First Day of Lab

By some divine miracle, Maria and I were assigned to the same lab group for our Cell Regulation practical slot. We donned our sexy lab coats and glasses (me wearing my actual glasses because the chloroform would apparently make my contact lenses dissolve into my eyes and cause mild / horrible discomfort) and chose a lab table at the back of the room that had empty seats.

Michael was going to be our TA that would help us through this lab.  If only he knew how difficult his job would be.

He looked like a hipster, with classic hipster glasses and shorts so short that I wondered if there was even anything under that stained lab coat of his. Maria found him to be “nerd-sexy.” I was too distracted by the amount of leg he was revealing to make a fair judgment until later in the day when I had grown accustomed to his visible thighs.

Our professor and the woman in charge of the lab both stood up front and rambled on for at least 20 minutes about what I assure you had nothing to do with what was going on, though I wasn’t even really sure what should have been going on because I didn’t read the lab before I got to class.

After they finished confusing the two of us, they told us to disperse. Maria and I stood for a few moments, staring wide-eyed at each other.

Thankfully, Michael came over to us.

“We are from America… and we have no idea what’s going on.” Maria immediately informed him. I nodded.

He tried to explain what to do, but all I could really gather from the situation was that one of us should be in this room, and the other one should go in the other room to do something with yeast in a flask, but he wasn’t even really sure what exactly should be done. I decided to go ahead and brave the new room, and wandered in there armed with a graduated cylinder, a funnel, filter paper, and a flask.

Other students were busy working with the flasks and filtering things and adding chemicals and laughing gaily at how they understood what the heck was going on.

I stood in front of them for a few moments, my hands full of glassware and my mind bringing back the wonderful memories of organic chemistry lab, which was the last time I felt this confused and frustrated with everything.

I finally spoke up.

“So… I uh… have never been in this room before.” I said aloud. The 10 students stopped talking and looked at me.

“I don’t know what’s going on.” I supplied. They laughed. I wasn’t trying to be funny, but I’m glad you all get a kick out of my confusion. A nice girl from Germany pointed me over to a station next to her that was unoccupied, and explained to me what I needed to be doing. Turned out to not be nearly as complicated as I thought.

I began working, and then the two professors walked in and had a little mini-confrontation when they both realized they had read the lab wrong or something. They re-explained it, and suddenly complete and total understanding flooded my consciousness. The desire to break everything in the room vanished, as the calming sense of knowing what was going on quelled my anger and relieved my tension.

As I waited for things to mix, I wandered back into the room where Maria was pipetting things. 

We chatted a bit, wondering how long this lab was going to take, and then I went back to complete my portion of the experiment.

Maria soon finished her part, and came in to keep me company. Michael and some other TA’s wandered in to help. My solution was the only one that was clear. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but Hipster TA nodded approvingly when he saw what I was doing. America. Yea.

I finished my portion, and we took the results back to our station and finished our Thin Layer Chromatography plates.

Then we found out some awesome news:

The plates needed an hour and a half to set.

SNACK TIME.  

But even though the plates were going to take an hour and a half, Michael told us that we HAD to be back in 45 minutes.

We walked to the student center to get chips so we could kill some time and I could eat something for the first time that day. We then sat outside of the science building and chatted with a friendly girl from North Carolina.

“I’m here with my friend Tyler… he’s tall and blonde…”

She LOVES him.

“I have a really bad case of Strep.”

Why are you sitting so close to me?

We went back upstairs. Michael then began chatting up Maria, asking her how long she had been there.

So here’s what happened:

Michael: “How long have you been here?”

Me: “Uhh…I don’t know.  Five minutes?”

Michael: Blank stare

Me: Blank stare

Me: “OH WAIT!!! In Australia!?”

Michael: “Yeah…”

Me: “Ohh umm okay well then about three weeks.”

Michael: “Cool.”

The plates were finally done, so we began to mark down things on the plate. A haze of confusion settled over us.

Maria: “So… what do you we do now?”

Kelley: “Ugh. I don’t even know. I hate everything.”

Maria: “Do you think we should ask someone?”

We waited a few minutes, gazing around the room, looking for someone to rescue us from the mystifying state we had found ourselves in once again.

Kelley: “I hope short-shorts comes over to help us.”

Short-shorts did come over, but only to tie his shoes. He did so by hoisting his leg up on one of the stools, which was actually rather high. It was kind of like this, only the stool was about two feet higher. And I was facing him.

We finally figured things out, and once we saw another lab group leave, we rushed out the door, 4 HOURS AFTER THE LAB STARTED.

Then we made chicken nuggets for dinner. 

Billabong Sanctuary

We signed up to go to the Billabong Sanctuary so we could see some native (and adorable) Australian wildlife and hopefully feed them and pet them and hold them and cuddle them and love them forever and ever.

Sharkies (the student travel group on campus) had arranged the trip, and gotten our group a private tour with one of the rangers.  We can't remember his name, so we are just going to call him Nigel. 


He was enormously entertaining and very knowledgeable. Many of his jokes probably wouldn't fly if an American tour guide said them, but we found them hysterical.

"See that black and white bird over there? It has the same colors as the New Zealand rugby team. And just like kiwis, you can't trust them."
note: 'kiwis'= slang for New Zealanders 

"Koalas are a lot like Paris Hilton. Lots of people want to see them, lots of people want to take pictures of them.  But they don't do anything."

Except look cute... 

While sleeping 20 hours a day. 

After looking at the Koalas, he introduced us to Tonka the wombat. Apparently, after the cyclone that struck the area last year, Tonka lost a lot of weight due to suffering from depression from not getting "the pats and cuddles" he was used to because the park had to be closed to be rebuilt. 


When he opened Tonka's pen, the fuzzy little guy ran away.

Nigel carrying Tonka after chasing him down.

"He's the closest living thing to a teddy bear."

Rocking the shades and loving the attention. 

Us with Nigel and Tonka.

So after playing with the wombat, we walked around a bit and saw the ducks.

Maria cornered by the ducks. 

I liked feeding the ducks, even though it hurt when they bit my hand. 

Bribing them to be my friends. 

It's working! 

Smiling through the pain.

This, however, didn't stop me from feeding them every time we saw them.


Nigel then took us to see the freshwater crocodiles, explaining that crocs kill one person every two years in Australia, and generally the people they kill were doing something stupid to begin with. 


He walked into the pen, and began harassing the crocs.

"Only stupid people get bitten by crocs. So that takes them out of the gene pool. That's Darwinism right there."

As he waved his hat in front of their mouths, one of the foreign girls in our group (I think she was from somewhere in Europe) asked if we were all going to get to go in the pen too. I stared at her with wide eyes.

"Um... no!?" I probably sounded rude, but I did get to see the type of person Nigel was talking about.

Once his tour was done, he released us to have some free time.

"You guys now have free time to walk around. I know a lot of you females started lactating when you saw the kangaroos, so you can go see them if you'd like."

Maria and I went and bought little bags of food to feed the animals around the park. Especially the kangaroos. 

Little Joey in a pouch!!!!

LOOK AT THAT FACE! 

I was ecstatic. 

And so was the kangaroo mom when she found Maria's food.

Eventually the kangaroos were full, so we walked back to go watch a bird show. 

Maria's attackers.

A kite (bird of prey). 

After the bird show, reptiles were brought out. They showed us the only monogamous reptile in the world, a type of lizard. When this feature was mentioned, the females in the audience (and only the females) let out an "Awwww!" (Classic.)

Also classic: The guy who doing the reptile show (Nigel II) mentioned that although the lizards are monogamous, the male lizards leave the females during the non-mating season.  However, the males always came back with flowers and an apology for leaving which, of course, wins the females over year after year.

Next, Nigel II brought out an enormous one year old Burmese python.  He then proceeded to ask the audience if anyone had any unplanned children (to feed the python).  In Australia, this is funny to people.  In America, this would have been offensive.  

Then we went over and watched the turtle feeding and race.

Feed me.

An eel!

For the races, we convinced our side to name our turtle Sebastian ([]_ _[] )

Sebastian is on the right. 

Unfortunately Sebastian was not victorious.

Dingos!

I'm wearing shorts, I swear.

The only thing that I could think of every time I saw a dingo was..."A dingo ate my baby!"  This probably wouldn't have been funny to mention at the time, so I  just kept it to myself.

Crocodile show!

Nigel II ruining my shot.

Maria gets a perfect picture. We can leave now.

After the crocodile show, we got on the bus and headed back. For a moment it appeared as though the bus had broken down when the driver pulled to the side of the road, but I guess he just needed to check on something.

Oh, and we passed the army base.

:D