Townsville

On Monday morning, I walked to the Greyhound station at 6:30am and boarded a bus to Townsville, Australia to begin my Independent Study Project. The ride took 6 hours, but time flew by, as I managed to sleep for much of the trip. We actually passed several of the placed that I'd been to with the rest of the group, including Mission Beach and 4 Mile Beach. I arrived in Townsville at around 1pm and walked around for two and a half hours before Rachel got in. The town is actually quite lovely, despite what EVERYONE has been telling me. It has real Australians living in it! The town is built on hills so, all the houses are basically hanging of cliffs, overlooking the ocean. In fact, it quite resembles Greece in an abstract kind of way. There is The Strand, which is a long road along the ocean/marina that has luxury apartments, bars, restaurants, and cafe's. And Flinder's Street, which is the walking street with the more backpacker type bars and pubs, restaurants, and clothing shops. It's hard to understand why people don't think this place is awesome.
Today, we tried to hike up Castle Hill, the giant cliff that overlooks the whole city and the ocean, but after walking for an hour trying to find the path, and then in the pouring rain, we decided to attempt the trek another day.
We start work tomorrow at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. A car from AIMS is supposed to pick us up at 7:20am and take us to the research station, which is about 30 minutes South of the city..somewhere in the forest.
I'm definately looking forward to the next month here!