Alright then, this is a first time blogger in action now. If you can't tell, this is Alex. This blog is about the Year 12 Trip I went on two weeks ago. The Year 12 Trip is a trip for 90 (94 youth came and 10 adult chaperones, 104 people in total) the senior church member teens who just finished school. For the trip we went up North to the Great Barrier Reef area. The reason for the delay in the blogging was that out of the three youth in our ward that went on the trip only one of us took good enough picures. The other two, Kamilla and I, were too busy having fun and being distracted by shops and what not to take decent pictures.

The trip started at 06:00 hours as I was picked up by Kamilla and her mother who drove her and me to the pickup point. From there we traveled on a "5 star" coach bus on an 18 hour trip North stopping every 5 hours for food. The air conditioning on the buses refused to work during most of the day so around mid day those buses got really hot inside. So what do you do on a bus for 18 hours? Sleep was the answer. But for me that was impossible. Due to some strange genetic fault or random mutation I have developed the ability to not be able to sleep on a bus. Honest to goodness I didn't sleep on the whole ride up, no matter how comfortable I was. It gave lots of time to think about the meaning of life. So after 18 hours of pure bliss we arrive at our - 0.5 star camping ground. Okay so they weren't so bad but they were't exactly the Hilton either. When I got back from the whole trip I heard that staying at that area cost us 5 dollars a night per person. Little cabins with bunk beds in them and cheap screens covering the windows and doors to keep out the christmas beetles and other guests in the area. Christmas beetles are little june bug beetles that are a shiny gold/green color and they fly around all over the place, and have a bad habit of falling out of the sky onto a person's head. They kept the trip interesting for most of the girls in the group, and hilarious for the boys. On the first official day up there we took a fancy catamaran boat out to a massive anchored pontoon that was floating by a section of the barrier reef. The boat ride was about two hours long and thankfully the ocean was calm so I didn't get sick. On the pontoon we could swim around in the ocean near the reef, but not completely over it. The company that owned the pontoon had set rope boundaries on where we could and couldn't swim and they didn't want us on top of the reef. So due to that rule I didn't get to use my underwater camera for cool reef pictures. But I did get to save my two companions from my ward. Kamilla got tired of swimming on our way back in to the pontoon so I, being a gentleman, towed her back to the pontoon. My other companion, Maya (pronounced "May-ya"), got tired as well and was behind me and Kamilla so after I dropped off Kamilla I went back out for Maya and towed her back as well. Also on the pontoon there was a water slide set up that went into the ocean. That was fun but got old very quickly. We also went on a glass bottom ride around the reef, which is where most of the reef photos came from. So after swimming around in the ocean and going down the slide a few times we (the Chermside Trio) got tired and changed back into out clothes and went back onto the nice air conditioned catamaran boat. Then for the next two and half hours we played Phase 10. The trip back to the main land seemed shorter, but that was probably due to us being distracted by the game, snack food, and by attempting to sleep directly infront of the air conditioning vent.

The next day we got back onto the fancy catamaran boat and island hopped to two different island resorts. They were alright but there was not much to do at them except swim and wrestle in the big fancy pools. That was an all day excursion. After we returned to camp we ate dinner and kind of had a dance. Nw I say kind of because all of the music was club music and hip-hop.
so dancing was relatively out of the question. So after a few minutes of standing around Kamilla, Maya and I gave up and played Phase 10 for the rest of the night. The next day, our last, we spent in the local beach town. The day was filled with loads of shopping and swimming in the man made lagoon. It was a good ending to a great trip. The next day we all piled back onto the buses and rode home. Once again I couldn't sleep but I didn't mind at all. I had a few interesting conversations with our leaders and just sat and thought again. The most eventful thing on the trip home was that when we stopped for lunch at a park for sandwiches it started to downpur on us and we all piled into a small tunnel for protection. It ended after about 30 minutes and we got back onto the buses and went to a local mall to buy food and new clothes for those who were completely soaked. I got home at quarter to midnight, went home, took a long shower(I know it's supposed to be short showers but i thought after a long drive i deserved it) and fell asleep like a brick. Below are some pictures taken on the second and last day.