Thursday, February 24, 2011
Quick Update
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Some facts about Perth and WA
WACA Warriors + Freo
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.
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
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Classes
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Koalas, Kangaroos, and Wallabies- Caversham Wildlife Park
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!
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.
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
Thursday, February 10, 2011
G’Day from Oz
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!
I’ll try to keep up more with these posts so I don’t have to put up such long entries next time. :)