Bird Spotting

Today was the beginning of the third week.  It’s pretty amazing to think that I’ve already been here for more than a month while most people haven’t even left yet for studying abroad.

Anyway, what made today special, other than finding out how to effectively catch and preserve a spider, were the bird sightings.  In the morning I finally figured out that the bird my housemates and I had been seeing quite frequently was a “Bustard”.  It’s a large-ish bird that stands on these tiny skinny legs and we only see them after dark in pairs.  They look a bit like an over grown roadrunner and apparently it is easier to approach in a vehicle than on foot, or so the bird book says.  Another exciting bird find was the sighting of Figbird (the northern form).  It’s about the “size of an oriole” and has a bright yellow chest and a red mask.  It’s nice to see bright bizarre species like this remind me that I’m actually right next to the rainforest.  Right after class I rushed home to record it in the bird book, which has now become pretty much a scavenger hunt guide for my housemates and me.

I finished off the day by going to the first “training” for the Cairns vs. Townsville competition.  The two JCUs (James Cook Universities) in this region have a competition in a bunch of different activities and one of them is a co-ed soccer game. However, because JCU Cairns only has a men’s soccer team they are asking any girls at the university to join for this one game.  My housemate Jennifer and I went out and ran around for about an hour and a half and had a great time, and I learned I was very out of shape.  It was a pretty good way to start the week, although it was rather exhausting.

Weird Tropical Fruits

The second week of classes was rather uneventful, other than the ripening of the custard apple!  On Tuesday night, which also happens to be the night that the pizza places have cheap deals and there are 1$ movie rentals, we decided that the custard apple was ripe enough to try.  So we tore it open and began experience this weird tropical fruit.  It has a white-ish flesh that is segmented in such a way that it almost looks like fish.  Inside of each segment of fruit there is a large dark brown seed.  The fruit has the texture or a mongo without all the fibers, but it tastes like a mix of mango, pineapple and lychee.  It was a very odd fruit, and I ended up eating way more than my housemates, who didn’t seem to enjoy it too much.

That was pretty much the excitement of the week, other than having a huge meal of chicken and mashed potatoes and salad and dessert of ice cream with passion fruit and pomegranate seeds.  It was a pretty nice week and tomorrow we’re venturing out to see the ‘Direct Factory Outlets’ and to see Chue’s friends at Rusty’s market.

Walkabout club adventure 1

Today was awesome.   We started the day out an hour early because we thought we had to be down town at 8 instead of 9, I guess it’s better than making the reverse mistake… Oh well.  We did a morning lap around Rusty’s market and Chue made a few more friends to get us cheap fruits and veggies.  We then drove an hour in a van to Lake Eacham National Park where we saw a few “bottom breathing” turtles, they are referred to bottom breathers because they breath our of…well, you get the picture.  Then we lay around the volcanic crater lake and ate fresh cut watermelon and pineapple.  Then it was back in the car to drive to the famous Curtain Fig tree.  The tree was giant! It originally grew around one tree and practically cut it off from al light, after that tree dies it fell onto another neighboring tree and continued cutting of that new tree.  We heard it was both 200 years old and 400 to 500 years old, so who really knows, but I don’t really care, it was so cool.  Then we drove to a small old town to have lunch at the Malanda Hotel, which seemed to have been founded in 1911.  We had a ‘beef burger’; don’t ask for a hamburger because you will end up with a burger made of ham.  They put lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and pickled beet (called beetroot) on the burger and gave us heaping portions of ‘chips’.  After feeling full to bursting we took a trip to the Milla Milla Waterfalls.  It was absolutely beautiful, and kind of reminded us of the scene in “Perfect Getaway”.  I am proud to say that Jen and I were the first two in the rather chilly water and both of us made it out to the waterfall before anyone joined us.  We climbed up behind the waterfall on the rocks to get a pretty incredible view.  It was so wonderful, we were reluctant to leave but eventually we swam back across the water and got changed to go on to our next adventure: Johnstone River Crocodile & Native Wildlife Farm. 

I have officially touched/ held: a saltwater crocodile, a black cockatoo, a carpet python, a grey kangaroo, several species of wallaby, a dingo, and a bearded lizard named “Crystal”.  We saw cassowaries and emus, and enough ‘salties’ (saltwater crocodiles) to make me never want to swim near estuaries.  After getting to take pictures with all of the animals and deciding that if I ever get a dog it must be part dingo we headed home.

 We took a quick trip through the night markets downtown to get me a cheap Aussi hat and then picked up pieces of Sunday dinner in Woolworths.  We came home and fixed up rice, a salad, baked rolls, and a pre-cooked chicken.  Although we were absolutely stuffed Jennifer made us crepes for dessert, which we covered in nutella, fruit and ice cream.  Now all we have to do is look back on our wonderful pictures of the day, digest, and oh ya, I have school tomorrow.

 The waterfall!

 My favorite wallaby, it had beautiful stripes on its face.

The First 'Real' Week

This week was the first week of classes.  One odd element of Australian classes is that they meet once a week, and often, the “practical’s”, which are kind of like labs, are on the same day as the lecture.  So on Mondays I have three hours of practical for ‘Tropical Entomology’ and after a lunch break I have two more hours of lecture.  Luckily my teacher is an extremely enthusiastic man in his 30s, and I assume he is going to be fun because he wore swim trunks as pants to the first day of lecture.  Plus there are about seven people in the class so loads of one on one attention, hypothetically.  On Tuesdays I have an hour of lecture for ‘Photography’ then a break for two hours and a practical two hours, which involved talking with him and taking photos for an hour and being in a computer lab for an hour.  He’s an actual photographer and not just a teacher so he’s a bit intimidating, and oh ya, he grades on a curve so only two people will get the highest grade (an HD) five will get the grade below that (a D), 10 will get the grade below that (a C), and 25 people get a Pass or Fail.  That’s a real confidence booster, but he seemed to like my Bob Dylan shirt and that I brought my camera to the first practical so hopefully that’s bonus points.  On Wednesday I have no class so that’s laundry and reading and hopefully pool time, whenever it gets hot enough.  Thursday I have ‘Biodiversity of Tropical Australia’, a class with about 25 students, 20 of which are international, and one of which is a retired loud old man. 

On Friday I have ‘Crime, Deviance and Society’.  This is taught by a guy who looks like a normal sized version of one of snow white’s dwarves and he loves purple, and what color folder did I happen to pick for the class? Purple. I’m choosing to view this as a positive omen.  He seems very intelligent and it seems like it will be a fun class, if only the adults in my class would shut their mouths.  On the first day of class our speaking topics ranged from sex slave trafficking to gay marriage to the colors of babies clothing, and oddly enough did not seem to touch on the goals of the class.  People asked him about his criteria for a paper, which is not even due until October 24^th.  A man in class stated that if a society has no laws and therefore no technical crime there can be no deviance, however, as the kid next to me muttered, “taking a dump on the table might not be against the law, but no one will want to be friends with you”, or at least that’s the cleaned up version of what he said.  Another lady proposed that scientists should study what is universally deviant by studying how rats react to things because they have a similar neurological structure, to which my teacher replied “Well they don’t really have a language so….”.  Needless to say we got through 4 PowerPoint slides in two and a half hours.  However, as we were all walking out he managed to make it clear that we should have the four readings read by next week, he will have the essay topics emailed to us within the next two weeks and describe the nature of tutorials that we will be having for the hour after lecture every week.  Quite brilliant.

Today was our grocery day.  The morning began with a trip to rusty’s market where one of the stall owners gave me a “custard apple” because I seemed so intrigued by it (I will post photos when we eat it).  And I found a pair of weird super baggy extreme harem pants that they love here for 5$.  Then we came back and relaxed and I was able to skype with our new kitties!  They are pretty adorable.  We took our cart down to the shopping center to fill up on essentials from Coles and we got kicked out of Kmart at closing time, which just happens to be 5:30.  We cooked a huge pasta meal and now we’re all just laying around unable to move.  Tomorrow is our first expedition with the “walk-about club”.  We are swimming in a volcanic crater, seeing the giant fig tree, going to a crocodile farm and seeing a big waterfall, sounds pretty good to me.

 Our very well stocked pantry.

The Botanical Gardens and Grocery Shopping

Yesterday we made the journey down to the Cairns Botanic Gardens, and it was well worth it.  It's one of the numerous free spots in Cairns that you have to put some effort into finding but once you do it's great.  It was awesome to see all these jungle plants that were native and marvel at their bizarre flowers and crazy colored leaves.  We decided it's definitely a place we have to come back about once a month to see all the different plants in bloom.  After spending about 3 and a half hours just wandering around the garden and the park across the street we began what we thought would be a simply bus ride to town.  Some how we managed to "miss" two buses, although we were on time for them as the bus station and the bus that picked us up was 10 minutes late, allowing us to relax at a bus station for about 45 minutes.  We made our way downtown to Rusty's market yet again and Chue made friends with a woman that ran a farmer's market stand and got about 20$ worth of groceries for 10$ and now we have to go back next week so she can give us her special super hot peppers.  After this trip we were all rather exhausted, especially because our long day at Fitzroy was catching up with us so we came home made dinner/lunch watched a movie and fell into bed.
Today was Grocery day.  We made the 20 minute trek to Smithfield shopping center with the grocery cart we had "borrowed" last time in tow.  We picked up school supplies, loads of groceries, and ventured into Dan Murphy's (The discount liquor store) in search of something our mentor called "Clear Skins".  They are bottles of wine that have something wrong with the labeling or the wine itself and they slap a white label on it and sell it for cheap.  It was fun to see all the Australian beer and to find out that our orientation was apparently sponsored by a beer company (Toohey's).  We came home with another cart in tow, somehow fit everything into our tiny fridge and spent the rest of the afternoon laying around, taking our first dip in the pool and finding the buildings where our classes were on campus.  I made a big pasta dish for dinner and Jennifer made us vanilla ice cream and Oreos
for dessert. We spent the night reading in our living room until we were all to exhausted and decided that we should probably get to bed because class starts TOMORROW!

 A crazy spider we saw a lot of at the botanical gardens.

Beautiful flowers that smelled like honeysuckle!

Fistzroy Island

OUr adventures to Fitzroy Island began bright and early at roughly 6:00am because we needed to catch the 7:01 bus to be downtown by 7:45 to make it to the boat terminal by 8:00 and depart at 8:30.  So once we successfully get out of the door at 6:45 we wait half and hour at the bus stop, because these buses run on island time and you can never count on them to be within 5 minutes of their promised time.  We then call the bus company who informs me that they are running on a Sunday schedule because today is a holiday, therefore the bus to pick us up is coming at 7:39.  Then a bus comes by and informs us that the bus to take us to downtown is having "problems" and he is not sure when he'll be here.  Finally the bus arrives, at 7:50.  They have to unload the bus onto another bus because of it's problems and then we're off, on a positive note, he was so grumpy about them not giving him a working ticket machine, he said no one had to pay.  We arrive downtown, miraculously, at 8:13.  As soon as we got off the bus we began a mad dash to the boat terminal to pick up our tickets and run to the boat.  After the annoyance of waiting around and the adrenaline of running to catch a boat we successfully find three seats up top on the ferry.  And the real fun began.
We started the day with a hike through the forest, it was hard to believe you even a bit close to the ocean with all the vines and dense vegetation.  We saw lots of these odd large birds, about the size of brush turkeys with tiny heads and large orange feet, that make so much noise digging around in the forest it's amazing they haven't all been eaten. 
We then made our way along the beach and picked up some half day snorkel mask rentals.  We found a nice private spot far down the beach and taught my housemate Chue how to snorkel, which is even more amazing considering that she has yet to be formally taught how to swim.  We saw several fish, a giant sea urchin, and loads of often coral.  There was so much coral that in most areas the beach was completely covered in large pieces of deal, broken coral and no sand was visible.  After a few hours of lounging and snorkeling we had lunch on the beach and decided to head off on a hike.
The fact that the hike was only 2.8 km was very misleading.  although it was not very long there were portion of the hike where I was seriously debating crawling rather than trying to walk up the steep slope.   Eventually we came to a lighthouse and climbed ladders all the way to the top to have an amazing view of the ocean around the island. 
After a very sweaty walk back to the beach we found a super nice secluded spot under some large shady trees and just enjoyed the view for several more hours.  We found lots of sea glass and some really cool snail shells that were whole.  We also saw a goanna on beach.  It's a very large lizard that eats eggs that it finds and apparently hisses at you when it is sick of having its photo taken.  It was extremely relaxing and enjoyable and we were all a bit sad to leave such a beautiful place.
On the way back we spotted several whales in a small cove, it was all very exciting and the boat was completely silent for a good ten minutes just watching the whale spouts.
When we got back to the city we went to a place that was recommended for us by one of our tour guides, an irish pub called PJ O'Brien's.  The have a deal where you can get a full meal plus a drink (beer, wine, spirits or soda) for just 12$.  My ribs were super good, and the meat literally fell off the bone.  We did a quick tour through the night markets and found some cheap deals on souvenirs.
We took a very crowded bus home and walked back from the uni to our lovely little house, then realized that we had been out of the house for more than twelve hours! I was a wonderful day.  The great adventures made the stress of the morning seem very amusing.  It definitely got me ready to get out and see more of Australia while I'm here, and to make sure I get someone to cover the center of my back with sunscreen so I don't end up with a very odd tan line...again...

 Snorkel!!!

The beach at Fitzroy Island.

O-week

 The beginning of our living room collage.

Our little friend we found in the backyard.

Since Monday we have had been engulfed in “O-week”, also known as orientation week.  By the end we began to realize that they assume that you will go to, at most, two of their activities because all of them say pretty much the same thing.  I learned, roughly 3 times, how to get onto the two school websites, open my email correctly and find the library resources online.  My housemates and I have met quite a few other international students, a bunch from the US, a few from Germany, Austria and Scandinavian countries, there is one boy from Stavanger!  From all of our conversations we have gathered that quite a few of them are viewing this semester as one looong bar crawl.  My housemates and I have realized that we don’t exactly want to be spending 30$ on bar crawls twice a week because it may mean one less overnight in the rainforest.  We’ve begun creating lists of activities that we have to do before the semester is done, and trust me, it is quite long.

Today we went on a bus tour around the city, to kind of get our bearings and see the highlights of the city.  On the walk home from “uni” (University) Jennifer fatally wounded a giant grasshopper, by giant I mean that its body was roughly three inches long.  So, being a developing entomologist, I caught this creature in an empty Gatorade bottle to bring home for entomology class.  At home I began the heart-pounding task of removing the grasshopper from the bottle to a Tupperware that could easily fit in our freezer. Now I am waiting to proudly display him, or her, in my pin box once class starts and I get my pin-box materials. 

After an exciting day of lectures, bus rides and abnormal insects we added to the collage in our room from all the brochures we picked up along the pier and made a dinner of tortellini, ground beef and tomato sauce (not ketchup).  We’re just starting to plan our day at Fitzroy Island tomorrow and preparing for an early start at 6:00.