August 31!

I caught my plane this morning, had a 1.5 hour layover in Melbourne, then a 4 hr flight to Perth. I met Dianne, a lady that I met through my aunt and uncle, and she picked me up from the airport and gave me a little bit of a tour of Freemantle, bought me lunch, and drove me up along the coast in Perth to her house. I got some pictures of some flowers, the beach, a little bit of a sunset, etc. I am not going to be posting much the next couple of weeks, as I won't have much internet access (esp. after I leave here), but I'll try to post an update every now and then, and then after I get back to Canberra (around Sept. 14th) I'll post full-updates of what I did, with pictures.

August 30

Today was a busy, busy day. Classs off and on throughout the day from 8:30 until 7:30, and in between I ran some errands to get ready for my spring break vacation (I bought another set of batteries for my camera so that I won't run out on the trip!).

After my classes were over I made a stir-fry with the last of my tofu and vegetables in my fridge, so they don't rot while I'm gone. Then I did laundry so I would have clean clothes for the trip, and packed my bags. Have to leave bright and early in the morning (5:45am) for the Canberra airport to catch my flight! :)

August 29

This morning I got up early and walked to my 8:30am class. I was struck by the distinct lack of students in the hall or the designated classroom, especially since I arrived at exactly 8:30, when typically at least half of the students have already arrived (It is not uncommon for students in any class for a fair number of students to arrive during the first fifteen minutes or so of the scheduled lecture time). I checked my unit outline, and sure enough, there was no lecture in that class this morning. I guess I should read that thing more often. I was slightly annoyed that I had gotten up so early this morning, but greatly pleased that I could just go back to my room and relax for several hours.

On my walk back from another class later today, I noticed both adult Masked Lapwings in the grass near the entrance to the courtyard for my building. This pair (presumably the same birds) had previously been incubating egg(s) on the roof of the building, and abandoned their breeding attempt after a long day of stead rain (I imagine on a metal roof, the water rushed right down the grooves and likely soaked the eggs, and also the feathers of the incubating parent. I saw both birds hanging around on the roof, but no longer sitting, for several days after the storm. Today as I walked closer to my building, I noticed that one of the adults was sitting in the grass, and right in front of it was a little baby lapwing wandering around looking for food! I walked a little closer, and the parent that was sitting stood up, yelled, and walked toward me, revealing a second baby lapwing that it had been brooding! The little lapwings are quite cute and fuzzy. They would have made for some excellent photos, but I did not have my camera with me. Since I had only a short lunch break, I decided lunch was more important than going back out and getting some photos. Perhaps they will still be in the vicinity tomorrow (it's unlikely such tiny little baby lapwings will have much desire to wander too far in one day/night).

On the way back from my final class this evening, there was a group of 5 or 6 kangaroos (I couldn't tell as some were in taller grass) about 50 feet off the trail that I walked on. Again, I didn't have my camera so I wasn't able to get any pictures. They 'roos were happily grazing the grass at the edge where the mowed lawn meets a tall weedy field.

As the sun was nearing the horizon I decided to go for a run this afternoon. It was about 5:20 when I set out for my run, and I recalled how when I first got to Canberra it was completely dark by that point. I ran for about 25 minutes, doing a flat out-and-back run again. My form was a bit off again today. For some reason whenever I have an injury that could be serious if I don't take care of it (such as plantar fasciitis, or an inflamed IT-band), even when my injury is not causing any pain, there is often a subconsious inhibitory response that won't allow me to fully extend or use that joint or limb in it's normal, full range of motion. Yesterday and today I did not have any pain in my foot, but this subconsious registering of "not quite fixed" feeling kept me from landing normally on my foot, sort of favoring to distribute the pressure on the outside edge of my foot, instead of absorbing it through the arch (which was previously sore). Today I noticed, however, that this inhibition wasn't as strong, and after I got loosened up for a few minutes of my run, I was almost landing in a way to distribute the force of impact through my foot as I normally would if I were not sore/injured. Pretty much what I'm saying is that my foot's almost completely better, and another couple days of running on level-ish surfaces should see me running completely normal again, without any pain. Yay! Maybe I'll have to schedule another race in the next several weeks. I'm definitely going to run something shorter than a 14K though, until I get my distance built up more.

August 28

I had class today. Only two more days of classes before my break begins! This afternoon I went running. I ran on a flat out-and-back course so it didn't hurt my foot at all. I can't really run up hills yet, so I think I should just stick to flat courses for a little while. It felt good to run though!

Tonight I browsed online for some things to do up near Cairns. I think I'm gonna schedule in a one-day reef tour with scuba diving, and maybe a rainforest trip or something. I might be able to find a hostel that is at the edge of some rainforest. That would be really neat! Tomorrow I should look at things to do in Perth, so I can get a game plan for this weekend.

August 27

After going to bed late last night I slept in this morning until 10:30am. Another hour or so of work after I had been refreshed by a full night's sleep resulted in a completed draft of my film review. Oh, I don't think I mentioned it last night, but The Castle is a comedy with almost the kind of humor found in Napoleon Dynamite or Monty Python. I enjoyed it, but I think I would enjoy it more and laugh more the second time I watched it. It's just that kind of movie, I guess. Different type of humor than is typical of most hollywood films. Also, interestingly, the acting wasn't as good (but that's ok.. it was a comedy), and the film quality made me think it was made in the 1980s, even though it was actually produced in 1997.

This afternoon I went for a walk before supper to stretch out from being inside and doing homework. I took my camera and was really pleased to notice five Australian Pelicans floating on the water and even sitting on rocks near the area of shoreline where people often feed the ducks! I walked closer and managed to get some nice photos of these beatiful, and huge birds! Aussie pelicans make the local black swans look small. I don't know how a bird like these pelicans can handle flying around with such an enormous bills either!

Tonight Amanda and I went up to the pick-up spot in front of International House and hoped that someone would come by and pick us up for Uni Church (a university church service) at Australia National University. After waiting about 40 minutes, Dan and his wife stopped by and we got our ride. Apparently due to helping out setting up at church sometimes, Dan said the time they get there to pick people up is variable, and can be anywhere as early as 6:30ish to almost 7:00. Dan had a Toyota Echo hatchback version (they never sold that version in the US), and the speedometer was really weird. It was like looking through a magnifying glass into a tunnel in the dashboard that was slanted toward the driver's seat. It was all digital, and the speed numbers were huge. There was also RPMs and fuel, etc. down that tunnel. It was such a different setup for the dashboard guages. Pretty neat though, I guess.

Church was nice. Amanda and I were discussing on the way back how the worship is very different here than back home. None of the songs had been previously heard by either of us, and we noticed how they all sort of sounded the same, and were pretty much just some music and some words, and the words were sung along to the music. They mostly don't have a distinct sound or catchy rythm or even rhyming words. It kind of reminds me of a musical, where the monologue is just sung along to music, whatever the words and music happen to be. I'm not really that great at describing it, but it is definitely different than what I'm used to. Why can't they just import all our songs? ;)

August 26

I enjoyed sleeping in this morning, then at a relaxed pace, getting around to doing homework. In the afternoon I went for a run. My ankle was feeling fine, but my plantar fascia on my left foot was still bothering me. It doesn't bother me until after I run for a bit, so it's not too bad, but still a little bit inflamed, perhaps, and not cooperating with my desire to run. I ended up running almost 25 minutes then walked the last half mile to stretch out my foot and not stress it too much. I think I just need to keep resting some more and let it fix itself up. :) This afternoon was beautiful though; partly cloudy and warm. A t-shirt and shorts felt great for running in, and even for just walking. It is definitely starting to turn into spring around here, as some of the shrubs and trees are actually past their peak for blossoms, and are starting to fade. There are some weeping willows along the lake and they are beginning to turn a faint green and shoot out their buds.

This evening I watched an Australian film, The Castle in Jess's room. I need to do a film review or book review for my literary studies class, and I chose a film because it would take me much less time to get through. I hate writing reviews, however, especially when they are graded on every little detail. This review is going to count for 25% of my final grade in that class. I spent probably four hours trying to figure out how to write it in a format that the lecturer would favorably accept, and also struggled with coming up with what to say to make it ~1000 words (the requirements of this assignment). By about 1:30 am I had finally gotten an approximately 800 word rough draft, and was running into mind-blocks when I tried to figure out ways to fix it so that it sounded better. I decided to leave it for the morning, after a refreshing night of sleep. :)

August 25

Today was a cooler, rainier day. It rained almost constantly until late in the afternoon today, which is good since everyone always says theres a drought in Australia right now. I stayed inside most of the day and worked on getting some school work done, and planning my spring break. I was disappointed when I went to the STA travel agency on campus and found that the cheapest I could get to Perth was for $740 round trip and that the cheaper option's website was down. Today I went online and found out that it was significantly cheaper to book a ticket through Virgin Blue on the STA website. I called up the agency on campus and they quoted me the same price as online.... but they also said that there would be a $30 booking fee! I found out if I just booked my flight online I saved about $20 over going through an actual representative. So that's what I did. I used my handy dandy credit card and purchased a round trip plane ticket to Perth, Western Australia. Woohoo! So my plan now is to spend five days in Perth, then fly back here for a few hours before taking off again on another plane for an eight day trip to the Cairns area up north, where I plan to explore tropical rain forests and the Great Barrier Reef! I can't wait!

This afternoon I went for a breif (~10 minute) run when the rain let up for a bit. It felt pretty good, but I didn't trust my left foot as being completely better and back to normal. I'll have to try running for a longer distance tomorrow and see how it holds up. Tomorrow's plan is to try to get enough work done so that I can completely abandon academics for my two week spring break vacation. :)

August 24

I got up for my one and only class today at 8:30. After that I came back and relaxed a bit and tried to do get a few things done. In the afternoon I had to collect more data for my group project, but that wasn't too bad. I decided with my first five days of spring break I wanted to go to Perth, Western Australia. I went to the STA travel center on campus today though, and apparently the cheapest I can get a ticket is $530ish now. I guess I wasn't too surprised since it's one week away. I kinda waited a long time before deciding what to do. Anyway, I think I decided that I'm not going to go to Perth for now at least. I'll have to find something else more local to do, perhaps, for a few days before departing for Cairns. Perhaps later this year I can take a 3-day weekend trip to Perth if I can get a pretty cheap ticket ahead of time. We'll see. It was a nice thought at any rate.

This afternoon I walked to the grocery store and went grocery shopping. My left foot (plantar fascia) hurt at one point where I almost didn't want to walk on it at all. It went away about 5 minutes later though. My right hamstring is also sore today, probably from doing a step-up exercise as a research subject for one of the other groups in my class (they're doing a heart rate study). The combination of these two things, and the fact that I had a bunch of things to accomplish today, kept me from running this afternoon like I had originally planned. I think I'll try running tomorrow though and see how it goes.

Walking around outside today I noticed how incredibly spring-like it seemed. Although it was mostly cloudy and the occasional light sprinkle of rain, I had a long-sleeve shirt on with the sleeves rolled up most of the day. The increased humidity caused by the rain, a light breeze, and an increase in blossoms on various shrubs all made it feel like a wonderful spring day back home. It will be nice when it stays consistently as warm as it was today (it was apparently up to the very low 60s today. :)). I'm going to get spoiled over break when I go up to the tropics and then come back to this "cold" spring-like weather!

August 23

This morning I dragged myself out of bed early enough to get a shower and breakfast before my 8:30am class. I didn't have my normal 3-hour long class this morning though, which was nice. I came back and relaxed a little after my 8:30 class for a few hours. I still had the rest of my classes until 7:30 pm, however. This week in my Data Analysis in Science class we are collecting data for our group projects, so I was required to go to an extra class during my normal afternoon break to collect some of the data. We get to collected data from every tutorial section for the class.

It was definitely a long day today and I was happy when it finally ended at 7:30. Another thing that made me happy was when I was going to my 5:30 pm class, the sun was still hitting some of the buildings on campus. I remember when I first got here it was nearly dark by 5:00pm. I'm glad the days are getting noticably longer now! Yay! :)

In my literary studies tutorial today we talked about our upcoming Australian book/film reviews. We discussed what makes a good review and each brought in examples to talk about. After talking to some people on my floor I decided to review an Australian film called the castle. It's supposed to be a really funny film, kinda old, and I've been warned I may not get all of the Aussie humor. I think it will be interesting to see if I do or not, and it will be interesting to review it from an American's perspective. I just hope the lecturer finds my review acceptable and deserving of a good grade. What they say about it being hard to do really well here is true. With so few assignments making up your final grade, every thing you do is worth a lot. I got back my "audit" today (worth only 10%, fortunately), and I had a "Cr+" written on it. The grading system here goes P (pass) CR (credit) DI (distinction) and HD (high distinction). HD is 85%+, DI is like 70%-85%, and then CR is I think 60-70% and P is 50-60%. So I passed again, that's good. But it's kinda disheartening seeing a "Cr+" and knowing that means I got a 60-something percent. Seems kinda rough to me, but I guess Cr is supposed to be the average and what the vast majority of students get. Oh well. Yay for pass/fail. :-D

August 22

Happy anniversary to me and Rachel! As of today we've officially been dating for 2 years and 5 months, and have been officially engaged for 2 months. :)

Today and tomorrow are my longest days of classes. Today I had three one-hour breaks from 8:30 to 4:30 pm. During one of them I came back to my room and made lunch. During the other two I stayed up on campus in the library the first time, then in a computer lab the second time, doing some school work and browsing the world wide web.

After classes were over I went down to the local state library to look for a book for a book review. I have to do a "critique" of either an Australian text or film by next Friday. I couldn't find any books that looked interesting, so I asked a couple of my Aussie friends if they knew of anything good. I got several friends that agreed that I should watch The Castle, which is apparently a funny Australian-made movie. So I went down to the video store and rented it. I think I'll watch the movie this weekend and then write my review as well. It's crazy how this one assignment (approximately four pages) is going to be worth 25% of my final grade in my literary studies class.

Speaking of assignments... we had our first exam in Intro to Exercise Science last Thursday. Our grades are now posted online, and I found out that I got 35/50 = 70%. Normally I wouldn't be too happy with a 70%, which would be a C- back home. However, it turns out the highest grade (out of ~200 students in the class) was 80%. The average grade was only 47%. The cutoff for passing is 50%, so that means that the average grade was a failing grade. Pretty crazy. In class today he said he wasn't able to talk about the exam because apparently 11 people didn't show up for it, so he needs to see if they have excused reasons for missing and want to take it still before he talks about it. I'm thinking almost certainly he will have to curve if greater than 50% of the class is failing. I talked to a couple other people in the class, and learned about one American girl that got the high grade (40/50), one American that got a 25/50 (just passing), and one American that failed (She didn't tell me her grade). I also talked to another girl that failed. It was a lot harder than everyone expected. We'll have to wait and see what happens. I passed though, and that's the most important thing for me this semester. :)

On my walk back from my last class today I wished I had my camera. Not more than 30 feet away from the sidewalk was a group of 5 kangaroos. The biggest kangaroo was the closest, and he every so often would take one more creeping "hop" forward while supporting himself by his tail. I think they were eating the grass. The other kangaroos were all smaller, but they all appeared to be much too large to even consider hopping into their mother's pouches. It was probably some mothers and their big, grown babies or something. The most distant kanagroo was probably not more than 60-75 feet away. It was really neat to see them grazing so close to the sidewalk. They told us at orientation that University of Canberra is the only university in Australia where you have kangaroos on campus. I don't even see deer that close to me on campus back home! It's so cool! Next time hopefully I'll have my camera.

This evening when I walked back from the video store it was just getting dark, and it was mostly cloudy and a little breezy. It smelled and felt like a cool, almost "crisp" spring evening when you can tell summer will be coming soon. Funny thing is though, it's winter. I'm tending to think that winter here is much like winter in the south, say, northern Florida or southern Georgia, however. Which means that spring really starts coming before spring is officially here. And I've seen evidence for this. There's some sort of shrub that has recently begun blooming with bright yellow flowers. Some shrubs and trees have had flowers all winter, but these are new ones. A few weeping willows and other trees along the lake are also starting to look a bit yellow-green and have swollen buds. A pair of apple or cherry trees on the way back from the mall are also just starting to blossom, as I saw at least a half dozen opened blooms along the branches today. It may still be winter here, but the warm weather we've had lately (about 60 every day) is making the plants think it's spring. Only one more month until the official first day!

August 21

Back to the ol' class routine again today. Not too much exciting happened today. I ate the leftovers of a stirfry for lunch, went to class, went running, did some school work, and relaxed. I'm apparently still not recovered completely from the City to Surf race. I guess that's what I get for running it with such low-mileage training. My right ankle was a bit sore today, so I think I'm going to take one or two days off (tomorrow and Wednesday are my busiest days for classes anyway), and then run again after that. :)

August 20

Cleaned up my room, organized my stuff, and did some uni work today. Pretty exciting, eh?

August 19th

I slept in late this morning (until almost noon) because I stayed up late last night hanging out with people on my floor. I ended up just hanging out with people on the floor again today, and then doing some reading and studying for school. Not too exciting. :-P

August 18

Today I enjoyed relaxing and not having to go to class. This afternoon I went for an easy run around Lake Ginninderra, and felt pretty good.

In the evening there was a trivia contest hosted by the resident student's organisaion (RSO) at the labor club. There were prizes for, obviously, the winners of the event, but also for some little contests they had in between rounds of trivia, and for "best dressed table". Trivia was fun, although my team didn't win. A team that dressed up as nerds (go figure) ended up being the winners of trivia. I participated in one of the contests they had, which was going "around" a table without touching the ground. What this contest involved was an elected member from each table that had to attempt to lay on a table, pull him or herself underneath the table and then back onto the top of the table without touching the ground at all. There was probably 7 or 8 of us that actually managed to do that. Then to decide the winner we had to do it agan, only the fastest time won. I ended up doing it successfully the second time, but in twelve seconds. The winner somehow managed to go around the table in only five seconds! It was a fun and different kind of contest.

At the end of the night they announced the winners of the best dressed table... and it turned out to be my table! We had gone dressed wearing togas with leaves wrapped around our heads. There were a variety of costumes but apparently ours were the best. :) We ended up winning a $100 bar tab (drinking's pretty big here in Australia!), and then we each got our own coupons for a free large pizza at dominos, and 20% off two games of bowling. After we collected our prizes we went down and spent some time at the bar for the after party, then came back for the night. I'll have to get some pictures of us in togas from some people to put up on here. :)

August 17

This morning I quickly reviewed some notes before walking up to class with Sarah to take our exam. The exam was in Intro to Exercise Science and was a 50-question, multiple choice test. It also counts as 33% of our final grade. I thought I knew everything pretty well but it turns out the lecturer is very tricky with his questions, unreasonably so in my, and other peoples' opinions. One question was what ACOG stands for, with five choices. I knew that ACOG was the organization that published guidelines for exercise for pregnant women, but I didn't bother memorizing whether or not ACOG stood for American College of Gyneaology, American Council of Gynecology, Australian College of Gynecology, Australian Council of Gynecology, or American Council of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Who cares? How does that benefit me? I knew all about what types of exercises pregnant women should do, what they should avoid doing, precautions they should take, the benefits of exercise during pregnancy, etc. This is just one example of many "tricky" questions that, in my opinion, did not test the knowledge that we should have learned thus far in the class. I'm reasonably confident that I passed the exam, but I have no clue what my grade will be as there were many questions I was unsure of. We'll have to wait and see to find out how I did, and how the class did. If everyone failed maybe the teacher will realize that he needs to do something different. Apparently this is only his second semester as a teacher.

This afternoon I went down the mall and bought a couple yards of a wine-red fabric from the craft shop. Friday we are having a trivia night and there are prizes for the "best dressed" table. My table is going to all wear togas. It should be a good time.

Later this afternoon I met with a girl from my Data Analysis class about our group project. Our other group member couldn't get to the meeting, so we discussed our topic, then presented our proposal to the professor for approval, and finally worked on our methods and project outline. We're going to research whether or not there is a relationship between student exercise and academic achievement. It will be interesting to see what our results reveal in the coming weeks.

August 16

Today was a busy busy day of classes. I had three classes this morning, followed by a break where I ate lunch and did my assignment for my afternoon class, followed my by afternoon class then a two-hour tutorial for Data Analysis in Science. During my breaks and after supper I spent all my time studying for my first exam of the semester, bright and early tomorrow morning! :-x

August 15

At 1:50 AM I was rudely woken up by the fire alarm. Apparently some kid on another floor pulled the alarm. I wandered outside half-asleep and waited for the fire brigade to declare it safe for us to come back in. I promptly went back to bed and slept until 7:00am. Today I had classes throughout the day from 8:30am until 4:30pm.

On one of my breaks in between classes I went to the store on campus to buy the Sydney Morning Herald to find out how I did in the City to Surf. I couldn't believe it when I checked -- my official time was 52:46 and my official place was 255 out of 53,669 people that finished the race! There was 63,541 that entered the race, so I guess about 10,000 people ended up not finishing. I can't believe I did so well! With how little I've been training my goal was to either break one hour, or be in the top-1,000. My second goal was to be around 55 minutes and be top-500. I literally did not expect to do any better than that with my training. My best 15K Boilermaker (a relatively FLAT course by comparison) was in the mid-57's two years ago. Last year I ran 58-something. But somehow even with all the hills of the City to Surf I managed to run 52:46, equivalent to 6:04 per mile! Wow! The race felt so good too. I purposely stayed relaxed and didn't push myself beyond the point of enjoying the run. I didn't feel like I was going that fast. Definitely my best 14K ever. Maybe I could do it again some day! :)

I had a tofu-veggie stir-fry with rice for supper tonight. I think I'm getting better at cooking. Well, I best be off to study. I have a test early Thursday morning and I'm not ready for it! :-x Plus I have several other assignments due. I guess I knew that my lazy streak couldn't last forever. :-P

August 14

I'm going to include in this post some more pictures from my weekend in Sydney. :)

I went to bed early last night, tired from the weekend of traveling and the City to Surf. This morning I got up at 8:00am. I am definitely sore today. My left foot hurt yesterday after I was done with the race (probably because I've only done one distance run since I've been here, and I just ran a 14K!), but today it feels better. This morning I woke up with much stiffer muscles and a lot more soreness than I had yesterday. Whenever I get up from a chair I am reminded of the race. It feels good though. It reminds me that I ran a good race.

This afternoon right before I was going to go to class Mick, one of the guys on my floor who is in that class, reminded me that our lectures today were cancelled. Yay. I didn't go grocery shopping last Thursday since I went up to Sydney, so I decided to go this afternoon instead. I stocked up on veggies and everything else I was getting low on and should be good for another week or so.

I stopped by a shoe store ("Athlete's Foot") in the mall and was looking at the still outrageously high-priced shoes that they sell there. I got talking to the one guy that worked there about shoes and what I was interested in and the city to surf, etc. It turns out he did the City to Surf but he was coming back from an injury and ended up getting reinjured and bailing out about half way through the race. We talked about running shoes, about the guy who won, the Canberra dudes that came in 2nd, 3rd, and I believe 5th, and about 10k's that I might be able to do in Canberra in the next few weeks. I asked him about why Asics shoes were so expensive here, double the price that I can get them in the U.S. I told him that I could get my shoes for $90 U.S. brand new back home (about $115-120 Australian) and he said that's cheaper than the cost he has to pay. He told me I would be better off just ordering new shoes in the U.S. and having them shipped over here since it would be cheaper that way. It's crazy how importing goods can cause such dramatic price differences in different countries. I'm not sure how much I am going to run here the rest of this semester (only 3 months till I go home!), so I don't know if it will be worth getting new shoes sent over. Plus I have to wait and see how my foot feels when I get back to running on Thursday or Friday (test on Thursday so I'm not going to run until after that). If it hurts to run then I'll probably take a couple weeks off. If not, then I don't think I'm going to be running enough miles to make it worth getting new shoes. Heck, people run barefoot and are fine, I can run with old shoes and be fine, right? :)

This evening after supper I took a break from studying to watch Australian Idol. It was funny watching some of the rediculous auditions. Some auditions were actually pretty good though. I guess tonight's show was narrowing it down to the final 100 that are actually going to go on to battle it out on stage on Idol. Blocka, one of the guys on this floor, has a friend ("mate") from his home town that tried out and he informed us has made it to the top-24. It's crazy knowing that before they even have it narrowed down to 100 on TV. Anyway tonight was the night his mate was supposed to be on, so we watched in anticipation of seeing him. He ended up doing a song where he played guitar and sang, and he was really good. I don't know about him having the ability to make it all the way, but it was cool to see him and know that I live with his friend. I've never had that happen on American Idol before. :-P

August 13

I actually managed to wake up this morning before my alarm clock, and got out of bed around 6:45am. I got dressed with my running clothes, packed my bags, ate a fruit/cereal bar, 1.5 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, drank a bottle of powerade, checked out of the hostel, put my bags in storage ($3/day), and walked up the street two and a half blocks to the registration tables for the City to Surf race.

At the registration center I picked up my chest bib (number 693, woo!), took three free baseball-style caps (they were encouraging me to take more than one), and drank some more water. They had color-coded bags to match bib colors, and I got the lady to write my number on one that was lavender (my bib color) so that I could send my clothes to the finish line. I stretched and drank water until about 8:00am, then even though it was cold, I took off my long-sleeve shirt and pants (keeping on only my running shorts and wife-beater) and put them in my bag to be loaded on the truck for delivery to the finish line. I then went through Hyde Park and wandered around for a bit, stretching every now and then and enjoying the warm feel of the sun.

After a while I got a look at the starting setup, then went off to a park with some open athletic field-type areas to warm up and chill out until the start of the race. It turned out to be quite nice as there was a bathroom that very few people were using (mostly just other "seeded" runners, as this was designated as the area they were supposed to warm up, etc.), so I never had to wait in line. I did a good 5-minutes or so warmup followed by some stretching and some shorter strides about a half hour before the start of the race. At 15 minutes to go I made my way over to the starting line. They had the streets sectioned off for the different starting groups. The seeded runners (top-1500) got to start in the very front of the pack. The first group of 18,000 people started immediately behind them, then each of two side streets had other groups that included HSBC start (average runners) and Back of the Pack (the slowest seeds, everyone with bib numbers 40,000 and higher). I couldn't believe how close to the front I was -- granted the road was 5-lanes wide here, but I had no more than about 10 runners deep stacked up in front of me. I got to see the number one seed, a guy from somewhere in Africa (Tanzania, I believe).

As I waited for the starting gun to fire, I stretched and stayed relaxed as the guy with the microphone said to do, and every now and then I would look up at the 5 helicopters that were circling overhead and the sky-writing that was occuring above them for companies such as Bose and Donut King. I found out at the end of the race after I picked up my free newspaper (the race is sponsored by a newspaper) that there was a new record number of entrants this year -- 63,541 compared to the old record from 2002 of just over 60,000 -- this was a HUGE event! As I continued to wait for the start, I wore one of my three hats (the other two I had sent to the finish line) to keep the sun out of my eyes and noticed that there were several female runners with bib numbers in the low-100s or below, indicating an elite female athlete presence.

Finally the time came for the start of the race. When the gun fired I started my watch, and I started running within two seconds. The race started down a hill, and within 30 seconds the crowd had comfortably thinned out so that I could run uninhibited. It was amazingly nice being able to see the front of the pack and running with many people that were going a pace similar to mine. I knew it was a long race ahead of me, so I kept myself from going out too hard at first -- I held back down the hill. After the bottom of the hill there was an uphill, and here I got into my race rhythm. At this point I started passing as many people as were passing me, so my position within the "pack" didn't change very much or very fast. As I continued to go uphill, downhill, through flat sections, under bridges, and around corners I managed to keep my rhythm. After maybe 20 minutes of running a steady incline began and I said to myself "I wonder if this is Heartbreak Hill that I've heard about?" I used to love running hills back home and running up this hill reminded me of doing the Colton Point hill workout back home. I kept relaxed and visualized Colton Point workouts as I worked my way up the hill, passing more people than were passing me. The hill was actually rather enjoyable as far as hills are concerned; it wasn't too steep to psych me out or make me too tired, yet it wasn't a shallow hill either.

At the top of Heartbreak hill the incline become much less, and a clock indicated that I was around 27 minutes. There were some smaller uphills mixed with downhills and plenty of curves after this, which kept the race from getting very monotonous. During a period of about 10 minutes after cresting Heartbreak as many as several dozen other runners passed me. I kept myself relaxed and used this period of "recovery" to my advantage. For the next 10-minutes I kept with a female runner that was slowly working her way forward. I ended up losing her up another hill where she increased her speed, but then I set my eyes on a couple of other runners ahead of me and started working my way forward. As the ocean became visible and I knew I was nearing Bondi Beach I kept picking it up until I had caught the people I was attempting to pass. The course started down a steady decline and I knew the finish was near. Going down a straight stretch I heard the announcer at the finish line around the next hairpin. I opened my stride and started kicking.

In the last 30 seconds of the race I caught and passed close to 10 more runners. When I finished I stopped my watch, proceeded through the gates where they took the small adhesive number off my bib and placed it on my time card, picked up a free New Balance/City to Surf keychain, my "city to surf finisher" medal, and myCity to Surf bag and free newspaper (I actually took three, since there were tens of thousands laying around. :)). There was a row of parallel tables that I guesstimate were about 200 feet long and were stacked completely across and three to four high of red gatorade and water in cups separated by sheets of cardboard between the layers. I've never seen so much refreshment in my life. I can't imagine how many thousands of cups were there. I personally drank four cups of water and gatorade. After I had consumed my fill of oranges and liquid refreshment I made my way over to the baggage claim. The bags were divided up behind temporary fences where they were divided according to color and arranged into numeric rows. As I walked up to the section with lavender bags a volunteer kid saw my bib number and when I got to the fence he handed me my bag. I tell ya what, these volunteers are efficient, that's for sure!

Next, I made my way over to the temporary bus terminal that was set up to shuttle city to surfers back to where they came from. As I walked up the hill and along the street I couldn't help but admire Bondi Beach. I wished I had my camera as the bright blue skies, green grass, bluffs, houses, and white sand made Bondi one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen, if not the most beautiful. Maybe next time I'm in Sydney I can get some pictures. :) I got on the bus back to "City" and 30 minutes or so later arrived back at Hyde Park where I had arranged to meet with Amanda and Melissa.

As I waited about a half hour for Melissa and Amanda (we agreed to meet at noon), I layed out on the grass in my shorts and t-shirt and soaked up the sun while skimming the Sun-Herald newspaper that I had received for free. When the girls arrived we walked through Hyde Park then to the botanic gardens north of the park. The gardens were huge and had a significant variety of plants scattered throughout. One highlight was taking our shoes off and walking across the warm grass (there were actually signs that said "please walk on the grass"... haha). I also enjoyed spotting a buff-banded rail skulking in some vegetation about five feet away. Rails are typically hard-to-see birds, and it was neat to be able to ID this one without any binoculars. :) Another highlight was walking through the Australian rainforest section of the garden. We skipped the section of the gardens that was deemed a tropical jungle within greenhouses as it incurred an entry fee that we were not willing to pay ($4). Intriguingly the tropical rainforest section of the gardens was titled "sex and death". I guess because of all the plant interactions that are occuring inside.

Yet another highlight of the botanic gardens were the hundreds, even thousands of bat -- flying foxes -- that were hanging upside down from some of the tree tops! We got to see as many as a dozen or so bats that would fly around at any given time looking for better perhes. Some of them screeched as they argued over perches and hung upside down by one or two "feet", trying to curl up under their wings and sleep. I thought the screeching was parrots at first, but was pleasantly surprised to see these guys. I've always liked bats, but it was really neat and amazing to see bats that were so big, and indeed had wingspands that appeared to be at least as big as a crow's wingspan when they were flying around. Flying foxes are fruit eaters, and have got to be one of the coolest animals in the world in my book! Birds are still pretty cool too. I guess I just like things that fly. Except mosquitoes. Which is good, because normal-sized (small) bats eat mosquitoes. :-D

After we had satisfatorily spent enough time walking through the gardens we started walking back to the hostel. We stopped along the way at a mall to get some lunch and do some wandering around/shopping to kill time. I ended up getting a foot-long veggie sub at subway, and the girls each got something from two other fast-food places. When we got back to the hostel we claimed our bags, I changed out of my running clothes, and we headed to Central Station. We got there 15 minutes before our bus left (exactly when they ask you to get there), checked out bags underneath, and enjoyed the 3.25 hour ride home. It felt kinda good (although a bit cold) to arrive back in Canberra, as Canberra sort of has a "home" feeling to some extent now. We caught a Canberra bus from the city back to our suburb, then walked a couple minutes from the bus stop to the dorm. On the way we passed three wild kangaroos that were in the grass/field along the road, which was pretty neat.

Oh. P.S. For people that have run the boilermaker before -- the Boilermaker has way better crowds of people cheering for you. Don't get me wrong, the crowd at the City to Surf was still way better than any other race I've done, besides the Boilermaker. However, out of five bands along the course today, and none of them were very good -- I didn't hear any heavier/rock music at all! And only one band was on a roof like I had heard about. The crowds were thin and only a few scattered people here and there along the course to cheer us on. Also, there was only half a dozen water/gatorade stops along the course. It was a good amount, but we definitely get spoiled with drinks at the Boilermaker! The hills and scenery were definitely a lot better in Sydney though! And they're both really fun races!! :)

August 12

Slept in until about 8:00 am this morning. After eating breakfast and packing peanut butter and jelly for lunch, Melissa, Amanda and I set off for Central Station in Sydney to catch a train. Our goal was to go to a koala park this morning, followed by the opera house in the afternoon. We bought a roundtrip ticket to North Strathfield and boarded our train as soon as it arrived. It was my first time on a real train (i.e. one used for transport... I'd been on a tourist fall-foliage tour ride on an old train once before), so it was a new experience for me. :) The train felt really floaty compared to what I was expecting, and the ride was really smooth. It was also nice not having to worry about traffic slowing us down like when we take the bus around Canberra or Sydney. In order to get to our destination we had to get off of the first train and board another train in Strathfield in order to get onto the North line. The second train was a couple minutes late getting there, but we hopped on only to realize two stops later that the one we had gotten on was actually part of the western line! Woops. So we got off and went back to Strathfield, got off again, and got on the right train to get to North Strathfield.

We left the train station in North Strathfield and walked to the bus stop that was indicated inthe travel guide as required in order to get to the koala park. It turns out there was a sign saying that buses only stopped here on school days though. We decided to walk down the street until we found another bus stop. We found another one only to read the sign saying that it, too, only operated during school days. We found this kind of weird and disappointing. Melissa checked her travel guide once again and re-read the directions. It turns out that although both she and I had read the directions at least twice each, we had mis-read/mis-interpreted the directions, and were supposed to have gone about 15 more minutes down the line by train to get to the destination we wanted! Oops. We went back to the train station and checked the time-table, then talked about what to do. We decided that since it had taken us so long because of getting on wrong trains by accident and getting off trains in the wrong place on purpose, that we'd try another wildlife park/zoo instead. We decided to go for the Featherdale Wildlife Park which was probably about 30 minutes away on the western line. We estimated we would still have about two hours of daylight after our trip to go up to the opera house afterward.

When our southbound train came, we hopped on, got off at Strathfield, then got on a westbound train headed to Blacktown, our suburb destination. When we were only halfway there we got an announcement over the PA system stating that trains were not running from Granville westward due to track work, and that buses would take passengers from Granville to points westward. At Granville we got off and went to the "rail bus" bay headed to blacktown and waited for the next bus. The bus took about 45 minutes or so to get there (much more traffic than the rail system!), but finally we made it to Blacktown. We took the appropriate local bus from the Blacktown train station to Featherdale then, and finally arrived at our destination.

At Featherdale Wildlife Park we managed to spend several hours exploring the various cages, aviaries, pens, and sections of the park and seeing the numerous and diverse native creatures that were housed there! There were tons of parrots and cockatoos, doves, finches, eagles and hawks, owls, rails, ducks, geese, bowerbirds, blue penguins, herons, kookaburras, frogmouths, woodswallows, and heaps of others. It was really neat to see all these birds, most of them native, up close and personal. I did see a couple of species of wild birds hanging out in the park that were new for me -- the spotted turtle-dove and Australian white ibis come to mind. One of the coolest things was having a bunch of laughing kookaburras sitting around just waiting to be petted by the park's visitors. There were four frogmouths sitting there too, but they were just a bit beyond the railing so that they were out of reach. But I got pictures of them sleeping (they are a noctournal bird that looks like a tree stump).

In addition to birds, there were numerous mammalian and some reptilian species present in the park. Many of the kangaroos and wallabys (of several species) were free-roaming in the park and available to be hand-fed and petted. There were other species of kangaroos and wallaby-like animals in fenced-in areas also. And several wombats, Tazmanian devils, a 15-foot long crocodile, some bats (including huge flying foxes!), and more! We spent some time in the gift shop after we were done being with all the animals and each ended up buying a souvenir or gift or two or three.

We had to wait 20 minutes at the bus stop by Featherdale in order to catch the next bus back to Blacktown. While we were waiting a family of Asian-Americans from California waited with us, and we talked about how riding in buses was weird and almost scary at first because of how they drive on the wrong side of the road, about Paddy's market, about university residences and paying for internet. etc. Apparently the one son of the family was studying at a univeristy in Sydney this semester, and his family was visiting him. Finally the bus came, we got back to the Blacktown rail station, boarded the "rail bus" back to Granville, and after almost an hour finally got to Granville where we boarded the first eastbound train. We looked at the rail map posted in the train and decided the Wynard station was the one where we wanted to get off in order to land closest to the Opera House.

It turns out the Wynard train station, and the one previous to it were under ground. I guess it's kind of a sub-train or something. We got off the train and then tried to get out.. only to find out that you had to scan your ticket for the turnsty thing to let you through. Our tickets (roundtrip) had been scanned twice, and therefore didn't work anymore. Another girl at the train station was having the same problem, and we watched her go over to the security guy and ask him for help. He went over and manually let her out. We followed her lead and manually let ourselves out and climbed upstairs onto the streets of the city of Sydney. Eight trains and 4 buses later we had finally completed our round-trip to Featherdale and were off to see the Opera House. And we hoped to get to it before dark, as it was now late afternoon!

It was only a five or ten minute walk before we were to the harbour and were able to see the Sydney Opera House. We took a bunch of pictures of the Opera House when it was still light, as the light was fading, and after dark. For those who don't already know, it turns out the Opera House was again the result of an international competition, and the winning design came from someone in Finland. It also cost about 100 million dollars more to build than originally planned, and is actually still used today for various performances. We also got a few pictures of the Harbour Bridge. After we were satisfied with these tourist attractions, we stopped by an inexpensive souvenir shop and purchased a few more items. :)

Finally we walked back to the hostel, unloaded our bags and got ready for supper. We went to Scruffy Murphy's Irish pub for their supper special. I got a big bowl of vegetarian "lasagna" (more or less just pasta with sauce and cheese) for only $5. After we ate we enjoyed the no-smoking atmosphere, the music, and parts of two rugby games on the numerous flat-screen tvs that were scattered around. Around 11:00pm we came back and I got ready for bed so that I could rest up for my City to Surf race early Sunday morning!

August 11

This morning we got up around 8:00am and got ready for the day. We started off the day by going to the mall up the street from the hostel. Here we purchased peanut butter, jelly, and zip-lock bags so we could pack our lunch. We also grabbed breakfast here, then went back to the hostel. At the hostel we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the kitchen area, then set off to start out day as tourists, by going to Paddys market.

Paddy's market was pretty much just a huge building with tons of vendors, with goods ranging from all sorts of groceries to leather coats, wigs, jewelry, and of course Australian things that tourists will buy lots of. The great thing was that everything was really cheap by comparison to retail. We spent almost two hours wandering around the markets and seeing what there was to offer. We found that it was a great place to buy souvenirs, so each of us purchased a fair amount of such items. :) I got a new leather wallet for $5, a calendar for $5, a couple postcards for $0.80 each, and a few other odds and ends which will not be mentioned on here as they may end up being gift items for certain people back home, and telling them about them would make it much less fun as a surprise.

After we were done with Paddy's market we went back to the hostel to drop our stuff off in the room. We decided to skip going to the rumored three stories of mall-like shops in the floors above Paddys market. Back at the hostel we sat for a bit and ate our lunches (guess we didn't have to pack them today after all!). Shortly afterward we set off for our next activity: visiting the Powerhouse Museum.

The Powerhouse Museum consisted of four floors of displays of various kinds. Some included different types of arts and graphics design, some included interactive displays and activities involving science. There were also displays of glass art of many forms with an interactive glass-making display, a bunch of things about the history of steam engines and the railroad, some displays from Australian life in the early 1900s, and a display about the history of space science including models of several early satellites, the space shuttle, a rocket engine, and lunar rovers. All in all it was a pretty cool museum, using up several hours of our time.

In the late afternoon we walked over to the Darling Harbour region of Sydney. We found the Sydney Aquarium and explored the various tanks of creatures within. The aquarium specialized in having a wide variety of Australian species of fish, aquatic animals, and reptiles. We got to see platypuses up close through a glass tank as they swam underwater looking for whatever it is that platapuses look for when they swim underwater with their eyes closed. Apparently they use electrical and touch receptors to locate their food. There were several species of snakes in one part of the building, including the most venemous snake in the world. I can't remember it's name, but it is a black snake that is only a couple of feet long. I'm not quite sure why a snake that size needs so much venom. There were also numerous tanks of fish including all of the characters from Finding Nemo (I couldn't find Nemo though.. only a species that looked kinda similar).

There were three "oceanariums" in the aquarium and they were really cool. The first one we went to was a seal display with several seals. You could look at them from above, but then we also went downstairs and walked underneath, where you could look up at the animals. The one seal was having a lot of fun playing with a cattail-type piece of plant root. The second Oceanarium was even cooler than the first, housing many many fish including a half dozen species of shark! There were several large grey nurse sharks in the tank that were about 15 feet long! Of the several species of sting-rays flying through the water, there was one that I swear could have eaten a shark for breakfast if it wanted. It was probably about two feet thick (pretty thick for a flat animal!), and had a "wingspan" that was around 6 feet or so. There was also a huge sea turtle in there that was 3-4 feet long. It was cool seeing all these animals from the side, and underneath. A third oceanarium was a great barrier reef display, with many reef species. This is where most of Nemo's crew was.

After we finished enjoying all the species at the aquarium we went back out to the shops along the edge of darling harbour. We did a little checking around and found a nice cafe (Blackbird Cafe) to eat supper at. The food was really good and the service was excellent; I was amazed at how fast the food got to us after we ordered. I had some mixed veggies in curry sauce with rice, and garlic bread on the side. It was about $A15 for the meal which is pretty inexpensive, especially compared to some of the other meals at other restaurants along the harbour.

After supper we went back to the hostel and relaxed for a bit before trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the evening. We ended up deciding to go to a bar that looked pretty nice and hang out. We spent some time just chatting, listening to the music, and enjoying the "entertainment": rugby was on one tv, music videos on another, people were playing pool, etc. After a while we left and came back for the night.

August 10

This morning I had only one class. After that I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon alternating being lazy and being productive, cleaning my room and packing my bag for the trip to Sydney. At 5:00pm I met Melissa and Amanda in the hall and we took our stuff and headed for the bus stop. It took about five minutes to walk to the bus stop, then another five minutes for the bus to come. We took the bus to the city exchange in canberra then walked three blocks to the travel center. It only took us about five minutes of waiting before they began boarding the bus, and about fifteen minutes later (6:00pm) we had departed en route to Sydney.

The ride to Sydney was very dark (it's still winter, so it still gets dark early here) and lasted about three hours and fifteen minutes. Melissa, Amanda, and I managed to make the time pass relatively quickly by talking most of the time, including what to do after we got to Sydney. We unloaded the bus around 9:20 pm at Central Station and then made our way to the hostel where we had reservations, about a five-minute walk.

The hostel was co-ed, so we asked the guy working the desk if we could all be put into the same room. Two of us had already been placed into the same room, so it was no big deal for him to move the third (Amanda) into the room. When we arrived at our room, we found that we already had two roommates in our 6-bed room. The one guy was sleeping (to catch an early plane) and the other guy wasn't in the room at that time. We decided to make our beds and then go out and explore the city a little.

We explored several streets in the vicinity of the hostel, making note of a grocery store, and also stopping to eat some food for supper. Apparently I was the only one that ate supper before we left (can't let my metabolism go without food! ;)). Here in Australia they have a lot of McCafe's in McDonalds, selling a variety of baked goods and coffee beverages. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a big piece of carrot cake at McDonalds, so that's what I got for supper/dessert. The girls decided on burgers at Hungry Jacks. Hungry Jacks is Burger King in every aspect besides the name. Even the logo is BK's buger, but with the words Hungry Jacks in the middle instead of Burger King. Apparently when BK came over to Australia there was already another store called Burger King, so they changed the name for stores in this country. Inside there were lots of American licence plates, pictures of classic American cars, and oldschool American celebrities (Marilyn Monroe, for example). It was kinda weird to see so much American stuff in Australia, even though it was an American restaurant.

After eating we went to Starbucks where Melissa was able to receive her employee discount for a cup of coffee. We then sat in Starbucks until it closed at 11:30 and try to figure out what to do tomorrow. We tenatively decided on going to Paddy's market in the morning, followed by the Powerhouse Museum and then perhaps the Sydney Aquarium.

August 9

At 9:00am all of us Conservation Biology and Genetics students were piled into minibuses to head out on our four-hour field trip. As a part of a project that we're working on in groups, we are going to be conducting field and literature research and proposing conservation actions for arguably one of "the most threatened reptile species in the world", the grassland earless dragon. These buggers are only a few inches long, but they prefer to live in short-grass grasslands (grassland/field = paddock in Australia), and a fairly significant population (of up to several hundred) can be found in some excellent habitat around Canberra here inthe A.C.T. These little lizards live in burrows in these prairies, burrows that are made by either wolf spiders or a cricket, typically.

After crawling between two strands of barbed wire (turns out they don't yet have a gate to access this property!), we followed a path out into the field to begin our educational field experience. We learned this morning in the freezing cold (mostly because of the wind), extremely windy conditions how to conduct searches for burrows in quadrats within a grid in the paddock. We then spent some time finding burrows and recording data such as diamater, occupation (by shining a pen-light down the hole), depth, and distance from tussocks of tall grass. There really isn't too much known about these lizards, so we're actually instrumental in conducting natural history data that has previously not been well understood. We did our burrow searches in groups of 3-4 people. I happened to the lucky person to first locate a burrow that was occupied by a lizard. During the morning only two lizards were found in the few quadrats that were surveyed. It was a pretty cool morning, and I learned a lot and enjoyed the experience. Hopefully collectively we as a class will be able to collect important data and propose possible conservation measures for the protection of this very vulnerable species.

Back at UC I ate a quick lunch then realized that I had one hour until my literary studies tutorial and I hadn't read for class or done the assignment. I quickly read the four stories assigned for this week, went and dropped off my completed Australia census form, then got to class two minutes late (I'm in Australia, so they don't really care too much if you're late). As much as I typically dislike literature, I actually enjoyed a couple of the stories we read for today, and the tutorial discussions were interesting. The professor liked my analysis of the paragraph that I thought best set the theme for the one essay/story about Australia and its ecological and developmental changes over the past 30 or so years. Yay.

After my literature class I ran into Sam and we decided to go running together around Lake G. We ended up running the loop in about 41 minutes, but it felt like a great "recovery run" and the time flew by since we talked most of the way. Only three more days until the City to Surf race in Sydney! Tomorrow afternoon/evening I leave for a three-day weekend in Sydney! Two or three other Americans are going to be coming along, so for the couple of days before the race, we're going to enjoy the city together. As a result of not being here at UC, I'm not sure how much internet access I will have or when this blog will again be updated. But rest assured, once I am back on campus I will update to let you all know how the trip and race go!

August 8

Today was wonderfully filled with classes, a break for lunch, and then finally a run around lake G (34 minutes) and supper. Tomorrow morning I have a field trip 9-12:30, then classes the rest of the day until 7:30pm. Yikes. I'm not a huge fan of Wednesdays. I might not get to go running tomorrow, but that's ok if I don't. If I do, I'll just do an easy run. My plan is to then run around the lake on Thursday, then run for about a half hour on Friday in Sydney and then about 15-20 minutes on Saturday. I'm starting to get excited about the City to Surf. I hope I feel good and can run a reasonably fast (by my standards) time. It'll be fun no matter what though.

This afternoon on my walk back from class I saw a new bird in the trees. I heard a harsh, grating, squeak-type noise and looked up to see three gang-gang cockatoos in the tree top. There was a male, a female, and an immature male. Gang-gangs are gray parrots with a curly, wispy crest. The male had a red head, and the immature male had a red crest; the female was all gray. They're pretty cool birds. Bigger than I imagined they would be though. Not much smaller than a Galah.

Tonight I took my medicine for the PhD study for the second time. It's still just as nasty as it was yesterday. I'm not sure if it's because it's an alcohol base (most likely? probably an extract of sorts), but it definitely has a very bitter taste, and it kinda burns when I take it. I always have to quickly follow it with something (some water and a cookie tonight. :)). It's just like when you're a kid and sick and have to take some nasty-tasting medicine. Only I volunteered to do this. haha. It's cool though, I'll get free stuff after I complete the study. :)

So it's almost mid-August here in Australia. As of Thursday I only have 3 weeks until the beginning of my mid-semester break! Craziness. I'll have 17 days of free time to kill, and so far I only planned an 8-day trip. I'm going to have to find another destination to fill up some of those other 10 days! I need to get the most out of my spring break. :)

Next week I have my first exam of the semester. It is in my intro to exercise science class. The lecturer is not a very good teacher, and since I miss one class per week (due to a scheduling conflict), I only know about half of what is going to be on the test. I guess I should open my book and start studying/reading, since I haven't done that at all yet.

August 7

This morning I got up early (unusual for a Monday morning!) because I agreed to meet with a PhD student from the Australia Institute of Sport / University of Western Sydney at 8:45a.m. This girl is doing her PhD research with the effectiveness of alternative/natural medicines at relieving inflammation for potential applications in sport. I agreed to help her out with her study testing the effectiveness of a natural herbal remedy called "devil's claw". As an incentive (and indeed the incentive that convinced me it was worth it!) after completion of the research I will receive an AIS backpack, a drink bottle, socks, and a gym towel!

At 8:45 I met her outside my dorm and she drove me to the AIS campus (about 1-2 miles away, too far for me to walk). Another kid that's participating in the survey met us there and she ran us both through some preliminary things, such as taking our weight (63.8 kg), height (175.6 cm), and then administering a "beep" or "bleep" test. The bleep test consisted of wearing a heartrate monitor (mine ended up malfunctioning, but she was able to get the necessary data anyway. :)) and running back and forth between two cones that were placed on lines 20 meters apart. The goal was to pace your running so that you got to line right as the recording beeped, turn around, and run back to the line by the time the recording beeped again. It started off really slow and got progressively faster, going up by one "level" each minute. The other kid that did the test (a soccer player with a bad ankle.. :-x) ended up stopping at about level 10. I somehow managed to hang in there until level 14.2. After that, I just couldn't keep up with the beeps. For the next six weeks I need to consume 10 mL of this liquid devil's claw supplement. Then after the six weeks are completed (mid-September) I will be tested for leg strength and vertical jumping ability, then put through a 40-minute downhill treadmill run (5X 8 minutes), then tested every 24 hours for 5 days to see how my performance is affected. After that I get my free stuff! Some time later, after the data analysis has been completed, I also get a report of the effectiveness of devil's claw at reducing inflammation.

I had two lectures for one course this afternoon. Afterwards I went for my run around Lake G. (31:30), followed it up with a shower, then prepared myself some supper. Zucchini, green beans, and mashed potatoes were tonight's menu. With some ice cream for desert. This was soon followed by a fire alarm (someone on another floor apparently needs to learn that the fire alarm is not the preferred method for knowing when your food is done). I also did my laundry this evening so that I might have some clean laundry for the rest of the week, including my trip to Sydney! Tonight will have to be an early night as I have a four-hour field trip tomorrow morning for my Conservation Biology and Genetics class. Oh. I found out that tomorrow night is the official Australia census night. Which means the Australian Bereau of Statistics requires that every human being that is spending the night in Australia that night fill out a form providing details of said nighttime location, said person's Australian residency status, said person's permanent residency status, and said person's personal statistics. Apparently there is a law in Australia (from the early 1900s) stating that it is compulsory for all people to fill out tthe census form or face the possibility of being fined. It's funny, but this once-every-five years census is required to be completed by any students, tourists, and even anyone who is sleeping in a hotel on the night of August 8. I guess they really care about finding out how Australia's doing. The cenus form isn't too scary though (the picture is deceiving ;)), so it won't be too bad I guess. I want to find out after the data is compiled how many other Americans were in Australia with me on the night of August 8!

August 6

This morning I went to the baptist church again. I tried two slightly different ways of getting there (walking) and it turns out going through the mall actually cuts off about 2-3 minutes. It was still a 27 minute walk even with the shortcut though, one way. Church was nice. They had communion today. They also introduced and interviewed a couple of kids at the church that are going to compete in the special olympics soon. They both did track and field events. :-D

For lunch today I reheated the leftover rice and stir-fry that I made yesterday. I posted yesterday's blog update right before supper, so after that I went to the kitchen and spent about two hours in there cooking up a storm! First I cooked some yummy rice. Then I borrowed Sam's frying pan and I stir-fried some tofu, red capsicums (that's what they call red bell peppers here), onion, and green beans in some canola oil and soy sauce. After the stir-fry was cooked to my satisfaction I added some store-bought veggie stir-fry sauce to make it a little "saucier", and poured it over my rice. Mmmmm it was good! After my supper was done I chopped up my pumpkin (i.e. winter squash -- all winter squashes here are pumpkins, and I don't think they have REAL pumpkins at all...), baked it in the oven, then turned it into a pumpkin pie. Everyone on my floor that owns cinnamon wasn't around today, so I made it without cinnamon. It turned out alright, but not as good as it would have been had there been cinnamon available. No worries, it was still delicious. :) And I saved most of it for today!

Later this afternoon I went running around Lake Ginninderra again. I stopped once because I saw some cool birds -- a flock of about 10 welcome swallows (like barn swallows, only slightly different) and then a group of three beautiful eastern shrike-tits. I'm not sure why (perhaps due to body/bill structure), but it seems like every other bird here is a shrike-something. I've seen shrike-tits, a shrike-thrush, and cuckoo-shrikes so far. Funny thing is, I don't think they have any actual shrikes here! Anymore most of the birds I list are just new species for me. I've gotten pretty good at sound- and glimpse-identifying most of the birds I see regularly, such as the various parrot species, waterfowl, honeyeaters, and black birds (they have a lot of different black birds here!). Anyways, I ended up taking my "dirt trail" shortcut up a hill and through a field again today, and finished the run in 30:25. I have recently been adding the dirt-path shortcut because of the hill it's got. I need to run more hills.

For supper this evening I ate spaghetti and zucchini. Then for desert I polished off the remainder of my pumpkin pie. I'm stuffed now, but it's ok. I'll run it off eventually, I hope. ;)

Later this evening I talked to two of my fellow American friends here at UC and we finalised plans and made bookings for this upcoming weekend. The three of us are going to head up to Sydney on Thursday by bus and spend three nights, then come back to Canberra on Sunday afternoon after my City to Surf race has been completed. I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have when I'm in Sydney (i.e. I don't know how much I'd be willing to spend to go online!), so I may not have extensive updates every day when we're up there. But I will be taking lots of pictures and will get them uploaded within a reasonable amount of time after I get back. I'm excited. Speaking of pictures, enjoy these additional bird pictures from yesterday. The common mynah (brown bird with black head and yellow bill) is slightly bigger than a starling, and very closely related. It doesn't make quite as many annoying noises as a starling though, and they are present in rather small numbers and often in pairs. The ravens here have cool, white eyes and are probably anywhere from U.S. crow-to-raven size. It's hard to tell when they're up so close and don't have any of their American counterparts for size comparison. :)

August 5

I slept in this morning again, like I do about 50% of mornings so far this semester. :) Today was a beautiful day with sunny skies and a high right around 60 degrees, so this afternoon I decided to go for a walk. I took along my bird book, my binoculars, and my camera, hoping to see new birds and catch some nice photos. I saw one new bird, brown quail. I flushed a covey of about a dozen birds when I was walking on this dirt path along the edge of a field. I explored a couple of paths off the main paved bike path that I usually walk/run on. I saw a decent variety of birds and was able to get some photos through my binoculars of several species, including crimson rosellas and red-browed finches. Usually when I take a picture of a bird through my binoculars, I try to hold my binoculars against a tree or some other support to steady them. Somehow I managed to get some decent pictures of the red-browed finches today even though I hand-held my binoculars. My arm got tired, but it was worth it for the pictures I got. I'll include a few bird pictures in today's update. :)

After I got done with my walk I came back and changed to go for a run. One of the tendons in my thigh was sore again for the first couple of minutes of my run, as it has been for the last two times I've gone running. After a couple of minutes, though, it had loosened up and the rest of my run was fine. Overall the run felt great. It was a little warmer than the past couple days when I ran, it was the perfect temperature for shorts and a t-shirt. Only eight days until the City to Surf race in Sydney!