School is out!

Well hello again everyone. I am now officially finished with my academics during my semester here at Waikato and my time here is winding down. I must say finals were truly one of the biggest academic challenges I've had in quite a while. I've never studied so hard and yet still felt unprepared ever like this. But luckily I think I handled my business good enough to get out of this country with some decent grades that won't dent my GPA. On Friday and Saturday and had a combined 5 hours of exam writing on the subjects of Ecology and Physiology. Basically what I did was in my Physiology final I had to choose a single question from five different sections. Four sections covered the different aspects of bodily physiological functions and the last section covered the animal behavior part of our class. I chose to discuss the processes of neuronal electrical potentials (basically what all goes into action potentials and how they are passed from the presynaptic to postsynaptic cell through both electrical and chemical processes as well as the differences between the different receptor channels found on excitable membranes such as ligand and voltage gated channels), since the class was a comparative physiology class in my next question I had to compare the different methods of locomotion between air, land and water (basically just talked about the different adaptations animals have acquired in order to reduce energetic costs in order to move through there environment). Just thought I would throw this interesting fact in here: ricochetal movement animals such as macropods (kangaroos and wallabies) have developed such an efficient way of movement that the elasticity in which there leg structure allows makes it so as they run faster and faster there oxygen consumption does not increase because there method of locomotion is so metabolically efficient they conserve so much energy from bound to bound. The third question I answered was about how oxygen is distributed through out the body using respiratory pigments (I discussed there structure, specifically explained hemoglobin, and how environmental factors can affect there affinity for oxygen). My fourth question I discussed osmoregulation and ionoregulation (one of the aspects I discussed here was how diadromous are able to live in estuary environments, how fish move from marine to freshwater environments and visa versa) and my last section on animal behavior I discussed deception found in animal signals.
So now that I bore you to death with physiology now I'll get started on Ecology, which was awesome because I learned so much about New Zealand and its wildlife (which I will dedicate a posting to pretty soon here where I will go into depth of some of the things I learned here, I just need a break from writing about all this stuff) and how the island structure of New Zealands ecosystem allows for so many unique endemic species such as the kiwi, the kakapo and the now extinct moa. My first question I discussed how there are different reproductive structures found throughout the animal kingdom (such as monogamy, promiscuity, polygamy which includes polyandry and polygyny and how the ecosystem can determine the structure). My second question I discussed the biogeochemical cycles of nutrients into and out of ecosystems (I was also considering answering the biogeography one as well). Then I answered a question comparing temperate deciduous forests and New Zealands temperate (I think, it could be tropical) evergreen forests (it was hard to remember specific specie names). My last question I answered how the different temporal stratification structure found in lakes affects the phytoplankton populations, the distribution of dissolved oxygen and nutrient cycles.
I would just like to say I learned a lot here and even though the finals were very very hard and I really hope I get good marks I must say this was well worth it. I love learning about this stuff and I'm excited to learn more. All learning does is raise even more questions about the stuff I thought I knew about.

Any ways enough about that. Basically after finals we started drinking and went to the All Blacks game who were playing Ireland. It was pretty damn fun. It was funny since as we walked in I all of a sudden heard "LADS! HEY LADS! Would ya come over here for a sec." I turn to find two drunk ass Irishmen  walking our way. I was a little skeptic to go over to them so I asked them what they wanted. Turns our they just wanted us to take a picture of them so Gabe did. As we left they said "Boys tonight you will witness history." What they meant by that was Ireland had never ever beat New Zealand in New Zealand and the week before the Irish nearly won.

Turns out we did witness history.

It was the biggest blow out between the two teams ever. The final score was like 60-0 and All blacks kicked ass. I must say I had a blast listening to drunk Irishmen chant. I loved hearing the combination of accents.

Any ways I'm super tired and I got footage I will show when I get back home. Watching the Haka was awesome.

I plan on dedicating a post about going to Auckland, the interesting things I learned in bio class (specifically the biogeography and the biodiversity in New Zealand) and just interesting things I adapted to regarding life in NZed.

Sorry this is so sloppy.

Finals finished on the 23rd of June.

Peace out