Things are slowly coming to an end with my study abroad program. I’ve got 2 short weeks of internship left, and just 3 weeks of classes including exam week. It is striking at how quickly the entire experience has passed. I suppose that happens when you’re taking in new cultures, seeing new cities, and making new friends.
At my internship, they have a procedure involving hyperperfusion, used to increase blood pressure to the far extremities (toes / feet) of the legs and stimulate arterial growth. Involved in this procedure, is a tube that connects the femoral artery to a pump external of the body. This tube is sewed to the artery and passes through a wound in the skin. I was tasked with making some design modifications for this tube to be used in a cardiac application, in which it would be connected to the subclavian artery for the extent of a cardiac bypass surgery. On Monday, I will construct a prototype for this assembly, which will hopefully be shipped off to the surgeon for approval, bringing the design cycle to a near complete finish.
In classes, I gave a presentation in International Business this week with Alicia, on Woolworths Limited (no connection to the US Woolworths company) and had a research paper due in Sociology today. That concludes the major projects for my classes. I have a journal portfolio for my internship to complete and then just exams to study for.
CAPA is putting on a Thanksgiving dinner for us students on Thanksgiving Day (local time, for simplicity). We will get a proper Thanksgiving meal catered by the Billy Blue School of Culinary Arts. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy will all be featured. There is a battle between Pumpkin and Pecan pie at the moment, I’m rooting for Pecan and may bake my own if Pumpkin wins out!
I bought plane tickets this evening for a trip with Stephanie to New Zealand from December 5th – 10th. We’re flying to Christchurch, on the Southern Island, and will be looking to partake in some lovely hikes and tours of the glaciers and mountainous surroundings. Perhaps a Lord of The Rings tour is in order (how cool would a tour of Hobbiton be?!) but may be pricey. Luckily the exchange rate is pretty good for us at the moment (~0.61USD:1AUD) giving us cheap flights and the NZ$ is pretty weak against the dollar at the moment as well (0.55USD:1NZD).
My parents are coming to visit me! They will arrive in Sydney on December 7th, while I’m in New Zealand. I’ll be meeting up with them, taking them around Sydney and then we’ll be off to explore another city or two. I’m rooting for Melbourne and then somewhere a little North for SCUBA diving. They’ll be in town until the 20th, and I depart for home on the 21st, just in time to recuperate for Christmas, then moving to back Minneapolis and into my new apartment with my new roommate, Jeff.

I register for next semesters classes in an hour. I’m looking to graduate in either 2 or 3 more semesters, depending on some small factors. I can do 2 semesters, but I’m weighing the pros and cons of a December vs Spring graduation and the ability to take additional technical electives that would help me in my major.

I suppose that is all I have for now. Cheers.

Life just won’t stand still for me, no matter how hard I wish it to.

I just got back from a 3 day / 2 night liveaboard dive trip through Prodive Cairns. It was absolutely thrilling! We did 4 dives the first day, 4 dives the second day, and 3 dives the last day. That includes 2 night dives the first two days.
While we were on the way out to the Great Barrier Reef I opted to join the Advanced Open Water training class that was going on during the trip. I joined several other students (ages ranging from 20 to 50) and did 5 training dives: Night dive, Deep dive, Underwater Navigation, Naturalist, and Underwater Photography. I would much have liked to do the Peak Buoyancy Control dive, but unfortunately they didn’t have all of the right equipment on board for that.

The diving was phenomenal, with perfect 26°C water somehow I was the only one to not wear a wetsuit the entire time. The visibility was good for most of the dives, and luckily this part of the Reef is largely thriving. I didn’t see any sort of bleached or dead coral while I was there, aside from what looked like natural life cycle deterioration.

For all of my dives, I buddied up with Nikolas, one of the other Advanced Open Water students. We had a good time together, and it was a good partnership, us both holding roughly the same number of dives and having near equivalent skill levels under the water. Together we saw huge schools of fish, a handful of sea turtles, a few small rays, and some whitetip and great reef sharks, along with experiencing diving at night for the first time. There were, of course, a few hiccups along the way. On one of the later dives, we got disoriented with our position from the current and surges we were swimming with, and set course back to the boat. After a long swim, we were running low on air and decided to surface to get our bearings, and probably snorkel it back. Good thing we did! We had actually swam under the boat, missing the anchor lines, and swam a good 200m past it! We weren’t the only ones, though; a few others surfaced around the same spot that we had once we got back to the boat. I also lost my buddie, for the first time. We were swimming amongst many coral heads, and we found a small swim through. I opted to go through while he opted to go over and when I came out on the other side, he was no where to be found! I frantically went back over the ridge, around several of the other boomies, all the while looking for his bubbles. I looked at my watch, okay… 1 minute then you surface. I swam, I looked, I panicked. 90 seconds later, I do one last 360 and there he his. Waving at me, looking at me and saying “Hey, I’m over here dummy!”. We finished off the dive, it was a little shorter than planned, I burned through air a little faster while looking for him. When we got back to the boat he said he could see me the whole time, but I swam away from him when I tried to find him. Apparently in my “panic”, I didn’t do a full 360 turn when I looked for him before swimming off. Lesson Reinforced: keep calm, relaxed, and focused.
During another dive, we were swimming through some surges and we got knocked into eachother. Completely accidentally, a small movement of Nikolas’ hand yanked the regulator straight out of my mouth. Very calmly, I looked at him in the face to say, “hey! I was using that…” and patiently waited for him to return my regulator to me, since he could see it better than I could (it went being me). Luckily, he returned it to me before I ran out of breath (of course, I always had my backup about 3″ from my mouth), and we leisurely continued our time amongst the fishies.

It was a great experience, I took some decent photos along the way, and I’m glad that I did my Advanced Certification, getting some extra experience with underwater navigation.
Photos From My Dives