with 6 girls to a room – it’s the Hunger Games for a shower. But besides that, the coziness has really forced us to get to know each other and I’ve already created so many friendships that I know I’ll bring back with me to school. My favorite part of Cairns so far (FYI it’s pronounced ‘cans’ like a soda can) has definitely been the Great Barrier Reef. The boat ride from our hostel to the Reef was about 2 hours but after a chilly week in Sydney, it felt amazing to lay out on the deck of the boat and relax in the sun. We w...