Byron Bay was amazing! We woke up around 6:45 in the morning on Saturday to catch the bus into town so that we would be ready for our first surfing lessons at 9:30am. The lessons were so much fun...first we layed on the beach and practiced getting on our board and catching a wave! After that we heading into the water and practiced lifting ourselves up on the boards in the wave...we wernt ready to stand quite yet! lol After a few times of riding the waves laying down it was back to the beach to learn how to stand up on dry land...soon we were splitting up into groups and heading to the ocean to begin surfing like the pros!!! It didn't take long until everyone in our group was standing up and riding the waves...including me :) I was very proud of myself for getting up on about a dozen waves! Catching these waves however, wasn't always a walk on the beach...i had my fair share of wipe outs. Some worse than others...the worse one happened when a guy in the group caught a wave...but didn't look to see if the other surfers were behind him first...that was the first mistake! He ran me over with the board and unfortunately the fins hit me and knocked me back...my feet flipped over my head and the ankle strap got caught on the surf board! This unfortunately hurt my ankle pretty bad and later on in the evening swelled up quite large...yuck! A few other mishaps that happened during surfing was a few jellyfish stings...every group had at least one person...usually more that got stung. No one was seriously hurt thankfully and there are no deadly jellyfish in this area for us to worry about. But in the end it was a great day surfing and I'm ready for my second lesson!
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| This is my surfing group for the day in Byron Bay! |
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| On our way to the beach!!!! |
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| Some how I managed to get put on the guys side of the bus haha |
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| The Beach in Byron Bay where we surfed |
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| The group after we caught some knarly waves!!!! |
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| :) Surfing was so much fun and I couldn't be happier with how well I did :) |
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| My hurt ankle :( YUCK! |
After we got done surfing our group went and had lunch and checked into our hostel! Later that night we headed out to the Cheeky Monkey Bar :) It was a blast...they had dancing on the tables and music along with an amature male stripping...that all of our guys signed up for, it was all clean fun...but it was very humorous to watch them dance on tables!
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| The group at Cheeky Monkey! |
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| Free drinks! |
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| Fun picture! |
The next morning we woke up early again...6:45am so we could be at the scuba shop at 7:15 to head out to our dive location. When we got there we suited up, packed the boat, and piled in a van. Once we got to the beach and unloaded the boat we boarded and headed out to the Julian Rocks! The water wasn't as clear as we would have hoped but we still got to see quite a bit! I tried taking some good pics however, they didn't all turn out so good...ill still post a few of them and hopefully get some better ones next time! We saw stingray, sharks, puffer fish, NEMO, eel, and much more!
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| My Dive Group! |
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| The Boat we took to our dive location...The Julian Rocks of Australia!!! |
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| Puffer Fish!...I didn't get a picture of the sharks we saw...but they were all sleeping in the rocks on the bottom |
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| A school of stingray! |
Scuba diving was quite the adventure and after it was over and we got back to the dive shop we were beyond exhausted! Ww had lunch at subway and then got ice cream and caught the bus home. Once we got home however, we realized our roommate who stayed home was out for the day and locked all the doors...so we had to hangout and take a nap in one of the other cabins until she returned.
With a successful first week here in Australia down i am ready to start classes tomorrow bright and early at 8:30am (Australian Life and Culture). We also have our first field trip tomorrow after class!!! It is still hard to believe I am halfway around the world!
