Part III: Australia!

G'day Mates! As most of you know, during my stay in Nanjing I also dipped down under for about 10 days and visited a few of my friends studying abroad in Brisbane, Australia. While I didn't have too much time to spend in Australia, it was a great trip none the less and helped me move one step (or should I say continent) closer to my life goal of visiting every continent! As of now, I only have Antarctica to go!

My first few days in Brisbane were a bit chaotic as we pretty much immediately shipped down to the beach town of Surfer's Paradise and moved into a hotel for 2 days. Surfer's Paradise was great, however, and we had an awesome time hanging out on the beach and enjoying the quaint atmosphere of the beach town. The only slight annoyance was the somewhat painstaking public transportation debacle that we went through to make it there. I must say though - I remember a local coffee shop down in Surfer's paradise that had a delicious coffee frappuccino called the "Voltage" which I have never had before - if you ever make it down there, I highly recommend trying one.

The next few days of my trip were spent enjoying the "Uni" (College) life in Australia and catching a glimpse of daily life in Brisbane. I found the Australian student's to be quite hospitable and quite rambunctious when it came to partying! I have never seen such a rowdy crowd before, and it seems like American concepts like "homework" and "attending class" have much less importance in an Australia education!
One of the main highlights of my trip was also a visit to the "Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary." The sanctuary featured numerous live "authentic" Australian animals that I could pet, feed, and take pictures with. Despite my, and my friends, best efforts - the best picture I was able to get with a Koala came out something like this one.

Fortunately, I was able to get some much better pictures with the Kangaroos at the sanctuary and they seemed to be a bit more inviting than the lazy Koalas. For some reason, the Kangaroos reminded me of dogs - they seemed lovable and friendly and they liked to be petted and fed! However, some of the bigger ones would growl if you seemed to be encroaching on their territory.

My last day in Brisbane was by far the most exciting. While the rest of my visit was certainly enjoyable, my friends and I decided to use my last day to go Skydiving! While I don't have the pictures from the dive itself back yet (I do have a video...) I will get them once I get back to the states.

However - I do have a few pictures that were taken by my friends on the ground that can give you a glimpse of my skydive. We dove from nearly 15,000 feet - the highest you can dive without an oxygen mask - and had over a 60 second free fall before our chutes deployed. Of course, I didn't dive alone - first time divers always have to go in tandem with a professional diving expert. I did, however, get to fly my parachute around for a bit once it had been deployed! The dive itself was exciting and not nearly as scary as I had anticipated. The scariest part was probably jumping out of the plane itself, but the entire experience was not even close to as terrifying as the Bungee jump I did last summer in Africa.
My skydiving adventure was a great conclusion to my visit to Australia and the next morning I hopped onto a plane to take me back to China. While my time in Australia was certainly one I will never forget, I must say that when I returned to China it truly felt like I was coming home.