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.