And the semester comes to an end...

It's almost over, my last fall semester at GT. All that's left is one class tomorrow morning, two final exams, and a take home exam. Then I start my last semester here. My last semester, can you believe that? I can't...

I'm pretty excited about next semester, though. Double A and I have lots planned... we're going to have dinner making parties and go to the gym and just have a generally awesome semester. At least all of that will make up for the crappy classes I have to take. I am really not looking forward to taking field methods or data analysis. Field methods would be okay if it weren't purely chemistry field methods, which will be no help to me in a geology career. And somehow, I have to finish my research and write two theses... somehow. But I'm auditing a French class! That should be exciting, right?

But, I still don't know what I'm doing after I graduate. I should figure that out...

Two spaces or not two spaces?

I've finally finished the first drafts of my three NSF essays. I must say, I really did not enjoy it. It's so hard to incorporate "broader impacts" into it all like they want. Writing these essays gave me a headache, which I still have.

And in this whole writing process, I learned that I have been wrong about something all my life. Apparently it's wrong to use two spaces at the beginning of each sentence! I've been doing this since I can remember, and now it's just second nature. It supposedly went out of style when they switched from typewriters (which use a monospaced font) to computers (which use a custom spaced font). I don't know what to think anymore.

I think I'll keep my two spaces, thank you very much.

Updates...

I visited a potential grad school this weekend. I really like it there, everyone seemed pretty nice. I hope I get in...

Meanwhile, we are still waiting on microspheres for my research with Joe. And I think we will finally start sieving my Colorado samples this week (progress!). I was really getting tired of the waiting around to do stuff. And is it just me or does the word "sieving" look like it is spelled wrong?

We have our second field trip for structure this weekend. It's mostly "show and tell" I am told, but who knows for sure? Kurt does, but he's not saying anything. And, we're getting t-shirts made for structure! I got to design them, so I'm really excited to see them.

I've been looking at buying a new camera. I have found lots and lots of good reviews for the Panasonic FZ35, but they recently came out with a new model (the FZ40). I'm a bit wary of buying a new model before it's had ample time to have it's flaws pointed out, but then I feel like I should not buy the old version because it is the old version.

Random thoughts of procrastination

My desk has more rocks on it than anything else.

Why is it so hot in October? I dislike this weather.

What are you supposed to wear for an interview to a geology school? I feel like business clothes are not appropriate for geology, but then you should dress up for an interview.

When is the next GT Observatory night? Did I already miss it?

How am I supposed to remember 35 notecards worth of test material?

Grad school... where to go? No one ever replies to my emails. Except for the guy at UTK. He's super awesome at replying. Can I get into CU Boulder without talking to any professors first?

Why are the GTPD such jerks? And why are they so creepy? I mean, why would you sneak up behind some innocent pedestrian in your cop car, and surprise them with a loud "BEEP!"? And why do they feel the need to set off their alarms at 3 in the morning for no reason?

I didn't realize Bruno Mars was so short until I saw him on SNL. They really fool you in the videos.

I don't want to study, but I guess I will..... maybe...........

Nostalgia

Right now, I am feeling just that, nostalgia. A desire to go back in time, to go to where I once was. A need for a rewind button. Maybe it has something to do with the cool weather...

A chilly breeze reminds me of wandering around Queenstown and Christchurch aimlessly. Drinking tea reminds me of the night in Te Anau where my friend and I sat by a cozy fire and worked on our module assignments, sipping chai and sharing good conversation.

The clear fall sky reminds me of panoramas of wide open spaces fringed with mountains in Colorado. Watching picturesque sunsets with rainbows of color outside my window only remind me of the evenings spent in Colorado watching the sunset change from color to color. The nights spent braving the cold for the smallest bit of contact with the outside world.

I want so much to go back...

Making connections

I've been working on "networking" with geology professors at different grad schools recently. What an ordeal it is! Write an email, reread said email 15 times, attach super long CV, send, and wait for a reply. The waiting is the worst. Some professors reply the next day. Others, not so much. I've been waiting five days for one of them to reply. And I know he's in his office. I saw him give a presentation last week when I was in Colorado. Does it really take that much time and effort to say, "Hey, I got your email and will look at your CV when I have time." Or just cut to the chase, "Hey, I'm not accepting MS students right now." Just let me know something.

So, for those who don't reply to my emails, I'm going to take it a step further. I got the idea from one of the professor's websites. It said, "Please try good old U.S. mail if email isn't working!" So this is my plan. I will send them a letter in the mail. Hopefully, it won't get lost or ignored like an email might. I mean, they may get 3o emails a day, but only 2 or 3 letters a day. And soon, one of them will be from me.

Pictures from Colorado

I have uploaded photos from Colorado.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kwarrell/KeckColorado2010#

Catching cool breezes

Most of my work is done now. I don't think I have any field work left (emphasis on think). I'm sure Dave or Will will come up with something. Actually, they just did. I have to go get seven more samples of stream sediment. Happily, it will all be shipped home for me. I do not have to take it all on the plane.

I think I made some sort of personal record. I finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan in five days. Never have I finished a book in that time. I was certainly impressed with myself, mostly because I didn't believe it was possible. I've started The Joy Luck Club. I'm not certain that it will be as good as Snow Flower. That book was really good. It started off really sad and depressing, but then I really got into it. I recommend it to anyone, and have it if you'd like to borrow it.

We have five days left! It's certainly sad to think about. I do believe that I just might miss Gordon Gulch. I mean, I've spent seven hours there every day for the past two and a half weeks. And Colorado, oh Colorado. When the trip started, I was not impressed in the least with Colorado. Over the three weeks I've been here, it has slowly grown on me. The wild flowers, the weather, the hippies, the lifestyle. It almost evokes something similar to New Zealand (it just took longer for it to sink in). I don't know how exactly to describe it. I guess you'd have to travel to either of the two to understand what I mean...

Looking up at the clouds, to the west, everything is a pale steel blue, the clouds a tad darker than the sky. The blue darkens toward the east. Directly overhead, the clouds are a fleshy pink, soft and undefined. They fade into a tangerine color in the east, with well defined billows edged in a slightly brighter gold. On the horizon, silhouettes of the mountains, not so far away. Can you see it?

Almost done?

My project is probably 85% complete... maybe. At least the field portion of my project is... we'll have to see what Kurt wants me to do with it when I get back, which could be a lot or a little. In either case, it will be a whole lot less work than some of my colleagues will have to do.

It has rained almost every day this past week and is supposed to rain the next three days. It's really a downer on everyone's mood. Meanwhile, I've taught myself how to weave flowers out of grass while waiting for the rain to pass. Not very productive, but it is rather hard to map anything when any amount of dampness will ruin the paper.

I've started reading a new book entitled Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Very interesting, and I recommend reading it so far. I finished reading The Namesake. I started it in New Zealand and didn't have time until now to finish it. Not much else is new. We went to the Boulder Farmers' Market last Wednesday and are planning to go again this Wednesday. They have mango sticky rice, which I am eagerly looking forward to. The dining hall here is not too keen on ethnic food, and if they do serve it, it lacks some serious flavor.

the beginnings of a "thesis"

So for the past four days here, i have been doing roughly the same thing: surveying the stream in Gordon Gulch. So far, I have about 50 pages in my little notebook full of data points to graph, which will eventually end up being a map of the stream. Once i get this map, I then have to go survey both the north and south banks of the stream and draw out the terraces onto my map. Eventually, my project will end up being similar to this one, maybe a little less extensive:

http://www.azgs.az.gov/sanpedroriver2009.shtml

Obviously, these people had a lot more time and resources than I will, but it's roughly what I'd like to achieve. I (hopefully) only have one more day of surveying the stream, which means only one more day of wet shoes. I'll probably still have to fight the vegetation when I map the terraces, but that's okay. It's a whole lot easier than hiking up a mountain. I'll probably even end up coring trees, which means that I take out a small cylinder of the tree to count its rings to see how old it is. That way, we can know a minimum age for the terraces. We'll probably end up using radiocarbon dating to get a maximum age by dating some old logs that are buried in the terraces. I've probably been working the most out of everyone here, and probably still have the most to do. But that's okay with me. I'd rather work on my project than be someone else's assistant.

Colorado, day 1

So today we took a leisurely hike up a mountain range. A lot easier said than done. First, we had an hour long drive in the bed of a truck over gravelly and rocky roads. We had to cross over huge boulders and a rapid creek, and the whole time we were being watched by marmots, which are supposed to be really vicious. They look like prairie dogs to me. The whole thing was exhausting, and makes me realize how terribly out of shape I am. These things get better with time, right? Needless to say, I don't think I'll be picking a project in the area we visited today.

Pictures! Finally!

Here are 443 of the total 1599 pictures I took in New Zealand. Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/kwarrell/AotearoaNewZealand#

End of an era

It's over. I don't want it to be over. Right now, if I could, I would take another 26 hour journey back to New Zealand. In a minute.

To catch up:

The first day in Queenstown, we tramped on part of the Routeburn track. The whole thing takes 3 days one way. We drove an hour to the track, and unloaded the bus. The track was very interesting. There were 4 or 5 spring bridges, which are probably the scariest things in the world. They move way too much when you walk across them. The moss everywhere was a bright green, there were shield ferns everywhere in one section of the forest. The track followed the Routeburn River, which was a bright aqua blue. So beautiful.

The next day was my free day in Queenstown. I went to breakfast at a small place with a few girls from the group. We went to the botanical gardens after breakfast, then went shopping. It was a nice, relaxing day. We went to Fergburger for dinner, and I had the lamb burger, again.

We left Queenstown the next day and travelled to Te Anau (pronounced tea ahh-noo). It snowed on the way there, and everything was white. We took a cruise through Milford sound in the Fiordlands the next day, which was beautiful. It's very controversial, because Milford gets so many tourists that it is having a negative impact on the place.

The next day we travelled though to Aoraki/Mt. Cook. Many roads were closed because of the snow and ice. We hiked through Hooker Valley the following day. I think it might have been the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

We had to leave and go back to Christchurch. It was our last coach trip, and no one liked that. We drove through the beautiful countryside, back into the city. I had kebabs for dinner, then watched a movie in my room. It was the first time I had had a room to myself. No roommate. The next day was a free day, and I did a little shopping with a friend. We went to a place called the Honey Pot for breakfast, which had the most amazing pancakes. The final day was our exam, which I think went well, and we had our last group dinner at a restaurant called Two Fat Indians. Not really spicy enough... but still good.

The flight home was long. Because we crossed the international dateline, I had to live June 3 twice. Quantas is still probably one of the nicest airlines. No bags were lost.

hello from queenstown

It's been a while since I've had internet access. We've been in some pretty rural areas, and it was awesome. Since I was in Nelson, we drove north to Motueka, where we stayed for 2 days. We kayaked and hiked in the Abel Tasman national park. It was really awesome. We learned about some of the trees there, including the Kahikatea and the Totara. I also bought a book on NZ geology while I was there.

I don't remember if I've mentioned this, but we saw LOTS of baby seals in Kaikoura. I have some video!

After Motueka we headed down the west coast. Our first stop was in St. Arnaud, which has a population of 80 people. A group of people went and hiked a really intense trail (I went on the easier track). They were out past dark, and it was really dark there. We almost had to send out a search crew.

We then went to Hokitika, where we had a lecture on the beach. It is the best place to buy pounamu, which is the Maori jewelery made out of greenstone (serpentine in geology terms).

Our next stop was Fox Glacier, where we stayed for 2 nights. We hiked up 700 stairs to get to the glacier, where we hiked even more stairs with crampons (spikes) tied to our shoes. Hiking on the glacier was the neatest thing ever. It was "sweet as" (that's kiwi lingo).

Today we drove 5 hours in the rain to Queenstown. There is a big weather system coming through. They're supposed to get 25 centimeters in 2.5 days. And that's nothing. One area got 17 centimeters in one hour last week. It washed out a couple roads and caused a landslide. We drove through some of the areas where they filmed The Lord of the Rings and 10,000 BC.

We are now in Queenstown, which is a big skiing place June-August. They are just now getting the first snow, so it might be a wee while before anyone can ski. Four girls bungy jumped today, and 10 other people are bungy jumping tomorrow. I'm hiking part of the Routeburn Track tomorrow. It's normally a 3 day hike, so I'm ok only doing part of it. We get to stay in Queenstown for 3 nights, and that's a real luxury. Some places we've only been staying for one night.

A wee walk in Aotearoa

So, we've done quite a lot since my last post. We've left Christchurch and headed north. We stopped in Kaikoura for a couple days. Kaikoura is one of the most green cities in the world. Look it up some time, it's pretty amazing. In Kaikoura, we first went on a Maori tour, which showed us lots of old maori places. We then took a boat out to see the dusky dolphins. There had to be hundreds of them! Then we went on a long hike along the cliffs on the coast to see a colony of seals. They were so close! The hike was amazing, we were hiking on rocky shores and up steep trails. We ended the hike going straight up a 70 degree muddy hillside, which some people slipped on. We also ate some lamb.

Since then we've travelled to Nelson, which is one of the sunniest cities in the country. On the way to Nelson we travelled along Highway 1, which hugs the coastline and cuts through some vineyards. We stopped to hike up a trail, which led us to a waterfall and pool filled with baby seals. There were so many of them playing in the water, one of them even came up to smell me. Once we arrived in Nelson, we went to a nature reserve and went for a "wee walk" which turned out to be a pretty intense hike because recent rains had washed out some of the trails. My muscles still hurt. We did some volunteer work there, clearing out the non-native plant species. We then ate dinner in town. Today we're travelling to Motueka, where tomorrow we will kayak in the Abel Tasman park.

a couple days in christchurch

So I've been in Christchurch for a couple days now. We've had lectures on ecology, tourism, sustainability, Maori culture, multi-member proportional government, and agriculture. A nice break from all of the hard-core science at Tech.

I have been to the grocery store a few times. Kiwis have some strange tastes: vegemite, instant coffee, ovaltine, nutella (can be bought for NZ$2.89), muesli and granola cereal, chicken flavored chips, kiwifruit, dried fruit, instant juice... just to name a few. I've been snacking on lots of dates and nutella sandwiches. And the fruit is a kiwifruit. It is not a kiwi. Kiwi means either the person (a european decent new zealander) or a kiwi bird (which are rare and only come out at night).

We went to the botanical garden and the Canterbury Museum today. I took so many pictures of the garden, I wish I could upload them. The museum wasreally interesting. They had lots of Maori artifacts. There was an entire exhibit on the geology of Antarctica, which I wish I could have spent more time at.

The Maori culture and language is very fascinating. There are two periods of Maori history. The first is when they were first here and hunted extensively. They hunted the large flightless moa birds, which whent extinct because of this hunting. The second period is more of a farming and agriculture period where they developed towns and tools.

On another note, this hotel is interesting and weird. It is very modern. The rooms are all different, and somehow we ended up with the bad bathroom with NO counter space and a huge shower. The floors all have different color themes, I'm on the green floor.

Christchurch is a cute town. All the buildings are very English looking. You can find so many coffee places here, and they all serve the ovaltine. I don't know why so many people keep going to starbucks for breakfast.

Well, I have to go get dressed for the Maori dinner/reenactment thing we have tonight. It's supposed to be cold and involve lots of walking. We'll see...

almost there

I'm waiting in Auckland, NZ for my flight to Christchurch.  So far:

Met a couple friendly kiwis and fellow tourists in the airport while waiting for the flight.  Also met some people from the UGA program who are very nice.

Qantas is pretty awesome.  Fancy pillows and blankets.  LOTS of food.  Toothbrushes and eyemasks.  Free personal TVs with lots of movies (I watched UP and Avatar and a Aussie documentary about a photographer in the salt flat there). 

The stars at night were unbelieveable.

My pen exploded and my hand is now strangely purple.  My ears are also popping non-stop due to the pressure differences everywhere.

We flew over the North Island and saw sheep and cows and black sand beaches.  The sea is strangely calm looking.  Everything is very green and the trees are very different looking.  The people are friendly so far.  

Still waiting to find a place to exchange my money.

all ready to go

So here's my stuff... all packed, finally. I'm sure that I'm forgetting something...

My first flight leaves today at 3pm. I arrive in LAX at about 4:30 and then I have a 7 hour layover, in which I will have to go find my checked green bag and re-check it in with the other airline for the long flight to New Zealand. Simple, right? Then I get to take the 13 hour flight to NZ and then another 1 hour flight to a smaller city in NZ. I won't actually get there until Tuesday (since it's across the international dateline).

preface

So this blog is meant to be my way of keeping in touch with everyone this summer. Please leave comments! I want to hear from you all! And I want you to hear from me, so let me know if there is anyone else who would like to be added to the email list. There is one spot left!

The plans...
May 9 through June 3
> Study abroad with UGA in New Zealand
July 14 through August 14
> Research in Colorado with Keck Geology