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

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