A weekend to remember

This weekend was one I will never forget in my life. I am always so amazing at the things that happen in my life, the opportunites that the Lord places in my life. I believe it was friday night, we were all headed to a pub to see some friends play guitar and bass. Don't worry everyone, I was not going to drink, I was the designated driver for the night. Even though alcohol is practically a lifestyle here, I have no desire at all to give in. Anyway... I was just sitting there listening when this girl approached me and said "Hey can we talk in private?" I of course said sure. She pulled me over to an empty table and said "I heard from one of your friends that you are Mormon. I am an inactive mormon. I was raised mormon." I of course was so excited! We automatically became friends right then and there. She then just began to cry and tell me her story.

"I became inactive and started drinking and smoking. I really want to stop and I have decided to become active again, and I have been praying to have someone come into my life for support, because there is none here. I have been wishing for someone to come into my life to show me the way back to the gospel"

When she told me that I just felt to blessed to be part of this wonderful religion. I felt so blessed to be in the right place at the right time, and living a life where I would be able to help someone like that. Living a worthy life is so worth it everyone. To anyone who will ever read this: living a life in line with the precepts and principles you have been taught and know are right, whether you are religious or not, will bring blessings into your life. You will be able to serve others in ways you never thought you would. It will bring you more joy than anything else temporal ever will, so always lead a good life. It sounds simple, but when it comes down to it, black and white can be hard to decern, so know where you stand. I am so grateful to be who I am, and to be born with the morals and knowledge that I was.

As the night went on we became better friends. I am so excited to get to know her more. So also as the night when on, my friends got slightly more tipsy (obviously) and Mark decided it would be a good idea to start irish dancing, and then challenge me to do so as well. Little did he know that I did Irish for 8 years ha ha. So when he was just skipping around, I did a few irish leaps, and jaws hit the floor. I don't think anyone expected me to be any good, let alone get the air that I did. It made me really happy to dance again. I do miss dancing, so who knows maybe out here I will get into out here!

Going down, going up, throwing up.

This past week I decided to shell out and get my dive certification here in Byron Bay. Awesome idea! So the first two days were lots of theory and pool time.

The first time I breathed through a regulator I felt like a mixture between Darth Vader and like I was about to get some dental work/surgery done. Odd feeling. When I first put my head under the water, my lungs felt like they would explode because, oh yeah, I was holding my breath. Totally the opposite of scuba. Go Hannah. When I finally gasped for air, I was half expecting to breath in a mouthful of water, and have to come coughing up out of the water (we were in the shallow end), but no water hit my lungs (obviously). It was the most liberating feeling of my life. I have spend a good 8 years or so snorkeling, and a good 18 years swimming, used to fighting for air, swallowing water. etc etc. If I could have any super power in the world, anyone who knows me, knows that I would totally pick gills. The ocean is my love in life. It means the world to me. So after the first initial shock of "holy crap I'm breathing underwater", the complete bliss set in. I felt so peaceful and just a total sense of belonging in the water. Truly incredible.

Today was our first day or open water dives. Let's just say that the bliss did not continue. On the boat ride I felt totally fine, no sea sickness or anything, just happy to be heading out to Julianne Rocks. There was about 3 meter swells so the sea was pretty rough today, but we figured it would be alright (bad mistake #1). When we got out there and attached to the mooring line and started to put on our gear, that's when the sea sickness hit. It was like automatic awful. So the dive instructors just got me in the water asap. After doing the traditional backward-fall into the water with gear dive move, I felt totally fine just being in the water. When we started diving down the mooring line, I continued to feel just fine. we got down to the bottom, around 8 meters, and I felt completely happy, just so excited to finally be a "fish". As we were heading down, a batfish came and hung out next to me, seeming to just say "welcome to my reef". It made me heaps excited! I love batfish. They are amazing. We saw loads of stingrays, some schools of yellow damselfish, around a few thousand fish. It was magical. There was also a big blue parrot fish that followed us for a while, chomping down on his coral. There were some reef clownfish, some moorish idols, and some silverfish and everything. Visibility was only about 2 meters, so that was a little disappointing. After only about 20 minutes we headed back up unfortunately. The currents were a bit strong. I thought the dive was going to end fairly well, until we got to the 5 meter safety stop. The moment we got there I instantly felt nauseous, and started the whole dry heaving/verge of barfing motion. All I could think was "I will not last three minutes at this safety stop". The second my head broke water, I spit out my regulator and proceeded to just dry heave a whole lot. I only had a few rice crackers that morning, so I was just dry heaving lots of stomach acid up. So not fun. It is a different experience spewing with your face in water. I think I like it better if I had to choose between that and a toilet.

When getting certified, we do two consecutive dives, so one right after the other. We headed back to the dive center to grab new tanks (and sea sickness pills and an apple). The same scenario went down, fine on the ride out, slightly feeling queazy putting on gear, and just fine once in the water. The swell had gone down so we all though visibility would be better, currents would be calmer etc etc. Descending this though continued until we got about 3 meters away from the mooring line. Then it hit us like a brick wall: the E.A.C. Yes, for all you Finding Nemo watchers this is the same EAC, East Australian Current that holds all the turtles. It's a brutal current in real life. It hit us, and automatically threw us around the other side of Julianne. The dive instructors were all trying to get us to swim perpendicular to get out of the current, but to no avail. We were getting thrown around, and panicked. It was super fun. Not. After about 10-15 minutes of getting dragged by the current we all decided to surface. Once again, the 5 meter barf line hit. This time was even better though. We were now on the opposite side of Julianne and had to wait for the boats. And the swell had kicked right back up. So there we were, a little clump of divers going up and down, up and down. Somehow during the dive and ascent, the apple that I had eaten between dives had decided to compact itself back into a whole apple in my stomach, then proceed back up. There was no force behind this barf, just a giant mass that I could feel every centimeter of the way back up my throat. When I finally managed to throw it up, it was just this apple mass like "would you like to eat me again?" It was awful. So I just proceeded to spend the entire time floating, waiting for the boat, ralfing my brains out. I can't even remember the last time I threw up, so I hope this was my one time for the next 10 years or so.

The second dive did have it's beauties though. I saw a guitarfish, about 2 meters long. It was lovely. Also a whole school of sand rays, just hovering above a sand bank in the current. There was around 40 or so rays. It was quite a sight. I also saw a big black bull ray, about 1.5 meters across. He was big! Absolutely gorgeous though. The good thing about Julianne is now I know that there is tons of sea life out there waiting for me to explore it! I am very excited to go out again. Back on shore the dive masters said that if we could dive in that, we could pretty much go anywhere in the world and dive. They said it was the worst dive conditions to possible imagine. I just wanted to scream "WELL THEN WHY DID YOU TAKE US OUT THERE?! WE'RE BEGINNERS! THIS IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE US FALL IN LOVE WITH DIVING, YA IDIOT!" But i obviously kept my mouth shut. I am grateful for the experience so I know what it can be like, but I pray that I never have to go back into water like that again.

My first day of legit Australian snorkeling

Today after dolphin research was done I decided to stay in Byron and snorkle around. Oh, and speaking of research, today we saw two small sharks from the lighthouse! I was so excited. They looked either like spiny dogsharks, or some form of sandshark, most definitely harmless, and too small to really do anything.

Mark and Jared decided to drive up as well. Since both of them were born and raised here in Australia, I just assumed they would know how to snorkel, right? Wrong. Mark had only snorkeling once before in some nasty lake. Jared decided to go to the pub instead. So it was just me and Mark, which meant I got to teach Mark how to snorkel. It was pretty fun. I had my pair of flippers, and he didn't have a pair, so I let him use mine, which meant I got to swim twice as hard. I love it (I really did).

We walked about twenty minutes along the beach until we got to a more sheltered area with smaller and less waves, seeing as it was a pretty windy day. Because of the wind, pretty sure that every blue bottle in Byron Bay was washing towards shore. So what doest that equal? The top of my left foot getting stung like crazy. We were walking right along the waves because it was hot, and we could see all the blue bottles, so we were just jumping over them. I jumped over on, and landed right as another one washed up. Ironically, 2 minutes before that I had said to Mark "I wonder what it feels like to actually get stung by one of those, I'm just curious". Thank you instant karma. And it hurts just as bad as everyone says.

After about an hour of just sticking close to shore, and seeing only a few goatfish, I made Mark swim out to a reef with me. When we got there, I was automatically in heaven. Right there was a school of squid, just waiting to welcome me it seemed. They were pretty shy, so I only swam with them for a few minutes. I then just saw several damsel fish, a few angelfish, a school or some whitefish, and just some random other small reef fish. Then the real treat happened. I saw a peice of seaweed, and then did a double take. This was no peace of seaweed, it was a leafy sea dragon. I nearly had a seizure! They are so beautiful, and not very common, not to mention they are pretty easy to overlook. When I looked up to grab Mark, and looked back down, my sea dragon was gone, but I still felt insanely lucky for seeing him even for just a moment. It was incredible.

It was a wonderful day to spend snorkeling, a bit windy, but still worth it.

It's a great day(s) to be a scientist

These past 4 days have been solid research days for me. That means waking up at 5 am, getting on the road at 6, and starting observations at 7 in the lighthouse. We don't finish until one, so it's 6 hours on your feet yelling out:

"I GOT A POD! Looks like 6 adults, 2 calves... wait make that 14 adults, 3 calves! They are milling. Definitely milling. Oh, I got a tail slap! Wohoo! OH MY GOSH Did you guys see that leap? Full out of water porpoising! Calf is belly up. Oh man he is the cutest thing ever! Hey we got one more calf over here."

It's pretty awesome. On thursday we initially saw a pod of about 6 adults as soon as we got to the lighthouse. It then went dead. Completely dead. It was a perfect day though, no wind, no waves, and water visibility was awesome. We did not see another dolphin until 11. They were all at some secret meeting or something, and we weren't invited! When we did finally see a dolphin, it was coming around the southern point from Tallows Beach (the other side of the cape of Byron Bay). As I started observing with some binoculars, I slowly started to see more and more as they were making their way around the cape. It was a pod of 44 adults and 4 calves! A pod of nearly 50 dolphins! It was definitely a once in a life time sight. I don't know why I was so lucky to be there. They were so gorgeous. They were all traveling north, and you could see pairs of synchronized dolphins, some were mothers and calves, others were just good friends. Dolphins that are tightly bonded synchronize their movements. It's beautiful. I now know what synchronized swimming was adapted from! Thankfully it was such a perfect day. Looking down from the lighthouse you could almost count everyone with the naked eye, it was such a beautiful day. When they got around the point into the bay, all of sudden it was dolphin central! Another pod of 13 showed up, along with a pod of 4, then another pod of about 6. They then decided to play some tricks on us and all mix up together, and spread around, then clump back up. Lets just say deciphering pods was impossible. Pod D became Pod DE, Pod E became EF, etc etc. They certainly had fun messing up our data.

Saturday I was out in the research kayak. It was incredible. Me and Sara (the head of research at SCU) headed out and just waited for some dolphins to show up. And waited...and waited.... Nothing! The entire time we were on the water there were no dolphins! The lighthouse radios us where to go, and they had nothing for us to look at. Just because they had no dolphins for us doesn't mean there was nothing to look at. The way the currents were flowing was causing a huge amount of blue bottles to head into the bay. Blue bottles look like portugese-man-of-war jellyfish. The have this clear bulbous top that floats on the water, then their tentacles are underwater. Blue bottles have a few short tentacles right off the bulb, but they then have one really, really long tentacle that reaches out. Most tentacles were up to a few feet long, while the top floating on the water was only a few centimeters. The biggest one I saw was about half the size of a dollar bill, so one wouldn't expect it to have a huge tentacle flowing out from it. The reason they are called blue bottles is their tentacles are all this electric dark blue. I have never seen a color like that before. It's looks like that electric royal blue you see on peacock's necks. But it's brighter. So we were paddling through hundreds of them. It was another incredible sight. I managed to look down at the water at the perfect time, one blue bottle had a neon blue lizard fish, about 2 inches long wrapped up in it's tentacles. It had it's pectoral fins all fanned out, and it was beautiful. It was almost the exact same color as the tentacle, which I found very interesting. I also found a floating shoe, and we grabbed it to take it and throw it away. As it was sitting in the boat, slowly all these creatures started crawling out! This show was like a little ecosystem! When I looked closer I saw a bunch of little blue and white worms, sand flees, and this creature that looked like a mixture between a crab, spider, and clam. It was bizarre. There was also a blue bottle inside which I was very excited about, so I got to get a really good look at it without getting stung. It's incredible how versitile and flexible sea creatures are. They can make a home out of anything. However, that does not mean it is okay to have trash in the ocean! No excuses world.

Today I was back up in the lighthouse. It was actually a pretty uneventful morning. We saw a pod right away, then nothing until around 10. Seems to be the reoccurring theme with these dolphins. When there aren't dolphins around, I'm still looking for sea life. The bay is packed with turtles, schools of fish, and all kinds of rays. As I was following this ray just cruising around the bay, out of no where he just jumped about 6 feet in the air! This ray ( I believe it was a cownose ray) just launched itself right out of the water! It was like he wanted to fly out of the water as well. I have seen pictures of this happening with whiptail rays, and it's something I have always wanted to see, but seriously, what are the odds of ever seeing that? Today I felt to blessed to be in the right place at the right time. Dolphins did finally show, once again headed in from Tallows. There was 14 adults and 3 calves. One calf was probably only a few weeks old. he was tiny, the smallest dolphin I have ever seen. He was smaller than half the size of the adults. He was so darling. It was definitely play time for him because he was leaping, breaching, slapping, and swimming belly up for us. It was almost like he knew we were there and he wanted to put on a show. Seeing something that small leap it just incredible. It makes human babies seem so useless! They can't leap, they can't do anything! I want a dolphin baby! But seriously, they are such a beautiful species.

Mark's Big Jump

yeah I was way too scared to jump off this cliff, but after some peer pressure we got Mark too.

Waterfall Jumping

So you know how you always see commercials on the travel channel about Australia and there's people jumping off waterfalls into this amazing pools? Yeah, that was totally me this week. There are two waterfalls pretty close to Lismore, about 10 minutes away. One is about 15-20 feet high, and it's just like one cliff into a pool. It's amazing. The second waterfall is like a crater, so there is cliffs all around this pool. Some cliffs are probably 40 or so feet high on one side, and on the other they are smaller, anywhere from 10-30 feet high. There are trees everywhere around the edge that crazy kids climb up into and jump out of, and do back flips, which put them at about 55 feet up I would say. So pretty darn high. And it's not just kids actually. Yesterday when we were all there at the falls, there was a 40ish year old man, probably about 200 pounds who was doing cliff dives, like face first dives! It was incredible! We all thought he was dead for sure when he started climbing up the tree as well, but he survived the jump!

Don't worry mother, I was not climbing up trees, doing backflips, or even jumping off the 40 foot side. I hiked around and jumped off the 20 ft side. Much much safer, I promise. It was so much fun though. Everything was just beautiful, the sun was shinning, and we were totally surrounded by green forests that were stunning. So to climb out of this crater you can go the long way up around the cliff, or you can just climb up a rope right next to the waterfall. So being me, I totally climb up the rope! So much fun. So after a few times of climbing up said rope and jumping in, the 40 year old Aussie started totally hitting on me, it was great. He was like "That's really impressive to see a girl jump, then climb up a cliff face." I just said I was a rough and tough american who enjoyed adventure. He replied "oh, well i'm just a dumb Aussie." ha ha great come-back.

Over all though, it was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. This is definitely living.

Flying Foxes and Vegimite

So this week I discovered two great things about Australia: Vegimite and flying foxes.

Why is Vegimite so under appreciated in the USA? It's amazing! It's seriously the best salt substitute ever! I bought my first jar ever this week. I went home and made a vegimite and avacado sandwich, it was awesome! Also tomatoes and vegimite, delicious! What's that problem that america has with everyone eating too much salt? I can't remember the name of all the ridiculous diseases, but they would not exist if people used vegimite. It's healthy for you too!

My friend Mark here at Orion introduced me to Vegimite. He was making vegimite pasta, which is incredible. You throw some cheese and a spoonful of vegimite in a bowl, then pour the hot pasta over it and mix it all up. It melts the vegimite and it's so good! Thank you Mark. He's pretty cool. My first thought when I saw him was "wow I'm looking at an 80's musician, I didn't know they still existed". But in reality he's fun. Constantly insulting me though, or rather just my life (the music I like, the tv shows I like, the fact I use a mac etc). P.s. He's awesome (he's sitting behind me eating ice cream singing Toto Hold the Line.)

So enough about vegimite, now on to the flying foxes! I had no idea that Australia had fruit bats! They are huge! So cool! One day driving to the plaza my friend Jared was like "hey look over there" and there was just trees full of them! I nearly jumped out of the car to go look at them! Then tonight me and Mark walked to the plaza and we walked on the street with all the bat trees (I call them bat trees) and it was sunset, so they were all silhouetted hanging in the trees, by a pink sky. I just stood there and watched them stretch their wings getting ready to head out for the night. So beautiful. Why doesn't the US have flying foxes? They are by far one of the coolest land mammals alive. I think tomorrow I'll head down that road and watch them for a while again.