Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Month of May in a nutshell...
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
Sunday, April 19, 2009
I am alive
The next weekend (21 March) I had my first field trip for my Australia’s Marine Environment class to Moreton Bay Research Station on North Straddie Island. It was quite an extraordinary trip. The research station is on the bay side of the island and is run by a woman named Kathy who has quite a plethora of knowledge regarding the area. The first day we got there we took a beach walk in front of the station, and I learned so much cool stuff! The first area we explored was a rocky shore region, and our tutor Bonnie did a really good job of pointing out different organisms and relationships that are usually found in that region, including mollusc-eating snails and hermit crabs. We then travelled across a mud flat to a sandy shore and a grassy shore. There were tons of puffer fish and crabs everywhere, and by the end of our exploring there, I was able to identify most of the organisms in that area. Kathy helped us do a seine netting, which is pretty much just walking a long net out into the current then pulling it in so that fish get caught in it. We were able to see some really cool animals that way, like a pajama squid and a blown up puffer fish, but it killed a lot of the fish as well so I wasn’t too keen on doing it again. That night we picked our research project (yes we did work), and my group ended up doing a study on natural rocky shore habitats vs. man made habitats and seeing if there was a difference in species diversity. It ended up being a pretty tedious project, but the presentation of our study ended up winning so I got a cool water bottle from the research station. One of the groups decided to look at species diversity on the sandy shore at night vs. during the day, so I went out and watched them do a seine netting at night. They ended up pulling in some really cool animals, like sting rays and pretty big squid, but because the tide was going out, they ended up killing about a quarter of the fish they caught. People were trying to throw the fish out of the net as quickly as they could, but they weren’t throwing them far enough to reach the water, so all the fish were landing on sand. My friend Tina and I had to do an emergency rescue mission to try to save some of the cool fish that were being suffocated on the sand…we weren’t too happy with the group running the project. The last day Kathy took our group to Point Lookout and Cylinder Beach on the ocean side of the island. It was really cool to have a marine scientist’s perspective on all the relationships between the animals and habitats that we saw. The hike took us along the same ridge I walked along when I went diving there earlier, but then we went and walked along a rocky shore on the beach which I hadn’t done yet. Every tide pool I looked in had some sort of cool animal or plant in it, and I was enjoying being able to identify some of the animals and know a little background to them. We saw a lot of fun stuff that day, including some dolphins playing in the waves. Apparently if I go in late winter here, I’ll be able to see humpback whales migrating south, so needless to say I will be visiting Straddie at the beginning of next semester. The whole weekend really made me consider doing some sort of fieldwork as a career, and marine science is looking more and more appealing every time I get near the water.
The next weekend one of the frisbee guys had his 21st birthday party, which they surprisingly have a big celebration for here. It’s considered a family event where they make speeches and tell funny jokes about the birthday boy. It was a really fun night at a cool venue in the city. The next Friday I went with a group to the Brisbane Forest Park right outside of the city. We drove to a point called Jolly’s Lookout which had a great view of the city and all the way to the bay. We went on an 8 km hike through a eucalyptus forest that had tons of birds and beautiful flowers. The hike wasn’t too hard, but it was quite enjoyable and relaxing.
The weekend of the 4th I was supposed to go diving at Flinders Reef, but it got cancelled due to rain and big swells from a cyclone hitting up north. Queensland has had a surprisingly long wet period, and Brisbane has been getting a good watering for the past couple of weekends. Unichurch was putting on a conference that weekend, so I decided to attend that instead. The speaker was from Canberra and is the chaplain for a team down there called the Brumbies. He went through the book of Philippians and did a chapter by chapter synopsis and analysis which was really insightful. I met a lot of people that I hadn’t seen on Sunday nights, and I felt like I am getting more involved with that church family.
I started off my Easter break this week with a fabulous trip to Heron Island. My Australia’s Marine Environment class went on a field trip to an island on the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef which consists only of a fancy resort and a research station. Not many people get to visit there, so I felt really blessed that I got to experience something like that. However, it really sucked getting to the island…we had to take a 7 hour bus ride during the middle of the night, which meant we lost a night of sleep. Then we took a two hour ferry ride of death that made almost everyone on the boat sea sick. Thankfully, the sea sickness pill, sea bands, and ginger beer I consumed allowed me to go on one of my first sea sick free boat rides! Arriving at the island was kind of magical…you could see this small, green island in the distance with a sunken boat nearby and a giant reef flat surrounding it all. I felt like I was in a movie or something. I spent most of the weekend in a wetsuit snorkelling, diving, or just enjoying the clear water. The second day of the trip we snorkelled around the island and got to see some small sharks and huge sting rays. We also did a walk of the reef flat and got to get a glimpse of what a larger coral reef would look like. It was cool how colourful and vibrant everything was…there were so many different hues and textures to look at. The week continued to be full of snorkelling and diving adventures. One day we went out on a boat snorkel, and I got to see my first true coral reef. It was so cool…I loved peeking inside the coral crevices and seeing all the colourful fish hiding inside. My dive the next day was pretty spectacular as well. Our voyage out was guided by a pod of dolphins, and when I was diving we saw a manta ray, a turtle eating, tons of fish, and huge clams. It was breathtaking to float eye level with a coral bommie and look at all the fish hovering on top. I wish it had been just a little bit sunnier so all the colours were more vibrant (we had a pretty wet weekend). We also did a night snorkel as a group, and I got to see an octopus and giant green sea turtles swimming around. The beach surrounding the island was really nice as well. The sand was a little rough and sticky, but it was so relaxing to sit and look out to clear blue water (even when it was raining). I don’t think I could ever get bored of that island. Even though it only takes about 20 minutes total to run around the island, the sunsets were some of the best ones I have ever seen, and no matter what time of day it was, you could always find something cool to observe from the jetty in the harbour. Whether it was sharks feeding on bait fish or meter long turtles coming up to breathe, I was always very impressed with the wildlife in that small area. The island is also a nesting ground for green turtles, so while we were sitting on the beach at night we could see baby turtles hatching and running to the water! It was overall an amazing weekend, and I feel so lucky that I was able to experience something like that. On the bus ride home, I got to watch a lightning storm for about an hour…I could even see individual bolts from the bus. The bus ride still felt like it took forever though. We got in about 1 am, and I had to wake up the next day for induction at a lab I am going to start volunteering at. It took about five hours to go through all the lectures, quizzes, and tours, but now I get to start doing some fun stuff in a lab on Mondays and Tuesdays.
The rest of my Easter break was spent relaxing and not doing too much. I went to Uni a couple of times to use the internet and hang out with some friends, but I didn’t really end up getting too much work done. One of my friends gave me the most recent season of LOST, so I spent a lot of time sitting on my bed catching up on everything I’ve missed. I finally tried a kangaroo steak! It was marinaded in BBQ sauce and was pretty delicious. It was surprisingly cheaper than beef steaks even though it’s one of Australia’s native animals. Saturday I went on another dive trip with the Unidive club. We headed down the Gold Coast to Cook Island which hosts a coral reef and head wall to follow along. We did a double dive, and I got to see some pretty cool stuff including some nudibranchs, a bright purple cuttlefish, a huge lobster, and a turtle. The cuttlefish was actually really cool to look at because it was hiding under an overhang and didn’t move even when we were really close. I don’t know if it was injured or something, but we were pretty much able to touch it without it swimming away. I’m really enjoying hanging out with the people in that club…they all have such cool dive stories and are all really willing to help newer divers get some good dives in. I’m hoping that as I gain more experience I will be able to impress them somehow, but for now I’ll be happy with just being able to identify most of the fish that they can. Now that I am all caught up, I am going to try to stay caught up. This blog took me all week to write! I’ve probably left out a bunch of stories, but I have to have something to talk about when I get home right? My next planned adventure is two weekends from now…I am going to try to get my advance open water certification. We’ll see if I can squeeze some other cool stuff in before that time. Until next time…
-Erin
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The Dive Trip
Love
-Erin
Monday, March 2, 2009
Saying goodbye to February
-Erin
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Noosa, Australian Zoo, Eumundi, and O-week
-Erin
P.S. I posted all the pics from my trip. Click the link on the right to find the album
Monday, February 16, 2009
Some random thoughts
-Erin
Friday, February 13, 2009
Sorry for the delay
Hello everyone!! Sorry for the gap in stories. A lot has been going on, and I'm still getting situated in my apartment in Brisbane. The rest of my stay in Sydney was a lot of fun. Saturday, we all went to Circular Quay and finally got to see the infamous Harbour Bridge and Opera House. It was pretty unreal being there. I spent so much time hearing about them, and actually seeing it all was a punch from reality that I am in Australia for a year, which my mind still hasn't grasped yet. Our group took a Sydney harbour cruise during the afternoon, but I spent more time finding spots out of the sun then actually looking at the city I think. The hole in the o-zone is directly over Australia, so my pale skin was not doing so well in the 100 degree, sunny weather. It would take me about 5 weeks of California sun to get as dark as my 3 day Australian tan. I found a group of girls from the program that wanted to explore the downtown area of Sydney, so we ended up staying near the harbour and wandering around the city at night, which was absolutely gorgeous. Sunday, a group of us headed over to Manly beach by ferry and spent the day lounging in the sun and looking at the coves and tide pools. The surf here is a lot stronger than in CA…one girl figured that out by getting her shoulder dislocated. On Monday, I flew from Sydney to Brisbane and got to meet my new housemate Kate. She is also a third year at UQ, and we have a lot in common. Our apartment is really nice…it reminds me of a beach house you might rent for vacation or something. Right now my room is pretty bare, but I was able to get a bed and a few other items from K-Mart. There are still many surprises to living here, such as having geckos run around my apartment, but I am getting more used to the language differences and wildlife. I’m only about a 10 minute walk to the University, and everything else is connected through the train, a bus, or a ferry. Brisbane is a very lovely area and is not as busy as Sydney was. The downtown area has really nice stores and walking areas, but the weather is usually really hot and humid which makes it harder to be outside. Recently it has been rainy, which is a relief from the high heat. The bushfires in Victoria have been all over the news…they are the worst natural disaster in all of Australian history. Please keep that area in your thoughts and prayers because it has been such a devastating time for a lot of families. A group of us are trying to plan a trip to the Sunshine coast for next week, so I’ll keep you updated on that. Hope all is well in the States!
-Erin