Givin it to God 24/7: Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, it's off to work we go....

I took my second field trip of the semester to the town of Charters Towers this past Friday to visit a gold mine.

Let me just preface this post with the facts that A.) Charters Towers is in the middle of nowhere so the scenery is, well,.... in-the-middle-of-nowhere scenery. B.) These pictures could possibly be sleep inducing as they're mainly of rocks, landscapes, and processing plant machinery-fun stuff, right.

The ride there was gorgeous, I honestly felt like I could have been driving through the African savannah (saw some very nice looking termite mounds), and even though the scenery was pretty rural, it was a nice change from a more populated area.

Our day consisted of first logging drill cores, where we basically played geologists for an hour and analyzed samples of rocks that had been drilled up from the ground. We then visited a site where the mine keeps a massive pile of extra ore in case they have a bad day, if they do have a bad day, they can just draw from this pile and process it. We were able to get a car tour of the gold processing plant, but it wasn't safe enough for us to get out and walk around. Then we went to an old mining site and took in the amazing view from Towers Hill, and the day concluded with going to the Warrior Mine, where the actual underground mining takes place. Unfortunately, we weren't able to go underground since it's dangerous enough for the workers to be there.

In other news, I have less than 8 weeks, still can't get over how quickly time has flown! I'm actually getting very tired of classes; let me just say that I am VERY glad I chose not to go into the field of science; after doing practical/lab write-ups, field work, and research papers, I see ever so clearly why God called me into the field of education :) Don't get me wrong, I enjoy learning new things in the environmental science field, but I could never do it for a living. I'm gonna finish strong though, determined to finish all of my assignments and do well on my exams.

Travel plans are still looking good, but we moved the Mission Beach trip back to the weekend of the 15th, and I think I've added a second trip north to Cairns for the days I have free before I return to the states. Good stuff!