first day

wooooooow, everything is so cool! yeaah, for sure going to be blogging frequently.

so, it is only 9:30pm and i am really exhausted... but it's k. still need to work on my power point presentation of my project due tmr morning at 10. today was a really fun day though.

us 4 showed up to the lab at 10am. we were shown the facilities by one of dr. fan's assistants since he wasn't there. but maaaan, the whole place was really awesome. i'll let these pictures speak for themselves.

[first look at the husbandry]

[one type of soft coral in one of the tanks]

[sea turtle!]

showed to this rosie, who then squealed (via AIM chat) in delight, haha. apparently, there is a place in the lab where they put injured sea turtles in for them to recover.

[one of the bigger coral tanks]

[sea cucumber!]

after these awesome tours, another one of tony's lab assistants then took the 4 of us out on a little town trip to get some groceries and such.

[a glimpse of town]

went and bought some noodles, vegetables, fruits, drinks, and who can forget, beer.

[types of taiwan beer]

lol, it's nice to be able to buy beer legally AND to not have people question your age or even try to figure it out when you're checking out.

Naizhen, the assistant, was really awesome for carting us everywhere in town, haha. he even bought all of us boba and such. =D

when we got back to the lab, we were finally able to talk to tony. we discussed our projects and possible equipment we might need and our objectives for the experiments. left for home afterward with michael and robert, but as we reached our aparment building, we got sidetracked by this little guy:

found this crab walking in the quad-ish area of our apartment, and as soon as it caught sight of me, michael, and robert, it hightailed out of the area... into the public restroom, which was just a room with a toilet and sink. decided to catch it and release it back into the wild.. haha.

ohhhh boy. anyway, as can be seen, i ended up at the beach for the first time. wasn't really a beach? it was very rocky, with remains of fragmented corals on the sandier/rockier area and the actual dead reef spread along the shoreline.

[calcium remains of euphyllia galabra(?)]

[town of kenting from rocky, dead coral reef shore]

anyway, got really tired, hot, and sticky, so finally went back to the apartment, took a nice long cold shower. fixed myself some noodles to eat, settled down, and started working on this blogpost, haha. now i have to work on the presentation and then heading early off to bed. more to come later... but hopefully not as long? if you survived reading this uber long post, i commend you, haha. can't wait to see what tomorrow has in store.

20 hours + 1 day

yay! so the 4 of us arrived safely in kenting, taiwan, where the weather and temperature was an expected, but unwelcome surprise.

had a few snags during the trip here. for me, i was almost denied my boarding ticket because the duration of stay on my itinerary on my eticket was longer than the 60 days of visit as stated by my visa. because of this, i had to argue with the people at the counter to explain to them that i was going for an internship and that i have a valid reason for staying past the visa. however, i couldn't get on the plane until i let them change my return date, which is the 21st of august at the moment. need to contact a few people to change it back to my original return date... complicated.

from LAX to tokyo, i was surrounded by many japanese people.. most to all wearing those SARS (h1n1) masks. made me a bit paranoid, so, following my mother's instructions, i wore one on the transpacific flight as well. i suppose it was a good thing, because the guy that sat next to me... well, let's just say that he wasn't in perfect health. started coughing occassionally, which made me go 0_0. hm, let's home that nothing happens to me... i'll be closely monitoring my health for the next couple of days.

then there was the 1 hour delay when we arrived at the tokyo narita airport. the typhoon passing through the strait between taiwan and china were proving to be bad flying conditions, so we had to wait for confirmation.. and also wait in line behind all the planes that were taking off (14 took off before us).

but despite all of this, we've all arrived safely and rather comfortably. =D

currently, i have a 1 bedroom apartment to myself (hopefully i won't have to share later if other students come?).. fully furnished with:

blue faux suede sofa
tv
internet
fridge
queen bed

[living room]

[kitchen]
[bedroom]
[bathroom]

woke up 3 times this morning (after going to sleep at 2:45 am). once at 5:30am, only to find that the sun is blazing high in the window in my room. then again at 6:30, and finally just stayed up at 7:30. looked out the window, and this is what i saw:

it's pretty nice, though the temperature makes it really hot and humid... stressing the words "hot" and "humid", haha.

well, it's almost 10am. we're all going off later to meet with tony fan and discuss details about our projects. i'll try and figure out how i can change the time zone on this blog so it doesn't look as if i'm blogging about the future. 0_0

counting down

whew. finally got my visa, cutting it a bit close.

only 4 more days left! 0_0 kinda excited/nervous because it's for the whole summer...and i feel that i may be under-packing for the trip. note: may need bigger suitcase.

another issue i have to take care of is money... how much i should take exactly, where should i do currency conversion and if i should do that with all my money all at once, how i will carry it with me on my trip... so many things to try and figure out (and maybe spam more of my fellow PRIME internees, sorry!) i'll also need to make photocopies of all my important documents and leave a copy at home and to keep with me during travel.

hmmm, besides the essentials.. need to unpack/pack stuff that i'm going to take with me when i come back. make sure that i have enough clothes, especially shorts which i think i'm lacking. yikes, that could be bad. hangers, towels, hygenic products? *sigh* so many things to consider..