So I thought I would write a quick blog before my exciting weekend coming up. I will no doubt have a long blog coming back with a TON of pictures. Let’s all hope that I remember my camera battery charger this time. I think forgetting it once at a world class diving spot is enough.
I am almost done with daily aging of otoliths! Shocking. It helps that I ‘only’ have to do 30ish of them instead of the 150ish that there are. I still have to re-read all the larger ones I already did, which were about 200 of those…woooo. Oh and do marginal increment analysis on all of those as well. So needless to say I still have my work cut out for me. I should be starting some of the reproduction work soon, so that should be a nice change to things and another chance to learn something new!
I finished another book! For those of you that don’t know, I don’t ‘read for pleasure’ all that much, haha. I finished The Time Travelers Wife when I first got here and I just read The Lovely Bones. For some reason I didn’t seem to like the latter as much as the rest of the general public. I mean, it was ok, but not really what I was expecting and not in a particularly good way, haha. I still want to see the movie though.
It seems as though the shuffle on my Ipod knows exactly what to play at certain times, it’s getting weird actually. The most recent occurrences include when I was walking to the train station the first weekend, got lost and ended up walking around for an extra hour. About 5 minutes before I actually made it to the train station, the song ‘I would walk 500 miles’ came on. Ridiculous. As I mentioned in the last blog, the Circle of Life came on right as the sun was rising, which (not going to lie) was just epic. And today, I was reading the last otolith before lunch (and as it turned out for the day) and I was just about the start the second and last reading of it when Daft Punk’s ‘One More Time’ came on. The best part of the latter was that they lyrics say ‘we’re gonna celebrate’ right after which I had never particularly noticed before. Haha.
I’ve started cooking a little more since I actually have some time. They made this awesome bulgar wheat chili in NZ and somehow I semi reproduced it using couscous instead. It actually turned out really well! Yay! I also made meatballs for the first time and they were SO good. I know, nothing impressive or that exciting, but hey…I’m starting slow…
Fun Fact:
Australians shorten any words that can possibly be shortened and even some that shouldn’t be. For example, uni instead of university and ta for thanks. The latter might be primarily a British thing, but it took me forever to figure out what people were saying and why..haha.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Swim meet?! And the Sunshine Coast.
I was going to write a blog before the weekend but I ran out of time since I didn’t actually plan the logistics of the weekend until Thursday night. But since not too much actually happened last week, I decided I would just add a paragraph or two to my weekend blog.
The only thing of consequence that did happen last week was pretty cool actually. As the first part of the title of this blog suggests, it has to do with a swim meet. Now, let me remind you, I haven’t actually swam competitively in roughly 4 years. Keeping that in mind, if all goes well, I will be swimming in a meet on July 4th. What?!
So Wednesday night I decided to go swimming since the pool is open until 7:30 during the week and I didn’t think I was going to be around during the weekend to head in. It ended up being awesome just in the fact that it was a really warm night, again I was swimming outside in a 50 m pool except that this time it was at night under the stars. SO COOL. Anyways, so there I was minding my own business when all these people start coming in to the lanes around me and then a random guy in my lane (when there were still 4 lanes completely open). I realized that it was some sort of group and my first thought was masters but I didn’t know if they had that here. Apparently they do. I asked the woman that was one of the ‘coaches’ if I should move but she assured me just to stay. A couple of laps later we randomly ended up getting into a conversation. Long story short, she gave me references to some cool marine bio places, the email of a science education person and invited me to swim in a carnival (meet) on July 4th with them as a guest. I don’t really know how all that happened, but I’m excited! I think I need to register by Tuesday so I hope she emails me back soon.
The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. The daily lunch ping pong games came to a screeching halt. Probably because Mark isn’t here and he usually initiates and because apparently it’s the end of the financial year and everyone has to reorganize their projects for the coming year, aka its hell week. Unfortunate for me, however, is that the ping pong was one of two things I had to look forward to in a day, haha, the other being going home to eat dinner. Especially now that I started daily counts on the otoliths, I really need something to break up the day. I think I am slowly going insane, or maybe not so slowly. Just to say, the next couple weeks at work are going to be interesting. I am now counting hundreds of tiny little rings in each otolith, oh dear.
Now for the weekend, the fun part. :) As I said, I did basically all the planning the night before I left. It took me like 4 straight hours after work to get all the bus and train schedules sorted out as well as directions and where I was actually going. But it all worked out well! I ended up cutting out a couple things that I was going to do but it was probably all for the best.
So all in all I ended up taking 8 buses/trains in a day and a half, which was actually 5 less than I had originally planned on, which is basically at least 25-30 bucks. Transportation is pretty expensive here, along with everything else. I guess I don’t really know how much public transportation is in the states, but it just seems to be pretty expensive here. Anyways, I left work early on Friday (although apparently leaving at 3 is normal on Fridays here) to catch a train to Nambour then a bus to Noosa Heads. Once I got there I decided to walk around the town a bit to see what was there and to try and locate the general direction of the National Park. The town was hoppin and there were people everywhere. The hostel I stayed in wasn’t like any other hostel I’ve been to. It was all lit up and colorful when I was walking up the hill towards it and it sounded like there were a hundred people there, haha. It was nice though, too bad I was only there for a grand total of 8 hours only 2 of which I was actually asleep. For some reason I was tossing and turning all night. It could have been due to the fact that one of the guys in the room was a mumbling sleeptalker, but still, I usually sleep like a rock. None-the-less, I was getting up at 5 am anyways to try and make it to the Eastern Coast of the National Park to watch the sunrise. Talk about early. It was an awesome walk through at that time though. I thought that walking there in the dark would suck because I couldn’t really see anything, but it actually made it better. 1.) I saw a koala and actually got a picture of it (below) and 2.) I got to see everything on the way back anyways so it was all new. The view walking along at twilight was amazing too. I somehow made it to Hells Gate in 45 minutes when they said it would take 2 hours. Good thing because it was just in time for the sunrise. Let me tell you, if Hells Gate actually looks like that, I’d have no problem going. I went down to Alexandria Cove and stayed there for awhile and took 239401923 pictures. Its amazing how intensely active some people are. At 5:30 in the morning I had 10 people pass me running, by 6:30 there were large groups of runners and by 7 there were runners, walkers, kayakers, swimmers, surfers, etc. Holy crap.
After the National Park, I got on a bus to the Eumundi for the ‘world famous markets’. That was the biggest market I have ever been to, HUGE. Apparently they are the largest in Australia. They were basically the size of the entire town, maybe not quite that large but you catch my drift. It was really awesome, I love markets. Got a few cool things, but probably spent more money on food. I had what was called a potato springy, which was described as chips (fries) on a stick, but was basically a potato cut in a spiral on a stick and fried. So good! I also had a lime macadamia cupcake. Sounds kind of weird but was really good, the lime was in the butter frosting. I met some cool people and heard some didgeridoo music and ended up buying a CD from a guy that played that as well as the saxophone, piano, drums and flute. He also had some of the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, it was crazy. Oh I also saw a guy wearing a koala costume with a shirt on that said ‘butt hunter’ and he was dragging a little red wagon picking up cigarette butts, so funny. I wish I got a picture.
My next adventure was to Nambour which I was going to go to the Big Pineapple, apparently a giant pineapple building with orchards and an animal farm. I didn’t end up going since I only had an hour and a half and according to the bus driver I should spend more like 3 hours there. Also the 5 minute bus ride would have been 7 bucks return and if the bus were late getting back I would have missed the only train to where I was staying Saturday night. So instead I took a bus to Caloundra (instead of the train to Landsborough and bus to Caloundra) which ended up being cheaper, shorter and easier. Since I made it to the hostel in Caloundra earlier than I thought I would, I had time to wander around the town a little bit. Compared to Noosa it was dead, not many people out and about. The hostel itself wasn’t as nice as the one in Noosa but I ended up liking it better. It was quieter and I got a free BBQ dinner and it wasn’t like the ‘dinner’ we had in the hostel in Auckland either. It was literally hot dogs, burgers, chicken and potatoes, pretty much enough food for 3 times the people there. Everyone there was really nice and I had some good conversations with people. There were a couple guys from NZ! Sweet as. I played some pool on the worst pool table that ever existed with a ‘cue ball’ that was more like an oversized golf ball. I eventually got all of them in though. I decided to wake up early again for the sunrise on Golden Beach, I can’t believe I actually got up two mornings in a row, shocking. For future reference, the broadway version of the Circle of Life is an epic song to watch the sunrise too, haha. I had my ipod on shuffle and it came on right when the sun was coming up. Side note, I am still dying to see Lion King on Broadway, it would be SO awesome. Maybe one of these days.
There were also markets in Caloundra this morning. This country really likes markets. What was funny was that some of the stalls that were in Eumundi were in Caloundra, like the same people (the potato springy people for example). I was going to go to the Glasshouse Mountains mid-day, but I ended up not going even though I really wanted to go hiking. But I decided (1) I shouldn’t push my knee, esp since I had been walking so much, (2) I was alone and its generally not a good idea to hike by yourself even though I would have anyways, (3) it would be ~45 minute walk to trail head down a dodgy, in-the-middle-of-nowhere road, again, alone and (4) I was already exhausted from lack of sleep and a steep hike wasn’t really in my cards, haha. Maybe I’ll make it up there at some point, but if not, it’s not too big of deal.
I got home 7 hours earlier than I thought I would so I had time to chill before this week of work which will no doubt be an interesting one. Sorry for the length of this blog! Unless something cool happens this week I probably won’t blog till after my weekend at the reef (hopefully this next weekend)!!!
Fun Fact:
The parking spots along streets here are designed for backing into, some members of my family would epically fail, including myself.
Koala!!
Walk in the Noosa National Park at dawn
Hells Gate
Alexandria Cove
Caloundra
The only thing of consequence that did happen last week was pretty cool actually. As the first part of the title of this blog suggests, it has to do with a swim meet. Now, let me remind you, I haven’t actually swam competitively in roughly 4 years. Keeping that in mind, if all goes well, I will be swimming in a meet on July 4th. What?!
So Wednesday night I decided to go swimming since the pool is open until 7:30 during the week and I didn’t think I was going to be around during the weekend to head in. It ended up being awesome just in the fact that it was a really warm night, again I was swimming outside in a 50 m pool except that this time it was at night under the stars. SO COOL. Anyways, so there I was minding my own business when all these people start coming in to the lanes around me and then a random guy in my lane (when there were still 4 lanes completely open). I realized that it was some sort of group and my first thought was masters but I didn’t know if they had that here. Apparently they do. I asked the woman that was one of the ‘coaches’ if I should move but she assured me just to stay. A couple of laps later we randomly ended up getting into a conversation. Long story short, she gave me references to some cool marine bio places, the email of a science education person and invited me to swim in a carnival (meet) on July 4th with them as a guest. I don’t really know how all that happened, but I’m excited! I think I need to register by Tuesday so I hope she emails me back soon.
The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. The daily lunch ping pong games came to a screeching halt. Probably because Mark isn’t here and he usually initiates and because apparently it’s the end of the financial year and everyone has to reorganize their projects for the coming year, aka its hell week. Unfortunate for me, however, is that the ping pong was one of two things I had to look forward to in a day, haha, the other being going home to eat dinner. Especially now that I started daily counts on the otoliths, I really need something to break up the day. I think I am slowly going insane, or maybe not so slowly. Just to say, the next couple weeks at work are going to be interesting. I am now counting hundreds of tiny little rings in each otolith, oh dear.
Now for the weekend, the fun part. :) As I said, I did basically all the planning the night before I left. It took me like 4 straight hours after work to get all the bus and train schedules sorted out as well as directions and where I was actually going. But it all worked out well! I ended up cutting out a couple things that I was going to do but it was probably all for the best.
So all in all I ended up taking 8 buses/trains in a day and a half, which was actually 5 less than I had originally planned on, which is basically at least 25-30 bucks. Transportation is pretty expensive here, along with everything else. I guess I don’t really know how much public transportation is in the states, but it just seems to be pretty expensive here. Anyways, I left work early on Friday (although apparently leaving at 3 is normal on Fridays here) to catch a train to Nambour then a bus to Noosa Heads. Once I got there I decided to walk around the town a bit to see what was there and to try and locate the general direction of the National Park. The town was hoppin and there were people everywhere. The hostel I stayed in wasn’t like any other hostel I’ve been to. It was all lit up and colorful when I was walking up the hill towards it and it sounded like there were a hundred people there, haha. It was nice though, too bad I was only there for a grand total of 8 hours only 2 of which I was actually asleep. For some reason I was tossing and turning all night. It could have been due to the fact that one of the guys in the room was a mumbling sleeptalker, but still, I usually sleep like a rock. None-the-less, I was getting up at 5 am anyways to try and make it to the Eastern Coast of the National Park to watch the sunrise. Talk about early. It was an awesome walk through at that time though. I thought that walking there in the dark would suck because I couldn’t really see anything, but it actually made it better. 1.) I saw a koala and actually got a picture of it (below) and 2.) I got to see everything on the way back anyways so it was all new. The view walking along at twilight was amazing too. I somehow made it to Hells Gate in 45 minutes when they said it would take 2 hours. Good thing because it was just in time for the sunrise. Let me tell you, if Hells Gate actually looks like that, I’d have no problem going. I went down to Alexandria Cove and stayed there for awhile and took 239401923 pictures. Its amazing how intensely active some people are. At 5:30 in the morning I had 10 people pass me running, by 6:30 there were large groups of runners and by 7 there were runners, walkers, kayakers, swimmers, surfers, etc. Holy crap.
After the National Park, I got on a bus to the Eumundi for the ‘world famous markets’. That was the biggest market I have ever been to, HUGE. Apparently they are the largest in Australia. They were basically the size of the entire town, maybe not quite that large but you catch my drift. It was really awesome, I love markets. Got a few cool things, but probably spent more money on food. I had what was called a potato springy, which was described as chips (fries) on a stick, but was basically a potato cut in a spiral on a stick and fried. So good! I also had a lime macadamia cupcake. Sounds kind of weird but was really good, the lime was in the butter frosting. I met some cool people and heard some didgeridoo music and ended up buying a CD from a guy that played that as well as the saxophone, piano, drums and flute. He also had some of the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, it was crazy. Oh I also saw a guy wearing a koala costume with a shirt on that said ‘butt hunter’ and he was dragging a little red wagon picking up cigarette butts, so funny. I wish I got a picture.
My next adventure was to Nambour which I was going to go to the Big Pineapple, apparently a giant pineapple building with orchards and an animal farm. I didn’t end up going since I only had an hour and a half and according to the bus driver I should spend more like 3 hours there. Also the 5 minute bus ride would have been 7 bucks return and if the bus were late getting back I would have missed the only train to where I was staying Saturday night. So instead I took a bus to Caloundra (instead of the train to Landsborough and bus to Caloundra) which ended up being cheaper, shorter and easier. Since I made it to the hostel in Caloundra earlier than I thought I would, I had time to wander around the town a little bit. Compared to Noosa it was dead, not many people out and about. The hostel itself wasn’t as nice as the one in Noosa but I ended up liking it better. It was quieter and I got a free BBQ dinner and it wasn’t like the ‘dinner’ we had in the hostel in Auckland either. It was literally hot dogs, burgers, chicken and potatoes, pretty much enough food for 3 times the people there. Everyone there was really nice and I had some good conversations with people. There were a couple guys from NZ! Sweet as. I played some pool on the worst pool table that ever existed with a ‘cue ball’ that was more like an oversized golf ball. I eventually got all of them in though. I decided to wake up early again for the sunrise on Golden Beach, I can’t believe I actually got up two mornings in a row, shocking. For future reference, the broadway version of the Circle of Life is an epic song to watch the sunrise too, haha. I had my ipod on shuffle and it came on right when the sun was coming up. Side note, I am still dying to see Lion King on Broadway, it would be SO awesome. Maybe one of these days.
There were also markets in Caloundra this morning. This country really likes markets. What was funny was that some of the stalls that were in Eumundi were in Caloundra, like the same people (the potato springy people for example). I was going to go to the Glasshouse Mountains mid-day, but I ended up not going even though I really wanted to go hiking. But I decided (1) I shouldn’t push my knee, esp since I had been walking so much, (2) I was alone and its generally not a good idea to hike by yourself even though I would have anyways, (3) it would be ~45 minute walk to trail head down a dodgy, in-the-middle-of-nowhere road, again, alone and (4) I was already exhausted from lack of sleep and a steep hike wasn’t really in my cards, haha. Maybe I’ll make it up there at some point, but if not, it’s not too big of deal.
I got home 7 hours earlier than I thought I would so I had time to chill before this week of work which will no doubt be an interesting one. Sorry for the length of this blog! Unless something cool happens this week I probably won’t blog till after my weekend at the reef (hopefully this next weekend)!!!
Fun Fact:
The parking spots along streets here are designed for backing into, some members of my family would epically fail, including myself.
Koala!!
Walk in the Noosa National Park at dawn
Hells Gate
Alexandria Cove
Caloundra
Sunday, May 30, 2010
I'm seeing double...
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.
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 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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