After 4 schools, 7 talks, I was pretty much too tired to write. It took me a while to get back into the swing of talking in front of people. Like most people I'm fairly petrified about presenting and it takes a bit for me to warm up. But after a few talks it becomes impossible for your body to keep freaking out and I started to remember what I actually wanted to say. 
For the most part the talks went really well
the kids were good and asked questions, figured I was onto a winner when the teachers were so curious they were taking notes and interrupting. Mostly the kids asked pretty good questions, the only silly one was from a kid asking how they choose which chicken to roast... Like in supermarkets... this is not something I know, nor is it something I have any intention of finding out. But other than that the kids got pretty interested in the idea of people who live on floating houses, and if there's any doubt about the excitement of science generally showing a video of a rocket launch sets everyone straight (and gets a lovely and appreciative oooooohhh).
What else? Not much really, the tricky bit was presenting my research to a bunch of prep kids. They did pretty well I think, it was possibly the most challenging time in my short time as a science communicator and whilst I could feel grey hairs growing I also learnt a lot about watching the audience and how to compare complicated international issues with day to day things kids experience everywhere (I avoided the word geopolitical and have since deleted it from the presentation). One of the issues I find most challenging to communicate is how decisions made about water use in China have direct impacts for communities in Cambodia. Whilst the analogy of water at the top of a mountain being clean and water at the bottom of a river being less clean is an ok way to tell the story it still seems to lack something. One of the many concepts I'm working on for communication. 
Stayed at a slightly creepy b&b where they tried to feed us fruitcake. 
Being Australian scientists it is essential to appreciate the local pub, we did this with enthusiasm. 

After my adventures last year as an ATSE Young Science Ambassador (which I am yet to blog about, but it happened, I promise!) I've taken up most opportunities I can find to bug people about climate change adaptation and floating houses. Sometimes these are people who know what I'm talking about, like the wonderful people at ACCARNSI at their research forums, other times they are just people who stand still long enough. The best opportunities though are the ones where you get to talk to kids, ideally those in year 6 and 7. Why? Because they are awesome. Because no matter what the topic they will inundate you with questions. Because if you're starting to get tired of your topic they can help you get excited about it again. Plus, on more than one occasion I have been asked questions that I have never thought of before. Often those questions are actually key to your research, and can help you along a lot. Never underestimate the power of enquiring young minds. 
So the opportunity came up to be a Young Tassie Scientist, which I now officially am. The following few posts are about the adventures and insights that happened along the way.
I encourage everyone to talk about your research with everyone and answer every question. It helps with keeping your stuff grounded to reality and relevant and also ensures that you really really know your shit. If you can answer the 5 year olds, the climate change denier aunt and the right wing cousin who thinks science is pointless with calm sensible answers then you're onto something. 

And enough rambling! Onto the joys of road tripping! We had a weather man, geographer, chemistry teacher and agricultural geek in our group, along with our ever present and long suffering guide/wrangler/timekeeper.

Day 1

For an introvert a car trip is not desirable. It's squishy, noisy and exhausting. On the plus side its a learning opportunity. On this car trip I learnt one of my hidden talents is generating quotes from movies, the purpose of which is to guess which movie. My favourites were:

'follow the white rabbit'
'we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark and we're wearing sunglasses' 
'what about parfait? Everybody loves parfait' 
and 'I'd rather hear my dog bark at a crow than hear a man swear he loves me'

I'm hoping you know all of those.. if you don't, Google is your friend.

Anyways, it was all fine until about 60km from Queenstown when windy roads of death combined with the dark and snow activated my carsickness to quite an unpleasant degree, but we all survived (though the girl in the front's dinner didn't make it.. The smell of chunder did not assist in.. Well anything)

So far not so much science, amazingly scientists are pretty normal people when it comes to being stuck in a car for 4 hours. Boredom reigns and discussions of books, tv, games, I Spy and "What Johnny likes" can only last so long.

We were met in Queenstown with a real wood fire though, that was undoubtedly a highlight of the day. Off to entertain with science tomorrow.

And that's about it for the day (bet you wanted to know all about it!)