yay for lack of work

Let's see. The weekend before last was the Tommie Ball. We all got dressed up and headed to the Hilton for the college version of a prom with alcohol. It was a lot of fun, an interesting night to say the least. The next day I woke up for the 8AM football game and for once ND won, yay!

Last week I actually had a ton of work! Mostly because I didn't do anything the previous week or weekend and had to finish everything before Friday morning-- but still I pretty much worked non-stop from Monday to Thursday night, ridiculous.

This past weekend all the ND kids went to the Albany area on our last ND-sponsored trip. On Friday, we left at 730 in the morning to start driving down south. We stopped at a Forest Heritage Center, had lunch at a cute little English-y place, and went to a really interesting integrated Aboriginal and White-culture museum. In the evening, we arrived at the lodge we were staying at in the Porongorups. It was really nice, groups of 4 had Chalets to stay in with lofts and a balcony with a great view of the hills.

On Saturday we spent the day climbing Bluff Knoll in Stirling Range National Park. The views were pretty impressive, it was really cool. The hike was a lot of fun; however, I was really tired (I think from lack of sleep the previous few nights) so I struggled up the seemingly endless stairs quite a bit.

Sunday was another mostly bus day but included some fun stuff too. While the others were at church, a bunch of us helped get rid of some invasive species from the bush, helping out the Australian environment. Later in the day, we did the Tree-Top walk (420-metre-long steel-truss walkway that is 40m above the ground, in the tree-tops), which kind of made me tingle all over. It was built to protect red tingle trees which have their root system very close the surface. They are only found within a 15 kilometre radius of Walpole, so it's a big tourist destination. The view was really pretty, not only of the trees, but in the distance they were doing controlled burning which resulted in a pretty amazing sky. After the walk, we were able to go into the “Ancient Empire” where they have some older tingle trees that have been through a fire. The inside of the trees was burned and only part of the sides, so you could go inside them, which was neat.

Yesterday I took my test and turned in my paper to finish off my massive amount of work. Now I should be all set until next week, though I should get a start on the work I didn't do last week (because I was busy with the stuff due Friday and yesterday) and the stuff that's due next week. Ah, but it's so hard when no one forces you. Today was soo nice out. I skipped my afternoon classes and headed to the beach, which was so nice. The water was quite warm and the waves were massive! They scared me a bit sometimes, and even knocked me over a few times. Also, I learned a few things about my frisbee skills, namely that I don't have any, I should work on that.

A Typical Week

An average week in my life in Australia...

Last Tuesday I planned out a productive day filled with tutorials, tracking epidemic simulations, analyzing the miss ratio for different computer cache sizes, and Body Balance. After dinner, a bunch of us headed over to the Inter-College Arts show, where some people for Tommie more played some music. There was some interesting acts like a gymnast with crazy sticks he swung around and techno dancers in silly clothing.

Wednesday was also pretty filled with work, so nothing too exciting. I don't have any classes on Wednesdays, but somehow was quite busy. I got pumped up with Body Pump and then spent the day reading lecture notes, doing lab work, and tracking some more epidemic simulations.

On Thursday morning I went to the fitness center for the first time. I've been to a lot of the exercise classes, but I've never just worked out using the machines in the fitness center part. And then I had a pretty relaxing morning while trying to get some work done before starting class at 1. I just had two classes (45 min each) and then an optional lab. After dinner, I went on a café crawl with people from my residential college. It was so much fun. It was only a few dollars and we got a bus ride to a cute little port town and free items at each of the three cafés. At the first place, I got a milkshake and tasted lots of little cakes mmm. And then we went to Baskin Robbins and I got Quarterback Crunch ice cream because I thought it was funny that it was American-themed. It was delicious though, vanilla ice cream with chocolate coated rice crispies and caramel on a cone... was soo good to have real ice cream. And then lastly, we went to Dome café- it's a chain that is all over the place. I got some tea in this cute little tea pot :-). The night was really great- it was relaxing and fun to hang out with everyone that went.

Friday I just had one class in the morning and then quick little meeting. After lunch, Christina and I went to Subiaco (a nearby town) to do some exploring and shopping. It was really nice, the day was absolutely beautiful. We went to the markets, the official sports shop at the footie stadium, the grocery store to get some essentials, and an amazing bakery. When we returned, we wrapped ourselves in toilet paper in preparation for an "Anything but Clothes" party. We made the "outfits" in the shape of dresses, and I think we did a pretty decent job. Other people had interesting costumes like caution tape, saran wrap, garbage bags, leaves, newspaper, etc. The newspaper dresses were super cute with fringed skirts. The night was great fun -- nights gets pretty amusing when the college provides free alcohol for everyone haha.

Even though I went to bed at 1AM on Friday, I woke up at 6AM on Saturday. I was reading up on Green Tea today (which I had for the first time on Friday) and I discovered today that Green Tea "possibly interacts" with the medication I took on Friday (which already has kind of odd effects on me, and I hadn't taken it Mon-Thurs)... so that was probably why that happened. So I was jumping around all morning, trying to occupy myself while the rest of the college was sleeping. A few of us went to Body Pump and then I went to Body Balance and boy was a kind of sore after all that. In the afternoon, some of us girls went to Kings Park and explored a bit. We climbed to the top of the "DNA Tower" to see a great view of Perth, went to the botanic gardens to experience the fullness of wildflower season, and did the tree top walk (pretty sweet bridges over the trees). The day was incredibly beautiful, high seventies, dry and sunny. After that, I attempted to nap to no avail, I could totally still feel the effects of something that felt like caffeine keeping me awake (even though I hadn't had any that day). At 9:30 I went to bed, because I felt like I should make up some sleep, and so that I could wake up at 1:30 to watch the second half of the game. However, I accidentally set my alarm for 1:30PM, whoopsie, so I slept until 6AM Sunday morning.

Sunday was filled with entirely too much work for a Sunday. I did some work in the morning and then went to Body Combat. Combat is kind of hard to follow, and some of the people are so intense and into the moves, it's kind of amusing. And then after lunch Dan and I worked on Comp Arch Lab from 1-3 and then break from 3-4 (because 2 hours of straight work is clearly too much), and then work again 4-5:30, whew. And then after dinner Dan, Ed and I put our report together for like an hour. Haha it's so crazy how my concept of "too much work" has so drastically changed, I think I'm going to die next semester.

Kim and I went for a run this morning. We ran like a mile away along the river, which was really beautiful and we saw a dolphin! And then stretched a bit and ran the mile back. Even though that is practically nothing for most people, I was really proud of myself, because for me, that was a pretty big accomplishment. Freshman year I started running and set a goal of being able to run for 20 min without stopping and I think I only did that maybe once. But I think I could do that now :-). The rest of my day has been good-- classes and such. And then Net Ball after dinner. Net Ball is a funny game with so many rules, but after my third time playing, I think I'm getting used to it a bit more. And despite my lack of ability to play, it's a lot of fun. And now I am avoiding my homework, I think I'm done for the night. I get to talk to Mike in 15 min and then I think I'll go to bed since I'm going to 6:15 Body Balance tomorrow.

Surfing, Horseback Riding, Wine Tasting...

This past weekend I went on another trip organized for the ND kids as part of our one credit class. We went to Margaret River, it was such an amazing weekend :-)

We left early Friday morning and got on kind of a sketchy old bus. I decided to take my medicine late morning instead of first thing so that I didn't have to wake up super early... but that was a horrible idea because I got a horrendous sinus headache from the weather and bus ride that lasted the entire day. We spent about 5 hours on the bus, but made a few stops for lunch (at a pretty cool beach with a jetty) and a mine site (where they mine minerals and do a great job restoring the land afterwards or something-- I was kind of half unconscious and didn't really pay any attention). We spent the evening hanging out at the hostel, which was pretty nice. I fell asleep until dinner, which was delicious BBQ food. They had wine and beer for everyone, and I found it interesting / kind of funny that on a school trip we are given alcohol. I went to bed around 945 because although I was feeling quite a bit better at that point, I definitely wasn't completely recovered.

I woke up early Saturday morning refreshed and excited for an awesome day. I took my medicine and hung out stretching and such for like an hour waiting for breakfast. After breakfast, we headed out for a Bush Tucker tour. We walked along a beautiful beach that is famous for surfing to the site where we got in our canoes. We then got in 6 person canoes and paddled down the river. My group had some issues getting started, we were a little slow, but we got the hang of it. The guide told us a lot about the history of the area, which was pretty interesting. We stopped at this one part with these awesome looking trees. He peeled off the bark and it was called paper bark and it was really soft. And we tried some of the plants and he told us what everything was for-- some of it for when your sick or some of it was antiseptic and used as soap and such. Learning about the Aboriginals is really interesting because all the stuff in nature stuff seem genius, just lots of little things you'd never know. Then we paddled some more past the Bussel house (people that were important in the area in the past) and to a cliff with caves. We walked through an area with lots of tulips that looks like a fairy tale and up the cliff. The guide pointed out lots of flowers, and interesting plants and stuff. The view of the river from the top of the cliff was pretty amazing. After that, we had a traditional bush tucker lunch. We had different meats-- kangaroo, emu and turkey with lots of different sauces made from plants that the Aboriginals used. The sandwiches were very delicious, kangaroo and emu meat is very good! Next, we went into a cave, which was pretty cool at the time. They forgot "torches" (flashlights), so it was dark, and we climbed through this tiny little hole that was pitch dark. It was fun but so hard to navigate through-- it was like a maze because you could go the wrong way and have to turn around, but you couldn't see where you were going and you had to crawl. Haha, definitely would have been wicked scary if I hadn't been with a bunch of others. We found out later that the site was apparently sacred, and the tour we went on was controversial, so now I feel kind of bad that we were there. After the caves, we raced back to the start. My team didn't do so well, we got pushed into the side by another boat, but oh well, was quite fun anyway.

Next up was horseback riding. My horse's name was Sausage, Saucy for short, haha, she was a good horse. The ride was nice, the horses just followed each other through the trail in the bush. At the end, we went to the fenced area and tried some trotting and cantering. Trotting was good, I got the up/down motion pretty well, but I was having some issues cantering. I kept getting a little scared when Sausage would go too fast, but I think I finally got it by the end. Next, the other half of the kids went and we talked to the polo player, which was really cool-- he was a really impressive rider. Then we had some wine and cheese and hung out around the fire for a bit and reeelaxed.

The rest of Saturday was pretty chill. We had a pretty amazing dinner with lots of great meat and potatoes. I love meals on these trips, such a great change from the blah Tommie food. We sat there forever telling jokes, was a pretty amusing meal. And then bed very early for everyone.

On Sunday I was up at 530 because we were on the road at 630 to head to surfing. We did some drills on the beach and then headed into the water. For my first wave, the instructor told me what to do and kind of gave my board a little push and I got up for a few seconds. I was super excited and that pumped me up for the rest of the time. It was such a blast, I now love surfing. Though one of my favorite parts was paddling out into a wave and doing girl push-ups over waves. I also loved riding waves in and not standing up. But the actual surfing part was amazing too, of course.

The rest of the day was pretty good as well. I walked around town a bit and got some bread at the bakery, mmm bread. Next was a wine tour. We toured around a vineyard and tried some different wines as we learned about them. I learned that expensive wines don't necessary taste better, and the cork is the most changing thing in the wine industry. Then it was on the bus to go to an Aboriginal thing, which was pretty cool with learning about different plants and weapons and other Aboriginal culture stuff. And then we went a little further north to a beach to learn about why it should be "saved", but that was pretty superficial and I couldn't really hear what she was saying. The beach was really awesome though, crazy waves and lots of different shades of blue in the water. After that, we had lots more time on the bus. I sat in the front and stared at the road so as to avoid another insane headache like on Friday, and I succeeded, but I was quite bored and had issues staying awake.

So all in all, amazing weekend. Yay for canoeing, horseback riding, surfing and wine tasting. I love Australia.

Spring Break?

It's hard to believe that it's spring break already! I've been here for 8 weeks: 1 weeks orientation and 7 weeks of classes. And there is only 6 weeks of classes left (and 1 weeks study and 2 weeks finals).

The weeks have been flying by-- we finally have some work now since it's mid-semester, though not nearly as much as at ND. And we've all been scrambling planning for spring break and after semester travel. Planning traveling has unnecessarily consumed way too much of my time, but oh well. Then I've also gone kayaking a few times in the river across the street with the Outdoors Club. Oh, and I've been going to lots of exercise classes like Body Pump, Body Combat and Flow.

And the weekends have been pretty busy as well. I've done lots of random stuff like shopping in Fremantle (port town about 15 min away), attending a footie (Australian rules football) game, going to a casino (I lost 2 dollars, sadface), playing badminton for my residential college, attending an engineering cocktail party, formal dinners and of course kayaking and exercise classes.

So I guess spring break is almost over. It's been pretty good. About half of the ND kids went up to Exmouth to hang out on the beach and scuba dive and snorkel in the Ningaloo Reef- but those plane tickets were like 600 dollars, which was too much for me. So this past weekend about 12 of us went to Lancelin, a tiny town about an hour and a half north. The weather wasn't ideal, but it wasn't too bad. We hung out on the beach a bit and explored the town. The water was beautiful and pretty warm too. On Sunday we all gave surfing a go; I didn't do very well, hopefully next attempt goes better. On Monday, most everyone else went down to Bunbury, a little city about 2 hours south. I decided to hang back to save some money. And then on Wednesday, they all went down to Pemberton/Walpole to go hiking; I would have loved to do that, but it would have involved spending 50 dollars to be on a bus for 7-8 hours, and then spending at least 7 hours traveling back three days later- which isn't really ideal for someone who gets motion sick on buses, but oh well. So I've just been hanging out here since Monday. It started out really well. On Monday the weather was absolutely beautiful and I went for a bike ride along the river. In the evening, I went kayaking on the river and there were dolphins! It was amazing. And then I played Net Ball with some people from my residential college. It was a lot of fun- I wasn't very good, but I don't think I was too bad considering I had never even seen it played before. And I even got a bit of work done too. But then on Tuesday I got very sick and barely slept on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I ventured to the store to get some medicine and then I pretty much spent the rest of Wednesday and Thursday in bed, just got up for meals. I am doing a little better today, I have the energy to get out of bed, but slightly upset about my wasted week.

Kalgoorlie

On Friday we left St. Thomas More College at 4:30AM to catch a flight to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. The flight was only 45 minutes, and they served us breakfast! It was quite exciting and tasty too. We arrived there at like 8AM and after climbing a huge tire and playing in the playground at the camp we stayed at, we headed to Gwalia, a ghost town that used to be a mining town until the 1960s. It took about two hours to get there and a lot of it was on unpaved roads that seemed to be leading to nowhere. Once we arrived in Gwalia, we toured Hoover's House (the same guy that later became President of the United States), which was right next to the huge mining pit. We got to see a lot of old mining equipment and cars and houses and such, which was quite cool.

Next, we headed to Lake Ballard to see "Inside Australia"- an instillation of sculptures. We walked around this place for a few hours. There was many sculptures scattered about 10 kilometers of mud/dirt and hills in the salt lake area. Apparently people volunteered to have their body scanned for the sculptures, but they all looked the same to me. It was pretty interesting to see, but I'm not really into artsy stuff so I don't think I really appreciated it as much as intended. I think Lauren, Dan and I had more fun taking pictures of our shadows than looking at the sculptures. The whole area was kind of an illusion too. It looked like there was water in the distance, but then it ended up being just a reflection. And hills would look like they weren't too far, but ended up being a mile or so, so it took awhile to walk from place to place. The whole area was pretty muddy, so we left footprints in the ground. There was lots of kangaroo footprints, which was pretty awesome. Lauren and I were pretending to hop like kangaroos and I slipped and got my sweatshirt all muddy, oops. Twas pretty fun though.

On Saturday morning, I had kangaroo for breakfast, and it was delicious! Probably one of the best kinds of meat I've ever had, and it's apparently the healthiest for you. And we roasted these sandwich/panini type things on rods in the fire (I forget what they're called). They were quite good and it was fun hanging around the fire. On the bus, we got a tour of Kalgoorlie, it's a cute little town in the daytime. Apparently because of the mining, it's 2/3 men and prostitution is legal there (though not in the rest of Australia). There is pubs all over the place and a lot of them have "skimpies". So the dynamic of that city was kind of interesting. We got to go on a tour of the SuperPit, where they produce tons of gold every year. It is massive. In the afternoon, we went to the Miners Hall of Fame and got a tour of an old underground mine. That was really neat to walk around, though being that far underground scared me a bit. It was fun walking through the tunnels and seeing all the tools. There was also lots of old historical stuff that was pretty cool too, I wish was more interested in history though. I like the Australian museums places though: they don't have any do not touch signs and you get to play with all the stuff.

Today we hung out at this homestead in the outback for most of the day. It took awhile to get there, and it was on unpaved roads. We had "morning tea" and toured a worked sheep station. We also had fun climbing the tree house, playing on the swing set and jumping on the trampoline. The food was delicious too and it was really nice to just hang out and relax a bit. They had this giant fire in their backyard, which was really awesome. They also just had a sheep walking around in their driveway. We walked around the outback a bit, which was really cool. This evening we walked around outside in the Arboretum. The dirt there was really red, which was really cool, I'd never seen red dirt before.
So, it was a pretty fun trip, we had a good time. And it was really cool to see the outback and mining sites as well.

Four Weeks

It's hard to believe I've been in Australia for four weeks! I feel like I just got here; though when I look back, I feel like I've been here forever.

I'm finally starting to get some school work, though none of it is due soon so it is really hard to get the motivation to do it. Plus, it's been hard to get the motivation to do anything because the weather has been quite gross. We've had the wettest winter in the past 10 years or something, but it looks like the sun will be out for awhile now. For the next week its 60s and sunny, which is my favorite weather.

Plus, nice weather gives me motivation to go outside and do stuff. I've been pretty good about exercising the past few days and I hope to keep it up all semester. They have some good exercise classes at the gym. One is called Body Pump and everyone here is pretty obsessed with it- it's hard but they play music and it's a good work out. I joined the Outdoor Club and I went indoor rock climbing the past two Wednesdays and kayaking on the river last weekend (it's harder than it looks!). Kayaking was fun, but I had to capsize and the water was quite cold since it's winter here! But I need to practice because I hope to go on kayaking and rock climbing trips at some point.


There is a lot of amazing scenery here. Last week I saw the sunset at the beach, which was beautiful; I love sunsets over the ocean. I've gone for a few runs along the river, the view is beautiful. One night last week a few of us went for a walk along the river at night to take pictures. My pictures couldn't capture the beauty of the night view of the Perth skyline, but I did get some pretty good ones.

We've had a few events here at Tommie More. There was a formal dinner last weekend and last night we had an Informal BBQ where the Americans dressed like Australians and the Australians dressed like Americans. Most of the Australians wore either ND clothes or sweatshirts. So I've been pretty busy, there is usually something to do and lots that I still haven't seen.

My Life In Australia

Australia in General...
+ They drive on the left side of the road. Since I can't drive here, I didn't think it would be an issue, but I'm still getting used to which way to look when crossing the highway on the way to class (there were some close calls the first few days!) and walking on the left side of the sidewalk.
+ All the power outlets have switches on them, and they are on 240 volts here so lots of power comes out of my hair dryer!
+ They consider everyone on the same level here and never put anyone on a pedestal. So there are no titles for professors or priests or anything: you call everyone by their first name. One of my profs name is Luigi and I think I'd feel awkward calling him that. None of the buildings are named after people, so the Computer Science building just says "Computer Science" on it.
+ Phone numbers are different lengths throughout Australia depending on what city you are in and whether it is a land line or mobile.
+ Since it is winter here the sun doesn't rise until about 7 and the sun sets at 6PM.
+ Stuff is very expensive since the US Dollar isn't doing very well. The ratio is about 1:1. There aren't many generic brands for stuff, so we mostly need to buy name brands. A typical bottle of shampoo is like $6, but all that little stuff really adds up quick.

My residential college and university...
+ There are five residential colleges, each with their own common areas, dining rooms, laundry, etc. I live in Tommie More. We all have singles.
+ We are given three meals a day but they are only open for about an hour for each meal. So we have to be at breakfast before 9 (or 10 on weekends), eat lunch at 12, and eat dinner at the specified time for that particular day. There is no choice of food and it's not very good, but we are surviving.
+ Tommie More is right across the highway from the university, a little north of the campus, not too far from the building they show in all the brochures. It takes me about 10 min to walk to class. Kind of like living in Lewis.
+ The bus is within walking distance and it takes about 10 minutes to get to the main part of Perth, which is the biggest city in Western Australia. We can get to the beach in about 15 minutes on the bus.

Language: They speak English here, but random words and phrases are different, which throws me off sometimes. They shorted everything here, so breakfast is breakie and university is uni, etc.