Awesome Auckland

You may be wondering why it has taken me so long to post this final blog. After all, I have been home for three weeks. In all honesty, I was just avoiding it because posting it would mean that my semester abroad was really, truly over. But here it is, my journey back home through the city of Auckland, New Zealand.

A building I like in Auckland

I stayed up the entire night my last night in Cairns since I needed to get to the airport early and I didn't want to waste my last hours sleeping. When I got to the airport I was super tired but didn't want to fall asleep for fear that I would subsequently miss my flight. So I ended up spending about half an hour just wandering around the terminal to stay awake. I got on my flight to Sydney and away we went. While on the plane it occurred to me that for some reason my layover was only 40 minutes and that this might be a problem. I began to panic. When we landed in Sydney I started hurrying towards the international terminal. Unluckily, it was very far away from the gate that I was at. When I got to the gate that was printed on my ticket I discovered that my flight had changed gates, to the exact opposite end of the international terminal. All in all, I was running all over the place looking like a crazy person but I made my flight. Not long after I landed in Auckland, New Zealand. I successfully located my hostel and then went out to explore the town.

The view from the summit of Rangitoto

The next day I had a harbour cruise scheduled so I woke up early and headed down to the pier. I got on the ferry and headed out. I went to Rangitoto Island where I hiked to the summit and explored some lava tube caves with a couple I met on the ferry. The island is volcanic and has only been there for a few hundred years. On the way back we saw an orca from the ferry. Ok, so I only saw a fin because I looked too late, but other people identified it as an orca. When we got back to Auckland proper I decided to go on a quest for food and quickly found myself in a mall foodcourt where I ate some falafel. I wandered the rest of the evening and saw many many things. Luckily, Auckland seems to be the only place my entire life where I actually knew where I was. I almost always get lost.

A Mini Cooper dealership in Auckland

On Sunday I had to be out of the hostel at 10 AM but my flight wasn't until about 3. So I spent a long time in the Auckland airport. Then I got on the plane across the Pacific. 4 silly movies, several episodes of tv shows, a couple conversations with a guy on the way home from Antarctica, lots of food, and 12 hours later I landed in LA. One good thing about Qantas is that the food is fantastic. I usually avoid eating on airplanes but I happily munched through everything they tried to feed me, which was quite a bit. I slept a grand total of one hour on the flight, so I was tired. Since I had a seven hour layover in LA I decided to take a nap on the floor of the terminal with my bag under my head. It was uncomfortable so I only slept for another hour. I also got some breakfast (since it was 6 am when I landed). Oh, and just for reference, LAX is an awful airport which is difficult to navigate and has nothing to do and inadequate seating at the gates....I spent most of my seven hours there sprawled on the ground. Eventually I got on my final flight and made my way home where I was greeted by my parents and a gingerbread milkshake.

The End

Completion

I am now completely and totally and officially done with my semester abroad. I took my last final this morning, I'll get all of my results in December. I even finished packing today, which is good because I get on a plane at 5:45 tomorrow morning. I'm flying to Auckland, New Zealand on the way home so I'll probably post one last time to tell you all about that, but other than that I'm done.

My last day at the beach. The white rectangle in the ocean is the net.

There have been a lot of lasts going on. On Saturday we had our last barbie. I had my last day on the Australian beach. I swam in the ocean in Australia for the last time, which was also the first time I swam in the netted area (they just put out nets because it's jellyfish season and the box jellyfish comes into shore areas to breed and kill people). Today I ate my last package of Woolworths instant noodles. I will finish my jar of peanut butter today as well. I ate my last fresh mango yesterday, it was truly delicious. On Sunday I went to the Night Market for the last time. I also had my last scoop of mango gelato. I even took pictures of my last trip to the Smithfield Shopping Centre to buy my last bag of wholegrain penne. It took me a long time to fall asleep last night because I kept on remembering that it would be my last night sleeping here. That's right folks, I'm staying up all night tonight. In any case, I've had a pretty good time here, and while I'm super excited to go home, I'm also sad to leave tropical North Queensland. I love the plants here, especially the ones that make me think of dinosaurs because they were around when they were. I'm going to miss seeing bright blue Ulysses butterflies. I'm also going to miss finding wallabies when I go for walks and skinks darting into the undergrowth whenever I walk by. I'll miss scanning the path for venomous snakes while I run and checking for paralysis ticks afterwards. I'll even miss avoiding the edges of murky bodies of water to avoid saltwater crocodiles.

My beautiful bus ticket art

As I was packing, I was reminded that I have saved pretty much every bus ticket I bought the whole time I was here. Someone suggested that I scrapbook them, but I didn't want to take them home so I lay them out on the floor in chronological order and made them into "art." I think it says something about my experience here.

Anyways, I just keeping on moving along, and before I know it I'll be back in Oregon and not long after that I'll be back at PLU. So I'll see you around!

Camping Trip

I have officially finished classes and just have three finals before I end this semester entirely. The end of classes was good, especially the part where my Biodiversity of Tropical Australia went on a "field trip" to go eat native Australian foods. Nom Nom Nom! Anyways, Australian Unis have a "study break" the week before finals start. I get the impression that I was actually supposed to study during this time, but instead some friends and I went camping. We left last Saturday and got back on Wednesday. Since we didn't have a tent or sleeping bags it seemed logical to rent a campervan and try that out.

A waterfall with a rainbow that we saw along the way

Us at the top of the ridge at Undara

On the first day we drove to Lake Barrine, Lake Eacham, and Malanda. While we at Lake Barrine I walked all the way around the lake and saw a Boyd's forest dragon and what may have been a musky rat kangaroo. Very cool. Also, I head something that I highly suspect was a bunch wampoo pigeons. They are named for their characteristic sound, it really does sound like "wam-poo." We spent the night in a campground in Malanda where we made pasta (a major staple in our diet for the week) using the campstove that came with the campervan. 

The next day we drove to Undara, which you may remember is one of the places I went on my fieldtrip for Biodiversity of Tropical Australia earlier in the semester. On the way we stopped at the Curtain Fig Tree and while we were leaving it a tree kangaroo crossed the road in front of us, very cool! Unfortunately I did not have my camera out and ready for it so I didn't get a picture. This time it was much warmer at Undara so I decided to go swim with one of my friends. We actually met some interesting people at the pool, a geology class from JCU Townsville (the other campus in North Queensland) was there for a field trip so we talked to them and also to some people who were here on vacation. Then we went for a walk. The last time I was at Undara we found a pond with some birds. Since one of my friends is into birdwatching we decided to head down there at around dusk to check out the birds. After that we walked up to the ridge (which has a spectacular view by the way) where we convinced someone to take a picture of us.

The day after that we saw a ton of waterfalls. We stopped at three on our way to the Henrietta Creek Campground where we intended to spend the night. Henrietta Creek was beautiful and we decided to do some hiking. After masterfully evading the stinging trees which were growing across the path we came to a tall and spectacular waterfall with a large pool at the bottom. Naturally we spend the rest of the afternoon swimming around in this pool. It was quite nice. When we were getting close to where we had left the campervan the Cicadas started singing. They were ridiculously loud. After the fact I realized while studying that they were probably Northern Greengrocer cicadas, which only sing for about 15 minutes at dusk. We didn't know that at the time and since we were fairly certain we were suffering hearing damage (it was loud enough to be physically painful) we decided to drive back to Malanda to where we had camped before. When we got there we were starving and made dinosaur pasta. I found this very exciting because I have long harbored an undying love of dinosaurs.

A rock wallaby with its joey

The final full day we drove to Granite Gorge. We stopped on the way to see the Cathedral Fig, it was very large and looked super fun to climb on. Granite Gorge is beautiful and is clearly named after the large granite boulders that make up most of the park. We spent the afternoon clambering around on the boulders and generally being silly. Among the cooler boulders was one that looked like a whale and another that looked like a dinosaur. Granite Gorge is also known for the huge amount of rock wallabies that live there. A few of the ones we saw had little joeys peeking out of their pouches.

The camping trip was a lot of fun and we had great timing. It started raining while we were driving back on the last day. Now I am studying for my finals and preparing to come back to the states. I leave Australia in two weeks!

Weekend Whimsy

Me holding a baby crocodile

This past weekend I did a lot of fun things. On Friday my friends and I were ridiculously goofy. One of my friends from back home is doing a semester of research near here and I got to see her on Saturday. She was in Cairns for the weekend so we hung out and barbecued with my friends then went to the Night Market. The Night Market is sort of like a saturday market that's open in the evenings and has tons of stands selling everything from peanut shells painted to look like Simpsons' characters to discount Uggs to full-body massages. All in all, it's an interesting place. On Sunday I had my long awaited trip that I won during Orientation Week. I woke up bright and early to make the bus. We went to Lake Eacham, the Curtain Fig Tree, and Millaa Millaa falls. This time I swam under the falls...it's starting to get quite hot here and I don't like it. We ate lunch at the Malanda Hotel, I had a fish burger and it was delicious. I still love that they put beets on burgers, yum! In the afternoon we went to the Johnstone Crocodile Park where we got to see several very large salt water crocodiles, emus, cassowaries, kangaroos, wallabies, and dingoes. We got to feed the kangaroos and pet the dingoes. All in all, quite the day! Today it was ridiculously hot so I went to the beach and the ocean felt much better!

Spring Break

A White Lipped Tree Frog

A Warning Sign on the train

Since I'm in Australia where it has been "winter" while my friends back home were having summer, I get to have a spring break, which was this week. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, all of my plans seemed to fall through, but then my brother decided to come visit me so we went off on a crazy adventure! I showed him around Cairns including the Botanical Gardens where we found a white lipped tree frog and some very strange looking spiders. We went to Rusty's Market and then had a barbecue. We ate ridiculous quantities of gelato because it is delicious! My roommate's birthday was this week so we went out to dinner to celebrate it.

On Sunday we decided to check out the oft mentioned Kuranda Scenic Railway and Sky Rail. The railway was built completely by hand in the late 1800s and has several tunnels. All in all, it must have been a lot of work. From the train you can see the Barron Falls. Unfortunately it is still the dry season here so there was relatively little water going over the falls, it's supposed to be incredible at full flow. The train goes up to Kuranda "the village in the rainforest." Unfortunately it's become a bit of a tourist trap. We went back down on the Sky Rail so we could see over the rainforest. It was definitely more scenic than the train.

The Sky Rail

Monday we went out to Fitzroy Island and sea kayaked. That was a lot of fun. It was possible to see coral below as we paddled and occasionally small (supposedly non-stinging) jellyfish. We paddled out to the small neighbouring island of Little Fitzroy. Readers of my blog will remember that there is a lighthouse on Fitzroy Island that is no longer in use; Now there is a beacon on Little Fitzroy that replaced it. We climbed up to the beacon, quite the adventure! There isn't a clearly defined path but getting there requires a fair bit of climbing over giant rocks and pulling yourself up by grabbing onto branches and bushes. Getting down requires repelling with a rope down a rock face and then climbing down a rusting metal ladder. Still, it was quite the view and I actually kind of enjoyed getting a chance to climb around. In the afternoon my brother and I went snorkeling in the shallows near the island. Unfortunately the water was not very clear that day so we didn't see much. It was quite sunny and not very windy, a great day to go kayaking!

Millaa Millaa Falls

Paronella Park

The next day we did a waterfall tour. We started off by going to Lake Barrine where we had tea and scones and took a boat tour around the lake. There were a ton of ducks following the boat because the driver always throws some bread to them. After that we went to Millaa Millaa Falls, which has apparently been used in a few movies but I couldn't find a list of them anywhere. Next we went to the Curtain Fig Tree. We had lunch at Mungali Falls. In the afternoon we went to Paronella Park, a place that I had never heard of but greatly enjoyed. This guy, Jose Paronella bought a chunk of land because it has a beautiful waterfall and then built a castle by hand from simple materials. All of the structures are arranged in such a way that they give a view of the waterfall. He built the whole thing by hand by himself. It's really quite incredible. In addition to having a waterfall and castle, the park has some cool animals around. The small lake has dozens of turtles and an eel in addition to many fish. In one section there were dozens of Spectacle Flying Foxes ( a very large fruit bat which is endangered but that I've enjoyed seeing a lot of around Cairns) sleeping in trees. There is a tunnel in the park where Paronella had dug up clay for his constructions which has a few hundred microbats living in it. They're quite cute. I really liked it there and am glad that I rather inadvertently ended up there.

On Wednesday we did what everyone who goes to Cairns should do, we went out to the Great Barrier Reef. This time I tried scuba diving; I'm not very good at equalizing. Still we saw lots of fish which came over to check us out. We went snorkeling and saw a sea turtle! I used up all the pictures on my disposable waterproof camera and I'm hoping that the sea turtle picture comes out well. It was quite exciting! Also, this time I managed to not get sunburned, yay! I also didn't get stung by any coral, I was quite careful! I saw some absolutely beautiful giant clams with very vivid colors, some large Wrasse, lots of colorful parrotfish, and several angelfish. All in all, a great day out at the reef!





Yesterday was my brother's last day here so we had a more mellow day and explored Cairns a bit further. We walked around on the Esplanade and climbed around on the bouldering place. I think that Cairns would be a great place to be a kid, there's a great swimming pool (the Lagoon), a giant playground, a skatepark, and a bouldering place all on the Esplanade. After one last day of fun I had to say goodbye to my brother. He should be on a plane on the way back home right now.

Fantastical Fieldtrip of Flora and Fauna!

A platypus in Yungaburra

This weekend my Biodiversity of Tropical Australia class went on a field trip to Yungaburra and Undara. We left Friday night and drove to Yungaburra where we stayed the night at a cute hostel called On The Wallaby. We spotlighted for possums. All of the American students were quite shocked to find that Australian Possums are quite cute and not anywhere near as creepy as American Opossums. Unfortunately it was incredibly difficult to get a good picture of them in the dark. The next morning I woke up bright and early to go look for Platypii (or is it Platipodes? ;) ). Despite going the wrong way to get to the "good" place to see them we saw two! They swam right under the bridge that we were standing on and were so kind as to come to the surface right beneath me so that I could take a picture. I was surprised how small they were, I had envisioned them being maybe twice as big as they actually are for some reason.

The Curtain Fig

Next we went to the Curtain Fig Tree, a very famous strangler fig. We went there to observe a vegetation type of North Queensland called Mabi Forest. The Mabi is the preferred habitat for tree kangaroos but unfortunately we didn't see any. I learned that figs are fertilized inside the fruit by small wasps that go inside the fruit to mate and lay their eggs. mmm....insects, now we know what makes figs so crunchy :P. Our next stop was a park called Forty-Mile Scrub where we observed deciduous vine thicket. After that we continued on to our final destination, Undara.

A Dragon!

A herd of Kangaroos

Undara is in Tropical Savannah, a vegetation type characterized by bush fires, low rainfall, grass and few eucalyptus trees. While there we clambered about on rocks and looked for interesting animals. We saw a few skinks. When it got dark we looked at the stars and found a bunch of spiders, their eyes glow at night. We also saw a bettong, a cute little marsupial that's related to wallabies and kangaroos. We indulged the professor by "showing what we'd learned" through such means as skits, raps, and interpretative dance before going to bed. In the morning we walked around in the bush some more and found a ton of kangaroos and a dragon! I was very pleased because I love reptiles and really wanted to see a dragon. The one we found was a two-lined dragon (Diporiphora bilineata) and I got to hold it. He or she (I'm not sure which) was quite mellow and let us take several pictures.

On the way back we stopped for food and coffee. I had my first latte since I've been here and it was delicious. I also had a sandwich with bacon (Aussie bacon is much different than American bacon, it's really more like ham) and egg which also had a big slice of beet in it. I was pretty excited about that. I've noticed that Australians seem to like beets more than Americans do, they put them on burgers in place of pickles pretty often. I love beets so I can't complain.

All in all it was a quite busy weekend and now I really need to work on homework, but it was well worth the trip!

Kayak-a-Barbie

On Saturday I went on a kayaking adventure. We went to Lake Placid on the Barron River and paddled around. There's some small rapids there and we got to swim down them. That was pretty fun. Also, the river was much warmer than I expected, it was actually pleasant to swim in. While we were kayaking we saw four turtles "sunbaking" on a log. Sunbaking is the Australian term for sunbathing and I think it is far more descriptive. There were many ducks on the lake and some other water fowl. Apparently there are sometimes snakes resting on the branches of the trees that go over the water and if you're paddling near them they freak out and drop into the water. Unfortunately I did not get to witness this event. Though speaking of snakes, I have been seeing more snakes while running lately. You should all be pleased to here that I have so far avoided being bitten by any, probably a good idea since the snakes around here are highly venomous and include the Coastal Taipan (the 3rd most venomous snake in the world and close relative of the most venomous snake, the Inland Taipan) and the Death Adder. I also learned that there are paralysis ticks here. So far I've avoided them but I need to remember to keep checking because they sometimes go unnoticed until you become paralyzed, which is something I intend to avoid.

Yesterday my friends and I had yet another barbie, a wonderful idea considering it's one of the only times I eat meat here since I don't have a good way to cook it besides that. I have decided that I really like that many public areas here have public barbecues which are very simple to use. While we were waiting for the bus to head back to the Lodge we played frisbee and attempted handstands. I learned some new frisbee throws since the only one I knew how to do I'm awful at. I discovered that I'm actually remarkably better when I throw the frisbee side-arm under my leg. Of course, remarkably better in this case is still fairly awful...but I intend to imrove!

In other news, my PLU friends have gone back to school and my brother is coming to visit me. PLU just had the first week of classes for the fall term. It's pretty strange to realize that I am halfway through the semester while most of my friends back home are just starting a new semester. I found out on Friday that my brother is going to be here one week from tomorrow. I am super excited as I love hanging out with my brother and I will now be somewhat less alone for my spring break. Most of my ideas for what to do over the break fell through because nearly all of my friends have a field trip for one of their classes that goes for most of the break. Anyways, it should be fun to have him here and I wish all of my friends back home good luck with all of their classes this semester!

when it rain and rains

I have been pretty busy with the whole school thing lately. Assignments are starting to attempt to sneak up on me but I am too clever for them. This weekend I decided that I ought not sit in my room doing homework all day so I packed up my anthropology text book and went to the beach. Just as I got there the clouds that had been looming all week descended en masse onto the beach. It was windy and grey. I also somehow managed to end up with about a pound of sand in my swimsuit which went all over the bathroom floor when I took it off. On Sunday we had planned a barbie so I went to get some supplies at the shopping centre half an hours walk away from where we all live, the Student Lodge. As a friend and I collected the necessary items for barbecuing, it began to rain. It rained on us the entire walk back. It was still kind of raining when we went to barbecue but luckily the public barbecues are under covers. I successfully cooked meat for the first time (it's not like I don't cook, I just never cook meat) and it was pretty tasty. We also grilled some zucchini and portobello mushrooms, so good! We walked around on the beach in the dark and then went back to the lodge where I changed out of ridiculously wet clothes for the second time that day. It was a fairly laid back weekend but still pretty fun. I plan to hike the Pyramid next weekend.

Crazy Weekend

This past weekend was surprisingly full. As of Friday, the only thing I had planned was watching a sporting tournament between JCU's Cairns and Townsville campuses and participating in the tug-of-war. Little did I know, my life was to become far busier. I showed up at 12 for the start of the tournament to discover that Townsville had backed down and wasn't coming. A lot of Cairns athletes had committed to playing so it became the Cairns versus "all comers" games. Since I was there, I became an all-comer. I got roped into playing a sport called netball within half an hour of my arrival. First of all, I had no idea what netball was, second of all, we were playing the official JCU Cairns netball team. My team kindly explained the basics to me, and I tried my best to follow them, I'm guessing somewhat unsuccessfully since I'm pretty sure that I got called for obstruction at least five times. For those of you who, like me, haven't heard of netball before, I will try to briefly explain the premise. My roommate describes it succinctly as "really polite basketball." There are two hoops (but without backboards) one at either end of the court. To score points you throw the ball through the hoop just like scoring a basket in basketball. There are several different positions, some of which are pretty much offensive (called attackers or shooters) and positions which guard (called defenders).  Each position is limited in what sections of the court they can enter and when. If you have the ball, you can pivot in place and pass it to someone or shoot, but you can't travel with the ball. If you're guarding, you can't knock the ball out of someones hand or touch them. You stand a meter away and try to intercept the ball.
So anyways, I played netball. I also played a game of rugby touch (they call it touch football, but it's the same thing) and tug-of-war. All in all a very active day. We were promised free pizza (and being a college student I never turn down free food) so we went to the after party to collect it. There we were (for once) the only Americans and actually got to talk to a lot of Australians. My friend and I were very proud of ourselves because we made a genuine Australian friend who offered to drive us to a local mountain called the Pyramid that we had been wanting to hike.

Sunday we woke up bright and early to go hiking. Unfortunately my water bottle had leaked in the bag that I had packed the night before and gotten my camera wet ( I let it dry while we were out and it's fine now, so no worries) so I have no pictures from my adventure. We met our new friend outside and climbed into his classic Jaguar and drove off towards the Pyramid. We stopped at a servo (a gas station in Australian terminology) and then the car wouldn't start. The gas station had one of those battery charging packs so we used that to get the car running. We decided that we would drive about an hour further to Josephine Falls to let the battery charge back up. The falls were beautiful and had a natural water slide which we slid down. The water was pretty cold and it was still early in the morning so I was cold but it was fun. We made some rock towers, including a super cool rock-bridge-sculpture deal. Once we had gotten adequately cold and explored a bit we went back down to the car to find that the battery was again dead. Eventually we found someone with jumper cables (which are apparently called jumper leads here) and got the car started. As we continued driving the car was clearly struggling and eventually we were forced to stop at the side of the road. We called for help and then a brilliant plan was hatched. We had an inflatable boat in the car which had a battery to run a motor. The battery wasn't really intended to run a car but we thought it might get us to somewhere where we could buy a new battery. Our driver plugged it in and off we went again. We bought a new battery and decided that what with all the excitement of the day, we'd rather go hang out at a lake than hike a steep trail up a mountain. We went to Lake Eacham which is in the crater of an old volcano. We blew up the boat and puttered about. We saw a turtle and we climbed one of the strangler fig trees that was growing at the side of the lake. All in all it was a very exciting (and unexpected) day.

Birthday!

This past Tuesday was my twentieth birthday. Despite the fact that I found a cockroach in my bathroom that morning, it was a fantastic day. It was sunny and the sky was blue. My friends took me out to dinner in Cairns. We had a lot of fun eating Thai food (because I missed it) and being generally silly. They even bought me a cake! All in all it was a lot of fun and I'm thankful to have found some awesome friends here.

Other than that I've been doing the school thing and hanging out at various locations. I have now turned in a few assignments, so I suppose that's kind of exciting. I feel like I've pretty much settled into my classes and understand what I'm supposed to be doing in them. I spent a lot of time at the beach last week. I love it. Also, I went into Cairns this past weekend and checked out as many second-hand stores as I could find. Most of them turned out to be more on the antique side of second-hand and were therefore expensive. The last place we went was more what I was looking for and much like a small Goodwill. I bought a  tutu and a tanktop for $11 and was quite pleased with myself. I also bought some dark chocolate tim tams while I was in town. Just for the record, mint dark chocolate tim tams are wonderful, especially with milk. For those of you who don't know what a tim tam is, it's basically two chocolate cookies with a layer of chocolate cream in the middle (kind of like with an oreo) dipped in chocolate.

Mossman Gorge

This weekend we planned to go to Mossman Gorge. We were going to go on Saturday but that fell through so we ended up going on Sunday instead. Since my plans for Saturday fell through I decided to join some friends who were going to a gym to go rockclimbing. On the way back to the bus from the rockclimbing place there is a boardwalk through the mangroves. We decided to go check it out and I'm glad we did. The mangroves were beautiful and at the end of the boardwalk is the Cairns Botanical Garden. It's free and we still had plenty of daylight left so we went in. I saw some amazing plants. I have loved the plants in Australia so much, they're so very different from the plants at home, but the plants at the garden were an entirely different thing. Most of the plants their are tropical but many are from other parts of the world to allow people to see something different from what they see outside of the botanical garden. It was lovely and I am happy to say that I will go back for a field trip for one of my classes.


On Sunday we actually did get out to Mossman Gorge. Mossman Gorge is near Port Douglass in the Daintree Rainforest. The Daintree is a world heritage rainforest and is the oldest rainforest in the world. And yes, it does actually rain in rainforests, I got rained on while there. On the way there we also saw a crocodile on a river bank, the first that I've seen that wasn't captive.

Anyways, we saw some fantastic strangler fig trees. They are very interesting to look at because they are so twisted. They grow by winding themselves around an existing tree. Sometimes you can see the old dead tree in the middle. It was really hard to get a good picture of any though because the light was dim in the forest and it was raining for a while so I was trying to protect my camera. There were lots of bush turkeys hoping someone would leave some food behind for them. I also saw another giant spider, a turtle, and a snake. 

Hills

This weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday we went into Cairns and went to Rusty's Market. It's basically a giant fruit and veggie stand with some other booths selling all sorts of things. I bought some basic veggies and more kiwi. Some of my friends decided to buy some tropical fruit to try. We tried paw paws, dragonfruit, and custard apples. I think I liked the paw paw the best, it tastes a lot like mango. Dragonfruit looks super cool but at least the one we got didn't have much flavor. Custard apples are kind of bizarre looking but actually taste pretty good, sort of like a mix of pineapple and apple. On Sunday we went for a hike.

We started our hike at about 11:30 without a clearly defined destination, I should have prepared more for being unprepared. Anyways, we hiked to the top of a hill and still had a good deal of afternoon ahead of us so we decided to continue up the saddleback trail. This turned out to be a longer hike than we had really anticipated. It was quite steep for a while. Also it went through a bunch of sugar cane which kept hitting everyone in the face. Then the track went back into the rainforest, which is beautiful. I loved hiking through the rainforest, but several plants didn't seem to want us there, we kept getting caught in things. Several of us have cuts and scratches from the spines on some of the plants. There were some excellent lookout points on the path. We were above the sky rail that goes up the hill which was pretty cool to see from there. Sometimes the trail was basically invisible and we had to hunt around looking for the next pink marker tied to a branch telling us which way the path supposedly took. Eventually we wandered out onto a highway. I'm not sure if that's actually where the path was supposed to end but we couldn't see where else it would go. Unfortunately, we had no idea where we were. Eventually we flagged a car down and asked. Apparently we were 5 km from Kuranda. This was a bit shocking because if we'd followed the road from where we started this would be an 18 km walk. The path that we took was more direct but a lot more steep. We didn't really want to rehike the trail that had taken us about 5 hours to take to this point so we started walking by the road to Kuranda. After about half an hour we came to Rainforestation, the place where I got to hold a koala in my first week here. It was closed but some employees were still there and we asked them for the number to call a taxi. We had to get a maxi taxi (which is basically a van) because there were 6 of us. It was fairly expensive but seemed better than walking the whole way back with no food. When we got back I was ravenous and ate a whole pizza.

I rested the next day and then had class again on Tuesday. In the afternoon someone talked me into running, luckily I seem to be getting back in shape pretty quickly but still, running up hills is kind of icky.

Starting Out

I have now started classes. Classes meet less frequently here than in the US so most of my classes meet once for a lecture and then some of them have a tutorial where more active class participation is expected. I am taking Ecology and Indigenous Australian Culture, Discovering Anthropology, Biodiversity of Tropical Australia, and Ecology and Conservation. So far I have been to one of each class except for Ecology and Conservation which I have tomorrow. I can't say that I have particularly enjoyed my classes so far but I think that that is mostly because it takes a little while for a class to really get started. I don't really like the whole introductory thing but that should be over soon and then I can start really delving into these subjects.

Besides that I've been doing small things. Some friends and I went up to Palm Cove and had a barbie. Palm Cove is considered to be the "nice" beach in the area. In other words it's very posh and has a wide array of glitzy buildings lining the beach. One nice thing about Palm Cove is that it has some super big awesome looking paperbark trees. Those I loved.

In other news, I managed to get sick. Yay me! I think I have the flu but I seem to be mostly recovered now so that's good. Hopefully I'm fully recovered by the weekend (which is rapidly approaching) because I would like to do some adventuring which would be considerably less fun if I'm still feeling a bit under the weather.

"Lighthouse in the Rainforest" or "Fitzroy Island"

Yesterday I went to Fitzroy Island with some people from my school. We had some trouble getting there because we forgot that the buses run on a different schedule on holidays (it was Cairns Show Day, a public holiday in Cairns) but we made it to the boat just in time. I love riding on boats, I think the rocking is very soothing and I love looking out at everything. It was a very sunny but mild day, perfect for our adventures. I spent the morning exploring the beach and swimming. The beach at Fitzroy Island is covered with broken pieces of coral and when you walk on it the coral clinks together making a tinkling sound a lot like windchimes. The water was perfect for swimming in. After lunch a few of my friends and I went on a hike to the summit of the island. It was fantastic. Beautiful tropical rainforest made up the first part of the hike. We saw so many different beautiful trees and tons of animals. We saw a few different kinds of birds including tons of (or if I'm speaking in Australian, heaps of) sulfur crested cockatoos (which you only see in pet stores in the States) and scrub foul, which reminded me of chickens. We also saw several small lizards, which I was pretty excited about. On our way back down the summit we also saw what appeared to be some kind of monitor lizard about 2 feet long. In other news, we saw some giant spiders with bright yellow spots on the joints of their legs. Anyways, the trail was pretty short but very steep. When we made it to the top my legs were worn out but the view was spectacular. It was a clear day so you could see the island and some of the islands nearby and ocean for ages.

There is an old abandoned lighthouse not far from the summit and it hadn't taken us as long as we expected to make it to the top so we decided to go check it out. The lighthouse looks quite modern and is covered in shiny white tile but was built in the forties and is no longer used. In the bottom part of the lighthouse there are signs that talk about some of the history of the island. It was used to quarantine Chinese immigrants during the gold rush because the Australians of the day were convinced that they were going to get smallpox from the Chinese miners. Unfortunately they didn't bother to equip the island suitably for such a task (not particularly surprising because it was exactly for humanitarian reasons that they were sending people there) and a lot of people died and are buried there. During WWII Australia built a radar station on the island to keep a look out in case Japan decided to invade the continent. In the forties, the lighthouse was built, but it was later replaced by a lighthouse on the neighboring island "Little Fitzroy." None of the doors were blocked off or locked so we decided to explore a bit. Apparently the lighthouse was used as a ranger station in the nineties and some of the reports and office supplies are still in an office within the lighthouse. We climbed up to the top of the lighthouse where the lamp used to be and looked out on miles of ocean. All in all, the island was fantastic. And hey, when else would I get to explore an abandoned lighthouse in a rainforest?

When we got back to Cairns we were starving from all the hiking and we went to a restaurant called Nando's which specializes in Peri Peri chicken. The chicken is based on an African roasted chicken that the Portugese brought back to Europe. It has a spicy sauce and is completely and fully delicious. So glad we went there!

All in all it was a fantastic day on a beautiful island. A wonderful end to my last week before classes start.

Orientating

So Orientation has started. It's called O-week here. I haven't really done much outside of going to orientation events in the past few days. The good thing about orientation is that I've learned of some things that are going on. For example, I'm going on a trip with a bunch of other students to Fitzroy Island on Friday. I've heard that the island is beautiful and that there is some good snorkeling around there. Also they apparently have a trampoline set up in the ocean which sounds strange but fun.


Besides orientation the only thing I've done of note is to go to the beach. I walked to Trinity Beach, it took an hour. When I got there it was very windy and the sand kept hitting me. The sand is very course there so it actually kind of hurt. Still, it was a beach and it had an area that is patrolled by a lifeguard which I swam in. It was super fun and the water was not frigid, a nice change from the Oregon coast that I'm accustomed to! While there I also built a sand castle.

In other news, I bought some kiwi fruit and it was the best kiwi I have ever had. It was truly fantastic. I can't wait to try other fruit as they come into season. They have fruit here that I've never even heard of. On a somewhat related note, I saw two giant fruit bats in the middle of Cairns. It was a bit surprising but very cool.

Splish Splash

I have done several things since my last post. One thing I did was whitewater raft on the Tully River. It was incredibly fun. It was also great because it was through the rainforest and there were super bright blue butterflies flying near us. Unfortunately the area had been hit especially hard by Cyclone Yasi last year and is still in the process of recovery. It was interesting to see how the trees are working to recolonize after a disturbance.

The biggest thing I did was snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef. I have always wanted to go there and it was especially rewarding since it gave me a chance to see some of the things I learned about in my marine biology class last year. I saw several different kinds of coral and really pretty tropical fish. I saw some bright blue and green parrotfish. I saw two rays, one of which was a stingray, definitely one of my favorite marine animals. I was also super excited to see a shark. The kind I saw is called a Whitetipped shark and they are not dangerous to humans, still it was very cool to see one. Also, the shark was at a cleaner station where a fish was cleaning off parasites and debris and a remora was attached to it to get a free ride and food. I saw some of those super big giant clams. They are interesting not just for there size but also because they attack themselves differently than most clams so that the algae that live in their mantle can get sunlight to photosynthesize with. I also saw three kinds of anemone fish, hello Nemo!

The final thing that I did besides move into my room is go to the final Harry Potter movie. Since I'm in Australia I got to see it earlier than all of my friends in the States which was awesome. It came out here on the 13th so a bunch of us crazy Australearn kids went to it last night. 

Rainforest!

So I just got to Australia yesterday but I've already been running around and doing lots of things. It is super warm here considering that this is their winter, I'm a little worried about what it will be like later in the year. Today we went to a place called Rainforestation which is sort of a park, wildlife, and center for learning about aboriginal culture. We saw a ton of Australian animals including kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, and crocodiles. I held a great big snake and got my picture taken with a koala. I attempted and utterly failed to throw a boomerang.
Tomorrow I am whitewater rafting down a river through the rainforest, I'm pretty excited.
I have some things to do right now so that's all for now, hope everyone is well!
~Rachel

Less Than a Week To Go

I leave for Australia on Wednesday, but due to the nature of a ridiculously long flight and the international date line it will be Friday when I get there. I imagine I'll be confused. It's starting to get to that point where I really do need to start getting ready, deciding what I need to pack would probably be a good start. Packing will be my goal for the next few days. I just got my JCU e-mail address, if you'd like to get hold of me using it the address is rachel.miller1@my.jcu.edu.au. I will still check my other e-mail addresses occasionally but probably not as frequently while I'm away. Or you can always get hold of me on facebook.
I've spent the past couple weeks trying to see some of the many people that I will miss while I'm away. Unfortunately I couldn't make it everywhere but I'm pleased that I got to spend time with those that I could. I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your summer and I look forward to hearing about all the crazy things you'll do while I'm gone, keep in touch. In the meanwhile, I'll keep you up to date with my semester away right here at Dingo Ate My Blogemite.

Preparing

I will be leaving for Australia exactly one month from yesterday. In the mean while I am trying to get things ready for my trip. I'm trying to decide what I really need and what I can leave behind as well as trying to get a chance to see as many friends as possible before I leave for five months. I'm starting to get really excited about my trip but I'm also a little bit nervous. Australia is an awfully long ways away.

Right now I am getting ready to go and visit some family members before I leave. It will be strange for me to be away from them for so long. Still, I think the opportunity is fantastic. How often does one get the chance to study in another country? I'm especially excited because there is so much incredible wildlife in Australia. As many of you know, I'm a bit of a biology nerd and can't wait to get a chance to go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. It sounds absolutely incredible, especially given the state of the world's oceans. This really could be both my first and last chance to see a vibrant coral reef community, though I of course hope that we find ways to care for our world so that these communities can exist well into the future. I'm also excited to spend time in the rainforests that border the university that I will be studying at.

Speaking of universities, I will be studying at James Cook University in Cairnes Australia. Cairnes is located in Queensland on the Northeast tip of Australia. I won't register for classes until I get there so I'm not 100% sure of what I will be taking but I am hoping to take Statistics, Biodiversity of Tropical Australia, Ecology & Conservation, and a subject on Indigenous Australian belief and practice compared to modern conceptions of ecology. If any of these subjects fall through (in Australia a class is called a subject and a "course" is more like a major) I have some alternate subjects picked out that also sound interesting. Part of me wishes that I could study there longer because there are many fascinating sounding classes available but I know that everyone back home would probably be upset with me if I stayed for that long.

Anyways, that's probably enough for now, I'll be sure to keep you updated on my adventures and as always, I hope you are all well!