Rainy Days

Self portrait I suppose

Oi! I can't believe it's nearly August! ...and still cold. :-/ Weather has been miserable this week. It has been raining since Saturday. But the rain is really funny here because it will be showering one minute and the next it will be sunny. I thought New England weather was unpredictable, but Tassie takes it to a whole new level. I've seen so many rainbows already. One showed up over the bay while I was getting all wet and muddy on the basketball court with some of the girls from Christ College. I decided to get into some of the college sports. It was actually really fun and relaxed. Plus, it felt so good to get active! I might even try out the Australian Football (Footy) after basketball.

I'm (reluctantly) getting into my third week of classes now. It was fun getting introduced to new subjects, class styles, and people, but now it's time to get to work. I ended up staying in "Cognitive Neuroscience" despite my worries. Luckily, half of the work is a group research experiment, which means I can just be a really good listener, say a few comments here and there, and hopefully pick up a decent grade. It's still pretty challenging though. We have to conduct an experiment relating to cognitive neuroscience without access to advanced equipment like MRIs. But I think my group chose a fairly simple topic/design. It has already been hypothesized that when letters are slightly more spaced than normal, it is easier to recognize words. We are going to show words with different amounts of spacing between letters to our participants and record reaction times to see how the kerning effects orthographic processing. (See, I'm already picking up on fancy neuro-lingo!) ... I'll worry about the exam part of the unit later.

View of the city from the reserve..
this isn't even near as good as it gets.
...achin' to explore more!

My other academic unit is a first-year Geography class. It's called "Space, Place and Nature", and yeah, it is as broad as it sounds. The lecturer is a hoot, though. He goes off on heaps of interesting side notes and personal tangents. He tries to make a joke every few minutes, but always ends up chuckling at himself alone. I already mentioned how he enjoys talking about poo. But at least he knows what he is talking about! I've learned that wallabies just poop wherever, whenever, while rabbits make themselves a circle of dumplings to eat once more before leaving it to the earth. I see rabbits all around campus, it's so cute! (Especially now that I know they like to eat their own feces.) We went on our first field trip last week in practical. We just went up  to the Uni Reserve behind Christ College and did some fairly uninteresting measuring, but it's much better than sitting in a classroom.

I went for a walk up there again yesterday since we didn't get to explore much during class. I was surprised at the size of it. I was expecting something like Clark's Arboretum ... but this blows that poor patch out of the water. The view of the city is really great up there and I even caught the sun setting behind Mt. Wellington.

Great end to a rainy day! ...notice the snow on Mt. Wellington.

I think I'll make it a regular spot. It's a great place to relax for a bit on a quick walk, and the birds sound magical. :)

Cheers!