homestay

I’ve been at my homestay for one week now. I am staying in Freshwater, a suburb of Cairns, which is about a 20 minute bus ride from the city center. I’m staying with Helen Simpson. She has two sons, Hunter (10th grade) and MacLean (7th grade), but this week they are staying at their dad’s house, so I’m getting closer to Helen now. When I first got here, MacLean was very friendly. We played pool, which I am terrible at, and went swimming, and he made me “homemade sherbet” for dessert, which was a combination of sugar and a powdered sports drink. There is also a border collie, Maggie, and a small cat named Tabby, who I think is about half the size of Cassie (my cat).

We’ve had a bit more downtime during our homestay than we did during our first week here, with the weekends off, as well as Fridays and Mondays off. We go into town Tuesday-Thursday for lectures and fieldwork, and we’ve had a lot of reading to do while we’re at our homestays. The work is actually starting to pile up: it is time to start thinking more seriously about our Independent Study Projects; we are currently during a bird-watching assignment to analyze bird activity in suburbs; we have an upcoming “flora and fauna” project, where we will present our research to the group on our rainforest trip (I have honeyeaters and ground ferns – chose the ground ferns in honor of my dad, who loved them); and we have been reading like crazy.

The sun has been coming out almost every day now, which is exciting, and I’m starting to get some color (but wearing lots of sunscreen, of course: this part of Australia is the skin cancer capital of the world!) When we get out of class, we sometimes go down to the lagoon to swim and get some sun and just be outside.

This week we also went to the botanical gardens again. We had been there one of the first days in the pouring rain, so I was happy to go back with my camera (pictures on Facebook). We went on an “Evolutionary Trail” which showed the evolution of plants in Australia, from the first ferns and cycads to the most recently evolved angiosperms (flowering plants). There were SO many mosquitoes (mozzys) on the trail; I put bug spray on twice, but must have missed a small spot on my arm, because I have seven bites in one place!

This coming week we have many more lectures, and we’ll start analyzing our bird-watching data and writing papers for that assignment. When the homestay is over, we leave immediately for our camping trip with the Aborigines! Then we’ll be back to the Northern Greenhouse, our hostel which is sort of like home at this point. I’m enjoying the homestay. It’s strange to be away from the group after having been with them 24/7, but it’s nice to have some quiet time and some time to relax, feel settled in, and get some work done.