Anchorage, AK

It was a long day of traveling (12+ hours), but I’m finally here. Alaska is beautiful! It’s the perfect temperature all the time. We met a fantastic waitress at our first restaurant, which also has incredible pizza!

First thing was getting all the equipment and all our stuff to where we’re staying. It’s a cabin feel in the front and a garage in the back. It’s the Alaskan mullet, in building form. Our fridge is stocked. And is now overflowing with two enormous boxes of pizza. Everyone’s eyes were bigger than their stomachs from traveling all day. But now we have leftovers!

This is going to be quite a journey, learning experience, and a ton of fun. I don’t feel out of my comfort zone yet, but I know that I will soon. That’s half the reason I wanted to do this trip. Similar to Australia I’ll be in situations I’ve never been in before and are completely new to me, but that’s what will make it the most fun.

Our crew for filming, climbing, and living together is just awesome and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to dive into this new experience with. As far as I know this is all new to all of us, save for a few activities. But those will have to wait.

Tomorrow will be a nice recovery day for us, but we’re jumping right in on safety when climbing, hiking, moving as a team, and many other situations too. Already feeling less overwhelmed than I did getting off the plane. I had been telecommuting into class in DC while I was in Wisconsin and felt a little separated from the group, but not anymore! We're gonna have a blast!

Time to finally get to bed. It’s 2:30 am in Wisconsin and 11:30 pm here in Anchorage. Funny thing is: here it’s still light out. The sun is almost fully set, but with a range of mountains near us it couldn’t get any better!

Arrivederci!

Final Leg

Well I'm back in America. It was a long day of traveling and done with about four hours of sleep for two nights. This whole experience was the trip of a lifetime and probably one of the best, if not the best experience of my life so far. Finished the program with a good grade, great friendships, and some very fond memories.

To everyone in the group, I just wanted to use this to thank you for everything throughout the summer. All the quotes and great memories. I am entirely serious when I say that I'm going to visit you all. I'm going to at least try and get to everyone in your town and hope that you will come to Madison at some point because we'll have a great time anywhere we go.

I can't wait to see where we all go in our lives because I know that we'll all do great things. It was great spending the past month with all of you and I hope you have fun in the second session. Don't let the new group take our place! Though I know it'll be tough to replace us :P

Anyways, the last couple days were devoted to school work and cleaning. We did get to go to Milla Milla Falls, possibly my favorite spot on the entire trip. Tied with Mossman Gorge at the very least. Really really cold water, but once you were in it felt great! We even got to swim underneath the waterfall. It'll be one of my most cherished memories from the whole trip, but the amount of memories I have from this trip is almost innumerable. It was an incredible experience and I wish I could do it again!

The trip home was very sad. It could have been a combination of being over tired and leaving the group and center, but there were lots of tears as we said goodbye to everyone. Bittersweet tears is the best way to describe it. My favorite part about this whole time was how close we all got as friends. It really does feel like a family and many friendships that no matter how long we have between seeing each other will feel like no time has passed. With so many great friends all over the US now, I can't wait to see you all again. Thanks for the memories! See you all real soon to make more.

Home Stretch

This has been a very busy few days. So much crammed into not a ton of time and it is taking it's toll on a large part of the group. People are getting sick, some are tired all the time, and some are hungry all the time. We're still getting along really well, but some are needing more alone time since we're constantly in contact with each other. 

While some things like that are happening, this trip just keeps getting better and better. Friday the 29th, half the group went to and off-site area to help plant trees and the other group (mine) found seeds on our access road and planted them and took a tour of the restoration sites around the center. It was very interesting and fun at the same time. Then it was time for lunch, but not at the center! We drove to Lake Barrine, another crater lake, and ate there and got to walk around. We saw a carpet python chilling but the lake in the grass. He was just trying to get some sun. Unfortunately the internet is not doing so well here so pictures aren't readily available for me right now.

Saturday was a really fun day! We got to celebrate TREAT's 30th anniversary. TREAT is Trees for the Evelyn and Atherton Tablelands and is a program where they plant seedlings around the tablelands area and keep an eye on them as they grow older. It has been working really well in a lot of the areas and is supported by many of the local community. I thought it was great that the community supported this program and continue to today. From TREAT we went back to Lake Eachem and hung out there for an hour and then went back to the center. Here we relaxed (finally!) even though we all should have been working on our homework.

To cap off the day, some of us made chocolate chip cookies and played volleyball before dinner and then went to the pub! This was a night a lot of the group was looking forward to just so we could talk to some locals and make new friends. We had to take a bus to and from the pub because it was in a different town, but it was definitely worth it while we were there. We met a lot of fun locals who taught us better ways to say words, like g'day, and were just all around great people. When we got back to the center, we had to walk down the access road. This shouldn't really be called a road at all. It's more of a gravel path up and down hills with potholes all over the place. A few of us had planned to do a 'naked rainforest run' because this was written in one of our cabins and we followed through. It was an obscene amount of fun to run through the rainforest like that: completely free.

Sunday was our relax day and it was well spent. I woke up and made hash browns for some of the group and pretty much continually ate all day, wrote a paper due that night, played volleyball, and worked on getting a tan. "Hole in the ozone...cook me." This quote has held true so far and will continue to carry over unless I get too burned one day.

Monday was our trip up to the Daintree. One of our interns told us that it would be really hot and humid while we were up there, but we lucked out and had great weather! It was dry and sunny for most of the time we spent there. We got there late at night and just ate dinner and went to bed. But the place we stayed at was an awesome hostel, with different cabins and buildings separated by gravel paths through the rainforest. 

Tuesday was another full day of driving and walking around the Daintree. We went to a discovery center place with an arial walkway and a tall tower so we could see the canopy of the rainforest we were walking through. It was very interesting to actually be up in the tops of the trees for once. From there we went to a fan palm forest and then onto a homemade ice cream shop. This wasn't any homemade ice cream this was bush tucker ice cream! This means it is made with fruit and/or nuts from the bush (rainforest) and the four flavors I had were awesome! I don't remember what they all were, but I think they were blue berry, jack fruit, walnut, and sour sop. They were delicious!

Then we went to a beach for our last field lecture from our professor Justus, who's from Kenya. It was a short lecture and then we had time on the beach at the Cape of Tribulations. It was beautiful there despite the overcast weather we had for the first time in the Daintree. Some of us started climbing some rocks around the bend, but stopped because it might have been a sacred Aboriginal initiation site, where women weren't allowed.

Then we had a night to ourselves, but a group of us went to the nearby pub in a hotel and hung out there for awhile. Again, we all were greeted with open arms by the patrons of the pub and became friends with all of them. We met the owner and his family and even his dog, who while we were there ripped the head of a rat off outside the hotel. The owner told us that the dog was a people dog and anything else on four legs or that flew it would attack. It seemed to be true because he was a very friendly dog.

Wednesday was a little less busy, just a lot of driving because it was time to go back to the center. The first thing we did this day was take a crocodile cruise down the Daintree River. We saw four adult crocs and many little babies. The alpha male of the area nearly attacked a younger male that was sun bathing on the bank of the river, but when he caught a glimpse of Scarface the young male took off down the river. We were hoping to see a crocodile fight, but the young one was far too young to even think about challenging Scarface.

Our last stop on the way back to the center was probably the coolest in my opinion. It's a place called Mossman Gorge and is an incredible river in the middle of the rainforest. We got to swim in the cold waters here and it was just perfect. Our student affairs manager's favorite place in all of Australia and one of the interns second favorite places. For me I think it has to rank up there too. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to swim in water that makes your hair feel dry even after you've been underneath. Just spectacular.

Back at the center we got to celebrate the fourth of July with some sparklers and an American flag cake, which was delicious!

Thursday and Friday were the last days of our class when everyone was scrambling to finish the papers and study for our exam on Saturday. This has been the trip of a lifetime and I've made some amazing friendships that I plan to keep forever! One thing I'll never forget was what the owner of the pub in the Daintree told us: "When you get a group together that's this good of friends, you can't lose touch." I really like that because we've known each other for now a month and the fact that he can see what good friends we are after just that amount of time is awesome!

Only two days left of this amazing trip with some lifelong friendships made and built upon. I don't want it to end and I can't believe it's almost over, but I guess it's about time for me to go back to America so I can visit everyone at their schools during the next year! It's going to be fun with everyone visiting each other around the country and just making more unforgettable memories! This is a great group of people and I'm so happy I got to spend the past month with all of them.

SFS: Day 1

Field Studies Day 1: Waking up at five in the morning isn’t bad when you’re excited for the day to come even if it means more flights and more traveling.

I love traveling as you know, but this is different. I was incredibly excited to meet my studying group. I got to the Brisbane airport just a little early for my flight at 9:10 in the morning. I was at the gate by 6:15, nearly three hours before my flight and that was after I went through customs and checked in my luggage and everything. Too early for me. I walked around the airport waiting for my group to arrive. While waiting I ate my breakfast, which consisted of my first trip to an American restaurant the entire trip.

I may have been excited to meet my group, but when it came time to actually meet them, I was entranced in my music. Lil’ Wayne this time. Quite a contrast to what I have been listening to for most of this trip, but it has been awhile since I listened to good old Weezy. After who knows how long I was approached by one of the group members, Shaina, and she told me they were three rows ahead of me in the waiting area in the gate. When I looked over the group of about 14 other students were looking at me and apparently commenting on my mustache. I guess it makes me pretty noticeable! Good thing too, or I wouldn’t have found them until after the flight.

After quite a bumpy flight, the bumpiest I’ve had in years, we landed in Auckland, New Zealand. In just the two weeks that I wasn’t on a flight with my favorite entertainment screens, new movies appeared! This time I watched Man on a Ledge, unsurprisingly simple, but very entertaining nonetheless. Anyways, we loaded our luggage (well most of us did, some members of our group had their luggage get lost). And I got to introduce myself to everyone and get to know some of them on our 45-minute van ride to our site.

Without seeing it in the daylight it’s hard to determine just how cool it is, but so far it’s very cool. Living in cabins in New Zealand. I love it! And the people have been extremely friendly, which I wasn’t entirely expecting because they have all been traveling for about 36 hours. And us guys have it easy. In two cabins that could fit six guys each there are three in each, while the girls are four to a room. We had a delicious meal and hung out in the dining room area for the night playing Bananagrams and just relaxing after traveling.

Not only are the people fun so far, but I learned that one of the members of the group thinks Bucky Badger is terrifying. I was appalled at the first thought of this, but then realized that I actually really like that thought. The fact that our mascot can scare fans from other schools and other bands (he goes to Boston University) is fantastic! I could do nothing but laugh at him for that. Not only did I learn that, but there’s a surprising amount of Big Ten schools here, Illinois, Purdue, Ohio State, and of course Wisconsin. At least those are the schools I learned for now. Otherwise there are members from all over the country. That’s all from the first day. Slowly, but surely, the Bananagrams players are dropping out and going to bed and I may have to join them shortly.

Sydney

After a brief flight, just under an hour and fifteen minutes I landed in Sydney, or the gateway to Australia as the locals call it and that's when the Melbourne bashing began. Everyone in Melbourne would not necessarily talk down about Sydney, but would definitely talk their city up. The same as a brother would pick on another brother. It's really enjoyable and entertaining.

First thing we did after checking into the hotel was start wandering as always. Found a restaurant to have a snack and a beer right on the Sydney Harbor. Great views and great food! Then came the Opera House tour. It was surprisingly interesting and fun to actually get to go into three of the theaters. When the tour finished we decided to see Karen O's "psycho opera" called "Stop the Virgens."

If you think you know weird, let me tell you, you haven't seen anything. This was one of the strangest and most confusing, yet entrancing and exciting stage production I've ever seen. I really couldn't give you any explanation as to what we watched, but I liked the music and the weird dancing was intriguing to watch. I have a feeling that everyone leaving the theater that night was confused about what they just watched. I'd say definitely check it out just because it is so...different.

Despite the oddity of the show inside the opera house, this production was a part of a big lights festival called Vivid Live. It opened with Florence + the Machine on May 27th and includes movies, music, art, and lights. It's pretty cool because all around the harbor are different light displays, culminating in this cool display projected on the sails of the opera house (sorry if the video quality is poor)

It's a very cool display and a great idea to bring in more tourists (like they need help with that). It also brings people who live in the area into the downtown area of Sydney, which is pretty cool too!


Yesterday was the day of our city tour. The guide we had was hilarious! Half the time I wasn't sure if he was just pulling my leg or was telling the truth about Sydney, but the whole group (five of us) got on really well with him. An interesting thing I noticed here was that the lines on the road are all white, even the ones that separate the different directions of traffic. Just an odd thing I noticed. We got some really great views of the skyline, ate some more great food, and asked Rick, our guide, where some pubs where the locals go were. He pointed out three of them and of course my parents and I, after relaxing a bit in the hotel, made tracks to the first bar:

The Hero of Waterloo. Upon entering the pub I could tell that everyone knew we weren't locals and were giving us some strange looks. Mostly along the lines of "how did these people find out about this bar." It wasn't in a very secret or hard to find place, but I guess not many people like to go out and immerse themselves in the culture around them. I'll never understand how people can travel anywhere and not want to try the local places.

We then went onto another local bar called Lord Nelson's and it was a small scale brewery as well. It has probably the best beer I've had so far on this trip. It was a crowded bar, which made me feel like I was in Madison. Packed with college-aged people, it was a great place!

Then we finally decided to get some food! Walked a short distance and figured out we didn't know where we were going (surprise, surprise!). So after some slight arguing my mother went back into Lord Nelson's pub and asked a couple at the bar.

They weren't planning to come along, but they figured that we'd get lost along the way. And hey! We made some new friends along the way! Now I have three friends in Sydney and two in Melbourne and at least one in New Zealand, where I'll be going in just over a week! I can't wait! Back to Sydney and the Australian Hotel. I wanted to go there to eat solely for the purpose of getting a kangaroo pizza, which I completely successfully!

The meat was surprisingly delicious and with barbecue sauce on the pizza it was delectable!  I highly recommend it. The next things on my list to try are emu and crocodile since I already ate vegemite and am planning to bring some back to share with everyone! That all happened in two days and I didn't even get to today. It wasn't that exciting, but it was definitely another fun trip even if I were tired from staying out with my new friends until 2:30 in the morning! Oh well, another post for another day! Time to get some dinner.

AirBus

I wasn't planning on writing a post about this, but I felt it was too good not to. I don't know how many of you have flown on an airbus before, if you ever get the chance take it. I've been on flights with movies and personal screens before, but the selection was right up my alley.

Instead of just a handful of movies this has a vast collection. Movies, TV shows, music, and much more. You can pick from premiere movies (aka new ones), Oscar favorites, and then by genre too. As for TV shows, I assumed there would be only old shows. I was wrong. New Girl, Modern Family, and many more shows are available.

This was a little worrisome because I needed to sleep at some point while in flight. Maybe I'll get tired, but I haven't explores everything available on this thing yet. So cool!

I have an addiction and it's to media. It's not the worst thing I could be addicted to, in fact it has given me more things to write about here. Now I can get a few movie reviews up while I'm in Australia too!

And I've landed. Made it safely. Great flight and already great people. Got my first of many G'day mates already too!

Leaving the Country

I love traveling outside of the United States. Being surrounded by a different culture and experiencing as many new things as I can. And so begins my trip down under. I'll be traveling to Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Uluru, Auckland, Cairns, and Yungaburra.

I've been excited for this trip since I was accepted to study abroad in the rain forests of New Zealand and Australia. I'll be traveling all over Australia for two weeks with my parents and from there will meet up with my study abroad group where we'll be living in the rainforest for a month.

Today we're flying out of Milwaukee to Chicago, a very short flight, we didn't even reach cruising altitude before we had to descend again. From Chicago to LAX 3.5 hours and from LAX to Melbourne, a whopping 14.5-15 hours. I'll be keeping this as updated as much as I can, but due to possibly lacking the internet at times I might find that hard to do.

I'm starting in the south (Melbourne) where it will be the coldest I'll be experiencing (hopefully). I'll be going to see penguins in their natural habitat on one tour and going on many other tours and awesome experiences that I'll be taking pictures of and sharing here (if possible) and on Facebook.

I started this on the plane to LAX and am finishing it in the airport...on my phone. Waiting for three hours to board a ginormous airbus.

Leaving at 11:30 pm US time I'll be missing out almost entirely on May 27th which is pretty cool I think. It'll be like I'm time traveling (hello LOST) and then gaining that day back by experiencing a day, July 11th, basically twice. I'll be even more confused as to what day it is than I am normally during the summer. I'm excited for that and the only reason I can come up with is the fact that I'll feel like I'm in Back to the Future or something, but instead of traveling back multiple years, I'll be "traveling" one day. Oh well.

As I said before I'll have intermittent Internet access while down under, mostly when we take trips into the nearby town and I'm going to update this as much as possible. I may even be able to Skype for a short time. If you want to you should be able to search for me by name. Otherwise try minicoop1227. Until next time, from Australia, have a good Memorial Day weekend!

Taken from the plane to LAX

Travel Tuesday

It's traveling Tuesday today! I'm going to feature a place I have either traveled to or want to travel to. Today will be about Australia, where I'm studying abroad for a month and traveling for two weeks before my program starts.

First of all, I'm incredibly excited for this. Australia has been a place I've always wanted to travel to and didn't know when I'd get the chance to go, unless I was studying abroad. So I made it a goal to study in Australia during a summer while I was in college and now it's actually happening!

I'll be traveling all over Australia for the first two weeks. I'll be hitting Sydney, Melbourne, Ayer's Rock, and Cairns, among a few other places along the way. Then for a month I'll get to live in the rainforest in Australia and New Zealand and work on studying the ecology, environment, and conservation of the rainforests.

Among the many things I'll be seeing, I expect to see a lot of different animals, especially when I'm in the rainforest. I do know that there are some dangerous animals and the School for Field Studies has told us about some of them, but that we really shouldn't have to worry about them where we will be working. But here's a fun video my brother showed me the other day all about deadly animals.

Having just finished "Lost" for the first time, it got me even more excited to go to Australia if only for the reason that everyone on the island was flying from Sydney to LAX. Either way, I can't help, but hope that my time in the rainforest will be similar to some of the events from "Lost." However, I am not Abed from "Community" so I don't expect anything that crazy to happen and I won't go out of my way to make it happen as he so often does.

More than anything I'm excited to go to the "land down under" and to see the Sydney Opera House, the Great Barrier Reef, Ayer's rock, and lots of other cool things too. I've heard that once you go to Australia you never want to leave, so we'll see how I react to it, but I usually become attached to new places when I travel. It would only be a matter of time I'm sure, before I would be sick of living there and want to travel to another new place.