white water rafting

may 16, 2008
hides hotel
11:30 PM

its hard to believe tomorrow is our last full day in australia. i'm a little, no-actually a lot sad to be leaving, but i'm trying to enjoy all of our time here: like today! today may have been my favorite so far.

after visiting the "big" gum boot (representative of all the rainfall in the city of tully), it was time to prepare for white water rafting! i'd never done anything like this before, except maybe the rafting ride in california adventure. =) i was a little nervous, but mostly excited!

after a video on safety, we were reminded about safety on the drive to our starting point on the tully river. i'm felt very attractive and safe (safety hotness!) in my red helmet and bright yellow life jacket.

i loved rafting!! even when we ended up in the water from tipping or practicing floating down the river, i quite enjoyed myself. i started out in the middle of the raft next to amy, with jodi and reneca in front and tyler and amanda behind with our guide, zoe in the back. but i think my favorite was being in the front with tyler. there were a few times where we had to get close and once when i though he was going to push me out, but we were a good team. it was easy to be excited about rafting when sitting next to tyler. our guide kept saying how much she loved our energy. =)

other memorable moments from rafting-
sitting on the edge of the raft to be tipped + being tipped
jumping off the cliff into the water below
carl tackling tyler into the water
carl jumping on our raft in attempt to take reneca in to the water
splashing wars
a delicious lunch of hamburgers, onions and sausages
being dunked by sean and jon

i didn't play spot-o today because the front seat was always occupied by others, but i did enjoy playing 10,000 with amy in a rice bubbles box in a moving minibus. sadly, she won 7 of the 9 games we played-which she was incredibly pleased with herself about. the ride to our hotel was also improved by rice krispies (from the states, otherwise they might have been rice bubbles' treats) from jodi and taking pictures of sleeping people.

dinner was at a bar tonight, since we wanted to redeem our meal tickets as provided by the hotel. for a few extra dollars, i got rump steak accompanied by mashers and salad. tyler, jodi, meagan, joel and amy al got steak too-but all cooked different ways. we were soon joined by reneca, jon and amanda, and later carl, josh, bryan, megan, jennee, sean, stephanie and mason.

then it was time for shopping-i bought sugar in several forms: tim tams, smarties mars bars and golden syrup. yum! the rest of the evening was spent eating caramel tim tams and playing nerts. the first round was played by meagan, amy, jodi and i. the 2nd round included jon and sean, as meagan left. this may be my new favorite game! =)