Saturday, November 18, 2017

Last week we went to Heron Island. So Heron Island is in the southern Great Barrier Reef. The island is 0.8 kilometers long. To get to Heron Island, we had to drive 9 hours to Gladstone and from there it was a 2-hour ferry ride to Heron. On the island, there is a resort and a research station owned by the University of Queensland. We stayed at the resort but the students stayed at the research station because families with children are not allowed to stay at the research station. There are many labs at the research station, where scientists can go to do their research on the coral reefs and animals that live there. This was the last trip for the students as a part of The Marine Biology Class.


Heron Island is full of amazing creatures. While we were there I saw a lot of marine life and a lot of birds. The island is full of birds and I am serious. When you walk up from the beach there is bird poop covering the sidewalk and birds fly into your face. One even knocked an ice cream cone out of my mom's hand. There are over 800K birds on the island. The two main kinds of birds are The Black Noddies and The Shearwaters. The Black Noddies were the ones that would fly into your faces while we walked on the island’s footpaths. The Shearwater birds make their burrows underground and sound like moaning ghosts or crying babies, we couldn’t even sleep. In the olden days, sailors would not go on the island because they thought the island was haunted by ghosts!
Everyday me, my mom, and the other family= we would go snorkeling twice a day. We would see fishes, turtles, rays, and even sharks.
While we were on the island the turtles were laying their eggs. The 2 kinds of turtles we saw were green turtles which are really large and loggerhead turtles, which are smaller. One night we went out to the beach and saw about 10 turtles making their nests. The turtles at dusk start to swim onto the shore.  Then they walk up the beach across sand and rocks to the edge of the beach where there are grasses and trees. They shimmy themselves into the sand and use their flippers to dig and shovel the sand into a huge deep hole. When they start to lay eggs, they cover up the eggs with sand as they go.  Then, the turtles cover the entire hole with sand and they slide back into the water and swim away.  We watched a turtle dig her hole for 45 minutes and she barely even done with it. Sometimes it can take most of the night for a turtle to

find the right spot, dig her hole, lay her eggs, cover it up and go back into the ocean. The baby turtles will probably hatch in December or January. I wish I could be on Heron Island to see the baby turtles hatching and going into the water.
At Heron Island, there is a lot of different kinds of coral. While we were snorkeling we saw Staghorn Coral which looks like antlers. We also saw blue, orange and purple coral. To tell you the truth I did not know that there were so many different kinds of coral. In between the coral, we saw a lot of fish and even some turtles were hiding in the coral.
And basically, this is my trip to the Heron Island with my mom .it is indeed a very fun place to go for a trip.
At last my My favorite part of the trip was:

  1. The food
  2. All of the cool creatures
  3. Snorkeling
  4. Playing pool after dinner (the game pool *not swimming in the pool)

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

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I decided for this blog I would tell you about life in Brisbane, so here it goes. Every day I wake up and do some math. Then my mom and I go out somewhere in the city. Next, we come back and do some work. Around 3 I will head down to swimming. After swimming, we have dinner and repeat the day again. Brisbane has been my home for the last three months.


In Brisbane, we live in a small apartment. In the apartment, we have four rooms: the kitchen/livingroom, my room, my mom’s room, and the bathroom. We live 5 minutes from the campus, which means it is really easy to go to swimming and lectures. My favorite part of my apartment is how small it is. I like how small it is because you realize how much you actually don’t need in your life. We have a few clothes, some books, sketchbooks and my computer. Pretty simple.

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The population of Brisbane is 2.4 million people, and the city is full of fun things to do and see. My favorite parts of the city are the street art, the CityCat and all of the museums. In Australia, there are many kinds of art. Street art is all over the city. When you walk along the river you pass beautiful masterpieces that don’t really make sense. Street art can be a lot of things, it can be a face, or a landscape, or even a statement that can hopefully affect the whole community. Example: street art in Brisbane can be the bridges that light up at night in different colors, or the sculptures around the city, even an abstract piece of artwork painted somewhere under a bridge. You can see it when you drive to the airport or even walking to the CityCat.

The CityCat is a ferry that takes you up and down the Brisbane River. The Brisbane River runs through the middle of Brisbane and divides the city between the north and south sides. The CityCat ferry is a fun way to get around the city instead of taking the bus. You can just hop on the ferry and get off at any of the 18 stops.

At UQ I swim in their club team. Swimming here is so different from at home. Here we swim in a 50-meter pool instead of a 25-yard pool and we do dryland training every practice. The pool we swim in is outside, which means the only way we get out of practice is if there is a lightning storm outside. Many times we keep swimming in the pool even if there is rain (and a little thunder)!

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