Traveling and the beginning

On February 7th I prepared to say goodbye to everyone and everything familiar; my family, my friends, my cell phone and good ol' American food would be absent from my life for the next 5 months. It was a whirlwind of a day. I started out at Newark International Airport and had flight to LA. It was a pretty good flight, considering the nice old man next to me bought me champagne, yum. Once I got to LA I had a bit of trouble in that they made me check my carry-on becasue it was too big, although flying from NJ to LA I had no problems with its size. Once I was all checked in I ventured to the gate where my flight was destined to leave from, only to find out that the flight was delayed another 2 hours. I soon met this girl named Ashley, who is from Kentucky and wierd. We bonded however as we saw Daisy from Rock of Love and her lips that looked like they were sucked down a drain hahahaha. The rest of the night consisted of meeting a ton of new people and playing UNO. The flight to Brisbane from LA was pretty uneventful considering I took some SleepMD and don't remember the plane even taking off. So since our flight was delayed in LA we were going to miss our connecting flight in Brisbane to Cairns. They instead held the plane for 107 of us trying to catch that flight. This would have been fine and dandy however we had to get our luggage and go through customs. We all know that my luck made me one of the last to actually get on the next flight. I thought it was all good until I realized my luggage was still in Brisbane when I got to Cairns, which roughly meant I was in the same cltohs for around 35 hours, gross. We got to our backpackers accomodation (Gilligans), went to dinner and had an early night in. The next day I fianlly got my luggage and showered. It was then that I met Sara, another crazy girl whom I have since become very close with. Day 2 in Cairns consited of going to Rainforestation in which we held a koala, played with roos and went on an army duck tour (we almost died due to the incompetence of our driver, damn you TINA). By the way, we all call ourselves and everybody Tina, its wierd and we know it. After Rainforestation we were on our own, so Ashley, Sara and I were like, well lets go skydiving. Thats right everyone, I jumped form a plane crusing at 14,000 feet and I was the first one out of the plane. 60 seconds plus of free fall and it was AMAZING. I loved every second of it and can't wait to go by myself (I was tandem with and old guy instructor whom I thought might have a heart attack). The next day was our reef adventure day. I went snorkeling over the GBR and saw a sea turtle and a blue-spotted ray, both of which were beautful. I also got to test out my new camera and took a ton of pictures of all the little fishes. This day however I also got second degree sunburn and that is no lie. The pharamacist actually told me I should have gone to the ER, it was that bad. But PawPaw's ointment saved my face, even though most of it fell off. Gross, I know. The next day we headed to Townsville, which is where my next post will tell you about.