Sunday June 15, 2008

I must have fallen asleep because I woke up to a ticking bomb at 5:45am. We all got dressed quickly because we had to be downstairs for breakfast at 6:15am. We finally got to mix it up for breakfast. There was eggs, bacon, spaggetti, and even baked beans, plus the usual. They even had apple juice! (Jacob called it beer). It was a really yummy meal.

They loaded us onto the bus at 7:00 or so. We drove down to the FantaSea harbor (Shute harbor) and boarded our fairy. Our group sat on the second level. We took up an entire side plus the middle. There was a videographer who was going to make a People 2 People video for us. He had us doing all of this funny stuff for the video like the wave, solja boy dance, and macarana.

The ride was really bumpy. We would go up and down and jsut everywhere. It made me a little dizzy, but I was pretty ok. When we would hit really big waves, the water would splash and hit the windows like a car wash. It looked really cool, but was a little bit freaky.

The boat had to make 3 stops to get other passengers, so we didn't get the boat to ourselves. How sad. It probably took an hour or so to get out to the reef. There was lots of hyper waves and mess-your-hair-up winds, but we did finally get there. We docked at this really neat platform out in the middle of the reef. I was suprised that we did this, because I thought we would dive in from the boat.

They deboarded the other customers after offering scuba diving tours and helicopter rides to everyone. For the student ambassadors, we did the underwater viewing chamber first. We went into this rectangular tube through this door that looked like the cellar in the Wizard of Oz. Down there it looked like an aquarium. We saw this huge fish that was a baby. Hard to believe. There was also these huge schools of small silvery fish that would swim around in huge groups. They were the coolest things ever.(It's funny how our opinion changed of them when we were snorkleing.)

We came out the same way we went in, through the Wizard of Oz cellar doors. We then went onto this half underwater submarine tour and got to see below the surface without getting wet. On the way out, the coral wasn't on my side, so we had to look over shoulders, but on the way back it was. The coral was absoultly beautiful. There were all kinds of different colors and shapes of the coral. We saw a lot of fish and a few stingrays and sea turtles. It was really neat to not have to get wet and see such great sights.

Once we got back to the platform, we loaded onto the boat again to have lunch. (We also had morning and afternoon tea where we got all kinds of yummy desserts.) For lunch, there was rolls (again), and tortilla sandwiches. We tried to eat quickly and Bailey, Braiden and I were first to finish. The three of us raced up to the stairs to get ready to snorkel. We had to get our suits on and get our towels and cameras.

I filled up about two cameras with pictures of coral. When the tide went back, we saw all of this dry land in the middle which happened to be dead coral. It was really neat to see. The boat left at about 2:30, and we had a long boatride back. The videographer showed us the film that he had made of us. We had to sit on the ground in order to see it because he couldn't find the cord to connect it to the tv.

When the boat started to hit turbulance, the captain made us go back to our seats. The video guy said he would show us the rest later. For that ride, I went up to the top and talked to some kids and Troy. It was really, really windy up there, like your-hat-would-fall-off-if-you-wore-one windy. We also got to finish watching our video and I bought one for $50.00. Overpriced but it's a great souviner.

The head photographer offered to put our pictures onto disks for $10.00 a disk. Bailey did this and somehow I ended up down there hanging out with Bailey, the photographers, and Troy. The photographer told us this crude New Zealand joke about a man and a sheep and wondered what he had done when he learned that we were only 13. It was a good joke though.

It was awesome being on the farry. We felt like stars on it because they went complatly out of their way to help us have fun. The scenery was absoultely beautiful! It's like Colorado times 10 minus mountains plus beautiful oceans. Absoultly beautiful.

We got back to the hotel around 6, and had to go hang out in rooms until supper at 7. I organized my stuff and washed my crusty hair out.

For dinner, we had to bring our journals so that we could catch up after supper. We had chinese food (still at Club Croc) and cake with ice cream for dessert. Then we spent about 45 minutes on journals. I don't think I need to tell you what I did. Bailey and I were like the last ones to leave. Since it's Monday right now, I think you can figure that I didn't finish.

Bailey and I went down to the computers to get online. It was $6 an hour, so we split it. (To get my $, I had to break into my room using the window. It was pretty neat cuz that's how everyone started to get into their rooms. We actually figured out how to break into almost all of our hotel rooms).

Anyways, I sent out a huge e-mail about some of the highlights. My hands got really cold after 20 minutes of typing, but it was worth it. Sandy took us up to our rooms because we were the last ones still roaming around. (For some reason, they didn't trust us to walk a few hundred yards through the open hotel courtyard up to our rooms.) In rooms was at 10 and lights out at 10:30. I think we turned in early and there was no karoke, so it was easy to sleep, thank god.

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!