Sydney!

Ok, bear with me folks - this is a LONG POST. So if nothing else, please at least look at the pictures!

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I LOVE THIS CITY. It's the most beautiful, green, clean, friendly, wonderful city in the WORLD. EVER. The last four days have been absolutely perfect and I'm really looking forward to spending even more time in this amazing place!

We arrived at the Big Hostel on Friday afternoon and settled into our rooms. Mine is super comfortable - it has AC, a tiny TV, and 2 of the 5 beds are full sized mattresses instead of twins! I'm rooming with Lisa, Jocelyn, Coop, and Helen, and it's so fun! We went out the first night to a couple clubs, and apparently traveling as a group of 13 attractive girls means that you get free drinks from the club promoters. Crazy!! We saw a really great live band at the second bar and they were really nice. It felt like Warped Tour but underground!

Photo with the band:


Saturday was basically just an exploring and shopping day. We walked along the main street and I bought four dresses! YAY! We also went to some outdoor markets in The Rocks, which is the neighboorhood across from the Opera House.
The Opera House! IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL! And it's not bright white - more like a light tan color



Super delicious feta, spinach, and chicken turkish meal:


Under "The Rocks" sign:


The Rocks market:


Christmas stuff! I'M ALREADY SO EXCITED!


Just because I love this picture, and because I want to show off one my new dresses (P.S. Don't worry dad, that's a lemonade - aka Sprite - in my hand):

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On Sunday we to the ferry to Manly Beach (haha funny name!) and walked along the coast, just looking at the harbor and all the beautiful houses. We also went to the beach briefly and just took in the sights. I met a really sweet couple on the ferry ride over - the woman was Taiwanese and her husband was Australia. Mom and Dad, they kind of reminded me of you two! They were really feisty and told me all about the sights from the ferry so I could orient myself and learn a little of the history.

Delicious sweet corn we had for brunch:

Photos from the ferry ride:




Snuffling little pig-dog! He was adorable and SO UGLYYYYY!

Photos from our walk around Manly Beach:




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On Monday, we went to the Australia Museum in the morning and learned about Aboriginal history. I thought it was a pretty tame exhibit - there wasn't much condemnation of all the terrible atrocities committed against Aboriginals, and I think we were supposed to see how Australians choose to view this issue so we can better understand the challenges that Aboriginals still face.

There was also a wonderful dinosaur exhibit! YAY! And lots of crazy Australian animals were featured. Here's an Aboriginal interpretation of the three wise men (left) and the last supper (right):
Marsupial skeletons:
Lisa posing with some tiny flying mice!
Piggy-back rides by the Goana:

Posing like dinosaurs:


And then of course, Monday night we had BING DINNER! It was super delicious and beautiful! We ate a restaurant right next to the Opera house and had 3 courses, with wine included and lots of fabulous conversation. Everyone looked amazing! We took lots of photos, ate dinner, then moseyed over to see the ballet Concord at the Sydney Opera House. That's right, Bing Dinner included a show at the Sydney Opera House!!!!! Unfortunately, we were about 5 minutes LATE so we had to wait outside for about 45 minutes. There was a huge thunderstorm going on at the same time, so we all went outside and admired the beautiful sunset west over the city, and the thunderstorm east over the harbor. It was truly magical and I still can't believe so many beautiful things were happening at once. I AM SO BLESSED!

Lisa and me (here's another of my new dresses!):

New Zealand crowd (we're signing "Love NZ"):
All the ladies in front of the Harbor Bridge:
The 12 men, being manly men:

The proposal I've been planning my whole life:
Wedding photo!

Eric in the sunset:
Evan and me:
Concord! This is the ballet we saw, and I really liked it!

Night photos of the city - we ended up walking out over the Harbor Bridge after the show and Sydney is just as beautiful at night as it is during the day!

Fun Times on Nth Stradbroke

Yesterday was CRAZY RIDICULOUS!

We went scuba diving just outside the bay and it was cool but also miserable. 4 of the 8 of us got violently seasick (vommitting was the word of the day) because the ocean was really rough and the currents, even 17 meters down, were really strong. We saw some awesome stuff though:

Holding a sea cucumber:

Pufferfish:

Pretty rock rubble:

Oh yeah, we pet a 9ft Leopard Shark. No big deal! It felt like soft sandpaper!




And we saw some huge wobbegong sharks, too:


One of many, many rays:



Lionfish! Suuuuper toxic and gorgeous:

I also went sandboarding with 22 of my fellow Stanford kids, and IT WAS SO FUN!! It's basically like snowboarding but on sand. It hurts a lot less to fall down, and we had some epic races down the slopes.


I started off by standing on the board, but my legs were pretty tired from scuba diving this morning so I ended up sitting or sliding for the rest of the 2 hours. Me and Jocelyn, about to kick some butt down the sand slope:

Face-first! The trick is to keep your mouth closed so you don't eat too much sand:

Blasting down the slope:
Penguin parade:

SO MUCH LOVE!! I'm part of the greatest group of young-adults EVERRRR!

The Final Push

I've spent the last 3 days creating a 35 minute presentation with a group of 6, and making the fact sheet about Dugongs. It's been an exhausting process. I've realized that I don't really enjoy group projects, specifically because they aren't very efficient and I hate when stuff takes me longer than I think it should. But I loved my group members and we came up with a really excellent presentation that was clear, concise, and hopefully well-delivered.

Today was presentation day - there were 8 total groups with 6 people each, and we were ALL discussing the impacts of a hypothetical tourist development on Stradbroke Island. We had the same data to work with and had all heard about the same issues, so it was basically the same 35 minute talk 8 times. TERRIBLE. But I suppose the process of putting it together and talking through all the issues was really valuable, so it wasn't a total waste. At the same time, I hope I NEVER have to listen to the same presentation 7 times again and I feel so bad for teachers who design classes with that result. EWWWW.

Here's some of the awesome stuff we did for our presentation - Mind Maps! These are to discuss the scope and cascade effects of different aspects of the tourist development and it's impact on the social, economic, cultural, historical, and environmental context of the island. Blah blah.

Economic factors:
Environmental factors:

So now all we have left is a written exam tomorrow, and then we have 3 days to work on research! I'm going SAND BOARDING tomorrow!! It's like snowboarding on sand dunes and looks like this:



We're also going diving off North Stradbroke and I really want to see a dugong. We saw tons of dolphins and turtles when were hiking around Point Lookout, so maybe we'll see some when we're actually in the ocean as well.

More field trips!

Yesterday we went on a field trip to Amity Point, which is where our hypothetical building development is going to be placed. We looked at the mangroves and coastline, both of which would be affected if any sort of tourist development were to be located there.





We also went on a hike around Point Lookout, which is a really cute town on the northeastern corner of the island, to get another perspective on the coastline.

Looking back towards Amity Point:


Main Beach extends for 30 km of uninterrupted white sands beach:


They also have DELICIOUS home-made gelatto and ice cream, which we plan on tasting again when we get our 3 research days at the end of the class.


I just wrote a big fact sheet about Dugongs, which are very similar to Manatees but found in the Indian Ocean and around Australia. Now I finally know where the name for the pokemon Dewgong came from!

Here's a photo:


And a screenshot of my fact sheet:

Sand Mining at Stradbroke

Today we went to one of the sand mines on Stradbroke - there are numerous sites on the island, because this island is entirely composed of sand. There's a small section of bedrock in the northeastern corner, but the rest of the island consists of accumulated layers of sand and vegetation on top. We visited the CRL mining site on the North side of the island and got to wear some awesome vests:





We learned about their revegetation practices, which are actually very impressive. I was pretty depressed when I visited the mines in Salt Lake City, Utah, but the companies here do a much better job of leaving the land pretty much as they found it. They do surveys before they start mining, remove the topsoil and use it immediately on other revegetation sites, and then replace all the sand when they've removed the 1% of mine-able materials, so its basically 100% replaced (so says the tour guide, anyways). And they replant native species and monitor them for about 10 years to make sure that insects and fauna come back. It's pretty impressive - certainly not perfect, but we saw a 10 year old re-veg site and it looked GREAT, you couldn't tell that it had been cleared to the ground only 10 years before.



Untouched sand dunes exist naturally, too:


The mined materials:

Happy Halloween!!!

Halloween is a semi-big holiday in Australia, and of course our class brought the Halloween spirit to Stradbroke Island. I dressed up with a bunch of the girls as Gumnut babies! Gumnut babies are characters in a really popular Australian kids book, and our professor John Hall kept talking about them during our forest ecosystem classes so we figured this was an appropriate Halloween idea:



It was so fun! We ended up going to one of the local bars as a class, and we TOOK OVER. This island is really small, and there were about 20 older people (all at least 40 years old) already there when we arrived. We all ended up dancing to oldies and songs from Grease and doing the Macarena. It was AWESOME!




New Zealand crowd:


The class, all dressed up:


Our professor, Ron Johnston: