Home Sweet Home

Hi Everyone!
I just arrived home from Australia last night and it is good to be home. My last three weeks have been full of adventure and it is nice to be able to just relax. However, I will fill you in on everything I have been up to!

After finals ended in Sydney, my friends and I flew to New Zealand for a 10 day long trip around the South Island. We took a trip called the Kiwi Experience which is a bus that brings you each day to a new city. We started in Christchurch and headed up the east coast all the way around in a huge loop until we got back to Christchurch. New Zealand is an amazingly beautiful country. Almost the entirety of it excluding the coast is huge snow capped mountains, and the mountains are COVERED in sheep! They are everywhere!

The first city we went to after Christchurch was Kaikoura. Kaikoura is a cute little town that is known for its whales, dolphins and seals. When we got there 2 of my friends and I went seal swimming. We had to wear full body wet suits that had hoods so that when we were swimming the seals would think we were one of them and not get scared and swim away. I was glad we had the full body suit on thought because it was FREEZING in the water. It was such an awesome experience because the seals were swimming no more that 4 feet away from me and I got to go right up to them and watch them play on the rocks. Very cool.

Another one of the really awesome places we went to was a place called Fraz Josef. It is on the west coast of the south island and it is famous for its Glaciers! We had planned to do a full day hike up the Glacier but sadly like it does 280 days out of the year in Franz Josef, it RAINED! When it rains they aren't able to bring people up the glacier because the gushing water makes it dangerous and hard to climb. To make up for it though, I went sky diving over the glacier which was one of the most awesome and exciting things I have ever done. I was very nervous going into it, but honestly once I got in the plane i was just so excited that i stopped being scared and i loved every minute of it!

When we got to Queenstown, we took a day trip out to a place called Milford Sound. It was a huge waterway surrounded by huge mountains and waterfalls. Very gorgeous. My friend Brook and I took a plane ride back to Queenstown over the mountains which was super fun and amazingly beautiful.

After New Zealand we flew to Fiji and spend 6 nights there on 3 different Islands. We flew into the mainland and spent one night there. Then the next day we took about a 3 hour boat ride out to the first island. We spent 2 nights there and it was GORGEOUS! The island looked exactly like the islands from the television show Lost. There were probably max 40 people on the island and you could just relax and read and sunbathe and snorkle and do whatever you wanted all day. It was a great change from the moving around of our New Zealand Trip. One day we walked to the summit of the island and looked out over the other islands around us. Our guide pointed out an Island not too far away that was where they filmed the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks! The second night we were there we were part of their traditonal ceremony called a Kava Ceremony and the Fijian people performed songs and dances for us. It was really cool. After the first Island of Kuata, we took another boat another hour to another Island called Kourovo. This one was really pretty also but definetly less remote. They had a pool which was nice, but I did miss the quietness of Kuata.

After all of that I flew back to Sydney for a few days and then got on my plane flight home. I am excited to spend Christmas with my family and head back down to New Orleans and spring semester.

I am so glad I studied abroad, and I would urge EVERYONE to take advantage of this opportunity. It was one of the best times of my life and I will never forget all the amazing things i go to do and see and the people I spent it with. And of course I suggest Sydney! It is SUCH a cool city and Australia is so unique and interesting.

I'll try to post soon!
Kelly

Hello From Down Under!!

Hi Everyone!

I wanted to start off my introducing myself! I am a Junior at Tulane and I love it to death. However, I am actually currently in Sydney, Australia doing a semester abroad at the University of Sydney. It is AMAZING! I am having a great time here! I am so lucky to have had this opportunity to come here and experience a new country and culture for an entire 5 months. Because Australia is in the southern hemisphere they have the complete opposite seasons from us in the States so it is the middle of summer! So the weather is beautiful - which is actually pretty normal for me this time of year going to school in a city like New Orleans. But the bad thing is that because they are entering summer it is the end of their second semester which means finals! I just had my first final this morning and it was SO INTENSE. There were about 400 of us in a huge hall - there were seat numbers and students from 3 different classes all taking different exams in the same room. There were about 30 "exam supervisors" (I know this because they all had name tags on with their executive title - ha ha ) and the main supervisor spoke over a microphone to announce the instructions. What a totally different experience to taking finals at Tulane where you are in your normal classroom with your professor at the front of the room to answer any questions you may have. Sydney Uni (as the local students call it) has over 40,000 students so the student experience is a huge change for me since Tulane has only about 6,000 undergrads. As much as I love it here - I couldn't take this for all 4 years of undergrad. I love the small environment created by Tulane's size much better.

I have been keeping my family updated throughout my semester with all of the awesome things I have been doing so I will fill you in on some of my favorites. I went to Surf Camp in August for a weekend and on a 9 day Spring Break to the Great-Barrier Reef and the east coast of Australia.

Surf Camp!
I just got back from Surf Camp and it was amazing! We left on Friday night and spent almost 7 hours on a bus to get to Crescent Head, a coastal town north of Sydney. We stayed at the camp location, which is a huge house with a bunch of dorm rooms with bunks in it. The beach was just across the street.

We started surfing at 8 am on Saturday morning. We had a quick lesson on the beach and then we were off! I fell the first couple of times I tried to get up but once I got the hang of it I was doing great!

I stood up I would say about 85% of the time! We were learning on what they call the whitewash, the wave that comes after the initial crash. The 2nd day I was actually able to ride a real wave. One of the instructors took me out deeper in the water and helped me catch a big wave, but i freaked out when it crashed and I totally wiped out. But it was fun while it lasted! I definitely want to do it again. It was a blast!

On Saturday night we had a little party on the beach with a fire pit. It was so much fun. There were about 45 people at the surf camp, and 5 instructors. At first it seemed like there weren't enough instructors, but about an hour and half into each surf session plenty of people would get out of the water, so then it ended up being really nice and we got plenty of attention. I definitely think that being an athlete and a dancer helped with my balance and ability to get up on the board. BUT BOY WERE MY ARMS AND CHEST SORE THE NEXT DAY! Surfing is a really amazing workout!

I definitely got tumbled by a few waves. I started getting a little ambitious and trying to ride bigger waves on the second day and it benefited me I would say about a quarter of the time. The rest of the time i would just get dominated by the wave when i was trying to get out deep enough in the water to surf on it. Overall - I would for sure do it again!!

Spring Break!
So for our Spring Break, which they call here a mid-semester break, my friends and I took a 9 day trip. We first went to Cairns, which is in the North East corner of Australia. It is about a 3 hour flight from Sydney. We had definitely been falsely advertised to because when we got there the beach we had expected was non existent! During the day the tide went out so far you couldn't even look out and see water. All you saw was mud! Next to the water though they had this large public pool called a Lagoon. It was the largest pool I have ever seen. So we would go and lay out there and swim during the day. We were there for 3 days and on the second day we went white water rafting in the rainforest. The northern parts of Australia are much more tropical than the southern areas.

To go rafting we had to do an hour rainforest hike from the drop off point to the start of the rapids. Little did we know when we signed up that we would have to trek through the rainforest with the rafts on our backs! That was extremely challenging because the path we took was not a normal forest path - it was what they called a goat track, which meant it had not been cleared much at all and at times we waded though rivers, mud and over huge boulders.

At one point while hiking the guide told us to watch out for 2 specific plants because they were just at the side of the goat track and if we touched them they could potentially be fatal. One would send pain shocks through your body that felt like shattered glass and the other would peel off your skin!!! We were very careful from there on out. About 3/4 of the way through the hike they also informed us that we were likely to encounter leeches! Now I don't think of myself as a "girl" when it comes to the wilderness and animals and such, but leeches are one thing I can't handle! About a minute later i looked down and I had one gnawing at my ankle. I freaked out a little and got one of my friends to get it off of me. I didn't feel so gross however because within 5 minutes more than half of the group has the same experience! Some of my friends even left the leech on their bodies to let them fall off naturally!!! I am not nearly that brave or adventurous.

The rafts we went in were 2 person rafts and we got to go down a classs 4 rapid! It was lots of fun however it started to rain halfway through so that got a little cold. I am happy to report Becca (my raft partner) and I made it safely through and didn't fall out of our rafts once!

When we got home that night I did notice a mysterious rash on my body that started on my back and crept all the way up my neck and down to my butt! Luckily - it went away by the next day so not big deal.

After Cairns, we took an 11 hour bus south to Airlie Beach. A small beach town when we got on a sailboat to sail around the Whitsunday Islands for 3 days and 3 nights. It was blast. I got to go Scuba Diving and Snorkling in the great barrier reef! I saw all sorts of beautiful fish and coral and even 2 sea turtles. They are beautiful in the water. We were following them for a while. At one point we were out snorkling on the reef and the ocean current was so strong it took us about 40 meters from our original spot and we hadn't even noticed! Luckily our sail boat has a dingy with it so they were able to come pick us up from Snorkling.

The Whitsunday Islands are the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The sand is SOOO white and the water is the most amazing mixture of blues in the world. We just stood our at a lookout point for about a half hour just staring at the beautiful water.

After the sailing trip we headed back to Airlie beach where we stayed for another 4 days. We just hung out at the beach and at the Airlie Lagoon until we headed home. It was a great relaxing time. Sadly, we had to return to Sydney for class, but it was fun while it lasted!

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I hope you all enjoyed by updates from Australia! I have one more final to take and then I am off for a 2 1/2 week trip to New Zealand and Fiji - and then I am back to the states on December 10th. I am going to miss Sydney terribly but I am excited for a semester back at Tulane with all of my friends!

I will post a few pictures of me with my friends in Sydney!

Kelly