Aussie term of the day...
"Pom" - What they call the British, whom they like to make fun of at times as well. It's actually kind of humorous, I am a Pom AND an American so my housemates have a hay day picking on me about random things. All in good fun of course :).
They also like the phrase "Only in America" which is honestly quite accurate at times, especially when I showed them the video from Florence, Oregon a number of years ago when officials decided it would be a fantastic idea to blow up a decaying beached whale with half a ton of dynamic. If you haven't seen it yet, just look up "Exploding Whale." Or just watch the link at the bottom of this post. That would work too.
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| Sunset that lit up the sky. |
So I’ve been sick most of the week. That’s been fun… BUT,
I did get to learn what the Aussie terms for a lot of the common cold
medications were! Like Panodol for example; it’s basically what we would call Tylenol. Helpful bit of information to know! And my
voice has dropped a full octave with the sore throat and such so I kind of
sound partially like a man now. Not
quite sure how I feel about that…
In other news, we had our second Coral Reef Geomorphology
lab this week and I thought it was pretty interesting! We learned about
microatolls which are corals that grow out in this giant circle and fluctuate
depending on sea level rise and fall. Basically,
they grow up until they hit sea level then they start growing out. If the sea level drops, the top dies and the
sides still under water continue to grow out. If the sea level rises again the
sides grow up until they hit sea level again then continue growing out. Really interesting stuff! We got to chart out
sea level fluctuations and how a microatoll would react to the changes. Tedious work,
but fun none the less.
Thursday we had our second monthly lodgee dinner! We had a few other people there that either weren’t in the lodge or were
past lodges, and it was fun getting to just hang out and actually experience my
first official Aussie barbeque! The girls and I played “girly rugby” which
basically consisted of us tossing the rugby ball back and forth to each other.
We also took a short walk down the wharf while the others were slaving over the
barbie and raced as well as we could back, our unconducive flip flops (well,
they would say “thongs”) slapping loudly on the wooden planks.
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| Love these girls! |
Another awesome thing that happened; we got to see a number
of possums with babies! That was super cool and apparently they are regular
residents of the park as a family down the way walked right up to them and
hand fed them several grapes before going on their way. Whaaaaat???
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| Yes, it is spelled "Possum," without the "o" |
Now to finish off with Friday. To say that class was uneventful would have been a lie even though my 8:00 am Conserving Marine Mammals class started out with a rather sleepy start on the part of most of the students which wasn’t helped by a lecture that went into a lot of statistics. I think it was about the time that we started talking about Leslie Matrix Models that this insanely loud and booming voice erupted from the back of the auditorium and this guy comes waltzing in, quoting lines of gibberish. I honestly didn’t catch much of his thrown together phrases, I think there was something about flowers and glitter, before he flamboyantly kneels before this girl on an end row and says “Will you marry me??” The incredibly embarrassed girl blurted something about needing to finish school and the guy gets up in a sweeping motion, shouting out “Was that a yes?!” and then launches himself out of the room.
Our teacher stood there for a confused second, said “Not sure whether that was real or not but at least it made matrix models a bit more interesting!” and continued on with his lecture. Needless to say, everyone was wide awake after that!
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