Here We Go

OK. So I have finally begun my blog to tell of my adventures. Don’t expect there to be brilliantly written, clever, remarks because if I have to think hard, I won’t end up writing anything.

This past weekend, I went on a trip with the Underwater Club (Scuba Diving). I went lawn bowling with the club Thursday night, and they invited me to come the next day. (Lawn bowling was pretty boring, but I was good at it!) So basically, I decided at around 10 o’clock Thursday night to hope in the car with some nice people at 7 the next morning for three days of camping and diving. It turned out to be an amazing trip, but at the same time, a complete disaster! I hadn’t brought the right clothes to deal with the freezing water, I slept in the living room of the cabin and therefore got very little sleep, and I was very unprepared for diving. I only got three hours of sleep Thursday night (Friday morning), so when Ivan and Amelia picked me up the next morning, I was delirious. I then proceeded to sleep on and off for most of the trip to Apollo Bay. We stopped in various towns and beaches along the way, which was great fun, but I was basically sleep walking. I distinctly remember waking up at some point and thinking, “I am halfway around the world curled up asleep in the back of the car with scuba divers I met a few hours ago while we drive down the Great Ocean Road. Sweet.” I pretty much missed all of the pretty drive, but I figure I’ll see it again.

All day Friday I spent on the beach. The water is freezing, but I had a very thick wetsuit. A few of us snorkeled out to a rocky island where a family of seals lives. It turned out to be much farther than it looked, as always. Most of the seals ran away when we got close, but there was a group that was asleep. They really look like underwater dogs. One of the guys, Macker, pet a seal, and it instantly woke up, looked at us like, “Holy Crap!”, and the group of seals flip-flopped away as quickly as their ungraceful bodies would allow. It was amazing how humanlike its reaction was. It’s as if you woke up to have a seal petting you. Freaky.

The next day, we woke up ridiculously early to go diving. Preparing for a dive is so tedious, but it is worth it whenever you get in the water. I hadn’t been on a boat in the ocean in quite a while, and I forgot how different it is from a lake. Anyway, the dive went well. We explored a sort of kelp forest, and I got to swim with the seals! They were so cute and curious in the water. We also went for a hike through the rainforest on Saturday. It was only about an hour hike, but it was incredibly beautiful. I took a lot of pictures. The waterfall at the end was picturesque. We then decided to walk back through the river/stream, and so naturally, I fell in the water trying to jump to really far away rocks. It wasn’t really a shock though. I saw it coming. Unfortunately, that meant my tennis shoes were soaked for the rest of the trip, so I had no closed in shoes.

The dive on Sunday was a lot of fun. It was very different from the one on Saturday in that we explored a rocky, reef ledge. I found two lobsters that looked very creepy, and I wished I had gloves so I could catch and eat one. I also saw a sting ray and several schools of fish.

Today is the first day of school, and I have been to two classes that didn’t meet on the first day. That was not fun. However, I am sitting on the lawn in front of the union with a ton of other students. A lot of students commute from home in the suburbs, so no one goes home during the day. Everyone is very friendly, and I like talking to random strangers. They are surprisingly good at interesting small talk. The administration here is very inefficient, and getting registered for the right classes is a pain to say the least. I am still not in the right classes, and I have no paper. None. That is me prepared for the first day.

Here is a link to some photos I've taken:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35894926@N05/sets/72157614829264131/