Thirty One: Week One

The first week after my birthday was filled with mixed emotions. It was a great week. It started with my overnight reef trip on the Rum Runner then continued with a trip to the beach in between shifts one day, lunch the next, then dinner at a fabulous Thai place the next. It was a really good week but there was a cloud on this silver lining. The reason for this flurry of activity was that my young German friend and co-worker was leaving at the end of the week to continue her own Australian adventure by travelling down the east coast.

During her time in Cairns we had often had some interesting conversations. She has a habit of asking the kind of questions that really make you think. In fact my post “Thoughts on Time” was inspired by one such conversation. She loves knowledge and isn’t afraid to discuss ideas that one or neither of us had any clue about. It was fun to try and work out the answers to her questions in the way my friends and I sometimes did when I was at university, I think my brain hasn’t been this well used in years to be honest and I loved it. As well as the more in depth conversations there was our joint love of ice-cream and the odd evening walk down the esplanade. Suffice to say I knew I was really going to miss that girl and I was right.

Sad as I was to say goodbye to another friend I at least had the comfort of knowing that I am pretty good at staying in contact with the people who I really click with. Don’t worry I did warn her that she is now stuck with me even if it is just stalking her on facebook. I was also excited for her as I was sure she was going to have a fabulous time travelling down the east coast. I have twice planned that trip and both times thought it sounds great fun, who knows, one day I might even travel it. Travelling might be one of my passions but for the near future it was not something I had time for.

Despite the loss of another friend life in Cairns was still good. On my next day off I cheered myself up with a wee white water rafting trip down the Tully River. I choose the extreme option which meant that I spent as much time in the water as on it but it was a brilliant day out. We tipped our raft repeatedly, jumped off of cliffs, body surfed and even rode one of the more gentle rapids without our rafts. We were told the day was about team work and thank goodness I was with kind and strong men who were happy to pull me and the other girl back into the raft otherwise I’d have been going down most of the river without the raft! We were such a good team we even recognised and foiled our guides’ final attempt at tipping us over. Well four of us did and two of our group threw themselves in for the hell of it. I love the reef and am looking forward to heading back out sometime soon but it was great to spend a day doing something completely different. Of course when I got home I missed being able to tell my friend all about it but she was one step ahead of me, I logged on to FB and she had left me a message. I told her about my day and she even found time to reply to let me know how she was getting on too.

I couldn’t believe it but February was already at an end but at least I finished the month in style. The next day it was March and that I knew would be a challenge of a very different kind. However that would come when it would and until then I was determined to enjoy my life as much as I could, now what was that about bungee jumping....