Down Under!

Life has been pretty great to me, giving me way more opportunities to travel and see things than I ever imagined. My latest surprise: Australia!!! I'm working with a professor at GWU on a project looking at how termites and microbes break down wood in habitats with different climates. 

It's amazing here!!! Tomorrow is my first official day in the Daintree Rainforest, but here's what's happened so far:

When we got to the airport before our flight, we realized that our bag had a gaping hole in it!!! Fortunately, I had my sewing kit and stitched it right up. My flight was 3 hours plus 17.5 hours plus 4 hours. I was so happy to finally be done flying for a while and slept quite a bit on the plane.

I haven't seen a lot of mammals here, but I did see this dead roadkill rodent. Turns out it's a bandicoot! They're actually pretty cute when they're alive.

This is Andrea, the spider that is living on our front porch. You can see the male spider next to her in this picture, but he's not there any more. I hope he didn't get eaten. She's in the genus Argiope--often called St. Andrew's cross spiders because they hole their legs in a cross position.

When some people think of Australia they think of the outback, but it's so green and alive up here in the rainforest part! Here's a really pretty flower.

This is a fly of some sort eating something.

We are staying at a place super close to the botanical gardens. There are so many magical flowers.

This is a golden shrimp plant--one of my favorites I've seen so far.

These leaves have the most interesting designs on them.

Cool plant.

Apparently bats here are kind of a problem. Some trees have so many that the limbs break!! This is really close to the city.

More bats.

This is a really cool insect interaction. It kind of seems like the caterpillar was scaring away the fly!

There's something really cool about this tree that I don't quite remember. I like its shape.

This is the view of the ocean and city from the ridge.

We went to the Koala cuddling zoo and my friend Sam got to cuddle this Koala! So cute.

This is me next to a Kangaroo. It looks like it could be feisty.

I wanted the wombat to come out and say hello, but all we got to see was its tail end.

There was a shop at the market that sold all sorts of crazy things made out of Kangaroo fur. I didn't but any yet, but we'll see I guess.

We went out to this waterfall-Davy's creek falls on our day off. It was amazing how quickly the rainforest turned into dry Eucalyptus forest.

Waterfall

These are my first termites!! They were so cute. I hope I see lots more.

This is Barron Falls. There was a lovely boardwalk over the rainforest that was lovely to walk over. I'd definitely go again.

Friends!

And insect friends.

Anyhow. This week starts the first official field work. We'll see how it goes!!