Great Barrier Reef

Because of Australia's lack of ability to keep up with 21st century technology, I have been without internet for the past ten days, and therefore unable to update you all on my goings-on. This weekend was rather without excitement, which leaves me completely free to travel back to last weekend... by far the most amazing experience I've had here in Australia... The Great Barrier Reef.

To attempt to even begin to explain is impossible. There is not a word to describe the smallness that you feel. You step on to the boat at a normal ratio to the world around you, then you gradually get smaller as you can barely see the coastline, lose the coastline, and become engulfed by the bigness of the skies and the greatness of the waters. As if you were not small enough at this point, you now go underwater and enter into a completely new world, a land of corals and sand and turtles and sharks and more species of fish than you can count, completely surrounding you, constantly reminding you of how much more there is that you can't see and don't know. Giant schools of the most vibrant fish glide past as if you aren't there, lazy turtles slip under your flippers, curious sharks circle to smell you out, and the vast stretches of abodes and niches made from the most amazing variety of colors and textures of coral lure you to explore the life that they contain. Such a humbling feeling. Twice in my life now I have been so struck by natural beauty that I have literally been moved to tears. The beauty and the magnificence is overwhelming and indescribable.

These pictures are but a small, sad, insignificant view, but they will have to suffice