Shouting and Eating

The lifers, being generous and wonderful people, need to make sure that no one ever gets bored during their stay at Fisher. This weeks we had two events to keep us all entertained. The first event this week took place on Tuesday. Firstly, it was Dylan's birthday, which of course meant that we would have to celebrate. The crafty committee decided that this would be the best time to have Fresher Shout. This name would be self explanatory to the people of Australia (who don't read this blog), but would make absolutely no sense to people who speak English. Fresher I already defined (first years), but shout? Hm, does this mean that they want us to shout very loudly? (in part yes, but that was just war cries, and that's expected just about anywhere and any time). You see, to shout something means to pay for it, or cover it. Example "You've been driving me around all year, petrol is my shout today." So hopefully you're starting to understand what this is all about. One now ponders the question, what are the freshers shouting. The answer is obvious, drinks. It was another fun night, and the lifers and old boys were pretty kind to us, not completely abusing their power. Another fun part was that some new old boys and old girls we hadn't met before or seen recently were there, so we were encouraged to socialize with them as well.
The second event was more innocent and less discriminatory. It was international food night. Now this one is even self explanatory to those among us who speak English (both of my readers). Everyone was encouraged to cook foods from their home country or any country that they felt like. I was lazy, and had a whole hour of class on Thursday, along with a three hour nap so I had no time to cook. But lots of other people were much less of jerks than I am, so there were an incredible amount of food, both in quantity and variety. I think the Thai curry I had there was better than the curry I had in Thailand (or at Pepperz). Kanger Bangers also were interesting...I'm not really fond of sausages to begin with so that may have lessened my enjoyment. I think the best thing though, were the crepes made by Tess and Keiv. Still daydreaming about those
I have another trip this weekend, so hopefully there will be some fun stories from that. Ideally they wont be about hail though

What the Hail

More Tas Fauna, yay! we had a giant excursion as well and were joined by the animal evolution class. Essentially it was a big zoology field trip. We were lucky and arrived while it wasn't raining. Then I encountered the first problem. I had borrowed a tent from Sam Clarke, and when he offered to show me how to set it up, we both agreed I'd figure it out pretty easily. Then I took out all the pieces and thought to myself "what the fuck is this?" After a good deal of effort and procrastinating I finally figured it out and set it up. Then I had to set up the rain fly because past experience has taught me to always have that set up, and I knew it was going to rain all weekend. There seemed like there was something missing, but I made do with what I had. The rest of the night started to consist of huddling around the fire and hoping it wouldn't rain. In fact the creation of the fire was quite odd. In short we failed to get it burning. We walked away when it started to rain, and then the fire started by the time we were back. Magic. Then Amy's, my prac partner and fellow american, housemates showed up with a little tent/covering thing and lots of firewood. So we had an epic fire and were able to run and hide in shelter when it started hailing on us. No you did not misread that, it started hailing on us for no goddamn reason. It rained off and on for much of the rest of the night, and the details of the night become foggier and foggier as the night progresses. We're not going to go into that. My tent collapsed turning the night and it rained on almost everything I had brought. I had very little dry clothing to wear for the next two days. Yay. I also thought I had lost my iphone, but turned out I stuck it in my sleeping bag.
This brings us to saturday. I woke up in surprisingly good shape, essentially ready to take on the day. Our first activity was bird watching, and not to brag, but i'm pretty damn good at that. We saw some birds, probably about a dozen species. But then it hailed on us again so we hid for a while. The birds love hail about as much as we do so there was probably a little less than usual. Still, not a bad start to the morning other than the off and on rain. No real highlights about that, it didn't compare to some of the other bird watching I'd done earlier in the year. Still no real complaints. We huddled around a fire for a while until our next activity. Our next activity was a two part thing. We set video cameras around traps, but I wasn't really involved in that part so it was kind of boring. The second half was tracking things with radio waves. It was fun, but also became very frustrating when I couldn't find it. It was also good because I was forced to meet new people again. The people I was most familiar with were elsewhere. Still good fun and got to meet people. People keep telling me I have a strong accent which is absolutely not true. I'm american, how could I have an accent? Final activity of the day was intertidal survey, and that was actually a lot of fun. We found some really cool things, like the biggest whelk (carnivorous snail) imaginable. Also we found a Elephant sea slug and some flatworms. I was able to keep mostly dry which was the top priority. Then it was time to go back and huddle around the fire. The only problem with this is that we were failing at setting the fire again. That is when my hero emerged. Her name was Anna and she actually knew how to set a fire. Now I also know how to set a fire, but she had lighter fluid. Now this would be more than enough to make her my hero, she also looked at my tent and decided there was something wrong with the rain fly. Rather than rolling her eyes deciding to let me live with it (my response the day before) she pulls out rope and fixes it up. Epic Win. The tent did not fall that night. The rest of the afternoon was very casual, just hanging out by the fire and meeting a large group of singaporean students who had set up their tents nearby us. That brings us to sunday. got up at around 6 am to go look for bats at 6:30. It literally took me 10 minutes to put in my contacts. Poking yourself in the eyes while shivering is a pretty risky activity. There were no bats. Then a small group of us peeled off to go look for penguins. We had similar success as with the bats. But it was fun, we got to see a cloudy sunrise and and I was hanging out with good people. One even went swimming in the freezing water. Then it was time to go empty possum traps. We had very little success at first. The only thing we caught was a currowong, which was hilarious. Eventually we caught a couple possums, the last of which did not even try to leave the trap until it was almost literally plopped on the ground. The waterrat cages were more exciting. We caught a swamp rat. It looked more like a mouse and wasn't the dirty things you see running around the subway. We caught one of those too, but no one cares about that. We also caught a water rat. Now I hear rat and think disgusting little rodent. Instead it turned out that it was more of a small, more colorful otter. It was pretty cool and they kept it in the cage so other people could see it later. Then it was time for the final activity: seining the ocean. Half the group had wetsuits and were ready to go, so we let them do the whole wet. We measured all the fish that they caught and enjoyed the suddenly beautiful weather. Overall it was a good weekend. My only regret is overdoing it a little while friday night. Good weekend, got to meet lots of people who also love animals and zoology and have a good time. The weather wasn't great, but it was more than survivable.

Spider Porn

So I may have raved about Tas Fauna in the past, and I thought I'd share another story from it. The most recent ecosystem we've been learning about are caves. Like you, I assumed there was nothing in caves other than bats, and we were told that all Tasmanian bats live in trees. It turns out that there are tons of stuff living in there, though they tend to be really small and impossible find without divine intervention. The guy teaching us picked out one species to look at in particular. It was...some type of spider, I don't actually remember what it was called. So it's cool because it is kind of an in-between species in terms of evolution. Also it has all these weird features and slightly weird things. I wrote it down somewhere and I'm not going to go look it up. He then showed us photos of the mating ritual. It was actually pretty cool, but I was still left with the distinct feeling I'd just been shown spider porn. I guess this is what we learn at Utas...
so this post is short, but the next one will be longer, and will appear very soon

Saint Patrick's Day

Let me guess, you saw the title and assumed that it was going to be all about drinking. Well guess what, you're wrong. Only the second half is going to be about drinking. The first half will be about what I did earlier in the day. So last week Gav asked me if I was interested in going out to some park and doing a five hour hike or something, and I said sure. I didn't really go out Friday because Wednesday was still hitting me pretty hard. So Gav gave me a call that morning to essentially tell me be ready to get my ass out of bed. He had invited a couple other people, but between rugby practice and the previous night's festivities, they were both unavailable. We set off and I did my best not to sleep in the car, which is almost a given for me. We went out hiking and it was not what I expected. I thought we were going to be on trails for most of it, but when we were on trails it was pretty waterlogged and trying to dodge the really wet parts. Luckily I had waterproof shoes, but Gav was less lucky. Once we got through that part we got to the actual mountain part, Mount Field East. We didn't hike all the way from the bottom, where we started seemed a good deal of the way up. So when we got to the mountainy part, the terrain became very rocky and we started hopping from rock to rock all the way up. As we got higher the wind got worse and worse and worse until it felt like nature was literally trying to throw us off the mountain. We persevered and made it up. Then we had some chips on top of the mountain. We got some epic pictures,  And there was also a rainbow we saw a bunch.We actually got a cool view where you could just see the top of the rainbow over the mountain so it looked like it was sitting on top of the mountain. the internet is being mean and not putting them up. They are on facebook though.
We did have a little trouble with the way back because there was one point that we couldn't find the trail back and it took many incorrect turns to finally find the real one. We survived and then to look at some waterfalls. Those are also on facebook. It was fun, but probably good that not too many other people came because it was a kinda physically demanding.
We got back around 6:30 and after grabbing dinner, Tess came in to yell at everyone for not being at her birthday party yet. Some of us shuffled over and became involved in a game of battle shots. THis is not Conant's version, it was exactly like battleship only with drinking. I played with Ira, we won even though Tess and Emily kept cheating and telling us the wrong answers. So that was fun for a while, there was some wii sports, attempted trick shots with ping pong balls, a defeat in root and won conversations. After that we did go out, though there was a lengthy break back in Fisher is Millsy room. Caitlin may or may not have gotten a concussion, we weren't sure. My mouth and the english language did fail me and say some incorrect things. A group of people were in Millsy room, mainly the Saint Pat's kids. It was a good time involving more beer and photobooth. then we eventually left and went down to lower house. while we were in line i ended up talking to some Norwegian girls, pretty random, and I was pretty drunk at that point. One of them gave me a giant green hat. From Lower House we went to Irish, because of the holiday. It was less packed than we expected. They did have lots of Guinness, which was absolutely disgusting. Even after having drunken a lot, it still was disgusting. I couldn't even finish the pint I had gotten. We were heading to Mobius but branchy and I didn't really want to go there. While we were waiting on line, I got into a debate over what's a better profession, medicine or investment banking. It was really a waste of air, and I think the other guy was lying his ass off about how much money he made. Branchy and I left mid debate (though the other "investment banker" told me as I was leaving that he didn't believe in only caring about money either). after that we finally headed back to fisher, right around the same time that a lot of other people got back. I had grabbed my waterbottle and sprayed Dylan with it. He took revenge with interest and told me to never do that again...so of course I had to do it immediately. It's not my fault. Then some people hung out in branchy's room for a bit, then called it a night. No hangover!

Madness I Say! Madness

March madness is upon us as any american would know. as usual the track team has a series of brackets. i'm already screwed, well not yet, but i forsee this going terribly. A game we often are involved in is coming up with creative names for the brackets. this year mine is fucking kangaroos, in a loving reference to End of Zee World

The best might be Jon Ryss with Nice Brackets Lady! The funny thing is that no one else here actually cares or even knows about it. its a bit of a change, but it seems like they do a similar thing with footy (AFL), but i'm not going to do that. i don't even understand the rules. rugby starts tonight, that should be fun, if dangerous. ideally i'll keep all my teeth though
Wednesday was an interesting night. It was essentially an initiation thing, but unlike those for the xc team, this one involved lots of drinking. luckily there were at least 16 of us, so the goon bags went pretty quickly. We learned the college war cries, which consists of almost cleverly yelling curses at the rival colleges. None are polite enough to be posted here. We went out after, and I am proud to say that i can actually remember a wednesday night, well most of it anyway. i also made it to class at 9 am thursday. i may have still been drunk, but i took good notes and enjoyed the class. then i went to sleep until about noon. i came down into the common room and found millsy and chopper. unlike last week they were both moving and eating. neither of them could finish their meals, so i got free food. later that day I got to something else even more exciting
I went SCUBA DIVING. it was a shore dive, which i'm not sure if i've done before. i prefer boat dives because it doesn't involve me getting lost and going around until the my buddy finally took over. The other thing is that all the people, or at least some of them were hard core, like a level or two beyond me. one guy had a $22K camera set up, and it was just all a little much. plus they seemed to know each other already and i felt a little left out. still i do like scuba diving, and even though the visibility was not great we saw some cool things. there was a crab and a large lobster thing, as well as some fish. i do wish the water was clearer. everyone was saying that I would get really cold with only a 3mm wet suit, but I was fine, apparently it was much warmer than usual at around 68 degrees. still i got to go diving. wooooo. i didn't see the octopus though, which i am devastated about. maybe next time...sigh

Catching Up

Sorry to both my readers, I'm getting a little lazy about posting. to be honest things have gotten a little less exciting because i'm going to school rather than wandering the country. I do still have a couple stories.
One is from thursday, and it is an image more than a story, and I don't actually have a picture so i'll paint you a word picture of it. wednesday night a few of us went to metz for dinner. Our goal was to have pizza rather than pepperz (the accommodations food) and maybe have a drink or two while we were there. We did get pizza for dinner...but we may have had more than a drink or two. There are many stories from that night which will go down in history, i will not share any of them here mostly because I can't remember them to well. One thing I do suggest to anyone is gin lime and bitters. it is a delicious drink created by chopper and millsy. So thursday afternoon found a number of us in the common room. I can remember six of us. Branchy on one couch, chopper on the next, ira on the next, millsy on the next, me in a chair. all of us were essentially unable to move for hours. Schmitty was there for a while too and admitted to being really hungover, but not quite as much as the rest of us. none of us made it to class. of everyone that went out i think only two out of maybe a dozen made it to class. We mostly watched a music countdown. It is a pathetic/hilarious image to me. all of us sitting there and hungover beyond belief. Sigh. Somehow i managed to drink significantly less last night...i wonder why

This is around 5pm the Thursday

  So tuesday for my fauna prac we went bird watching. it was pretty fun and i broke out my sweet binoculars and impressed everyone and felt very good about myself. as you can imagine we saw a bunch of birds, even though it was a horrible storm for a good portion of it. its fun to spend time with my classmates in a different environment. (get it because we were actually going to different environments to see different birds)
i finally signed up to go diving, next weekend i think. I'm excited for that, but sad that I can't sign up for more, too many conflicts or the dives are already full and such. one conflict is i have a fauna trip over one weekend. i'm pretty sure it's going to be awesome. i signed up for the cool activities while i'm there like trapping possums and tagging them. and more birdwatching
i'm also starting to get back to the running. ran 3 times so far this week, 15 whole miles...next week 25 and then we'll get back towards some real distances. the roads are wearing me down a bit, not enough trails
speaking of running. Congrats to Bowdoin Men's DMR on winning nationals and setting the meet record in the process. did someone say best ever?