Paluma Rainforest

Nothing very exciting happened this week. I spent the weekend miserably working on a paper for Plant Survival. I'm still not done with it. I'm still fairly miserable about it. So nothing to report.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, and I'm leaving for Arlie Beach. I'm spending the four-day break on a sailboat going around the Whitsunday islands, snorkeling, and hopefully diving. I'm much more excited about this than my paper.

As promised, the pictures from the rainforest (and small community) up on Mt Paluma from last week.


Basket Ferns:


Some canopy shots (not too many: I know they're not that exciting.

This one contains a strangling fig, strangling a tree:


Tree with buttresses:

A creek:

An abandoned mine from back before the forest was declared a "World Heritage" place:


A cool tree:


A vine that no longer has a tree and therefore is an interesting shape:


This is a Refrigerator Tree. It feels colder than other trees. I know the picture really captures that.


The major occupational hazard in the rainforest (aside from leeches and ticks):


Cool plants:




Pine trees (not native to the area, or usually this shape- they were in a yard at one of the houses nearby. Paluma's a bit of a summer-home place.)


There are birds in this picture somewhere. Trust me.


And the view from the mountain:


I took quite a few more, but you get the idea.

Prelude to picspam

I wish I had a secretary taking notes for me, so that when I get back there'll be a giant memo on my desk:
While you were away:
_x_ Part of Marietta caught fire again
___ The entire Republican Party collapsed upon itself
___ Your parents rent out your room
_x_ The Health Care Reform Bill passed
_x_ Your friends have decided to dress you up as a Kill Bill character
___ Several of your friends left for Spring Break and did not return

I also had a very exciting weekend, America!

My Rainforest Ecology class had an introductory field trip on Saturday- we went out to Paluma, which is a mountain about 60 miles from Uni which contains rainforest. We mostly just looked at trees and tried to identify them to family. I'm not very good at it- which is disconcerting. I'm brilliant at identifying trees to species at home. Of course, none of the families I know so well even exist down here. Even the 'beech' trees aren't in the same family as North American beeches.

:-( It's hard not being in Kansas anymore.

Anyway, Paluma has a little town up at the top, a bit of a summer-home place... Not unlike beach towns, except less built-up. We're going to be staying up there for a weekend in a few weeks while we do our individual research projects (I'm working on mosses with another girl from America- on this more when I know what we're actually doing). It looks like the weekend will be a lot of fun.

Then on Sunday my housemate offered to take me to the local aquarium- he and his daughter have a family pass, and since it includes two adults he figured I could save $20... he goes there about every other weekend and is rather jaded about the whole thing as a result, and therefore doesn't think it's worth the cost of admission.

And it's true- it's not as nice as the Baltimore Aquarium. There were no whale skeletons. But they did have some really cool reef fish... as one would expect. I hope at least some of the pictures I took turn out, but we'll see.
(The best part was the sea snake. I really hope at least one of those pictures turned out. *never got over her Chamber of Secrets-fueled love of snakes*)

Afterwards we stopped at a hardware store and I bought a folding chair, so my room is finally furnished to my satisfaction and there will be pictures of it eventually.

We also had a cyclone scare- Cyclone Ului was supposed to hit us Saturday, and there were warnings and everything else... it swerved and we didn't even get a decent wind. However, we *did* have a huge flood on Monday! The park across from my house was completely underwater, and my housemate called me out and we splashed around in it barefoot, which was great fun and struck me as a rather Aussie thing to do. Sadly, the rain stopped today, so the park wasn't flooded when I woke up, so I haven't seen it in daylight yet.

And that was my weekend. I still haven't got my pictures off my camera, but my next two entries (unless something exciting happens) are going to be just pictures of Paluma and fish.

Candy Bar Update:
Turkish Delight: Turkish Delight is a bit infamous in the US, because apparently (I haven't read them) it's the absolute favorite food of one of the kids in the Narnia books, but nobody in the US has any idea what it is. I've heard that it's disgusting, that it's ok, that it's brilliant...

First off, Turkish Delight is *very* big here in AU. All the Easter stuff is out, and they have Turkish Delight-filled chocolate eggs (chocolate eggs filled with things are apparently the big treat most kids get at Easter), Turkish Delight boxes of chocolates, and Turkish Delight shots- which will get you wasted faster than anything else on the planet, according to the anime club.

So I felt that I should buy and consume a Turkish Delight bar. It's this fruity red gummy substance, covered in milk chocolate. Alisa (my wonderful roommate at home) and I crashed a Hawaii club meeting one year and made this dessert with them... I can't remember what it was called, but it involved cornstarch and coconut milk... anyway, if I (or Alisa) remember its name, it's the same sort of thing as Turkish Delight.

(Turkish Delight shots are next).

Boost: This is a log-shaped candy bar with a chewy chocolate center with cookie bits in it, surrounded by a circle of caramel, and coated with milk chocolate. Pretty good.

Nestle Aero: This is the same thing as a Cadbury Bubbly, but Nestle stuff was on sale at the grocery story so I thought I'd mention it. And since we're more likely to find Nestle products than Cadbury ones at home, I hope that Aeros find a place on the US market. These things are really addictively good.

I also purchased a fresh passion fruit today, so I'll let you know how I deal with that.

Spinsterdom- beta version

"It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little rustling snake."

The book of the week for Children's Literature is The Secret Garden. I hadn't forgotten how much I identify with Mary Lennox, but it's still good to read.

My housemate is out of town for the whole week (which is totally a good thing to tell the internet at large), so I have the house to myself, and I'm loving it.

Up until this weekend, I spent a lot of time doing dishes or laundry or making grocery lists or other sundry chores and thinking, "When I get back, I have one more year at college, and then I'm going to be stuck doing this for the rest of my life." This was not a cheerful thought.

But having the place to myself really changed that. I'm also not feeling too bad about my inability to meet new people. My decision to be an eccentric spinster was a better one than I realized.
(It just occured to me that some of you aren't my college friends and didn't know that I've decided to be an eccentric spinster. Well, there you have it.)

Saturday I walked down to the Uni, attempted to do some research for an upcoming paper, got distracted, decided to cut my losses and go home, and made it to the nursing building before it started to rain.
The nursing building is this oddly-shaped building built over the stream that runs through campus. The ground floor is all open-air, except for the lecture halls and a room with elevators, which leads (presumably) to the second floor. It's pretty interesting, just odd.
So I waited out the storm in there, alone.
Some birds who were watching me get rained on:

The Nursing building:




I spent Sunday doing food-related experiments. I'm not baking while I'm in Australia, because baking involves buying lots of things that I won't use up before I leave, like vanilla and baking powder and milk (which I don't drink), but I did some fooling around with the stuff I had.
I made chicken soup with real chicken in it, which was easier than I expected, and very delicious indeed.

I also had a lot of left-over rice, so I rolled it into riceballs and fried them... This was successful, so I decided to add some sugar to them while rolling them into balls, then fry them. It's more or less an excuse to use more butter.
The fried riceballs were... more or less what you'd expect. They were pretty good... I'm not entirely convinced that they were worth the trouble, but it was some variety.
Dinner:


I also decided to candy an orange, using a recipe I found on Whisk Kid. I threw in an apple that I don't want to eat and some raisins, just to see what would happen. The apple came out pretty good... not the raisins. Of course, the orange worked best.

Not a very good picture:


(The sweet riceballs and the candied fruit is a good example of what happens when I run out of my Choc Creams- those being the off-brand oreo-esque cookies that I buy and consume by the dozen- and need my sugar.)

So I'm actually quite excited about being almost on my own. I figure that graduating will have several advantages, like being in the same country as my firmly-established friends, and being able to bake, and not waiting for my housemate to leave before I feel bold enough to leave my room.

As promised, a picture of one of my bruises, because we're all five years old and like to compare injuries:

A giant moth, with my hand to show some perspective:

And a pretty flower:

Lonely Tourist CeeCee Washburn

My housemate is in the living room watching the first Rugby game of the season, loudy. Apparently Townsville is playing Brisbane... he sounds happy, I guess they're winning.
The only thing I know about rugby is that MHC is trying to get its team to stop turning up drunk to games. Rugby is our frat house. They had a party one time in my dorm when I took out trash for workstudy, and they took the big recycling bin into their room and filled it up with beer bottles. So they're a very environmentally-responsible frat.

Candy Bar Update:
Violet Crumble: finally got ahold of one! They're... interesting. They're about the size of a Charleston Chew, only instead of a chewy part, they have this center of about the consistency of freeze-dried ice cream. It's yellow, and I guess it's honey-flavored? Anyway, that gets coated with milk chocolate, and you eat it. Pretty good... not my favorite thus far, but I can definitely see purchasing them. Beats me why they're called "Violet Crumbles"- in no way, shape, or form is the color purple involved in them (except the wrapper, but that seems a bit contrived.)

Some of the guys at Anime club have reassured me that my accent isn't that noticable, 'cause it's not Yankee enough, and as long as I don't say, "I want to see kangaroos!" I'll pass as a nontourist.

Today I went to the student travel agency to plan something for Easter break (which is just a long weekend). I want to go out on the reef, and they had a couple of day-tours I could take, but I think I'm going to be reckless and go on the two-day Easter Special tour (which is specifically for students). I thought it was just sailing when I first heard about it, but no, you get to snorkel and take a hike on one of the islands, and dive if you want to shell out a little extra dough (which I might). So that's the plan. I figure that if the rest of my excursions are backpacking-type things, it shouldn't be much of a budget strain. Thoughts on this from anybody?

I feel just like The Girl Called Chuck from Pushing Daisies when she decided to go on an exotic cruise (and was subsequently killed and brought back to life by the Pie Maker. This is probably not reassuring to my mother. I'm fairly certain that there will be no murders on the ship. I may or may not be killed while trying to pick up a conesnail, though.)

And now some pictures to make up for my talking too much for the past 3-ish entries:
The bikepath near my house, next to the Ross River, which contains crocodiles, although I haven't seen any:

Some highly-nobby houses near the bikepath (my house does not look like this, but some of the houses I've made on The Sims do):



And the cute, non-demonic Common Opossum of Australia, which is the closest thing to a squirrel I've seen here... and also one of the furthest things from a possum I've ever seen:


Was walking to school, thought this looked nice:

And the lizards that hang out on the porch at night... and sometimes in the pantry. And sometimes in my room when I'm with the Anime club and they think I'm not coming home. I think they're adorable, but they seem to be not-very-fond of me:

(Yeah, they cling to the ceiling. How awesome is that?)

Health and Safety

I was going to wait until I had some good pictures of my various bruises (on this, more later) to show you before I updated, but it turns out that my father sends me frantic emails if I don't update at least once a week, so here we are.

Well, after my last update I went to anime club and paid for my membership (it's $5 for a semester, don't worry too much about my finances), and then proceeded to foist myself upon the people there- as you do when you're a socially-maladjusted recluse who is concerned about her networking skills.

Several times in the past they've told me that they all go to Macker's after the club meetings... Being an American, I assumed this was a bar, because if you're legal to drink and you're at college why the hell wouldn't you go to a bar on a Wednesday night after watching Black Lagoon? Being American, I was also wrong- Macker's is McDonalds. Apparently everyone calls it Macker's, which kinda weirds me out because of all the various shortenings of McD's that I hear on an everyday basis, this is a new one.

So I have been to an Australian McDonalds and will probably be going back again every Wednesday night, so if I find any weird menu items I'll let you know. They did have a little McCafe or whatever they're calling them these days separate from the rest of the cashiers' stations, which had a variety of pastries that I'm pretty sure they don't have in American McDonalds, but keep in mind that it's been years since I've been in a McDonalds that wasn't either in Marietta or alongside the highway, so maybe that's what all the high-class Mickey D's are doing these days.

The major differences I noted where that they have fewer menu items (no Chicken Selects )-:) and no dollar menu, because *nothing* costs an Australian dollar... even though an Australian dollar is not all that different from a US one...
I also apparently should check out the KFC's here, because they have weird sandwiches that home KFCs do not offer and which sound pretty tastey. Yeah, yeah, I'm lame.

Right, so I hung out with the anime club, and they're pretty cool and seemed not-too-annoyed at me, so that's well and good. A group of them went paintballing this Saturday, so I finagled a ride out of someone and tagged along (my housemate was so jealous).

Actually, he offered me his leftover Chinese takeout for dinner on Friday, the reasoning being that he was going out of town for the weekend and it'd go bad before he got back. Turns out it went bad earlier than we expected, so I spent Friday night with food poisoning. So that was the start of my weekend. Promising.

Paintballing first thing the next morning was fun, though. We ran around in full-body overalls and heavy-duty facemasks in the hot Australian sun and shot each other with balls of paint. The rule is that you're only hit if it breaks on you, which didn't happen to me all that often, although I got hit a lot. The thing is, if they don't break, they hurt a lot more. I've got some fantastic bruises. The best one is on my elbow. I'll take some pictures before it heals and I stop looking like an abuse victim.

Sunday morning was my weekly Skype chat with MoHo. Always a good time, even if it leaves me a little homesick for the remainder of the day.

Grocery shopping today after I update. I bought a bag of vegetables from the Uni "Student vegetable co-op", which claims to provide students with enough vegetables for a week for $13. I had high hopes for this program, but... eh. They gave me a bunch of bananas (which I'm allergic to), a honeydew melon that was starting to rot on one end and still wasn't ripe on the other, one onion, and a bunch of potatos and carrots. I've been making really good soup with the potatos, carrots, onion, and some chicken bullion, but I'd rather pay just a little extra and pick my own vegetables. I'm also not sure it would cost me more, when you factor out the stuff that I didn't eat.

So all in all, a pretty good weekend. A little painful, but pretty good.

The Curse of Culinary Nerdery

Candy bar update:
Twirl- the wrapper said "chocolate twirls covered in [milk chocolate]" and by golly, that's what this was! It's chocolate that's been poured to make twirls... I suspect it blooms a bit, because the twirls were crumbly, and then covered in non-blooming, soft chocolate. I enjoyed it. I think crumbly chocolate is popular here... which I don't understand, but it still tastes pretty good.
My next major goal is to try a Violet Crumble ("It's the way it shatters that matters!"), but I keep finding other candy bars on sale.

We're into the second week of classes, now, and I'm still excited about them... although Rainforest Ecology is not all that exciting, since the interesting stuff is more the field trips (I hope, anyway).

It rained almost no-stop this weekend, so I didn't do much... My housemate/landlord and I decided to stop being the last two people on earth to have seen Avatar on Sunday... I feel silly writing about an American movie on a blog about studying abroad, so I'll just say that as a sci-fi version of a kung-fu movie, it was pretty good. Not award-winningly so, in my book, but as good a thing as any to do on a rainy Sunday.

Enquires to housemate/landlord (I'm just going to call him my housemate, since landlord sounds a lot more formal) have revealed that Cole's grocery stores change their prices based on the economic layout of the neighborhood, and since we live in a very nice neighborhood, he always goes to a different suburb to shop. So, come Monday (my official shopping day until I find something exciting to do on my long weekends), I took the bus down there, picked up a prepaid phone in the mall, and got some groceries.

And they are cheaper there. Is this how it is in US cities, too? I've only ever lived in small towns...

It was not very condusive to my exploring a new country to put me cooking for myself for the first time while in said country. The culinary enthusiast (I think they call themselves "foodies" out on the web) in me is very excited to just be cooking to the exclusion of all else, which is just fine with the rest of me, which is shy and doesn't like meeting new people. So any ambitions I have to be social are pretty much foiled by the combination of not being in a dorm, not being social, and cooking.
...This would be ok with me if it exploring the town alone wasn't so much more awkward than doing so with friends.

(...I realize that a lot of people who don't see me every day follow this blog, so some of you might not know that I whine a lot purely for sympathy and don't actually expect you to worry too much when I write paragraphs like the one above.)

So, here are a few more pictures:
The performer at the opening ceremony- blurry.

A lizard

A cockatoo. There's a flock in the park across the street from my house- I've decided they're kind of like blue jays- pretty, but loud and dirty.

I'm pretty sure this is one of those hanging nests that weaving birds make... I was always fascinated with them as a kid and I was Very Excited to see this:

One of the 300 fliers the anime club put up overnight. (I know it was 300 because I asked.)

And the anime club itself. I was *very* happy to see them, as you will recall, and may have come off as just a bit of a creeper, but they let me take a picture, anyway.


I don't have the cord to get pictures off my camera with me at the moment, but I have some photos of a very cute Australian possum and some of the highly nobby houses in my neighborhood.

Sorry that my pictures always get a little cut-off. I can't find a layout I like that doesn't do that.