Gold Coast

Hey all!

Once again, I am having a fantastic time down under. Things in my lab have really gotten busy, as the woman in charge of my primary project just returned from a conference in the US. I've now been trained and am busily coding Still Face Procedure videos, which are really cool to watch. It's awesome seeing that all the infants really do act as expected when their mothers' faces go blank (first they make some happy noises and cute faces, like come on mom we're still playing, then they get a confused look on their face trying to figure out what is going on, and before long they get very fussy trying to get their mother's attention). They all have variations on this, of course, but I love watching how common this pattern is. It's so cool when things go exactly as textbooks say they will! I've also been working on some data entry and editing some SPSS files for the same study. I've developed a hypothesis using the PICU data and have been running some data analyses. We will work on that project this week so that I should have a poster and/or brief report by the time I'm back in the states!

On an unrelated note, I spent this weekend on the Gold Coast, which is about 2 hours south of Brisbane (if you take the bus/train/bus route that I did). I woke up far too early Saturday morning and caught another bus to the Gold Coast Marathon race precinct. I had to be at the race and ready by 5:30am! But that did allow me to watch a gorgeous sunrise as I warmed up and prepped for the run. An hour or so later, I'd completed my first 10K race! All my runs in the mornings before work really paid off, as the race was almost entirely enjoyable. Also, they had one of the Australian Olympians running the race with us - I think he finished in 29 minutes, which is positively insane but really cool! After taking the bus back to my hotel, I rewarded myself with some coffee and then by spending the day on the beach reading a great book. It was wonderful getting some sand between my toes and some sunscreen on my skin!

The start of the race

I finished!!!

Loved my day on the beach

I see why it's called the Gold Coast

On Sunday I woke up not quite as early and headed to Main Beach to go whale watching! It was just about the greatest activity I've ever done. We spent 3 1/2 hours cruising the South Pacific looking for whales. At the start they were somewhat shy, but after a while they really started showing off for our boat! They were breaching left and right and some even swam right next to the boat. One actually stuck its huge head out of the water for a bit, but I was so amazed that I missed getting it on camera! I did get some pretty great pictures though, and, most importantly, I had a wonderful time.

This whale swam next to us for a while

I loved seeing all the tail fins!!

Enjoying the sun and sea

When I got back home yesterday I was exhausted! I think that's a sign that I had an incredible weekend. I would go back to the Gold Coast every weekend if possible - it's such a fun and sunny place! But after a long and restful night's sleep, I'm back to work and ready to get rolling on all my projects for the week.

Cheers!