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 :)

Yes, it happens in real life too

So I walked into a pole today.  I always thought that was something that just happened on TV or in movies, that it's too ridiculous to happen in real life.  Turns out it's not because I have a lovely bruise developing on my forehead, lol.

It seemed like something that deserved a post of its own...

Done (!!!)

Right now I stand on the brink of what will hopefully be two of the most relaxing weeks I've had here.  Here's how I got here:

Last week, Monday-Thursday:

Pretty much all I did was write papers, almost exclusively.  Some interesting parts of the week:

-A mission with my friend to try to get ten ridiculous vocab words into our first paper due (for me, Asia: Culture, Environment and Development).  When I had gotten 8 of them into my paper and he had stopped trying at 2, it turned into a bet.  So when I finally got all 10 of them in, he had to buy me a drink at the Halloween party later in the week...score.  Here were the words: Coagulate, bequeath, advent, nexus, amalgamate, entrenched, voracity, palpable, divisive, and decrepit.  I think coagulate was the hardest one to get in there.  Or maybe decrepit...anyway

-Halloween shopping for the double birthday party/Halloween party that 2 of the Port Lodge kids had on Thursday night.  Costumes explained later in the post :)

-My very first all-nighter.  Maybe not so much a highlight as a lowlight, but it was still definitely notable.  This was Tuesday night, after I had spent all day Tuesday writing and had finished a third of my Christology paper only to have some sort of computer glitch delete all my work.  Yeah.  I got so mad that I decided to stay up until I got my last 2 papers completely done.  It didn't exactly work out that way, as I slept from 6-7:30 Wednesday morning and then from 2-6 Wednesday night.  Regardless, I got very, VERY little sleep last week.

-The comical state of my trashcan by Thursday morning.  Photo evidence of my dependency on Diet Coke (PS they're 1.5 litre bottles...):

-Researching for and writing a total of 25 pages worth of papers within the span of about 5 days (not including the 2 papers from the week before).  Turning in that last paper on Thursday was an awesome feeling, especially since it was the last piece of work I had to do before finals in November.

Thursday:

After getting all my stuff turned in on Thursday, I still had to go to macro and community dinner.  But after we had to start getting ready for the birthday/Halloween party that night!  A couple of the girls from Perth (including Katie!) came for the party, which was held in the back room of the bar that's right down the street from Port Lodge called The Orient.  I was in a group doing The Price is Right:  we had a guy as Bob Barker, his girlfriend as one of the Barker Beauties, and then me, Katie (Freo Katie, not Perth Katie)and Andria were contestants with outrageous homemade shirts.  My shirt said "Remember me, Bob?"  And then over my very pregnant belly: "IT'S YOURS"  It definitely got a lot of comments at the party, haha.

Friday:

Friday morning was Australian History class and tutorial, then I finally made pizookie for the girls here in Freo (and proceeded to feel sick for the rest of the day lol).  That stuff is amazing but it's definitely something you can only do once in a while.  I'm glad I was able to pass it on to other people though; it's too good not to.  We were originally scheduled to leave for our weekend at Rottnest Island at 3:30 on Friday, but some of us got our tickets changed to leave Saturday morning at 9:30 instead.  It wasn't that warm outside, was supposed to rain, and I was exhausted from the week.  I proceeded to go back to Port Lodge and sleep for most of the rest of the day, and when I heard the rain pouring down and the thunder crashing I was so glad I was in my bed instead of a tent.

Saturday:

Saturday morning we left for Rotto, and 40 of us got to ride the speedboat ferry there instead of the regular ferry, which was an awesome decision!  The waves were pretty rough, so it was sort of like riding a roller coaster.  It actually ended up being the best part of the weekend...go figure.

I guess I should explain about Rotto a little first.  It's an island about 19 km off the coast of Freo, and it's actually a nature reserve so a lot of it (all of it?) is protected.  It's tiny though, at 11 km long and 4.5 km wide, and there's just one little shopping area with a couple of fast food places, a general store, a souvenir shop, etc.  Bikes are basically the only form of transportation besides the tourist buses that go around the island.  It's a popular tourist spot and is supposed to be one of the "must-do's" when visiting Perth or Freo.  It has a resort (I think), a hostel, villas/bungalows to rent, and campsites.  We were at a campsite because we didn't book early enough to get a villa.

So after we got to there, we rented bikes and took our stuff to the campground, and Betsy and I set up our tent that our Australian History lecturer had lent us on Friday.  Then a bunch of us set out to try to find the nice beach we had heard about.  We took off on our bikes for what turned out to be a really hilly ride.  Apparently none of us realised that Rotto is not flat. At all.  It had been threatening rain all day, and when we finally got there the skies opened up so we went back to the campsite.

After waiting out the rain, me and 4 others decided to go bike around the island to check it out, and we set out for what ended up being a 2+ hour ride.  I'm not sure if we did the whole ride around the island, but it sure felt like it.  The scenery was beautiful (still really hilly though) and we saw some gorgeous beaches.  It wasn't warm enough to actually go for a swim though.  The only downsides to the bike ride were the rain that started falling towards the end of the ride, and the crappy loose chain on my bike that made me have to stop way too many times to fix it.  But all in all I'm glad we rode around because otherwise all I would've seen of the island basically would have been the campsite and Subway.

Later in the afternoon, we all (a lot of the ND students plus a good number of the other study abroad students) just hung around the campsite until it was time for dinner.  Dinner for me was Subway, and dessert was the Nutella that me, Katie and Andria shared over girl talk in the tent.  Then Betsy joined girl talk, followed later by Kevin, Erin, Jackie and Kim.  By that point the tent was pretty much full, and we all went down to the beach where some people had already built a fire in a pit.

We sat around the fire for a while, and Erin, Jackie, Andria and I played a game where you make up a ghost story by each person adding on a couple of sentences to the story.  It involved a beach, a big group of kids, an abandoned barber shop, and a lighthouse, and alternated between being hysterically funny and actually kind of creepy.

Sunday:

No one slept very well that night because some of the people were being super loud and obnoxious and also because it was fairly cold.  I also didn't bring a pillow and just had my thin airplane blanket.  So by the time morning rolled around, everyone was ready to get on the 10:30 ferry back to Freo instead of the 4:30 one, and luckily there was enough room for us all.  I'm sort of disappointed the trip wasn't better, because other abroad groups have raved that going to Rotto is the one thing you have to do while you're here, but I think a lot of it had to do with the subpar weather which no one can really do anything about.  Oh well.

Oh yeah, here's a picture of the little kangaroo-type animals that live on the island.  They're really cute, but there's a ton of them and they're everywhere on the island.  They're called quokkas.

So anyway, the rest of today was awesome and lazy and involved lots of lounging and TV and movie watching.  This week of classes is our last one and is just a review week, so we're all looking forward to a break.  Then after that is study week, then 2 weeks of exams, then we're leaving Freo for good.  It's sort of hard to believe it's so close to being over.  But there's still more good times to be had before that gets here!

Aaaand now it's time to go sleep some more :)

<3

Caffeine.

That's what's keeping me going right now. I'm currently on my second 1.5 litre bottle of Diet Coke following two 1 litre bottles over the course of the weekend. I haven't had any Diet Coke here before this week...with such a minimal work load there was hardly any need for it. I forgot about how much I love it though. I don't know why anyone would ever drink coffee or tea over Diet Coke. I mean, yeah, there's the whole more caffeine thing, but what you gain in energy you lose in taste. Times a million. Moral of the story: Diet Coke = awesome.

So the reason I'm drinking so much of the stuff is because I'm smack in the middle of my 2 hell weeks, aka 5 papers due over the course of last week and this week. Last week I had two to turn in on Friday, and this week I have one due Tuesday, one due Wednesday, and one due Thursday. Right now it's Monday night and I shouldn't even be taking the time to write in here but I need a break.

I'm not really sure how I survived last spring on so little sleep. Pretty much every day I would go to bed between the hours of 2 and 4 and wake up between 7 and 9 and somehow managed to be coherent and alive most of the time at school? Then I come here and have one 5-hour night's sleep and I'm exhausted. I guess it all depends on what you're used to.

Thursday night and the weekend are definitely my lights at the end of the tunnel right now. By Thursday at 4 pm, I will have handed in all class assignments until finals in November. Then that night is a double birthday party/Halloween party, followed by a weekend at Rottnest Island. Cannot. Wait.

In theory, here's what I should be an expert on by the time Thursday rolls around:
-The effect of colonisation on the success of the Nattukottai Chettiar Indian caste in Burma (Business in Asia paper)
-The macroeconomics of the Great Depression (Macroecon paper...shocker)
-The effect of colonisation on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka (Asia Culture paper)
-The Christology and soteriology of the Book of Hebrews (Christology paper)
-The effect of the Anzac legend on Australian national identity (Australian history paper)

In more exciting news, I got to see Katie and Kenzie for the first time in a while this weekend! They came to Freo on Saturday and we got to catch up with each other and go to the beach. AND they baked cookies. It was really awesome to see them and I think we're going to be going up to Perth next week so we'll get to hang out more over the next couple of weeks :)

I guess that's it for now; I've probably procrastinated long enough. The Book of Hebrews calls...

My brain is sore.

Whoa. Just finished paper 1 of 3.  Granted, it's just a rough draft and I technically haven't done the actual referencing yet, but if you know me at all you know that for me to finish a paper a day ahead of time, much less 4, is basically unheard of.  And it turned out to be longer than it probably needs to be and definitely longer than I intended it to be.  When did I turn into such a nerd?!?

Oh, and one of the papers that was supposed to be due Friday (Asia Culture) got pushed back to Tuesday...YAY.  That just leaves one 2000-worder for Friday.  But I want to get the Asia Culture one done before the weekend because I'll need that time to start/work on my two papers due next week. Yikes.

Anyway, I just wanted to write in here about how weird it is that we've reached the point where people are putting together lists of things we still need to do before we leave.  Here's what mine looks like:

-Rottnest Island (aka Rotto).  Not too worried about this one because we already have campsites booked for the weekend after we get everything finally turned in - woooo.  Basically all of Port Lodge is going to be there spending the weekend camping, swimming, snorkeling, checking out the island, etc.  

-Kangaroo Island.  This is a small island in Perth with a bunch of wild kangaroos living on it.  Some of Port Lodge checked it out a few months ago and saw a bunch of wild kangaroos and got some really cool pictures of them.

-Surf lessons.  You can pay like $75 to spend the day learning how to surf and I realllly want to try it! If this happens it'll probably be during study week.

-Sunday Session.  This is a Freo specialty where people spend all Sunday afternoon at bars and cafes drinking basically.  It's supposed to be great fun and somehow me and a bunch of my friends haven't been to one yet.  This is a must.

-E-Shed Markets.  A different set of markets across town that I haven't been to yet because we always go to the Fremantle Markets.  If I don't get to it it won't be the end of the world because apparently the Freo Markets are a lot better, but I kind of just want to check it out.

-Turkish restaurant.  There's a couple Turkish restaurants here that I always pass and the food looks so yummy but I haven't been to one yet.  Preference to the one with the picture of the Genie from Aladdin on the sign.  I really just want a kebab, is that so much to ask?

-Red Bull Air Race.  This is another one that should definitely be happening.  On November 1 & 2 "twelve of the world's most talented pilots will compete against each other in a race based on speed, precision, and skill" over the skies of Perth (yeah that was from the website).  It's the first study weekend, so I definitely want to go.

-Pizookie.  For those of you non-3 Westerners, pizookie is an amazing dessert of amazingness that basically consists of a pan of half baked cookie dough covered with vanilla ice cream.  Reserved for the most horrendous of days/weeks.  I mentioned it at the beginning of the semester and people have really been wanting to try it but we've just never gotten around to it.  But I think it might be happening this weekend what with all the stuff we have due...so excited.

And that's all I've got for now!