Quick Update

Right now its about 37 degrees C (100F) again- so hot! The metric system thing is really getting me- I'm still having trouble trying to convert from celsius and kilometers, and even inches to centimeters. I didn't really notice how hot it was today until I came back to my room, I was at the pool since about 12 because I don't have any classes Friday. The sun is so strong that you can barely lay out without frying...it's a hard life here, I know.

Yesterday I had a "trial" at the kebab place in the school food court for an hour- they do that a lot here, at least with food service jobs. Hopefully it works out, it would be great because its right on campus and closed on nights and weekends.

Last night there was a beach themed party in the Tavern on campus- it was a lot of fun. It's so cool how they can have a place like that right next to the quad-they have happy hour every day Mon-Fri and a lot of people go there to chill where there are pool tables and foosball tables, and outdoor seating. It's really nice.

I'm just hanging out in my room for a bit then a few of us are going to head out to Kings Park for this outdoor cinema thing they have- I forget what the movie is. I'll update more after this weekend.

Some facts about Perth and WA

Western Australia...

is larger than all of Western Europe

is about 1/3 of the whole of Australia

is 4x bigger than Texas

has over 70 National Parks and 2 World Heritage sites

experiences dry and wet seasons up north

Perth...

is the world's most isolated and sunniest capital city

has a population of about 1.8 million

has an average winter temp of about 60-65F and average summer temp of 86F

There are only 2 million people in the huge state of WA- and 90% of them live in and around Perth. To give you an idea of how empty that is: Texas has a population of about 25 million- on land 1/4 the size of WA.

WACA Warriors + Freo

On Wednesday a few of us went to the WACA stadium to see our first cricket game. Of course, the day turned out to be about 37°C…or a bit over 100° F. Luckily the buses and the train to get there were all air-conditioned! When we finally got to the stadium it was pretty empty so we could sit anywhere. The game was too confusing and to really hold our attention- the Retravision Warriors wore the yellow uniforms, but the crowd seemed to cheer for both teams- that’s how confusing the rules were!

Warriors up at bat.

The scoreboard looked pretty cool but we had no idea how to interpret it. Despite all the confusion it was fun just hanging out, meeting new people and chatting during the game. Later that night we decided to check out the Newport club in Freo for a bit for student night- we didn’t stay for too long but it was really fun and crowded.

The confusing scoreboard- each player appears to have a score and their names

would occasionally light up.

WACA Stadium

Thursday was my second class: Country, Nature, and Identity: Indigenous Sustainability. It was really interesting and the professor was awesome! Looking forward to the semester. It was a small class so there’ll be a lot of discussion and it was nice to be mixed with Aussies. A bunch of my friends from the U.S. are in it with me, so that’ll be fun. There’s such a large international population here that I don’t think you could find a class without a few people studying abroad or from a different country. I decided to switch into the Nature-Based Tourism class on Monday, freeing up my Fridays. There are two field trips during the semester to Penguin Island and Yanchep National Park- very excited for that.

Probably my favorite part of being here so far is going into Fremantle- it’s just a bus ride away and there are tons of fun things to do. There are a lot of different restaurants and bars, shops, a park, a beach, and an amazing marketplace. On weekend nights it’s crowded with people and there are live bands playing in some restaurants, and the overall vibe of area is just amazing. The marketplace is open every Friday to Sunday with a ton of vendors inside this huge building. They have everything imaginable, like clothes, jewelry, didgeridoos and paintings. There’s a section for produce and food, which was fresh and cheap on Sunday so I’ll definitely be back there a lot! Over the weekend there are also a lot of street performers and musicians livening up Freo. They shorten every word in Australia- for example, Fremantle is Freo, Rottnest Island is Rotto, the Salvation Army is Salvo’s (even on the sign), etc. One act we saw last week was the “badpiper”- a guy in a leather-studded kilt playing Queen’s “We will rock you.” There was also a sword-swallowing pirate, and there are always a few didgeridoo players around.

Some stalls in Fremantle Market

Fremantle Harbor

Classes

Today was my first class, Environmental Politics. It seems interesting so far and we work in a group throughout the semester on a case study, which will be good to get to meet people. The teacher seems really nice and the two other people in my group are from Australia and Holland- though I could have sworn both were from Australia. Its funny because I've never really thought about people learning english as their second language with an australian accent- it was definitely confusing sometimes during orientation presentations telling where people were from with a blend of both accents!

After class ended at 2, I just hung around at Bush Court and read a book-it was really nice. Tomorrow we're heading to the Waca stadium to watch a cricket game! Last night we had an hour info session to explain the rules. It seems really complicated but interesting, I'm not sure what watching it will be like. I'll update on that tomorrow.

Koalas, Kangaroos, and Wallabies- Caversham Wildlife Park

Today we visited the Caversham Wildlife Park. We took about an hour bus ride there and split into 3 groups, each with a zoo tour guide. First up were the koalas. They were so cute! We were lucky to spot a few with their eyes open and one moving around because they spend the majority of their day sleeping. We were able to gently pet their backs and they were so soft! Also, the keepers rotate them and give them time alone so they don’t have to interact with visitors too much, which is good.

Petting a soft, sleeping koala.

Next we went to the Kangaroo enclosure, the part I was most excited for. There was a bucket of feed for the kangaroos, but they were so tame that you could pretty much just walk right up to them and pet them. They were really soft too, and really lazy in the heat and sun. A lot of them had joeys sticking out of their pouch- it was weird when all you could see were long legs sticking out of the mom’s stomach!

Me with a small white kangaroo.

I loved this one- she was one of the bigger ones in the enclosure.

A mum with a big joey. If you look closely at the baby's toes you can see that they have two small side ones, and one large middle toe. Very strange looking!

The zookeeper told us that many of the kangaroos that interact with the visitors are either juveniles or females because adult males can get up to seven feet tall. Here she is with her orphaned joey, Daniel. She takes him home every night to give him milk and he sleeps in a pillowcase.

Here’s the groups with Big Bubs, a female wallaby. I did not think this is what they looked like- they are adorable! They look like a giant stuffed animal/pillow. Jesse (the keeper) told us they can run up to 40 km/hr…which is about 25 mph. I don’t know HOW that is possible…maybe they can roll that fast? J

That’s another thing that’s hard to get used to here- the conversions. Everyone always tells us the temperature in Celsius and the road signs are all in kilometers, etc.

After our tour of the park we went out and had yet another sausage sizzle, complete with veggie sausages like always. Soda is pretty different here too…I got a Kirk’s “Creaming Soda” expecting it to be cream soda, and opened it up to find fluorescent pink, gross candy flavored soda. Kirk’s also has Passion Fruit flavor, which tastes like cough syrup. The lemon squash kind isn’t so bad. "Lemon Squash" is like lemonade while "Lemonade" labeled soda is more like sprite here. There are always tons of varieties of lemonade at the sausage sizzles.

Slang:

Arvo- afternoon (“good arvo”)

Footy- Aussie Rules football

Thongs- flipflops

Sun Cream- sunscreen

G’Day from Oz

So far Perth has been great! It is EXTREMELY hot here, and always sunny. I haven’t seen a cloud since I’ve been here. The sun is super strong-everyone got a really bad burn on the first day. I even got burned wearing SPF50. I’m in a flat with 4 other people- so far I’ve met 3 of them. One girl is from Malawi, one from Malaysia, and I’m not sure about the other two. Its nice having a single in a suite!

Friday, the day after I arrived, was a basic orientation day. At night a big group of the early arrivers went to the Mexican Kitchen in Fremantle for dinner- really good! Especially suddenly being able to order drinks at dinner :) The next day we had a “discover your campus race” which was cool to see the campus but very long and hot. Then the shopping trip to Kardy’s shopping center- things are so much more expensive here. For example, a box of Froot Loops was about 8 or 9 dollars…2 boxes of Coke were about $30. Apparently the state of WA is doing really well right now, and minimum wage here is wayyy higher- I think its $20/hr if you’re 20. I’ll definitely be looking around for a job soon!

We went out to Outback Jack’s that night with the study abroad group. I just got a veggie burger but you could get things like kangaroo meatballs, crocodile, and camel burgers! After that we were able to go to Little Creatures, a really popular brewery in Fremantle. I didn’t get any pictures but it was a really cool place, with glass side walls to see the huge vats where the beer’s made.

Sunday was our trip to Cottesloe beach, a bus and train ride away along Fremantle. It was gorgeous there- the water was so clear, it was really hot, and there was some great gelato across the street.


Monday we had another day of orientation stuff, then went to King’s Park in the afternoon in Perth. You just take a bus, then a train to get there from Fremantle. The whole TransPerth system is kind of like the Charlie card system in Boston. We only got to see a small part of King’s Park but it was beautiful. It’s bigger than Central Park so I definitely want to go and spend a whole day there! The birds you see here are so different from back at home- its weird not knowng the names of any of the wildlife or plants or anything. The crows are massive and all of the birds make bizarre calls- I even saw a green parrot-like bird flying overhead. There are a lot of quendas on campus, which are like larger, cuter rats. I’ve seen a few scurrying along towards bushes.

We also had a day trip of surfing and sandboarding at Lancelin beach. We left at 6:45 am on Wednesday, and split into two groups once we got there. We went surfing first- the beach was huge, the water was really clear, and the waves were just pretty normal sized in the morning. It was awesome- so much fun. I stood up a couple of times (only to come crashing down) and I definitely want to do it again!

Post-Surfing.

After that we went and ate lunch, then my group went sandboarding. We took a short bus trip away from the beach to these massive dunes- climbing to the top of one took a while and it looked like a dessert. I wish I could have brought my camera but we were warned not to because of the sand. There were these small snowboard like things that you sit on and slide down really fast- it was so cool and I was expecting much smaller beach dunes- it actually was a lot like the video in the last post but with whiter sand.

The dunes were much bigger than the ones behind us in these pictures.

In the water at Lancelin after sandboarding.

I’ll try to keep up more with these posts so I don’t have to put up such long entries next time. :)

Slang:

Rashies- the swim shirts (we're wearing over the wetsuits)

Sandgropers- Western Australians

Goon- boxed wine, the only thing we can afford over here ;)

Trolley- shopping cart