Shrimp on the Barbie...myth?

So I've been told that the Australian's don't actually do Shrimp on the Barbie...however, they do have wonderful sausages and steaks! Here's me in the morning:

The flag on top is the Australian flag while the one in the lower right corner is New South Wales flag. I'm not sure of the left one.

Today was our orientation to the Uni we're studying at. We met with Matt, technical instructor, when he picked us up from the airport. Today, he introduced us to our professor, Dr. Sharon Harwood.
While we were waiting on Dr. Harwood, we went to the campus coffee shop, where coffee was $4 a cup. Since it isn't as popular in Australia, it's less likely to find and more expensive. I went with a water since I don't have a water bottle for this trip. Whoops -_- Jeff got a Red Bull, which was in a different bottle.

We waited for a little while and finally met her coming down the stairs. The orientation was only for us Americans, which was kind of nice. She got to know us a little bit. We were taken to the International Student Office, where we were lectured on the campus and it's features. We were issued our JCU student cards, with passwords and such for email and blackboard accounts (same as US). They used Outlook Web App for their email too. We then traveled to the library of the campus to take a look.

 

After our orientation at the Uni was finished, Sharon and Matt took us all into Cairns for a Barbeque on the Esplanade. On the way, I grabbed some photos of people driving on the "wrong" side of the road. 

We started toward the city and I saw the hospital. Kind of a crazy looking one, wouldn't you say?

 Here are a couple more pictures of our way into Cairns. Cairns produces lots of Cane and its products. There's a picture of that too.

The first thing we had to check out was this giant mudflat, which would be considered the "real beach" in Cairns.

 Those strange metal fish are part of the "fake beach", called the lagoon. This was conveniently being renovated for a month :( Next, it was lunchtime! If there's one thing I learned, it's that we have incredible chefs for this class we're taking. Matt and Sharon whipped up an Aussie BBQ, complete with dark greens salad, sausages, steak, potato salad, and jam drops for dessert. Absolutely delicious for my first Barbie!

Here's a couple of birds, the names escape me. There was also a random man that bumped into Sharon. He was American, but moved to Australia. Quite interesting, and he exchanged business cards with Sharon. She claimed he was crazy.

 We continued to look around the Esplanade after lunch. Jeff wanted to find the local Harley Davidson shop, so we took a walk. Here are some pictures of the journey.

And you thought Grey Goose was expensive at home....

Some people were tanning nude on the Esplanade.

Most Pharmacies in Australia are called "Chemists", but clearly this one is found in the tourist district of Cairns.

The first and only church I have seen in Australia. They're not particularly religious here.

Seeing this the day before I went into the coral reef was definitely refreshing.

Gilligan's is the local bar that everyone gets wasted at.
Rachel, Jeff and Ken had a beer while I took some pictures.
It was actually a really neat bar, very casual.

There was a open-area food market with plenty of fruit.
We almost bought some passion fruit, but decided not to
since we didn't know if we liked it yet.

Coffee isn't really that popular in Australia.
There were only a couple of places to get it.
Tea was much more plentiful.
This was a hazelnut cappuccino, and it was delicious.
Even though it's small.

Their bus system is WAY nicer, except it runs really late. Bus schedules are completely useless.

After eating dinner at our lodge accommodation, we all went to our rooms to try to organize for the next day. Jeff and I needed to scout out the bus stop that we had to be at in the morning for our reef pick-up. On the way back, Jeff bought some wine for himself. We headed back to the room when we were stopped by a few Australians partying in the courtyard.

We talked to a few of them for a little while. The Americans that had been there all semester were leaving in a couple of days, so there was a keg party going on in the pool area. We joined the party for a short time, but decided to head to bed since we had an early morning the next day.

This concludes day 2! Cheers!