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

I'm Moving to Denmark (just kidding)

By Denmark, I mean Denmark, Western Australia - which is where I was the whole weekend. We (the CIEE group and I) left early Friday morning and got back to campus around 3 this afternoon. It was about a 5 hr drive, but we made stops along the way. One of the places we stopped was the Kodja Place Visitor and Interpretive Centre in Kojonup. We were lead on a tour of the centre by Jack which was....interesting. Jack was a really, really nice guy and very friendly but his tour was kinda weird. The center is mainly a history of aboriginals in the area, but the tour consisted of him saying "This is a spear. This is a truck. These are cakes," telling us random stories about Japanese tourists and not telling us the significance of anything. But he made us tea at the end and gave us bread so I guess that was cool. Then we arrived at The Cove, which would be our home for the weekend. Once we settled in there we headed to Green's Pool and Elephant Rock. I was dumb and left my camera at the cabin, so I've stolen some pictures from other people...

 The view from Elephant Rock

 Green's Pool (I'm in the middle)

Green's Pool

The water at Green's Pool was freezing, but it was definitely an experience. We saw a picture of what it looks like during the summer and it is absolutely gorgeous! After Green's Pool we headed to Wildlife Park, where we played with kangaroos!!! There were also sheep, camels, goats, alpacas, koalas, etc. but the kangaroos were definitely the best part, we even got to hold a baby kangaroo!! So cute! Of course, the one person that took the picture of me with the baby hasn't put pictures up yet so that will come later, but for nowww....

After the park, we headed back to The Cove, had dinner, relaxed, and went to sleep. The next day we woke up early (again) and went on a hike. We hiked (bushwalked...haha) over Monkey Rock  which is part of the Bibbulman Track that goes from Perth to Denmark. If you were to hike the whole thing it would take about 6 weeks, but our section only took about 4 hours. Illya, who owns the cabin we were staying in (and multiple others in The Cove), led us on the hike. I haven't gone a hike in years, but doing this reminded me how much I love it and definitely gave me the desire to go on more hikes when I get home. 

 View from Elephant Rock

 Another view from somewhere along the hike

The group at the highest point!

After the hike we headed back to the cabin, had some lunch, and begged Paul to let us take a nap. 4 hours of hiking is exhausting, but Paul refused and we headed to Walpole for a Tree Top Walk, which was also amazing. We were up about 120 ft in the air on a little walkway and were, literally, at the tops of trees. 

Pretty incredible, right? I wish I had more to say about it, but it's really one of those things you need to experience. It takes your breath away.  After the Tree Top Walk we headed back to the cabin once again, had dinner, and passed out. This morning we woke up and headed home. We were welcomed back to campus with a carnival at the Student Village for all the students living on campus. Pretty fun  - free food, bull riding, sumo wrestling, and all that jazz. After that we walked around campus and found our classes. And, once again, Murdoch is BIG and super confusing, but we figured it out. Classes start for everyone tomorrow, but I have the day off because I don't have any Monday classes (yay!) but I'll be going to Kmart (again), getting lunch with some people, and going on a run. Should be a nice, relaxing day. 

Off to organize my assignment book (I'm a nerd). 

xxx

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday. I know you all anxiously await each and every one of my posts (not). Yesterday was pretty busy, so I didn't really get a chance to update you all in the evening (or morning for you). But yesterday started off with an info session on our North West Trip, which is happening in a couple of weeks. Basically, we're driving up north and visiting a bunch of places there. It's open to all the study abroad students (not just CIEE) so it'll be nice to travel with the other students. We have the option of going during 2 different semester breaks and I think the majority of the CIEE kids are thinking of going the first semester break so that we can go to Bali during the second break. Oh yeah - Mom and Dad, I'm going to Bali :) Or at least that's what we're planning now, we wanted to go to Thailand but that's a little more expensive. They also told us about a southwest trip that's happening in the middle of August where we drive south (Margaret River, Albany, and one other place) and spend the weekend there. Planning on doing that trip as well, but only if they get enough people, otherwise the price is a little ridiculous. I've also been talking to some people about traveling once the semester is over - mainly going to Sydney, the Great Barrier, Cairns, and possibly Tasmania (and Fiji may be thrown in there too). Soo my return date to the states may be pushed back a little. Might as well experience everything while I'm here, right?

After the morning session we had the afternoon off, so three CIEE girls and I took that opportunity to go to Kmart and finish our shopping. The Kmart shopping center (I think it's called Kardinya Shopping Center) lets the students take the trolleys back to the campus so that we don't have to carry 40 different bags. We got some pretty interesting looks on the way back...

Caroline (in the front) and Jocelyn on the way back from Kmart

After Kmart I organized my room a little and took a nap. Then at 6 we had an International Students Welcome Dinner. The food was pretty good (made by the people at Wok Inn at the dining hall) and I met a guy named Felix from Germany and Victoria from Sweden and two Sarahs who I think were both from the states. To be honest, I'm really glad Paul decided to only make us attend the important parts of the International Orientation week. The CIEE orientation is a mixture of things set up by Paul and things set up by Russ Braby. I'm all for meeting the other international students and moving away from my American bubble, but the way they go about it is just so frustrating. Icebreaker games and get-to-know-you games? Really? Pretty sure I'm 20 years old, not 12. When we finished eating dinner they had us play a game by tables where we made sculptures out of tinfoil that represented what Australia is all about (which in itself was pretty stupid) but then they had the orientation coordinators walking around telling us to all get involved and all take part in it and make sure we were including everyone. I know that exclusion and cliques don't go away as you get older, but we're not in high school. We've all decided to travel to a completely foreign country where we know nobody....trust me, we're not going to sit in corners and seclude ourselves from the rest of the students. We WANT to get to know other people, we WANT to be involved and have friends. I'm sorry for the little rant, but those of you that know me well know that being forced to "bond" with others is not something I enjoy. I can do it on my own, thank you.

Anyways, after the dinner there was little party by the pool and then we were planning on going to a bar that is apparently the place to be on Tuesday nights, but since school hadn't started yet the bar was closing at 10 (lame).  So we stayed by the pool for the night. I had a really good time (a full bottle of wines worth). I met some Australian guys and then hung out with Caroline and her flatmates in their flat. We introduced them to Cosmo and honey-wheat pretzels - it was a good time. By the way...the price of alcohol is ridiculous here. 30s of beer are like $50 at the cheapest and a 750ml bottle of vodka is at least $40. CRAZY! So apparently boxed wine (goon) is the way to go. My nice bottle of wine (Slippery Fish Sauvignon Blanc...don't laugh) was only $5 and, to me, was pretty good (probably because it didn't actually taste like wine). 

Today, we didn't start until 2:30 when we had an orientation session put on by the Student Village staff. Once again, we were told what is expected of us and that trouble we can get in if we don't follow the rules...blah blah blah. Then after that, I headed into Fremantle with Paul for my meeting with the mayor!! For some reason I wasn't nervous at all, which is weird because normally I would be pretty close to having a panic attack. But everything in Australia seems so much more relaxed and easy-going....I like it. Brad Pettitt, the mayor, is a pretty young guy and really nice, so I'm really excited to work with him. But I'm even more excited for the project I'm doing. It's not exactlyyy an Environmental Science internship, but I'll be working on a project called "Un-Built Fremantle." Basically what I'm doing is taking 20-30 development proposals from over the years (that never actually happened or weren't approved) and making an exhibit of them to show people what Fremantle could have been. The exhibit will be shown at the end of the semester. Development has always been a touchy topic in Fremantle. In the 1970s (I think, it might have been earlier) there was a proposal to demolish almost all of Fremantle and rebuild it, but the people who live in Fremantle came together and fought the proposal and, fortunately, it never went through. And they're still pretty strict when it comes to development in the area, I think even now they're fighting a proposal to allow multi-story buildings in Fremantle (which is almost all one or 2 stories). Brad gave me a couple of choices for my projects, but this one sounded the most interesting. One of the others was working with a tip-site south of Fremantle. It's almost like a super-fund site, lots of toxic waste and things like that. But there are no records of what has been dumped in it and he wanted me to look into how to deal with it and what to make it in the future. While I was interested in that one, the exhibit sounded more interesting to me. Doing this, I'd be able to explore Fremantle a little more and I'll be able to talk to people who worked on the proposals. Maybe I can talk about the environmental impact the proposals would have had on Fremantle to make it more "scientific." Either way, I'm super excited. I start on Tuesday at 9:30 :)

After my meeting with Brad, three of the CIEE girls (Louisa, Virginia, and Jocelyn) came into Fremantle and we had dinner at a restaurant called Monk. I had pork belly and seared scallops, which was so soooo good - definitely going back to that restaurant. After we ate we headed to Newport (the bar where we watched the footy game) and had a few drinks. Newport is apparently where all the Murodch students go on Wednesday nights, but we got there pretty early and decided we didn't feel like waiting around for everyone to get there. But of course, the second I got back to my room, Caroline texted me and told me that the bar was crazy and so much fun. Oh well. 

Oh, I also found out about my classes yesterday. I don't have any classes on Monday or Tuesday, but Tuesdays I'll be working in Fremantle all day. Wednesday I have 2 lectures and a workshop, Thursday I have a lecture and a tutorial, and Friday I have a lecture. Not gonna lie, this seems like nothing after taking 6 classes last semester. But of course, Australian teaching styles are completely different than American. So who knows, I might have thousands of pages of reading to do each week. We'll see.

Time to say hi to some people on skype before I head off to bed. I'll try to write tomorrow.

xxx

"Mum said it was funny how one day you're not famous, and the next day you are. Famous. And then you're not again."

It's 10 pm and I feel like I should have gone to bed hours ago. Jet lag sucks.

So I've had a request from my mother to talk about some of the people in my program, so I'll start by doing that. All together, there's something like 80 exchange/study abroad students at Murdoch this semester. In my CIEE program there's only 11 students (all from the states) and I think I'm the only one in the Environment and Sustainability Program. I'm really too tired to go into detail on each person, so I'm just going to give you their names and where they're from. Caroline - New York, Jocelyn - Chicago, Jade - Tennessee, Virginia - Tennessee, Mike - Maine, Louisa - Massachusetts, Zach - Maine, Kenny - Massachusetts, Parker - I can't remember, but he goes to TCU with Jade (they've been dating for a year and a half), anddd Kathryn - Maine (she's been here for a full semester already). Everyone in the group is really nice and we all get along really well already, so this semester should be lots and lots of fun :)

This morning we started with an orientation session with all the exchange students where Russ Braby (who's the coordinator or something for exchange) talked to us about the campus, classes, public transportation, and how to get a job. Seriously considering the whole job thing seeing as minimum wage is something like AU$18 and everything here is super expensive, but we'll see. After the session, Paul took us to Garden City Shopping Center where we stopped at K-Mart and Coles and did some shopping. I don't have everything I need yet, so I'll probably just walk down to the K-Mart near campus tomorrow. Thennn I found out from Paul that I'll be meeting with the mayor of Freemantle on Wednesday to discuss what I'll be doing for my internship. I also found out that I'll be giving a presentation on my internship to the Environmental/Sustainability faculty on campus anddd to the Freemantle City Council at the end of the semester. Helloooo intimidation.

After shopping, Paul and Kate took the CIEE group out Clancy's Fish Pub where we had fish and chips for dinner (and some beer). I don't know if any of you have tried the Little Creatures Pale Ale, but it's really good (and Paul has stock in it, so he'll be happy if you have some). Then we explored the new section of the Student Village which is like 10x nicer than the old village where I'm staying...bummer. And then we watched the movie "Castles" with the other exchange students because apparently every Australian has seen this movie. Honestly...it was a little weird.

Before dinner, Paul took us here. Not really sure exactly where it is, but he said it's his favorite place in Freemantle.

The CIEE group. Sorry it's blurry, blame Paul.

I think it's time for bed. This is the latest I've been up since I got here. So sad.

xxx