Into the Real Middle of Nowhere

I will preface this by saying this is by far the longest post I’ve ever written. It made it to 4 pages in Word)

Way back in the day in England there was a tradition of what a family did when they had three sons. The first son was the heir of the estate, the second went into the military, and the third became a clergyman. So you’re probably wondering, what happened if a family had four or more sons? Well apparently, they were just like, we don’t really have anything to do with you, so usually they moved to either America or Australia. One such family had a fourth son who moved to South Australia and was in the Flinders ranges when he was drowned in a flash flood. His sister then thought him important enough to take a tombstone and travel a bunch of miles and take the tombstone to be placed at the place where her brother was killed (which was essentially the middle of no one). Where was I going with this? Why I am telling this story? Oh yes, travelling. With regards to the wildlife camp that I went on, there were a few people who weren’t from Australia. One came from Hong Kong, which really isn’t that far away. There’s an abundance of Asians in Australia. There was one from California, but essentially, all she did was cross an ocean. There was one from northern Virginia, which was pretty far, but me, I took the cake. I travelled the furthest distance (the absolute other side of the world) to go to essentially… nowhere. Yeah, the outback is pretty much the most of nowhere I’ve been. It’s just desert and some shrubs. This story was told by our professor at the end of camp (very much in that manner with him forgetting why he was telling the story, lol) and I won a mini kit-kat bar for the award for travelling the furthest distance. Yay Jersey!!! Anyhow, now that I’ve told you the end of the story, I suppose we should rewind a bit and start at the beginning.

So I got to have another adventure, and as a result, another chance to grow personally. The courses here are a lot less flexible as to when you can take them here, which is a big difference to my university where you can take pretty much anything in any order after your first year, and definitely after your second (with a few exceptions). Anyhow, I say that to say that most of the people in each year, know one another. The way my courses are set up is that I’m taking two 3^rd year courses and two 2^nd year courses. The two 2^nd year courses that I’m taking are biochemistry and wildlife management, the latter of the two is what this field camp (into the outback) was for. Biochemistry, however, is taught to both the animal sciences and pre-veterinary students and all the friends that I’ve made in that class just happen to be pre-vet, with the exception of one, and because the camp was split into two groups, she went on the first one, and I went on the second. So I was walking into this camp, knowing absolutely no one, and going, once again, to a new place with the preconception that everyone knew each other, or at least knew someone else already…it was like first arriving in Australia all over again.

I boarded the bus, but surprisingly, I was hoping that no one would sit next to me at that point because although it would have been a seemingly easy way to meet someone, I was very tired from having had little sleep the night before, and frankly I was also somewhat emotionally drained from something that I was dealing with in my personal life. Fortunately, the bus was large enough with few enough people that most people could afford their own seats. So I popped in my headphones and very shortly I was in the state of zzzzZ. It was about a 3-3.5 hour ride to Calperum station which was the location of our field camp. I slept for most of the trip, but it still wasn’t quite enough, and in fact, that entire four days was just me digging a deeper hole of sleep deprivation. We had to be ready to leave at 6 am each morning and so for me that meant waking up at 4:30 each morning (only by God’s grace did that happen). To add to that sleep deprivation was people boisterously gallivanting throughout the halls until like 1 am. However, I had a blast, and learned a few things, both about wildlife and people. First I’ll talk about the people, because they’re a lot less interesting and not nearly as exciting.

The main thing I learned about people, which I’ve seen in many to other circumstances as well, is that we’re too hard to please. If you know me, next time I’m complaining around you, call me out on it, and just straight out tell me to get over it! I was so sick of people’s griping and complaining. “We have to wake up too early…” “There’s too much free time…” “It’s (the weather) too hot.” “It’s too cold.” “Blah blah blah blah blah” I felt like I was stuck in the wilderness with the Israelites (I was halfway there with the wilderness part). Don’t get me wrong, not everyone was complaining, but there were quite a few. They just couldn’t enjoy themselves because they weren’t constantly being catered to every moment of the day. But now on to the exciting.

I thought the camp was awesome! Firstly, I got to go to the outback!! So I’ll give you the rundown of what we did. When we first got there, we had to go pick a room, there were rooms that had 3 beds, and some that had 4. Completely by chance, I walk into a room where two other girls were and asked if there was room for me. I introduced myself and asked them what they were studying. One girl was studying biochemistry; she was an exchange student from the University of California. The other was a biology major from (yes Nicole if you’re reading this) William & Mary. (just a sidenote: I feel like there are like 32 people here from W&M, so Nicole, I’ve decided that at some point, you need to visit Adelaide since you didn’t come here when you were a student there, lol) What are the odds that I ended up sharing a room with the only other 2 exchange students on the trip? So I’ll admit it was somewhat likely, since as I mentioned with my preconception of everyone knowing everyone, although it wasn’t completely correct, most of the people there were second year animal science students and did know one another. The only two other people who I’m sure weren’t animal science students were guys, so I wasn’t going to be rooming with them. Anyhow, after finding our rooms and stuff, we had a lecture by the ecologist that worked there, which I pretty much completely slept through (told you I was tired…and frankly, he was pretty boring). After his lecture which felt like hours, we were somehow ahead of schedule or something so our professor, we’ll call him Phil (cause that’s his name), decided to move the lecture planned for the next night, to right then, and I slept through parts of that one as well. I am so thankful that he moved it though, cause had it been the next night, I would have missed the whole thing.

That evening we went out to our field site. We got to ride in 4 wheel drive vehicles that were kind of like army bunkers (where you sit on benches facing one another in the back of the truck). We rode through sand to get to the “main road” which was only paved right at the entrance of the station, and unpaved everywhere else (apparently this was a “highway” that led to Sydney). We then turned off the road onto more sand and there was a fence blocking off the area we were going into with a sign basically saying that “unauthorized visitors would most likely receive no help if something happened to them.” Thought that was pretty funny…and they were serious. Anyhow, the program went as follows: There were two types of traps we were using. The first was called a pitfall trap which was a bucket buried in the ground forming a hole for animals to just fall into. This was used for catching reptiles (hopefully not snakes) and small land mammals. The second was an Elliot box trap which was baited and used only for the small land mammals. So before going out to check the traps for the first time (which were in the bush) we were briefed on the different dangers present. Basically the things to look out for were spider webs (which were more of an annoyance and would be a freak out moment if you walked into one more than a danger), my new arch nemesis spinofex grass, and snakes. The two snakes of the area were brown snakes (which are also present on the campus) which are venomous but have very shallow fangs, and death adders…’nuff said. Ok, I’ll say a bit more. Apparently they bury themselves in the sand and poke their tails out like a little worm to bait birds and other prey. They move slow, but strike fast, and they were the ones to most likely be hidden in a pitfall trap. In the case of coming across a brown snake, we were to make noise (stomping=vibrations to get the snake to leave) and inform our team of the snake’s presence. If the snake was right in front of us, we were to stay still and just wait for the snake to leave. We were instructed to always check the pitfalls with a snake hook for death adders before reaching into it with our hands to take something out. Any questions? Ummm yeah, of course you had me to ask the question which seemed very much obvious but no one else was asking: “What if we find a death adder in the trap?” (personal growth point) You know I’m not getting near it if there was. We were to call Phil or the other dude who’s name I don’t remember, to get the snake out, because they’ve had snake handling experience in the past. So that first evening, we placed our 50 Elliot traps (about 10 meters apart from each other) in a line and 15 meters away on either side of our pitfalls traps which ran in a straight line down the middle. (so there were 25 on each side of the line of pitfalls) There were 4 groups based on direction, I was in the northwest group. Our first night, we found one lizard, and I don’t remember what it was, but I do remember that it was a bit difficult to identify because many lizards are quite minute creatures and you need a microscope to look at many of the features that are in the key for identifying them. To add to that, the guide in the book often had things written like “spots usually (or sometimes) present on the tail” or even better, “eyelids transparent or not transparent.” ßthose 2 are exact opposites if you didn’t notice (cause the writers of the book clearly didn’t. Anyway, that took a while, and then my group went spotlighting. Before going on the trip, I didn’t know what that meant, so I realize that some of my readers may not be familiar with the term. My advice to you if you are that reader, is to Google it. I’m totally kidding! We got in the truck and had these 3 giant lights that we pointed out of the window to look for larger wildlife. You could also do this on foot with a flashlight, but we were covering a larger area of land, so a vehicle was much more useful in this situation. We saw about 8 or 9 kangaroos, a rabbit, some moths and some spider webs. The kangaroos were cool. Most were red kangaroos (which are ironically mostly grey in color and white at the bottom…I think) and there was the western-grey kangaroo (which was red and dark at the bottom). Apparently in past years, there had been a season of drought, so the kangaroos would be highly concentrated in one area. However, since there has been heaps of rain lately (relative to Australia’s aridness…so it really hasn’t been that much) but as a result, there’s more food available, so they were more spread out. I was fortunate to be in the first group so we got back around 10 and Yay! Bed! Unfortunately, my classmates thought it’d be fun to get completely trashed and be extremely loud while I attempted to sleep (sidenote: since I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that I live quite an unintentionally sheltered life…I miss that). I finally got to sleep probably around midnight, and woke up around 5 to one of my roommate’s alarm, since my 4:30 one failed to go off. She snoozed; I went to the disgusting ant infested bathroom. I still can’t figure out why they were attracted to swarming in there; I didn’t take a proper shower the entire time I was there. Anyway, we were gathered to leave at 6 and the staff was quite unhappy about the shenanigans that took place the night before. Phil threatened to send people home if it happened again. We got to our trap site and to our surprise, we caught 12 mammals! At that time we also closed our Elliot traps because they were made of metal and so we didn’t use those to catch lizards during the day because it would be too hot. I guess I should pause here to say that we collected the small mammals in the morning because they are nocturnal, and the lizards in the evening because they would be active and get caught in the traps during the day. We had to identify the animals so within our group we broke down into pairs and triplets to try and get the identifying done quicker. There were three mammals in the area. The house mouse, the Bolam’s mouse, and a carnivorous marsupial called mallee ningaui (I don’t know if I spelled that right, but it’s pronounced mal-lee nin-gow-ee, or at least that’s how we were pronouncing it). The house mice were pains because they smelled bad, they were super hyper and constantly trying to escape by jumping out of the bucket, they refused to be still, and one bit my finger. The bolam’s mouse was super cute and calm. The carnivorous marsupial was somewhat in between behavior-wise but it was cool because it wasn’t a mouse and they were rare to catch; the house mouse of course was always the most commonly caught. We marked their tails with a dry erase marker to avoid double counting them. We measured different features to determine whether there were juveniles present in the population to determine whether there was reproduction occurring. Later that day, we did a habitat assessment, which was basically measuring the density of shrubs and grasses and bare ground, surrounding our pitfalls to determine what type of habitat each animal was most likely to reside in. That evening, after releasing our mammals and collecting our reptiles (we only ever caught reptiles in our 10th pitfall trap for some reason), my group learned how to use the GPS units so that we could record the locations of our Elliot traps.

It was evening and it was morning, the 2^nd day. On the 3^rd day, we were fortunate enough to only catch 5 animals (at each trap we were hoping not to have something, because 12 took way too long the day before). This morning was bizarre. As we were identifying the small mammals, one of the guys in my group was handling one of the mice and he wasn’t over the bucket and the mouse got dropped and escaped. Then there was me and the girl, Kim who I was working with. She was holding the carnivorous marsupial and I was trying to sex it (determine whether it was male or female), so I was attempting to move its fur and the little bugger bit my finger. As a natural reflex, I jerked my finger away, however, little to my knowledge, it was holding on with its teeth and as a result, I pretty much threw it across the room. Bye-bye little mallee ningaui. So we captured 5 and returned 3. However, we weren’t the only group dropping mice (well, I guess I threw mine, but that was beside the point). Every time you looked around, someone was chasing a mouse across the room or out the door. Some were caught, others escaped. Because it had rained earlier that morning, we had to switch the morning and afternoon activities. We were originally meant to do sand transects in the morning which basically involves smoothing the sand out so that you can see what animals cross the road and whether larger animals, such as foxes, use the road as an easier path than walking through the bush. The purpose was to see whether the road was an interruption of the animals’ habitat or whether they would be willing to cross it. Because the sand was wet in the morning, it would have made for an extremely taxing task, so we waited until the afternoon for the sand to dry out. So in the morning, instead of the sand transect, my group went bird watching which was really cool. I think I might pick that up as a hobby someday. We had a bonfire that night, which I stood by for a few moments, but then someone came and lit a cigarette, and I was tired anyway, so I just went to bed. Finally, on the last day, we released the animals we’d caught the night before as per usual (although that night, we’d caught a bearded dragon and a mallee dragon, the mallee dragon was absolutely adorable), and I don’t know how many we caught but we managed to get 2 mice in one Elliot, and other groups were using our bags I think, so we ended up with like 9 or 10 to identify (one guy was convinced one of the mice he’d found was dead so he stuck it in a plastic bag, but it turned out to be alive…glad it didn’t suffocate), and we had dish duty that morning. So three of the guys stayed behind to do the dishes so we could get a jumpstart on identifying, and we still finished last. We then went and re-released them, and assessed our sand transects. We collected all the traps, and after having lunch, and gathering our things, 4 pages later, we finally return to the beginning of this post.

I thought the camp was a great experience and I had quite a bit of fun, despite my lack of sleep. I slept on the return trip as well. I’ve already mentioned the blissfully sheltered life that I live, and I suppose that may come up at another time in more detail. But the other thing I’ve learned is that I am less afraid to talk to people now. I think I’ve gotten better at more easily finding common ground or topics to talk about, or I’ve just gotten less afraid to do it. The positive is that I’m growing! Until next time,

You can do all things through Christ that strengthens you (Phil 4:13)

Grow…Be BOLD!! (2011)

Shalomses

A new adventure

A new adventure is coming my way

Guess I should prepare

Another adventure? again you say?

I thought I was already there

After all I reason, I took a big step

I jumped across the Pacific

To the other side of the world I traveled

Was that not brave enough?

In an unknown land

A stranger to all

I stepped out of my zone of comfort

For the sake of making new friends

But now I suppose

I've found that place again

Normalcy has set in

But did I come all the way to the other side of the world for normalcy?

Uhhh, I don't think so, nope, that's a definite NO!

So I guess it's time to stretch again

Meet more new people

See more new places

Into an unknown place

With unknown people

Here we go

Pray

What have I been up to?

First, some more random, but interesting stuff I learned in repro class. (If science/animals gross you out, or you were completely grossed out by the bedbug thing in the last post, skip to the next paragraph) When artificially inseminating an elephant, (cause you never know when you may be put up to the challenge, you could just be walking along and then Whoah! There’s an elephant and I need to AI it. When that happens, you’ll be glad you read this) you should know that it’s gonna be quite hard to do…because yeah, it’s an elephant. It’s about a 1.5 meter journey to the cervix where you need to insert the semen, and there’s like this random 45° angle turn that you have to make in order to get to the cervix. And once you get there, there’s 3 tiny mm sized holes that you have to choose from, one is the correct one and the other two are dead ends. Still with me? Well, the initial opening that you’d enter through is on the underside of the elephant, so I’m still trying to figure out how they actually mate…no wonder they’re endangered. Was that difficult enough? Well, let’s rewind a bit, because before you AI the girl, you’ve gotta get the semen out of the boy. This is where, once again, it gets weird. In order to get the male to ejaculate, you’ve gotta stimulate the prostate gland. This is NOT how it’s done for most animals, so I’m sitting there trying to figure out, “Who in the WORLD figured this out???? Oh, the normal ways we use for getting an animal to ejaculate isn’t working on this elephant. Maybe I’ll try sticking my arm into the rectum (yes, this is how one accesses the prostate gland) and…well you get the idea. As interesting as I find conservation of endangered species, I’m getting the idea that finding new AI methods for animals such as the elephant or the rhinoceros is possibly not the field I want to get into as a vet or animal scientist, but I suppose we shall see what the future holds. (If that bit of info interested you, check out the documentary “An elephant’s guide to sex”)

But yeah, I’m thinking that this is going to be quite a hodgepodge/random collection if tidbits from my life…so if you’re interested, read on. Today, my church had a picnic and it was quite fun, not to mention that the weather was pretty near perfect. Not too cold, not too hot and the sun was warm but not scalding. Anyhow, the reason I put this in here (well, I guess my church here is pretty cool, and I suppose that is one thing that I’ve been up to) was to tell you about the bathroom adventure that me and two friends had. We got up and started walking to the bathroom, but none of us actually knew where the bathroom was. We saw this building off in the distance that we decided the bathroom was probably in, but as we got closer, it was looking more like a shack and we were hoping that this was not where the bathroom was located. When we got to the building we realized there was a small fire burning, and there were a group of people sitting by. They were like “Hi! This is our campsite!” It was a bit odd, but they were quite friendly, and pointed the bathroom out to us. It was of course in the direction that we had come from so we went completely out of the way. However, we took a nice scenic tour around the park to get to the bathroom, so I guess it wasn’t so bad. When we got to the bathroom, there was a line, and no exaggeration, this is probably the weirdest public toilet I’ve ever seen. Firstly, there was no handle on the door. It slid open like an elevator, and it actually looked like the door to an elevator. You had to push a button to open it. (sidenote: interesting fact, the doors on the trains don’t open automatically, you either have to push a button or slide it open manually with a handle) Anyhow, when you went in, despite the fact that it was kinda gross, being a public toilet in a park and all, it almost seemed like a bathroom from the future. I almost wish I’d taken pictures. Anyhow, I felt a bit ridiculous as the various signs on the wall pretty much walked me through the process. First, you had to push a button to have the toilet paper dispensed to you. In hindsight, this was quite gross. If you think about it, if someone needed a second helping of TP, they had to push that button again after wiping….GROSS! Anyhow, the next step was to try and figure out how to flush the toilet. Sign: Toilet will flush automatically upon washing hands or opening door. (Could hand-washing not have been compulsory at this point?) So I go to the 3 part sink. Section 1: Automatic soap dispenser. (shift hands to the right to) Section 2: Automatic water. (shift hands again to the right to) Section 3: automatic hand dryer. Finally, you push the exit button to open the door. When the 3 of us finally got back to the group, 2 of my other friends were like, what took you guys so long, so I proceeded to tell them this story. They then told me that if I wanted a simple public toilet that I could go visit China because there are no doors on the stalls. One friend said she used an umbrella as a door.

I mentioned earlier how I have a tendency to go the wrong way to find stuff. If I haven’t told you my dentist in Chinatown story, ask me about it, but it pretty much happened all over again here when I was trying to get to the FEDEX store. I knew it was near the airport, so I went to the Metro place and asked which bus to take. He told me the bus number and pointed in the direction of the nearest stop which was V2. Unfortunately, when people point to stuff from inside a building, once I walk outside, I get confused. V2 happened to be only a few meters away down the street, but of course, I went the wrong way. I found V1, but V2 and V1 aren’t that close to each other. I ended up walking around a major chunk of the city, and ended up going back to the main campus of the university because I knew there was a stop near there (but it was completely out of the way). I finally got the bus, and it was about a half hour trip. I got off at the stop before the airport b/c that’s where FEDEX is. However, when trying to go back, I found out as the bus passed me twice, that it doesn’t stop there unless someone on the bus needs to get off there, because the stop is off the main road and the bus driver can’t see if anyone’s there (and no, they don’t bother checking). Another bus came, and he told me that I probably wouldn’t get picked up there anytime soon, so he took me to the airport stop. Because of this long excursion, I ended up missing the bus back to my campus, as well as the train that gets me to the town close to campus in time for the afternoon shuttle from town to the campus. So, I got on the train anyway and just decided that I could hang out in town for like 3 hours. That wouldn’t have been happy. Fortunately, one of my friends has a car and she got out of class early so she came and got me. But yeah, I’m still up to my normal travel mishaps.

Lastly, I guess I’ll tell you about my random uni stuff. I started a bible study, and it’s been going pretty well by God’s grace. I also joined the netball club. I’ve never played or heard of netball before I came here, but I’ve been told that I’m doing pretty well at it. I’ve been playing wing defense which I think is an alright position for me. For those who don’t know what netball is, which for all I know, plenty of people could and I could have just been living in the dark (but I think it’s primarily an Australian sport), it’s like a combination of handball and basketball I guess. The hoop doesn’t have a backboard, and only two people are allowed to shoot, and you have to be right next to the basket. Also, whoever’s trying to block the shooter has to stand 3 feet away. There’s also no dribbling allowed, and once you catch the ball, you can’t move (well you can pivot, but you can’t run with it). It’s pretty fun, and it’s giving me exercise which is good, cause this campus isn’t nearly as big as Purdue so I can’t use walking to class as my daily physical activity. I guess that’s it for now.

Oh, one last thing: I tried Vegemite…and hated it.

Until next time, try something new.

Shalomses

They Do What, How?!?!?

me with a basket on my head

boat with clay pit, it's kinda hard to see

water/baby carrier

shield map

boomerang and shield

bird net

giant boomerang (used for ceremonies not hunting...could you imagine throwing that thing?)

spear throwers

demonstration of spear throwing

So, you can ignore the pictures above for now, for the sole purpose of the fact that I can’t figure out how to make them go beneath the text, but I will talk about them later. In fact, if we’re friends on fb, you may have already seen them, but they will be a nice aid to go with when I talk about the things I learned about the Aboriginal culture when I took a tour at the museum. The title of this post would I suppose more accurately be named “Some random stuff I’ve learned so far” but that’s not nearly as exciting as the current title, and I promise you it is completely relevant. Before I talk about what I learned about the Aboriginals, I thought I talk about something completely irrelevant to Australia that I learned in Animal Reproduction: Bed Bug Mating

This is probably one of the weirdest things that I’ve ever heard, and I warn you now this may be a bit gross to some, or a bit in appropriate, but I’ll try to make it as un-awkward as possible even though it’s a totally awkward and weird topic. But yes, last week we went on a field trip for Animal Reproduction (where I got to artificially inseminate a sheep btw!!!) and as part of the trip, we watched a video on how different animals mate. An interesting fact that I learned is that with some species of bird, and I suppose some other animals may be able to do this as well, if an unwanted partner mates with them, they can push the unwanted sperm from their body. An odder fact is that dragonflies have a spiked penis that they use to scrape sperm from the reproductive tract of the female. However, the female repro tract is formed in a way that there are ridges behind where the sperm can hide. As strange as the previous two have seemed, there was no comparison to the bed bug. It was by far the weirdest. The male bed bug can penetrate the female in any part of her body and it injects sperm into her bloodstream. People always say that the sperm has a long journey from the entryway of the vagina to the oviducts in humans; however that doesn’t even compare to the journey the sperm of the bedbug take. The bedbug’s sperm must travel through the females bloodstream until it finds its way to the egg. Weird enough for you yet? Nope, it gets sooo much weirder. Not only can the male penetrate the female in any part of the body, males can penetrate other males, including while one male is mating with another female. If a male penetrates another male, his sperm journey is to travel through the blood stream until it reaches the testes, where it can then be transferred to another female. So not even the male bedbug can ensure its paternity to the female it mates with. So that’s something I’ve learned that was quite interesting since I’ve been here.

Now on to the Aboriginals. There are estimated to have been around 600 different aboriginal nations, all speaking different languages. The ones that inhabited the area of Adelaide were called the Kaurna (pronounced almost like Ghana, at least with an Australian accent) people. They’re society was led by a group of elders and they delegated decisions, discussions, and tasks as male business and female business. It was very much a hunter-gatherer society, and because they couldn’t be bogged down with having to carry a bunch of tools, many of their tools were dual purpose. They usually followed the wildlife which was part of their source of food; however, they didn’t go too far out distance-wise so they generally stayed in the same territory. But back to the dual purpose tools. The first picture (from the bottom going up) is of the spear thrower which doubled as a scraper. It was pretty cool in how advanced it was for the time period in which it was used. The design allowed for a further distance thrown as well as enhanced accuracy. Then there was the boomerang. Contrary to common belief, not all boomerangs returned to you. Some were actually quite club shaped in their design. Also contrary to common belief, they didn’t throw the boomerangs into the air and knock the birds from the air. That would be extremely difficult, as well as quite inefficient because on the occasion that you happened to hit a bird, you’ve only got one after heaps of effort. What they did in fact do with the boomerangs was throw them at the birds to get them to fly into the direction of the bird net that they had set up in a nearby tree. The boomerang could also be used to start fires by rubbing it against a groove that was in their shields. This was possible due to the fact that one was made of soft wood and the other of hard. Paintings on their shields also could be used as maps based on the colorings and patterns. I’m pretty sure there was a container that they used to carry water in that doubled as a baby carrier as well. Unfortunately I took the tour the first week I was here, but failed to write about it until now, so that’s pretty much all the detail that I can remember. I’m pretty sure that’s it, which means this has made to be one of my shorter posts.

Until next time, never stop learning! After all, “knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.” (Proverbs 2:10b)

Shalomses

One down, 11 to go

So that countdown is referring to the number of weeks of classes here. I’ve successfully survived my first week of classes, and it’s a bit different. Firstly, there’s only 12 weeks! I was talking to my good friend Bekah today before Skype rudely dropped the call and she was asking me about how the classes were different. So I suppose I will write about that in this blog, since I never got to answer here.

Firstly, I will note that when I got here, during international student orientation, they constantly stressed how punctuality is a major Australian value, and I’m like ok, we share a value. Although I sometimes operate on CP time, I really do like to be on time to stuff, and I make an honest effort to be for the most part. It’s something I can say I have actually seen myself grow in since beginning college. So since my schedule said 9 am on Tuesday for the start of my biochemistry class, I show up at like 5 before 9, and there’s barely anyone there. People slowly trickle in, including the professor, and finally at like 9:15 class started. I’m thinking to myself, “this is interesting. Punctuality, huh?” Maybe starting on time is how they roll at the main campus, however at the Ag one, not so much. Second difference: (also exclusive to the ag campus) the lectures are in 3 hour time blocks, so I have one class each day. In the morning is the 3 hour lecture, and in the afternoon is 3 hours of lab, tutorial, or a combination or alteration of the two. I say alteration because in biochemistry, we have a lab one week, and the next week a tutorial (which is like a discussion based recitation). 3 hour lecture? That is a bit long, but it’s not so bad. The biochemists have worked it out so that we get a 10 min break after the first hour, and lunch after the second hour before the 3^rd, because anyone could guess that 3 hours straight of biochem would be enough to cause someone’s brain to liquefy and just simply run out of their ears. However, these breaks seem to be at the prof’s disgression, but they do all seem to be in agreement that a break is necessary. My second day was in animal breeding and genetics, and the prof went for like an hour and a half, and was just randomly like, ok, let’s take a 25 minute break. Today, was animal reproduction, which so far, I find the most interesting. This is going to be a MAJOR nerd moment, but I was so engaged that I could’ve gone without the break. Or at least when she gave us one, I wasn’t necessarily ready for one yet, but in all honesty, I probably would have gotten restless if I had to sit for 3 straight hours.

The next difference is that the learning seems to be a lot more hands on. Today in repro I dissected the reproduction tract of a boar and goat. And then we got to design the stages of sperm development within the seminiferous tubule out of play-doh. Mine was done in pen though, cause it took until the end of the class period of the teacher explaining it to me until I understood it. However, I get it now (hopefully). Yesterday, my first day of breeding and genetics involved a trip to the cattle yards. And there are other similar things planned throughout the semester including trips to zoos, research centers, and my wildlife management course has a four day field trip.

Am I at number 4? Well, that’s what we’re going with. The professors generally go by their first names. And number 5, cause that’s a good number I think. When I was preparing to come here, everyone was like, it’s really hard to do well because your grade is only based off of the final exam and a paper. Fortunately, I’ve learned not to really listen to other people when their advice is even in the least bit discouraging. Even if something is difficult, I’m not going to go into with an attitude of defeat. I’m more than a conqueror!! (HS just gave that to me just now :]) I’m going to go into it expecting and working toward success! Anyhow, I got here, and maybe some classes are like that, but mine aren’t. The heaviest weighted exam is in my repro class and that’s 45%. The other two non-online classes have 2 exams and all of them have lab grades and other assessments. The learning style is still a bit more independent than at Purdue, and I’ll have to be sure to interact with each subject more than just that one day each week, but that should be a good growth experience, and hopefully it will help to improve my study skills. Well, that’s all I can think of for now.

Until next time…Be MORE than a CONQUEROR!! (Rom 8:37)

Shalomses

Quick post

Here's a music video that shows some of Adelaide at night time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j--ckIIdIc&NR=1

To the Middle of Nowhere

I stepped off the bus as tumbleweed rolled past. “Shalyse, what have you gotten yourself into this time?”

You may remember from the last post that I mentioned that I would be moving to the animal sciences campus, and I was told it was in the middle of nowhere. The closest town in fact is 12 km away (~7 mi?) For the first time since I’ve been alive, this is really the first time I’ve legitimately seen tumbleweed, but that’s not all I’ve seen since I’ve been here. First of all, I just need to mention that God’s always doing more than I can even ask or imagine…I signed up to live in the campus housing. I didn’t even know there was an option other than the residence halls, but I am living in a 5 person house with only 3 people (myself included in that 3). This house, fully furnished, also came with all the kitchenware needed to cook, and I get 5 meals/week provided. That’s just great in my mind. I wouldn’t have minded living in the residence hall, but I would have had to share a kitchen with the whole building, and I would not have had a mini fridge, so I would’ve had to put stuff in the main fridge/freezer. Only sharing a kitchen/bathroom with 2 other people is not bad at all.

The campus also has a swimming pool, gym (that I won’t be using cause I’d have to pay for a membership), and it’s just altogether pretty. There’s a shuttle that takes you to town a few times throughout the day during the week, but if you need to get to town at a time that the shuttle isn’t running, such as on the weekend, or earlier than the shuttle goes (like me on this past Friday), the university will call and pay a taxi for you, which is totally sweet. The provided meals have been good thusfar. It’s the only time I drink juice, however I’m considering buying some. The server in the dining room is very nice and quite funny. She usually piles way more food on my plate than I could ever eat in one sitting, and then she asks me if that’s enough or if I want more. I say that’s enough, and she’s like, “ya sure? Ok, well if you want more just come up and ask for seconds.” If I finish all that is on my plate, it’s a barely. On the day I arrived to the campus, I took a walk around just to explore, and I got a glimpse of the beauty of God’s creativity. I saw so many different birds of different sizes, shapes, colors, and sounds and it was amazing. I saw a few of these same birds at the wildlife park, so I’m guessing they’re not so common in the city. One cool one was this bird that looks like a pink cockatoo. I think it’s called a galah…I’m probably spelling that wrong, but nevertheless, they’re pretty cool. I stopped and watch these swarms of ants, mostly at first because there were so many I was afraid to cross the path, but as I watched, I was just in awe. An ant can carry like 20 (or 40, can’t quite remember) times its own weight. That’s absolutely insane; it’d be like me carrying close to 3000 pounds! But, as I often am, I’m completely going off on a tangent. I rather like it here so far, and I’ve yet to share two of my favorite parts.

The first has to do with more personal growth points. I believe 2 of the reasons I’m here are two grow personally, and to experience what it’s like to be an international student so that I can better relate. Well, since I’m doing the latter every moment by just existing here, I have to be more intentional about recognizing the former. If you know me well, you may or may not know that I don’t really like asking questions, especially if they’re of the nature of me needing help. I prefer to be rather independent and try to figure things out or do them on my own. Well, my time being here will rather force me to interact with security but fortunately, they’re quite friendly. And don’t worry; this is relevant to my first favorite part. A few of the buildings that are on campus for student use remain locked if they don’t have set hours like say, the library. Two of those buildings include the gym and the chapel. The chapel is open on Thursdays when the chaplain comes to visit, but any other time, it’s locked. When I first moved in, after my Welcome presentation, I was asked if I had any questions. Many times, when asked this, even if I have a question, I usually say no, because I decide that my question isn’t important enough to ask, and I could just figure it out, but this time I actually decided to go for the plunge. I asked if there was a piano on campus. “I don’t know, there might be one in the chapel, but I’m not sure. You can just ask security to open it.” So later on I just walked up to the security office and asked them to open the chapel for me. PSHH! Yeah right. I have to always make stuff more difficult and excruciating then it is in real life. Remember the swarm of ants? This is where I encountered the first bunch. I walked up to the building which seemed like it was probably the chapel because it sort of fit the map location, and it looked “churchy”, but it wasn’t labeled. So I ran past the ants, to the door, to see if maybe it was unlocked. No such luck, so I tried the back door only to come to the same conclusion. “I think now would be a good time to go exploring.” It’s funny how I avoid things. I could have just walked up to the security office, which is literally like right next to the chapel and ask them to open the door. But there were just too many unknowns. Firstly, what if that wasn’t the chapel. I’d look awfully foolish. I’ve decided (just now as I am typing this) that I need to get over the fear of looking foolish, because if you never take that chance, you never learn. But what if I trouble the security officers to open the door and there is no piano? I’d be wasting their time. It’d be such a hassle after all for them to walk all the way next door. It’s funny how silly the excuses we make to ourselves to stop us from doing something beneficial look when we write them on paper. So I after I took my really long walk, I had a decision to make. I could go ask security to open the door or I could wait for Thursday. (This was Monday by the way) In hindsight, I don’t know if I really just missed the piano or if I was afraid that waiting until Thursday would render me an audience of the chaplain. Whichever it was, probably most of one, but a pinch of 2, I finally asked security to open the door. There was a piano!!! It’s terribly out of tune, but on Thursday, the chaplain informed me that it will be getting tuned. However, there was an electric organ. I just have to play on two levels of keys. That made my day even sunnier than it already was.

The second favorite thing is the train. Well, there’s a couple of funny stories surrounding this one, but I’ll come out and say right up front that I get to stay at the church that I went to on the first Sunday I was here!!! Unlike in Jersey where the train costs a different amount depending on where you’re going, here it’s a flat rate of only 1.40 off peak, and I’m one of the furthest stops. However, I accidentally stole a ride I found out. It’s funny, stuff like the train and bus are on the honor system for paying. So I was at the train station and you need to use your ticket to get through the turnstile, I assumed that was the equivalent of paying and the ticket machines that were on the train were for people getting on the train at later stations that did not have turnstiles (b/c many don’t). I found out I’m supposed to swipe my ticket at both when I came back to that station and I needed swipe the ticket to exit the turnstile as well. This is when I decided that this must not be charging me. Whoops. My suspicions were confirmed when I asked a friend I met at church. Guess I’ll have to swipe twice next time I ride. Second funny story has to do with that friend and another, Claire and Winnie. They’re quite hilarious, and awesome people, as they decided to drive me all the way home to the middle of nowhere. I’ve only actually taken the bus from the city once and it was daytime, and so I didn’t really know how to get there. Fortunately, I was actually paying attention when we came, so I knew there were signs that told which way to go. But this time, it was pitch black and there were no street lights because, well, it’s the middle of nowhere. Why would you need streetlights? Lol That was a fun night. After me finding out from Claire that I’m not really American (Later I found out that she’s not really Australian), a bit of wrong side of the road driving, and being misled by a sign that had the name of the campus written really large and 500m on the left really tiny underneath, we finally made it to my house. And I was informed by my new friends yesterday that after they dropped me off, they couldn’t find their way out of the campus. Fortunately, security found them and directed them.

Well, this post has been ridiculously longer than it should’ve been, but as we’ve established, I’m long-winded. Thanks for reading. Until next time, “may He do more than all you ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20).

Shalomses