The final days and thereafter

By this point in the semester we had alot on our plates. We had finished our three classes, and were about to finish up our directed research projects! We had a Thanksgiving meal at the center, where we invited our host families for dessert! It was successful-- we had good food and dishes that different people made that they usually have on their Thanksgivings at home.  My favorite dish was made by our cook, Iris. It was an asparagus dish... I got the recipe from her, but I lost it! Thanksgiving was on the 25th this year, so I was thinking of my mom that day.


The dessert table was 25 feet long and filled with pies, cookies and Pavlova, an Australia delight. We watched Modern Family on the big screen in the back of the center, played cards and just chatted. Tim brought his baby Grace! She was so adorable. I got to hold her tiny self. She was so small that her entire hand hardly wrapped around Marcus's index finger! Holding her really made me miss Christian, Jack and Aiden.

Everyone was starting to go just a little bit crazy trying to deal with the stress of the internet being spotty and only two readily-available computers with internet on them, with people getting in others' personal space, and with deadlines soon approaching! We still had yet to present our research to the professors and interns, to create a poster and get graded on it at a poster presentation session at the center, and to present our research to the community at a local pub for community night, all on top of trying to pack and say goodbye to Australia and to the rainforest that we had been living in for the past three months. I would say that the last two weeks of the program was the most emotional that I had felt for the entire semester. I had a hard time deciding a research topic and project, then difficulties arose in the lab, when I found out that other methods should have been used in my data collection but not having enough time to go back and fix it, and lastly my computer crashing my microsoft word program and deleting about five hours worth of editing and writing of my DR that was due in the next hour. 

The first on the list of graded items was the presentation of our research to Moni, Siggy, Tim, Rohan, Leslie and all three interns! This was so nerve-wracking! We had a mock presentation the day before our actual presentation so that we could practice timing and get used to presenting in the room with such few people. My practice presentation didn't go so well-- it ended up being 8.5 minutes long, when it was supposed to be 20 minutes. After that I practiced and practiced and edited and practiced until it was time to give my actual presentation. I even practiced it out loud to Marcus (a very good listener and suggestion-giver) until I felt pretty confident of giving the real deal. My actual presentation went well! I wore my flower dress and was confident in what I had done and made.

The Deans were scheduled to arrive on the last week of the semester, just after our presentations. They were nice. They would eat with us, and we got to have extra-awesome food from Moni because they were there! We had an amazing brunch that had sausage, bacon, eggs, quiche, huge muffins, JUICE, and all sorts of fruits! If we had eaten that well for the entirety of the semester I have a feeling that all of us would have been a little bit rounder by the end of the program...

We had a crazy rain storm that just completely soaked everything. This was the biggest rainstorm I had ever seen, with the loudest thunder. It had been predicted that this was to be the wettest dry season that Australia has seen in many years, and I believed it! Every day it would be nice out and the sun would shine, but come 3 or 4:00, the rains would come and wash away everything. The puddles would be constantly filled to the point where frogs would lay their 1000s of eggs in them. The puddles started to look like they had tapioca balls floating in them, until those tapioca balls started wiggling around as the eggs turned into tiny tadpoles!

The day that we were to hand in our DR (Saturday, 4 December), everyone was freaking out. Those who had turned it in on Friday were relaxing, and the rest of us were scrambling. As mentioned above, my computer crashed my word document and deleted everything that I had been working on for the entire morning of that day. I immediately started to cry and ran into Rohan's office to explain what had happened and that I wouldn't be able to hand it in on time. He was very nice about it. He looked at my computer and tried to get it back, and granted me an extension. I was a bit relieved but still upset that I had lost all that information. So I went back to the computer lab to begin working on it again, and sure enough, I found a copy of the most recent document that was the one I had lost! Word somehow recovered it. I was SO relieved! The next obstacle to overcome after that dilemma was trying to print out my DR. The trouble was that the printers were connected to PC computers, so all of the labels on my graphs were missing and the formatting was all changed. So I had to spend another hour or so going through on a PC and fixing it. Finally, I was able to print out my DR and bind it with a backing and a plastic cover-- so official! It was a great feeling knowing that I had created the document that was in my hands, and that it looked so professional. Hooray! Only a few more things left to do...

The Monday before we left was our last day before we had our "disorientation" workshops and evaluation days. We got to go on a magical mystery tour where we went to Barron Falls, Kuranda, the Butterfly Sanctuary, The Humpy Nut World (a small little market with peanuts, icecream and veggies), Atherton and finally Tinaroo Dam to play frisbee for one last time with Tim. It was a nice day and was completely worry-free. I had a great great great time!

The disorientation workshops were really quite annoying. We had one day where it was a beautiful day and all I wanted to do was go to the creek and play around int he forest or go on a hike, but instead we had to be inside talking about alumni connections, putting SFS on our resumes, reverse culture shock and the details of the rides to the airport. It was exactly what I did not want to be doing for the last daylight that I had in Australia. 

Next on the list was to present at community night that Tuesday night. This event was held at the pub in Yungaburra, where a pretty good amount of people attended the talks and poster presentations. Four people, Joanna, Jake, Rhiana and Alaina were all chosen to present their powerpoint presentations, and at one point all of us had to stand next to our posters while the community members walked around asking questions about our research projects. It was nowhere near as nerve-wracking as when we had our poster presentations at the center, because this time we weren't being graded. We had finger foods and cake and I got a beer. Tim was presented with a promotion to Associate Professorship, and Tim and Siggy gave presentations saying goodbye to our interns Leah and Ian. It was a very successful night!

So Tuesday night and Wednesday morning we packed up all of our cabins and cleaned everything out. We had one last huge Warrawork and a cabin warrawork. We drove all of our suitcases up to the trailer, and brought our bedding to the common room. On our last walk to the center form the cabin, I heard the cicadas singing loudly and the frogs screaming behind the laundry area. I decided to go see them for the first time and take some pictures. They were stunningly green and cool! After that, I passed out asleep on the mountain of bed covers and pillows until it was time to take that last drive in to Cairns and to say "see ya later" to Australia.

I was dealing with the stresses of schoolwork, and while other people were starting to show their frustrations and sadness regarding leaving the forest, I held it all in expecting to be fine. I knew that I was frustrated and ready to leave, but I didn't know that I was sad and happy at the same time. One day I just sat on the steps, facing the entrance to the forest that leads down to the creek and started thinking and letting my emotions run free. I didn't realize how much emotion I had been holding back and had been refusing to let free until that moment. I thought and thought and thought not only about schoolwork, but finally about me. I thought about how much fun I had, and all of the times that I laughed so hard I cried, or cried so hard I laughed. I thought about the trips we got to go on, and how lucky we were to have seen all that we did. We saw the outback, we saw the rainforests, we saw the ocean. We saw kangaroos, snakes, spiders, cassowaries, coral reefs, pademelons, Boris the bandicoots and Charles-es. Thinking back on it, we saw what some people may never get the chance to see in the wild in their entire lives. We got to ride in awesome vans with our head out the window whether it rained or whether the sun shone down. We played sport with our professor Tim, collected rocks on the beach at Cow Bay, chased a cow down a dirt country road in a ute, went snorkeling in the desert, got to sleep in a cabin with 7 other people where we were kept up by the orange-footed scrub fowl and woken up by Ron or the figbirds and got to swim in an ancient crater surrounded by beautiful forest.

I know that I will always think about Australia differently than any other place I've visited, because I didn't just visit, but I lived there. I spent time learning about its animals and about its culture. It was definitely a great experience for me to have had, and I know that I will learn from it. So now, looking forward, I am about to finish up my last semester here at Smith College and gain more amazing experiences as I move into the next part of my life.