My Overall Impression of "The Land Down Under"

Gosh where to even begin! I feel like I have told you how I feel about everything in my previous blogs already. I might as well wrap it all up into one now. Australia was amazing! I couldn't have ever imagined it being half the trip that it was. The education on the trip was one that could not have been improved in any way possible. The group was PERFECT! The chaperones/chaperone family was AWESOME! The only thing that really sucked was the food, but hey i'm still alive am I not?! Even though I didn't eat much on the trip, I still found myself having the time of my life. The trip wouldn't have been the same without blogger being late to the bus most of the trip because he was eating up those last few seconds of uploading pictures and doing his blog! It wouldn't have been the same without Grant Gardiner saying "Proud of you" and "Karaaaa" at the perfect moments. It wouldn't have been the same without Michael Wimer's impression of Earl Dibbels Jr every single day on the bus. NOTHING would have been the same without every single person that attended this trip including the best sponsors in the world. Thank you to all the people who organized this trip (Mishelle Hay) and all who helped this be financially feasible for me. Until our next trip to Australia guys....Good day mates! :)

Some call them friends...after this trip I call them my Australian family :)

Analyze #2?! NLIS system!

Well, I wrote the food blog..apparently "someone" didn't read/understand the directions on that blog. So, I suppose I will write yet another! :)

I guess that the analyzation of different agricultural principles from Australia to the United States could go on forever. The difference that I was most impacted by was the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS). This system is used in the same was our our eat tag system would be used in the United States. So now your thinking...ok so why do you think its so different then?! It is all electronic! These ear tags are electronic and they have different types of readers that read the ear tags. This special ID number specific for that animal is then transmitted into the Victorian electronic computer system. This unique system has the ability to trace the animal from the producer to the point of slaughter. This system has SO many advantages! The advantages that I see are that their traceability is so much better than the United States. They know where that animal has been from the beginning of its life to the ending point. Also, if there was a disease case (example BSE) they could trace that animal within 2 hours and figure out the source of where the disease originated. This in my opinion is huge! It would be really nice to be able to know this, esp. with the modern day disease problems that we have had. This whole system is built into a data system over the computer.
Now for the disadvantages that I saw in the system. The computer system alone costs the producer $2,000 to have it on site. For a small operation this is just not feasible. Essentially what I see is that the hobby farmer will phase out in Victoria because of this cost. It also cost around $1 per ear tag. That is expensive compared to our ear tags! These are the only problems that I see with the system. It would be really hard to get the "grandpa" farmers in on this system as well just because it has to do with computers. I think that our generation would take to it a lot better than the older generations would because we are more comfortable with the electronic system as we have grown up with it.
Overall, I would call the Victorian system ahead of the times compared to the United States. The traceability on the cattle is just amazing. Even though there are cost disadvantages, I think the overall positives outweigh the negatives. If you would like to learn more about this system then you can visit http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/agriculture/farming-management/nlis. Enjoy!

Here is an example of the different NLIS ear tags! Pretty sweet huh?!

Analyze Australia...What have I been doing?!

Well, guess its time to analyze this trip to Australia. I thought that is what I had been doing throughout the blogs, but I guess it is time for a more detailed version. :) The topic that I choose to analyze that was SOOOO different from America is the food!

Now, lets get to analyzing! It all started with a little dish called chicken schnitzel! Australian's LOVE this dish apparently because it is on every single menu that we ordered off of. I still to this day do not know exactly what chicken schnitzel is. At one point I heard it was fried veil, then I heard it was actual chicken. I never tasted it personally. Every time I looked at it I more felt that gagging feeling than a lets bite into it and see how it taste feeling! The beginning of the trip was a set menu. We had 3 choices. Chicken schnitzel, fish, or veil (all served with chips). I know what your thinking...potato chips, right? NO! They were french fries! I can't tell you how often Kandi Schaake and I lived off of french fries. It was nearly every meal at the beginning. I thought oh things will get better! Nope! We had a couple of meals the whole time that I ate more than french fries. I ate the steak meals. Every single steak meal! Even though it was not the same grain fed beef, it was still a steak! We had a grass fed steak at the emu farm, so that was a different experience. The best steak that we had was at the Spry Shorthorn ranch because it was grain fed beef. :) I will never forget the meal where we went out for seafood. I don't like seafood from the beginning, so I tried the fried shrimp thinking it would be the safe bet (along with many others). We soon found out that nothing was a safe bet if you weren't a seafood fan at this restaurant! My shrimp had eyes and tasted quite fishy! 

My supper attacked me! AHHHH

See told you it had EYES!

My "shrimp" feast!

I still don't know what Hailey was eating...

This was "cooked" salmon...WRONG!

Kyla made her food into art! :)

Biggest grape EVER! And I ate it....

Some sort of dessert?!

Steak time! 

This was by far the biggest thing that affected me on the trip to Australia. Even though I didn't eat much on the trip, I still found myself having the time of my life. The trip wouldn't have been the same without blogger being late to the bus most of the trip because he was eating up those last few seconds of uploading pictures and doing his blog! It wouldn't have been the same without Grant Gardiner saying "Proud of you" and "Karaaaa" at the perfect moments. It wouldn't have been the same without Michael Wimer's impression of Earl Dibbels Jr every single day on the bus. NOTHING would have been the same without every single person that attended this trip including the best sponsors in the world. Thank you to all the people who organized this trip (Mishelle Hay) and all who helped this be financially feasible for me. Until our next trip to Australia guys....Good day mates! :)

Loved this Group!

Flight back home :(

Today is the day that we all are forced to go back to our normal lives. Its time to go back to America, Land of the Free, United States, however you want to say it but in normal terms is called reality. We all woke up and were on the bus by 3:45 this morning. I was still quite sick and not feeling up to par. The boys were so good to me today. I think that almost if not every guy carried my luggage today. That really shows how great of guys we had on this trip. I couldn't thank them enough for doing that for me today. We set off and headed for Brisbane. This was where we said goodbye to Graim. He was a great tour guide and a great gentleman. He insisted on getting some electrolytes in me and bought me a powerade. I think that is a big part of why I began feeling better! After Brisbane, we took board for yet another long 14 hour flight. I didn't sleep much at all. We landed in LA and here is a picture of our plane!

We then flew to Dallas where we would board our last flight back to Kansas. This of course felt like the longest flight because we were all ready to be off of the airplane by this time. We arrived in Kansas and it was there where my mom welcomed me home! :) It was so hard saying goodbye to all of our friends and our amazing sponsors. It was a trip that I will never forget and will be my most memorable college experience. Until my next Australian adventure......So long mates!

Katelyn

Australia down hill. :(

Well, I am writing this blog after the fact of Australia. You might ask yourself why would she be doing that?! Well....its pretty simple. I was upchucking from the second day in Cairns until it was time to board the flight home. Let me set the setting for you....

It started off as an early morning from the beginning. We took a walk to where we would apparently board this ship to go to the Great Barrier Reef. I was sooooo excited for this day. It was one of the things I was looking most forward to....that is until the boat started moving. You know how usually a boat ride can be a little rough. I think we were all expecting that. What I wasn't expecting was what we got....it wasn't a short wave kind of a trip. It was extremely long waves with drops in my stomach at every peak. I was on this boat no more than 5 to 10 minutes, and I knew I was in BIG trouble. All of a sudden, i reached for the front of the seat....I knew it was coming. I couldn't hold it in anymore....I was pukin. I don't know exactly how long that ride was because I was too busy praying it would be over soon, but I think it was somewhere around an hour. It was one of the worst hours of my life. Knowing that you are in a situation that you absolutely can't get out of AND on top of that....knowing that you would have to go through it all over again on the ride home. :( We finally arrived at the (I think they called it green island). It was there where everyone signed up for scuba diving (the one thing I really wanted to do in Australia). I decided the second I stepped off the boat that I would not be scuba diving. I set out with some friends that decided against the scuba diving and did a little bit of snorkeling.

I got a more powerful pill for the next ship ride. I never got sick again, but unfortunately the feeling never went away. We got to the outer reef which was where they all scuba dived. I decided when I got to the outer reef that I would try scubadooing along with Grant and Pake. I do NOT regret my decision. I had a GREAT time and it involved no energy. It was an underwater moped essentially! I wish I had pictures, but they are all on Grant's camera. I will try to post some later hopefully.

The rest of the trip I was sick in bed. A HUGE thank you goes to my amazing sponsor Kandi Schaake and my awesome friend Candace Weeda for helping me and taking care of me the rest of the trip. I can't thank you all enough! Even though the trip didn't end the way I wanted it to, I still had the time of my LIFE and wouldn't change it for the world! Thank you to all my friends that went on the trip and my sponsors for being awesome! Love to all!

Katelyn

Culture time! ;)

Today we got on yet another flight and headed to Cairns! It has been a great trip so far. We got on a (to us is a short 3 hour flight) compared to what flight we have coming in the next couple of days.

Today we took a step back and learned about the Australia Aborigines culture. We landed in Cairns and headed to the Tjapukai Cultural Center to sharpen up on our culture! We started out with a short video explaining their spiritual faiths and what they believe. Some of us listened to it in English...others listening in Chinese and didn't know it until the program was close to being over. This individual just thought that the program was very interpretive! haha It was a very different kind of a belief, but it was interesting to see how they believe the world first began. We then got to see the different cultural dances. This was pretty interesting. We were often hoping that his leather skirt or whatever that was wouldn't be too revealing with him jumping around like that! :/ The next part was the coolest part yet! We got to learn how to throw a boomerang and the spear! Some were very good at it, but most of us...well we stunk at it! :) We rounded out the experience by learning about how they made their weapons and a short digerdo performance!

We then went back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner. This is Hailey Clemons birthday so we headed to this "great" sea food restaurant! It was awful! I thought it would be safe to get the fried shrimp right?? Nooooooo! My shrimp still had EYES! Here is a few pictures to prove how my dinner went! And to answer your question...yes it did come back up later! Until next time, good day mate! :)

SYDNEY!!!!

Well today is a travelling day. We are headed to Sydney. Before we went to Sydney, we took a tour of Charles Sturt University with Dr. Peter Chenoweth.  Dr. Chenoweth was a previous Kansas State University graduate specializing in reproduction. He showed us all of the different units that they had. Eighty students can board their horses at the equine unit. It was a pretty nice unit. The beef cattle unit was developed based on Temple Grandin’s philosophy. They were definitely top of the line facilities. This was surprising considering the university seemed so small. We got to take a tour of the vet med center. This vet school was so awesome! If I had the chance then I would have definitely applied. There facilities are so good I will post pictures, but it will not suffice just how smart they put things together, esp. their equine part. I cannot apply there because they are not a credited university.  My license could not transfer back to the United States. I guess I will just have to stick to staying in the USA for that one!  Our last thing we did was finally got to see a real sheep dog work. It was a really cool thing to see, and I wish I had a cattle dog that worked as well as he did.

We then loaded up on the bus and headed for Sydney! It was a long 5 hour bus ride. Most of us slept a lot of the way. We finally got to eat some American fast food. It was KFC, and it was yummy!

When we arrived in Sydney we checked into our hotel. WOW! Talk about nice. We finally got a beautiful hotel room. It made up for all of the other hotels that have not exactly been “5 stars”. Sydney is something that I will never forget. The best way I can describe it is to think of New York City and double the size. It was a lot of city life, but the architecture was just amazing!

Unfortunately, we only got to spend half a day in Sydney. When we arrived, we checked into the hotel and only had two hours of free time. I used that free time to finally do some shopping. I got some really cool things and cant wait to show you all when I get home.

After shopping we boarded a cruise ship. We took a ride on the Sydney Harbor. We got to see Sydney’s famous bridge, the famous Opera House, and all the skyscrapers that Sydney had to offer. The meal was a very elegant 3 course meal. I had a lot of chicken.  We got to go see the sights out on the deck of the ship. Unfortunately, the pictures didn’t turn out the best since it was so dark. No words could describe how awesome of an experience that was to see out on the water.

I rounded out the evening by going shopping with Kandi, Scott, and Hailey. I headed up to bed shortly after so that I could reorganize my suitcase for tomorrow’s big flight. All aboard the next flight to Cairns! Beach time!

Fun in the Sun  

Aussie food....gettin better! ;)

Today was another really educational day. We started off the day by having a bit of breakfast at the hotel. This morning we all phoned home from the Ipad’s since we had free internet connection. It was good to at least say hi . We headed out and went to the sale yard in Wagga Wagga. The sale yard was definitely different from America. The auctioneer didn’t really auction anything. They more screamed out numbers. The buyers all had desks with phones too. Like I said, it was an extremely different set up. They can run 500 head of cattle through the yards in an hour. They were very efficient. The data was all up electronically, so they didn’t say much about the animals they just sold them. This picked up the speed on how fast they sold each lot. I wish I could say more about the sale yards, but I was in the back and couldn’t really hear the guy that was speaking with us.

Something that was cool about today was that we got to see a completely integrated system on all different levels. These steps were all the way from the feed yard to the packing plant. After we went to the sale yards, we went across the street to the Cargill abattoir (in American terms a slaughter plant). JBS (the slaughter plant we visited a couple days ago) is Cargill’s biggest competitor. Cargill is an American company, so it was interesting to see the comparisons between the two slaughter houses. One thing that was really weird was that they process the reticulum and omasum. Delicacy! They also process a lot of tongue and tail.  I would say more technical differences, but just like I did with JBS I want to respect Cargill’s privacy.  This tour worked out a lot better because they were able to break us up into small groups, so that we could hear the tour guide. They employ around 4,000 people and have 600 at the Wagga Wagga plant. 

After visiting the plant, we headed to have a nice lunch in the town of Temora. I had lasagna. Delicious! We got an hour to do a bit of shopping. That would have been really cool had there been any shops in that town. Anyways, after eating we headed out to the Cargill feed lot. We all felt at home at the feed lot. The cattle were being treated with HGP and operated in the way that a Kansas feed lot would be ran. It was mostly black cattle which is different than the farms we have went to so far. They were running 15,000 head with a capacity of 17,000 head of cattle. Something that is very different is that feed lots are required to do  a washing process. This gets most of the mud off of the animal before being processed. If we did that in America, we would be scrubbing for a while! Haha No they just spray them down with a couple hoses before slaughter.

Tomorrow we head to Sydney! It is a 5 hour drive, so the blogging will probably be limited again with no WIFI. Until next time good day mates!

Katelyn

More Farm Tours In The Land Down Under!

Today was a busy day in Australia! It seems to be getting busier and busier each day. The food is also getting better and better! Thank goodness. I thought I was going to famish there for a while!

This is our group at the Emu ranch!

We got to see some of the Albury night life last night. We all had a really fun time spending time together. It is amazing how well our group really gets along. It is like we are all family! I know that I will definitely miss all of them when this experience is over.

Having fun in Albury

The day started out with leaving the hotel, getting some breakfast, and another long bus ride to see a sheep farm called Trigger Vale. This sheep farm owned around 4,000 head of Moreno and white face Suffolk lambs. They were extremely focused on performance data. The wool was unbelievable. Never will I feel wool like I felt today. It just blows our wool out of the water. It was so soft and so clean!  There was also an adorable bottle lamb that was running around the farm for us to pet and take pictures with.

Me and the baby lamb Tom! :) 

After the sheep farm, we headed to Marrocka Emu Farm. This was definitely an experience! We came up to the pasture to see them, and they all started ffighting. I don’t mean like pecking every once in a while. It was hardcore attacking each other. It was kind of scary, but it was normal because it is mating season and they are extremely territorial. We also learned that they use the Emu’s mostly for the oil they produce. At this particular farm, he said those Emu’s would produce $25,000 annually in just oil production. Plus, they lay green eggs! How cool is that?! They also served us a nice steak lunch before we left. The scenery was once again very beautiful.

The Emu's were fighting! 

After this we rounded out our night at the Spry Shorthorns. This was, in my opinion, the best cattle operation we have seen thus far. They had really nice stock at this facility. The bulls that were presented for us to see were very high quality. One of the bulls just got done winning the Sydney Royal. This farm was extremely well versed on the industry and educated us very well. After we got done learning about their business, we had yet another steak dinner. This steak was different though. It was our first grain fed steak we have ate in Australia. It was a really good tasting steak! After the dinner, we sat around and enjoyed ourselves talking amongst ourselves and the owners of the operation.

Kara and I at the Spry Shorthorn Ranch!

Like I said today was a busy day, but we are all having such a great time. There will be more to come tomorrow!

Katelyn

Day 4 all around the farms!

Today was a long and wet day! We kicked off the morning by trying to blog at McDonalds. Unfortunately, this did not work out. We did still get to eat a good ol fashion American breakfast…aka hotcakes! 

After eating breakfast, we got on the bus for a couple of hours and headed to Lawson Angus Ranch. This is a ranch that has a partnership with Gardner Angus Ranch located in Kansas. This was cool to see some cattle that had genetics that were cased off of one of the other kids on the trip (Grant Gardner) in Australia! That  really says a lot about their program and how successful the Gardner Angus Ranch has been both in the United States and worldwide! We rounded out the trip and headed to have hot chocolate and cookies at a local coffee shop.

After visiting the ranch, we had another two hour bus ride to Lima Park. This was a Hereford and sheep operation. The managers name was Hamish McMillan and he was really funny. He singled me out and thought I was the trouble maker of the group. I have no idea why he would think such a thing! I’m a little angel! Anyways, back to the task at hand. This was a hormone free and emphasized he ran a low stress management. This was a very different operation. The calves are grass fed and handled very minimally.  They were also very large cattle averaging around 2200 pounds. To say the least they didn’t miss a meal. The sheep part of the operation was really cool to us Americans. He showed us his sheep sheering barn. That was something that none of us have seen before, and I believe we all enjoyed learning about something that we didn’t have much background on.

We also saw a lot of beautiful scenery on the way that I will upload a picture so you can share a part of Australia with me!

We are now at the hotel and headed to get some dinner. So far every meals options have been fish, chicken, or veil. I REALLY need to get a new menu quickly!  Im hoping for a big juicy steak at some point even if it is grass fed. I am ready for it! Hope that everyone’s week is going great in the USA! I miss you all.  

Day 3 in Seymour!

Well, it is yet another day in Australia. I do have to say it has been the best/ most educational day yet. This morning we went to the meat packing plant called JBS. This plant was amazing. They slaughtered both sheep and beef at this facility. They can process 5,000 sheep and 1200 beef a day! You can only imagine how quickly and how many employees it would take to run a business that can produce that much in a day. They have 600 employees currently working at the Australian JBS. It was much like an assembly line. Each person had a job that they had to do and they were extremely skilled at it. It was pretty funny how the workers reacted when they had visitors. They were excited to see us! One of the workers started talking to me and asking where I was from. I told him America. He said , “Oh America, is your name Dorothy?” haha! They also had packaging machines that were just amazingly quick. It was so cool to see how that machine knew which size of bag to use to package the meat. Something that was a lot different was the marbling in the meat. There virtually is none. They told us that the value added meat is getting really big in Australia. For those of you who don’t know what value added meat is a hormone free meat. I wish I could say more about the differences between the US and the Australian slaughtering differences, but we want to keep JBS privacy as much as possible. JBS does not normally give group tours at all. I asked the tour guide how many he did usually and he said none, so we were VERY honored to be there and would never want to cause any harm to their name.

After we were done touring JBS, we got on the bus and went to lunch at a pub. It was the best meal we have had yet. We had a choice from pork, chicken, or fish. I got the pork and it was really really good. Everyone said that their food was good at this place, so that was nice to have a good meal and get full off of it.

After lunch was done we loaded back up on the bus and headed for Webb Simmental ranch. These people were hilarious and awesome hosts. They had snacks there waiting for us and beverages ready in the fridge. They went above and beyond on hospitality and loved us Americans being there. They talked to us about how small the Simmental breed is in Australia. They are one of the very few who have picked up on the breed. A major difference that we see so far is that Australians hate black cattle. They would rather have red. That was quite the shock for me to hear. They would like the Simmental breed to grow into something special as it had in America. Webb ranch wants to have its name as the starter of the breed in Australia. His quote that I absolutely loved was “Be Bold, Be Daring, Be Different”. It was a great experience to see this farm.

We stay the night in Seymore today. This hotel is very interesting, but we only stay one night here.  There is more to come tomorrow! Hope you all are having a “Good day mate!”

Katelyn

Day 2 Lets Brew!

It is Day 2 in Melbourne! We have had quite the day today. It all started off with some seminars that talked to us about the Australian cattle identification system. The state of Victoria has an electronic ear tag system for identification. We had 3 different people talk to us about the system. This is what we did the first half of the day.

We then took the bus all over Melbourne. We stopped at the Shrine Memorial and it was just awesome. We could see the whole city of Melbourne from the top! I will upload pictures so you can see! :)

Then we went to the St. Patrics Cathedral. This church was AMAZING! Like no other church i have ever seen before. It was the most beautiful architecture! We also went to see Captain Cooks family cottage, but we had to pay to go inside so we didn't do that. We spent a short time at the botanical gardens in the conservatory as well!

The last thing we did for the day was go to the Carlton Brewery. It was there where they package 2 million liters of beer per day. It is the biggest Brewery in Australia. This experience was really really cool to see first hand. After the tour was over we got to taste 4 different kinds of beer. My favorite was the Pear Cider. It was delicious! It tasted like champaign without the bubbles! haha

After we were done eating we went to go eat. Unfortunately, I didn't eat anything because I started to feel really sick. Me and a few other people went back to the hotel early. I woke up this morning and felt a lot better. I hope that I don't get that awful stomach ache back again when I am on the trip of a lifetime! :)

Well that is all for now guys! Thanks for reading my blogs and will talk to you again tomorrow!

Katelyn

The first day in Australia!!!

Starting out on our tour of the wildlife sanctuary.

Hello to all my friends and family! I have finally made it to Australia! YEEHAW! :) It is really hard to get internet here in Australia, so please bear with me! It is actually Wednesday night here in Australia now. The small planes from KC to Dallas then Dallas to LA was a pretty easy flying. The tough ride was of course from LA to Melbourne. It was a 16 hour flight. I slept for around 8 or 9 hours of it. The food was AWFUL! We had a double decker plane. Never have I seen such a huge plane in my life! I played games and watched movies in my down time. Customs was a pretty easy process besides when Wyatt got stopped for beef jerky, but it all turned out okay. Finally we landed in Melbourne and were ready to begin our journey!

The animal hospital at the wildlife sanctuary.

When we got out of customs, our tour guide was sitting there waiting for our arrival. Our first eating stop was McDonalds! I will NEVER take advantage of McDonalds again after my previous trip to Sweden when the food was just different. I had some good hot cakes and the people so far have been really nice in Australia. The first adventure we had today was the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary. It was here where we saw our first kangaroos and koala's. I don't particularly care for zoos but this zoo was so different! My favorite part of the whole thing was the vet wildlife hospital that was incorporated. They work on wild animals brought in from the outside community for free! So not only was that cool, but there were tv's and speakers everywhere to tell what they were performing through the glass. When we were there someone had brought in a porcupine, and they were sedating it while we were there. We also got to feed the birds as they flew onto our arms. FUNNEST FACT OF THE DAY: We were in the gift shop at the wildlife center and I proceeded to see a t shirt that said CRAPMAN on it. I proceeded to ask the gift shop lady why they had this t shirt and what it stood for. He is the "superhero" for recycling toilet paper. She went on to say that he got his name from Thomas Crapper....The inventor of the TOILET! hahahaha! If that isn't funny then I don't know what is.

Downtown Melbourne at night.

Tonight we went out for what we thought was to be a nice dinner. Turns out it was a 3 course meal of which a barely nibbled on any of the 3 course parts...it was some sort of pasta, then it was potatoes and dry chicken, then ended with something that resembled ice cream. Yuck. And we had to pay for our drinks too. :( Well, that is all I have for today everyone. Look forward to talking to you all again tomorrow!

20 More Days...Am I Dreaming?!

Can it really be true??? Is this really possible....I leave for another country in 20 days and counting! It is so hard to believe that I will be traveling to Australia in such a short period of time. I remember signing up to go on the trip. It seemed like it was so long before we would be leaving and now look.....the time is drawing near! 
As the semester has unfolded, my classmates and I have done different presentations on where we will be visiting in Australia. Let me just give you a quick run down of how our trip is going to be one for the books....
We first become familiar with the geography in which we would be traveling. The most important thing I learned was how to correctly pronounce the city names, so I don't sound too much like a tourist!
The history part was knowing that this land was founded by convicts!!! Yikes! :/
The government fun fact was knowing that their is a $20 fine for not voting in Australia.
The economy fact was knowing the different things that were on the currency, so I will not get jipped when paying for my souvenirs!
The sports section was extremely interesting to me as their sports are so different. The most interesting to me was cricket!

The most important thing about the Tropical Rainforest that I learned was the humidity can get up to 90%...will I even be able to breathe?! 
The Great Barrier Reef was my presentation....the coolest known fact was that you can see the GBR from outer space! Dude thats awesome!

When learning about crops, I found the wine part caught me eye! Surprise...surprise! There is $5.5 billion wine exported, and it is produced in every state in Australia!

Talking about the slaughtering of animals was so different to me. I cannot wrap my head around visiting both JBS and Cargill and seeing such a tremendous amount of animals being processed every day. They are so efficient and its something that I look forward to seeing the most.
The livestock sales were fun to watch, as one of my classmates showed a video. It is definitely a lot different than the USA!
We rounded out the semester talking about the different breeds. So far nothing has really caught my eye that they showed to be different besides the extreme amount of associations that they provide. 
I am most looking forward to the Great Barrier Reef and seeing such a beautiful body of water. I have never been to anything that could come close to comparing to this. 
Also, I can't wait to get to know my classmates better and enjoy this, what could be, a once in a lifetime experience. 
Flight to Australia....this K State Mate is ready to board!