Considering the fact that over two weeks have passed and I have done a million things, I had a feeling it was around the right time for another posting. I am going to start way back when on my four day weekend trip to Frasier Island. Our first night we stayed at the creepiest and grossest hostel ever. I felt like I was in prison. I consider us to be really lucky that we survived and were not eaten by bed bugs. The next morning we went to Frasier island by ferry. Once we got to the island we got into this huge truck and we about to embark on some of the roughest driving I have ever experienced. Since the island is all sand and they had not gotten rain for a while, the roads were pure sand and impossible to drive through. It felt like we were on a rollercoaster the whole time and if we did not have our seatbelts on I feel we would have broken every bone in our body. However, it was tons of fun- especially because I wasn’t the one driving. We stayed in the coolest place, which was basically in the middle of the rainforest. Here is a rund down of the activities we did throughout the three day tour: we went to beautiful beaches and lakes, played in sanddunes, hiked through the rainforest, saw dead jellyfish on the beach and held them, and saw a shipwreck. I feel we did other stuff to but those things were some of the highlights. Unfortunately, we did not see any dingos (for those of you who don’t know a vicious Australian dog that eats babies), which is probably for the better because if I saw one I would have wanted to take it home as a pet and then it would have probably eaten all the babies in new york. That was a brief summary of fraser island. Then we had a week of finals. I had to write more essays that I think I have in all my years of college so far. Anyways, I made it though, I don’t know my grades yet but I feel they will be fine.

Now onto my Spring break trip. We broke the trip into two parts Cairns and the Whittsundays. We got into Cairnes on Sunday morning. We had the whole day to spend in the city so we explored around. Cairnes is a really cool city but it is very touristy. It at times reminded me of Miami. In the middle of the city there is a huge esplanade that has one of the biggest public pools I have ever seen. The pool was randomly shaped based on the park shape and could probably hold around 400 people. Surrounding the pool is this huge grassy area and a lagoon. It was a cool area because the kids were playing in the pool and then adults and teenagers were tanning and hanging out on the grass. They also had public bbqs and stuff there. We also went to the night markets which are markets that are only open at night and are all these small vendors that sell a huge range of products. We then went to bed early because we were skydiving the next morning. We were picked up at 7 am to go to mission beach which was the beach that we landed on. We then had to sign our lives away on a sheet that said how skydiving is a dangerous and unpredictable sport. There was a lot of other fine print but I decided not to read it because it would have freaked me out. Anyways they gave us like a 4 minute explanation of what to do and then we got on the plane. Then we got up to the 14,000 feet and were flying over the prettiest places. For example, we saw the great barrier reef from the sky. I was the second to go and we kind of moved to the edge of the plane and then slipped out. The free fall lasted for a minute. It was a weird feeling, it was cool it just felt like you were out in a really windy day and were flying. Then the parachute opened (thank god) and you float down. It is then when you can actually notice your surroundings and relax a bit more. Then we safely landed. It was so great. I have posted some pictures but everyone should get excited for the DVD I have of it. Then we spent the rest of the day on the beach. The next day we went to Cape Tribulation, which is a forest type area, that is ranked one of the prettiest places in the world. On the way there we stopped at a wildlife conservatory place. Here I got to feed kangaroos and wallabies and I held a snake and koala. Holding the koala was the greatest thing ever, I wanted to never let go of it. It is probably good I let go because koalas are actually pretty vicious animals. There are also state regulations which limit how much humans can hold time koalas. In most places in Australia , people are not even aloud to hold onto them. Later in the day we went into this lagoon place on a boat and got to see a crocodiles. We then got to where we were staying that night. This campsite was great and in the middle of the forest. It literally felt like someone cut down a few trees in the forest and built some cabins and made it a place people could stay. They had really good food and a pool. The next day we went on a hike, which was one of the hardest hikes I have done. I mean I am sure it wasn’t the hardest hike, but due to the current shape I am in and my lack of appearance at my gym, but I did struggle with it. On the hike we did get to see a goanna, which is a huge lizard like creature that looks like it can be a dinosaur. The view from the top was pretty but not all that amazing for the amount of sweat I released to get to that point. Then we went to the beach for a bit and took the bus back to Cairns. Then we went on a day boat trip for the great barrier reef. The boat was amazing and the views were amazing. When I went snorkeling I saw the coolest fishes and underwater life. The water was perfectly clear and you could see everything. Basically if someone drew a cartoon of the stuff we saw, it would have looked like the set of finding nemo. We were supposed to take a 12:40pm over night bus to airlie beach. The bus was 12 hrs long. However, the bus came an hour and a half late. We were terrified that we were going to miss our boat because we only gave ourselves an hour between when the bus got in and our boat leaves. However, the bus made up time and we made it there in time. We got to airlie beach and got on the boat. There were fourteen of us on the boat. It was a cool mix of people. There were people from England, Sweden, Czech Republic, New Zealand, and the US. We stayed on the boat for three days. It was cool to live on a boat but sort of gross. The boat was small and we were in very close quarters. When we were on the boat we just relaxed, snorkeled, and went to beaches. The sand was so soft and fine that it can shine jewelry. The snorkeling was nice here too but kind of scary because of all the deadly jelly fish around. I mean we wore stinger wet suits for safety but we were still scared. One of the greatest parts of the trip was laying on the boat at night looking at the stars. The sky is so so clear and I think I saw more stars than I have ever seen in the sky. The boat trip was great, but I was so excited to get back to land. I felt like the world was rocking for the next few days after that. Then we flew home and arrived home safely.

The next day I started my new class for this half of my time in Australia. It is a wine tasting class. I am really looking forward to it because I know nothing about wine. The teachers are really sweet and used to own their own vineyard and had a wine label. I also started my internship. I am interning with a sports physical therapist here. His name is Nick and he is incredibly smart and really kind. However, I sort of hate him for making me need to meet him to get to work at 6am everymorning. The one perk that I learned today is that he brought me coffee this morning. Too bad I don’t like coffee. I drank it anyways, my mouth tasted gross all day. And he asked if I liked it the way it was and obviously I could not tell him it was disgusting and that I only like starbucks frappacinos so I just said that I needed more sugar. Hopefully that will help. Also, considering this is super early in the morning I don’t even notice what I am drinking because I still am half asleep. The cool part was that the coffee is free for him because he treated the guy who owns the coffee shop and because the guy was so thankful, he gets free coffee for the year. Sweet deal huh. There are three other interns working with me. There is a guy from Sydney, a girl from Florida , and a girl from the Netherlands. The American girl is really nice and smart, so I think it will be really helpful having her work there. Also, she and the guy from Sydney have given me all of these study tools to help me in further classes. They both gave me really great videos that will definitely help me in gross anatomy next semester. Now that I am finally up to date, today I worked for the first half of the day in his clinic and just helped with patients and observed. Then we went to his sons touch football game to be the people if anyone got injured (basically like American athletic trainers). Their touch football is different than ours. Really the only thing that is the same is that when you touch people the team loses possession. But it doesn’t even work like that. Whenever someone on the other team touches you, you put the ball down and someone else on your team picks it up and keeps going. This can happen six times and after six touches the other team gets possession. Also, no one can kick the ball and you can only throw behind you. The game is so different but it was really cool and fun to watch. Then I came home and went to the gym. This weekend I am working at the Hawkesbury classic, which is a canoe race that is a fundraiser for bone marrow research. There are 500 rowers in the race and we give the participants pt at first and then we are at different checkpoints and give them pt if they need. The event is really cool but the race is 24 hours straight and we have to work all of those hours. It is going to be super exhausting but I think I will learn a lot. It is cool because I get to actually do stuff on patients like they will just be working with me. I learned a bunch of mobilization procedures and a bunch of things to do to work on the injuries that they should have. So I have recently learned a lot of new stuff and I really hope I can prove myself this weekend and not injure any patients instead of making them better.

Anyways I was going to put pictures on here but writing this has taken too long. Maybe next time. Love you and miss you all!!! Xoxo sam and sorry this was soooo soo long.