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