Study Week aka VACATION WEEK!

Here in Australia they do finals a bit differently than back home. In Madison I would have my last day of classes, then a designated "study day" then finals week. Here, I had my last day of classes June 7, then the next week (June 9-15) is called Stuvac week and is intended for studying, then finals last two weeks. But the way I see it is that if they are going to call it "Stuvac," aka "Student Vacation," well, I'm going on vacation!

So, as one last little trip before finals and my last weeks in Sydney, my friend Tory and I decided to vacation to the Whitsundays, which is a group of islands off the coast of Queensland, after our classes ended the 7th. We found a really good groupon type deal for a 5 night stay, full day Great Barrier Reef tour, and half day Whitehaven tour, so we treated ourselves to that! We mostly just lounged around at the resort filling our bellies with lots of food and champagne and treating ourselves to doing absolutely nothing which we hadn’t done all semester! It was really nice just to sit back on the beach or by the pool and relax for probably the first time all semester! Our resort also had sea kayaks, Lorikeet feeding, and poolside bar, so when we did feel up to doing stuff we did have options!

Our Great Barrier Reef tour was on a pretty windy/wavey day, but it was still pretty awesome. We had a two hour boat ride out to the reef again and then we arrived at Reef World, which is like a permanent barge off the reef with a sun deck, an underwater viewing room, picnic area, and partial submarine. We started off with the submarine trip over the reef because it was high tide and they could sub right over the reef. It was sweet because it was all windows and they literally go right over the reef at the drop off, so you get to see a mixture of the small coral fish and the larger fish that hang out by the drop off. After the sub ride we filled up on lunch then hopped in for a snorkel! At this point it had been approaching low tide, so when you were over the coral you were literally 2 feet away from it, which was awesome because the colors stick out a lot more. There was also a drop off that you could swim down and around, too, and I saw a Nemo and Marlin hanging out around there! This group also had a professional photographer, so we had a little photoshoot with him. He has some fish food so he’s literally surrounded by fish and at one point food must have gotten right by my face because a fish literally just hit me straight in the goggles!! He captured the moment just before the hit!! Tory went in because she was cold, but I wanted to stay in and swim around some more because there were SO many more fish species at this location than the previous one I had gone too. Finally I decided to swim in and all of a sudden I look forward and see this HUGE fish. I have an irrational fear of fish, so I was kind of freaked out, but he seemed super curious and friendly because he just kept swimming around right in front of me and around me! I wanted to touch him but he had two stubby teeth that stuck out soooo I got scared and didn’t, but it was still so cool!!

The day of our Whitehaven beach tour was kind of cloudy and crappy weather, but the beach was still absolutely beautiful. This is Australias “most photographed beach” and is only accessible by boat so we did a mini tour around the islands as well on our way out! The beach is 98% pure silica sand which makes it super white and soft. We used the sand to exfoliate (it really works!), built sand creatures, and napped on the beach!

Vacation can’t last forever, though, and it’s back to Sydney to write some papers and study for finals!  I can’t believe I’m almost done with school here!