From Beaches to Operas

Well, it's been a few days since my last update.  I'm coming on the end of my trip now.  Let's see, on Wednesday, I went on a beach tour from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach.  The walk itself took probably around three hours or so, and was right on the coastline, so we had great views of the water the entire time.  Once we got to Bondi, we had a late lunch at the Blue Burrito Company, which had some extremely decent burritos.

Thursday, I ventured to Darling Harbor, and went to the Sydney Aquarium.  The aquarium had a ton of sealife, a lot of which I had already seen, like the reef sharks, and many of the reef fish.  However, I got to see a dugong along with a leafy sea dragon.  Dugongs are in the manatee family, and are extremely rare, since they are an endangered species due to human impact.  There are only five dugongs currently in captivity, and the Sydney Aquarium has two.  After the aquarium, I got on a sightseeing tour bus, and saw most of Sydney during the afternoon.

Friday, I did a city walk through my hostel.  We walked around in a large circle, and saw Darling Harbor, Queen Victoria Building, Circular Quay (including the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House), the Royal Botanical Gardens (with their fruit bats), and the Sydney Hospital.  The tour took about five hours, and afterwards I definitely felt a lot more comfortable walking around on my own afterwards.  I met a ton of great people from my hostel, including a group of Americans!

Today, I toured the Opera House, which was absolutely amazing!  I got to see the Playhouse, the Studio, the Concert Hall, and the Utzon Room.  I got some pictures of the inside (none that we weren't allowed to take!), and learned a ton.  If I had time left, I would definitely go see a production there.  After the Opera House, I walked around the Rocks where a weekend market was set up.  It was definitely hard to keep my wallet safe in my purse!

Well, I'm off. Tomorrow will probably be Olympic Park.  I'll post pictures when I finally upload them from my camera.

G'day!

KK

Only one week left.  The last two days were a ton of fun.  Yesterday, I went on a wildlife tour of the Southern Highlands.  We saw lots of cool animals, including platypus, koalas, wombats, kangaroos, emus, wallabies, and we heard a ton of lyrebirds.  We also saw some bush-tailed possums after the sun had set.  We had dinner at the oldest continuously licensed pub in Australia, which was opened in 1836.

Today, it was more wildlife, but at the Taronga Zoo.  The zoo is on an island right outside of Circular Quay, so you need to get on a ferry to get there.  The zoo itself is probably about the same size as San Diego Zoo, and has a ton of animals that you don't see in American zoos.  There was a platypus, Tasmanian devils, snow leopards, leopard seals, a fishing cat (kind of like an ocelot), tons of Australian wildlife including the most poisonous snake in the world which looks a lot like a common garden snake from America, as well as usual zoo animals.  The zoo took about six or seven hours to see pretty much everything, and now I'm just lounging around for a little while.

Tomorrow I'm planning on going to Bondi Beach and get some sun if it's warm enough as well as hit the shops in the area.

KK

Platypus...kinda looks more like a log though.

Koala

Wombat

Leopard seal

Snow leopard

not very long, but if you listen closely, you can hear lyrebirds.

G'day from Sydney!

This was my first full day here in Sydney, and I started off my grand tour of the city with a day tour into the Blue Mountains.  This is actually a misnomer, because the Blue Mountains are not blue and they are not mountains either.  The blue hazy color comes from light hitting eucalyptus vapor, and reflecting only the blue wavelength.  And they are actually a sandstone plateau that has been eroded into mountain-like shapes by rivers.  All in all, it was absolutely fantastic!  The guide was extremely knowledgeable, and I met a ton of great people, including a family from Chicago.  The father looked and sounded a lot like my Uncle Dale, and now I'm wondering if he has any relatives from Chicago that would be travelling around Australia…

We also drove around Sydney Olympic Park, and saw many of the stadiums that were used for the 2000 Summer Olympics, including the Gymnastics Arena, the Tennis Center, the Aquatics Center, and the Baseball Stadium (which is now being used for agriculture showings).  Our guide didn't say anything about the Softball Stadium, however I am planning on finding out if it is in the park or if it is elsewhere, and see if I can find a way to go see it.

After the tour, we were put on a river cruise that would take us to Circular Quay, where the Sydney Bridge and Sydney Opera House are located.  This was around 6:30, so we saw these structures at night, which was absolutely breathtaking.  Once we got off, I ate dinner at a small Italian café that served an extremely decent gnocchi and panna cotta.  I then took the train back to my hostel, where I am preparing for tomorrow's trek into the highlands.

Cheers, mates!

KK

And here are those pictures I promised:

Wombat!

Feeding the kangaroos

Hanging around with the koalas

In the Blue Mountains

Three Sisters

And the Real Adventure Begins

Wow, the last few days have been extremely busy!  We finished up the last of our course on Wednesday with our group presentations, and began to pack up for the trip back to Perth.  Unfortunately, our travel karma hit again, and the bus that was coming to pick us up broke down an hour away from Coral Bay.  Because of that, we were stuck in Coral Bay for over eight hours longer than we were supposed to be while they sent another bus up from Perth to come get us.  So we didn't leave until somewhere around two in the morning.  Then, if that wasn't enough, the bus driver forgot to get gas at the road house we stopped at, and we ran out of gas an hour away from Murdoch!  Needless to say, upon arriving back at our dorms, none of us were inclined to go out for the rest of the night.

Friday, however, brought a whole new experience.  We headed over to Caversham Wildlife Park to see Australia's iconic animals up close.  We got to pet and feed close to a hundred kangaroos, pet a wombat, see dingos and emus, and pet koalas!  We saw this adorable koala joey that popped out of its mother's pouch while we were in the nursery.  By far the cutest thing I've ever seen!  After the wildlife park, we headed into the Freemantle Markets to do some last minute souvenir shopping before heading into Perth to do the same along with grabbing dinner at our favorite oriental restaurant.  From there, it was back to the dorms to do laundry, shower, and pack everything up for our early morning flight.

Our flight left at 5:45 am, so we had to reserve taxis for 2:45 am, which meant that none of us got any sleep.  It took about twenty minutes to get to the airport, and thankfully our flight took off on time.  Six hours later or so, I am in Sydney at my hostel, looking out at the city.  I think the plan for today is going to be getting changed into something that doesn't resemble pajamas, and heading out to get my bearings, and hopefully find food.  The camera is dead at the moment, so I'll have to post pictures on my next update.

Until next time!

KK

One fish, two fish

Well, it's been awhile since I posted last.

The last few days have been full of data collection.  My second project was fish identification.  We ran five transects at each site, and had to identify and tally every fish we saw.  Thankfully, one of my group members is an expert at identifying fish, so we had no trouble there.  Honestly, the worst part of the data collection was at Five Fingers Reef, where the current was extremely strong.  The transects were run with the current, so we would drift along, counting fish, but then we had to swim back up against the current to get to our next transect.  Needless to say, that was probably the greatest workout I've gotten since I got to Australia.

Today, we are finishing our reports, and taking our exam, which is a one hour essay.  We've been told that it will be about global climate change, so it shouldn't be too hard.  After that, all we have left is to give our presentations tomorrow, and then we head back to civilization.  It's been great camping out every night, but I'm going to be happy to have access to fresh water.

Cheers!

KK

A Whale of a Tale

G'day mates!

It's been awhile since I've updated, but we've been swamped with working on our plankton and manta project.  We have finished collecting the data, including looking at the plankton through a microscope and identifying them up to their order.  If asked, I can now identify copepods, decapod larvae, amphipods, and mysids.  Now all that's left is writing up the report and giving the presentation, which is also pretty much done.  Of course, our project did not come without some complications.  Ironically, all this happened at the site where we saw the manta rays the other day.  It was day two of our project, and we went out to take quadrat pictures for our habitat types, and we threw the one quadrat down and dove to take a picture, but when we went to grab the quadrat, it disappeared under the sand!  The swell was so bad, that the waves completely covered the quadrat with sand, and we couldn't find it, because it was so murky.  From then, we tied a rope with a buoy onto the new quadrat so we wouldn't lose that one, only to have water leak into the waterproof case and damage the camera!  Obviously, Bateman's Bay did not want us to do any habitat analysis, so we gave up and headed to one of our other sites.

However, because we've done all of this work for the last couple of days, we got to go on a wildlife cruise!  We got on the cruise at around 8:30 in the morning, and spent all day out on the boat, looking for Ningaloo Reef's iconic wildlife.  We saw black-tipped reef sharks, sea turtles, dolphins, manta rays, tiger sharks, and HUMPBACK WHALES!!  The dolphins were riding the wake of our boat, so we got a ton of really close pictures of them.  The manta rays were barrel rolling to feed, which was great to see again.  We saw four humpbacks total:  two were juveniles that were just beyond the reef, and the other two were a mother and calf that was less than a week old resting in the bay.  Today was, by far, the highlight of the trip.

Well, that's all for now.  We have another free day tomorrow before starting our second project.  Here are some pictures from our cruise along with one of our manta pictures for our project.

 Here's the dolphin that was riding our wake.

 Humpback tail! One of the two juveniles we saw outside the reef.

 Tiger shark!!!

Here is the manta ray from our project.

KK

Mantas and Plagues

Day one of our projects have finished!  I am working on plankton populations in different habitats in the reef lagoons.  We were on the boat from ten in the morning til four thirty in the afternoon, and we were sampling plankton by dragging nets behind the boat for ten minutes.  There were manta rays barrel rolling at one of our sites, which is how mantas gather plankton together in order to eat them.  So after our last run, we grabbed our fins and snorkel, and jumped into the water to swim with them!  The water was more turbid than some of the other sites, but we found the manta ray barrel rolling three feet from us!  It was by far the highlight of this trip thus far.

We also witnessed from the boat a large plague of locusts coming down from the point towards our camp.  There were so many locusts that they covered the whole point and made the white sand dunes brown!  They have been a bit annoying though, especially when you're trying to shower while keeping track of the seven locusts that are hanging out in the bathroom stall, but they don't bite, so there are no worries there.  Hopefully, they'll keep moving at the same speed they were earlier, and pass through Coral Bay quickly.

Tomorrow, we'll be finishing our last transect as well as collecting data on the habitats we are sampling in, and then afterwards start counting the different species of plankton and abundance at each site.  I don't have any pictures up from underwater, but here's a video of manta rays barrel rolling, so you have some idea of what we saw today.

KK

Just Keep Swimming

Hello!  We've spent the last two days out here in Coral Bay, and I don't think I'm leaving.  EVER.  We watched the sunrise from the bus on our way over yesterday, and it was gorgeous!  We got to Coral Bay around nine in the morning, and set our stuff in our tents.  We have these huge, two room canvas tents, and each one has cots and foam mattresses in them.  I am rooming with two of the Americans in our group: Emily and Rebecca.  After putting our stuff down, we grabbed a quick breakfast and changed into our suits.  It's so crazy to know that it is winter here, but it gets to around 80 degrees every day, so we are walking around in bikinis and tank tops all day.  We snorkeled that day for about an hour, and saw a ton of different corals and fish, including a huge school of parrotfish.  We also saw anemonefish, which are what clownfish are, and spangled emperors.

That night, we had a barbeque, and ate chicken, fish, and salad.  We also played a couple of games of Jenga and Uno, which took forever, because every time someone called Uno, they found a way to make them draw at least four cards on their next turn, so no one won the game after an hour.  The lights in the camp went out at ten so that we wouldn't disturb the town.  Looking up, I saw more stars than I've ever seen!  One of the Australians pointed out the Southern Cross to me, which was amazing to see.  We can also see the Milky Way!

This morning, we cooked our own breakfast on the grill, and made toast, bacon, and eggs with tea and honey.  After breakfast, we changed back into our bikinis, grabbed our snorkel gear, and headed back to the beach.  We took a glass bottom tour boat out onto the reef and jumped off to snorkel for about forty minutes.  Out there, we saw more fish, along with a four foot reef shark and a turtle!  The turtle swam up next to us!  From there, a couple of us snorkeled around the shoreline looking for stingrays, and then we headed back to camp to hang out.

This afternoon, we were assigned to our field work groups for the next three days.  I will be looking at plankton populations on the reef and in the seagrass.  We will be using this data to look at the feeding habits of manta rays, and why they feed in certain areas and not others.  So, for the next couple of days, I will be out on a boat collecting plankton and swimming with mantas!

Well, I must be going now, because dinner is in an hour, and I would like to shower beforehand.  Here are some pictures from the last couple of days.

KK

Me swimming with the turtles

Spider lunges out of the water

On the Road Again

Well, we are off!  I am currently on the bus headed for Coral Bay, and I am so excited!  The last couple of days have been extremely interesting, and like always, full of firsts.  Yesterday, we headed into Perth City in order to rent our wetsuits and snorkel gear for the trip, but in order to do that, we had to drive for twenty minutes.  If you haven't been in Australia or England, then you don't understand how strange it is to get into the car, and look where you are used to seeing the steering wheel, and seeing one of your classmates instead of the driver.  We were definitely freaking out a little on our way over.  After we got our gear, we were dropped off at Kings Park in the city, which is a huge botanical garden and memorial.  We walked at least half of the park, which is three miles end to end, and saw a ton of strange plants and animals including parrots and the boab tree.

After the park, we headed into downtown Perth, and walked around the main mall area.  We found a Target in the mall area, and when we walked in, we found ourselves in a department store that could rival a Macy's back home.  It was huge, and you would never guess that this was the same store that you go grocery shopping in at college!  After that, we found a great Asian restaurant, and had the best udon stir fry ever!  From there, we headed back to the uni by taking the train.  We ended our adventure by getting a free bus ride back home, since the bus driver was off duty, but needed to make a last stop at the university.

Today was the last day of lecture, which was spent going over fish ecology and very basic statistics.  After lecture, we were given the rest of the day off, however we weren't allowed back into our dorms, because the program didn't want to pay for that day.  Instead, we headed back out to the grocery store in order to stock up on snacks for the fifteen hour drive, and then passed the last hour or so watching NCIS in the student lounge.

We are currently about two hours out of Perth, and have stopped at a road house, which is what gas stations are called out here.  Hopefully, I'll pass out in the next couple of hours, and the long hours will go by quickly.  It is eight thirty at night here, so five thirty in the morning back in Arizona, but since there is no Internet out here in the middle of nowhere, I might not get to post this until tomorrow morning when we arrive at Coral Bay.

KK

Here is a video of the crows here in Australia.

A Night Out

Good morning!

Yesterday was full of fun, and I was just too tired last night to write about it.  We're coming down to the last of our lectures, and had our last lab class yesterday.  Actually, lecture was a lot shorter yesterday than it had been the last couple of days, and we mainly went over the different bays that make up the Ningaloo Reef in West Australia.  This included going over which animals we were going to see up in Coral Bay, which made all of us wish we were already there.  We are going to see everything from reef sharks to green turtles to dolphins to humpback whales to manta rays, not to mention all the fish, coral, and invertebrates that will be on the reef.

Lunch was two hours long, because of how early lecture got out, so we spent part of it in the library cafe eating our lunches and drinking hot chocolate, and then the last hour or so, we explored Bush Court, which is the main part of campus.  Lab was spent learning how to use Coral Point Count, which analyzes pictures of transects, and works up all of the analytic and statistical data for you.

After a dinner of leftover spaghetti from a couple of nights ago, we got dressed up and headed back into Freemantle, but this time to see the club scene.  Wednesdays were apparently the big night for Newport, so we headed out at 8:30, and arrived at nine.  There was no line to get in, and after having our passports scanned and our hands stamped, we were let in.  The club was split into three sections: a bar in the front, a side room with chairs and billiards tables, and then the dance floor in the back.  There was a DJ mixing the tunes, so we set down our rain jackets and headed out on the floor.  The music they played was very techno like, and often mixed in current hit songs.  A few of us left around 10:30, however due to the greatness of mass transit at night, the bus we needed to get on didn't arrive until eleven.  All in all, yesterday was a very calm day, and hopefully today will be much the same...but warmer and drier :)

KK

Good Times

Waiting for the professor...

Well, day two of classes has finished, and I must say that I feel a lot more confident now than I did this time yesterday.  The first day was supposed to be a quick overview of marine science, and the professor, who is a pretty chill guy, launched right into jet streams and currents, and I had absolutely no idea what any of this was.  Okay, that's not totally true...I do remember a couple of things from intro bio and from a Planet Earth video I watched with my sister on the waters of the tropics, but for the most part, it was completely opposite of my usual animal-based biology classes.  Today, however, we had a three hour lecture on coral reefs, including all the different types, how they form, where they will form and why, and so on; all of which made more sense than the day before.  Lab today was spent first with a guest lecturer who is an expert on tropical marine algae and seagrasses.  He gave us an overview in classifying and identifying algae and seagrasses when we go out into the field.  After that, we did some hands on classification for algae and seagrasses followed by learning to classify corals.  All in all, after five and a half hours of learning, us American students decided we needed to wind down, which we did by going back into Freemantle to walk around.

Now, we have our meager food at our dorms, which a good portion of us cooked up as a "starter" so that we wouldn't spend as much on food going out.  We were told that there was a great Thai and Japanese place affectionately called "Upchucks" by the residents that served food for under 10 AUD, which is extremely cheap out here, and we went out with the intention to find this place and try it out, only to find that they are only open Wednesday through Sunday, meaning that we weren't about to have any luck on a Tuesday evening.  Thankfully, we saw a little gelato shop that for some reason also sold pizza, and we could get the all-day special of a slice of any pizza with any gelato (cone or cup) for 7.90 AUD.  Talk about a great deal!  I had the American pizza, which had tomato sauce, mozzarella, green peppers, and salami along with a cone of Freo's Delight gelato, which tasted like a mix between having a coffee taste with caramel and chocolate chips.  After that, we headed back to Bather's Beach to see it at night, and to show one of our late arrivals the Indian Ocean.  In the end, we tried and epically failed to get a picture of eight of us doing cartwheels simultaneously, so it looks like everyone is bending over at odd angles.

I'm off to bed now...even though all of you people are just getting up!
KK

Aussie Life

Hey again!

I know this is the third post of the day, but since we just got internet access seriously five minutes ago, I'm having to catch up on keeping this blog journal thing up to date. :)

Today started the first day of classes!  Yay for learning!  The professor lectured for about two hours about some basic background knowledge of marine ecology and it's impacts on Western Australia.  After that, we took an hour break for lunch at the uni's food court (uni is what most people here call the university).  There were a variety of foods available, everything from soups and sandwiches to wok and kababs.  Kababs are Turkish, and are honestly a lot like gyros.  They wrap meat and whatever salad vegetables you want into a pita wrap and serve it with a variety of sauces like bbq, sweet chili, sour cream, and a bunch of others.  Although at the price of food around here, I'm not sure I'll be eating it again, unless I want to be broke at the end.  We ate lunch with the Australian students in our class as well as with the professor, and he made plans for us all to hang out at the university's tavern on Friday, where he claimed that the first round would be on him.

After lunch, we headed into lab to do a refresher on quadrants and transects.  This is pretty much review for when we head up into Coral Bay, since we will be doing two three day projects with field work up there.  The lab exercise lasted about an hour and a half, with us mostly talking with the other students we hadn't met yet, and afterwards we were free to do whatever we wanted to.  This meant that we had plenty of time to head up to the nearby grocery store so that we could stock up on the food we need for the next three days.  Thus I have become acquainted with how typical college students eat:  bread, peanut butter, and ramen...all for under $10.  Although, we did have to splurge a bit when one of the students that has been here a semester told us that Tim Tams were extremely popular cookies in Australia and it would be worth spending money on them.  Here the university has a contract with the grocery store, and students are allowed to take the carts back up with them to the campus as long as they are put in those cart holders for employees to come and pick back up.  Imagine it: ten students from the United States with all their food and drinks, wheeling shopping carts back to the college while trying not to get run over by the cars, since the whole pedestrian has right away thing isn't as respected here as it is in the States.  Not to mention they're all going the other way!

Well, once again, I am definitely crashing before I'm used to, which is probably a good thing tonight, since class starts at nine tomorrow morning.

KK

First Time for Everything

G'day!  I have officially ended my first day in Australia, and I must say that it was absolutely amazing!  We headed into Freemantle, which is about fifteen miles from the university, and spent the day hanging around.  We toured the Freemantle Prison, which was the first prison built in West Australia, and was actually built by the convicts that were being housed there, because the state needed an economic boost.  The tour guide was extremely funny, and actually had many of us help demonstrate prison life.  I got to be the inmate that was being whipped!

After that, we walked through the market, which had a variety of shops and goods out to buy.  There were all kinds of fruits and vegetables, including some I'd never seen before, like the paw paw, along with more recognizable foods like avocados, plums, and pineapples.  On the far side of the market, there was a man that was grilling kabobs of different meats that you could buy for $10.  Not just any meat, mind you, but kangaroo, crocodile, and emu.  And so that is how a bunch of us ended up eating emu for the first time.

From there, we headed down to Bather's Beach, because what trip is complete without going to the beach?  Now, we are on the west coast of Australia, which puts us at the Indian Ocean, and even though it is winter here, we all took off our shoes, hiked up our jeans, and jumped in the water.  The water wasn't as cold as we were expecting, especially when you're used to the temperatures of the Pacific Ocean.  From there, we headed to a microbrewery and restaurant called Little Creatures.  From what our guide around the area told us, Little Creatures is well known across Australia for their beer, and people come all the way from Sydney to go there.

Tomorrow starts classes from eleven to four, which will be extremely interesting, because now starts the delicate balance between seeing the sights and getting A's.

Well, I'm off to bed, even though it's only nine at night here.  I feel that I'm adjusted to the time difference, but I'm still tired. J

At Bather's Beach at sunset...first time in the Indian Ocean!

The Freemantle Market, where there was everything from emu to bananas and roo ribs dog treats.

KK

Group Grope

Hello everyone!

After close to 20 hours in flight time plus innumerable hours waiting at airports, I am finally in Australia!  Actually, we were supposed to get into Perth at around one in the afternoon, but since our flight from LAX to Sydney was delayed from 11:50 at night until 3:30 in the morning due to New York's weather, we missed our original flight across Australia and had to be rerouted through Canberra on a much later flight.  Therefore we got into Perth seven hours later than we were supposed to, and needless to say missed the first day of orientation.  The good thing about all of this was that the nine of us that were on the plane together got really close, especially after the initial five or more hours we spent in the warehouse-like terminal our flight was supposed to board at.

It's almost midnight here in Perth, which is fifteen hours ahead of Phoenix, and I must say that I am so sick and tired of planes, that I don't want to get on another one for the rest of my life (wishful thinking, of course).  Since we really haven't seen much of Australia due to us flying all day, I can't really tell you much about what it's like just yet.  Although, all the Australians have been super nice to us, and they actually do say "G'day"!  And some of the guys were rather attractive. ;)  Another great thing that I've noticed is that since it is winter in Australia, it was in the fifties when we landed and left the airport.  Talk about a temperature difference compared to Phoenix, where the high was supposed to have broken triple digits!

Anyway, I'm going to get into bed before I pass out at my computer, and hopefully figure out the whole internet connection thing in the morning, since the only one I could find wanted me to pay five dollars an hour or some crap like that.

KK

P.S. This was actually written two days ago, since we were just given free access to the internet today

Two days, 48 hours, 2,880 minutes

Hello all!

We are down to the end of the wait: 2 more days left until I leave for Australia!  Of course, that also means only two more days (less if you count the time I'll have to be at the airport before departure) to buy, organize, and pack everything that I'll need for my month abroad.  The good thing is that there are laundry facilities where I'll be staying, so I'm not bringing a month's worth of clothes along.  The bad, of course, is trying to decide which jeans, shorts, shirts, etc. that I want to wear over and over for a month.  And then there is the problem of space. You get everything ready, and try to put it all in the suitcase only to find that if you want to stay under the weight limitation, you have to take everything out and decide out of that what does not have to go.

Thankfully, all of that is, for the most part, done, which lets me have some time for the fun and more relaxing parts of preparing to go abroad.  And of course, this includes watching the NCAA Division 1 Softball Championship.  Go Sun Devils!  It always feels so surreal to turn on the television and see at least seven girls on the team that I used to play with or against back in high school and club.

Well, that's all for now.  I'm sure I have more to say, but the championship game for ASU and Florida is on, and is distracting me from writing anything else.  Oh, the pictures are from Coral Bay in West Australia, where I'll be spending about two weeks doing field work for the class I'm taking over there.

Ttfn!

Countdown: T-minus 24 days

Hello all, or should I say g'day!

Since I will be studying abroad in Australia for a month this summer, I have decided to attempt to keep a travel journal of my adventures.  This will also allow me to keep in touch with everyone a little bit easier while I am abroad and have no phone service (the horror!:) ).

Hopefully my grammar shall remain in good shape (cough cough: NK!), but I can't make any promises since I am just a biology major, so proper grammar is not always needed (especially after a year of taking a class where half the answers were structures and arrows *shudder*).

Anyways, I will attempt to also post pictures and videos (if for some reason you are not on Facebook to see them), and will also provide some great links.

KK :D