Kangaroo on the barbie.

Not a lot to say since yesterday, but I'm trying to keep these blogs a bit shorter...I don't know how anyone makes it through a whole entry, they're so long.

Big news of the day?  I moved!  I now live with Miss Lauren Alyssa Fish, just across the courtyard, in flat 39.  No balcony, but now I get to sleep with actual blankets and two whole pillows, instead of the sleeping bag I've been using over here the last week.  I was sad to say goodbye to Mohammed, Jon, Char, and the possibility of Justine, but this way I know I'll never have to skip out on a conversation with my parents or risk waking someone up because I need to Skype at 7:30am.  We got the call of approval while we were out grocery shopping (trying to find ingredients for a strange cookie recipe that called for condensed milk...final product = kind of yellow, kind of crumbly, kind of funny-tasting), so we beat feet back to the village and packed up my room in about 27 minutes so I could be on time for my meeting with Emma.

Meeting with Emma about units was...successful?  I won't know until sometime tomorrow morning.  Hooray.

Lauren and I made those cookies...here's the thing about our oven though, it's basically just a flame in a box.  No temperature control or anything.  So the cookies were pretty touch-and-go, but we ended up with probably twenty moderately edible chocolate chip cookies in the end.  Then Keith called up and invited us to join him and his roommates at the grill on the other side of the village to eat some sausages, pork, and kangaroo.  It was only 40 degrees outside, but I don't know about you, I can never turn down grilled kangaroo.  It took about an hour to get anything cooked, but it was GOOD.  Turns out I like sausage.  Kangaroo too.  It's a very different flavor, I'm not sure how to put it into words...but if I ever tasted it again I'd say OH YES, I know what this is, why this is kangaroo, fresh off the outback!  A perk about eating kangaroo meat - it's better for the environment.  Kangaroos produce less nitrogen and take less land and grass to raise, so they're lower on the energy chain.  YES.  Maybe I'll become a kangatarian.  It's pretty cheap, and they sell it on these handy kebabs that grill up real nice.

Thanks for reading - I'm off to bed, another full day of getting oriented tomorrow!

Koalas, inefficiency, and lots of rice.

ZOO DAY! That was today. My mind is abuzz with bite-sized bits of information about painted dogs, Rothschild giraffes (MY FAVORITE!_), Asian elephants...to conclude, it was a day full of oohs and aahs. Pictures to follow, if I ever figure out how to put them online.

Aside from mastering the seven-pots-of-pasta-at-once technique, Keith and I cooked fried rice yesterday. WITHOUT a rice cooker. That was my fault (we do actually have one, but when I look for things, I only look with one eye, and my vision's not so good). Man did we make rice. We made about half a bag of rice in one pot (I was in charge of that), and cooked up some carrots, celery, onions, and pork to add to it. The rice went surprisingly well, considering we didn't have a measuring cup or a knowledgeable chef in the flat. Vegis and meat turned out well too, but they probably had to cook too long to accommodate the colossal amount of rice we had prepared. Added a bit too much soy sauce too...Keith wasn't overjoyed with the final outcome, but it was hot food, and filling, and there's a lot of rice left over for second and third and fourth tries.

The only negative experience I'm having thus far at Murdoch is trying to enroll in my third class. There is one woman in charge of the enrollment for international students (she shall remain nameless), and I understand that this is an overwhelming task. There are a lot of us, and we all speak different languages. But she does not return emails, she doesn't answer questions, and twice now she's been unable to meet with four of us when we showed up at her office at a time she asked us to come. Once she was too busy to see us, and this morning she wasn't even in her office, and wouldn't be for at least an hour. Classes start in less than a week and we're all pretty anxious to get this over with, so I may have sent her an email that was a bit on the terse side...we were told to go back tomorrow at 2pm, and that's what we're going to do, unless she contacts me first and tells me otherwise. We'll see how that goes. It's not in my nature to be annoyed with people or unfriendly, but not being enrolled in all three classes also keeps us from accessing some of the services on campus, because we're not listed as full-time students. So we'll see how that goes tomorrow. Eeks.

In other news, I'm bummed about missing Jenn's birthday party, Gloucester, and the canoe trip Jakie is taking with Chad and Joe. I'm psyched about a bunch of the music Keith gave me off of his iTunes (including a bunch of Fleet Foxes, Slightly Stoopid, and the only controversial song Vanessa Carlton ever wrote, "White Houses"), and the fact that I'm about over this jetlag. I managed to stay up until 10:30 last night and didn't wake up until 7:45.

Pictures going up now. MISS YOU ALL.

Susie Homemaker

That's me, apparently.  Amazingly.  Spent the day in Freo yesterday (which was beautiful and very Australian, but more about that later), and then headed over to Keith's flat for dinner.  We were planning on cooking pasta and sauce for 10-15 people, but we didn't plan very well...it turned out alright though; we quickly learned that just about any lid, bowl, cup, etc can be used as a plate, that spatulas make GREAT serving spoons, and that college kids will eat spaghetti sauce no matter what temperature it's been cooked at.  Also, Keith doesn't know how to make pasta.  So I took over, and it may have been the most adventurous thing I've done so far.  Two pots of pasta and one pot of sauce going at once, trying to keep everything from boiling over, making sure everyone served themselves quickly so we could fill up the pots again to make more...it was hectic, but kind of empowering?  I had some myself and it tasted alright, pasta was a little starchy, but that may have just been the Coles brand we bought for 99 cents a bag (Keith and I figure someone could get five meals outta that baby, so it's definitely worth it).  After all the cooking was done I was sitting on the couch, eating "the fruits of my labor" and just kind of looking at all the people in the room...mostly Americans, but several Germans, a girl from Denmark, a few people from Singapore...everyone had just met each other within the last 48 hours I think, and I was thinking about how incredible it was, that we all ended up in this room, eating, talking a lot because we didn't have any other form of entertainment.  It's a shame the TV was ever invented, really, because look at what can happen when you put a bunch of people together and leave them to their own devices.  We were there for three hours, probably.

If this semester continues to be anything like last night was, I'm gonna love it here.

This is how real people live.

Hi again!

So the last time I wrote I was on my way to orientation. Lauren and I met up for breakfast (she continues to feed me, even now that I have my own food...but between us we are quickly exhausting the options on our list of "Easy, Cheap Meals We Know How To Cook That Actually Taste Good." Example: I'm making tortellini tonight, for the second time. If anyone has suggestions, we would both appreciate it greatly.

Orientation time. It took us a bit to actually find the building, but once we did we realized how nice this campus is. There's a sort of quad in the middle of this big square of student resource-type offices - health center, library, international office, etc., and when the sun is out, it's definitely a nice place to sit. However, when the sun is not out, it's about 55-60 degrees here...not too bad, but a cool change from what we left back in the States. Friday's orientation consisted of a million speakers talking to us about some pretty boring stuff...immigration laws, health care laws, what to do if we want to buy a car, consumer protection laws, actual law laws that protect you from getting mugged (don't worry Mom, it doesn't happen very often)...it would have been miserable except for a few things:
1. They gave us morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea...now the tea itself is actually fairly disgusting, but the biscuits (cookies) they feed us are delicious, especially these Australian brand cookies called Tim Tams, which are chocolate cookies covered in more chocolate, but not so sweet that you wish you hadn't eaten them after eating three.
2. Most of the speakers were hilarious, or wonderfully delightful to watch. Somethings I noticed about them were that every speaker dressed very differently from the others, some were very formal and wore suits or black dresses, others wore jeans and casual shirts. It was really refreshing to see that not every person at this university is a clone...not to say that BC is full of robots, but I think in America there's generally a stricter dress code for professors and state officials. Also, every single person that spoke was POSITIVE about our experience in Australia and at Murdoch. This is a huge difference from the States, even from BC. They presented us with opportunities, not consequences. I don't think one person mentioned anything along the lines of "don't do this, you'll get into trouble" or "if you do this, this is the bad thing that will happen to you." It was lovely.
3. I met more Americans! Lauren and I met up with Danielle, another student from BC - she's been here a week already, and most of it has been pretty lonely, so she was happy to see us too. We also met Keith, from Miami, Blaine, from San Diego, and Justin and Joe, from Minnesota. We didn't actually meet many international students on Friday, and no Aussies yet, but meeting more Americans was comforting.
After orientation we had dinner at Danielle's flat - she lives in the newer part of the village, so her flat is very condo-on-the-beach-in-a-nice-part-of-Florida-esque. All white walls, nicer bathrooms (mine looks like a high school locker room bathroom, stalls and everything), heating and air conditioning, ceiling fans, all white furniture...even her bed and desk are bigger. I'm not complaining about my flat though, I think it's homier. Or it will be, once I get my pictures on the wall and FINALLY buy the right light bulb for my desk lamp (two failed attempts so far, I'm not sure why this is so hard). I'll take pictures of my room and put them online, but basically my flat consists of a kitchen/common room...the kitchen has a good number of appliances: toaster, oven, microwave, big refrigerator and freezer, stove (with gas burners that you have to light, I'm a little freaked out about those), water heater for tea and hot cocoa (if you manage to find any that's tolerable)...and it came with a small table and three chairs. The common room has two couches really similar to couches we have at BC, an end table, a coffee table, a white board (I wrote a kind little message about turning off lights and appliances before we leave, because a few times I've come home to find the television on and the lights on and nobody in the living room, I hope my roommates don't hate me already), and sliding glass door that goes out onto a little balcony that overlooks the courtyard between my flat and Lauren's flat. The bedrooms are a decent size, I think about the same size as a BC double, but more like a square instead of a narrow rectangle. I have plenty of space because I don't really have any possessions other than clothing and my computer. The walls are painted brick, and the lighting sucks, so it occasionally feels a bit like a cell, but pictures on the wall and a lit desk lamp will fix that. My only other issue is that these rooms are FREEZING. It doesn't help that I definitely did not bring enough warm clothing for the climate down here, but I feel like I need to wear gloves when I go to bed. We don't have central heating but we do have these space heaters that get pretty darn hot - I put mine right at my feet when I'm sitting at my desk and after five minutes I have to move it so I don't melt my sneakers.
Still jetlagged - I've been going to bed before nine every night this week and waking up before eight. No human being actually needs that much sleep, so it's a bit frustrating. Tonight we're going out to Freo (Fremantle, the hotspot of Western Australia) so hopefully I'll be active enough to stay awake a few hours later.
Yesterday was eventful. A bunch of us had signed up for a "tour" of Murdoch, so we showed up in front of the international office at 10am, assuming we'd be walking around campus with one of the orientation volunteers, hopefully stopping inside a lot of the buildings to warm up and down some disgusting tea...but we were in for so much more. There were about 25 students on the green...around 10:15 (Aussie time is a bit slower than US time) they announced that we would be broken into teams and sent on a self-guided, Amazing Race around campus, complete with clues and tasks and prizes. Okay, great, this sounds like fun. And it was, for the most part, except I ended up with Jared, the South African Sergeant on my team, who insisted that we run EVERYWHERE. Also on my team was Mark from Georgia, Lisa from Germany, and Daniel from an island off the coast of South Africa that I'm sure I can't spell. Daniel actually ended up dropping out pretty early because he's got smoker's lungs. Jared's great, lots of fun, but man did I hate him for awhile there. We dashed about, and I swear to God I'll be hearing "come on ladies!" and "come on American!" in my sleep for the next week and a half. We ended up coming in third, and got Murdoch t-shirts and bags as prizes, but honestly I'm not sure how much of the campus I even remember, it was such a blur. We had a barbecue afterwards...funny thing about getting free lunch from the Aussies - they never have more than one dish to eat. We had snags (sausages) and rolls for lunch, and they had cans of soda, but that was it. The day before at orientation we'd had sandwiches and sodas. They always encourage you to eat more of what they have ("you never know when you're gonna eat again!"), but they don't ever have any sides or other options. Just something else to get used to.
After lunch we headed back to Kardy's, first to get cellphones, then to do some serious grocery shopping. Hello, real world. It was kind of stressful, realizing that I had to buy food that would not only keep me from going hungry, but that I knew how to cook, that would be moderately healthy, and that wouldn't put me in debt. I think I got at least a week and a half's worth of groceries...we'll see how that works out...for fifty Australian dollars. I really know how to cook surprisingly little, so I bought a lot of pasta, peanutbutter (crunchy! that's the great thing about buying for yourself, you have nobody else's tastes to worry about), fruit and vegis (they're wicked expensive down here though, apples are $2.68 per kilo...not sure what that works out to in pounds, but it's more expensive than the US), rice, some chicken thighs, tortilla wraps, eggs...we'll see how this all goes. The cellphone shopping was successful, I got a month's worth of minutes and texts for $30, plus spent $50 on a phone. Yikes. The girl at the counter, as Keith from Miami pointed out, looked just like the girl who works at the counter in the abortion clinic in Juno, but she was way happier. I also made my first alcohol purchase yesterday - a six pack of beer called Barefoot Radler. This made my day. First of all, we walked into this liquor store called Cellarbrations and didn't even get carded; the two twenty-somethings working behind the counter were really friendly and helpful. Apparently they get paid $20 an hour, so I'm not surprised. I walked around, pretty clueless, for awhile, then found this bottled beer that had "barefoot" in the title, and it was $16 for a six pack, so I said YES, I will buy that. I was extremely excited about it, and asked the guy at the counter if it was a good choice, he said yes, apparently radlers are infused beers, and then he said "Oh yeah, and you get a free pair of socks with it." CAN THIS DAY GET BETTER? No way. I haven't tried it yet, but some of my roommates said it's good too. And the free socks are bright blue and green and have feet all over them. Don't worry, I'll take pictures.
To get all the groceries back to our flats we pushed the shopping carts down the street back to the village, and what an adventure that was. Australian grocery carts (they're actually called "trolleys") are just as wobbly and crooked as American carts, so we were constantly having to swerve the carts to avoid falling off the sidewalk. At least they have sidewalks here. It's difficult to avoid the cars too, because of the whole left-side-of-the-road-driving thing, so all in all it's quite a feat that we made it back to the village in one piece. While I was unloading my groceries (such a nice task too, and how wonder-full is it to look in the cabinet and refrigerator afterwards and see all that food?) I met my new neighbor Julie, she lives in the flat next to mine; she's from Ohio and goes to Tufts. We ended up talking for a long time, and realized that we will hopefully be in at least one class together. She's studying environmental science too. NICE.
Lauren made dinner last night - stir fry, delicious, we had some champagne to celebrate, and went to bed early AGAIN. I woke up at 7:30 today, a bit of an improvement, but I'm still hating this jetlag. Still awaiting my roommate...the three flatmates I've met are great, but when people are home they stay in their rooms. Lauren's roommates are always out and about, so her place is a bit more fun to be in. She has this French roommate named Octave (Ahk-tahve) who cooks really well, and leaves notes on the whiteboard telling people to eat the food he's made.
I'm off to hopefully master the Fremantle public transportation system, and possibly go to my first pub...peace and love (:

Oh the jetlag.

Good morning Australia, good night Connecticut. Lauren and I crashed around 8:45 last night and woke up today around 6:30 because we just couldn't sleep anymore. Good news - these mattresses are actually pretty comfortable. Orientation starts at 8:45 today, and my family isn't answering my Skype attempts, so I'll fill everyone in on the last few days.

Official time of departure from my house on Tuesday: 6:20am ish. I slept most of the ride up, except when You Belong With Me came on the radio and Mol, Jake and I proceeded to have an early morning singalong. Mom and Dad didn't join in...I don't blame them. Everything at Logan went smoothly; we met up with the Fish family and packing-taped up our huge "rucksacks" (that's what they call them here...and maybe many other places in the world), checked our suitcases - now here's where my mom becomes a superhero. My large suitcase weighed in at 53.6 pounds or something when we checked at the vet clinic. How much did it weigh at Logan Tuesday morning? 49.5lb BABY! Perfect.

Said goodbyes, made it through security alright, and we were off. This leg of the flight may have been the worst one, actually. It's about five and a half hours from Logan to LAX, and Lauren and I were lucky enough to sit in front of the loudest man on the flight. He was wearing earplugs...I can only assume he needed them to prevent his hearing from being damaged by the volume of his own voice. God bless the two guys sitting on either side of him (Loud Man was supposed to have the window seat, but he thought he'd be more comfortable in the middle or the aisle, and how do the airlines expect three grown men to sit together anyway?)...they had to listen to and respond to his many comments about the weather, what route the pilot would take because of said weather, what golf club in California his father belonged to, how he missed the "steady diet of bad news" you get in CA, how New England shouldn't complain about budget cuts when California is doing much worse, although Rhode Island does have an unemployment rate of 12%...on and on and on. We tried to sleep through the din, but every time Chatty Charlie got up (which was often, to say the least) he banged on the back of Lauren's seat. Fun fun fun.

We landed in LAX and were faced with a layover of eight and a half hours. So, being the adventurous folk we are, we decided to leave the airport (we checked with two 20-something male security guards first, they said DUH we could leave, we would be crazy to sit in the airport for that long) and try to find somewhere in LA to have lunch. We ended up taking a bus to Union Station and walking across the street to this little Mexican village called Pueblo, or Olvera Street. We ate lunch at some family-owned joint (there's your word, Jakie)...two soft tacos each, filled with some chewy, at times crunchy, unidentified meat. Not great, but it was food. The tax in LA, by the way, is, yikes, 7.95%, and apparently includes semi-edible Mexican food. We wandered around the village for awhile; it was a bazaar, with lots of stalls and little shops with no air conditioning. The temp was at least 85 degrees in the shade, so we were sweating. I bought two neon bandanas for a dollar each - Mom's right, I really don't have room for "crap like that," but at that price, I'll make room. It was nice to stretch the legs for awhile, the sunshine was wonder-full, the lack of English speakers charming. Eventually we bussed back and prepared ourselves for our marathon leg: 14 hours in the air.

Uncle Mike, you'll be happy to know that this flight felt the shortest of them all. I have never been so comfortable in an airplane, or maybe anywhere. The seats were huge, we had personal, fold-out screens with on-demand movies and television shows (I watched Adventureland, I Love You Man, Sunshine Cleaning and one episode of Man vs Wild), they served us dinner a few hours in which was actually delicious - I had the salmon, rice, and an unnamed green vegetable (artichoke? kale? what is kale anyway?). I took one of Lauren's Tylenol PMs, but didn't get much sleep. The movies were too good. If anyone is looking for some good movie recommendations - Adventureland is an indie teen love movie, Kristen Stewart is in it and some guy that reminds me of Michael Cera, top notch...I Love You, Man is a Paul Rudd movie, surprisingly hilarious (Mol and Jake you'd definitely like this)...and Sunshine Cleaning is really sad most of the way through, Amy Adams and Emily Blunt (the other secretary in Devil Wears Prada), but so so so good.

So! We landed in Sydney, OH MY GOD WE'RE ON ANOTHER CONTINENT. And exhausted. And not looking forward to another five hour flight. But, we didn't have time to be tired or to complain, because we only had an hour and a half, and we had to clear customs, quarantine, get our bags (even though the lady at Logan who checked our bags said they'd go all the way to Perth without having to be picked up again, thank God we checked with someone in Sydney), go through security again, and take a shuttle to the terminal. We had to fill out a card on the plane for the people at customs, saying if we had illegal drugs with us, if we had food with us, if we had been in Africa or South America in the last 30 days, if we had been in a freshwater stream, river or lake the last 30 days...Lauren and I both answered "yes" to this last one. We both dumped all of our food too, then found out we didn't need to - only things with fruit and vegis in them are quarantined. Sweet. The guy at customs asked us when we had been in a lake (I lied and said two weeks ago), what shoes we had worn in at the time (none, obviously), did we have any camping equipment with us, was my backpack considered camping equipment...but we made it through. Just in time, really. We got on a shuttle immediately and boarded, only to find that this Qantas flight would not be quite so comfortable as the last one. Seats were smaller, no personal screen...we did get breakfast though, and the scrambled eggs were actually very tasty. The movie they played was 17 Again - Zac Efron and Matthew Perry - gets two big thumbs down from me. Zac's haircut is weird.

Five hours later and we are FINALLY in Perth. Now it's oh dear, where is the man with the shuttle to take us to Murdoch? We asked around and literally every airport attendant gave me a different answer, but in the same, carefree manner...I was told to wait by baggage, to cross the street and wait by the bus terminal, to keep walking up and down the road outside the airport and look for someone with a van, that he probably wasn't coming because nobody had ever heard of a shuttle to Murdoch before, but no worries, you'll be fine. Lauren located an elderly man with a van, and after relocating me, we were off. We met a lovely couple in the van who were from New Zealand, who had just decided to take an indefinite vacation in Perth. They arrived with one bag each, no plans, and no worries. We also had another student going to Murdoch with us, a boy from Germany. He was as clueless as us about where to go when we got there, when orientation actually started, etc. We drove around downtown Perth for an hour or so...not a lot to see, actually, lots of restaurants and houses, looks a lot like Florida or what I imagine Arizona or New Mexico look like, but the coast is beautiful.

We made it to Murdoch...felt like it took seven years, actually; I think it was about 3:30pm our time when we pulled in. The rest I'll have to save for another post because this one is ginormous, and because orientation starts in half an hour and I'm still in my pjs.

Love to the states, I miss it already.

Come pick me up, I've landed.

Too tired to write something actually blog-worthy right now...but for the record, I'm alive, all my luggage is present and unscathed, and the quarantine dog at customs didn't try to sic me.  Currently in my flat (I feel cooler every time I mention that I now reside in a flat) unpacking all my clothes (I'm realizing that's ALL I brought) and setting up some of my purchases from KMart (think quilt cover and polyester pillows).

Hopefully tomorrow I will be jetlag-free and a blogging fiend.  Until then, I'm sleepy.

One day more.

Hey everybody! (if you can, imagine that in Dr. Nick's voice from the Simpsons)

Welcome to Australia! Actually, I'm still in CT, sitting in my living room, watching my mom attempt to fit one more dress into my 32.1lb, as-tall-as-me backpack. We leave 76 Park Avenue at 6am, hoping to arrive at Logan airport by 8:30.

Takeoff: 11:00 hours. Land in LA, wander around the LAX airport for a painful 8.5, leave for Sydney at 10:30pm, hello 14-hour flight. We arrive in Sydney 6:15am (thank you date line), take off again, and, if all goes well, pull into the airport in Perth, Australia at 11:15am.

You'll hear from me before I reach Perth - I can only read and watch airline movies for so long - but until then, sayonara, hasta la vista, and however they say "catch ya later" in Australia...peace out America.