Yarr... do ye have any spare change?

Back on dry land... ohh yeah! I've still got sea legs though... hopefully won't be too long before I can walk in a straight line.

The job wasn't too bad at all... well, the job itself was pretty damn boring, but the people I was working with were great. My job was to assist the technicians, who were implanting... dealies (sigh. I didn't pick up the terminology I guess. Little round white balls so pearls would form) in the oysters. Then I'd take the oyster, put it in a net, then zip tie them to the net so they stayed upright. Then repeated 4-500 times a day. Wooo! Those were the days anyways... fairly boring. There were 4 technicians and four of us assistants... two German guys, an English girl and me. We'd usually keep occupied by pelting each other with oyster guts (which really stain)... and making more zippy ties. The thin zippy ties we had weren't long enough, so we had to put two together. Thousands and thousands of them. It became therapy after a while.

Every day we'd start work at 6:00, and usually finish 4:30-5:00... with a couple breaks for breakfast and lunch in between. After work we'd go fishing, or watch DVD's. Nothing that exciting, but we didn't usually feel like doing much after standing around all day.

Anyways, I've decided to go back out again for another 9 day trip, leaving this Sunday again. It's a pretty good way to save some money, and the food is fantastic. We have a full-time cook for us, Julio from Spain. I've never eaten this well. (sorry Mom and Dad, home cooking is great but...)

Some pictures... there's the boat we were on, the Yardie Creek. Pretty comfortable boat... there were only 17 of us on this trip, normally there's over twenty. Also a slightly blurry shot of us playing with a tiger shark :)





The sharks were cool. I didn't manage to get any pictures of the big one we had around the boat though... there was this small tiger shark and the big one hanging around most of the time we were there. So I didn't go swimming, obviously :) Plus I saw whales, dolphins, sea snakes, turtles... great change of scenery for a while.

Well, the next few days are going to be beach days for sure. I figured that since I'm working on a boat I'd have a chance to work on my tan, but we were indoors the whole time. Sigh. Skin cancer'll have to wait I guess.

Today I'm moving down to a caravan park by the beach and pictching my tent instead of staying at this crappy hostel again... only 10 bucks a night, and I know people with cars there now :) I'll probably be hanging out with the girls back at the hostel most of the time anyways. Thursday night'll be a good one, going to the local club with everyone from the pearl boat, plus all my friends at the hostel. Should be great.

Well, maybe another post before I go if I do anything interesting. Probably not though :)

-Brad