Catching up...(Sunday, May 31, 2009)

Wow a lot has happened since I wrote last time, and it’s just been so ridiculously busy that I just haven’t had a chance to sit down and write about it! It also has a little bit to do with my computer and how stupid & slow it is…it won’t hold a charge, && it takes 20 minutes to load when I turn it on, so the battery dies before it gets started up. Fabulous. Anyways…

Thursday we went dugong searching. A dugong is similar to a manatee, except instead of a paddle-shaped tails, they have dolphin-like tails. They feed on sparse regions of seagrass and are often spotted in the Moreton Banks near Moreton Island. So a group of 9 of us got into a little inflatable dingy and sped away from Straddie toward the open ocean. SCARY!! This dingy—I kid you not— was metal on the bottom, but other than that, it pretty much looked like a glorified Life Saving ring. At first I thought my professor, Glenn, was just going to putter out into the channel and we’d go slowly in search for these sea cows. Oooh was I wrong. He hit the gas and we FLEW through the ocean toward Moreton Island, every ocean “bump” leaving our stomachs thinking we were on a roller coaster! Now, those of you who know me know I HATE roller coasters, but this journey was sooo much fun! Of course I did my normal Ashley scream & cackle, and I may have shouted “We’re gonna die!” a couple of times, but all in all it was a blast! We ended up spotting 2 dugongs: a mommy & her calf! They were beautiful. I’m hoping I successfully took a good picture of them coming up to take a breath, but i won’t know til I get back to the states. Also on our journey, we spotted several stingrays; some were HUGE! We also spotted a loggerhead turtle, and my professor told us to jump in and get on the turtle’s back. We thought he was kidding. Nope. Wrong again. He was dead serious, and for the other group, he literally jumped in onto the turtle’s back & held him up for everyone to see. Jumped right into the open ocean! He said they call it the “Turtle Rodeo,” and I’m fairly certain it’s illegal haha. The guy is nuts I swear!

Friday was the day we presented the research we’d been doing all week to the class and to the professors. In the morning we went to Cylinder Beach for some good ‘ole R & R. The beach was soo beautiful (pics up on facebook). It was nice to get out of the research center and just have some real downtime. In the afternoon, we presented. I think everything went alright with my project, and everyone else’s was very interesting to listen to as well. Then after dinner we went down to the Little Ship’s Club (one of two bars in Dunwich, lol). The whole group came, and we proceeded to take shots of tequila with our professor! Ahhh, good times. Glenn (our prof) also tried to pimp me out to the hot bartender! He must’ve had a little too much Jose, lol.

Saturday we went up to the north tip of Straddie & checked out a place called Point Lookout (also pics on facebook). It was sooo beautiful. We took a hike all around the rocky headlands. I am scared half to death of heights, but I faced my fears and climbed with everyone else. I even posed on a couple rocks for some good pics! Our group shot was awesome too. It’s so unreal how places this gorgeous can even exist. My pictures definitely don’t do it justice. After our hike we pretty much just relaxed on the beach again until it was time to say goodbye to Straddie & head back to Brisbane. Once we were back into the city, we went out to a super nice place for dinner called JoJo’s before doing a little bit of souvenir shopping. One of the girl’s was friends with a guy who goes to school not far from the city, so later on he came into town and we hung out with him & his friends at a small bar. It was a blast! I went to bed super early, though, because these long days are so exhausting.

Today we went to Underwater World! OMG it was soo awesome (notice I’m running out of adjectives to describe all of my adventures. I apologize. You have to be here to understand!) We took a guided tour of all the aquariums. As neat as it was, I’m just really looking forward to seeing it all in person when we snorkel on the reef this coming week. The BEST part of Underwater World was for sure my seal swim! I got into the tank and swam with the awesome seals. One of them even gave me a kiss :-) They were so much fun. They’re favorite game is tug-o-war, and man are they strong! Pulled me right off the rock I was seated on. They are literally the most fabulous creatures—they’re so intelligent & relatively easy to train, too. They do the coolest tricks, and most of the time they’re very friendly! I just had sooo much fun in general. Well, we’re going to be spending the next couple of days traveling, and then we’ll be on Heron Island. I don’t really think there’s a lot of internet access there, if any, so this may be my last post for at least another week. Well at least I got you caught up!