Thursday, April 23rd, 2015 at 11:06am
Hey peoples! Are finals stressing you out yet Miami? I still have a ways to go yet. I found something out today that puts the difficulty level of the academics here as compared to home into perspective:
Australian high distinction (85%-100%) = U.S. A+
Australian distinction (75%-84%) = U.S. A
Australian credit (65%-74%) = U.S. B
Australian pass (50%-64%) = U.S. C
Australian fail (<50%) = U.S. F
Yeah... But I've been pretty on top of my game this week which feels good. I turned in my mid-term this past weekend (due Friday) and I turned in my lab report last night (also due Friday) and I've started working on my data analysis for two more lab reports (due on the 8th and 22nd). Yay productivity!
Also, I'm slightly ashamed to say that it's getting cold here. At night it's getting down to 65 degrees and it feels cold. You know you've been in north Queensland for quite some time when the Minnesota girl calls 65 degrees cold.
Anyways, on to the fun stuff:
This past Saturday I went to Paluma National Park with Dana, Jess and Peter. We drover up into the mountains to this clear water spring called Little Crystal Creek. I have never seen water that clear before. It was so pretty. We went swimming under waterfalls and climbing over rocks and just generally enjoyed life. When we got tired we had a picnic lunch and then headed farther up into the mountains to go hiking on the paths through the rain forest. It started raining while we were hiking but because the trees were so think we could barely feel it. Except of course when Peter or Dana grabbed a tree and shook is so whoever was behind them got soaked lol. It was so quiet there. I mean absolutely silent besides the rain if we stopped walking. The clouds created an eerie fog that was both slightly unnerving and strangely beautiful.
When we returned back to Townsville we dropped our stuff off in our rooms and then went and got pizza. Then we spent the rest of the night at Dana's apartment watching the Hunger Games movies and hanging out. We ended up crashing there for the night. Overall a really great day of just living, you know? No academics to worry about, or anything else to worry about, just going out and living in the present and enjoying life. I've said this at multiple points now but I really don't know what I would do without those three. I'm going to miss them life crazy when I have to head home.
I have so many things coming up. I'll try to keep up with the blogs as best I can. I think the easiest way to talk about all of them is to just make a list:
Tonight Dana, Jess and I are going to see the new Avengers movie!! AHHHH! :D
Saturday, April 25th to Monday, APril 27th I'll be at the Wambiana cattle station for my Australian vertebrate fauna class. We'll be live-trapping animals and learning how to identify them.
Tuesday, April 28th to Friday, May 1st I'll be back at the Orpheus Island Research Station for my reef fish class. We will be doing various field experience practices out on the reef.
Friday, May 8th to Sunday, May 10th I have my Arcadia free event weekend where my study abroad group and I will be going to Tully and Mission beach. We'll be kayaking, swimming, and hiking among other things.
The week of the 10th at some point Dana, Jess, Peter and I will probably go out to dinner somewhere, probably on The Strand, for my b-day.
Friday, May 29th to Sunday, May 31st Dana, Jess and I are renting a condo on Magnetic Island, making some home cooked meals, treating ourselves to a spa day and going shopping and snorkeling. We figured it would be a good idea for out mental stability if we treated ourselves before finals started.
Thursday, June 11th is out last free dinner with our study abroad leader and the rest of my study abroad group.
Friday, June 19th I'm hoping to head back to Magnetic Island and treat myself to some horseback riding on the beach and bareback riding in the ocean to celebrate being done with finals. This is something that had been on my bucket list for a while.
Saturday, June 20th Dana, Jess, Peter and I as dressing up and going out to a nice restaurant as a going away party because sadly I'll have to leave this awesome place at some point.
Monday, June 22nd I fly out of Townsville at 5:50am to head to Brisbane. My flight to LA from Brisbane leaves at 10:25am and arrives in LA at 6:25am west coat time the same day (magic time travel!). My flight from LA to MSP leaves at 1:00pm and gets in around 6:30pm on June 22nd central time zone.
Busy busy busy!
Again, I hope everyone is doing well state-side. For those of you in school right now you're on the final stretch. Hang in there!
Pictures from the park have been posted in the usual spot on my google photos thing (like on the side of the blog) and many of them have been posted to Facebook as well.
Later peoples!
Orpheus Island Research Station and Reef HQ Fieldtrips
Sunday, April 12th, 2015 at 2:04pm
Hey peoples! I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been very very busy. I hope everyone had a nice Easter! Also, don't buy Olympus "waterproof" cameras. Long story short I'll be buying a new camera soon. Thankfully they are the same price AUD here as they are USD back home which means the same camera is cheaper here with the current currency exchange rate.
I went to the Orpheus Island Research Center for my coral reef class over Easter break. I skipped my class on Thursday and went on the first trip. We left at 5am and arrived at the island around 9am. After getting settled in our rooms and going through a safety debriefing, we changed into our wetsuits and spent the rest of the day snorkeling out on the point. We collected competitive interactions data on our coral species (ours was any porites massive species) and the TA's taught us how to identify different coral species in the water. After a shower and dinner we had a quick meeting and looked at the competitive interactions between the corals in the aquariums and then we all crashed for the evening.
The next day we spent the morning learning about all the research projects taking place at the center and took a tour of the center. We spent the afternoon in the water collecting abundance and competitive interactions for our species again. We finished our data collection early and spent a good amount of time relaxing a looking around. It was beautiful, too beautiful for words. I've never seen so many species of coral and fish in the wild before. After a while my partner was getting tired and wanted to head in so one of the TA stayed in the water with me. I was heading out to the edge of the reef to find one of our coral colonies that had grown to over 10m across but the TA stopped me because the currents from the incoming tide were getting stronger. As he came over he had a baby fish following his hand. When he came near me the fish started swimming in front of my hand. Then a second fish joined the first one. The entire way back the two fish swam just in front of my hand. If I lowered one hand they swam over to the other. If I lowered both hands then they swam over to the TA and then back to me when I put my hand back up. When we got closer to another group they swam over to them. At this point I was pretty tired from swimming against the current so I decided to head in. As I swam into the shallows the two little fish popped up in front of my mask and started swimming in front of my hand again. When I sat down they perched by my knee and when I cupped my hands in the water they perched in my hands. It was an amazing experience. That night we presented some of our findings, helped clean up the center and then went to bed. We got up at 5:30am on Saturday to take the boat back to the mainland and then the 2 hour bus ride back to campus. I grabbed some lunch and then took Saturday and Sunday off to recover. We had Good Friday as well as Easter Monday off so I spent Monday working on my lab report. I also had a movie night with some friends that night as well.
As you can probably guess from above, my camera broke from a faulty waterproof seal. Thankfully my memory card survived and I have a card reader on my computer so there are a few pictures posted. I didn't get pictures of the deeper areas where there was a lot more coral so the few pictures I have definitely do not do the area justice. I'm hoping to get some sunset pictures on my second trip there because I have never seen more beautiful sunsets than the ones I saw there.
Yesterday we went to Reef HQ for my reef fish class. We did dry runs of the surveys we'll be doing on Orpheus Island in a couple of weeks. The nice thing is that we don't have an assessment/field report for that trip so it should be relatively relaxed. Anyways, we did species censuses, cleaner wrasse behavioral observations and feeding behavior observations.
That's all for now. The posts will probably less frequent for a while because sadly I have to actually focus on my academics now :p I have a major report/project due every week until finals pretty much so I won't be going out as much. That being said, I should be going to Crystal Creek with some friends next weekend which should be fun :) We were going to go today but I have a major paper worth 20% of my grade due Friday that I need to focus on. Welcome back to the real world :p
Later peoples!
Hey peoples! I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been very very busy. I hope everyone had a nice Easter! Also, don't buy Olympus "waterproof" cameras. Long story short I'll be buying a new camera soon. Thankfully they are the same price AUD here as they are USD back home which means the same camera is cheaper here with the current currency exchange rate.
I went to the Orpheus Island Research Center for my coral reef class over Easter break. I skipped my class on Thursday and went on the first trip. We left at 5am and arrived at the island around 9am. After getting settled in our rooms and going through a safety debriefing, we changed into our wetsuits and spent the rest of the day snorkeling out on the point. We collected competitive interactions data on our coral species (ours was any porites massive species) and the TA's taught us how to identify different coral species in the water. After a shower and dinner we had a quick meeting and looked at the competitive interactions between the corals in the aquariums and then we all crashed for the evening.
The next day we spent the morning learning about all the research projects taking place at the center and took a tour of the center. We spent the afternoon in the water collecting abundance and competitive interactions for our species again. We finished our data collection early and spent a good amount of time relaxing a looking around. It was beautiful, too beautiful for words. I've never seen so many species of coral and fish in the wild before. After a while my partner was getting tired and wanted to head in so one of the TA stayed in the water with me. I was heading out to the edge of the reef to find one of our coral colonies that had grown to over 10m across but the TA stopped me because the currents from the incoming tide were getting stronger. As he came over he had a baby fish following his hand. When he came near me the fish started swimming in front of my hand. Then a second fish joined the first one. The entire way back the two fish swam just in front of my hand. If I lowered one hand they swam over to the other. If I lowered both hands then they swam over to the TA and then back to me when I put my hand back up. When we got closer to another group they swam over to them. At this point I was pretty tired from swimming against the current so I decided to head in. As I swam into the shallows the two little fish popped up in front of my mask and started swimming in front of my hand again. When I sat down they perched by my knee and when I cupped my hands in the water they perched in my hands. It was an amazing experience. That night we presented some of our findings, helped clean up the center and then went to bed. We got up at 5:30am on Saturday to take the boat back to the mainland and then the 2 hour bus ride back to campus. I grabbed some lunch and then took Saturday and Sunday off to recover. We had Good Friday as well as Easter Monday off so I spent Monday working on my lab report. I also had a movie night with some friends that night as well.
As you can probably guess from above, my camera broke from a faulty waterproof seal. Thankfully my memory card survived and I have a card reader on my computer so there are a few pictures posted. I didn't get pictures of the deeper areas where there was a lot more coral so the few pictures I have definitely do not do the area justice. I'm hoping to get some sunset pictures on my second trip there because I have never seen more beautiful sunsets than the ones I saw there.
Yesterday we went to Reef HQ for my reef fish class. We did dry runs of the surveys we'll be doing on Orpheus Island in a couple of weeks. The nice thing is that we don't have an assessment/field report for that trip so it should be relatively relaxed. Anyways, we did species censuses, cleaner wrasse behavioral observations and feeding behavior observations.
That's all for now. The posts will probably less frequent for a while because sadly I have to actually focus on my academics now :p I have a major report/project due every week until finals pretty much so I won't be going out as much. That being said, I should be going to Crystal Creek with some friends next weekend which should be fun :) We were going to go today but I have a major paper worth 20% of my grade due Friday that I need to focus on. Welcome back to the real world :p
Later peoples!
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