I took 43 pictures today!

I have no excuse for not writing, because I haven't been working. Well I have a little bit of an excuse- I've been sick. Not really sick, just a cold. But the weird thing about diving is that people will do it with any kind of ailment except a cold. Basically, if you are congested, your eustachian tubes might be blocked and you won't be able to equalize your ears. Or worse, you'll be able to go down just fine, but on the way up, your ears won't equalize, and there's nothing you can do about it. Because you have to come up eventually.So even though I showed up for work yesterday, I asked Asako, the Dive Supervisor, if we had enough staff so I could just lead the snorkellers. It turned out that Liz, who is a brand new (like one week) instructor, but has worked for Tusa for a while, showed up even though she wasn't rostered on. She had her first student the day before, and she was going to finish his course yesterday, so she thought she had to work. (That's not how we do it-- who ever finishes the course gets the certification.) Anyway she really wanted to stay because she wanted the cert, and she was also totally hitting on her student. Now I don't really like her that much, she's kind of bossy even though she doesn't know anything about instructing, and she wears short short shorts to work that are totally inappropriate. And she hit on her student, which was funny because he was not into it at all. So since I would have taken the cert from her, I was tempted to stick around. But since I wasn't feeling well, and they offered for me to leave, I took the opportunity. Then I came home and we did what any other 22 year olds would do on a day off in a party town: we did a jigsaw puzzle.

Later we saw an enormous group of Japanese tourists crossing the street by our aparment-- like 250 of them blocking traffic. I took a picture. Think about it- I had time to notice them, go inside and get my camera, come back, and take four pictures and there were still this many! Crazy. And yes, it's blurry on purpose. I'm artistic like that.


So today I just had a normal day off, and am feeling a little bit better. I'm still taking decongestants, which make me a little hazy. My boss called me earlier to see how I was feeling. Then he said something about the sun today, and I thought it was a little weird that he was talking about the weather, but I just sort of agreed, thanked him for calling, and hung up. Several hours later, I was thinking about it again and suddenly realized that he was probably asking me about my SunSuper account, which is like an Australian retirement account that we are all required to have, and for which I have not given them the number. Which makes a lot more sense than him talking to me about the weather. Oops. I did tell him at the beginning of the conversation that I was still on medication. Hopefully he'll call back.

So once some of the haze wore off, Jon and I went over to the Cairns Rainforest Dome. It's kind of small, but the zoo is about a half hour drive, and we didn't feel like renting a car, especially since I am under the weather. It's on the top of one of the hotel/casinos, which is a little strange, and it is a part-glass part-screened-in dome, as the name implies.


Well, we were impressed. They have about 60 species, including....

A huge crocodile named Goliath! He's something absurd like 20 feet long.



Birds! The birds are kind of everywhere, and like to dive bomb you and flutter right by your head and things like that.


I was giving this bird a talking-to, because he kept following us. He later got together two more of his friends and the three of them cornered us. Creepy, until we remembered that we were bigger and just walked past them.



Bats! We were there for the bat feeding, which pretty much entailed a woman putting fruit onto these little trays and swinging them over to the bats. It was cool to see them up close. The bats here are crazy, there are actually a lot of them in Cairns, just cruising around the night sky. Jon actually took this picture, because his camera has a zoom. (See Mom, I really do need a new camera for Christmas!)



And of course, koalas. See? I'm really in Australia.



...really.