Work?

Unfortunately my open-water dive training sessions this weekend were postponed due to weather conditions so I won't be certified when I'm in Cairns. I should definitely have my certification for Fiji though so I will just have to do an introductory dive and some snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. Instead this weekend I just hung out with the girls that I'm living with (the weather was pretty crumby), so we just had a nice relaxed weekend and went out at night.

Since Aunt Francesca sent me some questions, I'll answer those for everyone:

Have you met a lot of locals or mainly college students?

One thing I do regret is that I came to a university dominated by exchange students. There are 40 people here from Duke alone, which makes the incentive to meet people a little bit harder. At the same time, I have met a bunch of Germans and Dutch people in my scuba class, there are a bunch of Germans that we have met in our apartments, there are other Americans that I have met who have come from other universities and programs, but, in general, I have only really made friends with a handful of Australians through meeting people out or at things like ski club. Since you all know I'm pretty independent, I hope that when I'm alone in New Zealand I will be able to meet loads of people.

What are you going to be studying once school starts? Will you travel on the weekends?

School has started. It actually started July 23, I'm just not to concerned with it right now. I do all of my work, but it's just not very hard yet. Don't quote me when my grades come back though. So, yes, I will be traveling on the weekends.. and some weekdays for that matter. Right now I'm studying:

Catchment Hydrology
Soil Mechanics
Thermodynamics
Coral Reefs

We toook a field trip to a catchment the other day to study how to design for floods, which was an interesting experience. We basically walked for a half mile through the rain in a ditch that collects storm runoff so that we could calculate the flow capacity using formulas that have never been explained to us... it was pretty cool! Anyways, I did write a twelve page paper on the Bahamas for Coral Reefs, so that counts as real work, right?

Anyhow, since I'm skipping Friday this week and Monday next week to go to the Barrier Reef, I'm thinking that I should maybe go do some work or something. Hope all is well!

Lauren