Corinne's Here!!!

Corinne arrived here today! It was so exciting to finally have a friend from home on the Sunny Coast! She was determined not to take a nap because of the jet lag. If she did sleep she probably would never woke back up till the next day.

Soooo we did the most obvious thing we could think of! Kangaroo searching and visiting the beach! I gave her a tour of the school and found some roos in one of the fields. We hung with the kangas for a bit then caught the bus to the beach. The beach was beautiful today so took fun pictures and did some sea shell hunting.

Once we were done I brought her to the shopping center and told her all the ins and outs that I know. I think the biggest culture shock was when she saw the prices at McDonald's... No Dollar Menu... basic cheese burger was $5 minimum. Then on top of that the grocery store differences from home really freaked her out. I have been here so long I forgot a lot of these differences even existed.

Well after this long day I need some sleep! Night/Morning depending on what time you decided to read my blog. :)

Outback

Giant Termite Hill!

Cheeky Emu looking to steal something from our rental car!
(I got to drive on the wrong side of the car and road! Awesome!)

The last adventure Mom and I shared was a trip out to the Outback.

Well to start...I didn't find any steakhouses...no bloomin' onions or shrimp on the barbie! (Both of which Outback Steakhouse made up by the way) In fact we didn't find much at all. Mainly heaps of gigantic termite mounds and long horned, floppy eared cattle all over the road or in the dried/burned fields. It was beautiful though. Just endless repeatition of mountains and then plains. We drove a few hours and arrived in one of the most remote and boring towns in the world. It was some lame tourist trap, but the beautiful drive was worth it anyway!

On the drive back I drove! It was my first experience both driving on the left and driving in a car with the drivers side on the left. It was great fun! Driving on unsealed roads (shhhh don't tell the rental car company!) was fun, but the best part was dodging cows and pot holes. At one point I thought I had popped a tire though...
I was driving along and there wasn't a town for at least 50 miles in any given direction and you only past another car every blue moon. I was just crusing along when saw a sign that said "neighborhood watch". What neighborhood and who was watching?!? I literally was laughing so hard I was crying so I didn't see the monster pot hole! We heard a huge thud and crunch, but I lucked out and everything was just fine! Ooops!

 Also in the savannah we found a nice nature reserve that had many beautiful birds including a emu that was keen on stealing something from the car! He was peeking through the windows, I'm sure when people leave them open he swipes a few things!

I did have a shocking moment when we went the the "outhouse". (which was just like a normal toilet just detached to the main building) My mom went in first, while I chased emus around the outside. She told me (through the wood walls) that there a sign to keep the seat down because wildlife gets into the toilet. I laughed and while she told me a story about a snake being in a toilet in Texas  (I think). Meanwhile I went in the second stale, sat down, screamed and jumped up! I felt the struggle of a creature underneath me! It wiggled and I thought for sure after the story Mom had just told me I was about to have a Brown Snake (one of Australia's most deadly) bitting my ass! My Mom paniced (understandable since EVERYTHING IN AUSTRALIA IS DEADLY), until I started laughing! I sat on a HUGE green tree frog! This is probably one of my favorite moments of the entire trip!

Great Barrier Reef

It was kinda windyyyyy

The best weather out of the 3 days...it got bad later though!

Yea I dove in that...

The adventures in Cairns continue...

I spent a couple days of this trip in class getting PADI certified as a Scuba Diver! Once the in class session ended we took a 80 yatch out into the Coral Sea to the Outer Great Barrier Reef!!! Now unfortunately the weather was far less than perfect. In fact, we had torrential rain, wind at ~30 knots and waves 3 metres high (~10ft)...needless to say majority of the passengers got sea sick...Mom and I did okay I guess because we are used to boating, but I'm not gonna lie at times I did feel a bit queasy. Anyway so after a long 3 hour ride to our first reef we suited up in our gear and prepared for our first Open Water training dive... I was sooo excited! I mean really how many people can say they got trained to dive on the GBR!!!

Well after the completion of my 5 training dives I was exhausted, but thrilled with all the creatures I had seen! I found all the Finding Nemo characters!!! :) Now...let me remind you that above the surface was aweful weather sooo under the surface had strong currents, surges and extremely poor visability. Reguardless it was all very amazing and unlike any reef I have ever seen!

Now it was time for my dive Buddy and I to venture on our own for 2 dives! My dive Buddy was an awesome Aussie guy from Perth, he's actually moving to Baltimore July 2012! Small world! Anyway soooo my buddy and I were giving free range of the reef! We saw a few Green Sea Turtles, a Hawksbill Sea Turtle, Humphead Wrasse, White Spotted Puffer, White-Tipped Sharks, Barracuda, Giant Clams (like the size of a european car), Anemonefish (Nemo and his close relatives), Triggerfish, Butterfish, Surgeornfish and heaps more! It was great!!! (My Buddy knocked my regulator out of my mouth like 5 times though! Not too exciting when you 60ish feet underwater!)

We were offered a deal to do our Adventure Diver certification at a 1/3 of the regular cost...This allows you to go 30 metres (100ft) instead of 18 metres (60ft) and do night diving. Both my Buddy and I decided to take the course...That night we were to embark on our first night dive and in the morning a deep dive!

At night time we were served dinner...once we were finished we put our rubbish in the bin and rinsed our plates by hose off the side of the boat. This attracted lot of fish! A group of us traveled to the upper deck because someone said they spotted a shark! Sure enough a white-tipped reef shark was chasing fish around...we watched for a bit when suddenly he bolted at a fish! By the time he got to it 3 other white-tips attacked the same fish! It was awesome!!! About 10 minutes later I geared up and jumped in with the sharks!

The night dive was unique in a scary kinda way. It was funny you all stay soooo close because you don't want to be left behind or eaten by something! It was pretty cool even though the visibility was poor from the weather.

Finally we in the morning we did the deep dive! It was amazing so how without even realizing I was at 100ft underwater! We did a few cool experiments with the pressure and color specturm changes. The dive instructor asked us what fruit he was holding on a slate...we all guess Apple or Orange (even though it was vibrant orange colored)...turns out it was a tomato (red is the first color lost underwater). He also held out a flashlight and asked what color it was...everyone guess yellow because it was clear as day bright yellow! It was really neon green! The last thing he did was show us a bottle of water he brought down...it was crushed! And after the dive showed us it again at the surface it nearly exploded from the pressure!

The dives were awesome and an amazing experience! And at the end the dive instructors told us that the conditions we dove in were in thier top 5 worst! Basically I could have surfed on the GBR, but now I'm prepared to dive in anything now! I loved every second of it! And to top it off on the ride back to the port we spotted whales!

Cairns Rainforest on the Skyrail

I took a trip up to Cairns (Northern Australia) for a holiday and to meet my mom for a visit! It was great fun! I meet up with my mom at the airport and then the adventures began...

We started our visit with a ecotourism attraction! The Kuranda Skyrail and Scenic Railway. The Skyrail was a cable car that took you deep into the rainforest. It was a beautiful airial view of both the tropical rainforest trees and the distant towns and city. My Mom was a little nervous about the heights and kept telling me to sit down because I was shaking the gondola. Oooops! She was pretty confortable with the whole thing by the end though.

Once we finished the ride up we arrived at a small town where a local market had venders that wanted to sell anything and everything australian. My Mom and I grabbed an unique Aussie ice cream called Violet Crumble (which is actually a type of chocolate candy) during a brief rainstorm. Later we hit the bar for a drink and lunch (of course fish and chips!).

Finally it was time to catch the Scenic Train back down through the rainforest mountains, past waterfalls, over trusel bridges, through sugar cane fields and into town. The train was very old and beautiful. On the train we were servered wine, cheese and dried fruit. It was great fun and a beautiful view, but don't stick your head out the window too far because you might get hit by a rail sign!

Last Week :(

Soooo its now the last week I will be sharing with my almost all of my new friends! Its so sad because who knows if I will ever see these amazing people ever again! Most of them live all over Europe, South America, Asia...this kind of gives me an excuse of doing more global travel! (It is my goal to set foot on every continent sooo now I have some hook ups!)

This semester has been so amazing for me! It was like a new life really...nobody had any prejudgements to base you off! (besides sterotypes that came with your country of orgin haha)  It was great fun and really helped me to come out of my shy shell a bit. Meeting all these new people with different views, beliefs, languages, foods and whatever else has helped me to open my eyes and see just how big the  really is world. I considered myself pretty open minded  and educated on cultural differences prior to coming to the Land of Oz, but now after becoming close friends with people from all over the world has only made me open my eyes more to reality!

I really love all my friends here and its going to be sad to see them all go, but were going out in style with a bottle of champagne sent directly from my the winery owned by a family member of my French friend Anne-Segolene! Also had a goodbye barbie as one final dinner sizzlin' up some Aussie sausages and kanagroo!

Germans and New Caladonians

German and American (Michigan)



French, Swedish, Brazilian, Japanese & American (Florida)



French

Seal Swim!

Glory and I (interns) doing a Seal Swim!

Groucho and I

Bella! She's a beaut!

Amazing day! Today I did my regular duties at UnderWater World, but there was extra slots in the seal swim so myself and my new friend Glory (intern from Miami) got to take the places! It was freezing cold water, but it was just such and aweome experience! I got to play Tug of War with the seals which is fun because they are sooo strong they will just drag you around the pool. It you get them really riled up they will porpoise around the pool at super fast! Also they will float on their back for you to give them a massage with a high pressure hose. They love it!

It's really amazing how they can shoot across the water like torpedo. The muscles in thier flippers is extremely strong allowing them to balance all their weight on a single flipper! This strength is essential to propel them through the water at high speeds. They can reach speeds up to 28 kph (17 mph) and then blast out of the water and jump onto ledges up to 5 meters (16.5 feet) high to escape sharks like the Great White! Not only are they jumping that high, but full grown males can reach weights of up to 360 Kg (790 lbs)!!! The are such an amazing animal!

They are just so cute and playful, sharing very similar mannerisms as a dog. They are a very family oriented mammal that loves to play and keep entertained. In fact, learning new behaviors for the shows becomes a challenge and a type of entertainment for the seals. Its really rewarding for them because they get positive reinforcement with fish, squid and octopus! 

Career in Acting?!?

Groucho standing on one flipper
(he's about 600lbs)

I've always been shy and never been fond of being the center of attention, BUT it's official I'm starting a career in the show biz! That's right! Holly Burkhardt is the star of the show in UnderWater World's seal shows!

Okay sooo I may be exaggerating a bit, but it is pretty cool to do the seal show skit. Basically I am a planted guest in the crowd that get picked to feed a seal...I get picked and head on the stage. I pretend my name is Sam(a girl/guy name so it's consistent in all shows) and I am from New Zealand so they crack some Kiwi jokes. The seals and myself are ready I hold a octopus up high for the seal to jump out of the water and eat from my hand.

Everyone applaudes and I start to head off stage when she calls me back and asks if I want to do another one, but this time it's a young seal that is training...They make some jokes that I'll only lose a finger or 2. I agree, but i have to step up to a higher deck since this seal can jump higher...

Now this is where all my years of being clumsy come in handy! I trip and fall into the seal pool. Now this may sound easy, but thinking about tripping makes tripping really hard! But luckily I played bball for 11 years so I've acquired some good acting skills (all good bball plays are excellent actors/actresses to draw fouls, sad but true).

Once I'm in the pool the seal trainer frantically tells me to swim to the middle of the pool, where a floating island is, just in case the seals try to attack me...At this point a seal comes flying around me doing "bowing" out of the water...then Jaw's music play and the seal swims with 1 flipper in the air "sailing" too look like a shark circling me...

While all of this is happening I am secretly holding on to the floating island with 1 hand slipping off my shorts... then once the Jaw's music climaxes the seal dives under water and "pulls me under and attacks" ( in reality this me passing the shorts to the seal). Then they make a bunch of jokes about how the seal stole my shorts and then the seal jumps around me a few time and returns my short into my hands...

I get out and the show finishes up...but it's a lot of fun!