Dissecting and other funness

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So, since I last wrote a lot has happened. The pics of everyone in the program are now up on the sfs web site in case anyone hasn't noticed that and would care to see them. =)

Last saturday we took our swim test at Lake Eachem. It started raining basically as soon as we got there but we still swam and it was kinda fun. The water was warm and it looked really gorgeous seeing the rainforest bordering the lake through all of the rain. At night I stayed at the center with a few people and we hung out and made rice crispy treats.. but with coco crispies and rasberry and vanilla marshmellows. It was interesting to say the least. =) Sundays are our free days so me and 5 others got up and walked to Cathedral Fig, which is this crazy insane amazing fig tree that is huuuuuuuuge. It is impossible to describe and all the pics I took don't really do it justice. But it was amazing. The walk there was cool too. We think maybe it was 4miles there. Some was through the rainforest, and then some was along a road. Took about 1.5hrs to get there. Then the rest of the day we just hung out and did some work.

Monday was insane. I was a little worried that the whole week might be like that but luckily it wasnt. But so monday was basically just full of classes and field exercises and stuff. It was really fun but also really exhausting. The rest of the week (tues, wed, thurs) we worked on our field exercise for our ecology class. This involved dissecting tons of Cane Toads (an invasive species that is causing lots of problemes) to examine their stomache contents (oh joy!) but we also did spotlighting which was really cool. That involved going out at night to these different areas about 1/2hr away and using a spotlight and our flashlights and walking very slowly through either new growth or old growth, and scanning for wildlife. The first time I went out we saw different possums (so cute!), white tailed rats, and also some sleeping birds, which was actually really awesome. One was on the end of a branch right near the path so we walked right by it. I don't think i've ever seen a sleeping bird before. Really neat. However, the second time we went out, which was two nights ago, was not so cool. It was POURING rain and I, of course, had my rain jacket and gum boots, but no rain pants. So my pants were soaked within minutes and my boots ended up filling with water. It was lovely. We saw nothing, except for one owl. So that was kinda icky. However, the car ride home was a lot of fun. Much singing to fabulous music. I love that so many people here are really musical. It is great. PB&J folks - they played 500 miles and i nearly died. it made me so happy it totally made my day 1,000,000 times better. =) Anyway, for that class we have a scientific research paper due in about a week and a half on a question we pose relating to either the cane toad dissections or the spotlighting. So we had lots of time during the afternoons to work on that except I haven't quite decided what I want to do. Which is bad. But i'm hoping to accomplish stuff this weekend. We shall see. I think I want to write on the spotlighting because I find that more interesting but I think that will involve much more research because we have very little data.

Last night was AMAZING. There was a quiz night at a local pub and our entire group went to it. It was so much fun. Most were groups of 4 but it was just me and one other girl and we were pretty awful. But we had a blast. And we won a losers prize of some chocolate. :-D Didn't get to sleep til midnight though which was nuts.

Today we split up and my group went to the TREAT nursery (same people we did tree planting with last weekend). It was cool. We sized some plants (basically just sorted large and small out in separate boxes so that all similar sized plants were together. We also repotted some saplings, which was a lot of fun. Also, it is normal for Australian's to take a "smoko" break in mid-morning. Which is basically for tea and snacks. Amazing. I love this tradition. such yummy tea! =) After that we did warrawork (cleaning of different aspects of the center which we do once a week, with groups of 3 people, each cleaning a different aspect) and then went straight into town for our Atherton freetime. Which kinda sucked cause I didnt get to shower so I was quite gross. But I still had fun. I went to an internet cafe but I hadnt gotten to charge my laptop battery before I left and so I had hardly any power and I didnt have much time anyway so hence only one picture got put up. But I am going to work on that now with these computers. We'll see how it goes.

So, that was my week. Still loving it. I can't believe how fast time is flying. I will try and keep ya'll updated and phone calls and such. :-)

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Comments

[Virginia]

:-)
Yay, Jackie! Thanks for the update and the photos - you got your hair cut! When did that happen? It looks cute :-) Glad to hear they've got good tea and the good sense to set aside a time during the day for it ;-) I love you! -your seester