It's okay to be scared of them. Some early hominids must have figured out that some of them can hurt us, so now many humans are scared of all spiders. It's unfortunate, because they can objectively be cool (though in my heart of hearts I still think they are ookie spookie). I want to talk about the golden orb weavers outside our dorm rooms. Some of them are massive--at least as big as the palm of my hand--and they're really menacing with their long-ass orange-banded legs and cold, gray bodies. They build intricate layers of webs, and many of them live together in their giant happy silky society of nope. I usually walk quickly past them avoiding eye contact, like awkwardly avoiding that one coworker that you secretly hate. But, on our second day on the island, I noticed the silk of their webs catch the sun. It is truly a lustrous, deep, shimmering gold. I have never been so floored by the beauty of one small product of the animal kingdom. I've also never experienced such a poignant juxtaposition of awe and fear. These animals are just doing their life, giving nary a fuck about me, spinning air into gold, and now I think about them every day. I watch them every chance I get with reverence, admiration, and horror. This is not my photo, I'm sorry. I meant to take a photo today, and didn't get around to it. From now on my goal is to take more photos of things. And also, you are welcome for making that photo real small because otherwise I'd probably have to add a goddamn TRIGGER WARNING BECAUSE YIKES! Onto the day's events. Busy day! I usually enjoy being put to work, even in wildly windy conditions that blow my body around in the sea. We took sediment cores along a transect to measure the amount of invertebrates near the coral reef patches. In other words, we dug up sand to look for bugs n shit. It was pretty meditative (a kinder word for "tedious") to look through the scopes for hours, searching for tiny invertebrates hiding in the sediment. I found the second most tiny purple rocks, a Heron Island symbol for patience (as of today). I didn't mind the day at all, and I keep discovering more people around me who are good to banter with. I just remembered I do have a photo that I took recently. It's of the cool-ass shipwreck near the island. Behold: This is all invaluable and salient experience that I'm so happy to add to my life and resume. I dedicated so much of my life to music and social work, and feel like I built a very respectable career doing those things after I failed out of college that first go-around. Now that I've returned to school, well-travelled, confident, finally disciplined/organized, happier, and in a completely different field of study, I feel tremendously lucky to happen upon these opportunities that will help me get the most out of school and shape my new career.
I'm supremely grateful to be wanted here. PS. Guys, never feel bad if you need to leave school (or any other relevant hard thing), gain some life skills, and come back when you're ready. Also, never feel bad if you're scared of spiders even though they are small and mostly not deadly. They are scary, and it is okay. It is also okay to be in second place in the purple rock-finding contest. That's still a lot of rocks.
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Today is May 30th. We visited the coral reef today. It was glorious and I saw so many animal creatures. I didn't take a picture, but I did take a screenshot of my computer game that looks kind of the same: The game is called Bubble Trouble, and it's from the 90s. I don't think anyone plays it anymore on Earth except for me. Consequently, it is actually possible I'm the best at it out of anyone in the world. My high score is over 1.1 million points. Wouldn't it be neat to be the very best at a thing in the whole world?
We also did a lab today. We set up transects and looked at things in the sea. I thought my lab partner and I would be a dream team, but it turned out that neither of us knew how to tell the difference between algae and coral. Then, after we figured that out, we still ran into trouble telling the difference between dead coral and rocks. Here are the profound questions we pondered the most: 1. Are coral corpses the same as rocks? 2. Are tiny rocks the same as sediment? 3. At what point is rocks pebbles? 4. At what point is pebbles sand? Besides the lab, I ate delicious meals and listened to my book (shoutout to Brando Sando; this is my first of his books because I want to be able to talk about more stuff with my sister who is a superfan), and definitely didn't study the animals that are going to be on the ID quiz on Monday. I don't sound like a very good student. Hopefully Edd and Trisha skip over today's post. That about covers it. I otter call it a night. Thanks for tuning in! Yo, Trisha and Edd, see that time stamp? So far so good on this blog thing. Look at me, gettin' credit for doin' work. Hey to whomever is watching. This blog exists for the porpoise of documenting my perspective of this adventure. Indeed, it's time to be on Heron Island for sea creature viewing. Such magnificent animals and plants under those waves that we get to put into our eyes, because we're lucky enough to have the means to visit their silent, salient, saline world. It feels like humans shouldn't be allowed to see those bustling coral cities. Imagine us, ridiculous hairless apes, hopelessly land-dwelling yet somehow floating around in the sea with a pair of goggles and a pipe to breathe through: the smallest plastic vessel allowing us access to a forbidden world. Am I blogging right? I'll make sure to do the bass I can to bring you quality content. I don't have any pictures of Heron Island yet, and though I could show you all my exciting pictures of my 3 weeks in Queensland/New South Wales before this class started, this isn't the time nor place, and you probably don't care about that anyway. So instead, feast your eyes on this sea creature I found on Google images: Because frankly, Scallop, I don't give a clam.
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