last leg

Hiii readers! Sorry for the lag in updating, again. I'm blogging to you from Cairns, Queensland, our last destination of the journey! We'll be getting certified in scuba diving, starting tomorrow, and then diving for a couple of days out on the Great Barrier Reef...how wild is that? I remember learning about the Great Barrier Reef as a kid, but I can't believe I'll actually be there soon...talk about surreal. But before I have to go, let's see if I can recap my trip really quick since my last update. So the kangaroo feeding ended up just being us watching the guy feed joeys (baby kangaroos) through milk bottles, but we still got to pet them (and I got kissed by one! See Facebook, haha), so that was awesome :) During the rest of our Groovy Grape journey, we got to hike around Uluru, a sacred Aboriginal site that is a giant monolith (super cool!), as well as Kings' Canyon, another awesome hike. I got to make friends with some cool European backpackers during the ride, as well. After Groovy Grape, we flew to Brisbane and then spent 5 days at Chenrezig Buddhist retreat center, set in the lush rainforest atmosphere of Queensland. It wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be--it was really relaxing, and I got to learn a lot about Buddhism from some really nice monks and nuns and artists. Also, I surprised myself by reading four books in 5 days! (Hinds' Feet on High Places, and then three memoirs: Eat Pray Love, Mao's Last Dancer, and Tuesdays with Morrie--all so good!) Altogether a good time, so praise God for that :) The past few days, we've just been doing some free travel again--got to go to Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world, and we also got to learn how to surf in Noosa (a beach town)! That was really sweet and a lot of fun :) Also got to take a couple of awesome hikes in rainforesty areas over the past couple of days (and I spotted a koala high up in a eucalyptus tree! Wheeee). Now we're off to eat dinner and prepare for--you guessed it--the last leg of our trip. Here we go!