Cassie's 4th Week in Australia!

First things first, tomorrow is my one month anniversary of arriving in Australia. I'd say that's pretty cool, eh? Anywho, let's get to this story of the fourth week. Prepare for a long story.

So my usual Tuesday ride consisted of riding bike to the botanical gardens, where I took many a picture and had a pretty enjoyable time. Yes, I did in fact take jumping pictures, which you will see below. I'm trying out a slideshow deal so hopefully that works. If not, be prepared to scroll lots. Anyway, the botanical gardens were rather large and beautiful, and included a zoo, though I didn't take any pictures since I've already been there and there are pictures of that in an earlier post. After I visited the gardens I visited a cathedral, St. Joseph's Cathedral. It was pretty, but it kinda scared me inside so I only stayed for a couple seconds.

I went scuba diving again on Saturday and this time we went with a group of students from our class. On the way to the bus stop, I saw a camel in a horse trailer on the side of the road and loudly exclaimed, "Camel!" The scuba diving was fun. Going with people I actually knew made it even more enjoyable. The site we dove at was beautiful with very clear water, so clear that you could see the hundreds of jelly fish swimming around. The only reason I got in the water is because I forgot about the jelly fish, but was promptly reminded of them when I surfaced amidst a herd of them. Literally, a herd. Of jelly fish. It will probably sound less cool when I say they were only 2-3 inches long, but still, they were jelly fish.

On the first dive I encountered a very small shark, not much more than that (except the jelly fish). After the dive we just lounged around on the boat for a while, which was nice. Then we re-entered the water for the second dive. I was able to break away from the group with my dive buddy, Tom, and we got to see so many more cool things. If you stopped breathing for a second you could hear humpback whales off in the distance, it was both very eerie and amazing. We swam around along the reef for a bit, then I pointed in a direction and we both swam towards it. I almost went into shock when I saw a sea turtle just sitting there on the reef, but I had enough composure to swim close and snap a few pictures (to be developed soon). I got within four or five feet and just sat there, staring at it, and it stared back. Tom tried to swim to the other side to get a picture with it, but then it started swimming away. I swam with it for a while, but soon it picked up pace and was gone. I was saddened by its departure, but it was honestly was a breathtaking experience that I will never forget. Nothing very exciting happened after this and we soon surfaced, dried off, and returned back to shore.

On Sunday, today, after church I was able to go see the nearby area with one of the guys from the branch, Chris. He took me up to Mount Archer where there's a really nice view of Rockhampton, then around to Yeppoon, where there are a few beaches. We took tons of pictures and ended up at Emu Park, another beach park, where we waited til sunset to get pictures of it. The whole place was beautiful in the lighting and I tried to get as many pictures as possible. When it finally got dark we drove back to Rockhampton and I had dinner with his family, the Swans. They honestly are so awesome and have welcomed me so quickly into their home; I've never been so at ease in a place I've spent so little time. I already know it's gonna be way hard to leave them when it's time to go home. After dinner I talked to Chris's sisters for a bit, Sarah, Lisa, and Jessica (his sister-in-law), then Chris took me up to Mount Archer to look at the city lights, which I had heard a lot about. Apparently, they spell out the word "H-E-L-L." So, when we got to the top, Chris pointed out to the city and said, "Hell's over there." I was amused. But really, it did kinda spell out the word, though it's hard to tell from the picture. When that was over, Chris just drove me home and I decided that the time had come for my weekly blog post (I've decided it's weekly now). So, that's it for now. Wow, that was shorter than I expected. I guess it's just the pictures that are lengthy.