G'day Mate from Down Under!
I’m now in Cairns, Australia! It’s so amazing over
here
I’ve been having so much fun! I met most of the other interns at LAX, everyone
is super nice. It’s really interesting to see all the different personalities
and what everyone is doing. Two girls are doing sea turtle conservation and
most of the others are doing business related internships. I’m surprised there
are so many business people over here, I would never think of coming to Oz to sit
at an office. But I guess I could never really see myself at an office.
The plane ride was actually great, I stayed awake for like 2
hours in order to get dinner at like midnight then slept on and off for almost
10 hours! I didn’t even have enough time to watch a movie, I just watched some
family guy and big bang theory then we were landing. I was actually shocked
that it worked out so well. I can almost never fall asleep on planes. However,
the plane left at like 10:30 pm, so Grandma Courtney was already pretty tired.
But every time I woke up I was like...
I sat next to
nice two older women who were also going to explore Cairns and Sydney. It was
really cool. Apparently these 4 friends get together and travel around the
world. They have been to Spain, France, Greece, Turkey, ect.. I think it would
be so awesome to travel with a good group of girlfriends when I’m older.
Then
we landed!
The airports were a little different security wise here than
in America. It’s a lot more laid back. When we were clearing customs they would
ask if we had any food. If you said yes they would only ask what it was and you
didn’t even need to show them. I thought that was funny. Also when we were
walking through you could give them your customs/immigrant card and then you
would walk down a certain row. Almost my whole group got row 6 and I got row 8.
So I thought the lady made a mistake or something so I joined row 6. I was
quite silly because almost everyone in my group was in a quarantine line and I
was going to go straight through. I obvi have a very trusting face. ;) So I
basically signed up myself for a quarantine check where they had a beagle smell
all of our luggage. It was kinda cute to have a beagle instead of a more
intimidating dog like a German Shepard or something. But I was randomly getting
worried that I missed something and they would put me in a room in the back
while they go through my entire luggage. However, everyone made it through
after a few confiscated bananas.
After that we had to go to another terminal to
get to Cairns. So we all went through security again, which was really relaxed.
All they wanted out was your laptop and aerosols. We weren’t sure exactly what
they wanted at first so we all American on them and took everything off and out
to be scanned. It was really funny, an intern in front of me went through the
metal detector and he did it LAX style so he went sideways and crossed his arms
and just stood there. He thought that it was the ones where you stand for a few
seconds as it scans around your whole body. Alas, the scanner was just a normal
one so the Aussie Security woman was like, “What the hell are you doing? Have
you never been through a metal detector before?” Then the intern was really
confused and embarrassed so she told him to just go through it again. So he
went through then paused in the middle again. The lady was getting so annoyed;
she was like, “just walk through it!” In the end he finally got it and just walked
through. The other security guard, an older man, told the woman security guard,
“Oh they are Americans, in America they make going through the airport scary
and that they should be afraid of everything.” I thought that was really funny
and totally true.
We all then got to our second terminal and then took a 3
hour flight up to Cairns! I just read the whole time and sat next to this older
woman. When we landed she looked over to me and said, “I like that you’re a
reader, I hate talking to people on the flight.” Haha I agreed. Then we all
finally landed in Cairns!! Yay!!
We then met up with our trip advisor/leader person to take
us all to the hostel.
This is what you call a “party hostel” haha. We are
basically next to a tattoo piercing parlor and across the street is a stip
joint called the “toy box” haha. But still an alright area. We had a meeting
almost right away to talk about the hostel/area/schedule/ect. In which I got my
awesome phone!!!!! <3 <3
I can still barely use it. It’s quite pathetic. It should be
illegal to go from iphone to this little Nokia. All of us were having trouble
just putting numbers in it and texting takes about 20 minutes. I’m starting to
get a little better at it and it has some games like sudoku and forbidden
treasures, which is cool. It also has a flashlight. Yeah, definitely best phone
eva. Yes I'm high maintenance.
We had a small session to learn more about Australia and
Australian culture. I was pretty jet lagged by then so I don’t really remember
much ;) BUT I do remember a fun little game where we played Bingo with Aussie
slang. Can YOU figure out the Aussie Slang?
Esky
Ripper
Tinny
Wanker
Mate
Thongs
Sticky-Beak
Kip
Cactus
Bloke
Haha so that was pretty fun. After that we went back to the
hostel to get our phone situation figured out and chill out. Once we got the phone
situation under control for the most part we all went out for dinner. We could
choose a few options like Fish and Chips, Caesar Salad, Chicken Parimgana, and steak and chips. Guess what I got? Haha
It was a huge group of people. It was a mix of interns as
well as students going to a business school. There were a lot of Americans, some Swedish people,
German, and an Austrian. It was a cool mix for sure. I sat next to my
Cairns/Zoo roommate Nakeisha and we bonded over animals and scared our
neighboring people talking about how ducks have a corkscrew penis and how
bonobos are very sexual animals and solve all their problems through different
acts of sex. Yeah. It happens. ;)
After dinner we went back to the hostel. Some people went
bed right away and others went downstairs to check out the bar scene. I wasn’t
really tired yet so I joined some of the people at the bar to chill out and
stuff. However, Wednesday night happens to be Bogan Bingo night!!!
It was crazy, these two Aussie guys were up there basically
dressed up in fake mullets and short shorts. Bogan bingo is similar to regular
bingo but kinda not really at the same time. You get this card with numbers on
it and then they call out numbers. If you have that number you cross it out and
if you cross out all the numbers within 1 of 3 sets then you win.
So I played
some bingo but unfortunately lost. They were soo crazy haha I couldn’t even
handle them. A lot of cussing, a lot of innuendos, and a lot of fun. There
were like 4 blow up/balloon guitars in front of their stage if they played the
AC/DC song “Back in Black” you could rush up to stage, grab one, and then play
air guitar. Once you got your guitar and played it for a while, you were
automatically entered into another air
guitar contest. Whoever got the most cheers won a really awesome prize like
rafting or scuba and stuff. One of the American students won, he took off his
shirt and totally dropped it like it’s hot. It was impressive I must say ;P
I didn’t stay
out too much longer after the first game since we had a big day the next day
but it was definitely worth experiencing!
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