Thursday, November 25, 2010

hey all!

So as some of you may or may not know, I've returned to the US! Briefly. I got back early this week and head out again in Jan. Right now I'm in CT, eating thanksgiving yummies and doing whatever it is I do here. I'll be heading down to Maryland and some point in the next few weeks (before xmas) because I miss you all and want to see your smiling faces again. (yay!) Also, I have a new phone number : 860-965-0170, so you should call me and we should hang out. That's the morel of the story.

Cool. Yeah. So, we should hang out sometime soon. yeah.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Sorting out my life

Deciding what you want to do with your life isn't easy. It's even harder to do it for that matter. However, I've un-officially applied to a Masters degree in New Zealand (still waiting for the email that says they got all the papers), I have one more form to fill out for that too, booked all my flights there to look at houses (and the flights home and back for xmas). Now I'm sitting around Hobart wondering what to do with myself. All I now need to do is file my tax return, find an illegal cash-paying job and enjoy life. Oh, and get accepted to Masters. Fingers crossed!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Latest updates

Since it's been two months or so, I figured it was time to update this blog again. Since we finished watching whales in North Stradbroke, I realized that plan A (which was me staying in Tassie and guiding for another season) would not be possible because of assorted visa issues. Naturally, the next best option was to fly to New Zealand and look into doing a Masters degree there. So, Mike and I flew to Christchurch and started a mini road trip that involved seeing the sights and climbing in between rushing back to Dunedin to meet with professors. Mike met up with a guy doing behavioral work on mosquito fish, and I with someone doing phylogeography (read genetics) of southern ocean kelps and seaweeds. We also got to spend 2 days at Castlehill, which was just a pathetic amount of time really. AMAZING place though and I'm super excited to be living just a few hours away!! Enough boulders there to keep several people busy for a lifetime, and you probably would never run into anyone else. Truly a magical place to be.

After that, we flew to Nadi, Fiji to do yet more whale stuff. This was very different to the work on Stradbroke, principally because there were very few whales. Mostly we sat on top of a mountain and stared at the ocean. (but we got free t-shirts!) Everyone there was just awesome though, so I made a whole bunch of Fijian friends and got my butt kicked almost daily in volley ball by the local village kids.

Now, we're back in Queensland, waiting patiently for Fed-ex to come and deliver my academic transcripts. Then I will officially apply to the Masters program at Otago University. :) very exciting stuff. Then tonight it's off to Frog to get our butts kicked by some crack lines. Then to Sydney and catching the boat on the 2nd. Back in Tassie on the 3rd!!

Hopefully I'll be able to update this a bit more frequently in the near future (maybe even with photos)! Stay tuned.

PS anyone have any cash-in-hand jobs for me??

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Lately...

So it's been what, 7 months since I've updated you all on my life? Far to long I imagine. Sorry to keep you all in such suspense. Right at this very moment, I'm sitting in a house on North Stradbroke Island, which is off the coast of Brisbane (still in Australia, for those of you who don't know where I am). I've been here for about a month now, "working" for the University of Queensland on a study involving migrating humpback whales. This island sort of creates a bottleneck for the humpbacks as they migrate north from Antarctica, so about 95% of the population comes within 20 km of the shore, which means we can see them with binoculars. Yay!! The "job" involves sitting for 5 hours a day on a platform, with binoculars, a theodolite and a computer (with three or four other people, of course) and counting and tracking the humpbacks as they swim by. It's pretty thrilling work.

Actually, that's not true. Sometime's it's cold, windy, and the sea state is awful, which means you're miserable and you can't see anything. Other days, like yesterday, it was beautiful calm seas, and we sat on the platform in our bikini tops, drying off after a surf in the two hour break between shifts (it's a hard life)!

At the peak of the season, we were getting about 120/130 whales per day, which made for some pretty busy shifts. Suddenly, within the past two days, the peak has dropped off and we've had a decrease in daily numbers (like 60 or 70 animals). I won't dwell on that, because if you search on facebook for "straddie humpbacks" our page comes up. You should become our fan. All the cool kids are doing it.

When we're not watching whales, we're hanging out and eating, and talking shit. Lots of cool folks here from all over the world, doing really interesting jobs, all sort of bumming around and working odd jobs like this for food and accommodation. Might even be joining Saras over in Fiji after this, doing the same work for food and accommodation (again). It's a pretty sweet way to save money I must say.

SO technically, Mike and I are currently living out of a garage in Noosa, but that will change when we return to the mainland. Probably a bit of climbing at Frog is in order, then perhaps Fiji before heading to south Australia to do more mammal work in the middle of the desert. (Bilbies better watch themselves! I plan on catching many). The guiding work ended in May, so I spent a month (3 may to 3 june) in Flinders doing some bush regeneration work (AKA killing African Box thorn, the most vile plant EVER)! Then drove up to Straddie, collecting road tolls along the way.

It's been good to get to that bigger island Tasmanians are always talking about, but I have to say that I'm missing Tassie a bit (not the cold or the dark, but the people and climbing, naturally). It's looking like I may have to leave the country though, do to some visa issues. Apparently, I was reading forms for a Working Holiday visa (which I don't have) instead of the ones for the Work and holiday visa (which I do have) because they are two very different things. Ergo, I can't get another Work and holiday visa, which means if I say in Oz, I'll stay on a visitor visa, which I can't afford to do if I can't work. Make sense? Please explain it to me then. Of course, this is all that I could deduce from the immigration dept website (which is awful) and I'm still waiting for an email that will answer my questions, because they don't see fit to respond until they've kept you waiting for at least a week.

Anyways, that's all. Photos will follow.... maybe on Friday when I can go to the library.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

What has been happening....

Apologies for my continually awful ability to keep in touch with anyone. I'm sorry, it's not you, it's me. At least I'm trying to rectify this situation, yes?

So for those of you who don't know, or care, I've been living in Australia, specifically in Hobart, Tasmania, for the past 3 months or so. It's been pretty sweet; mostly because it's warm here and cold in the states. What have I been doing with my time, you ask? I've got a pretty sweet job as a walking guide, which constitutes me being gone for 6 days at a time. I also work for some hippies and get paid in vegetables (and fruit). I was picking apricots till the season ended, which was extremely dull, but I got to eat unlimited apricots.

The company I work for is called Cradle Mountain huts, and we walk the famous Overland Track, which extends throughout the length of the Cradle Mountain - Lake St. Clair National Park in Tassie's World Heritage Area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_Track
We're out for 6 days at a time - myself and another guide, with up to 10 guests. There are a few other guiding companies out there, but we are by far the fanciest. All other companies are tent-based operations, meaning that they stay in tents at the National Park huts along the way. We however, have private huts, hidden in the park, only for us to use. Now when I say 'huts', these include gas heaters & stoves, showers with hot water, beds, bedding, sleeping bags and gourmet food. Everything we need is helicoptered in twice a season- once in Sept before our season starts, and again in Feb to stock up on everything we might be out of, and to fly toilet waste, garbage and compost out.

Ergo, during the day I serve as a walking guide, making sure no one gets lost, taking photos of guests in front of mountains and mending blisters. We carry about 25 kilos of gear (just over 50 pounds) ranging from sleeping bags and all of our personal clothing and gear, sat phones, 1st aid kits, food (including 2 kilos of beef for night 2), veggies, maps, EPIRBS, tent, stove and a whole host of other crap. Guests carry their lunch, clothing for the trip and a sleeping sheet for the hut, usually totaling between 7 and 9 kilos (maybe 20 lbs).

Toward the end of the afternoon, one guide breaks off from the group to run ahead and get munchies ready for the guest (tea and coffee, muffins, scones and/or and antipasto platter). Once done, that guide starts dinner (a 3 course affair nightly) till the other guide safely leads the guests to said hut. Then both guides cook while guests shower and relax. In the morning, we do breakfast and a lunch spread, then clean the whole hut top to bottom (including toilets) for the group coming in after us, which is usually later that afternoon.

To say the least, it's a pretty full on job. I'm usually on my feet from 7 till about 10, which is usually when the guests pass out. It can be fun though, especially when you have good guests. If people help with they drying and washing of dishes, you can be done with everything by 9 and have time to relax, read, play scrabble or whatever.

Despite walking the track 6 times already this season, it's still neat to do it again. You get to work with some really cool guides, meet some really awesome guests, and just make fun of all the insanity that goes on. Since our tours are so luxurious, the guests are usually fairly wealthy (it costs $2500 for a 6 day trip) and tend to be interesting people. Most of the guides are really great to work with, and the more you're out there, the more you learn about the track. Important things, like getting to know all the rangers, the guides for the other companies, who owns what helicopters, who got evacuated, when and what happened, where the secret beer stashes are, the best places to see platypus and where to find glow-in-the-dark fungi. (yeah! glow in the dark fungi. It's awesome. Mike and I found some on a side track)

It sucks being gone for 6 days, away from friends, home, your own bed, being lazy, and the ability to say whatever you want to anyone. But you get to hike some amazing country and it gets you excited to check out the rest of Tassie. As a guide, the people who come out are completely relied on you to do everything. Most people come on our tour because they lack the fitness/ability/gear to do the walk on their own. Often this is the first big walk people have ever done, and it's amazing to see people struggle though and succeed. I've had people with knee replacements, one lung and a woman who wasn't even walking 4 months earlier complete the walk. It's wonderful to hear them express their gratitude and genuine appreciation for all that we do. There are the occasional wankers who come out, but I chose to ignore them.

When I'm not out on the track, I work Saturdays at Salamanca Market, selling veggies and fruit for an all organic distributor. It's pretty cool, I earn credit and then get all the veggies and fruit I need for the week. Mike is working for Mountain Designs now, which is motivating me to look for a second job. In the meantime, I climb, explore hobart and eat wallaby burgers. I miss everyone in the great state of Maryland the the U.S. as a whole, but it's good living out of the country for a while.

Hope someone made it to the end of this, sorry for being so long-winded! I'm about to get kicked off this computer by the librarian. Till next time!