Friday the 13th of June 2008

Before I start, here's some things that are hard to ge used to:

• When you turn right, you have to cross over traffic. When you turn left, you don't.
• You pass on the right. They call it the overtaking lane.
• It's extreamly, amazingly, awesomly, beautiful.

We woke up at 7 and had to share the bathroom with the boys. Most of the girls had to straighten their hair. Bailey actually burnt her hair, so the guys were complaining of the smell. Everyone had to pack an overnight bag for the aquarium that night. We loaded our luggage onto the botom of the coach and diched our overnights on the coach.

For breakfast, we had the same thing as before: toast, fruit, and cereal. Then it was time to say goodbye. It was heartbreaking to say bye to the kids and know we would never see them again. Tear, Tear!

We all loaded onto the coach and we started to drive. It was a two or 3 hour drive to Townsville. We went to an outside mall where we got to eat lunch and shop. I got a lot of souviners like t-shirts and stuff. It's making me wonder how I'm going to get everything into my luggage...

For lunch, we had sandwiches at a restaurant in the middle of the mall. We had some time to shop after lunch, and then we loaded back up. I probably spend $130 or so at that mall, but I got some really neat stuff.

Then we drove to the Billabong Sanctuary. We gotto get pictures with a koala. It was so soft and cuddly. I wanted to keep it and bring it home. I also got a picture with a snake and a crocodile. They were really cool to hold. We got to see some crocodiles get fed and see kangaroos with joey's in their pouches.

At the souviner shop, I got some stuff for my grandparents. They had some really neat stuff, buit I tried to refrain myself and only got a little bit of stuff.

Then we drove a bit to the Reef HQ Aquarium. They split us up into three group. I was in the Nautalis (?), group. We all pilled into the aquarium and went into the kids playland. Everyone put their bags down and we got to explore. Most of us ended up in the souviner shop. I got a magic box for Joe and then some other stuff for people.

In the theatre, we saw a film on the Great Barrier Reef. The caters brought food in and after the film, we ate dinner in the cafe. There was bread, veggies, cold rice, chicken fettichini, and meat. it tasted really good. For dessert, we had cheescake and pavlova. The pavlova was an Australian dessert made from like eggs, milk, and sugar. it was like cotton candy in how it melted in your mouth.

We then split into our three groups and toured the aquarium. my tour guide was Siggy. First, we did a behind the scenes tour. We got to go above the tanks (outside) and look down on the fishies. There was a preditor tank, and then one that was a compleatly balanced ecosystem. the divers had to clean the preditor tank, but not the fish one. We also saw where they make the sets. There were a bunch of offices too. There were these tunnels with fishies on either side. After a while in there, you would get a headache.

We took showers next but there were only two showers. We had to hand our stuff to some people and then get it back and change in the showers. By this time, I was exausted. I tried to start the next tour, but was way too tired, so Guan (the leader from Georgia) took us back up to our sleeping ags and we caught up on our journals.

They had us all go down to the theatre. There was a presentation about the food chain and sea grass took over the world almost every time. After that, we got to go to bed. We slept in this room with a bunch of activities for little kids.