Leavin' on a jet plane...

So it's my last night in Freo...weird.  Some people have already left, some are leaving at 3 am this morning, and some (like me) are leaving at 7:30 am to catch our flight to Cairns.  Leaving Fremantle feels weird, and different than any other time I've had to leave a place.  I think that's because when I leave school for home, or home for school, I know I'll eventually return.  But this time, I know that I'm pretty much never going to be coming back here, so it's a permanent goodbye.  

But even though it's a little bittersweet, I'm SO super excited for the next two weeks of traveling!!!  I probably won't post before I get home, since I have a feeling the only internet I'll be able to use between now and then will be the $1/15 minutes version.  I'm going to try to keep track of the highlights in a little journal Kdub got me for this very purpose at the end of last year, but I kind of suck at maintaining non-virtual diaries, so we'll see how that goes.  Regardless, I should have a ridiculous amount of pictures when I return (although my camera has decided to hate me by failing to zoom anymore, so don't expect any close-ups, lol).  

I feel like this post should probably be more introspective and full of mushy stuff about what an amazing experience this has been, etc etc (and it absolutely has, don't get me wrong), but I have to wake up in less than 5 hours and I kind of want to get some sleep before my two weeks of non-stop travel begins!  I might do something like that later, but who knows.  

Anyway, I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving!  I'll be spending mine in Sydney, where they don't have to give thanks for any kind of harvest and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will almost certainly not be on TV...but I'll survive :)  

<3

Birthday Week!

So apparently I was subconsciously really afraid my birthday was going to be super lame.  Over the course of the semester, I had 3 dreams involving my birthday being pretty pathetic.  Seriously.  The first one happened a good month or so ago, but the last two were both in the past week.  They're actually pretty funny, so I'm going to recount the highlights...

Dream #1 - I spend my birthday eve volunteering at a prison.  Midnight hits and I feel like a huge loser because no one cares.  My friends take me out to a restaurant/bar the next night for my birthday, and we get there to find the place completely empty.  The drinks are expensive (the horror!) and no one is really in a celebrating mood at all.  Two of my friends move from the bar to a table so that they can read the books they brought with them.  The waitress realizes it's my birthday and brings me a free dessert - a twig of crystallized sugar.

Dream #2 - Me and my friends go to some fancy hotel restaurant for my birthday.  As soon as we get there, the waiter finds out it's my birthday and goes to get the celebratory dish: a plate of four hotdog-type sausages.  And I have to eat them right there, before we sit down.  And I have to eat them in under a minute.  I agree to do this for some reason, but I just barely don't make it under the minute mark.  I then proceed to feel sick and want to puke so I can enjoy my actual dinner, but this is impossible.

Dream #3 (which occurred during my nap before my birthday dinner) - I'm napping before my birthday dinner.  My alarm doesn't go off, so I wake up 15 minutes before we have to leave.  I wake up panicked because I still have to shower and get ready.  I leave with two of the guys from Port Lodge that I hardly know at all, and we're walking down a road in some rural area.  We finally stop to wait for a bus, and we're sitting on the edge of the road, which is right next to a creek.  A huge gross fish jumps out of the creek and onto the road next to me.  I think it's trying to get me and have a mild freak out.  It wiggles it's way into the road as a bus comes barreling towards it.  I realize what's about to happen and turn my back.  The bus runs right over the fish, making a loud disgusting squelching sound as fish guts are sprayed everywhere, including all over my back (sidenote: this was undoubtedly the grossest thing that's ever happened to me during a dream).  I try to rinse my back off in the creek.  We go back to Port Lodge to re-shower, but now it's also partly a school building and I'm unable to find the shower.  I end up in the library in my towel.

It doesn't take Freud to figure out the underlying meaning behind these dreams.  I just never realized I was that nervous about my birthday being lame!  Thankfully, my actual birthday bore no resemblance to ANY of those dreams and was really great :)  It was actually stretched out over a whole week since I had finals the day before, the day of, and the day after it (at 9 am nonetheless). 

It started Monday when I heard some mysterious noises outside my door as I was studying.  I opened it to find Andria, Katie, and Sam putting a countdown to my birthday on my door (set to 1 day, haha).

Monday night was spent studying for my Asia Culture exam the next day at 2.  My attention started to wane around 11, when me, Katie, and Jackie investigated a mysterious painted-over door in the downstairs hallway that we had never really noticed.  Port Lodge is pretty old and is rumored to have ghosts, so we got ourselves pretty freaked out about it.  Jackie pushed a knife around under the door (still not really sure what that was supposed to accomplish), and then we heard Christina from the other side of the door.  Turns out the door sits behind the food lockers that we use every day, and Christina was getting food out when she saw the knife poking through below the lockers.  She could even hear us freaking out about what could be inside this supposedly sealed room.  Needless to say, we felt like idiots and I laughed about it harder than I've laughed in a really long time.

At midnight, a bunch of my friends came to my room to sing happy birthday to me :)  Betsy made banana bread, so they stuck some candles in it and used it as cake.  Also, Katie got me a 21st birthday shot glass and I may or may not have been forced to use it to take a celebratory 21st birthday shot...

Once everyone was gone, I went out of my room for a while only to return to find a brand new set of decorations - in red and green, since apparently it's embarrassingly obvious how much I love Christmas (organizing Christmas Day back in September probably didn't help...)  These were also courtesy of Andria and Katie, who were basically responsible for making the whole week awesome for me!

Somehow at the beginning of the semester, Betsy and I decided that McDonalds breakfast is pretty much the best thing ever and that we would treat ourselves to it on the morning of my birthday.  We actually managed to remember this over the course of the past 3 months, so at 8:45 that morning (we had to get up early to keep studying for the final later anyway), me, Betsy and Steph walked over to McDonalds.  We go in and I'm about to turn to look at the menu when I catch a glance of the outside seating area.  It turns out Katie and Andria decided to come early and surprise me (and they dragged Mike along with them), and they had put balloons on the table and a fluffy light-up birthday crown for me :)  So we get breakfast and as we're eating, Andria gets a phone call, leaves, and returns a few minutes later with a gorgeous bouquet of lillies.  Katie (Perth/3W Katie) had ordered them for me and they happened to get delivered during breakfast, so that made the whole surprise thing even better!

The rest of the day was spent studying for and taking my Asia Culture final, and then studying for my Australian History final the next day.

Once my Australian History final was done, I could breathe a (small) sigh of relief, since my next one wasn't until Friday morning.  Wednesday night was my birthday dinner, which was at a Mexican restaurant called Zapatas.  Aaand I'll go ahead and be honest and say that the main reason for this choice was the drink special of $10 carafes on Wednesdays (but for the record, they were delicious!).  It actually ended up being a pretty big group (about 25 people); Katie and Kenzie came from Perth along with a couple other kids that I know from there, plus a lot of people from Port Lodge, plus some other people too.  It was a lot of fun :) 

Later that night we went to The Orient and I got to experience the glory of birthdays...having other people buy drinks for you all night, haha.  I somehow ended up wearing my birthday crown the entire night. 

One of the funniest parts of the night was definitely when Arthur and Aron, two of the guys from Perth, sang happy birthday to me as a karaoke song...and actually watched the monitor for the words.

As far as the rest of the week, it was basically filled with more studying - this time, for my Business in Asia final on Friday morning.  After that final though, I was done until Wednesday, so Friday was extremely relaxing.  Andria and I went to the markets to look for souvenirs and then on a run, and later that night we had our end-of-the semester dinner and presentations for the study abroad program.  It basically consisted of a wrap-up/inside jokes from each of the residences and then a slide show of pictures from the semester.

That night we went out to The Deen and The Paramount, which was really fun. That night basically marked the end of my week-long birthday celebration, and all-in-all it was awesome (minus the whole finals thing).  I think it's safe to say that none of it resembled anything in any of the dreams I had!

So that's pretty much it for now...the rest of the weekend involved wandering around Freo, going to the beach, checking out an Aboriginal festival in the park, and watching a parade for the Fremantle Festival, which is apparently the biggest event in Fremantle.  The parade was a little out there but had a ton of personality, which reminded me of Freo itself.

Now I have 5 days, 1 final, and a lot of packing before we leave Freo for good on Saturday morning.  I'll probably post again before then though.

<3

Eeeek

Is it really almost the end of my two relaxing weeks before finals?!?!  Sadly, the answer is yes.  Soon the kids in Thailand will be coming back and we'll all be freaking out about the impending week of non-stop essay-writing that is finals. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration.  But most of us DO have 4 finals next week, and all of those finals are essay finals...lovely.  I'll be so happy to go back to the business school at ND where the most you have to write is a paragraph for a group project (also possibly a slight exaggeration).  ANYWAY, I figured before I get into serious study mode today I would update y'all on how my 2 relaxing weeks have been!

Last Monday: Class for Asia Culture consisted of our lecturer Shaphan telling us how to study for the final, showing us how to make paper cranes, and taking us to the bar after class.  Andria and I were already in running clothes though, so we went for a run after class instead.  It's amazing how much nicer it is to run when there's a beach waiting for you at the other end of your route.  Also went to what would end up being our last footy practice (I'm guessing), but there were hardly any of us there so it wasn't as fun as it's been beore :(.  Monday night a bunch of us went to The Deen and we met up with some of the Perth kids.  Overall a pretty good night.

Last Tuesday: Went to the Qantas office in Perth to get some flight stuff straightened out.  That was the first time I had ever ridden the train from Freo to Perth by myself, and it was such a liberating feeling to do that and go into the city alone.  Then I realized that even the young kids here do that all the time and felt kind of silly, lol.  I guess growing up in a suburb I never really got to have that kind of experience.  Anyway, I got everything worked out, then came back to a nearly empty house.  Most of the kids went to the house of some other study abroad kids for Beer Olympics, but I just didn't feel like drinking my weight in beer so me and a couple others stayed back.  Then later that night we went to the Cottesloe Hotel (a bar, not a hotel) for the night.  We ended up having to sprint from Port Lodge to the train station to catch the train there (not the best idea...ugh) and when we got to the train we had a good 60 seconds to spare.  Oh well.  It was definitely an interesting start to what ended up being a really fun/entertaining night.

Tired faces after sprinting to the train station

Waiting at the train station to go back to Freo

Last Wednesday:  Again, class (Business in Asia) was cut wayyy short and really just consisted of telling us how to study for the final.  I don't really remember what I did during the day besides maybe go on another run with Andria.  We had our last Christology class (THANK GOD...no pun intended lol) which still went two hours because our lecturer is lame - actually wanting to teach us...who does he think he is?!  After that we all went to watch the last game of the pool tournament that the university sponsored, mostly because they promised to feed us afterwards.  Then they were having a massive ping pong tournament, and for my first game I had to play Michael, who of course is really good at ping pong so I didn't go any further than that match (sorry for tarnishing the Maloney ping pong reputation Dad, haha).  I lost 9-11 though, so it was at least close.  Going out that night consisted of staying close to home by going to the Orient.  The Perth kids were there so we 

got to see them again, which was awesome.

3 West...Australian Edition

Last Thursday: Went back to Perth to try to book the rental car for New Zealand with my voucher...didn't work but I did find some good replacement sunglasses for the ones I lost on Rotto so all-in-all not a completely wasted trip.  Our last Macro class went for the full 3 hours (boooo), BUT afterwards the university fed us again (!!!) in the form of a Halloween party with meat pies and sausage rolls.  Most of us were still pretty Halloween-ed out from the party last Thursday so we didn't dress up and just went for the food, haha.  Thursday night was frustrating because we were going to go to Claremont, which I had only been to once before but loved, but I made it all the way there before realizing I didn't have my passport with me.  THAT will definitely never happen again.  So I ended up coming back to Freo and staying in that night.  Good times.

Last Friday:  Final class of the semester - Australian History.  No more classes until mid-January!  Lunch with some of the girls at the Burger Bar (chicken sandwich with cheese and avocado...) then massive nap :)  The kids going to Thailand left that night, and those of us who were left went out to a place I had never been before called The Loft.  It was kind of lounge/bar and was more adultish than anywhere we've been so far, but it did have an amazing view of the harbour!

Freo Harbour at night

Saturday:  Slept in for a long time, then went with Katie and some of the guys to Cottesloe Beach for the afternoon.  It's the nicest beach I've been to so far in the Freo-Perth area (the sand felt AMAZING) and basically we just sat around and listened to music and read on the beach.  It wasn't warm enough to go in the water though.  Saturday night a bunch of us decided to spend the night at UWA after going out to watch the ND-Pitt game on their big projector, so me, Katie, and Tom took everyone's stuff to UWA and left for Northbridge from there.  We met up with everyone (including some of the Perth kids who we convinced to go out instead of staying in that night) at The Paramount and ended up staying there for 4 hours!  The music was really good and it was fun, but it was definitely the longest I've ever stayed at a club - basically from 10:30-2:30.

Sunday:  After The Paramount, we went back to UWA and watched the game...soooooo sad.  I managed to stay awake for the entire first half, but fell asleep during half time and didn't wake back up until the end of the 4th quarter.  Then of course I had to stay up for ALL 4 overtimes, and by the time it was over everyone was super tired and cranky.  We dragged ourselves to the UWA dining hall for breakfast and some of our group left to go back to Freo. Me, Katie and Tom decided to stay to go to the Red Bull Air Race, though, so we got changed and took the bus with a bunch of the Perth kids to the park where everyone goes to watch it.  I don't really know how we were still functioning at this point.  But we got a spot in the sand and (after copious amounts of sunscreen were applied) laid down to nap for a little while since the air race didn't actually start until 11.  I'm glad we saw it, but after the first 2 planes Katie and I were ready to leave.  So we came back to Freo, and the rest of my day went something like this: sleep. mass. sleep.

Going through the course

Me and the Katies

Monday: This was a pretty chill day - caught up on Grey's and The Office, went grocery shopping, did some planning for New Zealand, went on a run.  Monday night we went to The Orient and played cards in the back room, which ended up being really fun.

Tuesday: Let's see...I don't remember what I did during the day besides go for another run.  For dinner Katie and I went to this place called Amano Gelato that I had been wanting to try - $5.90 for a decent-sized piece of pizza and cup of gelato (white chocolate, in case you were dying of curiosity).  And that's Australian dollars, so with the exchange rate the way it's been going it was practically free! ;)  Most of us decided not to go out Tuesday, so instead we watched Thank You For Smoking, which I highly recommend if you like sarcasm and satirical humour.  It's a funny one.  Afterwards four of us lounged around on the couches in the dark trying to think of something fun to do, and three hours later we realized that it was 1 AM and we should probably go to bed.  

Wednesday: The majority of late morning/early afternoon was dedicated to watching the election coverage.  It was sort of weird because while the news stations here had some of their own coverage of it, mostly they just streamed CNN so basically it was like watching it from home.  Also, Katie (Perth/3W Katie lol) came to visit because she was getting back from Rotto that morning, so after Obama's acceptance speech we just hung out for a while until dinner (which consisted of some of the best-tasting nachos I have ever eaten...sooo good).  Wednesday night is karaoke night at the Orient, so we all went there after dinner.  After watching some inspiring performances of "You've Lost that Loving Feeling" (Mike and Kmart) and "Roll With Me" (Kim and Steph), I finally decided that almost 21 years is too long to go without ever having done karaoke, so Mike and I channeled our inner boy-bandness and sang "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys.  I always thought that I would have to be quite drunk to ever do karaoke, but I wasn't that night and it really wasn't bad!  Actually it was pretty fun :)  After that Katie (3W Katie) and I were going to sing "Livin on a Prayer" but they stopped taking requests...boo.  Maybe in two weeks after I have my last final though...  When we got back to Port Lodge Kmart had the brilliant idea to make cookie dough, and even though we definitely didn't have the right ingredients it still tasted pretty great (although most things do when you get back from a bar).

I've found my new calling...ok not really but it was fun

So that's been my study week so far.  We've been pretty bummed that the weather hasn't been nice enough for us to hang out at the beach during the day, but we've managed to have some fun anyway.  You might have noticed that study week hasn't exactly lived up to its name, but I keep telling myself that that's because I work better under pressure.  Besides, now that this post is out of the way I'll be able to sit down and focus.  Well, after dinner at least :)