Fun with tourists...

Hey all!

Sorry I've been missing in action lately... I've been having a lot of technological problems with my internet! Technology doesn't like me much.

Life down under is still going swimmingly! The boats have been very busy for the last two weeks because of Chinese New Year. The actual new year was about a week and a half ago now, but its a pretty long holiday season. Since China's really not that far from Australia in the global scheme of things, we've had an influx of tourists the last couple of weeks.


Luckily we have a couple of Chinese translators working on the boat, otherwise we'd all be in trouble. Between the lot of us, most people know a little of one language or another, which comes in handy for translating tourist problems.

We have heaps of people that come to the boat with no idea what snorkeling is, let alone what a coral reef is. This is one of my favorite exchanges on the boat:

Do you know how to swim?? (with appropriate swimming charades)
-Nods
Are you suuuuuure?
-Nods
Okay then, in you go... head that way toward the reef.
-Drowns.

In the last few weeks I've done so many snorkel rescues... there was one day when I didn't take my fins off for a good thirty minutes because I kept having to hop in and rescue something... people, noodles, cameras, hats....

At the end of the day, we have passengers fill out comment cards about how their day was. One of my favorites, word for word:

-You should have warned us about the saltwater. 

Some other fun comment cards I've seen recently:

-The one in the blue shirt was smart (we're all in blue shirts...)
-Why aren't there more seahorses? 
-There should be some shade on the sundeck (Ahem... its the SUNdeck...)

Some days we have really good bunches of tourists. It was easy a few days ago... we had a group of 60 American college students on a study abroad program. There was a joke on the boat that if anyone had trouble, I was the American translator. Other days we have 50 people out of 100 on the boat that speak no English and don't know how to swim and put all their masks on upside down. Ohhhh boy. We all end up at the pub on the end of those days because after 10 hours of that, you NEED a drink.

But it all keeps things entertaining and you've got something to laugh about at the pub at the end of the day. Life is good on the boat and in Cairns. I realized the other day that I've been here 3 months already. I feel like I've been living here forever! Life is good!

I promise I won't be so long with another post! I'll get my internet fixed sooner, haha!


Love and fishes.  

Cyclones, Australia Day and bungee jumping! Oh my!

Well, I can honestly say that life in Australia is never boring...

Last week we got blown around a little bit by a cyclone with the most unfortunate name ever. Oswald. Cyclone Oswald cruised down the coast of Australia, giving us some nasty winds and rain, but not much else. It was enough wind and rain to keep the boat off the reef for three days though! Three days off of work! Too bad it was raining and windy and gross!

Now in Cairns, we got pretty lucky. Pretty minimal damage. Areas further south got nailed by rain and flooding and they're still having trouble as far as I understand.

So the day that the boat finally got back up and running was a very popular holiday around these parts... namely Australia Day! Pretty similar holiday to the 4th of July... lots of beers, BBQs and red white and blues. Although a slightly different flag. The only thing missing are fireworks!

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! 

So at work, we were all decked out in Australia flag fake tattoos, flags, I even made breakfast in an Australia flag apron. We had an awesome day out on the reef, good times for all. After work we had a BBQ at one of the crew's house, had some beers and said a lot of Australian things. The majority of the people I work with aren't Aussies... we're from all over the world (Canada and England mostly... but also France, New Zealand, other miscellaneous parts of Europe, Taiwan) , so it's fun when we're all pretending to be Australian! 

I had a few days off earlier this week... the first day I was super productive and got everything done, ran a bunch of errands. The next day I had nothing to do... soooooo I went bungee jumping!!! Yayyyy! It was awesome. So much fun, but so freaking intimidating!!! I was definitely more afraid on the top of the bungee tower than I was skydiving. I'm definitely going to go again... now I've got a frequent jumpers card :)

Other than that, just living it up in the insane Cairns heat... It's been near 100 F (38C) for the last week! It's been so bloody hot!!! I'm so glad I work on a boat most of the time and can just jump in the water whenever I feel like it! It's been beautiful on the water though... all the heat and the lack of wind has just made it super glassy out on the reef. It's amazingggggg! Everyone should come visit :) 

Love and fishes! 

It's raining... sharks!

Well, it's finally happened... the wet season that everyone ranted and raved about is here. It's been raining for days in Cairns... good news is that I don't work in Cairns! Not really, anyway! I work about 40km away on this lovely large reef...

Despite days of rain lately, the reef has been beautiful the last two days. Yesterday it was forecast to be blowing 25 knots (which is rather windy...) and it was supposed to be raining on the reef all day. The morning was a little overcast, with a bit of a drizzle on the trip out, but by mid-day it was AMAZING. It was probably one of the more beautiful days we've had since I've been out there. Really clear visibility, flat glass calm water and no wind to be had. We even changed up the days itinerary in honor of the beautiful day! 

Pretty much every day we go to Hastings reef in the morning and a site called Breaking Patches in the afternoon... yesterday we went to reef call Saxon reef which was just absolutely gorgeous. I managed to go on a dive there as well, helping out one of our instructors with a group of introductory scuba divers. These are people that mostly have never dove before, and we take them out for an easy training dive to give them a taste for being underwater. Some people take to it really well, some people never leave the boat. But I got to tag along and help herd the intro divers on this amazing site. We had three white-tip reef sharks wandering around almost as soon as we jumped in the water. The fish life was excellent! Huge schools of red bass (snappers) and sweetlips... loads of damselfish, coral trout (groupers) and clownfish. The coral was excellent and it was a new, different site for most of the crew, so we were all stoked. Just about all the crew got to jump in for a dive, which is rather uncommon, but we only had 43 passengers on the boat, so it was a really cruisey day!  

Best of all, at this site I saw my first cuttlefish! Cuttlefish are related to squid and octopus. They're incredibly smart and charismatic animals and interacting with one, even this little shy one that we found, was amazing and a serious dream come true. My marine biology nerd sensors were off the chart! They're SUCH COOL CREATURES. 

Today was equally beautiful, weather-wise. It was a bit more stressful.. we had more people on the boat and loads of them couldn't swim. Normally we take non-swimmers out in groups of 4 or less. I took 4 out to start and somehow ended up back at the boat with about 7 people grabbing on to my life ring, one of them near panicked and none of them were very good English speakers. Despite that, it was still a really lovely day. Calm, sunny, almost no wind... really can't complain! 

Now... hopefully the weather continues in our favor. Apparently there may or may not be a cyclone heading our way. A cyclone, by the way, is just a backwards hurricane. But Wednesday is forecast to be about 35 knots which is CRAZY windy weather for boating. I'm hoping that Wednesday will be a day off, but I won't know that until tomorrow! 

Stay tuned for the possible thrilling comparison of South Florida hurricane parties to Cairns cyclone parties! 

Love and fishes! 

Working hard!

Hello friends and family and blog readers everywhere!

Life in Australia is amazing. I've been working my tail off... today was day 10 straight and I know I'm working again tomorrow, but it's all good. I like my job a lot, the people I work with are pretty awesome and even when we have a rough day from time to time, they make it entertaining at least. But really, even the rough days aren't so bad... when it comes down to it, I'm still working on a boat on the Great Barrier Reef. It's a rare day when I don't get in the water for a longish snorkel. We've had beautiful weather lately too, which makes our lives on the boat so much easier... calm weather means less seasick passengers.

One of the most rewarding parts of my job is helping people overcome their fears of water or snorkeling. It's really satisfying to talk someone into the water, lead them around on a life ring for a little while while they freak out about water getting in their snorkels and having mild panic attacks and then work with them and come back later in the afternoon and find them out in the water, swimming around with a noodle, raving about how amazing their day was.

The least rewarding part? Definitely dealing with the seasick ones.

Here's a couple of pictures, thanks to my lovely mother, who played paparazzi while she was on the boat over the holidays... so you all can see my ridiculously wonderful job.

This is what my mornings look like... cooking bacon and eggs for somewhere between 60 and 100 people

Yayyyy snorkel tourssssssss

Tough day at the office... on lookout making sure everyone's safe and happy. 

Some of our awesome crew! 

Life is good down under. Sending lots of love back home! Hope you're not freezing too much! It's sunny and warm and beautiful down here! 

Love and fishes!! 

Happy 2013!

Happy New Year all!

Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and New Years back home in the states! It was pretty awesome around here, although a little more unusual than years past.

I worked on Christmas day, which wasn't so bad... it was a little hectic, we had 110 guests on the boat when we normally top it off around 95. Most of the people on the boat couldn't swim, which always makes life a little challenging. But everyone was festive and in a good mood. All the crew had on the most ridiculous Christmas hats ever. No one can be sad when you have a foot tall Christmas tree hat on your head. When we got back into the dock at the end of the day and got the boat all cleaned up, I  found these two lost-looking Americans waiting at the dock for me! My parents had arrived!

Had a great time with them... had calamari for Christmas dinner at a cafe on the Esplanade, had a couple of glasses of wine and they passed out. 30 hours of traveling will wear you out! I met up with the "Orphan Christmas Party"... the party the boat crew had for everyone that didn't have family around. I had family around... they just went to bed at 8 o'clock... haha. It was actually an awesome party... complete with fake snow, water guns and Nerf guns.

They spent the week playing tourist in Cairns and the surrounding areas. I had a couple of days off work, so we spent one day in Kuranda in the rainforest, a day at the beach in Port Douglas and a day whitewater rafting in Tully! It was all a lot of fun and great time to spend with Mom and Dad again. It was fun to play tourist a little bit! When I was back at work, they came out on the boat with us a couple of times and met all the ridiculous crew and spent some good quality time at the Pier Bar, our daily afternoon stop after work.

Had a great New Years with my parents and with some of my friends from the boat... watched the fireworks over the water at the lagoon on midnight and wandered around town a bit... work at 645 New Years Day? Not so much fun. A bit of a hangover cruise for all parties, but we did alright!

Mom and Dad left on the 2nd :( It was great to have them in town for a while and I think they really enjoyed Australia. I wouldn't be surprised to see them here again before my year out here is up!

Hope everyone had a great New Years. Here's to a great 2013!

Love and fishes!

Merry Christmas from the other side of the world

So I've been at my new for a couple weeks now, and it's been awesome. Really really fun job, really great people that I'm working with. AND on top of all that, I get to snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef.

My job has so far been everything that I initially thought it would be, with a few added responsibilities like running the barbecue for breakfast... aka cooking eggs and bacon for 80+ people. The first day I was on BBQ duty wasn't very pretty, but its getting better! My eggs are looking more and more edible by day! Lucky they get put into a bacon and egg sandwich so no one can really see them anyway! 

A few days ago, we had a family on the boat and the dad was in a wheelchair. He had been in a motorcycle accident 14 years ago and had broken his spine and become paralyzed from the waist down. Apparently he had asked a bunch of other boats in Cairns if they would take him and he was turned down because dive boats aren't really handicap accessible. Well, we got him on the boat, despite lack of ramps and all that other stuff and everyone was determined to make his day awesome. When we got to our first site, a reef called Hastings, a couple of our divemasters helped carry him down the stairs and got him in the water. I got him set up with a life ring so he could stay floating in the water and still look down and snorkel and led him around in the water. He was SO thrilled to be in the water, he told me he hadn't been in the water in 14 years... no other dive boats would take him so when he went out with his family, they would be able to go snorkeling and he would just hang out on the boat. It was such a great feeling knowing that we were able to give him that experience.

Well, getting ready to spend Christmas down in the southern hemisphere... gotta say, it doesn't really feel festive when its 90 degrees and humid! At least Florida cools down a little bit! I'll be spending my Christmas Eve and Christmas day working on the boat, but its really not so bad! There are far worse places to spend Christmas than the Great Barrier Reef! And after work on Christmas, my parents will be coming to town! Excellent Christmas gift! Can't wait to show them around this ridiculous/wonderful city that is Cairns.

Sending a big Happy Holidays to all my friends and family following this. I hope everyone has an amazing Christmas with lots of love and laughter. Thanks so much for all the love and support on my Australian adventure. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you! I'm sending along as much holiday cheer as I can possibly muster! 

Love and fishes! 

Gainfully Employed!!!!

A job! A job! A job! 

A magical wonderful super-duper JOB! 

So, I was wandering around the docks with my resume in hand a couple days ago, asking the dive boats directly if they needed any help (going to the offices proved unsuccessful). I talked to one boat and they said that their marine biologist was actually leaving in a couple weeks, how would I like to go back to the office in a little bit and talk about the job? 

Ummm... yes please? 

So long story short, I am now the marine biologist on  a boat that does snorkeling and diving day tours!!!!! My job is pretty awesome. I start out in the morning helping out in the kitchen, getting the boat ready for the day, little things along those lines. After the safety briefing, I take over and give a marine biology presentation... just basic stuff like, what a reef is, why they're beneficial, how they're made, what kind of fish are around, what to watch out for, and how you won't get eaten by great white sharks. At the first reef site, I'll be working the snorkel platform, helping snorkelers in and out of the water and leading snorkeling tours for people that can't swim or aren't very good at it (basically dragging them around in the water while they hold on to a life ring). In the afternoon, I lead marine bio snorkel tours, where I take people out, show them cool things and find neat creatures to pick up, like sea cucumbers and hermit crabs and harmless things like that. 

YAY I HAVE A JOB. AND I REALLY LIKE IT. I've been out for two days on the boat now... one training day, and today was my first day on my own (seriously some trial by fire action), but it was good! I think its going to be a really great fit for me right now and I can't be more excited about it. 

Now, with me on the water every day, hopefully I'll be shooting out some entertaining stories about crazy tourists, crazy creatures, and probably crazy crew members! 

Love and fishes!