They call today meatless Mondays

This past week has been filled with... alot! I'm not sure where I left off, but I know that we've been spending alot of time together, and not much time to ourselves... once again. We have been getting to swim at lake Eacham, which is a crater lake that isn't too far from the site. The water is nice, and apparently there's a small crocodile that lives there... eek!

Meatless Mondays includes fried everything... and a salad. Except today was actually fried everything, a salad and spinach ravioli! score!
Last week we got to take a canopy tour at Mamu, where we had a guided tour through the rainforest, and then got to walk up a 50m tower to see the lookout, which was absolutely breathtaking. We could see even more than we've seen already... about 7 layers of forests, a meandering creek at the bottom, and two cockatoos swooping through the whole scene. To add to the awesomeness of our day, we got to swim underneath a huge waterfall in the middle of the jungle in Millaa Millaa. The water was freezing and I almost didn't go, but after I made it across to the other side of the lake and under the showering water, I was sooo happy! I looked up and saw the mist from the water sparkling above me. It became difficult to keep my eyes open, but even when closed the smell and the sound was so overpowering that it was just as amazing. We were SO COLD. I couldn't stay long under the fall, but on the way out my professor Tim showed us a "bum-breathing" turtle! They actually have the ability to breathe out of their butts if they need to! How cooooool is that?
Last week we went to Jungle Farms and got to eat kangaroo and crocodile! When we first got to the farm we went down to the lake / river (not sure what it was) to watch for platypuses, but we were unsuccessful.  Dinner was great. I really liked the kangaroo. It tasted sort of like teriyaki beef. The crocodile was alright... it was in sausage form. It definitely wasn't my favorite. We also had beef, crab salad, regular salad, nice bread, cookies and tea and coffee. It felt really good to have some real meat in my body... we've been sort of eating really processed foods that are easy to purchase in bulk. After dinner we took a tour of the farm via spotlighting and saw 3 tree kangaroos!!! They have such long tails that hang down like a branch, and they are very fluffy with black faces. aww.

Thursday we had our first quiz! It was a bird quiz... memorizing 25 birds by sight and sound. I got 19 out of 20! Pretty exciting! Friday we had TREAT (community service time) and Warrawork. Last week my group did Lantana (an invasive vine from the Amazon) removal, and this week we went around the site finding tree species with fruits, sling-shotting their fruits down and bringing them back to the nursery to plant. It was alright... nice not to be inside a classroom, that's for sure! My group's warrawork (warrawok is a time when everyone on site has a designated section to clean, and they clean it) last week was cleaning out the cabin bathrooms and the study shack (bleh!). This week, though, it was easy-- we only had to clean out the car park (what they call parking lots here) and sweep the veranda. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy!

On Saturday we got to go to the Yungaburra market. It was a really cute little town event, where all the local farmers and vendors brought their stuff and set up a table. Marcus and I went around finding all of the free samples (because we're awesome like that), and I ended up buying a canvas bag for $3.60 that has a tree kangaroo on it! I also bought more (5) avocados (nom nom nom), limes (5) and a tomato for only $2.50! I made out like a bandit!

That night we went to Cairns and stayed overnight!!! We all got rooms in various hostels-- I was with Marcus in a hostel called Cairns City Backpackers, which was actually really nice for FIFTEEN DOLLARS. yeah, that's right... cheeaaap! They gave us a free dinner and 10% off of his snorkeling trip, too! Other people stayed at the Global hostel, and most in Gilligan's. The city itself is a really nice area. The streets are really wide, and all of the stores are very nicely kept. The main street that goes down the middle of the city has old strangler figs remaining that were saved from being removed. The esplanade was super beautiful... there's a giant public pool that is flush with the land so it looks like a beach, and then the ocean is in the background. There are large sculptures all around (one of a group of angelfish) and street performers almost all of the time! It's a nice little place to buy some cheap wine, eat some good food and just enjoy walking around. On Saturday night a few of us sat on the esplanade wall looking out into the ocean just hanging out. It was alot of fun! 

Sunday morning we woke up bright and early to go diving!!! The group I went with was all of the certified divers, so Camilla, Evan, Kelsey and I. On the way to the first reef I was absolutely seasick. I filled up three bags with vom. ew. The first 2 dives tasted like that, too. We went to Saxon reef, where there was a giant magical wall, and Hastings reef where there was a giant fishbowl shaped reef. We saw absolutely giant corals, and GIANT clams! We saw huge purple giant clams that probably could have eaten Harmony if they really wanted to! They were mesmerizing! At the fishbowl we saw absolutely gigantic corals. One was about 20m tall! We saw tons of clown fish in their respective anemone habitats and I saw a unicornfish. No sharks, rays or turtles though :-/. We did three dives, the first one being the deepest. I couldn't go very deep (not more than 15m/40ft) because my ear wouldn't clear properly. By the third dive I couldn't clear my ear past 7ft, so I decided just to linger close to the surface and just enjoy what I could see from there. Oh well. The water temperature was 27 degrees C! We also had a nice lunch on the boat with potato salad, macaroni salad, roast beef, ham, bread, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, noodles and more. After my third dive I treated myself to a coke (sweetened with sugar cane, of course)! and I was not sick on the way home, so I slept on the bow of the boat in the sun for an hour :). Overall a pleasant weekend!

Today we spent the day setting up skink traps along the access road with Siggy. My group was at the 900m mark (aka almost the furthest away from the center). That was actually really hard work! We set up one open trap and one closed trap per group (groups of 3... I was with Charlie and Marcus, aka we were the best team ever :)). The closed trap requires  four walls of plastic that we had to dig trenches in order to stake them into the ground in a 5m squared box. In the center of the square we dug a hole for a bucket that we made flush with the ground so that unsuspecting scinks would just walk right into the bucket. We are doing this for practice for our DRs (directed researches). We've spent 3 days with Rohan to get an idea of what a DR with him is like, and now we're spending 3 days with Siggy to see what hers is like, and then will do 3 days with Tim to see what his is like. In November we start our DRs (ahh!) so we have to be prepared to come up with a research question and be able to set up the experiments ourselves. Today we were pretty leechy-- I had some leeches on my neck, hands, arms, legs, ankles, etc. and I had wait-a-whiles attaching to my face and hair! I even wore my hiking socks over my pants, with hiking boots and a long-sleeved shirt. I was doing alot of sitting and kneeling in the leaf litter and laying across vines and logs to lay out the plastic drift fence. but, it's all in the name of science!!!


Overall it was a successful week! Now, on to destinkify myself...
oh, and if you're wondering what a budgie smuggler is... picture a man wearing a banana hammock! (budgie is a type of bird I think, so it was a term used to tell a man that it looked like he was smuggling 2 small birds around in his bathing suit :)). Also, heaps= tons!

cheers!

so much to do, not enough time!

So the second week that we were here we did alot of lecture and field-based classes. We took a site tour to get a general idea of where we are living, and also got to take a tour of the area to learn about the ecology of the land in terms of tree species with our professor Tim. He showed us some of the different types of forests (re growth, old-growth, etc.). There was alot of damage caused by Cyclone Larry that left a noticeable mark on the land. Parts of the forest that were affected are less populated and do not have as thickly covered / dense forest cover. 

We did night spotting with Siggy, and saw a huge cricket molting, tons of huntsman spiders, caterpillars, a tree possum, a southern boobook (an owl-like bird), and learned of the forbidden strangler fig tree. The trail head was pointed out to us... of course we're going to go explore it!
We've already handed in 2 assignments, and are working diligently towards the completion of another one just for Rohan's class alone. We've written a 500 wd paper, a 1000 wd one, and are working towards a 1500 one and a presentation. For Siggy's class we've already had 1 presentation about scientific writing, and for Tim's class we have two presentations coming up. The schedule here is really rigorous... We wake up every morning to have breakfast at  7:30, and to begin our classes/ begin our day at 8:30. We often end at 5:30 for dinner, and sometimes even go until 9:00 pm. The birds turn on to wake us up at about 5:45am, and the cicadas alert us that it's almost time to end the day at about 6:30 pm. I have been able to sleep through the birds in the morning, though, and often get to sleep in until 6:45! With classes and a schedule (pronounced shedule) like this for six days a week, it becomes difficult to find any free time to think about yourself or do the readings for the next day's class or keep in contact with people from home... I have been making a strong attempt to keep in touch regularly, though! Starting this Thursday we have our first quiz, which is on the birds of the Australian rain forest. We have 25 birds to memorize via their call and picture... how exciting! (ugh). Thursday we also have that presentation for Tim...

By this time, we are all used to checking our beds for spiders and snakes and used to the long walk to the center. My cabin is up a pretty large rocky hill, which hopefully will get me in shape by the end of this trip! We're used to getting leached if ever it rains (it usually stays pretty dry and warm, except for these last couple of days and at night). We spent time in Atherton on friday, where I was able to find a Westpac bank in order to withdraw money without being charged crazy fees, use the internet and buy things like avocados and chocolate... yes, I purchased avocados and chocolate :-p. We have internet at a place called the study shack (aka spider shack), but it's not strong enough to watch videos or upload pictures...We also organized a frisbee game, which I played about the last 25 minutes of and realized how much I missed it! It made me feel good that I understood the game and remembered how to play (lol) and was able to help my team score the last few winning points :). We played with our 2 professors, Tim and Rohan. That was great-- maybe we'll play rugby next week!

I've really been enjoying the random animals and insects that we find here. Last night I saw a giant huntsman spider eating a millipede, the other night we saw a giant Hercules moth at the center (about an 8 inch wing-span), and this morning during class a Lewin's Honeyeater bird flew into the classroom chasing a moth, caught it, and left with it in its mouth! It was funny! There is a poisonous snake living under my cabin (it emerged the other night on the porch only to freak Kenyetta out and send her screaming for help), and today we found a rat in the dashboard of 2 of the vans! I look forward to seeing all sorts of other interesting wildlife around here.

Right now everyone is sort of winding down from the initial excitement of being in a new place. I think there is a bug going around. I've had a wrenching stomach ache for the past 3 days, Jake had a fever today, Sophie was sick the other day, Ali has a cold and Kenyetta has been feeling off... It's just a combination of being run down from so much activity and our bodies finally adjusting to where we are (at least that's what I hope it is!)

Next weekend we're going to Cairns! We're staying in a hostel on Saturday night, and then going diving on Sunday! I cannot wait to see the Great Barrier Reef!

For the past 2 Saturdays we've gone to the Peeramon Pub... We get picked up in the Peeramon Pub bus (which costs $4 round-trip per person), brought to the pub, everyone stares at us because there are 25 of us and like 4 locals, then we get dropped back off at the top of the access road, which is about a 2 km walk (25 mins) back to the cabins. That's a longggggg road at night! I have been getting used to walking alone at night, though when I'm coming home from the center or the study shack. It actually gets pretty peaceful when all you hear is the crumble of the rocks and the trail beneath your feet, and the symphony of cicadas around you and all you can see above are the stars and below is the path lit by the shine of the moon... I've learned not to be afraid of the forest so much, and just to accept all of the sounds that come from within it.

the first days...

So I'm here going onto my third week of chillin' out in the rain forest with some sweet tree possums, pademelons, cockatoos, parrots, deadly snakes and very large spiders (and many, many more...)! We arrived at the Center for Rainforest Studies here in the World Heritage rainforest of far Northern Queensland on Monday, 6 September, after having left CT on Saturday, 4 September. We didn't actually get the chance to live through Sunday the 5th... that was a very strange situation! I flew from Hartford to Dallas Fort Worth to La to Brisbane and finally to Cairns! (whew, that was a long one!). I met my first fellow student, Marcus, in the Bradley airport. It was nice not to be flying alone and sort of talk to someone about my worries, excitements, etc. We seemed to be on the same page about what to expect... except he made me feel a bit nervous that he was only bringing a hiking backpack and a regular backpack, where I had a 51 lb. suitcase and a duffel bag and my hiking backpack! Oh well...

So arriving in LA I was very tired and sick of planes... but SO EXCITED to be finally going on this trip and meeting new people (I had been anticipating my abroad experience since about a year ago when I applied to SFS). Marcus and I met up with some people in the LA airport and ate at On the Border, where alot of the group was hanging out. They were all very noticeable with their hiking backpacks and SFS T-shirts. I had a white Zinfandel to try to put me to sleep before our long 14-hour journey over the Pacific Ocean and Coral Sea to Brisbane. It worked very well. While in the terminal, I was greeted by almost the entire group of fellow SFSers. We were all excited to be on our journey to the Southern hemisphere where the toilets DO, indeed, flush the opposite way!

When I got onto the plane I was almost immediately prompted with dinner and then easily fell asleep for about 7.5/8 hours. It was sooooo nice. It was actually surprisingly pretty comfortable, too! They gave us alot of food. nom nom nom.  I plugged my headphones into the seat and Beethoven's 7th started playing... it was beautiful! My seat mate (visiting Aussie to thank a doctor that saved his hand while he was in the Marines training in OZ) gave me his Tiramisu desert (unopened, of course) and was very nice to talk to. The view out the window was absolutely amazing... it was dark out for almost the entirety of the trip, and mostly everyone was sleeping. I was awake for the last 6 or so hours of it, though (on and off of course). At one point I was staring out the window of the (double decker) plane at the stars and was graced by the presence of a shooting star! I couldn't believe it... when the sun started to rise it rose behind the plane in a horizon filled with reds, oranges and yellows, with a very deep purple above and ahead of us. Eventually the rest of the sky turned orange and red and again another deep purple was above us. It was one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen.

The arrival in Brisbane was successful, and the flight to Cairns was SO EASY compared to the past few flights I'd been on that day... when we arrived at Cairns and got our luggage, we were greeted by our SAM (Student Activities Manager) Leslie. She's super great-- she helps us organize ourselves into committees for deciding what to do on free time/ sundays/ mid semester break, helps us work out problems, is our mom when we're sick and is just someone to talk to outside of the group that understands and can offer sound advice. She's great. We met Rohan (our socio-economics professor), and Leah, Ian and Hester, all interns this semester. We then loaded the SFS vans (with the driver on the opposite side of the car!) and headed off to the CRS site. The vans were exactly what I pictured them as-- dirty and crazy with opportunity to get very close with the person next to you (due to the close proximity of the seats) and dangle your arm out the window if you're not driving past a wait-a-while tree/bush or near the center line of the road. The drive to the center was ridiculously windy-- we drove on the Gillies highway which you have to go slow on because it's along the edge of a mountainside (mom, you'd hate it!) and turns the opposite direction around every corner. Once we finally made it to the top, the lookout was fabulous! you could see for miles, and see the layers of the rain forest and the city of Cairns below. What a beautiful site!

Upon arrival to the site, we drove down a long and windy access road, which is our main road for entry and exit to and from the site. We are located directly in the rain forest, so you can imagine the vines and trees attempting to repopulate the roads. We took a general tour of the center, which is where we spend all of our classroom time, eating time, and other time (watching movies/ hanging out in the common room/ changing other peoples' facebook statuses when they forget to log out... things like that). Afterward we got to move into our cabins (I was assigned Cabin 2, which is the awesome cabin, basically) and meet all of our new cabin mates! There are 4 cabins, with one bathroom cabin... they are all located along one leg of the access road and trail to the center. Cabin 1 is the furthest away from the center, then cabin 2, then the bathrooms, then the dongas (where the interns and Leslie lives) and then cabin 4. My cabin mates are Kenyetta, Kelsie, Ali, Sonia, Val, Erin and Camille. They are all nice people, and fun to hang out with... we have some great cabin time conversations at night and in the mornings!

After moving in we had some basic ice-breaker games led by Leslie. This lasted until Thursday morning, when we began our first class with Rohan. We were to go out to an assigned town in the Atherton Tablelands (of course driven in the SFS vans) and talk to the local people about the economy, population, politics, environmental issues, etc. We learned alot about the surrounding towns through presentations that we gave at the end of the day. On the following day we did a geological tour of the Atherton Tablelands with Siggy (our ecology course professor) and learned about the basalt and granite soils, the cinder cones and formations of the rain forests throughout geological history. It was really alot of information to take in all at once, but overall a good introduction to the surrounding area. That night we had a barbecue at a cinder cone transformed into a state park. It was very pleasant... the sun was warm, and setting behind the distant mountains.