"Best of" last semester slideshow...

I finally finished the slideshow of the best-of pictures from last semester. No captions though, so you'll just have to use your imagination. Oh, and just to warn you, it is kinda long -- about 15 minutes. Enjoy!!

Only in Australia...

I'm sitting outside the library right now. It closed before my downloading of the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy finished so I'm sitting outside using the wireless. Above me in the tree were a couple of black cockatoos essentially ripping the tree apart in the process of eating the tree's berries. I'm under the impression that these are pretty rare so I watched them for a bit and went back to downloading. A few minutes later they took off and I watched not a couple, but five of them fly away. Just so you know, these birds are worth $10,000 if you sell them as a pet. And all I could think as I watched them fly away was "Wow, there goes $50,000. Only in Australia can you watch $50,000 fly out of a tree....."

(I took this picture at a zoo on a field trip last semester)

Flashback to middle school

A bit bored of the bar scene here in Townsville, we decided to do something a little different this weekend. Sober ice skating. Yup. I said sober. ;-) I was mostly excited about the cold air part of it... I'm getting a bit sick of the never ending heat, and was looking forward to wearing jeans AND a long sleeve shirt AND a fleece jacket! It's alot easier to control your temperature when it's cold out than when it's hot. There's only so many pieces of clothing you can take off and so many settings on the fan!

It was interesting. Definitely brought back flashbacks from middle school. Especially since there were alot of young teenagers there. I think we were the only people over 16, including the employees! We had fun picking out the different high school kids.. such as The kid who thinks he's super hot and cool with the faux-hawk and the eyebrow ring... the pretty-girl-who-knows-it.... the bitchy popular girl... the Spazzy kid who tries to get girls to notice him by being a spaz ... and the cute skater kid who plays an instrument and doesn't even realize all the girls have crushes on him. I was kind of glad it only lasted an hour or so!

After that it was still early so we went to the theater and saw this British movie called Hot Fuzz. I don't know if it's out in the States yet, but if it is... go see it! It's by the same guys as Shaun of the Dead and it's absolutly hilarious. I thought it was anywyas. It's the kind of random-what-the-fuck-is-going-to-happen-next kind of humor. Jaime hated it, but apparently he hates all comedies, and Karen didn't hate it and was at least laughing at the absurdity of it all. I thought it was genius.

Also saw 300 this weekend. It definitely helps to know that it is a Frank Miller film... otherwise you're just like WTF??

Not a bad weekend, but with every passing week I just get more and more anxious and excited to move back to Boulder. It's good motivation to work on my thesis and just get it done with, but it's distracting too... job searching, apartment hunting, talking about how excited I am with George, Mim, Aubrea, Eric, and others... Fortunately, there are not too many distractions in Townsville, so I have ALOT of free time to be writing away. 10 pages out of 40-60 done already! Woohoo!

OK, here's the ice skating adventure pics!

Karen fell right at the end of the night. Doh.

This is the kid we called "The Spaz"

Take Two

Bezza discusses Steve Irwin & defines "tosser"

Was playing around with my camera the other night, and thought I would post this here so you all can get a bit of a taste of the Aussie accent. Enjoy. :-)

Cinco de Irish!

My friend Betty's parents own an avocado farm not far from here, and we've been talking for a while about having a big guacamole party, since Jaime makes the best guacamole EVER. Seriously. So it finally took fruition this weekend, and what better day to have a 100-avocado-guacamole party than on St. Patrick's Day?!? I mean, guacamole is green. Jaime also cooked up a bunch of other Mexican food, and even made something called rice water. It tasted like a cold chai latte. Yummy. I decided to make green beer in the true St. Patty's tradition, which freaked Jaime out a bit, but soon everyone was dying everything green. Even the tatziki dip Karen made! haha. All in all, it was an awesome time and way better than cramming into some Irish pub with a bunch of drunks. Might have to try this again next year ;-)

Mmmm... Green Corona!

Yes, really...100 avos

How to make green beer

Helping the chef

Or maybe just watching....

Best St. Patty's shirt ever

Green Guinness = Greeness??

Awesome.

Apparently Betty peed green the next day. haha!

This is less than 1/2 of it. SOOOO good.

Guac, chilaquiles and refreied beans. And rice water in the mug.

The chef passed out...

And caught me taking a picture of him

Two different cameras again.

That's right.... Mario Kart 64!!

Total flashback to hanging out at UMass with George.

Diving (Take 2)

So I went back to Magnetic Island on Tuesday to do my Advanced Open Water dive course. Finally! It started early Tuesday morning. The Advanced course consists of 5 specialty dives. Because I was the only student it was only me, the instructor and the dive master, and the skill stuff that I had to do only took a few minutes, so most of the dives were basically fun dives. The first one we did was the Navigation Dive in Alma Bay, where you learn to use and navigate by compass underwater. Pretty easy when they just make you swim in a square. I'd still rather follow a pro around the sites though. Second dive of the day was the Wreck dive. We dove on a smallish wreck just off shore of Alma Bay. It was intentionally sunk for some purpose or another, but sank in the wrong place. Third dive of the day was the Underwater Naturalist dive where you go around and identify fish and animals. This was again in Alma Bay. Saw a HUGE ray and also swam behind a turtle for a while which was pretty cool. Lots of fish too of course. Wednesday was the big day. We took a 2 1/2 hour boat ride out to the Yongala shipwreck in the middle of the Coral Sea. Check out this link for more info Basically, it sank 97 years ago with 120 people (and a race horse!) on board in the middle of a cyclone. It was found some 50 years later or something, and is now totally encrusted with coral and is one of the best dive sites in Australia. As my instructor put it, "It's like everything on the Yongala is on steroids". So true. All the animals are pretty big or scary (like sea snakes!) and there are ALOT of them. And also some really beautiful coral. The first dive of the day was my Deep Dive. We went down to 28 meters which is about 90 feet. It didn't really feel any different than 10 meters, and it wasn't too much darker. But I got a headache later, which my instructor said could be because the air you breathe at that depth is more dense, and so sometimes air gets stuck in your sinuses and is looking for a way out. Whatever. I also got totally sea sick after that dive which sucked. It was kind of interesting watching the giant trevalli's (1-2ft. long big black fish) fighting over people's puke. Going into the water made me feel instantly better, so the second dive was great. This was my Boat Dive, which really wasn't anything new since that's all I did in Thailand, so it was mostly for fun.

Anyways, I don't have a casing for my underwater camera. But Mike 'The Pirate' McCallister was kind enough to let my use some of his pics from last semester. Thanks Mike! I did see everything you see here! It's pretty amazing swimming around a huge wreck that you know so many people died on when it went down. But at the same time you are looking at all this amazing underwater life. Tragic, but absolutely beautiful as well. I have to say, I am a HUGE fan of wreck diving! Enjoy the pics...

Batfish...There was a whole school of these under our boat

Sea snake. Apparently they are curious/friendly and like to swim around you and check out out. My instructor said "Don't try to touch them. If they bite you, you will die." That seems to be a theme with alot of animals in Australia! Luckily I only saw a sea snake from afar.

The bow of the boat. Check out all the fish!!

Yes, I did get this close to quite a few turtles! So awesome!

Professional shot I ganked off of google image search.

Maori wrasse. BIG fish.

Check out this fish's gill getting cleaned by the cleaner wrasse!

Moray eel. Got super close to these too!

I think this is also the bow of the boat. And a HUGE fish.

Puffer fish with cleaner wrasse.

Shovelnose ray. OK, I didn't see one of these, but it's a cool pic!

Looking into the wreck.

The first class toilets.

Another pro shot.

HEAPS of fish!

Here's your clown fish Eric!! ;-)

This is a great shot of what the underwater world looks like... It's like another planet!