Vita est Iter

      This week was very exciting because my parents flew in from the states to visit me! We met in Sydney for the first leg of the trip. I got in pretty late, but we went to get dinner anyways. It was hard to find a place that was open, but we eventually stumbled upon a great Korean restaurant. We had some fabulous deep fried chicken covered in a spicy orange sauce with peppers, peas, and baby corn. My dad and I also had an excellent Korean blueberry wine, my first legal drink with the rents!      The next day we went to the Sea Life aquarium where we saw a ton of cool animals. They had 2 dugongs, one male and one female. This was really exciting because there are only 5 dugongs under human care in the entire world! I chatted with the trainers there for a bit, discussing how to train animals without being able to use positive reinforcement. (This is because dugongs are herbivores and are fed every 10-15 minutes.) The aquarium also housed a number of large sharks and had big glass tun

This Saturday I decided to go out for a day of diving with MONUC, the Monash Underwater Club. We set off around 9:30am and headed to our first dive site of the day, Mornington Pier. Driving around Victoria is so interesting because you always see a bunch of different sculptures or elements of design built into everyday structures.  We got to the first dive site and waited for the rest of the group to arrive. Once everyone was there we donned our gear and began the tedious walk out to the pier. Everyone joked that the hardest part of the dive wasn’t in the water, but getting to it. Jumping into the water after a long walk is always so refreshing because you get very hot in dry wet suits; especially when you’re towing over 40lbs of gear with you! I was a bit disappointed with the visibility at the first dive site. The location wasn’t very well protected so there was a lot of sediment dispersed through the water. It was so bad that within the first 5 minutes of descending we had to r

Hi everyone! It’s been a while since my last post so I have loads to catch you up on. Last Thursday I ended up going diving with a couple people from the MONCU, the Monash underwater club. It was my first dive since my certification so I was a bit nervous but it ended up going really great! I was able to rent the gear that I didn’t have for almost nothing, and was given a ride to the dive site. The water was a bit colder than I was expecting but still MUCH warmer than Buffalo. We saw so many incredible things, from multicolored corals to shrimp, weedy sea dragons, and bull rays. We even saw a good size octopus slinking through the sea grass. I also got to practice buoyancy control so that one day soon I’ll be able to start doing boat dives! Overall it was an amazing experience and one that I’m very keen to repeat. After the dive I had to do laundry and pack up all the things I wanted to take with me on my marine science field trip to Queenscliff. I also learned the hard way that

I've finally gotten all set up and figured it was time to give everyone an update! The first plane I was on was pretty big so I thought there would be a lot of people on it. Much to my surprise I ended up having an entire row to myself! I was able to stretch out and sleep across the seats on my way to LAX. I wonder if that had something to do with the timing of the Super Bowl. The flight went by pretty quickly and I took some really cool pictures of all the light patterns different cities made as we flew past them. The food they gave us was surprisingly good. I had chicken in some kind of wine sauce with buttered orzo and veggies. We had a smooth landing and as we were taxiing the pilot announced the winner of the super bowl for the few passengers who had asked. He also gave us a quick run down of the game which was pretty cool of him.  As soon as I got off the first plane I had to run to my next gate because they were already boarding the next flight! I was in the very