Swagman: A traveler

Despite working all weekend, I finally got a chance to post about Sydney - hopefully I can remember everything. To describe our experience, let me start by saying that after arriving in Melbourne from the Great Ocean Road on Friday evening, we needed to be at the airport at 5:15a to catch a 6:30am flight. I set my alarm for 4:15a and scheduled a cab pick-up for 4:45a. At 4:30a, however, I am awoken from a text from the cab company saying that my cab is arriving at my door - ahh! We both jumped up, grabbed our bags, and were out the door in literally 4 minutes. Although I had set my alarm, I had set it for M-F instead of Saturday. Needless to say we made it and hopped on a flight to Sydney.

Ali had booked our hostel so I had no idea where it was, except that it was relatively close to the harbor. Turns out, we stayed in Jolly Swagman, and it was in King's Cross - the red light district of Sydney. We had our choice of bars, strip clubs, and adult novelty stores. Actually, it wasn't that bad - probably the nicest red light district I've ever seen. Here's a view from our room balcony. 

We shared a room with 2 lovely German girls who had recently moved to Sydney for a year of work and travel. They were 20 years old and just graduated high school (something different about the school system). They said that their previous roommates were English, not nice, and ugly but that they liked us much better. Thanks, I think?

The weather was beautiful there, mostly. After stopping for a quick breaki we plopped in this park to soak up the sunshine.

I found a fun tree! I've always had a thing for big trees, particularly ones I can climb on or in. 

Then we walked into the Royal Botanical Gardens. It was a lot bigger than I expected. The palm trees and lush greenery made me miss Florida and the beach.

Ali and I practicing our statue poses. I think we got it...

Oh look, another tree!

At the end of the Botanical Gardens are the Sydney Harbor bridge and the Opera House. Beautiful!

It is a cool structure, but that's about it. Sadly, I didn't go to any operas.

We walked across the bridge to see Luna Park and the harbor view from the other side. Surprisingly, it was quite hard to even find the walkway of the bridge and it was long! I think we walked about 8 hours that day.

The next day we took a ferry (you'll have to trust me we are on a boat here) over to the beach. 

This is either Manly beach or Shelly beach, I can't remember. Both were packed with tourists but the air and water were still way too cold for my taste. It is only about 2 weeks into Spring so I wasn't surprised. I'm sure the locals have other beaches to go to, I can't imagine they actually stick to these beaches. 

 

On our last day we went down to Darling harbor. It was more inland than Sydney harbor and right off of the central business district so it was much quieter. 

Ali has several pictures that I need to get; I will try and post those as well. Other things that didn't earn photos - we managed to spend an unnecessary about of money in a pub and made 5 new Aussie friends there; I also bought some kangaroo jerky and will eventually muster courage to try it; we visited the Hyde Baracks museum and learned all about how Sydney (and later most of Australia) was started by convicts sent from the UK. Turns out that it was quite easy to be convicted of a crime at that time and so many (or most) people sent over were really harmless. Many people also purposely committed minor crimes so that they could come over with their relatives. There was a database of surnames to check to see if your Australian ancestors were registered convicts. I checked, there were both Brights and Burkes but somehow I don't think I have Australian relatives.

In case you were counting, here are the Australian bingo items we accomplished on this trip alone:

6. Walk on the Harbour Bridge
9. Make 5 new Aussie friends (bonus points for remembering their names)
12. Eat kangaroo (alright I wont take credit for this yet but it's coming!)
22. Take a picture with the rock art on Shelly beach.  - I didn't see any rock art but I did go to Shelly beach so I'll count this one.
25. catch a Sydney ferry from Circular Quay, Sydney Harbour to Darling Harbour and return - I took a ferry from Circular Quay to Manly beach and return, it counts.
28. Visit the Sydney Opera House (bonus points for seeing an Opera) - wasn't quite dressed for the occasion but did visit
32. Visit the Royal Botanic Gardens

33. Do the Sydney Bridge climb - didn't make the budget :(

Missing my boys

Today I got to Skype with Charlie! Kate, the girl fostering him while I'm away, dropped him off with Tamar for the weekend and I got to see my sweet Charlie bear! He seemed happy and healthy, all I can ask for. Hearing my voice caught his attention but he of course didn't have a concept of the computer and seeing my face on it. This image sure made me feel good though!

Now where's my picture of Tank....mom?

Comments

I've heard from a few of you that you couldn't post anonymous comments. Sorry about that! I fixed the setting...comment away, I love hearing from you all!

Great Ocean Road

The past 5 days have been nothing short of a whirlwind. I'll try and condense it for an enjoyable read and share some of the knowledge I've learned along the way (some tidbits are more useful than others).

Our first trip was down the Great Ocean Road, a coastal road south of Melbourne. We went with a tour guide named Todd who owns Ride Tours - it was a fantastic tour and he was hilarious. 

Ali getting ready for our adventure.

Our first stop was Logan's beach for whale watching. Sadly, there were no whales for us to see. 

Our next stop was at Tower Hill State Game Reserve for lunch in a crater. There was hardly people around, but plenty of animals. 

There are wild emus, kangaroos, koalas, and echidnas all around. We ate lunch with these emus. They were harmless but certainly interested in our lunch. 

What's this little guy next to the bus? It's a kangaroo just hanging out!

We were told there was a koala near by so we went looking. Turns out he was eye-level in a tree on the path - fantastic photo opportunity. Now I know all of you are wondering if I pet it, picked it up, or carried it home. Absolutely no to all of the above. This koala is in the wild and not just a pet to pick up and carry around. They have exceptionally sharp claws and have been known to do some damage when provoked. I just enjoyed watching him eat and then fall asleep. Because I won't be paying to hold any koalas in the zoo, I think this counts as the first goal on the list. I also count that kangaroo above as number 18.

Here's a cool video showing how close we were. Also, this is when we learned one of those fun tid-bits I mentioned. As Todd, our tour guide, put it "koalas eat shit for the first 12 months." Essentially, baby koalas don't eat leaves until about 1 year of age. Until then, they rely on their mother's milk and, well, poop for obtaining nutrients. Lovely.

We then headed up the coast. The coast down there is all limestone and eroding quickly. As you will see in future pictures, it is very dangerous to go near the edge of the cliff as large (and I mean LARGE) sections fall off all the time.

Oh yea, it was FREEZING for much of our trip. We're talking in the 40s and really really windy. 

Don't believe me?Take a look at this video.

That night we stayed in a hostel in Port Campbell. There were 10 beds and 5 of us but Ali and I jumped at the opportunity to sleep on a top bunk again.

The next day, we made more stops along the coast. Sometimes we could go down to the beach.

These signs were everywhere. Basically, you are quite likely to fall off if you step out onto the ledge. 

Our trip then took a turn inland and we visited a rain forest. As cold as I had been I could not wait for a rain forest  Turns out, it was a cool temperate rain forest and actually got COLDER as we went in deeper. It was still quite lush and beautiful. There were many of these Mountain Ash trees. They are the largest flowering trees in the world, second largest overall after the Redwoods (which I have seen as well!). The hollowing of the tree is actually a sign of its decay, they rot from the inside out.

We then made it to the 'original great ocean road' and the limestone rock gave way to these amazing rolling green hills. Fun fact - the Great Ocean Road was constructed by Australian servicemen after WWI. They essentially created it by hand and it took them almost 13 years!

From the bus we spotted a few more koalas - see her baby?

The ride also included several rainbows. The first one was cool, the first double rainbow was also cool, the third through fifth were less cool.

Still cool enough to take a picture. 

Then, we saw a few more kangaroos just hanging out. Guess where they were...

On the golf course! Apparently these kangaroos got pushed out of their natural habit by brush fires a few years back and have been on the golf course ever since. Makes for an interesting game I'm sure.

I have a good amount to post from Sydney as well but this one took forever so give me a few days...

Sneaky peak

Ali and I have been out on the Great Ocean Road for two days. We're headed to Sydney tomorrow for three days and then I have to work Tuesday through Friday so it will be a bit before I can get a proper post in about our adventures. In the meantime, here are a few fun pictures.

An emu, crossing the street in front of our bus.

Ali walking on the beach between massive cliffs of limestone.

A view of the coastline.

What EXACTLY do you do?

A picture of me at work. I am generally the first one there and the last one to leave. This day I was the ONLY one there; thus, I played with the camera on the computer.

More than once I have been asked by family and non-psychology friends what I actually do - both in general and here in Australia. I'm going to attempt to answer that question in this post, for both those friends/family but also myself as I question my next career move. 

Broadly, I am a researcher. I have been trained to find out the answers to questions in a systematic way, usually with the hopes of eliminating the bias of someone's opinion to get at the 'true' answer. My training has involved learning about theory (e.g., ideas about how relationships work), methodology (i.e., how do we test this question?), and statistics (i.e., how do we use numbers to see if we are right?). Typically, but not always, researchers work at a university as a professor. In this position, they conduct their research, teach courses, and share their research findings with the research community. 

Conducting research is done in a variety of ways, depending on your area of study. When I study families, for example, I might put up flyers in the community asking parents to call us if they are interested in helping with research. When they come into the laboratory I might observe them interacting or ask them to fill out questionnaires. Sharing findings is usually done by publishing in scientific journals (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine). Generally, the only people who have access to these journals are doctors in large hospitals and other professors at universities. The idea is that these professors then use this research to inform their own research and that doctors or other clinicians will use the research in their practice. If someone published, for example, that a certain drug was not effective in treating high blood pressure then doctors would (hopefully) stop prescribing that drug. 

The research that I am doing in Australia is quite interesting. Researchers here (social workers, MDs, and psychologists) were interested in how parents are affected when they have an infant born with congenital heart disease (CHD). They were mostly interested in how it affects the parents; That is, how do parents feel when they find out that their baby has CHD? How is their marriage affected? How is their relationship with the baby affected? Does it matter if they find out during the pregnancy versus after the baby is born? Does it matter if the baby has only one surgery compared to many? The data had already been collected before I arrived so now I get to just figure out the answers to these questions. I use statistics to answer the questions. That is, I look at relationships among characteristics of the parents and determine the likelihood that this relationships would be found again if someone collected this same information from other parents with infants with CHD. In one of the papers I am working on I am looking at the relationship between disease severity and the father-infant relationship. I have found that if the illness is more severe, the relationship suffers. The relationship is protected, however, if the father feels like he has high amounts of social support. 

Also - just thought I'd throw this in there- this is a picture of the meerkats at the hospital. I mentioned before that we have a lot of green spaces, an aquarium, and a meerkat habitat in the hospital, this is it!. 

Ali Watts is coming!

One of my very best friends is coming to visit in 2 days! Ali and I went to UGA together, but she left us in August of last year for bigger and better things in DC. I didn't realize it until now but last time I saw her was the Dammit Zombie premier last Halloween - almost a year ago! There are so many fantastic pictures I wanted to post here to capture our relationship, but I narrowed it down to these three.

This is us jello wrestling at Ali's good-bye party in Summer 2011. Summer heat, 60 packs of jello, and a blow-up pool are all you need! 

This is us about to jump out of a plane. That's right, jump out of a plane.

This is us after the movie premier. Ali threw together this Robin costume the day before and she looked great! I was on crutches because I sprained my foot the day before when I made Ali run. The good friend that she is, she brought me to the ER when I woke up in excruciating pain that morning. 

Can't wait to see her and add many more pictures and memories to our history of adventures!