Working hard, playing hard.

When I got back from PNG, I had to take a few days to recover from the trip and catch up on schoolwork. Then, Saturday September 5th I had a beast of an all-day field trip: a bus ride all the way up to Cairns and back and visits to three separate aquaculture farms. I’m pretty sure I only survived because my closest buds, Kelsi and Marissa, are taking Aquaculture with me.
We had to get upat 5:30 to make the 7am departure from campus. After a two hour drive up the coast, we arrived in the small town of Cardwell to see Seafarm where prawn are farmed in big earthen ponds, as you can see below.

After lunch, we drove for at least two more hours up to Northern Fisheries Centre, a facility that is more research-oriented. Here’s Kelsi standing next to a container of plankton dutifully taking notes.

Next stop: Cairns Marine, where fish are sold for display in aquaria. The short introduction included an explanation on their scrupulous adherence to environmental protection laws when collecting organisms. Then we got to walk around to look at the cool fish in the tanks – so this was definitely the most fun of the three. Below you can see a lionfish and Kelsi and Marissa with a grouper.


We had dinner in Cairns before making the long drive to Townsville, arriving at 11pm. Kelsi, Marissa, and I plan to spend “spring break” in Cairns in September and are looking forward to not having to take notes.

Last week I turned in a few big assignments so I made it a fun weekend (better than the previous one for sure). Friday I had an hour of class and then I spent the rest of the day on campus with Marissa to relax. We spent some time at the pool, enjoying the cool water and basking in the warm sun.

That evening Marissa and I got ready to head over to Bludgers, the Friday night event at Uni Club. The water polo team was there barbecuing sausages to sell as a fundraiser. Marissa isn’t on the team, but she won everyone over by helping to grill sausages and sell raffle tickets.


Saturday afternoon I managed to get some work done (that’s a big deal for me). Saturday night was a big night in town. The club we were at opened the dancefloor with a fire twirler, which was exciting. Also exciting was that there was an enormous drug bust and it was quite a scene. We saw probably twenty people arrested over the course of the night.


Sunday, Marissa, Kelsi and I slept in, made pancake breakfast, and did some homework. I went to water polo practice, then to a barbecue with some water polo teammates.
Today, I returned to the weekday routine - I attended class, turned in a paper, scrimmaged some water polo… Hope to have something good to report again next week.