Or at least I will be soon. I now spend my days at work staring down a microscope and at a computer screen counting rings on otoliths that are generally assumed to be unreadable, ironic? Maybe not entirely unreadable, but compared to other fish otoliths they definitely are. Gary, one of my supervisors, got me started on aging stuff mid-week and approximately 10 seconds after focusing the first slide he said ‘Oh, now I remember why I didn’t do these…’ Yeah, well stated Gary, well stated. Not going to lie, it is really cool and interesting but it’s pretty difficult. It’s a bit subjective and makes me paranoid since I will have to redo them all again to see if my second run through shows similar ages (so that I am consistent and not guessing). So basically I am dreading the second run through for that reason as well as the fact that there are a couple hundred of these things. Ha, ha…ha. Oh and with the smaller ones, I get to count daily rings. As in, hundreds of little tiny lines for each otolith. Oh dear.
In other news, last week absolutely flew by surprisingly enough. Even though I am just in the lab all day counting rings, it seems to go by pretty quickly. There has been daily ping pong during lunch which definitely helps break up the day. It’s really fun! I think I am getting better too, that or my moments of luck are increasing in frequency.
A few people at work headed to a pub near work again on Friday, so that was fun. A couple of us ended up staying a bit later just hanging out and listening to the one-man-band. He wasn’t bad actually, just covered songs though, nothing of his own. It was great just hanging out and people watching. A couple hours into it and some people were definitely feeling good. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a large group of adults boogie, rather funny actually. I now know what I will look like in 20 to 30 years. Bring it on, haha
I found some outlets!! Thank goodness because I really needed some new clothes. I have gotten really tired of wearing the same 5 shirts I have here, which I had already been wearing consistently in NZ for 3 months. I actually got some pretty good deals which is good. It ended up raining for most of the day so it was a perfect shopping day. I love shopping. :) Today I did a little more shopping as well. Mostly for food, which unfortunately means more than enough money spent this weekend. It’s seriously ridiculous how much groceries cost here, boo.
Today was a gorgeous day and I finally got myself over to the lap pool here after walking around town for a bit. Cleveland just got even better. The facility is less than a five minute walk from the house, has outdoor pools that are slightly heated in the ‘winter’ and an indoor gym. Oh and did I mention that they have BOTH an eight-lane 25 meter pool and an eight-lane 50 meter pool. What?! So awesome. I am so out of shape but it definitely felt good to swim, although, half way through my arms felt like lead blocks and I could have sworn that they were going to fall off.
I’m getting a little annoyed because I can’t really figure out if I will be able to make it to the Great Barrier Reef or not. I am DYING to go but I would need to fly to Cairns which is difficult enough when I potentially can only get a 3 day weekend. It will also be relatively expensive, but if I could work it out I don’t really care. I want to go so bad! :( I guess we’ll see what happens, but if it happens it’s most likely going to be one of those spontaneous moments. I really should have planned a week afterwards to travel, I was going to and for whatever reason didn’t end up doing so, boo. I will definitely be coming back here sooner rather than later in any way, shape or form that I can though.
Oh, I finally added pictures to a couple of the previous blogs so go check those out if you are interested. :)
Fun Fact:
Leonard Cohen is going to be in Brisbane for a concert on my birthday, too bad I won’t be here for it…not. I laughed hysterically the first time I saw the commercial for it though. So funny.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Into the City!
I decided I would blog again since I had a sweet day yesterday. That and I don’t want to do the work I should probably be doing and this seemed like a good procrastinator until Bones and House are on. :)
I went into the city yesterday (Brisbane) and it turned out to be a really good day AND I made it back home. I actually had more trouble getting to the train station in Cleveland than finding my way to anything else during the day, fail. If you don’t already know, I am HORRIBLE with direction especially if it is going somewhere I should know how to get to. For example, the train station in town is a 15-20 minute walk from the house but I left with half an hour to spare, just in case. Apparently that wasn’t enough. Somehow I managed to completely miss the train station (which by the way I have walked past about 10 times since being here) and ended up at work (30-35 min walk from home). Good thing the train leaves every half hour that’s all I have to say. Side note, the train station was in view when, for some reason, I decided to walk the other direction…yeahhh.
Anyways, when I finally got to the train station I found out it was only 10 bucks for the ticket, including the return and I could apparently ride the train all day in whatever direction, coolio. I thought it was going to be $10 each way. It was roughly a 45 minute ride to South Bank, which was my destination. A few people at work told me to check out the Gallery of Modern Art both in general but also said there was a cool exhibit going on. Boy were they right. Ron Mueck, a famous Australian artist, had an exhibit going on and it was SO cool! He is described as a ‘hyperrealist sculptor’ and makes oddly sized sculptures of people. I say oddly sized because they are rarely to scale of a ‘normal’ human. They are unbelievably realistic though, it’s crazy. Everything, down to the veins of a clenched fist or goose bumps on bare skin, looks incredibly real. The expressions on the faces of the people spark interest and a ton of discussion. It was one of the things I heard people talking about the most, and a video following the exhibit exemplified his attention to the thought-provoking expressions. It was really awesome. The process for making his pieces is ridiculously intricate too. For example, he inserts every single hair one by one with a tiny little instrument so that it looks like it is actually growing out of the skin. Crazy! I have a few pictures that I will eventually put up here. Amazingly they actually allowed photos which was good due to my history of getting in trouble for snapping a few despite warnings and signs, oops.
After that exhibit I wandered around the rest of the gallery and they happened to have a New Zealand section which was pretty cool. It included 4 flat screen TVs with headsets playing episodes of the Flight of the Conchords, epic! I definitely sat down and watched part of one, love that show. They actually had a lot set up in the gallery but I won’t bore you with everything I saw, haha. I left to head to the Greek festival but got sidetracked by the adjoining art museum. They had a hat exhibit. Yes, hats. Some crazy hats for that matter. It was cool to see though, I don’t really understand who would actually wear half of them except maybe Lady Gaga, but I guess that’s not the point. There was a bunch more art in there too but by that point I was starving and just wanted some Greek food, so I left.
I successfully found the festival and it ended up being a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. It was basically a Greek eating/dancing fiesta with a carnival attached. The food was really good, as expected, and I tried honey puffs for the first time. They are literally what they sound like, fried dough puffs with honey and powdered sugar, yummm. I hung around there for a couple hours, they had some dancers which were cool. The best part was when I came back (left to go to the mall/shopping), a belly dancer picked random guys from the crowd and made them try to belly dance, hysterical! It reminded me of when my dad went up with the hula dancers in Hawaii (I still appreciate that dad, haha), so great.
Either I was in the ritzy end of Brisbane shopping, or everything here really is ridiculously more expensive. Every store I went into had tank tops for like $85. What?! I was on Queens St which was really neat actually. It was a long line of shops that were outside with random places where the bigger mall part went inside a huge building and had like 4 stories but it was still open to the outdoors. Kind of hard to describe but it was really cool. The middle of the ‘street’ had open spaces for street performers and such. There was one guy doing magic tricks when I was there. But yeah, needless to say I didn’t buy any clothes, apart from the one Australia shirt I bought at the souvenir shop. I don’t know what it is but I am a magnet to souvenir shops, it’s not good. Everyone better appreciate their gifts, :P Haha Actually I didn't buy too much there, most of the damage was done in NZ.
I headed back to the Greek festival for another hour or so. Somehow I planned it perfectly that when I headed back over the bridge the sun was setting. Awesome. But yeah, that was pretty much they day. Highlights = Ron Mueck exhibit and wandering around the city on a gorgeous day. Lowlight = seeing a mid-aged woman with a ‘Team Jacob’ shirt on.
Brisbane!
This is what they call a pedestrian detour due to road work in Brisbane. In the US? Most likely a dirt pathway...haha
Greek festival!
I still have yet to go on a ferris wheel...one of these days, haha
The city at sunset :)
Fun Fact:
The money down under is really pretty, yes pretty. It is awesomely colourful with cool pictures and designs on them. The US needs to redesign. Also, I usually hate change, but here a handful of change can literally mean 20 bucks.
I went into the city yesterday (Brisbane) and it turned out to be a really good day AND I made it back home. I actually had more trouble getting to the train station in Cleveland than finding my way to anything else during the day, fail. If you don’t already know, I am HORRIBLE with direction especially if it is going somewhere I should know how to get to. For example, the train station in town is a 15-20 minute walk from the house but I left with half an hour to spare, just in case. Apparently that wasn’t enough. Somehow I managed to completely miss the train station (which by the way I have walked past about 10 times since being here) and ended up at work (30-35 min walk from home). Good thing the train leaves every half hour that’s all I have to say. Side note, the train station was in view when, for some reason, I decided to walk the other direction…yeahhh.
Anyways, when I finally got to the train station I found out it was only 10 bucks for the ticket, including the return and I could apparently ride the train all day in whatever direction, coolio. I thought it was going to be $10 each way. It was roughly a 45 minute ride to South Bank, which was my destination. A few people at work told me to check out the Gallery of Modern Art both in general but also said there was a cool exhibit going on. Boy were they right. Ron Mueck, a famous Australian artist, had an exhibit going on and it was SO cool! He is described as a ‘hyperrealist sculptor’ and makes oddly sized sculptures of people. I say oddly sized because they are rarely to scale of a ‘normal’ human. They are unbelievably realistic though, it’s crazy. Everything, down to the veins of a clenched fist or goose bumps on bare skin, looks incredibly real. The expressions on the faces of the people spark interest and a ton of discussion. It was one of the things I heard people talking about the most, and a video following the exhibit exemplified his attention to the thought-provoking expressions. It was really awesome. The process for making his pieces is ridiculously intricate too. For example, he inserts every single hair one by one with a tiny little instrument so that it looks like it is actually growing out of the skin. Crazy! I have a few pictures that I will eventually put up here. Amazingly they actually allowed photos which was good due to my history of getting in trouble for snapping a few despite warnings and signs, oops.
After that exhibit I wandered around the rest of the gallery and they happened to have a New Zealand section which was pretty cool. It included 4 flat screen TVs with headsets playing episodes of the Flight of the Conchords, epic! I definitely sat down and watched part of one, love that show. They actually had a lot set up in the gallery but I won’t bore you with everything I saw, haha. I left to head to the Greek festival but got sidetracked by the adjoining art museum. They had a hat exhibit. Yes, hats. Some crazy hats for that matter. It was cool to see though, I don’t really understand who would actually wear half of them except maybe Lady Gaga, but I guess that’s not the point. There was a bunch more art in there too but by that point I was starving and just wanted some Greek food, so I left.
I successfully found the festival and it ended up being a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. It was basically a Greek eating/dancing fiesta with a carnival attached. The food was really good, as expected, and I tried honey puffs for the first time. They are literally what they sound like, fried dough puffs with honey and powdered sugar, yummm. I hung around there for a couple hours, they had some dancers which were cool. The best part was when I came back (left to go to the mall/shopping), a belly dancer picked random guys from the crowd and made them try to belly dance, hysterical! It reminded me of when my dad went up with the hula dancers in Hawaii (I still appreciate that dad, haha), so great.
Either I was in the ritzy end of Brisbane shopping, or everything here really is ridiculously more expensive. Every store I went into had tank tops for like $85. What?! I was on Queens St which was really neat actually. It was a long line of shops that were outside with random places where the bigger mall part went inside a huge building and had like 4 stories but it was still open to the outdoors. Kind of hard to describe but it was really cool. The middle of the ‘street’ had open spaces for street performers and such. There was one guy doing magic tricks when I was there. But yeah, needless to say I didn’t buy any clothes, apart from the one Australia shirt I bought at the souvenir shop. I don’t know what it is but I am a magnet to souvenir shops, it’s not good. Everyone better appreciate their gifts, :P Haha Actually I didn't buy too much there, most of the damage was done in NZ.
I headed back to the Greek festival for another hour or so. Somehow I planned it perfectly that when I headed back over the bridge the sun was setting. Awesome. But yeah, that was pretty much they day. Highlights = Ron Mueck exhibit and wandering around the city on a gorgeous day. Lowlight = seeing a mid-aged woman with a ‘Team Jacob’ shirt on.
Brisbane!
This is what they call a pedestrian detour due to road work in Brisbane. In the US? Most likely a dirt pathway...haha
Greek festival!
I still have yet to go on a ferris wheel...one of these days, haha
The city at sunset :)
Fun Fact:
The money down under is really pretty, yes pretty. It is awesomely colourful with cool pictures and designs on them. The US needs to redesign. Also, I usually hate change, but here a handful of change can literally mean 20 bucks.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Koalas, dolphins and the pit.
I can’t believe the second week is over already! Looks like this little adventure is going to go by as fast as New Zealand did, unbelievable. I have spent most of my time this week in the pit, rightly named so, since once you go in you never come out. It’s actually hysterical that when you tell someone that you’ll be in the pit if they need to find you, they know exactly where you are talking about and are entirely sympathetic. For the most part I don’t mind it, it’s not unlike any other work in labs, but it does get a little lonely in there. I have had a few visitors the past few days though which helps to break up the day. Oh and it smells pretty raunchy but you get immune to that pretty quickly. It’s just the initial wall of stench you have to be ready for walking in. Oh yeah.
I saw a koala this week at work! SO CUTE! He was just chillin in a tree outside of one of the buildings. I saw a few random people staring up into the tree and I figured id just go about my business and ignore what they were looking at until Christian called me over. Good thing he did, apparently that was his first koala sighting in the 5 years he has lived here. Lucky me. :) I also forgot to mention that we saw some dolphins last weekend (maybe I mentioned it, I don’t remember, haha) on the survey trip I went on. We also saw one this morning. Apparently Morton bay and outlying regions get lots of cool marine life. Apparently mid-June to July they get whales coming through! Hopefully I will plan a trip to Stradbroke Island around the time they come through. I went on a plankton tow/sampling trip this morning and ended up getting soaked, the one day it was suppose to rain all week they decided to go. It was fun none-the-less though and I got away with not really doing any work all day. We got back at lunch, I played some ping-pong, fluffed a bit then left to come home at like 3. Solid. I then got a call to go out for drinks with some people from work. It was an awesome little place that overlooked the bay, we literally had a table right by the water during sunset. Love it.
Have I mentioned how much I love boats? Because I really do. If they weren’t so expensive and such a hassle I would say that I would own one when I am older, but I think I’ll have to bank on knowing someone that does or having one wherever I end up working. It is literally one of my favorite places to be, well anywhere near or on the ocean in general but being on a boat is awesome. (Sorry for those of you that get sea sick) Even when it is pouring out and you I am getting soaked, for some reason I still love it. Everything is so unpredictable, you never know what’s coming next or what you are going to see. One of my favorite things is crashing over waves at high speeds, not particularly good for the boat or my knees, but it is fun all the same. :)
We went to go see Robin Hood last night, it was pretty good I suppose. A little slow and really didn’t need to be that long but it was entertaining. They did a good job making it a different story or different view from the classic Robin Hood story and it was well filmed. However, it is definitely one of those movies that I would only be able to watch every once in awhile.
I decided I am going to head into the city tomorrow for the day and wander around. First I was going to go just to shop for some clothes at the mall, seeing that I have been wearing the same set of clothes for 3 months already. That and I got rid of several things in New Zealand due to lack of packing space. But I found out tonight that there is a Greek festival this weekend in Brisbane! Literally a 15 minute walk from where I was going to be going anyways. Perfect! Apparently there is also a cool modern art gallery around the area as well. Should turn out to be a good day, just pray that I find my way around and make it back home tomorrow night.
Fun Fact:
Australian’s pronounce the word fillet with the ‘t’ at the end, it throws me off every time. Try saying filleted with the ‘t’, it’s weird. Seriously…try it.
I saw a koala this week at work! SO CUTE! He was just chillin in a tree outside of one of the buildings. I saw a few random people staring up into the tree and I figured id just go about my business and ignore what they were looking at until Christian called me over. Good thing he did, apparently that was his first koala sighting in the 5 years he has lived here. Lucky me. :) I also forgot to mention that we saw some dolphins last weekend (maybe I mentioned it, I don’t remember, haha) on the survey trip I went on. We also saw one this morning. Apparently Morton bay and outlying regions get lots of cool marine life. Apparently mid-June to July they get whales coming through! Hopefully I will plan a trip to Stradbroke Island around the time they come through. I went on a plankton tow/sampling trip this morning and ended up getting soaked, the one day it was suppose to rain all week they decided to go. It was fun none-the-less though and I got away with not really doing any work all day. We got back at lunch, I played some ping-pong, fluffed a bit then left to come home at like 3. Solid. I then got a call to go out for drinks with some people from work. It was an awesome little place that overlooked the bay, we literally had a table right by the water during sunset. Love it.
Have I mentioned how much I love boats? Because I really do. If they weren’t so expensive and such a hassle I would say that I would own one when I am older, but I think I’ll have to bank on knowing someone that does or having one wherever I end up working. It is literally one of my favorite places to be, well anywhere near or on the ocean in general but being on a boat is awesome. (Sorry for those of you that get sea sick) Even when it is pouring out and you I am getting soaked, for some reason I still love it. Everything is so unpredictable, you never know what’s coming next or what you are going to see. One of my favorite things is crashing over waves at high speeds, not particularly good for the boat or my knees, but it is fun all the same. :)
We went to go see Robin Hood last night, it was pretty good I suppose. A little slow and really didn’t need to be that long but it was entertaining. They did a good job making it a different story or different view from the classic Robin Hood story and it was well filmed. However, it is definitely one of those movies that I would only be able to watch every once in awhile.
I decided I am going to head into the city tomorrow for the day and wander around. First I was going to go just to shop for some clothes at the mall, seeing that I have been wearing the same set of clothes for 3 months already. That and I got rid of several things in New Zealand due to lack of packing space. But I found out tonight that there is a Greek festival this weekend in Brisbane! Literally a 15 minute walk from where I was going to be going anyways. Perfect! Apparently there is also a cool modern art gallery around the area as well. Should turn out to be a good day, just pray that I find my way around and make it back home tomorrow night.
Fun Fact:
Australian’s pronounce the word fillet with the ‘t’ at the end, it throws me off every time. Try saying filleted with the ‘t’, it’s weird. Seriously…try it.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
AUSTRALIA!!
The end of one adventure, the start of a new. I don’t know if this will be an adventure per se, maybe more of a journey. I hope to make it around to a few cool places on weekends and such, maybe that will make it an adventure, otherwise it’s pretty much like going to work 5 days a week from 9 to 5. My first week was good, the first few days I met a ton of people I don’t remember the names for and did some computer stuff. Shane (one of my supervisors here) had me do some basic growth modeling exercises. I was lost for a little bit, he literally just gave me some books and was like ‘go at it’, but it actually wasn’t too bad. It was cool to see how to transform data into the growth curve, since I had read about it in some papers he gave me and had no idea what it was talking about. He said he will probably try and get me to do a yield-per-recruit model soon which scares me, haha.
The past few days I have been in the lab chopping up fishies, or more like hacksawing fishies. You have not had an arm workout until you’ve had to hacksaw a dolphin fish, let me tell you. As a general overview for those of you I haven’t told, I am studying basic pelagic fish biology (focusing on Golden Trevally) which is part of a bigger project going on a CSIRO. Right now I am extracting the otoliths, stomach and gonads of the fish as well as doing general morphometric measurements. In a week or so I should be starting the age/growth analysis part of the project which involves sectioning and counting the otolith rings, kind of like a tree. After that I will be doing a bit of histology to determine the stage of reproduction and such so that we can better see at what age (and supposed length with length-at-age models) they mature. Cool stuff, at least I think so. It’s all for fisheries management, so like making sure that the minimum size range they are imposing on commercial and recreational fishing practices is legit or if they need to change it.
To back track a little bit, my flight from Auckland turned out to be pretty awesome. I got food, wine and movies…all of which I didn’t expect. Woot! Before the flight I got randomly picked to do an interview about my time in New Zealand, complete with me describing everywhere we went, how we got there and what we did. It took a bit of time but it was cool to kind of mentally go through it again all the way through. He gave me some dvd thing for doing it but I have yet to watch it.
I am renting a room in Shane’s house for the time I am here and so far it has been good. He has a pool and a massage chair… :) And it’s a 10 min walk into town and a 15 min bike ride to work. Sweet deal actually. I am in Cleveland, QLD which is right outside of Brisbane. It’s basically my ideal place to live, right on the bay, near a bigger city and everything you need within walking distance not to mention mostly warm weather all year round and an island with beautiful beaches a 30 min ferry ride away. Now all I need is my friends and family to come join me, hehe :)
I spent the day today with a few guys from CSIRO doing a rec fishing survey around the bay, so I was pretty much straight chillin on a boat, in the ocean, during a gorgeous day. It was fun! I took some pictures that if I ever get my ident and computer at work ill put up here and on facebook. Also, until that happens I can’t skype either, hopefully once I get the computer that will work, we’ll see! For now I’m going to have to stick with this and email though.
Apparently there is a market Sunday mornings so I am going to go check that out tomorrow, should be fun. Hopefully I don’t buy too much, I literally have zero room in my luggage and I was 0.4 kilos under the weight restrictions for my flight. Phew.
I can’t believe I am here doing this internship, hopefully I don’t mess it up! It will definitely be a great experience and I am beginning to see how many great scientists are at CSIRO doing research, so cool. It kind of blows my mind some of the things they do and new ideas they think up. A little overwhelming and kind of puts a damper on what you think you can do personally, haha. It’s all good though, I will definitely learn a ton.
First bird I saw, it was right outside the house in a bush
Stradbroke Island
Morton Island
Sunset!!
Fun Fact:
From like 5-6 pm there are masses of bats flocking somewhere. I haven’t seen so many bats in my life, kinda cool to look up from my bike ride home from work and see them flying. They are quite large too.
The past few days I have been in the lab chopping up fishies, or more like hacksawing fishies. You have not had an arm workout until you’ve had to hacksaw a dolphin fish, let me tell you. As a general overview for those of you I haven’t told, I am studying basic pelagic fish biology (focusing on Golden Trevally) which is part of a bigger project going on a CSIRO. Right now I am extracting the otoliths, stomach and gonads of the fish as well as doing general morphometric measurements. In a week or so I should be starting the age/growth analysis part of the project which involves sectioning and counting the otolith rings, kind of like a tree. After that I will be doing a bit of histology to determine the stage of reproduction and such so that we can better see at what age (and supposed length with length-at-age models) they mature. Cool stuff, at least I think so. It’s all for fisheries management, so like making sure that the minimum size range they are imposing on commercial and recreational fishing practices is legit or if they need to change it.
To back track a little bit, my flight from Auckland turned out to be pretty awesome. I got food, wine and movies…all of which I didn’t expect. Woot! Before the flight I got randomly picked to do an interview about my time in New Zealand, complete with me describing everywhere we went, how we got there and what we did. It took a bit of time but it was cool to kind of mentally go through it again all the way through. He gave me some dvd thing for doing it but I have yet to watch it.
I am renting a room in Shane’s house for the time I am here and so far it has been good. He has a pool and a massage chair… :) And it’s a 10 min walk into town and a 15 min bike ride to work. Sweet deal actually. I am in Cleveland, QLD which is right outside of Brisbane. It’s basically my ideal place to live, right on the bay, near a bigger city and everything you need within walking distance not to mention mostly warm weather all year round and an island with beautiful beaches a 30 min ferry ride away. Now all I need is my friends and family to come join me, hehe :)
I spent the day today with a few guys from CSIRO doing a rec fishing survey around the bay, so I was pretty much straight chillin on a boat, in the ocean, during a gorgeous day. It was fun! I took some pictures that if I ever get my ident and computer at work ill put up here and on facebook. Also, until that happens I can’t skype either, hopefully once I get the computer that will work, we’ll see! For now I’m going to have to stick with this and email though.
Apparently there is a market Sunday mornings so I am going to go check that out tomorrow, should be fun. Hopefully I don’t buy too much, I literally have zero room in my luggage and I was 0.4 kilos under the weight restrictions for my flight. Phew.
I can’t believe I am here doing this internship, hopefully I don’t mess it up! It will definitely be a great experience and I am beginning to see how many great scientists are at CSIRO doing research, so cool. It kind of blows my mind some of the things they do and new ideas they think up. A little overwhelming and kind of puts a damper on what you think you can do personally, haha. It’s all good though, I will definitely learn a ton.
First bird I saw, it was right outside the house in a bush
Stradbroke Island
Morton Island
Sunset!!
Fun Fact:
From like 5-6 pm there are masses of bats flocking somewhere. I haven’t seen so many bats in my life, kinda cool to look up from my bike ride home from work and see them flying. They are quite large too.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
The Final Days
I can’t believe The Quest is over. Like, over. I am sitting in the airport (even though I don’t leave until tomorrow) and it literally feels like I blinked and it was over. Where did those 3 months go? Up until today it has felt like it was going by fast but that we had been here forever, but today it literally feels like we just got here. What is going on?!
We finished our DRP’s and all our presentations went well. My paper ended up being 73 pages. 73 PAGES! Holy crap. Granted, a lot of it was results figures and tables or site maps, but still. I haven’t had a paper that long before, unfortunately I will have papers much longer than that coming my way eventually. Boo. I realized I never mentioned what all the different projects were. Mine was marine debris; we were looking at quantity, type, sources and spatial distribution of debris around the Firth. It was cool, we got some interesting results. There was and education team that worked with the Kaiaua Primary School making a module for a 10 week environmental sustainability program. Frogs, inverts and birds were the lucky ones with traveling to cool places but they seemed to be pretty intense. The frog group wadded through streams counting frogs that were the size of a fingernail. Inverts and birds basically did surveys of quantity and type of animals present in their sites. All of them were pretty cool especially since they all were helping in one way or another.
Our final days were really awesome/sad/surreal. The days following our presentations were filled with group activities and such. They were definitely all about the ‘final group moments’, which is good, but definitely hard to deal with at times. Wednesday night they took us to the Miranda hot pools. So relaxing, I can’t believe we hadn’t gone there before; it was literally 10 km down the road. It was literally a cement pool that has water heated by natural hot springs, pretty awesome. Smelled a little of sulfur, but that’s ok. Definitely not like the smell of Rotorua. They also had us make a card type thing that everyone signed or wrote messages on, exactly like a yearbook. It brought me back to high school, haha. We went to a nice beach on Thursday, ate lunch and played a few games. I think that’s when it hit me that we were leaving, sadness! That night was really awesome though. The staff collected and painted small rocks for all of us and each of them took turns telling a story or memory about everyone. SO CUTE! Liz told mine and it was fabulous. She told a story from Leigh when I saved Ian’s weight belt. She was really good at making it dramatic and awesome, haha. I love Liz! She’s going to come visit me in Australia!!! SO EXCITED! Anyways, it was really great that they did that. We also had a fire that night where we sat around and went through memories and such. Basically a cry fest for myself and a few others. It was a good time though. :)
This morning was a bit rough. We all stood in a circle and Jono and Ria spoke to us. I was doing well considering 10 of the girls were crying, but right when we started saying goodbye to some of the staff and students we weren’t going to see at the airport, I was toast. Definitely sunk in that it was over. Then I started thinking about everything being ‘the last time this..the last time that’. Sad sad sad. Its ok though, we will definitely find a way to see everyone again and if I have anything to do with it, I will be back here in a flash. No doubt about that. If anyone is headed this way, let me know and ill tell you where you should definitely go and what you should do.
About a week ago a few people decided to put everyone into 'Questwarts houses' like Hogwarts...special I know. It was hysterical though. One kid decided to make an EcoQuest jeopardy. It was so awesome. We all dressed in our house colors and he had a ton of questions relating to the Quest. It was complete with both Harry Potter AND Jeopardy music. So much fun!! Gryfindor won though...booooo. They got 2 of the 3 double jeopardys though..not fair. Even Ria and Jono (main directors at EcoQuest) came and dressed up, it was great.
I am leaving for Australia tomorrow, ahhhh. I will describe more about it later as I have a limited amount of internet right now and should stop blabbering on.
Fun Fact:
New Zealand commercials are hysterically non-relevant to the item the commercial is for. Also, there is an epic NZ soap opera called Shortland Street. Worst acting ever. hahaha
We finished our DRP’s and all our presentations went well. My paper ended up being 73 pages. 73 PAGES! Holy crap. Granted, a lot of it was results figures and tables or site maps, but still. I haven’t had a paper that long before, unfortunately I will have papers much longer than that coming my way eventually. Boo. I realized I never mentioned what all the different projects were. Mine was marine debris; we were looking at quantity, type, sources and spatial distribution of debris around the Firth. It was cool, we got some interesting results. There was and education team that worked with the Kaiaua Primary School making a module for a 10 week environmental sustainability program. Frogs, inverts and birds were the lucky ones with traveling to cool places but they seemed to be pretty intense. The frog group wadded through streams counting frogs that were the size of a fingernail. Inverts and birds basically did surveys of quantity and type of animals present in their sites. All of them were pretty cool especially since they all were helping in one way or another.
Our final days were really awesome/sad/surreal. The days following our presentations were filled with group activities and such. They were definitely all about the ‘final group moments’, which is good, but definitely hard to deal with at times. Wednesday night they took us to the Miranda hot pools. So relaxing, I can’t believe we hadn’t gone there before; it was literally 10 km down the road. It was literally a cement pool that has water heated by natural hot springs, pretty awesome. Smelled a little of sulfur, but that’s ok. Definitely not like the smell of Rotorua. They also had us make a card type thing that everyone signed or wrote messages on, exactly like a yearbook. It brought me back to high school, haha. We went to a nice beach on Thursday, ate lunch and played a few games. I think that’s when it hit me that we were leaving, sadness! That night was really awesome though. The staff collected and painted small rocks for all of us and each of them took turns telling a story or memory about everyone. SO CUTE! Liz told mine and it was fabulous. She told a story from Leigh when I saved Ian’s weight belt. She was really good at making it dramatic and awesome, haha. I love Liz! She’s going to come visit me in Australia!!! SO EXCITED! Anyways, it was really great that they did that. We also had a fire that night where we sat around and went through memories and such. Basically a cry fest for myself and a few others. It was a good time though. :)
This morning was a bit rough. We all stood in a circle and Jono and Ria spoke to us. I was doing well considering 10 of the girls were crying, but right when we started saying goodbye to some of the staff and students we weren’t going to see at the airport, I was toast. Definitely sunk in that it was over. Then I started thinking about everything being ‘the last time this..the last time that’. Sad sad sad. Its ok though, we will definitely find a way to see everyone again and if I have anything to do with it, I will be back here in a flash. No doubt about that. If anyone is headed this way, let me know and ill tell you where you should definitely go and what you should do.
About a week ago a few people decided to put everyone into 'Questwarts houses' like Hogwarts...special I know. It was hysterical though. One kid decided to make an EcoQuest jeopardy. It was so awesome. We all dressed in our house colors and he had a ton of questions relating to the Quest. It was complete with both Harry Potter AND Jeopardy music. So much fun!! Gryfindor won though...booooo. They got 2 of the 3 double jeopardys though..not fair. Even Ria and Jono (main directors at EcoQuest) came and dressed up, it was great.
I am leaving for Australia tomorrow, ahhhh. I will describe more about it later as I have a limited amount of internet right now and should stop blabbering on.
Fun Fact:
New Zealand commercials are hysterically non-relevant to the item the commercial is for. Also, there is an epic NZ soap opera called Shortland Street. Worst acting ever. hahaha
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