Thanksgiving away from home

This year, I spent my first Thanksgiving alone. In fact, I realized it was a bit sad last night making a bowl of ramen for dinner (don't worry Ma, I put an egg and veggies in it for some nutrients)...

But just because I can't be with my family and childhood friends doesn't mean I don't have so many people and so many things to be thankful for.

I just want to say how thankful I am of everyone back home who has supported me in my decision to run around Australia for three years and continues to support me even though I'm terrible at keeping in regular contact. I am also so incredibly thankful to Pauleen and La Trobe University for the most wonderful 9 months so far of my PhD. It's been a good deal of hard work, but also so much fun and I've had so many opportunities for new experiences and personal growth. Last but not least, I am thankful for all the new relationships I've built this year. I really feel like I have a new family here in Australia - and it will definitely be rough when a bunch of them move away next year.

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am. And while it seems silly that people aren't more thankful on days other than Thanksgiving, I'm glad there's a day where I'm reminded of how very great I have it. This past year has been absolutely incredible here in Australia but I am definitely looking forward to escaping most of the Australian summer and hiding at home for 6 weeks over the holidays!

Finally, a break

Two months ago, in my last blog post, I wrote:

I will write blog posts more often. 

 Oops... But things have been crazy crazy crazy.

The honours students are finally done with their projects, theses submitted, and I am so proud of the both of them for scoring a H1 (highest honours)! Woohoo! Now...it's nearly time for next year's honours students to begin :)

I've also been fiddling around with my own project, really trying to narrow down exactly what my "story" is, and the questions I'll be able to answer (achieve-ably) within the next two (maybe two and a half) years. Seeing as my last "real" content-filled blog post was back in August, there's a bit catching up to do.

Long story short, I've sort of changed the direction I'm taking in my PhD (a number of times in the past three months...). When I arrived in Australia, the honours students were already starting a project investigating visual perception in dogs. I found it really interesting so I was heavily involved in their projects and planned to look at canine visual perception via a number of different methods/tests. But at one point, the dog trainer in me went - "wait a second, how can we justify using these training/testing protocols when we don't actually know what methods are most efficient/effective?" So I went back to the drawing board, and now my actual research topic is more relevant to the world of applied behaviour. I'm looking at certain dog training techniques and the underlying motivations and mechanisms that make them work (or not!).

Having changed my topic about six months in, I was a little behind. So of course I've crammed as much as humanly possible into the past couple months. In the middle of October, shortly after getting back from my sister's wedding in California, I presented a research proposal on my new topic to my Research Progress Committee and had my project (and candidature) approved (woohoo!). I've also submitted ethics applications for a couple upcoming projects, and wrote a literature review that will be officially submitted to a journal on Monday. This coming Friday, I'll be presenting my project ideas at a Postgraduate Research Festival on the La Trobe Bendigo campus. It's technically a Health Science student event, but a couple of us Psych PhD students asked to be involved, just for the chance to share our research and meet other postgrad students on campus.

Everything is still pretty crazy, but I decided I needed a weekend off these past two days, so I took Audrey for a trip down to Melbourne. I dropped her off with Jess on Saturday during the daytime since my housemates wanted to go karaoke-ing in the city, then today we took Audrey and Charlotte to the beach for Audrey's first beach adventure!

Pictures, because text is boring:

Wedding week!

I'm HOME!

Well, I'm actually in Los Angeles, about to board a plane to go home. I arrived back in America earlier this week, just in time to celebrate my birthday with family. This past weekend, I flew down to LA for my sister's bachelorette party. It was a fantastic (and impressively well-planned) weekend, but now I am thoroughly exhausted and so done with airports and airplanes. I'm looking forward to a busy week of final preparations for the WEDDING this coming Saturday the 26th!

Lots has been happening, which means there is a lot to update on, but lots happening also means I have trouble finding time to write blog posts... oops!

Hopefully things will calm down after the wedding and I get back to Australia and back into PhD-land. I will write blog posts more often. At some point. When I can figure out how to prioritize my life without failing any of my stats classes. My brain feels like it's ready to explode!

One week was not enough

Stats.

For anyone who doesn't know, while I'm here in Australia working on my PhD in Psychology, I'm still enrolled in an online Masters program through Penn State University in Applied Statistics.

So far, it's been OK. I spend maybe 6-10 hours a week on stats homework/studying/exams, which is easily done on the weekend. But the rest of the week, dread and guilt hang over my head. I know that I need to get my homework done and whenever I sit down to browse Facebook or catch up on the latest episode of So You Think You Can Dance, that awful little voice in my head goes "you know, you should really be doing stats homework..."

The summer semester at Penn State just ended on the 14th - and I was looking forward to a little non-guilty downtime. Until I looked at the next semester's syllabus and realized that classes started again on the 23rd of August. One week is not enough of a break!!! I spent this past week in denial, until Thursday night when the guilt started setting in again. The first homework and quiz assessments are due on Monday and Tuesday, so the rest of this weekend will be spent working on stats - woohoo...?

Mostly I'm just unnecessarily whiny. I'm learning useful things and it's really important to me that I have a strong foundation in statistics so I can perform quality research. Just starting semester 4 of 6 (or 7...), let's do this!

Where are the pictures of fish???

We've been back from the conference for a full week now. It's been a bit of a crazy week trying to get all caught up after a whole week away. Still not quite there yet, but today has been a much welcomed day of recharging (read as: didn't change out of PJs all day)...

As promised, I have one more day in Cairns to share - arguably the best day in Cairns! Our last day, we booked a trip out to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef. What a magical place.

I didn't bring along my DSLR because it would have been pretty useless, but luckily Nick had a fancy waterproof camera and I've stolen some of his underwater pictures. It was absolutely incredible!!

I could have stayed forever...

Lots of coral, lots of fish

Such pretty colors

There were a bunch of enormous chubby sea cucumbers  

Nick even took a picture of me snorkeling :)

Hello beautiful parrot fish

A GIANT clam!

Shark!!!!

Nick even captured some cool videos. I've only chosen to upload a short clip from one of them:

The Daintree Rain Forest

Spent the day exploring the Daintree on a small group tour. It was a very good day - with lots of sleeping on the bus (oops...).

Pictures are better than words though, so here's a little peek at what we did today!

The only way to get to the Daintree from Port Douglas is by ferry.
They must make a lot of money carting everyone back and forth every day.

Crocodile boating tour with our guide Ernie.

The view on the croc tour was stunning.
The photos on the boat tour were all taken by Nick - he was very excited about looking into the camera eye piece...

We saw some crocodiles! Maybe 4 or 5?

Kayaking in the Daintree

Pauleen didn't want to go so Nick came with me as well so I wouldn't flip the canoe :)

Spikey but pretty vine plants along the walking path.

We also got super lucky and got to see wild cassowary along the road! Apparently there are only about 1000 left in the wild, all living along the northern border of Queensland/Western Australia. They think there are about 60 living in the Daintree area. I didn't take any photos because he/she was behind some bushes, but I've pulled a photo from the internet for anyone who doesn't know what a cassowary looks like:

Courtesy of the Cassowary Recovery Team

Day 3&4 - A bit of sleeping in...

On Wednesday, instead of waking up and getting to the conference for the 8:45am plenary talk, we opted to walk along the beach to the conference center. Took my camera along for some photos. Cairns sure is beautiful!

In the evening after the conference, Tiffani, Pauleen and I went to an aboriginal dinner event hosted by the conference. It was a pretty cool experience.

The fire was burning pretty colors - apparently some chemicals.

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On Thursday, we were originally going to take the day off from the conference and go visit the Daintree but made the ultimate decision to skip Friday instead since there is only a half-day of talks tomorrow anyway. It was a good choice. We saw some really interesting talks today about Learning and Cognition - and Jess and Nick went to one super interesting one about slime moss.

Since we're skipping tomorrow, we've officially finished all of our conference activities. It's been an incredible experience. And my PhD topic has changed about a half million times - oops? I do need to write a research proposal in the next couple days though so I should probably get on it.

Looking forward to exploring the Daintree and going snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow and Saturday before we have to go back to real life though!

Day 2 - Poster day!

So tired...

What a day of learning and making friends. Except our brains are now completely fried. I had my poster session this evening and had great discussions with lots of people doing research in non-human animal visual illusions and others who are either doing or have done research in dogs. Exciting stuff!

It's bedtime now. At this rate, I may never share any of the cool information I've learned the past couple days. Oops? I am taking notes though, so that must count for something!

Day 1 - First Day of the Behaviour2015 Conference!

What an incredible day of talks. The day started off with a plenary talk (one by an invited speaker that all the attendees go to) about social relationships between baboons. They'd found that the amount that a baboon engaged in social interactions with other baboons was correlated with infant survival rates. Makes a lot of common sense but very cool to see data - especially data from two different sites thousands of miles apart in Africa showing baboons living in surprisingly similar social structures.

After the plenary talk, it was morning tea and we got to put up our posters. Obviously mine is the best one because it has cute photos of Audrey and Baxter on it... (just kidding!) There were some very cool posters hung up yesterday. Ones about whales, chipmunks, chickens, and everything in between! The official "poster sessions" are Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, where we've been asked to be available to discuss our posters with people.

The actual day of talks is organized into "streams" or "disciplines" - sort of. Basically there were seven meeting rooms where talks ran concurrently, each with a different topic of focus. There was a Communication room, a Learning and Cognition room, etc. Each person giving a talk had 12 minutes to present research and 3 minutes for questions (at least that was the aim).

The night before, we chose a bunch of "must see" talks, and just filled in the rest of the time with other talks that were taking place before/after the same rooms. It ended up being that we just happened to be sitting in some pretty cool rooms! Although I'm not sure that it isn't just that ALL the talks are super interesting.

At lunch time, we had scheduled to meet Dr Kazuo Fujita from Kyoto University. He is one of the leading researchers in non-human visual illusions and has done extensive research with pigeons and chickens. We went to grab food with him and a bunch of his students who were at the conference as well (10 of us in total!). Turns out service in Cairns follows the easy, laid-back model..where we don't get our food before it's time to go back to the conference!!!

Actually, it was only an issue because we were in a bit of a rush and just didn't have the time to sit, relax, and enjoy the beautiful weather (and we were hungry of course). Tiffani had been scheduled to give her talk on a Diabetes Alert Dog project at 2:00pm but was told that day that she'd been bumped up to 1:45. So we ended up having 15 minutes less time for lunch.

It's Tuesday morning now and time to head off to the conference again. Hopefully the internet will be working tonight so I can actually have time to write about some of the cool stuff we've seen!

Day 0 - Arriving in Cairns

We've made it!

Almost didn't. Flying is hard - it was a bit of an exciting morning...but when is travelling ever easy?

Anyway, Cairns is beautiful. We arrived in the early afternoon and went for a nice walk along the promenade and had lunch by the water. The weather is so nice - warm with a sea breeze. I could stay here forever!

We're off to the conference this morning, excited to learn things!

Warm weather, here we come!

It's here (almost)! I've been waiting all year (read 5 months) for this conference in Cairns, and now it's really about to happen! We are leaving on Sunday morning for an entire week in Queensland where it is WARM and SUNNY. I'm hoping to be very active in terms of blogging next week but of course this will depend on internet access...and evening activities. I'm sure I'll be learning a lot at the conference so I'd like to write about it - and share some cool experiences too.

It's been a bit of an odd week. We've just started getting participants training their own dogs for our study. It's a good feeling that all of these dog owners are so keen to volunteer for our studies, even when we are asking for 12 week commitments! I don't know if I would do something that... I also just found out that a lot of school admin stuff was supposed to have happened shortly after I enroled - but somehow never did. Hopefully now everything is finally on track and I can be less confused about what is expected of me and just get on with my PhD!

On to more exciting news, our two new PhD students are coming in September! Both of them are named Sarah. Sarah B. Sarah B with blonde hair. Oh dear...we'll have to figure something better out.

This week is going to fly by with everything that needs to be done before we fly away to Cairns (it sounds like it's pronounced CANS of soup, but like how Americans pronounce "cans", not how Australians pronounce "cans"...). Pronunciations are hard. That reminds me of a new thing I learned recently. I've only just discovered that 'sultanas' are raisins - but only because in Australia, Kelloggs makes Sultana Bran instead of Raisin Bran :)

Horse riding!

In Australia, they say "horse riding", not "horseback riding". Somehow it makes a lot of sense but has sounded very weird for a long time.

Anyway, this past weekend I got to ride one of Pauleen's horses! His name is Aurum (I'm actually not sure how it's spelled - maybe Oram?) and he's a beautiful teenage Palomino. I originally went over to Pauleen's place on Sunday to meet her friend Cheryl, who wanted to see the discrimination training we've been doing with Pauleen's Lagottos. We spent a little time demonstrating the training and convinced Cheryl that she wants to be one of our study participants and train her super smart dog Gilbert. In the afternoon, we had some free time and decided that I should spend some time doing round pen work with Aurum to start building a relationship before I ever got on him. He's the absolute sweetest old man and apparently has been showed and used do a lot with his previous owner but hasn't been ridden hardly at all for the last three years (twice, actually, including yesterday). I got to feel like a fool round penning him and trying to figure out how to get him to turn away from the fence towards me to change direction, then getting him to yield his front and rear, and flexing his neck (which we called the half-tap position at Mustang Camp). He was super patient and was absolutely wonderful, even though I was giving all sorts of terrible mixed signals. (we ended up watching the Clinton Anderson DVD on round penning that evening so I'm more hopeful about next time!)

After a good session of ground work, Pauleen went and got the saddle and we did the same thing again, with his saddle on. Shortly after, she said "do you want to ride him today?" - um YES? We just did some walking and trotting around the round yard and I got to try and feel where his front feet were so I could go up on the outside leg - which was easy one way around but really hard the other way! We'll get there though. Pauleen says she's happy to teach me and I'm so excited to get real lessons and finally learn to ride!

I feel like the luckiest person ever. I've come to Australia, been given a puppy to play with,  a horse to ride, and someone is paying me to be here! Of course real work is still happening...just mostly late at night when the world is quiet :)

Meet Miss Charlotte

So...I've been hiding a secret. There is a puppy cuter than Audrey.

Please enjoy:

Words cannot even.

Charlotte with her mommy Molly

Beating up a newly short-haired Miss Audrey

Puppies playing is the best thing ever.

Watch out Audrey!

ATTACK!!!

Audrey is so good with the puppy...I'm a proud mummy!

Mid-winter haircuts

Today Audrey got her first major hair cut for her 7 month birthday. She's had two semi-haircuts so far, but this time I chopped everything off, including her beautiful golden mustache. Nick, one of our honours students, was not pleased -- but it's OK, it will grow back!

Here she is mid-haircut:

















All finished! She is adorable in a jacket...

Next week, Pauleen is off to New York for a conference. She's actually been on leave from the university since last week, although with us coming over three days a week to train dogs, we haven't really let her be on a 'real' holiday. Later this week she and Ron are taking a day trip and I will help take care of the dogs for the day.

Back to SPARCS...

Two years ago, I created this blog after an inspiring weekend in Redmond, Washington at the very first annual conference hosted by the Society for Promotion of Applied Research in Canine Science. I actually was encouraged to attend this conference by Dr. Yin, who offered to cover my conference registration.

It was a life-changing experience. Not so much in the sense that I suddenly decided to go into the field of canine research (that had already happened - ha!), but it was actually the first time I had to pretend to be a real adult all by myself. I was more than likely the only undergraduate student there and felt completely out of my comfort zone. My awkwardness around and preferred avoidance of strangers certainly didn't help. Luckily everyone I met was super supportive and encouraging and all of the researchers were happy to chat with me (after I managed to work up the courage to approach any of them).

I learned so much that weekend at SPARCS 2013. Actually, ever since then, I've compared how nervous I am feeling in any setting to how I felt that weekend. Nothing ever comes even close to comparing, and since I survived SPARCS, I can survive just about anything!

Every year, SPARCS shares the event as a FREE livestream event, making the content accessible to anyone with an internet access. This year, tuning in to SPARCS has required a bit more dedication than usual... Because of the time difference, the very reasonable 9am - 6pm schedule in Phoenix, Arizona turns out to be 2am - 11am here in Bendigo. Yikes? It's currently the "lunch break" on Day 1 as I'm writing this blog post - meaning 6:00am here. I took a nap before the day started so I'm still going strong (with some tea/coffee and snacks) but we'll see how the rest of the weekend goes. Miss Audrey has been fast asleep all "morning"...

Dusting off the camera...

This weekend, I took my baby DSLR out for the first time in a long while. Pauleen and I have been planning to take photos of the dogs for a few weeks now, but we've always either forgotten or run out of time.

This past Sunday, I finally got a chance to shoot some dogs - and I'm pretty happy with how some of the photos turned out! Of course, Miss Audrey is still the cutest one...

It was hard picking just a few favorites, but here we are:

Gabby the Destroyer, looking very innocent.

Baxter just had a haircut and is looking SO handsome and all grown up!

She's obviously the cutest one.

Danny-boy, who we picked up from NSW a few weeks back.

Princess Louie (actually her real name is Lulu)

Candy - and her beloved frisbee

I can't wait!!!

It's official, this August I will be attending and presenting a poster (!!!) at Behaviour2015. We're going to Cairns for a whole week! Of course this trip would not be complete without visiting the Great Barrier Reef, so that's on the schedule too. I am so looking forward to this!

In the mean time, the semester is winding down. Next week is the last week of classes, and then the students have Winter Break for 2 months before the start of the next semester. I'm not doing any tutoring next semester, which means I will be 100% focused on my research project(s).

It's also my 3-month Australia anniversary tomorrow. I feel like I've just gotten here, but at the same time it feels like I've been here forever. I still try to get into the wrong side of my car though - so not quite completely converted yet!

I've also started volunteering at the local RSPCA. It's nice to spend one morning a week supporting a good organization, and the connections I will make there are invaluable. Plus they might let me practice my photography skills on the adoptable animals - woohoo!

Road trip!

Yikes, I've been doing a terrible job of blogging regularly.

It's been busy here, but lots of fun. This past weekend, Pauleen and I took a road trip up to Bathurst, New South Wales. But first, it's probably good to go back a little bit on the updates.

Dog training is now well underway for the honours students' project. The dogs are learning a visual discrimination task and it's fun to see the different techniques each dog uses to try and figure out the rules. So far we have Princess Lulu far out in the lead compared to the other dogs, but we think everyone will figure it out if we give them enough time!

All of a sudden, the semester is nearly over. We've finished marking (aka grading) the student essays, and there is only one more tutorial left, and a video project they have to do before the end of the semester. It's all a bit nuts - time is going by so quickly!

The other day, I got a message from my sister telling me that her company, Alter Eco, now sells their chocolate at Coles, one of the major supermarket chains here in Australia. I was sent on a mission to find the chocolate and take a picture. Of course I forgot my phone when I went shopping, so I *had* to buy one instead - I had no other choice!

I picked the least dark one. Yummy!

 The semester ended last week for my stats courses - which means 2 semesters down, 4 more to go! I'm only taking one class over summer semester though, so hopefully it won't be too stressful. I should figure out when classes start again though...

OK - now I think that basically brings the blog up to speed. This past weekend, Pauleen needed to drive up to Bathurst, NSW to pick up a dog, and asked if I wanted to come along for a little road trip. The trip to Bathurst from Bendigo is about 8 hours if you drive straight through, and about 9-10 hours with breaks for car fuel and people fuel. Bathurst is a fancy little town, about 2.5 hours outside of Sydney. Apparently lots of rich city people own weekend properties there.

Trip from Bendigo to Bathurst, courtesy of Google Maps

On the way up, we were driving at night so there wasn't much to see, but on the way back it was a beautiful drive. New South Wales (or at least where we were driving through) was much greener than home, and we drove past miles and miles of pastures with sheep and cattle. We even saw an emu (which Australians pronounce e-mew) and a camel! I guess some people keep camels as "pets" - although I'm guessing it's sort of like Americans keeping zebras as pets.

On the drive back, we stopped at an iconic road trip stop, the Dog on the Tuckerbox. There wasn't much to see, but we each had a Tucker Box Burger for lunch - with beetroot in the burger. Odd, but I like beets so it was actually quite tasty.

Miss Audrey will be 6 months old at the end of this month. She's growing up so fast - and my time here in Australia is going by so quickly too! Before I know it, three years will be up. Hopefully by then I'll have learned lots, experienced lots, and (most importantly) finished my thesis! :)

Oops...

So...it's been way too long since my last post. Earlier this week I got messages from two different people asking "Is everything OK? You haven't blogged in a while." It's been getting harder to talk to people at home, now that the time difference is only 17 hours instead of 19 hours. Basically I am now one day minus 7 hours ahead, instead of one day minus 5 hours ahead which means that now its midnight at home in California when it's 5 in the evening here.

Life is really starting to pick up and get going. We've just gotten university ethics approval for one of our dog training projects, so I've been really involved in getting that up and running. I'm also grading student assignments for the course I'm tutoring, so that's been a big part of my life the past couple of weeks as well. In Australia, they call it marking - and I was really confused at first, but I think I've figured it out.

Speaking of figuring things out, I have a couple more interesting observations on Australia:

Courtesy of: abramowitzesdownunder.blogspot.com

• There aren't mail trucks. The postman rides around on a motorcycle with neon yellow sacks of mail (see picture).
• "H" is pronounced "hay-ch". Well enunciated. I probably wouldn't even have noticed if it hadn't been that every time I say I'm doing my PhD (pronounced pee-aich-dee), people do a double-take and then go "oh your P-HAYch-D".
• Ketchup is actually tomato paste - and tomato is pronounced to-MAH-to. Like when you say "to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to" but wonder who ever says to-MAH-to? British people, and therefore Australians.

I've also finally made it to the Asian grocery store in Bendigo. I was so happy to find Aloe juice and 沙茶酱 (Chinese satay sauce). I made Ma Po Tofu that evening and it actually turned out surprisingly tasty!

Yummy!

Meet Audrey

It's Easter Holiday, which is also mid-semester break. Students get one week off from classes, and the University is closed for Good Friday, and also the following Monday and Tuesday.

Turns out basically EVERYTHING was closed for Good Friday - including the grocery store...

Luckily, I have a small fuzzy warm monster to keep me busy the next couple days. This is Audrey, Pauleen's 4 month old Lagotto puppy who has come to stay with me and learn about life off of the farm. It's been a lot of fun having a puppy around - I forgot about all the crazy mischief puppies get into! Today, I went downtown to the pet store (which was luckily open for 4 hours this weekend) and picked up some rope toys and rawhide chews for poor Audrey who is teething and needs toys other than her stuffies.

So far, she's been rolling around on the ground chewing on her rawhide for over an hour. She seems happy, and I don't have to be upset at her for wanting to chew on the walls or bed frame!