What is my dream career?

The last couple weeks have been interesting....

I met with my lab supervisor K-lynn whom I worked with before when I studied abroad on male-male competition study. The project was to score recorded songs of the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater. Although I just sat at a desk all day it was kind of fun listening to the songs and separating each piece. Unfortunately the program kept freezing and I kept losing all of my work. In the end she had me help fix some issues with the male-male competition project I did in 2009. Apparently I was not very precise when I scored all of the videos and there were a LOT of things to fix. After three days of constantly fixing things and re-running the analysis I had finally fixed all of the problems. My next job is to go through the data and see if we can find any possible significance which would be awesome! I'm glad I came back to fix it!

While talking with K-lynn I also started questioning what I wanted out of all this uni work. We talked about having kids while doing Masters/PhD and, although she had her daughter during her PhD, she strongly advised against it. I told her if it came down to career or family I would pick family and she said it would probably be best to at least wait till doing a postdoc. This got me thinking...I'm in no hurry to have kids, but I don't think I event want to do a postdoc! I want to work with animals on a day to day business not just stay at uni forever.

I started questioning what I really wanted and then I found out that my dream job as a Tiger Handler at Dreamworld was hiring (no I can't apply - I don't qualify). This was a blatant reminder that this was why I was here and that I want to be a tiger handler! To do that however, I don't have enough animal handling and big cat experience. I don't really want to be stuck having to do significant research my whole life, but I do want to work with people and animals on a day to day basis with the ability to do research. As a tiger handler at Dreamworld I can work hands on with tigers while also helping in educating the public on them. Also, I feel this would open up plenty of opportunities to use research to help find ways of learning more and improving the conservation of tigers. I don't really need to have a PhD to have that job so am I pursuing the right things?

In the end I realized I wanted the PhD just to be able to achieve as much as I could, do research worthy of such a degree, and to open up options for research or doing postdocs later. After talking to a friend working in research at the Chicago zoo and my Master's supervisor I now feel very confident that if I want to pursue the PhD, but in the meantime I want to try to also get as much volunteer and animal handling experience that will help me get to where I want to be.

Surprisingly there is a huge obstacle amidst all of my career pursuits....Matt. After spending a lot of time here Matt is really not too keen on Sydney. The traffic is bad, there's a lot more cigarette smoke than he's used to, and the list goes on. I'm not too sure what will happen in the future, but for the moment I don't think Matt will want to stay and live here. Hopefully in the end we will find a situation that works for both of us and I'm secretly hoping he'll fall in love with Brisbane where Tiger Island is.

In the mean time we have definitely had some fun times with friends! We hung out with my uni friends for my friend Elayna's birthday BBQ which was a blast. That same day we went to have dinner with the Mackie's at their place. Lachie Mackie I knew when I studied abroad here and now we are in the same church ward! His wife is an American from Montana/Utah and we have loads in common which led to a very fun and humorous evening. I'm sad I haven't had the time to go visit many other friends around Sydney, but I'm glad some awesome friends are nearby!

That's it for us! I now get up at 5am to workout every morning and get some work done before uni work. Also, with our spare room as my new study area I can easily get work done and still set aside time for watching my favorites shows with Matt every night. Things have been stressful, but there are always some good times as well.

Matt meets Australia!

After two weeks of travelling and packing and more, Matt and I finally finished and were on our way to Australia. Luckily we had an empty seat on both planes (despite them being "full" flights) and could spread out, relax, and sleep a little. When we arrived we were waiting for the taxi and Matt was bursting with excitement!

It was so nice to be home and have a real bed!! If anyone remembers I had a small cockroach problem and had set a bunch of traps out before I left. When we got there we found about 6 or 7 dead cockroaches all over the kitchen floor...glad the traps worked. 

I was really nervous what Matt would think of the place and the furniture and stuff that I got, but he liked it! He said it reminded him of his New Mexico mission. In my mind that's not a good thing, but I'll take what I can get. 

Unfortunately the following two days I had to spend at uni for a class. One of my bio classes last semester requires you to attend a conference which was the two days after Matt and I got back. I didn't actually have much jet lag but I was still kind of tired as we sat for four hours listening to lectures. The topics were interesting at least, but not really in my area of expertise. The second half is more discussion with smaller groups about a project you would create to answer a question. My group was really interesting as we discussed using robotics and a sensory suit to understand how animals perceive the world. 

Before I left I had given my phone to Matt so he could use my GPS and go places. When I had gotten home Matt had been able to go to the shopping centre in Parramatta and get his phone setup as well as explore all five floors of it. Although I felt bad I couldn't be with him to help him organize stuff he did fine figuring things out. 

My second day of the conference I had to leave early and lose points because our internet was being set up that day. Even though Matt was going to be home, I realized they might need me there since I set up the account. I'm glad I did because right when I got home they called me to make sure I was there. If I had stayed I wouldn't have been able to answer my phone and the company would have charged us for missing the appointment! It all worked out and now we have unlimited internet! 

Thursday I was finally free from seminars and it turned out my friend Kaytlin was available to take us shopping for some much needed items. It was a fun day and we finished it off hanging out with Brock and Kaytlin at their apartment. The highlight was how Kaytlin was just telling us that day how they rarely got cockroaches and we found a giant one at their place! Naturally we killed it. 

Saturday we went to the Taronga zoo and Matt got to experience all of Sydney's public transportation systems (bus, train and ferry) in the process. It was a great trip through the city and then to explore the zoo. Since we have annual passes we took our time and only finished about half of it before they were closing. I love zoos!

This is right before the bird bit him

Sunday we got to go to our new Oatlands ward at 9 am for the first time. I was shocked at how small it was! Apparently there are only 60 or so regular members. Everyone was very excited to see newcomers and especially another young couple. Lachie Mackie I knew from when I studied abroad in Australia and the last activity we had together he had thrown a 50 cent coin into the pool that hit me square between the eyes. That coin has jagged edges making me bleed and needless to say Lachie was not my favorite person at the time. Since then he got married to an American from Montana/Utah and is no longer throwing coins into pools (I think). I have a feeling we'll all be good friends!

We met with the bishop after the church and he was so excited to have new people for callings! He was excited that I'm musically talented although I explained my skills are much out of practice and I'm not amazing. It seems they have been lacking a chorister and pianist for a while. Bishop Cox also said not to be surprised if we may get multiple callings. I think it will be fun to be in such a small ward where it's like a big family and everyone works as a team to make things happen. They are all really nice, and there are even some other YSA in the ward I already knew!

This last week I had my first week of classes which really only consists of a couple days of actual classes. Most of my work is out of class reading research papers and writing reviews. I think its going to be quite difficult to have all reading and writing. Overall though I'm pretty excited about the topics and I think it will be a good semester. 

One of my classes got cancelled so I replaced it with a similar ethics course in Philosophy. I am the only non-Philosophy Masters student in it, but I'm hoping I will be able to keep up and have valuable things to contribute to discussions. 

Quite a bit of other stuff happened this last week. Matt started work with Sam Sung (yes that's actually his name) who is an LDS member of my last ward. He's really enjoying it so far and is learning all the differences from painting houses here versus the US. Sam Sung is thinking of making Matt a supervisor which will be awesome!

Matt and I still don't have a DVD player so we have been relaxing at night watching some TV and got hooked into Australia's Big Brother and the Japanese channel Ninja Warrior. It's actually been really nice and I'm enjoying finally having someone else to respond to the comments I make at the TV! 

Also, some classmates are going diving with some sharks and invited me to go with if I could get certified. It's expensive but another classmate mentioned a groupon that is a killer deal! Matt and I decided to get the Groupon, but unfortunately there was no way to get certified in time. We signed up to do the course in September and I'm sure my friends will go out many more times that we will be able to accompany them. I'm just glad I'm not required to take some of the diving courses my classmates take because it's way over $1000 for all the extra diving courses. 

Another even this last week....we bought a car! It was a cheap $2500 Honda Accord, but we decided it would be best to get something without having to finance and that we wouldn't be too upset if it got in an accident. It's got a lot of miles/km but should still last us a few years at least. It turns out Sam Sung might give Matt a van to use for work so it might not be as much of a necessity as we originally thought, but it will be nice to be able to visit people and buy stuff at stores without having to carry it on the bus. 

After my last meeting with the Bishop Matt and I agreed if we could find a cheap piano/keyboard to practice on we would get it. My only requirement for a keyboard is that it had to have a full set of keys so I could practice other songs that take up a lot of keys as well. It turns out keyboards are pricey!!! I kept checking on Gumtree (same thing as Craigslist) and found a free upright piano! I made sure all the keys worked and just had to pay for it to be delivered. It's pretty out of tune, but it's perfect for practicing!! It is a very old piano, but the walnut it's made out of is beautiful and it fits perfectly under our stairs! 

We have definitely had many blessings in making this move here! Matt is still learning to adjust to the differences, but I think he likes it. I'm sad he's not a big fan of the great indian, thai, chinese, and japanese food here. Perhaps he'll develop a taste for it over time. 

Oregon, Summer Cold, and Moving Sale

After vacationing sometimes it's really nice to get back to regular life, unfortunately that was not the case for me.

Matt and I arrived at the Eugene airport to discover that my typical carry-on bag that I had checked was missing a wheel rendering it completely useless. Oh well, out of all my luggage pieces the carry-on is the one I wouldn't mind losing. Mostly I was super happy to see my grown-up cat Odin, although he spent most of his time hiding in the closet of our room. Not too long ago he had gotten in a fight with the pitbull of the apartment and had been paranoid since. Matt had really gotten the worst of that fight and even had to get antibiotics for all the cat bites he got separating the animals. I'm glad I wasn't there, but I was sad to see how nervous Odin was about everything.

Matt's car that his sister had picked up from the towing place was luckily mostly in tact with just some wires exposed. His Ipod was gone, but surprisingly they left the car kit, stereo, and even their own phone charger and flashlight! With some repairs needed, we were hopeful we would still be able to sell it.

It didn't take long for me to see how much work there was to do once I saw the large piles of unfinished boxes. The boxes with things to store at my Mom's was already taken care of, but we still had to box the stuff to ship by sea. We got working on organizing, sorting, and boxing quickly but the end never seemed in sight. It didn't help that we could barely sleep at night on our thin pads on the floor.

Luckily my mom and sister were already on their way from Utah to help out. I had not prepared for them for work so unfortunately their "vacation" was cut short. They were pretty mortified when we took them to what we call Matt's Mom's house where all our stuff was. The old abandoned house had been taken over by fleas and spiders. As we showed them around it was common to find a few fleas on your legs. Matt thinks a spider had babies and that's why there were small webs all over our stuff. Since that was the only space we could do it all there wasn't much to do about it.

We had some fun spider experiences though as we tried to spray a giant one (see picture to right) on the light just in front of the doorway with bleach water. It began to dangle on a string and us girls jumped big time when I sprayed it and the spider swung toward us. Later I found another big one that had developed a nest underneath the mud guard of my bike. I made Matt kill it and we found thousands of tiny eggs. Those spiders definitely work fast because it must have just built it that day.


The first night my family was there I stayed in the hotel with them in Eugene and we discovered the next day I had a pretty bad cold and was not really able to do much of anything. The good news was that we picked up Matt's car from the shop that morning and it was only a $100 to fix up the car.

Later we discovered some bad news as the boxes we had packed all of our shipping stuff were collapsed when stacked so we had to get all new double lined boxes. In the end, my mom sent Matt and I to her hotel in Florence while they finished working on stuff for us and got things set up for the moving sale the next day.

After the GPS on my phone led us a 30 minute drive away from the hotel we finally got to sleep on a nice bed and not have to get up early and start working on stuff. Although Matt was anxious to get back I was keen on just relaxing so we went to the coast, ate at Moe's, and walked around the shops before heading back.


Upon returning, the moving sale was all set up and there were lots of people already looking around even before the sale started. While the sale went on my mom and sister repacked the stuff while I managed the people looking at stuff and Matt cleaned his car to sell. Heavily drugged on Dayquil I was probably the worst person for the job as I was selling things a lot lower than Matt would want. I didn't really care and as long as it was gone and we got something for it that's all that matters.

My family left to spend their night at the hotel in Florence while Matt and I finished any final packing. There were some difficulties deciphering my Mom's handwriting of what was in the boxes, but we got it all sorted and we ready to send them to Portland.

Later that night we got another blessing because we found out Matt's grandma was going to buy the car for his sister Jaime! She was going to give us a check the next night when we would stay with them so we didn't have to worry about trying to sell the car anymore!

The following day Matt had to take a cargo van with our 13 re-packed boxes up to Portland to be dropped off at the port. While he did that I got to see my friends Laura and Valerie once again! We didn't do much but chat and have lunch, but spending time with good friends is priceless. I hope we will always stay in touch.

I was extremely fortunate that the first couple of hours of the sale not many showed up while I was all by myself. Miraculously I even took a little nap sitting in the chair. My mom and sister came back from their day in Florence at the perfect time. I was really glad that my mom and sister would get some time to have fun and apparently they had an awesome day at Hobbit beach. We had to rotate again because Matt and I were spending the night at his grandparents in Oakridge, which is about an hour away.

His grandma made breakfast for us in the morning and then we only had time for a short chat before we had to leave. We went straight to his other grandma's house down the street (his Japanese father's side). She is an adorable short Japanese woman and it was fun to see her before we left.

All that was left to do was finish our sale, finish packing our bags for the plane and clean up! Saturday was packed with people at the sale. My sister, Carina, and I loaded up her car with all of our storage boxes including a volleyball net and golf clubs. Once that was taken care of we got back to helping with the sale and as the day went on we were just letting stuff go quick and cheap! By 3pm everything was $1 or less and just an hour later we starting loading up whatever was left into the truck to take to Goodwill. We sort of cleaned up stuff in the old house, but in the end there just wasn't time and after all there was still loads of other junk left there that didn't come from us.

Finally it was time to say goodbye to my family and my fat cat as they headed out back to Utah. Odin was scared by all the movement going on that he hid in his litter box. I was just happy I knew my sister's place had plenty of space for him and no other animals to scare him (other than people that is). It was sad to see them go because truthfully we couldn't have done all the packing and the sale by ourselves. They were our lifesavers. On top of all that, they even got us new bags since Matt didn't have a second bag to check and my carry-on had broken. My family is amazing!

Next up...Australia!