Steve visits Australia

My eleven days with Steve was so much fun and it was really comforting to have a little piece of home in a place still so strange to me. I was so excited to be able to share this experience with someone and create more awesome memories with him. It was really nice to have good tasting food for a week too! (haha)




After he rested up for a couple days, we went to Reef HQ, an aquarium famous for having the world's largest living coral reef system, located in Townsville. It was so cool to see the different kinds of creatures that I didn't see when I went scuba diving and that he has never seen. The next day was really nice, so after some lunch we laid by the hotel pool overlooking the harbor and the city...it was gorgeous.

Our second adventure together was a Saturday night out on the town with my girl friends to celebrate what my 21st should have been like and it was FUN! That morning we got massages, spent some time shopping for his family's souvineers and laid by the pool reading some books before getting ready for the night. We hung-out in Steve's apartment/hotel room for a little while then hit town, pub hopping and it ended up being a perfect night of fun. All the girls met and loved Steve, and he loved being around them, which made me even happier. We spent the day Sunday watching movies, eating junk and recovering from the exhausting dance filled night before ... I love those kind of days :)



Monday we celebrated out 6 month anniversary together. Steve rented a boat for us to tour Magnetic Island (seeing all of the bays ... some of which you can only see from the ocean) snorkeling (my favorite thing to do here) and fishing (his favorite thing to do). The weather was kind of cloudy and crappy, but we still made the best of our day together. It was Steve's first time snorkeling and he was a good sport about it. Although, Queensland is out of stinger season, there are potential jellyfish that can still harm you, so we had to wear really obnoxious stinger suits that looked like fish-net stockings hahaha! The visibility was not so great and Magnetic Island because it is an inner reef flat, so we got out of the water after about 20 minutes. The tour guide fed us some yummy gourmet sandwiches and showed us all of the beautiful bays. He is from Maggie Island, so he knew all of the best places to show us. He was like our personal photographer and every so often found a good spot and told us he would take our picture (very nice). We reached a great fishing area mid afternoon so we started fishing, hoping to catch something worth while. I was the first to catch a fish, but it was a little baby and nothing good to keep. After a couple hours and a couple more spots, our tour guide caught a huge fish and let me reel it in :)! We got to watch the sunset as we headed back to the harbor and then had a very nice dinner to top off the day.


Our last excursion was to Billabong Sanctuary, which is a lot like the Rainforestation I went to when I first arrive in Cairns. Steve got to see koalas, kangaroos, crocodiles, snakes, etc. and don't let him lie ... he liked it! They had quite the variety of animals, so we were able to spend a great afternoon walking through the sanctuary and taking as many pictures as we could... The next few days were full of buying souvenirs for Steve's family, studying and making our time together the best. And it was. It was hard to say good-bye ... again, but I was so thankful that I could share part of this experience with him.

I only have 10 days before I come home! ... good food, Dunkin', driving, my own bed! .... boy am I ready for that!