Blogspot is working again!
I don't know what it was doing this morning, but it wasn't cooperating. But now it is so everything's good.
I realized this morning that I had forgotten to post the pictures from the Booze Cruise online, so I just put them up now. Tomorrow night is the Guy/Girl Pub Crawl, and the theme for the girls is Desperate Housewives. Any suggestions on what to wear from people who actually have seen the show would be greatly appreciated.
Today I'm spending the rest of the day doing my biology activity about Australia's arid zone....which is one third of the continent. Only Antarctica is drier than Australia is. That's your random Australia lesson of the day. I admit, it's not quite as fascinating as the triops or the Antichinus lesson, but hey, that's what I'm learning today, so you get to suffer with me. Just be happy you don't actually have to give behavioral characteristics for desert frogs, dunnarts, scorpions, and marsupial moles that help them survive in the desert.
I'm pretty excited for next week's trip to Cairns! Everyone here who has been there keeps telling me and Mel that it's the most amazing place ever. I'm going to look into either renting an underwater camera or buying this new "scuba diving disposable camera" that's supposedly like those little cameras you can buy for snorkeling, only it gets good, clear pictures down to 60 feet. Either way, I most definitely want to take pictures of the reef. Anyway, I can spend time thinking about the reef and the rainforest some other day; today I must get back to the desert!
This is just a test
This blog comes up strangely on my computer....it's missing the sidebar with the archives, and it only has one and a half posts on it. Is it just the way it's coming up on my screen, or do all of you see it that way too? Hmm. I hope it fixes itself because I definitely have no clue where to begin with that one!
TRIOPS ARE AUSTRALIAN!!!
No kidding, those squirmy little things Jodi and I called "pets" last year are actually shield shrimp, and they live in the Australian deserts. Their eggs remain dormant for up to 25 years (which is why we could buy them in a package), and once a big rain falls the eggs become active and they hatch and quickly reproduce. The first generation are all female so that they can reproduce as soon as they mature, and then the next generation's eggs, the ones that are fertilized by the males, are the ones that can survive for years by being dormant. They reproduce until the ponds created by the rain dry up, when the eggs just wait until the next big rain to hatch. How cool is that?? And Jodi and I just thought they were some radioactive-looking, gross, dumb little fishy things that just seemed to want to jump out of the bowl and into the toilet (prompting me to save them with a plastic spoon....don't worry, I didn't reuse the spoon afterwards).
Later tonight my corridor is invited to go eat desserts with important people. I don't really know too much about it, except that last year apparently there were pancakes? Yummmmm. Speaking of pancakes, they don't have maple syrup here! There are no maple trees! They have to eat fake syrup. It's very sad. Okay I think I've spent enough time tonight doing absolutely nothing productive, I'm going to go finish my biology activity that's due on Friday. One of the questions is about shield shrimp. I'll bet not many kids can say they had some as pets!
3 days left til Spring Break!!!!
I am most definitely counting down the days. Tonight I went with Jen over to International House (the college/dorm next door) and we watched a movie with Harrison and Chathu. We watched Aladdin!! Yay for Disney movies!
Tonight's dinner was really good. It was chicken in this garlic sauce, with the usual sides of corn, broccoli, and potatoes. A Hall meal here just isn't complete without the undercooked, cold broccoli that no one really eats. I'm still working on getting a picture of those funny Hall gowns.
I should probably just finish my biology activity tonight and get it over with, but it's 11PM now and I'm feeling kind of sleepy. I can't remember if this post was supposed to have a point. We learned about Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia today in my Social Work class. It was very interesting, but most of it was stuff I've heard before in other classes. I did like how Australia has day programs for patients with Alzheimer's who don't speak English, to keep their minds engaged in different tasks that are relevant to their culture and upbringing. I don't think the US has those. My tutor (in the tutorial that's after the lecture) mentioned that it's been shown that doing crosswords, gardening, socializing, eating dark chocolate, and drinking one glass of red wine a day helps decrease memory loss. Sounds like a nice day to me!
I have no biology tutorial tomorrow morning at 9AM!!! I'm so excited that I get to sleep in. I just realized that, yet again, I am completely stupid and have forgotten to order a lunch for tomorrow. I do this every single week. You'd think that by Week 8 I'd have learned that on Monday nights at dinner I need to order a lunch for Tuesday because I have class and can't come back to Whitley to eat lunch. I'm really annoyed now. Well no lunch for me tomorrow then, I hope dinner's good! Hmmm, I'll just eat a really big breakfast. Yummmm breakfast.
