This is probably going to be a VERY long post. Pictures will be up sometime later this week.
So I'm going to try and wrap up the work week pretty quickly seeing as how we didn't do too much. John finished his part of the paper completely except for a few spelling changes and maybe a few word changes. Kemal is almost done with his part so we can review it. Our methodology section of our paper has been turned in and corrected and at this point is in very good shape. Our advisors have had very few comments for us, which is always a good thing. We're done sending out surveys now too so start this Tuesday, we're going to be compiling the data we've collected. In total, we've collected over 60 surveys and our sponser told us we would be lucky to get back 20.
Also, now that the surveys are back, I can start to write my part of the paper. I'm also going to be working on the database for our project. The tech guy in our office, Ian, told us that instead of using Excel for the database, we should check out a program called DreamWeaver, which is like a website-design program. He gave us a copy, so now we are going to try and learn it to use for our final product. Hopefully it works out well for us.
We only worked until Thursday because Easter is huge in Australia and they get Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday off. On Thursday, the people in the office bought hot-cross buns and made them for us. I've never had them before and they were pretty good. They were absolutely shocked when we told them that we had never eaten them.
So Tuesday night was interesting, to say the least. Our advisors are taking everyone out to dinner in three seperate groups, so about 8-9 people go at a time. I went this past week, along with our two advisors and their wives, Renda, Rachel, Sally, Corinna, Chris, Jairo, Sweet and Dan. The food was surprisingly good. We had a six-course meal all paid for by WPI and we got to talk to our advisors outside of the "project environment".
So funny story about that night. In the middle of our meal, some really corny "Happy Birthday" music started playing in the background. The table behind us had about ten people sitting at it and it was one of the guy's birthdays. The waiter walked out and put a plate in front of the guy. On the plate was a fried banana and two scoops of vanilla ice cream covered in chopped nuts and egg noodles ... all arranged in the shape of a certain male organ ... with two sparklers sticking out of the ice cream. To say the least, we were all a bit surprised since this place was supposedly a family restaurant but of course we all thought it was hilarious and tried to take pictures. Joking around, I looked at one of my advisors and said, "Hey, you should tell them it's your birthday" and the waiter came over to me and said, "AWW, YOUR BIRTHDAY TOO!?" I said "Yeah" joking around and he laughed and brought out the rest of our food.
So we're eating the rest of our dinner and we were getting ready to leave when the music comes back on and the waiter walks out with another "birthday dessert". We all were wondering who it was going to this time ... and then we quickly found out. He dropped the damn thing right in front of me and everyone started cracking up. One of my advisors was laughing so hard, he was crying. The advisor then said that if they made a list of the top 10 things that happened on this trip at some point, that moment would be up there. Supposedly people have pictures, but no one has posted any yet, which is kind of a good thing in my opinion.
OK so Thursday night, I was in bed by 8 and I had to wake up at 4 am to catch a flight to Tasmania! Ten of us (me, John, Potts, Kemal, Chris, Chad, Jillian, Sally, Corinna and Maura) spent Easter weekend there. We booked a flight with Regional Express (a small local airline that has flights throughout southeastern Australia) and flew in a small 30-seat plane from Melbourne to Wynyrd-Burnie, Tasmania. The flight was actually one of the smoothest I've ever been on, and it was a propeller-powered plane.
We got off the plane and went into the airport. This was easily the smallest airport I have ever seen. They had a whopping 1 terminal and the ten of us pretty much filled it up. Chris, John and I got the two cars from the rental car place (Europcar). We got two Mitsubishi Lancers: a silver one (which was mine) and a white one (which was John's). Over the course of the trip, the cars ended up getting named. The silver one was called Homicide (I have no idea why) and the white one was Fruit Loop because Kemal spilled and entire box of Fruit Loops in the back seat.
So I was one of the first people to drive and it was surprisingly easy. The hardest part was staying as far right as possible, since I'm used to driving on the right side of the road and staying as close to the left line as possible. After about 15 minutes, it became pretty simple. One of the funny things about Tasmania is that they dont have speed limits everywhere. When you're in a city, they usually will post a speed limit but because the area between cities is usually just outback and farms, they don't post them. Also, speeds are in kilometers per hour so city speeds were 60-80 kph and highway speeds were 100-110 kph.
So we left the airport in Wynyrd-Burnie at about 8:15 Friday morning. I had burned a bunch of CDs so we had music to listen to for the trip. There were three drivers (me, John and Chris) since we were the only ones who were 21, so we rotated drivers every couple of hours. John and I started. Jillian and Potts were pretty much in chrage of getting us where we needed to go.
The first place we stopped was Devonport, which is a small town a little ways away. It was 9:00 and we were all hungry. We found a Hungry Jacks (Burger King equivalent) and ate there for breakfast. After that, we kept driving to Launceston, which is a pretty big city-area kin of like Worcester. It looked like a dump so we passed through it. We ended up at a place called Cataract Gorge. We were actually at the top of the mountain at this point (which by the way, Tasmania has a lot of mountains) and took a chair lift from there to the bottom, where there was a huge waterfall and a river that passed through the area. We walked around for a bit and rode the chair lift back up to leave.
The rest of the afternoon involved driving up and down a lot of mountains. The east coast is blocked off by some pretty big mountain ranges so we had to drive to the top of about three or four. We got some awesome views though. We saw a few signs that said "Large Vehicles Sound Horn Before Curves" and John (being the intelligent, mature one in our group) decided that our Mitsubishi Lancer was a large vehicle and continued to honk the horn about six times. It was a pretty fun trip.
We drove for a few hours and ended up at Bay Of Fires, which had probably the whitest sand I have ever seen in my life. We walked around there for a bit, then got back in and drove to our hostel. For those who don't know, a hostelis basically a hotel for backpackers. It's a lot cheaper and in most cases, not as high-quality, but it usually has a pretty big recreation area where everyone staying there can sit down and make food or watch TV. Our first hostel was called Swansea Backpackers in Swansea, Tasmania and it was definitely the nicest of the three we stayed at.
At Swansea Backpackers, we had two 5-person rooms so Chad stayed with the girls for the night. There was also a big area inside with a pool table, couches, chairs, a kitchen, a TV, books and games. We were really surprised, since we were expecting something like Ned's Other Beds. That night, we went to a restaurant right next door for dinner. I got a pizza and it was pretty good, but expensive. We then went back to our rooms and went to sleep.
The next morning (Saturday), we left Swansea at 8 am and drove down the east coast of Tasmania, but first we stopped at the bakery next door and got some hot-cross buns and raspberry muffins. This was rare to see stuff open, as almost EVERYTHING was closed because of Easter. We started driving to Wineglass Bay, which is supposedly the third most beautiful beach in the world.
After about an hour of driving, we got there and found out some pretty upseting news: Wineglass Bay is on the other side of a huge mountain and the only way to get there is to climb over the mountain ... and there aren't any roads that go there. This meant that we were going to have to hike up the mountain and back down the other side to get there ... then hike back. The entire trip took us about four hours and the beach was really nice and the water was very clear.
After Wineglass Bay, we made our way to our next Hostel, Central City Backpackers in Hobart, which was about four hours away. Along the way, we saw a berry farm (Kate's Berry Farm) that we stopped at to get ice cream and raspberry pie. I was pretty excited for that. We continued on to Hobart and found our hostel. This place was kind of a dump (nothing like the one in Swansea, but it was OK). We then went out to walk around and there was a steak place we stopped at for dinner. It was pretty good. Then we went back to our hostel and went to sleep.
The next day (Sunday - Easter), we left the hostel at 8 and went down to a bakery to get breakfast. Then we started driving back to Wynyrd-Burnie, which was a pretty long way away. We drove for a good amount of time and stopped in Deloraine, which was a little town along the way. We all got fish and chips and after we ate them, we found out that the fish we ate was "flake". We found out later that flake was shark meat (yum ...). Then we HAD to stop at a honey farm because the girls wanted to go there. I wasn't feeling good at this point becuase I was stuck in the middle of the backseat for an hour and a half.
From there, we drove to a Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary where we got to hold a wombat, pet tasmanian devils and feed kangaroos. It was pretty fun. From there, we pretty much drove straight back to Wynyrd-Burnie and found our last hostel, which was called the Burnie Ocean View Motel. This place was the biggest dump I have ever seen. It was literally a trailer park plus two "dorm rooms", which we luckily got. The beds sucked and there was a one inch gap under the door, so we had to put towels and blankets down to cover it during the night.
Once we put our stuff in there, we asked the guy at the front desk of this dump where to go eat and he recommended a place down the street. We drove down there just to find out that this place was literally and old folks home cafeteria. It was the ten of us and about 50 geezers sitting around eating. The food was horrible and expensive. After dinner, we walked to the other side of the cafeteria and found that they had a small "casino" (aka, slot machines). We were bored so we all tried them out. I did the best out of everyone. I put in a dollar and cashed out $28. Chad won $15 and everyone else lost money. I figured I deserved to win seeing as how my meal was horrible there anyways. From there, we went back to the hostel and hung out for a while before going to sleep. We woke up at 4:30 this morning (Monday) and took our plane back to Melbourne. The trip was really fun but I'm glad to be back here. Jillian made a list of all the funny things that happened along the way which she will be giving us soon, so I'll make a new post when I get it.
-Tim
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