Look Ma, I'm famous!

Forreals. Yours truly is famous. I was in the newspaper, specifically, The Fremantle Gazette. Jealous? You should be. Check it out.

How sophisticated do I look?   I know, my maturity is a little overwhelming.

Sarcasm aside, how many people can say they've been in an international newspaper? I think it's pretty cool. My excitement for the article to get published is what has kept me from posting. I wanted to wait until it came out to post (I'm a loser), so that's why I haven't blogged in a while. But a heads up, since school has actually started and I have lots of work to do, posts are probably only going to come once a week or so. I know, sad times.

Since I last posted not too much has happened. Classes as usual during the week with my internship thrown in on Tuesday, and the occasional (ha) night out. Friday we went to the Fremantle Prison for a torchlight tour which was a lot of fun. The prison is no longer in use (don't worry), I think it closed down in 1991, but I can't remember. The tour is meant to scare you, they have things that fall from the ceiling, people that pop out of solitary confinement cells, and a "ghost" who sings to you. It was a little creepy, but not that scary. But our CIEE coordinator, Paul, doesn't go on the tour anymore because an aboriginal man told him he had gone too many times and had opened himself up to the "spirits." Kindaaa funny. 

The prison

One of the prisoners was allowed to paint on his walls as a way of therapy

Saturday I spent the day at the beach with Caroline. It was 73 degrees and sunny and it was soo nice to just lay on a beach and relax again. I can't wait until it starts getting warmer and we can do that more often.

 beach beach beach

Sunday was spent doing homework (boo). Then Monday and today I worked at my internship. Two days this week since I'll be gone next week on the North West Trip, which I will tell you alllll about when I get back on September 4th :)

I'll write again after the 4th.

xxx

I burned myself of the kitchen faucet...

No joke, it happened. Apparently my kitchen faucet doesn't know to do "warm" water, instead it's either ridiculously hot or ridiculously cold. So now I have a nice little burn mark on my right arm. Beautiful.

This week I continued my quest to find a real vanilla iced coffee...kind of. More like I went to the same place in Perth and asked them for a vanilla iced coffee in a different way. This time, I asked for iced coffee with a shot of vanilla (no ice cream). Needless to say, it didn't work. Instead it was coffee flavored milk with, from what I could tell, no vanilla.  So sad. Probably the biggest "culture shock" moment I've had since I've been here. Driving on the other side of the road? No big deal. Funny accents? Eh. No vanilla iced coffee? ...HELP. Oh Holy Grounds, how I miss you.

Also, the fact that people are putting up facebook status' every second of the day that say "heading back to Nova!" or "can't wait to get back to Nova!" and things similar to that are making me miss Villanova a littleee bit. Although what I'd really like to do is transport the people (aka my friends) from Villanova to Perth. Because, really, Perth is about 157x better than Philadelphia (sorry, guys).

Since I last wrote not too much has happened. Tuesday I had my internship again and this time I actually started researching the different development proposals. There's about 10 or so in the Local History Library that Brad wants me to look through and then a couple of others that I need to get from other people throughout Freo. I spent the majority of the day on Tuesday looking through files on the Woolstores, which is a giant warehouse in Freo that has been left untouched for about the past 60-70 years. It has had probably 5 or so proposals presented to the town for development, but none of them have gone through. The most recent taking 10 years until the project manager decided to give up because Freo wouldn't give her permission to do anything.  Her plan was to tear it down and build a hotel/apartment/shopping complex (the plans actually looked really nice) but Freo is determined to "renovate" the building and not tear it down because it is a heritage site. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea on how difficult it is to build anything in Freo - which makes the project I'm working on all the more controversial and shows that it is definitely a political move made by Brad (seeing as he is pro-development). Just the Woolstores files took me the entire day to go through (with no lunch break) so, clearly, I'll be spending a lot of time in the library in the next month or so.

This is what the Woolstores looks like now. It's not horrible, but it's the first thing you see when you come to Freo from the water, so it's not very welcoming. I find it strange that such a beautifully kept city is opposed to tearing down something as old and decrepit as this building. 

Wednesday was full of class and then the bar for the night. Thursday was class, minus the bar and Friday was similar to Wednesday. Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day so Caroline and I sat outside and did homework for a while. We were originally going to go to the beach, but I had too much work to do so we stayed on campus. Saturday night the CIEE group went into Freo and had dinner at this place called "Jus' Burgers" which was reallyyy good. Nothing fancy, just burgers and fries (they even had kangaroo burgers haha!). After that we walked around Freo for a little bit and then headed back to campus. I don't know what everyone else did, but I did some homework and then went to bed. Today was another day of shopping in Perth (with a failed coffee adventure) and since we got back all I've been doing is homework (bah). So I should probably continue to do that until I skype with my parents. 

Write later.

xxx

Sorry for the lack of posting again. I don't have an excuse this time, I was just lazy. Sooo what's happened in the last week...Thursday I had a lecture and tutorial for my Environmental Policy and Law class. In my tutorial, my tutor told us that the class is really hard and that we will lose sleep and cry. So I'm super excited for that. Then Thursday night we went to dub-step night at Newport, which is a bar in Fremantle. There weren't a lot of people there but I had a tonnnn of fun - we danced like crazy people for hours, it was great. But, unfortunately there was no Dub-Step Santa (sorry Tom, Alex, and Lauren haha). Anyways, Friday I had lecture and then headed into Fremantle with Virginia, Caroline, Kathryn and Jocelyn (now you're not just the ambiguous girl who didn't put pictures up...happy?) and I got my nose pierced!! Woo!

 There you go, piercing and all. I'm kind of obsessed with it so I'm sure there will more pictures of it soon. Friday night we went into Northbridge. It was also a lot of fun, but kind of strange cause they had dress codes. Specifically, boys can't wear sneakers so pretty much all the guys we came with couldn't get into the bars/clubs. And you're not allowed to wear shorts or flip flops....strange. Oh well. Saturday Jocelyn and I went into Perth and did some shopping. I had to buy a new Ipod cause mine is broken, so that was an expensive day :(  But Perth was really nice and had lots of shops - some were really expensive so we had to find the affordable ones. OH! And one reason Australia is weird...we went to a coffee shop and I ordered a vanilla iced coffee. Normal, right? WELL they gave me a couple shots of coffee flavor, milk, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream....what?!? It was good and all but sooo weird.

Saturday we went to an aussie rules (footy) game. We saw the West Coast Eagles play the Richmond Tigers. I finally understand the game (kind of). It's pretty fun to watch, but also a little bizarre. Why do the refs through the balls in like this....?

It's a little weird. Are the players incapable of doing it themselves? Also, the refs look ridiculous. And where do they find all these enormous Australian people? Seriously...these guys are huge. Not only are they super strong, they are fast (and super in shape) and reallyyy tall.  The best part of the game is that they have people in bright yellow uniforms that run on and off the field delivering messages to the coaches and players. I don't understand why they need to do that, according to the fan sections Australians have no problem yelling.
Anyways...here is a picture of the field (pitch?)

andd some of the group that went to the game (Caroline, Zach, Kathryn, Jocelyn, me, Mike)

Well I best be going. Off to get ready to go to the bar :)

Also...everyone should listen to this song cause it's amazing

.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY

xxx

No Newport Wednesday for me :(

My parents will be happy to know that my plan to go to the bars tonight (Wednesday) were completely ruined when I came back to my flat and found I was locked out of my room. I came back from my class around 6:15 and was trying to get into my room. After 15 minutes of standing there and trying to unlock the door, along with attempts by my flatmates, I realized my key wasn't working. But then the RA came and the master key wasn't working! Long story short - they had to call a locksmith because my lock was shot. I didn't get into my room until 11. So disappointed. Oh well. It's dub-step night at a bar in Fremantle tomorrow night, so I'll be going to that (sorry mom and dad).

To recap on the week so far - Monday I had no classes, Tuesday was my first day of internship, and today was my first day of classes. Monday I just went for a run (got lost) and did pretty much nothing. Tuesday was a little more interesting. I woke up early (had to be at the internship at 9:30), however, I waited at the wrong bus stop and when I tried to flag down the bus I needed to be on, it didn't stop. So that was nice. Eventually I figured out that the bus stop I needed to wait at was just down the road. I was 15 minutes late to my internship, but they didn't seem to mind. I didn't accomplish much on the first day. Brad (the mayor) was a little unorganized so he just had me reading up about Fremantle and things like that. Next week he said he'd have interviews organized for me so I could start really researching for my project. Made it home fine, no wrong bus stops or anything like that.

Today I started classes at 1:30. Kind of weird starting so late, but I was able to get a good run in before classes (and a shower, of course). My first class was Environmental Policy and Law. My professor seems awesome. He brought in stuffed animals and told us that the preferred reading for the class is all the books in the Harry Potter series. Then told us that if we could find an example of law in the Harry Potter series he would reward us with cane toads...which are actually Freddo Frogs, a Cadbury's treat - but they're not actually frogs, they're cane toads. We also have a day where we have to bring in a stuffed animal and we're not allowed in to class that day unless we have one. Should be a fun class. However, I think it's going to be superrrr hard. Apparently the feedback they get every year is that the class is really hard and he even admitted that it is. I know zero about environmental policy and law (and have no idea how to read litigation) so it should be a struggle...but a fun struggle? If that even exists. Also, this class is in a huge lecture hall and has probably about 100 people in it. Biggest class I've ever had.

My second class was Climate Change Adaptation: Ecosystems and Societies (it was Climate Change Adaptation: Policy and Practice, but they changed the name but I think that's right). It's a lot smaller, about 20 people and we learn about how climate change affects different ecosystems and how they adapt to it. The only bad thing is I go straight from an hour long lecture to a two hour workshop, so it's a long afternoon. But the good part about that is I don't have at all the rest of the week.

And here are just some random thoughts about teaching styles at Murdoch:

1. They don't have folders here. Seriously. No folders. Where am I supposed to put all my papers?! I don't do binders, I do a notebook and a folder for each class. Also, their notebooks are weird.

2. They number classrooms weirdly. One of my classes is in the social sciences building in room 1.036. 1.036?? Why not just 1036. Or 136. Why complicate a room number with a decimal?

3. They put every lecture and powerpoint online. The professors wear little microphones around their necks to record their lectures and then they put it up on the website for the external students. But...doesn't that defeat the purpose of going to class for the internal students? Why bother showing up when you can listen to EXACTLY what they say in class online? And then supplement that with the powerpoints? Weird.

4. I get to call professors by their first names. My policy and law professor is John and my climate change professor is Belinda. Oh, and they don't like being called "professor."

I can't think of anything else, but I'm sure I'll come up with more as the semester goes on. Anyways, I'm tired so I'm going to go to sleep. Night (....or good morning? afternoon?)

xxx