Month of May in a nutshell...

I had this written awhile ago but forgot to post it! All the pics that I have thus far are on my Picasa sight. I’ll write about my Bundaberg/Melbourne trips sometime this week…


4 June 2009
Hello all! I know I said I wouldn’t get behind on my blog, but it’s just too easy to do. These past couple of weeks have flown by, and I can’t believe that this semester is almost over! I am sorry to say that I haven’t gone on too many adventures over the past couple of weeks, but I’ll try to fill you in on the highlights. I started working in a lab at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences located at UQ. I have a research scholarship which means that I am taught what a group is researching and learn all the tools and experiments they use for research. It has been really interesting and really good practice for me. My PhD supervisor is a very nice German girl, and she is really helping me understand the lab work that I am doing. The group as a whole is looking at the proteins that allow macrophages to fuse together in hopes that they can apply it to future medicines for inflammation problems. The school work load has definitely picked up…I think a lot of classes leave most of the work until the end of the semester. I feel like I have 2-3 assignments due every week, which means my weekends are spent working on papers or studying for tests. I have still managed to dive though, and I ended up getting my advanced open water certification which means I can go deeper and have upped my experience level. We took a weekend trip to Straddie again and did 7 dives that weekend, 5 for the course and 2 for fun. The group taking the course was really interesting…we had some Italians, an English bloke, a Bavarian, a Brazilian and surprisingly a couple of Australians (usually its just international people on dive trips). Another group from the dive club came with us just to do fun diving for the weekend, and we had about 11 different nationalities represented in a group of 24 people which was pretty cool. For the course we had to do five specialty dives: a naturalist dive, navigation dive, night dive, deep dive and drift dive. The naturalist dive consisted of bringing a slate down and naming as many invertebrates, fish, and plants as we could. I had one of the Italians as my buddy, and he ended up drawing pictures of the things he saw because he didn’t know the names of anything. When we got to the surface and looked at the pictures, we realised that every fish he drew looked exactly the same, and most of the plants he named were actually sponges. So in the end we had to make up what we saw in order to pass the dive. The navigation dive was pretty standard; we just relearned how to use our compass and use natural signs to gain a sense of direction. The night dive was really cool, but I think we went down too close to sunset because a lot of the cool night animals weren’t out yet. We did see a really cool cave with a shark sleeping in the back and huge lobsters scuttling all around the sides. The next morning we started with the deep dive and made it down to 31 meters (about 93 feet). It had been storming all night, and I was pretty surprised we ended up diving. The boat ride out was pretty miserable because it was still raining…I felt like we were in the Navy or something. During the deep part of the dive, I kind of got the feeling of nitrogen narcosis, but it was not anywhere near as bad as one of the Italians in our group. He kept trying to blow his whistle through his regulator, and stared at each of us like he had no idea what was going on. It was one of those situations that no one understood at the time, but when we surfaced we laughed at for about 10 minutes. And of course he totally tried to deny that he had gotten narked. The drift dive was probably the coolest dive out of all of them. We found a really good spot that took us right along a wall and over some really brightly coloured soft corals. It felt like I was flying, and it was nice not having to use any effort during the dive. After that dive, we were officially advanced divers and even got certificates for it. The next day’s dives were pretty uneventful...my buddy and I were just happy to make it back to the anchor line each dive. I did my first swim through which didn’t look too pretty on my part but was fun all the same. During the afternoon, three of us took a long walk on the beach which was absolutely gorgeous. The sky looked really ominous because of the storms, but it was still warm and sunny where we were. I was pretty bummed because my camera lens ended up getting a grain of sand in it and totally locked up the lens. The camera store said it would cost $300 to fix and $600 to replace, so I instantly went onto Amazon and got the same camera for $200. Australians are really missing out on the internet suppliers. The University of California advisor in Australia came to UQ during the week and met with each of us personally to make sure none of us were having a terrible time. She then took us all out to a nice Thai place near the Uni, and we were allowed to order whatever we wanted! It was quite a delicious feast, and it was nice to catch up with all the other UC people from UQ. I’m getting sad that most of them are going to be leaving once the semester is over, especially since two of my friends changed from staying for the year to only staying for this semester. I’m just happy that I have made other friends so that I won’t be all alone once they have left. Two weekends ago I went on a day dive to the Tweed River heads and did a shore dive right near where the river meets the ocean. It’s a drift dive along a wall, and there are tons of crevices and big rocks to look into. I saw a really cool colourful eel hiding behind a rock. The day was meant more for making friends and hanging out, so we had a barbeque after and just hung out most of the day. That next week I ended up finishing all the assessment for two of my classes, so now I really only have 2 classes to worry about until finals are over (which is in about a month). I pretty much have my next month and a half planned out, and I am pretty excited about it. June 6-8 I am taking a dive trip up to Bundaberg, which is a couple hours south of Townsville. We’ll be camping for the weekend, and we’ll do 4 dives there with a possible night dive depending on conditions. June 9-13 my friend Kim and I are heading down to Melbourne to experience that city and the Great Ocean Road that spans across the southern coast of Australia. My finals are on June 17 and 23, so I’ll be doing some actual work once I get home from Melbourne. The day after my last final, my friend Tommy and I are heading up to Cairns for a dive trip/rainforest bush walking exploration. We booked a 3 day dive boat cruise that offers 11 dives at a bunch of different dive sites at the reef. I’ve had a bunch of friends tell me it’s amazing, and I am really excited to get to experience the GBR. July 5-12 I’ll be doing my Outback Ecology Field Study course, so I’ll be spending some time with the kangaroos and wallabies in the outback. Then on July 13, I head home for the wedding! I am pretty stoked for all my trips, and I am having troubles getting myself motivated to finish the semester. I have started planning out my next semester’s courses, and I think I am going to take an anatomy course, a marine science course and a Spanish class for fun. I’m also going to write a report and give a presentation about the work I’m doing in the lab, which will count not only as 1 of the 4 courses I have to take for each semester at UQ but also as a whole lab course at UCSD. Right now I am kind of sick with some sort of tonsil thing…it’s not strep, but it hurts pretty badly. Overall though I am still happy and content and am loving my life here in Brisbane. I am always willing to take visitors as well  Alright, I think that’s enough of an information dump! I miss you all, and I can’t wait to see you in the near future!
Love,
Erin