2 Weeks of volunteering..

Since i did two weeks of volunteer work, I’m going to try to put it all on a few entries instead of one entry for every day–that would just take too long. So Let’s see how this goes. 

DAY ONE 29/6/09  -Monday   (Read 29th of june, 2009)

Work: Seed collection for Bead Glasswort plant at Lake Wyn-Wyn and Lake Mitre

Purpose: to put the seeds into the Millennium Seed Bank in the UK

Millennium Seed Bank- This is a place where a collection of all possible wild plants are saved in case of catastrophe occurs so plants can then be regenerated. 

 

DAY TWO 30/6/09 Tuesday

Work: search and GPS  the rare Forked Spyridium

Purpose: Because this plant is known to have vanished from much of the area it used to live, it was our responsibility to find what was left of it in an area known to still have some exiting spyridium and GPS it so it can be monitored for later reference. 

IT ENDED UP POURING RAIN! so our day was cut short so we ended up just making orchid cages back at the DSE office the rest of the time. 

 

DAY THREE 1/7/09 Wednesday 

Work: Make nest boxes for bats, and other animals varying in size, make a fence for the golden Sun Moths

Purpose: because of the large fires in Australia very recently, a lot of the native trees that take hundreds of years to grow burned off. Nest boxes would be nailed to remaining trees for animals to live. and where we were working was the only place in the world where Golden Sun Moths are found. Because of this, the locals were able to fence off the site where they come to lay their eggs in October. But the fence they made did not keep the local sheep out, so it was our job to reinforce it so the sheep wouldnt eat the plants that the moths lay their eggs. 

FUN FACT!

   the Golden Sun Moth only give birth to females that will never need to fertilize their eggs, also meaning they never need a male! Only females give birth to females with already fertilize eggs! 

collecting seeds for the Millennium Seed Bank

Crew ready to search for Forked Spyridium

picture courtesy of Glenn (DSE employee)

Horsham, Victoria

After traveling 2 hours to LA to LAX,waiting 3 1/2 hours in the airport to board a 15 hour flight to Melbourne,

 and then walking straight into a cramped bus for another 4 hours, I finally made it to our “home” for the next two weeks. 

 

Horsham was the name of the small town in the state of Victoria in Australia. Yes, Australia is split into 8 states and Victoria is the state that is on the southern end of the country. But anyways, the first day in Horsham, i was able to get to know the 10 other people in my small volunteer group. We were a diverse group, all different personalities and ways of life coming together! It was exciting I was also able to meet the people we were going to be working with, the workers of the DSE. They held a “Bar-B” for us, and let me tell you.. i fell in love with their Aussie BBQ! Food was Sooooo goood. During lunch we also got the run down Orientation which stated all the business we were going to do for the next few weeks. 

-Searching for rare plants

-Nest Box Making

-Fencing

-Tree Planting

-Tree Removal

    .. were what was on our agenda. 

 

One thing I grew to love about my group was that we were all pretty adventurous, and if we found any sort of hike to do, we did it. Right after our first Bar-B and Orientation, we all hopped into our family van and our volunteer leader, NINA, brought us to  Mount Arapiles, which is a Random mountain that juts out of the flat land around it. It is known in Australia where expert Rock climbers go to climb. We drove to a parking area where we then hiked our first mountain up to the top. View made me feel like what i would’ve seen on top of Pride  Rock on the Lion King! Pretty cool. On our way home we spotted our first KANGAROO! We obviously freaked out and stood next to it taking pictures of it. Luckily it was very still and didn’t mind us bombarding it with our cameras. Not long after that, we also saw our first DEAD KANGAROO as road kill. It was sad, but nina did let us jump out of the car and she gave us a run down on the anatomy of the Dead Roo. It’s leg was mangled by the car that hit it and most likely died on impact.

view from our caravan park

Veggies! yumm

ISV AUSTRALIA 2009

    So this summer i signed up with a volunteer group to travel to Australia for a month to help with conserving the environment that their country is facing due to several factors, (small and large). We were able to work with a local environment group,( the Department of Sustainability and Environment,) to help with conserving the Australian land by performing projects first-hand. this trip was to help us become more aware of the environment around us and how little things affect the lives of the plants and animals native to the country. For the first two weeks we were going to spend it in a town to help with their local environmental projects. Sounds somewhat nerdy but what i learned really helped me to appreciate the plants and animals that we were helping to survive. The last two weeks we were going to spend it on an adventure tour – basically relaxing. 

   SOO, i’m going to try my best to best explain my trip and the pictures that i put along with it, so bare with me!

Time in Brighton is up :(

Okay, so I haven’t been able to update this thing with all the other places I have visited in the past few weeks, sorry but time is something I do not have in europe! The program in Brighton is actually coming to an end, (14:30 pm today to be exact). I am obviously happy that all the homework and studying is now over, or for atleast a few weeks, but I am also very sad to leave this town. I have grown fond of Brighton and what it has to offer, the pier donuts, Ben’s cookies, Fish and Chips, Kebabs, Curry!.. Yes I just named a grip of food haha. But most of all, I’m going to miss all the people and new friends that i have met while here. HOPEFULLY, they will become friends that I can hang out with and become close to! But just because the program is over, doesn’t mean that I’m done with my Europe trip yet! After the program Debbie and I are going to be traveling for nearly two more weeks before going home. Sartaj will be accompanying us for a couple days, which i am very excited about! 

 

Places on our agenda:

ITALY:

Le marche, (pronounced le markay )

Rome

Sorrento

Capri

Pompeii

Amalfi

SPAIN:

Barcelona

Madrid

Ibiza

 

see everyone soon!

Venice

Sorry it has been a while since i’ve blogged, but time has gotten the best of me and have just found a little extra time to blog. So two weeks ago, the girls and I went to Venice, Italy. I’ve been before, but it was awsome to see what i remember of the water city. 

  The day didn’t start out like i hoped, first off not getting any sleep because of the schools Pub Crawl Event the night before. It was a great night with friends and the good ole’ Oceana night club. But anyways, we had to catch the train to Central London and then hop onto a Bus to drive us an hour and a half to Stanstead airport where our flight was at 10:25 am. We started our day off at the train station at 6AM, but while walking to the station, I realized i had forgotten my train pass in my room, so i sprinted all the way back to my dorm building, (which was crazy far,) to grab my pass and sprinted back to the station just in time. But when we got to our next train stop, we realized we missed it, then making our arrival in central london late, and missing our bus to Stanstead. I know, very complicated, but all in all, after just barely making our flight, we were on our way to Venice. 

Video Diary:

 

     Venice itself was beautiful. We were able to meet up with Mitz’s parents who were also in Italy at the same time! They were awsome and even paid for our meals, i am very thankful for that! It was definitely nice to see some parents with us for a little while. My goals in Venice was to eat gelato, and that is what I did! 4 different flavors hazelnut, caramel, cantalope, and another flavor i cannot remember at the moment definitely fullfilled my appetite. 

    On our flight back to London, we experienced a very… comedic experience. Supposed to board our flight at around 9PM, we were delayed for reasons we didn’t know why. We were sitting in the waiting room, staring at our plane which was literally less than 100 feet away. They ended up loading us up into city busses to bring us to the airplane, which was literally less than 100 feet away.. What I am trying to say is, they made us wait over an hour past our boarding time so they could put us in city busses to bring us to our plane which was 100 feet from the terminal! We could have just walked to our plane, i really think we could have managed.. ha!

Video Diary:

Paris Weekend

    So this week was the end of first session in my Physics class. After studying all weekend, our whole class took our final in the afternoon, and by night everyone was packed up and ready to leave the country for a fun-filled weekend wherever they planned to go, for me? We planned to spend a weekend in Paris, France. 

    We took a train to London and in the morning we took a coach bus to Dover, where we took the ferry to France. Now we left London at 6:30am and didn’t arrive until about nearly 8PM. It was a ridiculous ride with a very unorganized tourist lady. But besides all the negative aspects that did happen during our weekend in Paris, when the three girls and I were by ourselves in France, we had the time of our lives. We bought Metro tickets so we didn’t have to depend on the Coach bus to bring us everywhere, sometimes it’s just better to depend on ourselves. We got to see the eiffel tower and night, which was a beautiful sight, and the next day we literally walked the city of Paris. We started at the Louvre and ended up at the most expensive shopping area in all of Paris, luckily i didn’t blow off my money there. 

   What I did splurge on in Paris was the food. For lunch i bought a tomato and mozzarella quiche and a strawberry pasty. I will have to say that it was quiche and strawberry pasty i have every tasted! Paris did live up to my sweet tooth expectation. It was even better that we got to eat lunch under the Eiffel Tower. 

  So i am too lazy to give all the details, so just enjoy the pictures. 

 

it was lit Beautiful Blue haha

Just a random shot

Lying on the floor looking up at the Eiffel Tower

It was France’s Independance day just last week, so the tower was lit with stars, and on the hour, the tower sparkled like a ” bottle of champagne”

the best Pasty i’ve ever eaten

eating lunch under the Eiffel Tower

Windsor Castle, Eton college, Oxford University

   This weekend us girls decided just to go on a day trip instead of a full weekend trip because we have our physics final this week. So we decided to take a trip to Windsor Castle, Eton College, and the University of Oxford, and man was it beautiful. 

   Our first stop was to Windsor Castle, home of the Queen. We came there in time to watch the changing of the guards, which was very different from what I remember about the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. The Queens flag was raised on the castles flag pole showing that the Queen was at the castle! (Typically, if the queen was away from the castle, they would replace her flag with the British Flag, and when she would return, they would put up her flag).  

  In the town of Windsor, we were also able to visit Eton college. If you do not know what Eton college is, it was originally a school built by Henry the 6th for 25 poor boys, but over hundreds of years, has become one of the most elite colleges in England. I believe there are only 1300 men that attend this college, (which included Prince William and Harry,) and what we know is that tuition to attend is about 30,000 pounds a term- think of it as $60,000 dollars a term! Ridiculous, but beautiful. 

   After Windsor, we took a coach to the University of Oxford. Now like I said, Eton College is one of the most elite schools in England, but Oxford is known as THE UNIVERSITY to go to. It is the most elite university in England. Our tour guide explained to us why this school is so amazing, and I found myself mezmerized. He explained how the grading system at the school is based on a test taken as your first year there. If you do not pass that first exam, you are automatically dismissed from the school. And over the next 3-4 years, depending on your certain degree, you will not have any more exams until the year you plan to graduate, which consists of twelve 3 hour test in two weeks! Now this material covers everything from the 3-4 years you were at the school. INTENSE! Luckily when we were there, many students were gradating so we were able to see geniuses up close! One of the graduates we ran into and conversed with was actually very humble and down to earth. Congrats to him!

  Besides that, Oxford University is also known as the campus where the Harry Potter films were shot. It was awesome to see everything up close, such as the main dining hall, the staircase, and the courtyard in the movie. Check it out!

 

Windsor Castle, England

These are the beautiful dormitories of the students. They are very anal about stepping on the grass!

beautiful buildings!

This is the world famous library. this is the home to 8 MILLION books, (160 km I believe.) The books are cared by 300 librarians, these books are exclusively for Oxford students, no one other than students are allowed in the building. One copy of every book published in england goes to this library. What you cannot see in the 3 floors directly under this.

This is what is known as the main dining hall in Harry Potter! But in reality, it is used as a dining hall for the college

These are the tables used in the movies! But in the movie they sat in benches, not the chairs that you see.

This courtyard was used during winter scenes in Harry Potter

This staircase was used in the movie as well! This is what leads into the main dining hall

Ironic

You can see what they changed for the movie and what they added

Randoms & London day trip

    So the last few days have been really slow, with the typical England rainy weather and of course, study for my first midterm. Early in the week we went bowling with the people from our program. Yes, i know, i usually do not like bowling, but I gave it another try, and I WON! we have to pick names and I came up with “PRINCE.” inspired by of course, prince . 

 

       Us girls took a break this weekend and took a day trip to London just to do all the touristy things to get away from studying. It was a great day in London, with sunny intervals. We took the train from Brighton to London in the morning and then used the tube, (subway,) and the good old pair of feet to get lost in London. Good times and laughs with the ladies.  Check some random pictures.  

 

we all made up random names, Try to guess whose who

good ol’ ISS08 advisors Michael and Tom

people are very comfortable with themselves

when the clouds let up, the weather was beautiful

Stonehenge//Leeds//Bath

So ive always wanted to visit Stongehenge, don’t know why, but have always found them very int er est ing. So on our first weekend in Europe, we were able to visit it! on Saturday morning, we hopped onto the train to London and then were off in a coach to Stonehenge. 

  There were sooo MANY people there it was ridiculous but still an awsome sight. Unfortunately only half of stonehenge remains because of vandalism, and because people have actual stolen some of the stones, (or so we were told). The weather was extremely windy, cloudy, and chilly, but according to the locals, it was a great day to visit stonehenge. 

 

We also went to Bath, England where we were able to see the Roman baths. It was a beautiful town where we ate baguettes and panini’s on the green. 

 

Leeds castle was another great place to visit. A picturesque castle was surrounded by acres of grass, with exotic birds and swans, including peacocks! The castle also included a maze, (which we got lost in,) a golf course, garden, and several lakes, and a mote!

 

all the people going to stonehenge

the tour guides insisted NOT to touch the water because it was never cleaned, and we saw people putting their feet into it- GROSS.

This building is famous for it’s Georgian architecture, beautiful flats!

haha and YES I took the picture knowing there was an old lady there

with mitz

Now who can say they took a picture with the backside of a peacock- I can!

But for those who don’t care about the backside, the front side is also beautiful :)

don’t let the picture fool you, it was horribly hard to get to the center!

First week in Brighton

So this week was the first week of classes, and we also went to our programs first pub crawl! A pub crawl is pretty much where our leaders take different groups of student to three different pubs down in town and then all meet up at a very large club called oceana. Now, this club fits nearly 3000 people! and it was sooo beautiful and sick! fun night with the girlies and the other international students

Click the pick to see my captions??

 

The small alley’s our huge groupe of 20+ walked through to get to different pubs

the club right on the shore of Brighton beach

circular dance floor+huge chandelier+lots of people = funn!

but a tower on campus with the light shining through the glass– pretty :)