Sweet August

Wow!! I have already been here for a month!!! That just blows me away! This week has been a good time. It was POURING down rain the beginning of the week and I was soaked!!!! Monday and Tuesday were alright with classes and such just hanging out and working on projects i.e. reading "Into Thin Air" and "The Adventure Alternative." Tuesday was actually probably the worst day I have had here yet and it wasn't even that bad. It was pouring rain of course and I don't think I have ever been that wet going to class. I had marketing class from 9-11 and usually I love it but that day I could not stay awake! So I left at the break and went back to bed. At 12 I had marketing tut. which is like a smaller discussion group. We were suppose to discuss this question that we were suppose to write out a answer for but I guess I didn’t' put very much effort into it so I ended up not participating partly because what I had thought of had already been said and partly because it went into Australian politics and economy and I really didn't know much about that so I didn't say anything. I stayed after to ask what I could do to be more up to date on what we were talking about and the teacher basically asked me what the real problem was and I wasn't exactly sure what she ment. I then told her I didn't really like politics, or politicians and she went on to tell me off on how I need to pay attention to politics for the future of leisure science and such. I just left feeling like a stupid American and thought a lot about what she said. Then decided there are more important things in life than politics and I understand the strategy to stay up to date, predict and provide what people will want but that’s not what this life is all about. So I decided to take her advice, work harder, pay attention to news and such but I also decided to continually look at things from an eternal perspective. Anyway that kind of shook me up. In Eco-recreation we had a guy come in and do team building/icebreakers with us. We jumped rope, can you believe it?? It was alright, he was a good leader but I have done a lot of stuff like that before so it wasn't really anything new He did offer us jobs though if we wanted to volunteer for awhile and I told him I would come back and work for him someday.. It was pretty exciting to have an offer like that for "someday."
O then later Tuesday night I went to my friend Jade's house, she is great! We made Sausage Rolls which (for all you in America who probably never had one) are freaking good!!! (PIC: me holding a wombat!!) I met her family including her mom, little sister, Crystal, and her brother, Jacob he is my age, and he is pretty much the man!!! We have a ton in common and a lot to talk about. He ended up giving me a ride home and we talked a lot about church and what his situation is like, I was kind of trying to hint around how to get into a better situation one that he may like better and it just ended up not coming out the way I wanted it to. So I felt like an idiot and decided to go for a run after he dropped me off. I also decided to apologize at the dance that was coming up on Friday.
(PIC: Yeah who got to ride a camel!!!!!)Ok so rainy crappy Wednesday came and went and Thursday came with sunny skies!! Brittany (the only other American on the village) and I decided to actually get out and do something so we walked to the library, grabbed some lunch then went shopping where she got two sweet dresses for super cheap. Anyway, then we went grocery shopping and headed back to the village. It started raining later that night and Friday came to early, 7:41 to be exact when I was suppose to be meeting my class at 7:45AM to go biking, so 9 minutes later I was at class and only missed a few minutes. Biking was a bit of a disappointment. I thought we would bike for longer but it was still nice to get out and enjoy each others company. Then after my group met and we set up our bike ride more and that was good fun.
Later that night I was talking to my good friend Rene from Germany and we started talking about religion which was to much fun!!! I was getting picked up to go the ball (dance) at 8 pm and it was 7 when we started talking at around 7:40 I finally had to tell him I had to get ready I felt so bad cuz we were having such a deep conversation and he was really excited because he said this was his first deep conversation like that in English and he was pretty proud of himself. It was cool. He has this theory of business, where everything in the world is like a business, even our bodies but it is really complicated, input and output stuff and deeper than that. It was really interesting!
The dance.......so Jade's other brother Travis picked me up, he is such a nice guy, we talked about lots of cool stuff but have totally different interests. He works at a hotel, loves to sing and is interested in politics (go figure). So we got there and who was the first person I saw, Oh Jacob and DADADADA....his girlfriend. Sweet. She ended up being really cool though, but I didn't get the chance to apologize but he acted like it never happened so it was all good. The ball was alright. The g isn't working so well on my keyboard. Anyway, lots of dancing later, Jade gave me a ride home and we were trying to name all the 50 states, or according to her 52 states. I guess there are 2 districts or something or another. Anyway, we got to about 45 and I still can't think of the other 5. Saturday was lazy just kidding, we went to Caversham Wildlife park and got to pet kangaroos and koalas and saw lots of cool animals which you will see in the pictures!!! It was really exciting!! I came home and took a nap though. I finished the book "Into Thin Air" dude, READ IT. It is sooooooo good. I would recommend it to anyone. Anyway, church was good, all is good, now I need to do some homework and clean my room. mmmmm good American hot cocoa thanks mom!!!! (PIC: Me, Maggie and Sofia, my flatmates at Caversham)

Fern Gully

I cut my hair!!!!! Well actually my flatmate Sofia did it. She is from Sweden and is super cool, we get along great and she is so energetic and just glows and everyone loves her, she lived in Australia for 8 months last year then returned to Sweden and came back again for 8 months this year but in the mean time has traveled all around. She went to Thailand for a month and has amazing pictures!!! I am thinking of traveling there over during the Christmas break for about a month.
This week has been pretty good, Classes were great. My profs really open my mind to new ideas and life theories and ideas that I want to remember. I also learned how to change a bike chain, and patch a tire. I am also planning a trek with 3 other girls on bikes for 3 days and 2 nights which, can you believe it, is our major assignment for a course!!! The same day we decided to go together I set up my Prac, or practical work. I have to do 35 hours of volunteer work for a class so I am volunteering at a camp for 5 days plus training, and the training is great it certifies me to work at other camps as well. So that will be a good experience, it is over the semester break which is only a week but my bike trip is the weekend before the week starts so I will have a few days of REAL break after the camp finishes Friday so I may take a train or bus to a sweet beach and hang out there.
I have been chowing down on dry Milo (cocoa mix), tea (herbal), fruit, and tortillas with cheese, meat, and salad. Oh my other specialty is onions, tomato, and carrots all fried up with a Mongolian or teriyaki sauce then add cooked ramen noodles and/or meat and mix, its pretty much the best thing ever!!!
My dad's 50th was on Wednesday so I gave the fam a call which was cool, I also got to talk to Kaela, Katie and Sarah, so it was a pretty good day. I have still been running quite often but it has been really stormy lately. I went running earlier today and it just rained a bit and then it was really blustery. After I thought it cleared up I tried to go to the city library and as soon as I was out of the building it started POURING. I was huddled under a tree that I thought was going to fall on me then when it finally died down I ran to the library only to find out it was closed!! Oh well it was a fun walk back because it poured even harder and I decided I didn't want to hide under a tree forever so I just walked in the rain and was soaked!! The girls upstairs got like 6 movies and called it a movie day, there is a mix of Disney and horror so its good times they are going back and forth, we just watched Fern Gully, that movie is so good!! It was made in Australia too!! (The picture is of Sofia)
So last night was this huge party at a club with like 200 people and EVERYONE from the village went but I was going to a church dance so I took the train which is really cool by the way. Then someone told me that you could see the church from the train station so I stood outside looking around then decided it must be on the other side of the freeway so I walked over there and went to a petro (gas) station and asked for a phonebook to look up the address and then went back to the station to look up the road on a map cuz no one knew where it was. Then I only found a park with the same name as the road it was on so I decided it had to be around there. So I started walking and after an hour of walking in a circle I finally found it! It was right next to the train station!!! So frustrating. There is no way you can see it either. Anyway so then there was NO ONE there!!!!! So I guess I got my day or time wrong. Anyway I took the train back and a footy game just got over so thankfully there was a lot of people on the train. I was so tired when I got back I had chips and cheese and watched 2 movies. (the pic is the entrence to my Uni its suppose to look like a ship with sails))
I'm reading the book "Into Thin Air" which I love!!! It is really well written and inspires me to be hardcore. That’s about all I have been doing. I love Australia, one day a bunch of us were just hanging out and we started talking about Aussie lingo and they say No like noiee haha so it sounds like no-yee. Say it fast and it will be right. So now every time someone says no-yee I start laughing. Sometimes they do it on purpose just to amuse us Americans haha. Oh so Sofia MADE Justin and I go to this place called DUSK, it’s a tavern, and hang out and they played the Napoleon Dynamite dance song. Then we met some people from the Village there and this dude Rene from Germany and I started a dance off it was sooo funny!!! I did the moon walk and he busted some great moves, he is a really good dancer, I couldn't stop laughing at how serious he looked when he busted a move. He is skinny as a rail and witty. We get along great, we have Eco-recreation together it's pretty funny, our prof Annie will say something and we will both look at each other, realize the other doesn't know what it means either and go back to paying attention mutually deciding to disregard what she said as not super important. (this pic is of Maggie and I doing a V for Victory after conquering the shopping center)
So after our dance off everyone from the village was watching us and they clapped for us then I decided I wanted to get the heck out of there so Justin and I walked back and right after we left he was like “why didn’t you tell me you could dance!!!” Which was pretty flattering because I don’t think I’m that good a dancer it is just really fun. He said I would put him to shame on the dance floor and he was glad HE didn’t dance with me. Then we found a trolley (shopping cart) on the walk home and he pushed me in it then I pushed him and crashed oops. It was a good time. Then we just started talking about our lives which was really cool, and deep this guy is awesome! He is hardly ever here though but he is really fun to be around. I love my unit!!!!! The diversity of everyone makes it special because we all get along great and help each other out. So stay out of those Dodgy areas and have heaps of fun!!! (This pic is just a view from the village of the beautiful skin distructive sun)

Prison

So this week has been pretty uneventful until last night. There was a prison tour set up by the school and I was a bit skeptical, wahoo a prison tour that’s what I have always wanted to spend my Friday night doing!!! Yeah, well anyway a BUNCH of people went from the village and it was like an hour long ride to Fremantle which is a beautiful old England place on the port. I want to visit it sometime during the day, anyway, so this prison is where they kept prisoners from when they first brought people over until 1991!!!! This place is soooooooooooo creepy!!!! It was sooo cold, like down to your bones!!! The stories they told were crazy too!! I have videos as well for when I get back to show you all. Ok so some of the stories I just have to tell. Our guide was a Scottish lady and she was awesome!!! She said people have told her that she has had a man following her around that was one of the prisoners, and there have been pictures taken with weird orbs in them people think are ghosts. I didn't pick up anything to weird in my pictures. The lead singer of AC DC was in there for awhile and we saw his cell. There was one guy who stole something and got sent to prison for 10 years but kept escaping so finally they put up 2 inches of thick hard wood in his cell, and then put 3 sets of bars on the window and they also put nails into the boards all around the room and the door and he had a chain around his neck to the ground and still he escaped!!! He was pounding rocks in his cell and usually the guards removed them but they forgot so he started piling them up in front of him until the guards couldn't see him but they could still hear the tinking of his chisel but he was pounding through the wood in the cell!!! All in all 150 people that they know of escaped. It was sooo creepy!!! I guess some people who were prisoners came back after it closed and took tours, some even when they were on the run!!! It was a sweet tour even though I haven’t been that scared in a long time! The tour was an hour and a half! Check out the pictures!!
So after the tour we had about 45 minutes to hang out and we heard a football game going on. Ok so this was soooooo cool, it is called Australian Rules Football, and its kind of confusing. I will explain it to anyone who asks though. I know how Cricket works now as well. Anyway, so we watched this game for awhile and then it was half time and everyone rushed onto the field!!! So we went on it as well!! I thought that was sooooo coool!!! It was a league, not a city league though it is the people below the pros or something like that. Anyway we got to go right up to the players and I could smell them, gross. It was really cool though. Than on the way home on the bus we were all super hungry and a bit tired so we started singing crazy songs that all of us knew. It is cool to see how many songs are universal! We had Africans, Americans, Australians, Englishman, Norwegian, Swedish, French, German and Canadian, it was awesome. We had such a good time!!! I also talked to this Swedish guy on the way down to the prison and he wants to go into Military Intelligence and it was cool listening to his point of view on Americans. We look like idiots to him, but I tried to guide him to look at a different point of view. This guy is going to be a CIA though, dang. He was really smart.
Oh how could I forget, it was a dudes birthday on Thursday so we had a dress up party and the girls dressed as Guys and the guys dressed as girls. It was pretty much the funniest thing EVER!! After about 3 hours all the guys were like, I DON'T WANT TO BE A GIRL ANYMORE!! Some even had high heals on, I got some great pictures. Uni is good fun as Australians say.

Adventure Recreation Management

Well school has started. It is freakin cold here when it rains!!! It pours sooo hard that I can't sleep when its raining because its so loud! So I live in this place called "The Village" Its actually the student village but mostly its just called the village, which kind of creeps me out cuz I saw that movie. Everyone parties here A LOT. That is basically ALL they do. I made soup tonight and my flatmates always try my cooking and tell me it is "ok" or they pretend it is good, but its really not as good as they could do. Well tonight, my soup ROCKED!! I wrote down the recipe so if anyone wants to try it sometime I can give it to them or make it for them.
Classes are ok, soooooooooooooooo much work but I only have each class for a couple hours all in a row one time a week. It's awesome. I'm taking 1.Leisure, Lifestyle, and Programing, 2. The principles of Eco-Recreation, 3. Marketing. 4. Adventure Recreation Management. In 2 of my classes we have to plan an overnight trip, one of them is a 2 night and 3 day bike ride. I'm so excited! we are also going kayaking, sailing, and abseiling (climbing).
So some of the other lingo here, people always say, heaps! Oh yeah I was over at the baa (bar) and there were heaps of chaps there. haha, they never pronounce their R's, its fun though trying to figure it out. One of the assistant professors here just got back from New York and saw that I had an Alaska shirt on and we started talking and he wants to visit Chicken, AK, I laughed, I told him there is nothing there but he said there is a bar he wants to go to. haha. Anyway, I have been watching Australian Idol, and Big Brother which are really big shows over here. We (Maggie and Frank and I) are still trying to go running but our times class a lot and I'm starting to get shin splints. They have this really good cocoa which is called Milo and it is THE BEST!! Well its good raw, and with milk but cruddy with hot water. I am reading, "Into thin Air" and a Lance Armstrong book for 2 of my classes. I also have to do 35 hours of volunteer work in the rec field, its called Prac, man sometimes in class the profs will say something and I am just like whoa I have to stay after and ask them what that ment or ask someone next to me. My marketing prof is sooo witty!! He cracks me up, he is Japanese with a really loud strong voice and has an Australian Accent. I was surprised but he is really easy to understand. Oh and we call all the profs by their first name. My Principles of Eco-rec prof is named Annie and she was the first female national park ranger in the state of Western Australia.
In my Adventure Rec Mang. class we looked at slides of my profs days at camp like 20 years ago when he was a leader and we talked about the risk management issues and I can't believe the rules and regulations they have here!!! Its like, you can't touch a student or camper at all, not even a hug, if they go near water there has to be 1 leader to every 8 people and the leader has to have their water and surf rescue license or something like that, he also showed us these slides of a hike they did in the mountains in Australia where it was really snowy, it looked like Alaska in a blizzard. The leaders had to have cross country ski licences!!! My mouth was gaping at the whole shpeal I couldn't believe the crap they have to do!! I be eventually America will have the same or similar rules and regulations though.
I have met a lot of cool people from all over, oh I met a girl from Austria today! I was really excited cuz that is where Sarah is going. Oh it is a requirement by our uni (thats what everyone calls it) that we do a group project and a presentation in every unit we take. It is so confusing the language here cuz they say we live in a Unit and we are taking Units and we go to a Uni, ahhh!!! Make different names, I guess they just ran out of words. Anyway, I tried some Vegimite the other night and it was discustofight! I made that up. My Ipod won't update anymore, I don't know whats up with that but hopefully it will start working again. Oh today I had a meat and vegetable pie, just for you dad! NOONE plays frisbee here. It’s the saddest thing EVER!! On a lighter note I saw some sweet movies, Wimbledon, Madagascar! They are sooo good!! Well thats all from me for right now. Until then, I can tell that we are gonna be friends.