One Fish Two Fish, part 1

Where do I even begin. Spring/Easter break was epic. Yeah, epic is a good word for it. So epic that now I'm suffering from a cold due to lack of sleep haha. I'm going to try avoid making a 3 mile long post, but I make no guarantees.

PRETRIP:
I was running around like crazy two days before, trying to get everything done and get my papers turned in early so I could leave Wednesday afternoon. I just barely missed the train I had intended to take, but I had given myself extra time and my flight was delayed due to some technical failure so I got to the airport with enough time anyway. It was only an hour and a half flight, but Quantas served a full meal plus a drink service. I decided I deserved some of the free red wine after getting all my work done, but as I reached for my ID to show the hostess, suddenly we hit the worst turbulence I've ever been in. The hostess who had been right next to me was thrown over onto the ground and people's drinks were flying off their trays. The pilot announced to be seated immediately, which apparently means that they don't have time to take the cart back to the back of the plane, but instead have to sit down in the aisle and wedge themselves between two seats and a passengers legs, aka mine. Apparently it's only that bad about once a year, and I wasn't scared, but it wasn't particularly fun to be in, especially since I had to have a death grip on the service cart next to me to prevent it from crashing over onto me. Even the landing was super rough, as we rammed into the runway at first, so I was kind of glad to be in Brisbane finally. When I got there I took an airport shuttle to my hostel and crashed early.

DAY ONE:
I got up way too early - I forgot to change my phone to an hour later, so I ended up getting up at 5:30 by accident... and then proceeded to drop my glasses down behind the bunk bed I was on top of, waking up the girl under me, and rendering me blind until she gave them back. Basically that morning was sort of a blunder, and I'm glad it wasn't indicative of the rest of the week. I met up with Katie who had taken the train overnight and had just got in, and grabbed breakfast before trudging off to find the bus. We found it more or less without incident, and boarded up. We had 47 people on the tour, plus our two tour guides, nicknamed Kazu and Doggie. We also met our mascot who incidentally only ended up lasting a few days, but at the time he was an inflatable boxing kangaroo with a joey who we dubbed Alan and Carlos after The Hangover. We all signed our names on him, so my name was on the back of his ear. From then until his downfall he was taken absolutely everywhere we went.

The first couple of activities that were planned were explained to us as we drove towards the Australia Zoo - Steve Irwin's zoo. There we saw all the typical Australian animals, along with some giant turtles, tigers, and Elephants which we fed. Apparently Bindi was there filming some interview for their 40th anniversary, but I didn't see her.

We grabbed some lunch before heading off to our hostel for that night. It was a weird little area and we shared a little cabin with 6 people. We just dropped our stuff off, changed, and got back on the bus though since we had a mini cruise that night. They had a BBQ for us and it was a good chance to start to get to know everyone, not to mention a to see a crazy moon rise that was so low and red we thought it was a ginormous bon fire at first. After a few hours, we headed back, hung out for a while, and went to bed.

That's going to have to be the first installment of the story of my spring break because I have to go to bed. I'm actually headed to Melbourne tomorrow evening for the weekend, so sorry about any serious blogging backlog lol, I haven't even managed to post all my pictures on facebook yet in trying to make sure I don't fall behind in class.