Kiwis and Squeaky Sand

Soooo I fail at updating this regularly but I'm at least going to attempt to catch up from my last post here. To sum up my kiwi adventure, I had a hell of a great time and hope to find myself there again someday. Had my first bball game Monday night which considering basketball's popularity here and the state of our team went pretty well. We played better than I think any of us expected and only ended up losing by a few points. Got two games tomorrow night, which I'm sure we're going to rock!

The week cruised by pretty quickly as usual. Got to see Taylor play in his first rugby game Wednesday night and other than a long overdue haircut nothing overly exciting happening until the end of the week. Friday morning, Fuster, Shazza, and I boarded a bus to the Moreton Bay Research Center on Stradbroke Island for our first research field trip for our Australian Marine Biology course. Jeeves and a few other Dson girls had gone the prior weekend and had brought back rave reviews of beautiful beaches and constant feedings so we were pretty pumped. We had ended up going out to a club the night before so after hopping on the bus at 7:30 I slept for the majority of our 90min bus/ferry ride to the center but once we got there it was go Go GO!

The weather was absolute crap and on the beach it was even windier and colder with some intermittent rain but we all braved the elements to go out while it was still low tide. We were broken up into groups of 8 and went out with PhD students who showed us all the cool things to be found in the sand, seagrass, and rocks. We were literally fed every three hours so of course despite going in and out of the cold I was quite happy! Just before dinner we went out during high tide to do some seining and actually were able to catch a bunch of different fishies as well as a male and female sting ray which were doing ummm male/female things prior to us catching them. Sorry!

The next day was nonstop research: we formulated a hypothesis that on the pipes running into the water we would find more different species the further away from shore you went, created an experiment with random sampling to test our hypothesis, analyzed the results (we were right of course :P), and then had to create and give a powerpoint presentation to the tutors and other students. We did all of this in ONLY 10 HOURS!!! By the time we had made it through the the last presentation I basically walked back to our room, flopped into bed, and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning (Sunday/today) we roused our tired selves, got some bfast, packed up, and headed out on the bus to Point Lookout to do a gorge walk along the shore. Found out that Moreton Bay is home to the largest permanent population of bottlenose dolphins and is a popular spot for whale watching! The views were spectacular and we actually saw a few humpback whales playing around out in the distance. We stopped for some delicious homemade gelato (I had passionfruit cheesecake along with strawberry mango cream!) before heading to the beach. The sand was some of the whitest and most beautiful sand I've ever seen and was so fine that when you stepped in the dry areas it actually made a squeaking sound! It was a bit chilly because of the strong winds coming off the bay but I allowed myself to be coaxed into swimming around in the water for a bit before relaxing in the sun and "tanning".

We didn't have anywhere near as much time on the beach as we would've liked but eventually it was time to head back. Before long we were back at Cromwell College and Fuster and I had to catch up on what is called Ball LineUp. At the end of September, Cromwell is going to have its ball, called Ballistic this year, which is basically like a sort of prom/formal. Each semester the guys and gals take turns with which gender will do the asking to ball and this time around it was the guys turn. Basically what happens is that all the guys lined up to ask to bring their preferred partner. The catches are that people were allowed to start lining up nearly a week ago, though only a few guys started that early. Most started lining up on Friday or Saturday so for most of the weekend there was a line of guys chilling in the hallway outside of the room of the guy, Randy, who was in charge. Now people weren't expected to stay there the entire time, most guys worked as a pair taking turns standing in line so they could have the option of eating, going to uni, etc. So by 4:00pm today when the asking actually started, most of the Cromwell guys were lined up, aside from Fuster and I who only got back from Moreton Bay just after 5. This actually worked out alright for us, because although we missed all of the fun of lining up we arrived after the line was completely gone and simply had to walk in, take a look at the list of remaining girls and make our pick. Despite being so late in the process, we were quite happy with our partner choices.

So now all of the Cromwell guys have their partners but the gals currently have no idea who asked picked them and I'm not entirely clear on the details but we'll be giving them clues and such for awhile leading up to Ball. Some weekend before ball, Fuster, the other Lockley guys, and myself will be taking our dates on a little trip up to either the Sunshine Coast or perhaps even a bit further north than that. As I said, the details of everything are still quite fuzzy for me but as things progress I'll be sure to update things here.

Continuing on with the busyness of this weekend, after picking dates for ball, and having dinner, I went to my first Dancefest practice. Dancefest is going to be sometime in the first week of October where each of the residential colleges will put on a dance and I'm assuming there will be judges and a winner of some sorts. Anyway, I am about as white as they get when it comes to dancing and prior attempts at taking part in a dance line have been compared to a mentally challenged bird of some sort. Nonetheless I feel like I did fairly well and it should be a lot of fun.

Anyway, that about catches things up though as always I know I've left thousands of cool things out and will be kicking myself about them for the next few days saying I should blog about them but in two weeks when I get around to actually doing my next post I'll kick myself for not being able to remember them. Buuuut so it goes I guess! tomorrow the Dson crew is going to have coffee with Ann, which is always fun, then back to the crazy thing called class, then my two basketball games! In summary, its barely after 9pm here and I'm bout set to head to bed. Night y'all!