I've finally returned from my week-long orientation trip, and we've already done so much - I feel like I've been here forever! Monday, we left Cairns, stopping at the Tjapukai Dance Theatre and the SkyRail on our way North to Port Douglas. The Tjapukai Dance Theatre is an aboriginal cultural center, where we saw a video on the history of the aborigines (with the English invading and killing the people), a performance on the creation stories of the aborigines, and...

G'day from Cairns! After 24 hours in the air and a few crazy moments at the airport (running between flights because of delays, going through customs when we weren't supposed to, thinking we had all lost our bags…), we safely arrived in Cairns (pronounced "cans"), Australia, where I will be based for my fall semester. My program, Natural and Cultural Ecology run by SIT, consists of 15 students (8 girls + 7 boys)from universities across the US, led b...