Hello, hello! Sorry for the long wait between posts. I was going to write one about my trips to the cultural center and the fair last weekend, but never got around to it. So, yeah, I went to the cultural center with Aran. Basically, it's just a conglomeration of museums and galleries all in the same area. We spent a lot of time in the art gallery, where there was this awesome exhibit showing all the stages of old-school Japanese printing presses, with one color added for each frame. Then we judged some of the art in the Modern Art gallery, and Aran discovered his inner bat at the history museum.
Move over, Batman.
The next day, I ended up going to the fair with Eike and Sanja. It was costly, but it was awesome good fun to see all the animals, especially the show dogs.
Puppy has the right idea.
As I suspected it might be, it was pretty similar to the Puyallup Fair, except there were no scones, and there was an entire warehouse dedicated to "show bags," which are basically plastic bags full of a ton of cheap shit, all matched to a particular theme. I didn't buy any of them because frankly it was sort of stupid, but Eike needed to get one for her friend Zah, who was nannying a little girl who wanted one, so we spent a good half hour scrounging through the booths in search of "Glamour Barbie Pack" and "Wedding Princess Pack." Personally, if I had been a kid, I'd have gone for the ninja pack. I did see one little boy with a rubber sword that was bigger than he was. That kid knows what's up.
Cheap shit for sale!
But enough about last weekend. This weekend was even more awesome, because I had my first UQ field trip, to Moreton Bay Research Station on North Stradbroke Island (Straddie for short). I had to get up at about 6 AM to shower and pack and still make it to campus by 7.30, when the bus was leaving. My friend Pishum/Wendy barely made it on time, because apparently she turned off her alarm in her sleep. I hate it when that happens.
It was a gray day, and we had to take a ferry over to the island, which felt very much like home to me, although most of the other kids got a lot of mileage out of whining about it. I don't know what they were talking about. I thought it was gorgeous.
The first day at the station, we trekked out onto the intertidal zone at low tide in the rain and driving wind, which actually did get a bit cold, to get a sense of what was out there. We were suppose to be finding things that interested us so that we'd have an idea of what we wanted to do our research on the following day. A lot of time was spent staring at the sand, and a few brave souls even volunteered to take out a net, with which we caught some rays (a male and a female; our instructor, Kathy, said she was pretty sure they'd been mating when we caught them).
The second day, we had our research projects to do. My group included three guys, Greg, John and Brian, all American. Our hypothesis was that bigger rocks along the rocky shoreline would have a greater variety of marine life living on them than smaller ones. So, basically, we spent a couple hours looking under rocks, and then measuring the size of them by the amount of water they displaced when we put them in a bucket. This method of measuring seemed obvious to us, but Kathy was impressed with our ingenuity and commended us for it later when we were giving our presentation.
Greg and Brian, staging a photo. For science!
With all of our work behind us, the third day--Sunday--was for fun. We packed up and headed out to the ocean side of the island (as opposed to the bay side, where we did the research), where we took a short, easy hike, bought some delicious gelato at a seaside store, then settled down on the beach for a couple hours. Some kids went swimming, but my friend Julie and I deemed it a bad idea due to high winds and thus a high likelihood of freezing our butts off, so we just hung out on the sand instead.
SPF 50 for the pale peoples!
The best part about the trip? The food. Not because it was particularly delicious, but because there was so much of it. We got fed five times a day, which works out to approximately every three hours. It became a sort of joke: "Okay, it's been three hours; where's our cookies?"
As for my immediate future, this week is going to be homework-intensive, because I have my first major paper due on Friday (for Anthropology), but I won't be here Friday so I have to turn it in on Thursday. Time to research and write like the wind! Wish me luck. :)
Move over, Batman.
Puppy has the right idea.
Cheap shit for sale!
The first day at the station, we trekked out onto the intertidal zone at low tide in the rain and driving wind, which actually did get a bit cold, to get a sense of what was out there. We were suppose to be finding things that interested us so that we'd have an idea of what we wanted to do our research on the following day. A lot of time was spent staring at the sand, and a few brave souls even volunteered to take out a net, with which we caught some rays (a male and a female; our instructor, Kathy, said she was pretty sure they'd been mating when we caught them).
Greg and Brian, staging a photo. For science!
SPF 50 for the pale peoples!
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