Well, I'm back from my trip to the Whitsunday Islands. It was fabulous, tiring, and a little scary. We arrived on wednesday night and took a bus from Prosperpine airport to Airlie beach where our hostel was. Now, I've only ever stayed in two hostels, one in Byron Bay and one in Melbourne. The Byron one was fair, but since we were with a group it was better. Melbourne the hostel was fabulous. Quiet, clean rooms, the bathroom was down the hall, but that was no big deal, a little cold, but over all very enjoyable. Airlie Beach hostel was bad. Very, very bad. We get to the room, luckily it is air conditioned, it has a small little kitchen and a bathroom in the room. Those are its only redeeming qualities. Our bunk is right next to the door, we are the only girls with 4 other guys, 3 of which are 20 and from England, studying at Brisbane. We're tired so we just want to go to bed. The 3 guys go out for the night and return at around 3 o'clock in the morning. They then decide it would be a fantastic idea to make heaps of noise. They are taking pictures, and I'm not sure if they actually took a picture of us sleeping, because i saw the flash and then heard them like run and laugh. So, I go on defensive mode. I face the wall but am wide awake to ensure I can kick them in the balls if they try and do anything funny. One of them brought back a girl and proceeded to do dirty things in the bathroom. They continued on like this for a good 45 minutes. I was pretty sure we were going to be raped, but we were not. The second night the room is then joined by 2 other girls from england, but they just got off a boat and were very tired as well. The boys went out again that night, and returned around 1 and again made a boat load of noise. This night, though, no one brought home a girl. They did this again on the third night. Good thing we were only in that room for 3 nights. I feared for my safety a bit. I don't know what it is with these europeans, but they like to sleep in the hot. All the rooms had air conditioning, which i was very content to leave on all night. But they would turn it off! Who does that! So we wake up in the morning and it's beastly hot. Not okay.

After getting over the horrible hostel experience, we did have a good first 3 days. We went jetskiing, which is very fun. The water was a little choppy

which made it very hard to drive it. We got caught in

a boat's wake and i'm pretty sure we got some major air going over those waves. They make it look very easy to drive in the movies, but let me tell you, for a first time jetskiier, it was very not easy to drive. We also got to hold baby sharks and feed barramundi fish. Now when these fish eat it's crazy. You dangle their food right in front of their nose and they just wait. Then when they decide it's the right time to eat, they will pounce and suck in the food and like 2 liters of water in a fraction of a second. It's ridiculous. So of c

ourse we all got a big kick out of it. We also got to feed giant sting rays. Because their mouth is on their stomachs essentially, you have to push the food under them so they are on your arm and they just like suck it up. Strangest feeling ever.

On saturday we went on our boat trip. We were on a maxi yacht called Broomstick. That was awesome. It was all a bunch of other young travelers backpacking through australia. We met up with two other americans and were dubbed team america by a crew member we du

bbed team england. That stuck for the duration of the trip. We sailed around the Whitsundays, slept on the boat, went scuba diving, snorkling, went to Whitehaven beach and had a marvelous time. I went for an optional dive, which was amazing. We went about 7 meters down and saw 2 sting rays and this big fish that is in the process of changing for a female to a male. How

interesting. That morning it was raining when we woke up. But we decided to go to Whitehaven beach anyway. This is like the most beautiful beach in the Whisundays/most of australia. It's actually I think something like a national park, so you can only visit it was a tour group, and you can only stay on it for I believe 4 hours. The sand is so white and soft it's outrageous. I wanted to bottle it up and take it home with me. As soon as we got to the beach the weather cleared up. But of course because it was so gross out when we left none of use were wearing sun screen so we had to stay in our lovely stinger suits (a lighter wet suit to protect you from jelly fish). We frolicked in the water for a few hours before heading back to the boat.

After the boat trip we were back in Airlie for 2 more days. We just hung around mostly. On our last day we were parasailing. Such great fun. Plus the boat driving was a babe. Such a great ending to a great trip. Now it's back to reality for a few more weeks. Only 4 more weeks in the semester here, crazy. We're planning a trip with a bunch of people back to Byron in early october, a trip to sydney in early november, and then hopefully we'll get over to New Zealand before we head back to the states.