So I am thoroughly enjoying Canada the weather is amazing (although the beer is very expensive!) the conference has been a whirlwind of meeting people, attending talks and socialising in the evenings. I arrived in Canada early afternoon on the 7th August, that evening I went for dinner with my supervisor and some of the other PhD students it was great to catch up with them all and update them on my research and travels. The next day was the official first day of the conference however the presentations did not start until the 9th so we spent the day exploring Vancouver and went to the conference registration. We visited Stanley Park which is stunning and enjoyed the amazing views Vancouver has to offer. The 9th was the first day of presentations so we had an early start with the welcome talks at 9am these were very interesting and introduced many important people as well as a very good first presentation by Tyrone Hayes he is an amazing speaker if you are interested this is very similar to the talk he gave us, and is well worth a watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIF_K0cC5mI
After this talk I went and put up my poster ready for the poster presentations each evening. I still had a couple of hours before the afternoon presentations so I went for a walk down on the beach and took some photos of the amazing view. I spent the afternoon in presentations which were very interesting including one on the Tepuis in Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil there are some very interesting endemic frogs found on these mountains! That evening was the first of several social events involving a BBQ, volleyball, crazy golf and beer!
Over the next four days I attended many different presentations on a whole range of topics from tropical poison frogs to getting your work published in top herpetological journals. These were all very interesting and have given me lots of tips, pointers and ideas for my own research. As well as attending these I attended my poster presentation session where I stood with my poster for two hours and talked to a wide range of people who were interested in my research.
I have put together a selection of photos from this week. I have also included a selection of photos from my trip to the Aquarium and some photos of the friendly racoons that live on the University campus they are very cute and we saw them most evenings. This individual climbed up the tree away from me while I was taking photos of him then he looked at me, changed his mind and climbed back down to sniff me then ran off again! We also saw skunks however I did not get a photo of them didn’t want to get too close just encase!!
I am now relaxing in my hostel in Vancouver doing some work and updating my blog. My friends arrive tomorrow and I am going to have two weeks with them travelling around Canada in a RV! I am very excited about this and will post an update about my travels.
I just wanted to point out that none of this would be possible without my funding for which I am incredibly grateful!! Thanks to all who have donated to the Alumni Postgraduate Research Scholarship 🙂
