Home Sweet Home

Today marks my fourth day back in Canada... and my first day that I left my house (for longer than 1 hour).

It has been a long journey back.

My trip home started at 2AM when I woke up for an hour drive to Brisbane.
It was a little hectic as I was flying from Brisbane to Sydney (Domestic) on Qantas Airlines. However once we arrived in the domestic airport, we were told that this particular flight was flying out of the international airport.... off we went RUNNING to the car to make our way to the other airport. Time check 4:10am and the flight was supposed to take off at 5am.

We made it. I checked in my backs while Cait parked the car.
The farewell with Cait was bittersweet. She has been my roommate for 5 months and my friend for over 10 months. I have really bonded with her and she has seen me at my bests and my worsts (whale watching sickness, break down with my last teaching experience etc.).

I boarded that plane and off we went.

After arriving in Sydney I heard there was a delay (noooo!!).
Sydney was experiencing some fog (lots of it) and so the flight I was supposed to board, had to do a landing in Brisbane because it wasn't safe to come into Sydney.

So off we went.. waiting.

Basically I waited an extra 5 hours in the airport when finally we boarded and started our journey to Vancouver.

At this point, I knew I missed my connecting flight in Vancouver to Toronto so I just waited until I heard anything further to assess the situation. Apparently Air Canada was going to arrange my travels for me once I landed in Toronto.

The thing that sucked about traveling back to Canada - I was required to collect my luggage at every stop. So while I was in a race to collect my luggage in Toronto, I had to keep in mind that I was in a race against everyone else to get a seat on the earliest flight out of Vancouver - haha

Turns out that I was too late to get on the 1pm flight and so I boarded the 1:30 flight which was scheduled to touch down in Toronto at 9 PM.

In Toronto, I was so excited to get off the plane. Frankly, I didn't want to be another plane for a very long time! haha I knew I had people waiting for me (expecting my mother, father and sister) but it turned out to be a whole cheering squad!  My mother, father, sister, her fiance, my best friend and my cousin. It was excellent. Truthfully, I always wanted to know how it would feel to be greeted at the airport (I've witnessed a lot of homecoming welcomes and always tear up seeing them). Well let me tell you, it feels great.

Now.. as I've said, I have been home for 4 full days.
Here has been my sleeping schedule:
Day 1: 4:30 am until 11 am then again at 2PM until 4PM
Day 2: 11 PM until 5 am (wooohooo)
Day 3: 7 PM until 10 PM and again 4 am until 11:30 am
Day 4: 2 AM and I am still awake...

This sucks!

Pictures

Noosa National Park

 Canada Day

Fraser Island day trip

Whale Watching

Two days ago I went on a whale watching cruise with two of my friends.

The cruise started at 8am and it was heading to the ocean for 5 hours.
After about 30 minutes on the boat, I started to feel a little uneasy.
The day before I got a little sick off a 6' sub from subway and it completely upset my stomach. Now I'm on a boat that is in the middle of the rough ocean.

We were sitting at the front of the boat and I had to leave.
I tried to walk around the boat and it made me feel (more) sick... so off I went running to the toilet.

I locked myself in that toilet for the next hour (or more).
I have NEVER felt seasickness before and I hope to never have that experience again. After an hour my roommate came looking for me. There was also an employee standing outside the toilet waiting for me (haha). The lady explained to Cait that I was 'violently ill'.
She had a sick bag and a glass of water. I was told that being in the basement of the boat was the worst place to be when you're feeling (or are) sick...that I needed to move upstairs to the fresh air.

But I couldn't move. I could barely lift my head up let alone walk up two flights of stairs.

I felt awful. So sick...constantly throwing up and my body was heating up-  I was dripping with sweat - it was awful. When I was this bad, I knew the rest of this trip was going to be insane. I was only 45 minutes into this boat ride :(

Eventually I heard more and more people getting sick and I knew I had to free up the bathroom for other people. So I walked out and let someone else in - to be sick. I couldn't make it up the stairs so I stayed on the ground floor. Eventually I was sick a couple more times and then made my way to find my roommate. I found Cait and was sick again. For the next 4 hours, I continued to be sick.

She eventually told me that when Cait came down to find me. After leaving the basement, she was also sick. But she was only sick once and then felt ok.
After walking through the first floor, I noticed EVERYONE was sick. If you weren't sick on the boat, you definitely felt like you were going to be.

Yes, I did see some whales but I could barely keep my head up. We went outside and I rested my head on the railing and every so often I'd tilt my head to see the whales.
Thankfully Cait took my camera and took some pictures for me.

Worst ever!

Pictures will be posted soon.

Check!

Helloooo!

I finally got my computer back - woohoo!
It looks beautiful - the shell is completely new :)

Updates:
Fraser Island - CHECK!

On Tuesday I boarded a shuttle heading to Fraser Island (5 am start time).
The island is massive (125 km) that I wasn't expecting. There is life on this island. Perhaps I was a little ignorant with what exactly this island was about.
Here are some facts I learned from our tour guide:

Fraser Island has been an island for about 10,000 years.
It started as a logging, timber site. The original Central station is still there.
Logging only stopped in 1992.
It's now a National Park (97% of it).
The other 3% is privately owned.
It is Aboriginal land.
Fraser is called Fraser Island because of a ship wreck that occurred and husband and wife that landed there, their last name was Fraser. He didn't survive but she did.

There are 2-3 holiday resorts on the island - with many tours that drive through it

The thing I kept having to remind myself was that I was on a island that was made completely out of SAND.
The agriculture that was growing there, it grew in sand.
As the logging company grew, and the market became larger, the people needed to have and plant trees that had a large turn over. There are American type trees on the island, too!

I also saw 2 dingoes. They are a relative of an Asian Wolf. This animal, that looks like a dog, is only found on Fraser.

There are 42 fresh water lakes.
We also visited Lake McKenzie. It has low PH level - great for polishing jewelry.
The grains of the sand is sooooo tiny. I even cleaned my elbows (with only using dry sand). It was beautiful.

Random facts about the trees on Fraser.
There are strangler figs- they latch onto a tree that is already rooted and grow up it. Literally strangling the original tree.
You also see a lot of hallow trees which are usually from termites. Hallow trees are also from lightening. The lightening will hit the top of the tree and fry the inside(s) of the tree. The heat eventually dies down and that's why there is still a frame of the tree left.

I have limited internet but I will post pictures in the next couple of days.