Short update

I've been really busy these past two weeks. For the first week, I was in the mangroves which are like... if you think of a beach where the ocean is the river and the shoreline and sand is a bunch of dirt and trees, you get mangroves. So basically, the tide comes in and out every day, making it almost always muddy, and a ton of crabs frolic in and out of the dirt. I wasn't too big a fan of mangroves because I got eaten alive by mosquitoes and sandflies (and got hives as a result), and it was impossible to not get soaked and caked in mud each day. In the end, though, I had a lot of fun times in there. I also have some cool pictures, but I'll do a huge photoblog when I get good enough internet. We're all sharing a pretty weak internet line right now that's enough to skype but not to upload pictures.

For now, I'm still in North Queensland for another week or so and we've been looking at the surrounding forests each day, including the rainforest. Our days are packed so we don't get much free time. Basically, we wake up at 7 (sometimes earlier), have lecture for an hour or two, go into the field, lunch, back to the field (this means a number of things, but it's usually a hike of some sort), some free time (usually swimming unless we go back to the ranch), dinner, lecture, and then free time. By then, it's about 8 and I'm exhausted, but I have assignments I need to finish for the class. It's a lot of fun though. For the first few days, we went to some caves, went stargazing, and saw the sun rise and set. Now, we're staying at a ranch with a wrap-around porch in tents just outside of it. The food is amazing! It's sort of insane how nice our accommodations have been here. In the mangroves, we stayed in bungalows smack in the middle of the rainforest, so you went to sleep hearing birds and frogs and rain, which made it impossible for me to sleep without earplugs. A lot of people are worried they're going to gain a lot of weight by the sheer amount of food we've been getting, but I'm not too worried since we're always out doing things.