"For every dream that's reborn, there's a dream that dies. For every hello you say, there's a sad goodbye."

Before coming to Australia I never considered how difficult it would be to say goodbye. I had a feeling that I’d love it here (which I do, a lot more than I thought possible), but saying “goodbye” to Perth and the people I’ve met here is a daunting thing. I’m not one to indulge in and display in my emotions but let’s be real here – I sat in my room the other night and cried because I finally realized that I was leaving. I was talking to my friend and she said something along the lines of “I was so excited when you added me on Skype, but then I got sad because I realized that that’s going to be the only way we can see each other soon.” Those few words made the idea of leaving real to me. The fact that I won’t be able to walk across the student village to somebody’s flat just to talk is horrible – instead, I have to Skype them and if I want the full experience, I have to fly across the country. Saying goodbye to my friends and leaving Perth really makes me appreciate the experience I’ve had here and at the same time wish I had done more and met more people. But I know that someday I’ll make it back here.

On a different note…I leave for Cairns in 3 hours! I’ll be there until December 2^nd and then fly to Sydney and then on the 8^th I fly back home. I’ll update when I get home.

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

xxx

Sorry for the severe lack of postings. I think it's almost been a month...whoops. I could say that things have been pretty busy (which they have) but, mostly, I kind of forgot I had a blog. My bad.

Anyways...what's been happening? October 16th I had my first surfing lesson. Paul took us to Trigg Beach, which is about a half hour drive from Murdoch campus and we had a 2 hour surf lesson. The conditions weren't the best for a first-time surfer. The sun was out and it was hot (which was great) but the waves were kind of ridiculous. They were really strong  and quite large, and there was backwash, where the waves come back from the beach and its like another wave but it comes from behind. So, basically, we had waves coming at us from like 3 different directions which made it a little difficult. Regardless, we had a lot of fun. I didn't actually stand up on the board but I did get up on a knee so I'd like to think that's pretty good for the first time. I ended up with Caroline in the hospital because the fin on her board hit her in the face. She needed a few stiches so I went with her to do that. She's all good now - stitch free and all.

I think the most significant thing that has happened in the past couple of weeks was...my 21st birthday!! WOO. I am now legal to drink everywhere in the world and never have to worry about being underage (I know you're proud, mom and dad). For my birthday Caroline, Kathryn, and Virginia made Jocelyn (who had her birthday on the 17th) and I dinner in my flat and then other people came over and we headed out to the bar. Don't think I could have asked for a better birthday!

We also made it to a new beach - Scarborough. Takes about an hour on public transportation but it's a pretty nice beach. Yes, I swam in the water and no, I did not get eaten or bitten by a shark. There's been a lot of those attacks lately but I think the majority of them have been swimming at dawn when there's no beach patrol and it's like the prime time for shark attacks...sooo I'm gonna call stupid on that one (sorry if that's insensitive). Now they're hunting the shark, which is silly because the likelihood of it being one lone shark is pretty slim. Oh well...

So what else has been going on? I've had a bunch of school work to do lately. I had a big project for my Environmental Policy and Law class and a case study due for my Climate Change class so I've spent a lot of time the past couple weeks working on those. Today I had a presentation for my internship which went pretty well. It's finally starting to come together. Some of the images/pictures are at the printer now and next week we should be sending the rest of them to get printed and mounted - exciting! My friend created a workout for me to do, so that's been kicking my butt three days a week.

Tomorrow is my last day of classes. How insane is that?? I feel like I just got here. But now I only have a month left and then I head home. Pretty crazy. I seriously considered staying here for next semester but I think I've decided to go home instead. It was pretty hard to decided because I love it here but I also have so much to go back to at home. I'll make it back here soon, though.

Tonight I'm just going to stay in and relax. Time to go grab a drink and relax.
xxx

Wombat, Wallabies, and Kangaroos

Clearly the whole "write tomorrow" thing didn't happen, but better late than never, right? This past weekend was pretty exciting. Friday afternoon Paul and Kate took us to something called "Nearer to Nature" where we got to play with some native Australian animals and learn a little about the aboriginal culture. We got to pet a wombat, hold some kagaroos, and watch a wallaby jump around. The woman who showed us the animals takes care of abandoned animals. They all stay at her house and she takes care of them until they are old enough/strong enough to be returned to the wild. Sounds like an awesome job, right? I want kangaroos jumping around my house all day.  Anyways, here are some pictures with the animals...

Wombat!

Jocelyn petting the wombat

Kangarooooo

Wallaby!

A baby opossum...kinda looks like a rat 

After we played with the animals we went and learned how to make axes the traditional, noongar way. I don't have a picture of one but, basically, you find a stick (should be about a foot long and thicker than your thumb) and you heat it in the fire, and then you take the ground resin from a plant (I forget what it's called) and put that resin on the hot wood and then heat it again, put it in the resin again, heat it up, etc. until the resin is really thick and then you put the stones in the resin and continue the resin process until the stones are firmly stuck to the stick. Pretty cool.

Making the axes

The orange stuff is the resin

Our guide (Zach) then took us on a little hike through the woods where he showed us a plant that, when you rub it with water, makes soap and found us some wild carrots. We tried the carrots and, strangely, wild carrots are spicy. After the tour, Paul and Kate took us to Dome, which is a little cafe/restuarant where we had dinner, and then they drove us back to campus.

The rest of the weekend was pretty relaxing. I stayed in for the weekend and (attempted) to do homework. Sunday I tried to do work but decided to go to the markets in Freo instead. Even though I tried hard, Saturday and Sunday were pretty unproductive but, fortunately, Monday was a good work day. Tuesday I had my internship which is finally starting to come together (yay!). Although I'm still stressing about it a little bit, I think people are expecting something a lot bigger than it will be....and we don't even have a venue yet, so that's a little worrying. But it will all get figured out soon, I hope.

Anyways, off to get ready for class.
xxx


P.S. I turn 21 in 7 days :)

I don't think Bali could have been more amazing. I was expecting to go to Bali and have a good time and experience some cultural things but....wow. Words cannot describe how much I loved it. I wish I could go back right now and can't wait until I have the time/money to visit again somebody. We (8 other students and I) spent nine days in three very different places - Kuta, Sanur, Ubud. Kuta was, by far, my favorite place, but I'll go through each individually.

Kuta

Part of the hotel

So we spent 3 nights here at a hotel called Dewi Sri Cottages. I think we paid $20 for an absolutely incredible hotel - beautiful grounds and pool, good food, kind people, and a great location right in the heart of Kuta. We got to Kuta around noon on Friday the 23rd, took a taxi to the hotel, checked in, and decided to roam around the city. Honestly, it was a little overwhelming at first. It was ridiculously hot, there were people everywhere trying to pull you into their stores and sell you something, and traffic was crazy and hectic (it's almost as though they have no road laws), which made crossing the street an adventure the first time. We spent the first couple of hours exploring the streets, checking out the shops, and saying "no, thank you" every 5 seconds. We got back to the hotel and decided to lay by the pool for the rest of the afternoon. I can honestly say Bali was the first time I've experienced culture shock this past semester. Australia was very easy to adjust to for me , but the first night in Bali was the only time I've wanted to be in the comfort and security of my home in Virginia. I'd like to think I'm a pretty cultured person and that I've traveled a fair amount in my life (Kenya, Tanzania, China, etc.), but experiencing something so different on my own and, more specifically, without my parents was something I hadn't done before and I think that's what really got to me. Thankfully, that overwhelming feeling only lasted the first night and wasn't feeling that way the whole trip.

The hotel pool area

This was a funeral we saw on the first day. They were marching the bodies to the ocean, burning them, and then throwing their ashes in the ocean.

The second day, we explored Kuta some more and did a ton of shopping. Everything was so cheap. I bought six shirts for the equivalent of about US$20. Oh, and our taxi ride to the hotel, which was almost an hour long, was $6...crazy, right?! Coming back to Australia and having to spend $60 for a 25 minute cab ride definitely sucked. So we spent the first half of the day shopping and then hit up the pool again cause it was crazy hot. That night we went to some of the bars for the night. The bars in Kuta are insane. First, they're huge. One of them (The Sky Garden) was five floors and each floor had it's own type of bar (for example, on the floors was a sports bar and then they had a VIP lounge on another). Crazy. Second, they had crazy deals all the time. Drink were so so cheap. Third, they played great music and everyone had a great time. We went to another bar called The Bounty, which is also huge. They had live music, a karaoke bar, and a humongous dance floor. Sadly, I took no pictures of these places :(

Legian Street in Kuta

Random side street in Kuta

Beach at Kuta

 The third day was a beach day. The beach was pretty huge and definitely different to US beaches, mainly because people hassled you on the beach to buy things. Kind of annoying, but I think at this point we were pretty used to saying "no, thanks" all the time. Something we found a little weird was that men would go around to the american/australia/not indonesian women and take pictures of them sunbathing. While it's a little creepy, we attributed it to the fact that Bali (Indonesia in general) is very religious and women don't normally dress like we do (short shorts, tank tops, etc) so to see a girl in a bikini was something...different (?) for them. Anyways, the day at the beach was really nice and relaxing, AND I didn't get sunburned. GO ME!

The next day was our last in Kuta, so we spent the first part of the day doing a little more shopping at an incredible art gallery we found. It's called "Kaka" and it's on Legian so if you ever go to Kuta you should check it out :). After the art gallery we took a cab to our hotel in Sanur.

Sanur


Our first night in Sanur consisted of going out do to dinner and hanging out by the pool for a couple hours. Sanur wasn't very big and didn't have much going on, which was a huge contrast to Kuta, but probably needed seeing as most people were up until 6am on our last night in Kuta...whoops.

Our hotel room...it was huge.

Again. Pretty good for AU$16 a night

Beach in Sanur

Our first full day in Sanur was another beach day. We literally spent the entire day on the beach just tanning and relaxing. The beach was really nice, but when it was low tide you could walk forever and never get to water above your knees, which was kind of crazy. After, we went back to the hotel, showered, went out to dinner, and hung out at the hotel for the night. The next day we woke up early and headed to Ubud.





Ubud

The pool at the Sehadewa

The pathway to our rooms

The hotel

Trash was everywhere the first time we went to the markets

The markets

Ubud was what I considered to be the
cultural part of our trip. While Kuta was definitely a place to experience, Ubud was full of temples, rice paddies, waterfalls, and so much more. Our first day we dropped our stuff off at the hotel (the Sewaheda Resort and Spa) and walked around. We walked to the markets, which were a 20-30 minute walk from our hotel. We thought Kuta was overwhelming but, damn...these markets were insane. There were hundreds of little stores, which meant even more people trying to entice you to buy their jewelry, dresses, shirts, and other souvenirs. All of us walked in intending to spend over an hour shopping and all ended up walking out 10 minutes later because we couldn't handle it. Maybe it was because it was raining or because it smelled of trash or because it was late in the day so children were out begging for money or maybe we were just tired, but none of us could do it. Instead, some of use decided to go to the Monkey Forest for a couple hours.

More of the markets

I wasn't too keen on going to the Monkey Forest at first because monkey's kind of freak me out, but these guys were pretty cute. A lot of them liked to jump on people and one of them tried to open up someone's purse and go through it, which was pretty funny. You could buy bananas from the people working there and if you held the banana above your head the monkeys would literally climb up your body to get it. I didn't do it, but a couple of people in our group did. So we spent a few hours there then headed back to the hotel to shower and get ready for dinner. I would put in a picture of the monkeys but I'm having a real problem formatting everything today sooo I'm just gonna skip on that...sorry, guys.

We had booked an elephant tour for the next day, so we woke up early and our driver took us to ride some elephants! The ride lasted about 30 minutes and it was pretty incredible. They're huge animals but also so docile and so sweet. While it was fun to ride the, it was also pretty sad to see the conditions they lived in. The majority of the day they were tied up in chains in a tiny concrete building and, during the ride, they had to walk on concrete paths the majority of the way which is obviously not natural to them. I don't regret going on the ride, but they definitely could have lived in better conditions. We sat at lunch and you could see the elephants tied up and for the entire time we ate one of the elephants was trying to get out of his chains. That broke my heart, it was so sad to see. It's hard to justify doing something like that and paying to support it but it's also  hard for me to sit here and say (and to hear other people say) that it's such a terrible thing when I've gone to zoos and circus' my entire life. Despite the bad treatment (and my mixed feelings towards the whole thing) it was still an amazing experience.

After the ride we got to feed them!

andd we got to pose with them 

They also had this random honey bear at the elephant tour.
This picture was taken right after she licked my face.

So we fed her and in other pictures I have you can see
 her  putting her paws around me. So cute.

We originally thought that the elephant tour was going to be an entire day event, but we were wrong. So after the tour we quickly got organized and had the hotel get us a van so we could explore Ubud more. We headed to the Elephant Cave which had both a Hindu and a Buddhist temple, which were both beautiful. There was also a jungle temple we took a hike to. We didn't really see the temple part of it, but the view and the scenery was gorgeous.

Where we hiked to

After the Elephant Cave we went to a waterfall and a temple. Our guide said the waterfall was a "small" one in comparison to others in Bali, but this one seemed pretty big to me. At least compared to ones in Australia.

The only picture of the temple I have,
my camera died soon after this was taken.

waterfall

So again, after all the touring we went back to the hotel, showered, and went out to dinner. The next day the majority of the group rented motorbikes and drove through Ubud  and toured on their own. My friend Cara and I didn't feel too comfortable doing that (seeing as people are mad when they drive in Bali) so we decided to go on a bike tour. We were picked up by our guide at 8am, taken to a place where they make coffees, teas, and spices. We then were taken to pick up our bikes and rode for a little over two hours with our guide downhill through rice paddies and villages. I had a ton of fun on this tour and I don't think I've ever said "hello" so many times in my life. Every time we went through a village children would come out and say hi to us. But the tour guide was very helpful and knew a lot.

My ability to be descriptive is clearly fading and I'm struggling at writing the rest of this entry. But basically, we did the bike and went out to dinner that night. The next day we headed back to the markets and braved the chaos that makes the markets so memorable. We shopped (a lot...way more than I planned) and then headed back to the hotel for a few hours before we made our way to the airport to catch our flight home.

We did some stuff today (Friday) but I'm too tired to write it out so I'll do that tomorrow.
Again, this post looks like crap cause pictures hate me, so I'm sorry if there are a bunch of spaces and blank spots and the photos look disorganized, but I can't figure out what to do to fix it.

Write tomorrow.
xxx

Since I'm not doing anything tonight I figured I'd finally update the blog. The past week or so has been pretty busy with traveling and school and...well, just being in Australia.

The weekend after the Northwest Trip three friends (Virginia, Jocelyn, and Kathryn) and I flew 4 hours north to Darwin to play with some giant crocodiles. We stayed at a hostel called "Chili's Backpackers" which was pretty much in the heart of Darwin (...which isn't very large). The first night we walked around, explored a little, and had dinner at Nando's (!!), and hung out at a bar called Monsoon's for a little bit. The next morning we woke up, got some breakfast, and headed to Crocosaurus Cove to play with some 15 foot long crocodiles. We signed up for this thing called "The Cage of Death" where they put you in a glass cage with one other person (I went with Kathryn) and lower you into the crocodile's enclosures. We got to go into three enclosures and swim with Chopper, Denzel, and Will & Kate (one of the croc couples...cute, right?). I'm terrified of crocodiles so I was (figuratively) peeing my pants before we were lowered down into the first enclosure. But once we realized that, while they didn't like us, they were too old/lazy to do anything about it, it wasn't so bad. The majority of the time they just stayed in their spot and attempted to ignore our yelling and all the banging on the cage. The only croc that moved was Denzel and he ended up just sitting under our cage. Even though he wasn't scary (although he did snap at Virginia and Jocelyn when they went) it was pretty cool to be close to something so large and powerful.

Kathryn and I in the cage before our first drop

 The giant croc in the background is Chopper. He's the thrid largest croc in captivity in the world!

In with Denzel! If you look at my legs, clearly I'm trying to run away...underwater...

Apparently Bert is the grumpiest of the crocodiles they have, but we weren't able to go in his enclosure (not really sure why). But he's the crocodile that was in Crocodile Dundee!

So after our playdate with the crocodiles, we went back to our hostel and hung out on the little terrace they have and met some other people staying there. That night we went back to Monsoon's. The next morning we woke up (early) and went a tour that took us to the Adelaide River to see jumping crocodiles! The people working on the boat put meat at the end of a stick and crocodiles would propel themselves out of the water to get the meat...pretty incredible, and shows just how strong they are in order to lift all that weight out of the water.

 We noticed that real crocodiles look fake...kinda strange.

Jumping!

Woo! 

Another one jumping!

After the jumping crocs we went to Litchfield National Park and saw some termite hills... 

....and waterfalls!

Pretty pretty pretty!

So when we got back from the tour (which was 8am - 6pm thing) we got dinner at a great Thai place and explored Darwin some more. It's a pretty small place but has some really nice areas. The next morning we went down to the waterfront and laid out for a little, did some shopping, got lunch, walked around, and then caught the airport  shuttle to the airport and caught our flight home. All in all, a pretty incredible weekend.

The Darwin waterfront!

When I got back from Darwin it meant getting my butt in gear and doing some work. I spent Monday writing my progress report for my internship, Tuesday at my internship, and the rest of the week writing a paper for my policy and law class that was due on Friday. Thursday night Paul took us to see "Red Dog" a movie based on a dog (called Red Dog) from Dampier. I'd explain the whole story, but I'm too lazy. It's a pretty sad story and I almost cried in it, so that says a lot. But it's really good and I definitely recommend either watching it or reading the book (which is pretty short).

Today (Saturday) Caroline, Kenny, Mike, Virginia, and I went into Subiaco to explore a little bit. I don't have any pictures but it's a really nice area. Kind of like Fremantle in the sense that it has streets with shops on it instead of giant shopping centre, but also a little bit like Georgetown (in D.C) because it's little classier and on the artsy side.

Since I'm being lazy tonight I'll probably go to bed soon, but I think I'll watch some trashy TV first...night :)
xxx

Welcome to the Outback

3950. That's how many kilometers we drove in the past 10 days - almost 2500 miles. Needless to say, it's been a long 10 days but every mile of the trip was worth it. We slept in tents every night, hiked, swam in waterfalls, snorkeled, saw some incredible scenery, and got to experience the Outback. Prepare for a long post...



DAY 1


The first day was spent mostly driving and sleeping while driving, so not too much to say. We drove through a lot of farming areas (aka a lot of nothing) and ended up at the Northbrook Farmstay for the night.

Caroline and I shared a tent for the 10 days, this little 2-person tent was our "home" for the trip. 

This is some of the area around the campsite, other than this there were some rooms to stay in and a field - not a lot going on there.

DAY 2

Woke up early and made our way to Kalbarri National Park.

A view of the cliffs. The water was beautiful and as we walked along the path overlooking the cliffs we saw a whale jumping out of the water!

Jocelyn, Virginia, and I at the cliffs.

After the cliffs we went to the Murchison River Gorge. This is a view from the overlook...

Me in the gorge

Another view of the gorge

Our campsite for the second and third nights at Hamelin Pool which is in the Shark Bay World Heritage site. 

After we set up our tents we took a walk to the beach to watch the sunset. The beach by our campsite was full of tiny shells and not sand. 

This picture is taken from the pier at the beach.  The ground in this picture looks dirty, but those shapes (they're a little hard to see) are stromatalites - the first living organism in the world. They were formed about 3.5 billion years ago and are still at this beach. I think this is one of 3 or 4 places in the world where stromatalite colonies still exist

More stromatalites

DAY 3

We started the fourth day early so we could make the hour long drive to Monkey Mia (also in Shark Bay) and watch the dolphin feeding.  

Unfortunately, the dolphins weren't so interested in us that day, but it was still pretty incredible to be so close to wild dolphins

I forget this dolphin's name, but he's sticking his eye out of the water so he can look at us!

After the dolphin feeding, some of us went on a 2-hour catamaran ride in Monkey Mia. I forgot to take a picture of the boat, so sorry about that.  We spent the 2 hours looking for wildlife, mostly we saw dugongs (manatees). This picture isn't very good, but it's the best one I took. The dugongs don't keep their heads above the water for very long so it was hard to get a good picture. There's over 10,000 dugongs in Shark Bay which, I think, makes it the biggest population of dugongs in the world.

Then on the way back to the beach we got to ride in the boom net (pretty sure that's what it's called, but I could be wrong). It's just a net in the back of the boat that you can sit in while the boat moves.

The water was freezing, but it was soo so much fun.You have to hold on really tightly because the force of the water can almost push you out of the net (which also meant holding on to our bathing suit bottoms).

After Monkey Mia we drove back to our campsite at Hamelin Pool. On the way we stopped at a couple places. This is Eagle Bluff. Sometimes you can see tiger sharks in the water, but we weren't so lucky.

Another view at Eagle Bluff

Another stop we made was at Shell Beach

It was a huge beach, but not so comfortable because of all the shells

DAY 4

This day wasn't very eventful, we drove the entire day to Coral Bay. We stopped at Carnarvon to do some grocery shopping, but I didn't take any pictures. When we got to Coral Bay we camped in a caravan park. It was weird to see so many people in one place after staying in other places with only a few people. Coral Bay was a more resort-y area, but very nice. We spent the afternoon at the beach walking around in the water. There were stingrays everywhere which was kind of crazy. After dinner we came to the beach and watched the stars which was pretty incredible. The sky was so clear and I saw probably 5 or 6 shooting stars in that night - I wish the sky was that clear at home.

DAY 5

 This day was spent at Coral Bay. We woke up early to go snorkeling but as we walked on the beach we found a kangaroo!

We went on a 2 hour glass bottom boat snorkeling trip in the Ningaloo Reef (also a world heritage site) which was so much fun. The boat was really nice and it was so cool being able to see the reef underneath the boat. We stopped and snorkeled at two places on the reef and at one of them the snapper swam right by us, practically touching us, because they wanted to be feed so that was pretty cool. We all wanted to see a reef shark but, sadly, we couldn't find one :(

Some fish under the boat.

 After the snorkeling trip we spent the rest of the day on the beach. The weather was perfect for the beach, not too hot with a beautiful blue sky. It was also really nice to have a day where we didn't have to be on the bus driving for hours. I wish we could have stayed at Coral Bay for longer.

DAY 6

Day 6 was another day full of driving. We left Coral Bay early and made our way to Karijini National Park. On the way we stopped at a small town called Tom Price for some groceries and had lunch in the middle of nowhere (literally). 

DAY 7

This day was amazing. We woke up early, had breakfast, and went on a hike through a gorge in the national park. We stopped at a pool in the gorge to swim and then hiked again towards a waterfall where we also swam. We then hiked back to the campsite, had lunch, relaxed, and then went back out to go to another pool to take a swim before dinner.

Me sitting at the top of the gorge

Hiking down the same gorge. This first part of the hike was really steep and kind of killed my knee...but it was totally worth it.

The first pool we swam in  called the Circular Pool. The water was freezing but when you made it towards the falls at the other end it was really warm. 

Our tour guide found a dead blue tongued lizard

A waterfall in the gorge (Fortescue Falls)

View of the waterfall from the top of the gorge

Another waterfall in the gorge

DAY 8

Another day of driving. We headed towards Kumarina Roadhouse and stopped in Newman along the way. Newman is a small mining town, where BHPbilliton mines for iron ore. We were able to see some of the mining site from a hill.

Clearly we weren't happy about the mining.

 Giant mining trucks

Later in the day we stopped where the Tropic of Capricorn is! Pretty cool

DAY 9

Also another day of driving, we made our way to Wogarno Sheep Station where we would have, pretty much, the whole place to ourselves so we were able to make as much noise as we wanted :) On the way there, we stopped at an gold mine that had been closed for 6 years. Then we stopped at a town called Cue which was pretty much a ghost town. We guessed that the population was probably around 50....so strange. This night was a lot of fun, we had a campfire which we kept it going until around 2am. 

Day 10

Our last day and we just drove from Wogarno back to campus. No significant stops, just a gas station and a place to stop for lunch. We got back to campus around 4pm.  I feel like I'm missing some parts of the trip, but it's hard to re-cap such a busy trip and I'm super tired. Sorry :) But I can't imagine how this trip could have been any better. I had so much fun and I'm so glad I had the chance to go - traveling through the Outback isn't something every person gets to do and it's definitely an experience I'll remember for the rest of my life. Australia is truly an amazing place and I can't wait to see more of it!

xxx