Saturday, November 29, 2008

Adventures in Sydney and Cairns

This will probably be a pretty long entry...

First of all, a couple weeks ago I got to see Australian Idol LIVE. It was amazing; my friend Anne got free tickets and decided to take me and our friend Claire. I was so excited; I've never seen any TV show live, and Australian Idol seemed so incredibly more exciting to see live than American Idol, even though I haven't actually been following the show here.

We waited in line for probably three hours before they let us in. The studio was tiny! We volunteered to go in the "mosh pit" which was basically four rows of screaming teary-eyed teenage girls in front of the stage (some with signs!) My two favorite parts of the show were watching the hosts read off the teleprompter, and the way the producers attempted to entertain the audience during commericials. It was all very exciting. The show was the final three performing two songs each. I was surprised that all three were male...but actually, not so surprised when I took the demographics of the audience into consideration. Anyways, I found myself (frighteningly) becoming an Australian Idol fangirland desperately reaching my hand out to try to touch these Australian celebrities every time they came over to high five the girls in the front row. I failed at this, being near the back of the crowd. However, at one point I was successfully able to reach my hand over the crowd and poke Mark, the bald contestant, on his head. The most popular of the three with the mosh pit girls was, by far, Wes (at the end of the show he was my favorite as well) and a week later he ended up winning the title of Australian Idol. But yes, it was a quite random but very fun night.

But, even more exciting was that, because of the fact that I worked two jobs this semester I was able to go to Cairns for a week, the 19th to the 26th. I went with my friend Claire, and it was the most amazing week ever. We spent a great deal of time just swimming - in the pool at our hostel (Geckos backpackers; it was really nice and I'd definitely recommend it), at the "lagoon" a giant, pretty public pool, and in the ocean. We, of course, snorkeled at the great barrier reef during one of our first days in Cairns. At first I had a bit of trouble with this, as basically the boat stopped in the middle of the ocean and we jumped out with our snorkels and fins on. It was then that I remembered that I am an awful swimmer and I clung to the side of the boat for dear life. Eventually I obtained a small floating device which I tied around my waist, but I was still unable to handle the huge waves. Eventually one of the guides threw down one of those floating rings, and I hung on to that. It turned out to be a pretty sweet deal as she snorkeled with me, pointing out fish and coral of interest, and I was able to...you know...not drown.

A lot of the trip was spent lounging on the boat, which is where I realized why Queensland has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. I, not lie, reapplied sunblock at least three times over the course of the day, and came home from the trip super excited about seeing one of the great natural wonders of the world, but with the worst sunburn of my entire life.

The next morning I woke up at 3:45am to go on a hot air balloon ride. I was SO EXCITED about this, as going on a hot air balloon ride has been a life goal, a dream of mine since I was probably about six or seven. They do the balloon rides so early in the morning because that is when the wind is the least strong...or something like that. Luckily, the fact that I was soooo so excited made getting up so early bearable. The shuttle driver brought us all to the site, and it was crazy foggy out. There was talk of the flight getting canceled and I was really nervous that it would happen. But it didn't, and soon I was climbing into a hot air balloon basket, one of the largest hot air balloon baskets in the entire world, with a number of Japanese tourists and a girl from California, who, weirdly enough, had been on my boat cruise the day before and who immediately recognized me.

The flight was amazing. Absolutely incredible. You can see pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020261&l=6c409&id=22702016
Along with some other pictures from my Cairns trip.

After the flight we all got to help pack up the balloon which was a very interesting an amusing experience in itself. Then they treated us to breakfast. At the breakfast site there was a man with a bunch of animals; I wasn't quite sure what he was doing at the breakfast site but we got to hold his owl and a baby crocodile.

The next day I went bungy jumping. That was terrifying. I went with Claire; it had been my idea but she said she'd come along. Of course, when we were on the top of the platform I was the one completely freaking out with Claire comforting me, telling me it's just like a high diving board. She jumped first, and afterwards she told me that she had said to the guy "I don't think I can do this" and he had blocked her way back off the platform and had just started counting down. I thought that was kind of funny. I was really nervous, but I never thought about backing out of it. Even so, when I was on the end of the platform, about to jump off, I still couldn't, in my mind, comprehend that I was really going to jump off this thing. Of course, the guy starts counting down....5,4,3,2,1...and you have no choice but to jump. You can't just be standing there when he gets to one. Still, in my absolute terror I forgot to breathe as I jumped and it ended up being somewhat painful feeling in my chest. I was also terrified I was going to die. Which I didn't. And the adrenaline rush afterwards was so awesome. Oh, and I bought the DVD. If you wanna see my bungy jump I'm more than happy to show you haha.

The next day was more of a chill out day, exploring the town and the beach. The day after Claire went on another reef trip but me, too cheap to pay all that money again, went through every brocure in the hostel looking for the cheapest tour I could find. I ended up finding a really cheap all day tour and decided to go on it, and I ended up having an amazingly fun day. The tour guide, this guy named Stewie, was maybe a little nuts, but he cracked me up. Weirdly enough, nobody else on the tour seemed to find his jokes all that funny but I thought he was hilarious. Like, we passed a cementary and he said, "Hey guys, this is the dead center of town!" Well, I thought it was funny.

We explored the rainforest/jungle type areas (and saw the famous "stinging tree" which, apparently, if you touch you experience awful awful pain that lasts six months and has led many dogs and horses to suicide) and went swimming at this beautiful waterfall. Also we were all forced to lick this bug that tasted like lemon. Stewie kept climbing up really high and jumping down into the water which made us all really nervous as the water was not very deep and the bottom of the water covered in rocks. He didn't die. He also didn't wear shoes the entire day which was sort of interesting. At one point he said to me, "Aly, give me your camera and I'll take a picture of you," and he did take a picture of me. Later I looked through the pictures on my camera and to my surprise, before the picture of me there was a picture of him sticking his tongue out he had taken when I wasn't looking. I laughed out loud.

Basically it was just a really entertaining day, and it was cool to hang out with a real Cairns local. It just always fascinates how I end up loving the cheap tour the best.

Today I went to a YouTube gathering in Sydney. I found out about it on youtube and I couldn't not go, even though I'm not exactly a huge youtuber, and I also don't watch the videos of anybody who was there. (I had hoped to meet Frezned, but apparently he had to go to a wedding instead). Anyway, I went with my friend Anne, who doesn't use youtube at all, and basically it was just awkward. We kind of just stood around watching people, not sure what do to. I ended up talking to this one guy, Fredrick, because we had the same sunglasses. He is that guy on youtube who does that special effect to his eyes to make them look huge. Anyway, he taped me for a couple seconds and said he is going to put me in a video so I will have to keep a look out for it haha. He has like 7,000 subscribers! Oh...youtube. Anyway, Anne and I ended up ditching it pretty quickly and went to Chinatown and got delicious Thai food and I was a happy girl.

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