Decapitation

Ok well if you will notice at the end of the last post I made the comment “ ONLY TWO WEEKS BEHIND NOW!!!!!” well if you have lost track of time its been probably about two and a half weeks since my last post so we all know that 2+2.5=4.5 so that means I am currently 4 and a half weeks behind now… I am leaving for Sidney tomorrow so that means that I have got to catch up some before I leave… But ya so I left of right before the second awesome day of Seabird rescue on a Friday.

Right so on that particular day (Friday) I was excited for another day of Seabird Rescue!!! Fantastic right. Well on this particular day it turns out the previous night Seabird had obtained a 120-year-old sea turtle, which was very sick and needed intense medical care. Unfortunately, it passed away that night which meant they had a huge dead turtle on their hands. So what do you do with a dead turtle you may ask… Well you saw it open and see what’s inside and try and preserve its giant shell, that’s right turtle necropsy baby. So pretty much we sliced and diced on this turtle for about 3 hours and I was allowed the privilege of pulling out its large intestines, ripping off its chest plate, and last but not least decapitating it with tree branch cutters. IT WAS AWESOME, and sad at the same time because that was a really old turtle and you hate to see those die. It turns out that the turtle had about a thousand different sicknesses so it was impossible to really pinpoint what exactly killed it. Once again there are some sweet pictures and once I get back to the states I will liven this blog up with some pictures, but until then you are just going to have to bare with me. After we left the necropsy we got back to camp and prepared to head on another three-day field trip to Tenterfeild!!! (The most wonderful place on earth… cough) After we got packed up people started playing some games and what not and some really funny pictures were taken. Once again you’re all just going to be patient with me on that. But we called it a night and rested for our three-hour journey to the wonderful land that is Tenterfeild.

Tenterfeild was a pretty fun trip. It definitely had its dull moments but overall I enjoyed it. The three-hour bus ride wasn’t bad because I slept through most of it and we stopped at McDonalds (in Australian Maccers) so we couldn’t complain (unless you hate McDonalds like I do). But we got to the hotel and it turns out Ball State put some money out for us to stay in Tenterfeild. The hotel was really nice and ended up having fantastic food. But the first thing that we did when we got to hotel was turn around and leave. It was time to go on our first adventure hike, which turned out to be a really sweet mountain face called Bald Rock. Since I don’t have pictures I will describe it. Essentially Bald Rock is a giant hill with a huge rockslide face if that makes any sense. But ya it was super fun climbing around on the giant rocks on the way up and the top had a fantastic view. On the way down we went down the steep rockslide and got some fun Matrix pictures. After the hike we ended up going to a wine tasting facility called the doctors nose. It was a lot of fun because the owner of the place brought out a whip and we all tried to crack it (which is a lot harder than I thought). Well I ended up cracking the back of my leg instead of the whip pretty hard and had a huge welt for a day or so. But besides that it was fun. Then after the winery we went back to the hotel and ate dinner. After dinner we had an open mike night, which was awkward and fun, all rolled into one. After the singing extravaganza, I decided to go on a walk with a couple people out into the countryside. After the walk I came back and slept long in hard in my comfortable bed. I almost forgot but this was the first day that I saw kangaroos, and a lot of them all leaping and bounding around on the side of the road.

Well after a good night sleep and I woke up for the second day in Tenterfield. We had a fantastic breakfast and then piled onto the bus once again. This time we were going to sieve for Sapphires at a Sapphire mine. We got there and spent a good 2 hours just sieving through dirt for gems. A couple of people found some big gems worth some money but I didn’t really find anything of value. After the Sapphire mine we went to a small religious community. I don’t really know how else to describe it but that is what it was. We got to the community and about 30 students our age were standing outside our bus just staring at us. It was incredibly awkward because I had no idea where we were or why we were there. It turns out it was camp for Christian kids who want to live in a community that completely supports itself. The kids made quality signs and sold them to different businesses around Australia. The camp had a very similar feeling to the town in the movie the Village. But they made us food that was really good and the awkwardness faded a little bit by the end, but in no way was it ever gone. All of the kids were from all over the world. I think only one or two of them were actually from Australia. After we left the community the next destination was an old town. This was boring and I don’t really want to describe it… ya so we left that and went back to the hotel where I sat around and talked with people for the remainder of the night until bedtime. The next morning we had another wonderful privilege of learning about the history of Tenterfield. This would be comparable to learning about the history of Anderson.. nothing really happened and no one really cares, but the people tried really hard to make it interesting but unfortunately failed miserably. But after the tour we headed back to our home sweet home of Lennox head. Once we got back to camp the next four days I sat inside and did homework because I procrastinated and had to make a presentation and write an eight-page paper on coral reef. Both of those went very well and I was glad to get them over with. But ya that was one week, you all should be looking forward to the next post because it will be all about the TEN DAY…. Which a road trip in the Mystery Machine has to be full of adventures am I right??? Of course I am.

Holy Crap

I just looked at my blog and it just looks boring, tomorrow i will spend time trying to get at least some pictures up... Just for everyones sake

First day of Sea Bird!!!

Ok, so where did I leave off, right the FIRST DAY OF SEABIRD RESCUE. If you don’t know what seabird rescue is let me tell you (I don’t know how you would). It is an organization that rescues seabirds especially pelicans… and that’s about all you need to know. Oh right they also rescue sea turtles, which will turn into an interesting story later on. But right now let me tell you about the first day of seabird. So essentially we arrived there on the bus and all piled into one large room where a prego girl came out with a colorful bird on her shoulders. Now let me tell you at this point I had no idea what we would be doing at seabird and was incredibly excited about it. Our tour began with a couple of videos and a tour of the grounds. The videos go me excited because it showed a lot of the rescues that they had done (including dolphins, whales, sea turtles, and birds). What I learned was that essentially we were going to be doing some research for Seabird, particularly the distinction between a seabird, water bird, and shorebird. We would also be feeding some animals and cleaning cages. At the time there was only one bird in their care, known as the Giant Petrol. This was a hug bird even in its youth. It was about the size of a full-grown vulture. It has the weirdest looking beak that I have ever seen, when I figure out my camera I will post pictures. This bird is known for taking a bird known as an Albatross and grabbing them by the neck and drowning them in the ocean so you don’t want to get your fingers to close to it. It was having trouble with its oil gland, which prevents seabirds from drowning. They were doing what they could to stimulate the gland and get it secreting again. But ya seabird was cool, and so far its only gotten cooler. After Seabird we met up with Phil and went on a nature hike with him. We ended up seeing some wallabies and he had us eat different random plants throughout the bush. Later that night Rusty and I had the great idea of going down and jumping in the tea tree lake around 10 oclock on a freezing cold night. We tried to gather up as many people as we could and only ended up with four. So we put on our bathing suits and headed down to the lake (Me, Rusty, Eleanor, and Chelsea). Jordan and Piper decided to come watch us and followed us on bikes. Eventually we built up the courage and jumped in. It turns out that the water was actually really warm compared to what we’ve been swimming in. It was awesome because all of the stars were out and the water felt fantastic. We stayed in the water for about a half an hour just messing around. Turns out that Jordan and Piper had the bright idea to steal all of our towels, so it was a cold jog back to camp. Saturday I really have no idea what I did on that day, probably nothing spectacular besides the whole still being in Australia part.

Sunday, I decided to go to church again. This time it was actually held in a building about a 25-minute walk away from camp. They had a really good speaker this time. He was very passionate about what he was speaking on and this always makes people easier to listen to in my book. After the service was over we stayed and talked with members of the church and enjoyed a little birthday celebration. After church we headed back to camp through market day in Lennox. People come and set up shop in tents every other Sunday here and some of them have some very interesting things to sell. Well I didn’t end up buying anything and went back to camp for lunch. Later that day a large group of people decided to go kayak in the lake. Once again it turned into a major battle where everyone was flipping everyone else. Then Monday we got the privilege of going and talking to the mayor of Ballina council (pretty boring), revisiting seabird (same videos, so pretty boring), and visiting a Tea Tree factory (not that bad). Tuesday I got the privilege of going on my FIRST SCUBA TRIIIIP. It was a little overwhelming to be honest. I wasn’t that nervous getting into the water of going under for that matter. The major issue was the incredibly strong current. You would be sitting still in the water and then all of the sudden be swept away by an incredibly hard current. The visibility was also pretty poor but we still saw 6 grey nurse sharks, a bunch of Wobbegongs, huge schools of huge fish, and a huge stingray. I am looking forward to dives with better visibility and less of a current. Nothing else really happened until the marine biology trip on Thursday where we got to snorkel on a rocky beach. The only thing I really saw though was a Wobbegong. I am going to try once again to get some pictures up because apparently I am boring some people (HOPE)…… ONLY TWO WEEKS BEHIND NOW!!!!!

WHALES, OCTOPUS, AND SHARKS OHH MY!!

Ok well it has been a terribly long time since I have updated this thing so I think I better. At this time I am in an RV on a road trip down the south east coast of Australia and its incredibly bumpy so ignore any typos you jerks.

So Ah yes I left off on Friday the eleventh, which was GROCERY DAY… This is normally not that big of a deal but this trip was particularly special because of our driver….PHIL!!! That’s right the man who knows it all about wildlife, and I do not over exaggerate when I say that. You will be driving with him and he will spot animals and give their scientific name constantly, not to mention he is incredibly awkward which just adds to his awesomeness. So anyway back to the grocery trip. It began with Phil spotting our first wallaby even before we even got on the bus. It was a big one that was just down a dirt road just behind our camp. Everyone got pictures and eventually it hoped away into the bush. We then piled onto the bus and started our venture to the grocery. Once we reached the top of the head, Phil spotted a particular bird that can literally sit/hover in the air. It was ridiculous. The bird would be completely still just sitting in the sky using the air current to keep itself up like a hang glider. Then we spotted whales in the ocean and pulled off to watch a small pod constantly jumping around in the ocean. I don’t know what they were doing exactly but I would like to think they were frolicking. We made it to the grocery and bought food to sustain us for the coming weeks. Phil then took us to a spot where there bats known as flying foxes. We got to the location and there were literally hundreds of giant bats up in the tree. They all started taking off at once and it was absolutely spectacular. Well the next day I went with Piper and Jordan to Byron to go see the movie Inglorious Basterds, which I must say was an awesome movie. I ended up paying about 25 dollars to see it and it was worth every penny. It will however definitely be the only movie I see here in theatre. Then on Sunday I woke up and headed to a local church service with a small group of people. It turns out that on this particular day it was father’s day in Australia. The church service was held outside by Lake Ainsworth (tea tree lake) and there was a free sausage sizzle after words. It was a good service and the sizzle after words was spectacular. The sausage was by far the best I have had here and believe me when I say that there is some bad sausage here. But it was really cool to sit down and talk with a couple Australians after the service because we are pretty secluded back here in the Lake Ainsworth camp. But another positive thing that came out of this was on the walk home the greatest decision ever was made…. Road trip. It turns out the group that went to church didn’t have any idea what they were going to do for the ten day. Someone mentioned the word road trip and it was settled in a heartbeat. After church a medium sized group of people decided that we should all go kayaking in the lake. Well we got there and out on the lake and it turned into a major dunking fest and we all had a good time. Then Me, Kurtis and Jordan decided that we were going to try and snorkel at the lagoon. It was much more successful this time, still freezing but more successful. It was probably the lowest tide that I have seen yet which made it perfect for snorkeling. We snorkeled for about 20 min and that was all we could take. In that time I saw three octopuses, a stingray, a small shark, and a weird giant slug thing. It was a full day so that night I just sat around and talked with people

Well Monday we had another boring class in Australia life and Culture. It was on Australian sports, which was cool the first hour but dragged on the next two. At this point I cant really remember what I did that day because there was no field trip so I had the afternoon off. I most likely did something at the beach. Tuesday I decided to go down to the other head with Kurtis and Carrie. The other head is about two or three miles from our camp and let me just say its 15 times cooler than the closer more popular one. There are giant rock faces to climb, large tide pools that we saw a small octopus in, thousands of crabs, some of the smoothest roundest rocks, and great views. We spent about three or four hours exploring and decided to head back because it was starting to get dark. If you go past the other head you can make it to Byron, which I haven’t done yet but I plan on doing soon. Nothing much happened Wednesday I had Terrorism Class and that’s about it. Thursday however was a good day. For our marine class we got to go out on a boat and watch for whales. I went out with the first group. We didn’t see anything for a long time but then we finally spotted on off in the distance. We rushed over to it and it turned out to be two humpbacks and a small pod of dolphins. We got incredibly close to the whales, which was awesome, so close actually they swam underneath our boat. This was one of the coolest experiences of my life. The whales were absolutely HUGE. I have never seen an animal that large that close. After that we went to a lab and looked at some plankton underneath a microscope which some of them were crazy looking. After that we went back to Lennox and had class. And that was my week four weeks ago at this point…. I am going to try and catch up a week ever day so look for new post daily for about four days straight

Mangroves stink... literally

Well lets see here ah yes Sunday… it began with us getting up early and heading into town because we were going to work at the Australian doorknock. Essentially what the doorknock boils down to is raising money for the local rescue helicopter service by going around different neighbor hoods around Lennox and knocking on there door and asking for money (thus its named doorknock... creative right). I was not initially excited for this event but in the end it didn’t turn out to be that bad. Rusty and I ended up walking around for about three hours or so (probably more) knocking on doors. I had one or two long conversations with people in our designated neighborhood about why there were a bunch of Americans collecting money for an Australian helicopter service, but besides that nothing really exciting happening. I had one house where I saw a lady in the front door , but she saw me coming and sort of briskly moved around the corner. I still went up to knock anyway and got no response the first knock or the second. At this point I was determined to at least get her to respond because I knew that she was probably 5 feet away from me in the other room. So I pounded the third time on her screen door (her front door was open which would have made it impossible not to hear me which increased the determination), then from around the corner came and I quote “GO AWAY!” from a middle aged woman. Getting what I wanted I briskly walked away from the house. After the doorknock I can’t really remember if anything exciting happened so probably nothing did. Oh ya one thing did happen… I shaved my head. So here is essentially what happened I was hanging out with people playing games and what not. Then Rusty and Carl busted into the room and were both bald. I talked with them for a while and then they left and went off to who knows where. Later I went back to my cabin and Rusty, Jon, and Carl were all in the cabin talking about their new hairstyles. Jon asked me twice if he could shave my head and I agreed with some reluctance the second time. It wasn’t a big deal for me since 75 percent of my life I have shaved my head but it still is always a little sad to see it go. The news spread quickly and started a big commotion around camp. So about twenty people crammed into our living room to watch the event. Well it turns out that the razor ran out of juice before they could finish so I went to bed looking absolutely ridiculous that night… But rest assured that it was fixed the next morning before class started.

Monday we went to Southern Cross University (which is a college about a half an hour away from Lennox head) for our Australia life and Culture Class. This was one of the longest field trip of my life. The entire time we were there, we had an aboriginal tell us about aboriginal history. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing wrong with learning about aboriginal history but the guy was a very dry speaker that really liked to go off on tangents. This made it very difficult to pay attention to the guy for longer than 5 minutes. My mind already has enough trouble focusing and dry speakers make it that much worse. It was a long three hours but nothing can last forever and eventually he drew it to a close. Nothing spectacular happened that Tuesday, but I do think that was the night that I went with Eleanor and Lauren to Subway and we rented Tarzan, which was fun.

Wednesday I had the terrorism class for the first time (since I decided to add it to avoid an online class). This class is probably currently by far my favorite class offered. I find it very intriguing to learn about all of the different terrorist groups and the types of weapons and tactics they could possibly deploy (scary but interesting). If I remember correctly that day all I did was play on the beach and really nothing else extravagant happened. Thursday was a fun day. We got to go and visit a Mangrove and Estuary for Marine Biology. If you don’t know what a mangrove is it is essentially a very salty swamp with very interesting plant and wildlife. Pictures speak a thousand words so once I get pictures up on here you will have a better understanding. We spent most of the day there exploring. We also got to cross a river on a Ferry, which was a new experience. We also played with these sucker tools on the beach that you stick in the sand and pull up animals in the sand, which was super fun. We also walked on a beach that literally thousands of holes from a type of crab called solider crabs. Our prof said that there is a time of days that all of them will come out of their holes and march around the beach (thus the creative name again). Unfortunately we were not there at the right time but we still got to see a couple of them who were still wandering around. After the trip we came back to the camp and shillaxed after a long day.

I typed for about an hour straight so that’s all I am going to do tonight I think. There should be more tomorrow depending on the number of distraction. OHHHH and I realized that I forgot to thank another two very important people for giving this opportunity…. My Loving Parents. I am so thankful that they were willing to fund this trip for me and give me the ability and support to go. I know that it was hard to send their second favorite child (this is totally not true I am definitely the least favorite haha…. But seriously when Hope had a kid it moved me down to number three and Corrie will always be number one by light years) way across the sea since they already have had the favorite gone for two years in Scotland and another about to leave for the missions field in South America in a couple years. I love you parents and I will never be able to repay you for everything that you have done for me and I love you and miss you. And dad hurry up and get to Scotland so we can Skype fool… But seriously love you XOxOxoXo

Already out of Blog titles... DOG ATTACK sounds good

Well Well Well, here you are once again at my blog... checkin up on me. Well I have been pretty busy lately with school and messing around, and it has been hard to make time to just sit down and write on my blog. My hatred for typing is also a very large factor right now as well, but I have an hour though because I am staying up to talk to the other half of my family so I am going to use the hour wisely. I think that I have decided that I will update this thing weekly so I don’t spend all my time in Australia talking about the time I have spent in Australia. So lets see where was I aw yes Tuesday of two weeks ago. Well Tuesday and Wednesday all I pretty much did was play on the beach and hang out with people and nothing absolutely fantastic or interesting happened. Thursday was the first day of Marine Biology. The class was really boring because all we did was talk about currents and different types of beaches for about 4 hours straight. After the long lecture though, we did go for a walk on the beach. That was still pretty boring to because the professor rambled on about nothing for an hour and showed us some random stuff. It wasn’t all bad though because we did get to see a couple of different types of crabs. But on the way back the bonus was that I finally got to meet or at least see the infamous Phil. He is an odd looking, awkward fellow but knows more about the Australian wildlife and plantlife than anyone else on this green earth. Nothing significant really happened that night that I can recall, I probably watched a movie or something like that. Friday I went with a large group of people to Byron. Bryon is a pretty cool touristy town with a lot of shops and a lot of places to eat about a half an hour bus ride from Lennox. I walked around with people for a couple of hours and didn’t end up buying anything but there are some prospects for the future. They include an Australian hat, boomerang, and didgeridoo. But after aimless wandering we ended up heading home and watching the little mermaid that night which was super fun.

Saturday had a one major interesting thing happen… We found a camp dog… She didn’t stay long but still amazing right??? The day started out with Kurtis, Jordan, and I waiting for low tide so that we could go snorkel at the lagoon because everyone else was gone in scuba diving class. We waited around till about 4 o’clock when we thought it was going to be low tide. Well when we got to the beach we realized that we had gotten the tide backwards…. It was pretty much the highest tide that I had seen yet. Well we had the brilliant thought that the tide would go down by the time we arrived at lagoon, which was about a mile and a half away. This would not be the case. On the way this dog ran up in and started to walk in front of us. She would never let us get close enough to pet her for some reason. We eventually realized that this was a stray dog because no one was claiming it around us and she just kept on following us. Kurtis eventually got a stick and we started throwing it for the dog. Let me just say this dog was in the best shape that I have ever seen any dog, not to mention the fastest. The 3 mile walk from our camp to the lagoon and back the dog was continuously sprinting and bringing back the stick the entire time without getting winded. It was pretty much the third coolest dog ever (next to Pipp and Choochers (RIP), Bubba was a close fourth and I always hated Luke). Well anyway we ended up making it to the lagoon, but the tide didn’t go down at all which made getting to the lagoon impossible. Not to mention the visibility was terrible because it was a gloomy day. We still tried though which was a large mistake. The water was freezing and when stood up there was a strong wind, which made matters worse. I saw three fish in the 30-minute failed attempt, it was miserable. The whole time we were in the water the dog (later named Sophie) sat on the beach and waited for us. Well since she committed to us we committed to her. We took her into the camp and fed and bathed her. Kurtis even let her sleep in his bed that night. Her stay was short lived though, because that next morning on the way to the doorknock (described in next blog) some friends of the owner recognized the dog and said that they would take the dog back to its rightful owner. It was a sad goodbye but it would have been hard for us to keep up with the dog. Hard not impossible….

Oh Ya one of the morning I woke up super early to watch the sunrise and it was amazing. There are pictures so that you can understand what I mean.

To avoid super long posts I am going to end this one here but there will be another one up shortly maybe its late here and my family should be online soon so probably not but we will see… Oh and the reason why there are no pictures so yet it because it sucks to try and upload them, but I will still try throughout the months.

First day of School

Well boys and girls its been a couple of days, but classes are starting up so I am losing my infinite hours of free time were reduced by about half, if even. But anyways lets go over the first day of class… I had my Australian life and Culture class for the first time. It wasn’t the most exciting class and I had a cold (which I think I have completely recovered from at this point) so I had a lot of trouble paying attention. But it was only a couple of hours so it wasn’t that bad and the first half the professor tried to get to know us better. After the lecture we all went back and prepared for our field trip to the rain forest!!! On the bus ride up to the forest I talked with one of our Australian professors (Lyn) for an hour or so. He and I talked about Australia and his thoughts on healthcare in Australia. Once we got there we had the pleasure of trying Crocodile, Kangaroo, and some Australian fish in a classic bush tucker meal. The kangaroo and the fish were both excellent but I wasn’t a big fan of the croc. We hung around at the camp (which was a publicly funded environmental education facility for children) for a while and then took a trip to the rain forest. The rain forest was pretty cool but the bus driver was on a schedule so we stopped at a couple spots for about 2 seconds then turned around and left. It was kind of annoying because I really wanted to explore the forest more, but such is life. We then headed back to the camp and explored the grounds. We ended up listening to the guy that owned to place talk about the camp and what they were doing with it for the children. Eventually we ended up at lake where the wild PLATYPUS resides. We waited there for about an hour or so and no dice. It was kind of a disappointing field trip all around, but we did get to throw around a boomerang, which was fun. But that was pretty much all that happened the first day of class, pretty lame but still a bad day in class in Australia is better than a good day of class in the states… There is talk however of going back to the rain forest so we can actually spend some time exploring and whatnot, which would be stellar because one of the sites that we stopped had an amazing view with people at the bottom of it (which would be fun to explore). I know this is only to Monday of last week but no worries because I don’t have class tomorrow and plan on getting caught up… so ya more tomorrow