More videos.

I posted a few more videos - from Sustainability Week, at our tavern event - on the link at the right. Enjoy (:

My (guy) roommates wash the dishes TOGETHER.

HEY EVERYONE. I'm itching for stories from the US lately...if you've got some good ones I'd love to hear 'em. Uncle Mike and I even managed to Skype last night - I'm getting better at it! My computer is not...it still freaks out whenever anyone calls, but we usually get it sorted eventually.

So a fairly normal week, whatever that means in Australia...took awhile to recover from a birthday party last weekend, but I finally found some motivation to get a LOT of work done...I've been lacking that necessary element since we got back from the Northwest Trip. Classes are going pretty well though; just started a week-long ecology project today (we have this week off of classes, it's our second "study break"), and it looks like it's going to be fun...at least I get to spend some time outside in the sun (sampling plants and ants!) rather than in a lecture hall. I shall not complain. Today we took a lot of plant samples, measured abundance of plant species, and caught ants! Here's a tip, if you ever want to catch a lot of ants in a relatively short amount of time: get some ethanol and a paint brush, put the ethanol on the paint brush, gently tap the ant with the paint brush, and voila, you have a stunned ant. Much easier to put into a vial and take back to the lab for identification. We had to put ours in vials that also contained ethanol, so the ants died...my soul needs some repair after that. But we spent a really really long time trying to identify them, and I learned a lot from that...so perhaps they did not perish in vain. MAN does it take a long time to ID ants. You put them under a magnifying glass and it's so, so cool to see all the hairs (setae) and body parts that are way too tiny to observe when they're just running around in the sand, and what's really, really awesome is how different each species actually looks. They're extremely diverse, but the naked human eye can't do them justice. Anyway, I give EO Wilson mad props for what he's done - ants are really difficult to study, but a lot of fun in the end.

Anyway now that everyone realizes just how nerdy I am...last week! Volunteered at the hospital on Wednesday and had a great time, got to talk to a lot of new people - actually maybe I've never mentioned this before, come to think of it. So on Wednesday mornings I go to the Fremantle Hospital and work for a few hours with this lovely woman named Jeanne (she's French), pushing the library cart to patients' rooms in case they want some magazines or books. She had been doing it by herself, and she totally could continue to do so, but I really wanted to do some volunteer work while I was down here and I think Jeanne just wanted someone to talk to, so they let me do a few hours a week. She reminds me a lot of Great Grandma (or what I imagine Great Grandma was like when she was 72). Anyway I get to talk to patients, hopefully cheer them up a bit...it's just nice. And I get Jeanne's life story, as well as the stories of her four children and her husband's mother and her daughter's ex-husband...she's got an unending arsenal of stories. After leaving the hospital I usually hang out in Freo for awhile, then stop at a market on the way home (the CHEAPEST produce I've ever seen - a huge bag of carrots for a mere 79 cents...), and meet some more interesting people while I wait for the bus. Wednesdays are good days. They are also VOLLEYBALL days. Hooray. I'm going to miss volleyball when I get back to the states; I don't play it nearly as much at home as I do here. Gotta fix that.

Thursday Keith got a paid gig on campus, right in our courtyard...he played for an hour (I sang a bit with him too, which was cool) while people looked at the stalls of books and movies, etc...then that night we watched Glee (Lauren, Jennifer and I are obsessed, along with many other Americans) and I went to see Keith play another open mic.

Friday: Bogan Bingo. What a night. So "bogan" is slang for "hick," or "white trash" basically...as in "Britney Spears is such a cashed-out bogan." Not a very nice stereotype, but apparently a pretty common one down here. Every Friday night there's a bar in Canning Bridge that hosts Bogan Bingo. You are to dress up like a bogan (people actually asked to borrow my clothes...flannel shirts are IN at this thing), show up at 8:00, play bingo, and don't ask questions. There are two rounds of bingo, complete with a lot of yelling when certain numbers come up, an air-guitar contest, a best-dressed contest...and at the end they just turn the music up and everyone dances for a few hours before beginning the long trek home. We had SUCH a good time. Most of the crowd is older than us, so we college kids were a big hit - we'd only brought two guys with us and they got a lot of invitations to dance. I almost won once, too. In which case, I think my prize would have been a free beer. Ah well. Anyway if we go again this Friday there will be news crews there...not sure why exactly, but they're filming a night of Bogan Bingo, and we're all supposed to work really hard this week on our bogan costumes.

Saturday morning I was whisked away to Earthdance - a music festival on a nature reserve in the middle of NOWHERE...the town does have a name, it's Bencubbin, but its town center doesn't even have a petrol station. Just a bar that sells bags of ice. Anyway Earthdance is a three-day festival out in the boonies, you bring camping gear and set up wherever you like, and go listen to music and meditation sessions and "laughter yoga" sessions and dancing and whatever you want. I went with about ten other people (mostly Australians, but Lauren, Jess and Heather were there) and I had a GREAT time...we were a little out of our league, to say the least...it's definitely something to research ahead of time if you plan on attending, it's a pretty intense cultural immersion. But a worthwhile one, in the end. I hear they have them in the US - I gotta look into that for next year. Anyway it was a relaxing weekend, but it's nice to return to a really, really busy week this week. Whenever I get out of ecology early enough (it runs 9-5 each day but today we were done identifying our poor ants around 4pm) I have to go to rehearsal...my director is really not happy with me about missing so many this week, but I care more about the grade I get on this project, so, yeah.

That's about it for now. Oh yeah - I have the best flatmates ever. Really. I wish everyone could meet them...I may try to stuff them all in my carry-on luggage on the way home. They're all small, it should work.

Mucho amore.

Oh hey!

Hey guys - sorry it has truly been forever since my last entry, and given that I haven't even finished writing about the Northwest trip, I should probably get on it...

SO. Day six. A lot of driving, nothing terribly exciting, except for many more opportunities to push-start our bus, and when we reached our sleeping spot (KARIJINI NATIONAL PARK YESSSS!!!), we saw a ton of dingoes, and we got a constellation lesson from Terry. Here's the deal with the dingoes: SO COOL to see them up close, literally two feet away, and they just look like really pretty German Shepherds or something, but they're totally domesticated. They live in this national park, so people are always camping and giving them food, so now they just associate humans with free meals, and aren't afraid of people at all. No good ): so while it was great to take pictures of such a beautiful creature, we needed to shoo them away ASAP. When it got dark Terry taught us how to find the Southern Cross and the Scorpion and a few others...very, very cool. If he's got grandkids, they're lucky people.

Day seven: Karijini adventures. Our itinerary described this day as "FULL ON!" and boy was that right. The pictures do it much more justice (though nothing compares to the real live thing) than my words can (I put up all the pictures by the way, click the link on the right!), but I'll give it a shot. Took a rough morning hike down into Weano Gorge, which included a lot of steep cliffs, a ladder, and...dun dun dun...THE SPIDERWALK. Basically, the walls of the gorge are only about two meters apart, and the rocks under the water here are too slippery to walk on, so you put one arm and one leg on each wall, and spider-walk yourself through. A little scary to start, but it's easier than it sounds, and tons of fun. Terry and Fi supervised the whole time, of course. Once you get past the spiderwalk, it's cliff-jumpin' time. It's really dark in this part of the gorge because the walls are so tall and block out most of the sky, so the water is FREEZING, and the rocks all around the pool we were jumping into were wicked slippery (we had a few falls), so getting out of the water once you've jumped in is another story, but the jump itself is lovely. Not too high either - 20-25 feet maybe? We had a good time trying to get pictures of people in midair. I took a nice, long, chilly swim down the rest of the gorge with Keith, Gabe, Blaine and a few Danish guys...I felt very small. The walls are so high, the water is so deep...you just look up and can see a sliver of sky between the rock and all around you is more and more rock. What an unbelievable place.

Hiked a bit more to another place to swim (Hancock Gorge? Handrail Pool? I know I've been to these places but no clue which ones are which), where we also found Joffre's Waterfall - the waterfall is situated so that you can climb up the side of it and sit somewhere in the middle, what a nice view.

We were exhausted when we got back to camp that night, and you're not allowed to build campfires in Karijini, so most of us went to sleep pretty early. Fi, our boisterous female tourguide, was lucky enough to have another close encounter with a dingo - one stole her pillows. BRILLIANT. She chased it down and managed to wrestle one pillow away, but he made off with the other. Fi of course found it hilarious, her saved pillow was covered in red dirt, man was it entertaining.

Day eight: another hike in Karijini, this one not as treacherous as the day before...we ended up at Fortescue Falls, a nice place to swim (though also freezing), an even taller cliff for people to jump off of (I declined this one)...lots of great geology to take pictures of, and tons of sunbathing spots for post-swim naps. We swam there awhile, then hiked a few hundred meters to Fern Pool, one of the few spots in Karijini that Aboriginals still have total control over. There are signs everywhere reminding visitors to be quiet, to respect the area, not to jump off of cliffs or trees...and how glad I am that they have these. Fern Pool is paradise. The water is warm and sweet, there's a waterfall on the opposite side of the pool that you can swim to and sit under (you can actually get a decent back rub out of this thing, it's got a lot of pressure), the vegetation surrounding the pool is beautiful...what I would give to be able to swim here every day. I think I'll just move to Karijini, set up a tent somewhere and become friends with the dingoes. Sounds good. Anyway, we swam for a few hours, then had to head back to camp to pack up and get moving. A few more days of driving ahead of us, oh boy. We ended up at Newman that night, a mining town, where we got a lot of funny looks from the locals when we went to buy groceries...we were a huge group and pretty loud, I guess. We went to a bar that night and had some lovely conversations with miners...they're friendly enough, but they're all of the "sailor on leave" mentality - they're cooped up in this town for a few months at a time, not much female contact, so you just gotta be careful. Some of the guys on our trip had a great time trying to get male miners to buy them drinks though.

Day nine: driving driving driving until we got to Wogarno Sheep Station for our last night. I would love to live here - it's a sheep-shearing farm run by a family of parents, 15 year-old son, and a two year-old daughter. The farm is huge, and everywhere you look there's artwork. Most of it is made of rusted metal, probably old farm equipment, in shapes of horses and sheep and chairs and beds, but my favorite was the shadow of a tree created on the ground out of stones. I asked the son how they got there, and he said they invited art groups to visit their farm and do whatever they want. Some of them are kind of creepy (as in, some are made out of bones, and coming across them in the middle of the night by yourself may be scary), but SO creative. A few of us had a wonderful conversation with this kid, he told us about how he and his father had gone hunting that evening for kangaroos and emus, they caught a few. He has to take a week or two off of school (he goes to boarding school in Perth; there aren't any public schools in the area) for the hunting season. It truly is a whole other world out here. We slept under the stars that night, and woke up freezing, but worth it.

Day ten: home again home again. We drove all day long and returned to our wonderful roommates and hot showers.

DONE. Yay. Sorry that took me so long...the pictures may actually tell a better story than the blog, but I felt that I should finish it anyway. Gives ya something to read.

Life since then has had the volume turned down, for sure, but I'm finally back into the swing of things here. Found out I only have ONE exam, and it's on the first day of exams, so I have some travel plans to make for the middle and end of November if I still have money left...may head over to Sydney, who knows. Turned in my first assignment, had a wonderful time rock-climbing last weekend, sang a few more songs with Keith at our Sustainability Week event at the Tavern on campus yesterday (I'll post those soon), going to a Northwest Trip reunion this weekend, GOT TO TALK TO CLAIRE MATHIOT ON SKYPE LAST NIGHT, absolutely made my life...last weekend was audition weekend at BC so I got a lot of emails about that and was feeling pretty homesick, but talking to Claire made everything sunny and happy (:

Rehearsal time - miss you guys, hope you are well!

More tales from the outback.

Day three: Monkey Mia.  It's a little seaside town, mostly a tourist destination, and the place where we would get to see dolphins up close and personal.  So we awoke, as usual, to Terry hollering "TIME TO GET UP" (it sounds annoying, but actually it was endearing, I love that man) and sure enough, on the road by seven.  Monkey Mia is mostly a place to relax on the beach, but it was kind of cold for that...we did a lot of dolphin watching (they feed them right along the shore so if you go at the right time you can see a ton of them in really shallow water; nobody is allowed to touch them because their skin is really really sensitive to oils, but definitely the closest I've ever been to a dolphin.  Also, they pee every ten minutes), some pelican-harassing, and then had a fierce and fun game of beach volleyball.  That was really the highlight of the day.  On the way back to camp that night we stopped at a few different look-out points to hunt for sharks and sea turtles - no luck, but we may or may not have seen a whale.  WHOA.

During our third night we had another bonfire (after getting charged at by a kangaroo - not really - and watching another gorgeous sunset - really), and this time we were joined by Shane, the man who owns the land that our tents were staked on.  He's a middle-of-nowhere Outbacker - which means he's got a long beard and not all his teeth and tons of stories, many of them having to do with snakes and near-death experiences.  First he told us about the brown snake he got bitten by.  He reached his hand into something and the snake latched on; his first instinct was to break its neck.  Then he walked calmly into the store at his campground and asked someone to drive him to the nearest hospital (which is at least an hour away), because he only had about an hour and a half to live.  When he got to the hospital, there were no doctors there who were actually licensed to administer the antidote, so it took a little while for him to get the injection, but he survived.  He went home, put the snake in a bottle, drove straight to the bar, and put the bottled snake on the bar next to him for the night.  The other story he had was about the water python living in his shed - supposedly it's about 14 feet long, he found it awhile back and decided it couldn't live in his shed any longer, so he managed to get it out and put it in his truck, so he could drive it to the dam up the road.  Only problem: he didn't put it in the back of his truck, he put it on the passenger seat.  So by the time he got to the dam, the snake was wound around both him and the seat, and there was no way he was getting out.  So he took a cigarette lighter to it, (there may be some embellishment in this story, but it's a good one nonetheless) got it off of him, and threw it in the dam.  A few days later it was back in the shed.  He got a French guy to help him (Frenchie had to hold the snake in the truck, so this time he was the one who got squeezed), threw the snake back into the dam, and drove home, only to find it already in the shed when he got back.  So now the python lives in the shed, unbothered.  Obviously we wanted to see this python, so Shane took us out to the shed (first he showed us the museum on site, which used to be a telegraph station, one of the first in WA, and is also home to the only living stromatolites in captivity IN THE WORLD.  And it's a little shack in a no-name town, not commercialized at all - you gotta love Australia), and we couldn't actually find the snake, but we did find some of its skin.

Day four was driving driving driving until we got to Warroora, where we'd stay before our big exciting day at Coral Bay.  Day four was also "bus break-down day," so we spent a good amount of time at an automotive repair shop.  Not the most exciting day in the world, but with drivers like Terry and Fi it's never boring.  Let me tell you about Fi: I want to be her.  Or at least be related to her.  She loves Australia.  She's loud, she wears hiking boots probably every day, she's got crazy curly blonde hair and she knows so much about the towns and sights to see in WA, and she's got a great, infectious laugh.  She's one of those people you never forget, no matter how short a time you've spent with her.  Having her as our driver definitely enhanced the experience - she played the music on our bus really loudly (we usually passed around iPods, but she also got us into Matt Gresham, an Australian singer - we actually saw him in concert just last night, what a blast), made sure we were up to speed on our "random facts about Australia" know-how, and just kept us generally entertained the whole time.  She and Terry had walkie-talkies to talk to each other on the road, and we could often hear those hilarious conversations, even from the back of the bus.

The broken-down bus slowed us down a bit, but this actually provided for some really wonderful moments later on in the trip.  The bus was never totally fixed, so once in awhile it wouldn't start.  Enter the bus-pushing, ala Little Miss Sunshine.  Ten or twelve of us would line up behind the bus and start pushing it while Terry tried to get it started - gives you a nice sense of accomplishment to start the day off.

Spent the night in a warm room with Lauren - resort-like accommodations compared to our dilapidated tent.  Had another kangaroo experience in the early morning - had to pee, opened the door, kangaroo standing right outside.  Nice.  We caught the sunrise one morning here - I can see why a lot of Australians are early-risers.  It's addicting, seeing literal start of the day.

Day five: CORAL BAY.  One of my favorite days.  It was really windy, so there wasn't actually much we could do at Coral Bay (we couldn't go kayaking, boo), but what we did totally made up for it.  We took a glass-bottomed boat ride over Ningaloo Reef, which is a smaller, but much better preserved reef than the Great Barrier; on the way out we saw a ton of coral, lots of brightly colored fish, a sting ray, and a sea turtle through the glass.  We also spotted a ton of turtles (the area is a sanctuary for them) on top of the water, as well as dolphins, rays, maybe a whale?  THEN WE WENT SNORKELING!  I may need to move to Florida or the Caribbean, because snorkeling rocks.  Tons of neon fish (no Nemos, but a few Doris), lots and lots of really intricate coral...it's a science geek's dream.  Just before I got back onto the boat our boat-drivers decided to feed the fish right off the edge, and literally hundreds of these huge fish called Spangled Emperors swam right up to it, surrounding Lauren and I - a really strange feeling, but a pretty cool one, to be covered in fish.  We didn't do much after that - Keith and I went to an outdoor cafe and spent a few hours amusing ourselves trying to catch lizards and making up games using salt and pepper shakers and coins.  Terry and Fi brought everyone to happy hour at the bar - lots of fun (I was the only one who got carded - apparently I don't even look 18), Fi let everyone out of the bus on the ride home for a pee-break in the outback, good times.

So ends the second installment...I'm off to climb some rocks.  Indoors.  With harnesses on.  No worries (:

Until next time - miss you guys!

Here goes.

I only have an hour before class so we'll see how much I can spill out until then...

From before our ten days of wonderment: played pick-up ultimate frisbee Monday night (a weekly event), lots of fun...went to a huge potluck dinner at Keith's Tuesday night, run by Malte - full of wonderful food, I ate way too much...Wednesday night played volleyball again; this time we had a training session beforehand, and WHOA did that help.  We actually sustained a pretty decent game.  Woohoo.  Keith played another gig at Moondyne Joe's Thursday night, then it was home to finish packing and get some sleep before our early start Friday morning.

7:45am Friday: meet in the carpark AT THIS TIME AND NO LATER or you will be left behind.  Cool, except the buses were about an hour late.  No surprise there.  There were about thirty students on the trip, along with two tour guides and a Murdoch rep to make sure we didn't disgrace the university.  We got a riveting speech from the president of Murdoch (or some other position at the uni that requires him to wear a suit) about how he could kick us out of Murdoch AND out of our home unis if we behave inappropriately during our trip...his speech was so uncharacteristic of Australian authority figures, it kind of weirded me out.  But no matter.  We piled onto two buses, led by our fearless leaders - Terry and Fi (short for Fiona but don't call her that), and we were off.  I was on Fi's bus, accompanied by pretty much everyone else I knew going into the trip, and a bunch of new faces.  Day one was all driving.  We saw a lot of sheep, a lot of kangaroos (Fi was kind enough to stop the bus so we could take pictures), stopped for lunch at a really windy but beautiful seaside picnic area - my feet were so happy to be out of their shoes.  Our stop for the evening was in Lynton, where we stayed in a sheep barn on a big ranch.  The barn happened to be located at the bottom of a HUGE, GINORMOUS hill, which a bunch of us climbed up.  Keith and I kept climbing (we couldn't see the other side of the hill yet, and we wanted to find a good place to watch the sunset) and came upon a whole other world up there.  Lots of really cool vegetation, the grass was higher than my knees, there were these weird melons growing on vines along the ground...anyway we found the sunset, got a lot of pretty pictures of the Indian Ocean (I think?), then spent a good amount of time wandering back through the tall grass to the barn.  Terry made us dinner (as he did every night) with the help of some of us, we ate off of tin plates around a big long table; it was a scene out of the Waltons or something.  And I forget what we ate, but it was tasty.  That man knows how to cook.  After dinner we moved the furniture around and put our sleeping bags on the floor and crashed pretty early - we had 6am starts every day.

6am means 6am.  Terry bangs on the door, yells "everybody get up" four or five times, and we are outta there.  Every morning was cereal or toast for breakfast (sometimes we had a toaster, sometimes we did not), and we were on the bus by 7am.  Day two was spent mostly at Kalbarri national park - we climbed a gorge, hiked over a lot of really beautiful cliffs looking down on the Murchison River, took a ton of pictures...this is when I realized how good this trip was going to be.  The gorge we were in had clear paths, but if you weren't paying attention or wanted to be an idiot, it's definitely possible to hurt yourself by, oh, say, falling off the edge.  And our tour guides basically let us roam wherever we wanted.  There's so much more trust in Australia than in America.  For that I am thankful.  One of the very cool structures on these particular cliffs was nature's window - a naturally made hole in rock looking over the river - photo op!  We went a little shutter happy.  That night we stayed at a place called Hamelin Pool, where we found, brace yourselves, STROMATOLITES!!!  Here's the deal with these babies.  They are the oldest life form on earth, and because they actually PRODUCE oxygen, they are responsible for the atmosphere we all know and love.  They're pretty badass.  And Hamelin Pool is the only place on earth where they are easily accessible by humans, although they are found in the Bahamas and in one other place in Australia.  Basically, they look like funny-shaped rocks.  They sit along the shore of a beach, there's a boardwalk that goes out to them so you don't step on any, and there they are: behold the beginning of life as we know it.  A few of us already knew about the stromatolites before we got to Hamelin Pool, so needless to say, we were ecstatic.  This is also evident given the number of pictures I took of these guys.  But it's hard to get other people to be excited about rocks if they have never heard of them before, no matter how heroic the rocks are.  We were the only people out there; I'm amazed anyone else finds this place, to be honest.  It's out in the middle of nowhere, when you get to the boardwalk there are a lot of placards with information about the stromatolites, but other than that you're on your own.  You don't have to pay to see them, they trust you to stay on the boardwalk (again, kudos Australia); seems to me, if we had this kind of scientific goldmine in America we'd have totally commercialized it by now.  Think of all the scam attractions we have in the US - this is real, live old rock, and the Australians just let it be.  This country has got its head screwed on right.

Hamelin Pool became "the place of sunsets" - for the two nights we stayed there we spent at least 45 min each night watching the sun go down.  Oh to do this every night.  We tented while we were there - I was in a tent with Lucy, Lauren and Julie - THAT was fun to set up.  The first night it looked a bit dilapidated (we were missing some parts), but we got it together by night two.  Both nights we had a big fire before and after dinner.  To quote Keith: who needs technology when you've got fire?  Seriously - we were entertained for hours.  Now here comes Aussie animal encounter number one: the first night we were at Hamelin Pool, I had to pee very early in the morning.  I did not want to walk all the way to the bathroom, so I decided to pee behind a tree.  It was still dark.  When I went to leave, I looked to my right and OH HELLO KANGAROO - there's a big red kanga about 2oo feet away.  Now, kangaroos are actually pretty dangerous - if I haven't said it already, they can attack you WITH ALL FOUR LIMBS AT ONCE.  But this guy was far enough away that I just watched him (or her) for awhile, then went back to my tent.  Oh yeah - the stars were perfect.

Oh these entries are going to be long.  I've gotta go to class so I'll stop here.  Hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend!  Love you guys.

Alive.

Hi all - just got home from ten days in the outback, so there will be several long entries about that as soon as I get my bearings back and the red dirt out of my hair...just wanted to say hi and hope y'all are well (: especially you guys who moved in to college the last week or so...fill me in.

Love you all and miss you heaps!