The Stolen Generation - also, the final part of day 2

So the first part of this is going to be academic-ish (will sort of help me study for my Australian History Exam) and then I'll finish up Day 2 :) They are related though!

The Stolen Generations refer to the removal of Aboriginal children from their families legally in the early 1900s - really not all that long ago. They theory behind the removal of the children was to create one, white, Australia that shared the same culture. The genes for Aboriginal characteristics are recessive when in competition with European genes. Once they figured this out they felt that they could 'breed out' the Aboriginal peoples and eventually they would have a white Australia. The kids who were taken were known as 'half-castes'. Children who had one parent that was white. (They also took other light skinned children who were 1/4 or 1/8 etc Aboriginal.) They thought that the Aboriginal people would just kind of die out (they'd been there for thousands of years, clearly this was not a really bright idea...). The Europeans were looking to 'save' the white half or 2/3 etc. of the child that they took from their families in the bush. Depending on age and color the kids were taken to camps run (usually) by missionaries and taught english and assimilated as best as they could. These kids often never saw their parents again and often became house maids and servants. It wasn't until recently that an official apology was given to the stolen generations (by Prime Minister at the time, Kevin Rudd). At the risk of sounding like a documentary or something - to learn more I would recommend watching Rabbit Proof Fence. It is really good and based off of a true story and is very historically accurate. Okay, now, onto the final part of Day 2.

After dinner we got to talk to Nana Laurel, Gary's (main host guy) mother. She was a part of the Stolen Generation. She told us her story. For a long time her parents (mom and step-dad) would hide her in a sack whenever the white men would come looking for children to take to be 're-educated'. Eventually she got too old/too big to hide. Her mom had a choice. At the time the law said something to the effect of if you turn in half-caste children then we will keep them at a location near you so that you could sometimes see them. This confuses me because letting them occasionally see their parents (even through a fence for a limited time) doesn't help with 'getting rid' of their culture. Anyway, her mom gave her up (I think more so that no one would get hurt if she was to be taken). She eventually was moved away from her mother but many years later found her again and reestablished contact up until she died.

It was really cool listening to Nana Laurel tell us about this time in her life and it was certainly a privilege but it was hard to listen to because it was like midnight, I didn't feel very good (remember that water thing?) and we'd been up since 6am moving around all day in the sun. I wish we had gotten to talk to her during the day, I think all of our questions would have been better and we would have been able to take even more away from it. As it was, I still feel really lucky because many white Australians have pushed this out of their minds and haven't wanted to or had the chance to talk to someone who experienced it first hand and learned how it impacted their family.

After this talk/presentation/conversation we all went to bed. Everyone was too tired to shower but we did wash our hair in the sink because we wouldn't be able to shower again until we got back to Freo on Friday!

SALT LAKE AND MOUNT JESSOP! Stil Day 2..

After going to Gwalia we piled back in the van and headed over to the salt lake. So I guess usually when people visit there that time of year it is completely white and sparkly because of the salt that has risen up through the soil. Well. Unluckily or luckily depending on how you look at it. The lake bed was not white and glittery. It was red and glittery. This was because it had been a fairly wet winter in Western Australia. Therefore it was unlucky for us because we didn't get to see the full effect of the salt lake but it was lucky for Australia because they had gotten more water.
A unique aspect of this 'lake' - if you hadn't gotten the impression yet, there is no water in this lake, no puddles even- is that, as part of an art exhibition that has become permanent fixture there, there are statues all over the lake that is HUGE. It is several kilometers in any direction; where we began walking onto the lake we could not see to the other side. Focusing. The statues were made using the dimensions of real people who lived in a town near by. The height is accurate and they are all 1/3 the width of their real life selves. The statues are spread out all over the lake. Part of the artwork is the design (that you can see from the giant rock/hill in the middle) that visitor's footprints make in the ground as they go from statue to statue. It was really cool and seeing as my words aren't really doing it justice I'll just show some pictures now.

This picture is from walking out towards the salt lake. 

 My attempt at taking a picture of the ground to show how sparkly it was...if you squint you can kind of see it but mostly it just looks like ground. Imagine this ground but with silver glitter on it. That's what it looked like.

 Rach, Tasha, and Brooke on our way up the hill. Rachel is virtually impossible to photograph with a real smile or regular face. 

 The view from the top of the hill (which was really steep to climb by the way). The shiny is the salt/glitter I've been trying to explain. It was a pretty incredible view. 

 Me! On the top of the hill! Yes, that ground is the same as the ground in the previous photo. You can't see from here but there are statues surrounding the hill in kind of tree rings...closer ones, then past those there are more, but they are symmetrically lined up or anything. 

 Close up of one of the men who used to live there. Well. Of his statue.

 This is me with one of the woman sculptures. 

 Their shadows were really cool because depending on the angle you were looking at them from they looked more or less like an actual persons shadow, instead of a statues shadow. 

Rachel and I decided that to get our exercise we would run between every other statue. We did this for almost an hour and we only made it to 11 statues. I believe there were 60 statues in the whole lake. I think that's how many anyway. Basically we didn't make it close to seeing all of them. 

We drove back to home base after this and 3 of the Aboriginal kids (age guesses 8, 13, 16?) who will eventually be in charge of the whole experience for other groups took us on a walk to Mount Jessop. It was between the salt lake and Mt. Jessop that Brooke and I decided with Rachel and Tasha that we would have roommate photo contests. I'll try to remember to put in some of the contestants as they are taken. Anyway. The walk to Jessop was probably 2km. Maybe 1. It took like 25 minutes with brief stops to see things like this really cool bird nest. I don't remember what kind of bird it was, they only knew the Aboriginal name for it and I couldn't pronounce it so I guess it isn't really surprising that I don't remember what it was called. But the males build these really elaborate nests to attract females and  in addition to their superior architectural talents they collect bright shiny objects that they find. Some will only collect clear shiny things, others only green, some don't seem to have a preference in what color their prizes are. 

 This one's nest had clear and white sparkly things like rocks, glass, and shells. The nest isn't just the top mohawk part it is also the part under it - that is a mound about 5in off the ground. We saw more of these later in our trip. One had only blue prizes and the other had only green.

 This is the view from the top of Mt. Jessop when we arrived.

This is almost the same picture like 10min later. The sun sets REALLY fast. It was beautiful watching it drop. We took a few roommate pictures here but they are on Brooke's camera.

When we got back we had to cook dinner. This was the first time we were cooking dinner with just a fire (WHOA - I'M IN MELBOURNE TYPING THIS RIGHT NOW AND TWO REALLY PRETTY PARROTS JUST LANDED IN FRONT OF ME. then flew away when I tried to take a picture of them...). Sorry. As if that wasn't enough we were expected to make curry. So we had to cut meat, veggies, and prepare everything. In the dark. Because the sun went down while we were on Mt. Jessop. We had headlamps and a fire and flashlights/torches. I was in charge of cutting onions and potatoes. It actually turned out REALLY good. It was just a long process and we were hungry and working together in a productive was wasn't the easiest thing in the world.

Okay, next blog will be the last one about Day 2. I promise haha :)

[My grammar and sentence structure were not good in this blog. Sorry guys, my brain is fried. I've been studying for exams and I'm tired.]

Day 2 Continued: GHOST TOWN

We drove to:

The town of Gwalia is actually a functioning one and is very small. We drove through the non-ghost part in about 2 minutes. Gwalia was one of the towns that was established because of the mining boom.

 See! Proof! We thought this one was really big but later in the trip (spoiler alert!) we went to the Super Pit and realized this one isn't all that big in comparison but it still was really good and definitely big. So the town was created because people moved there to mine. Fun fact about Gwalia is that Hoover (yessiree, the one that was later our 31st President) was like an overseer person here because he had experience in the U.S with mining! His house, that he designed, that he never got to live in because he left before it was complete so someone else got to live there instead, is still there and is preserved in that the furniture and museum stuff in there is authentic and set up to what it might have looked like - the original furniture isn't there any more but it was pretty cool looking!

 It has a really cool wrap around porch.

This is the dining room with Brooke in the pink hat. It was REALLY windy which made it a bit chilly. We later realized that the wind was really nice even if it made it coldish because when it wasn't windy the flies were everywhere! But they weren't bad when we were in Gwalia. I just realized that the dates on the pictures are wrong. They think that they are in Ohio. So half of them are a day off.

Hoover's house was on the top of a hill closer to where the mine was located. To get to the ghosty part of the ghost town you had to walk down the hill past the old mining machinery:

I hadn't been feeling very well that day - we think because I was having a harder time adjusting to the water there. The water wasn't bad but it was different enough that a few of us would have to go to the bathroom more often than normal...(I know, I know, this is actually relevant)...I got about half way down the hill past all of the old mining equipment and almost to the pool before I had to go back up and go to the bathroom and walk ALL the way down again. The pool was put in place for two reasons. 1. Fires: I actually have an essay written partially about why there are fires in Australia. It hasn't always been that way. Yes, it is people's fault. No, it isn't just because it is hot. If you want to learn more feel free to ask me, I just really don't feel like explaining why there are fires at the moment. I'll send you the paper I wrote. Anyway, the pool was there for water if there was a fire, to control/put it out. 2. There were women and children who lived in this town who weren't working in the mines and wanted something to do on the hot summer weekends and who doesn't like pools?! I made up the second reason but I could see it being a reason. There were pictures in the Hoover house of people in the pool from back then. This is the pool now: 

We couldn't get to it. And, as you can see, there was no water in it anyway. 

So I did eventually make it down the hill to the creepy ghost town. This is from the abandoned house I went in BY MYSELF. You have no idea how much courage it took to walk in by myself and not just stand in the door.

 This is the 'living room' where I had not yet set foot IN the house...Only partially because the door only kind of opened and it was hard to wriggle inside.

 Their dining room. I'm pretty sure this stuff was authentic because everything looked old and dirty like it had been there for awhile. The locals sponsor houses to make sure they don't fall down on anyone but they (to our knowledge) didn't add things to the houses.

Easily the creepiest room. I'm not sure why but it definitely was. 

The salt lake with its super cool statues are coming up next blog as part 3 of Day 2. 

Day 2 AL375 Trip

I thought about showering in the evening of Day 1 but I decided not to when I was the last in line and the water was FREEZING and there was no water pressure left. 

We were awakened at 6:30. I swear we never slept on this trip. We didn't go to bed until the early hours  of the morning usually. No Mom, this was not JUST because we were chatting. We were always doing something in the schedule until like 11pm or midnight. Course we weren't supposed to have our watches because Aboriginals don't operate on our time exactly. It is more of a guideline. Things aren't scheduled for times - in the morning we'll do this, then later we'll do that, etc. When we get to it we'll get to it. It isn't going anywhere type of thing. We were warned of this and were told it would be a lot of hurry up and wait. I'd just like to say that we only had the hurry up and wait because Peta (who's fun/nice/approval rating went progressively lower throughout the week) made us hurry up and wait. Instead of just getting us ready when they were ready...

Anyway. It was originally planned that we would spend 3 nights outside in our swags (pictures day 3 probably) but because the weather was REALLY windy and rainy our first night and it was supposed to be the same the next night they took pity on us city people and decided we'd stay outside just 2 nights and only 'rough' it when it came to breakfast and dinner on Day 2. 

Breakfast: This was our first adventure cooking over a fireplace and actually went pretty well. Each meal (not lunch, that changed daily) we were given two big trunk things that had ingredients, directions, and cooking utensils. I don't remember what we had for breakfast that day. I think it was eggs and mushrooms and bread and cereal.

After breakfast we did sightseeing things because technically we weren't set to start the Aboriginal experience until that night (we got there a day early for some reason and they let us stay there and fed us also). We went to a ghost town from the mining boom, and to a salt lake. In our super cool bus that it won't let me upload a picture of so instead this is the sign going into Morapoi station our home base.

Day 1 continued AL375

I forgot to write about stuff on Day 1 once we got there!

After taking the train we got on what became our bus. Basically it had 18 seats and there were 16 of us. There was practically no leg room. We got really good at squeezing and finding creative ways to sit so that our legs wouldn't cramp up and alternated sitting in the 'good' spots where there was a little more leg room or at least an isle seat so you could sprawl.

It looked kind of like a trailer park in a desert. I think I have pictures that I'll hopefully be able to post but if not that is a fairly accurate picture of what it looked like. There were several different LARGE trailer type buildings as well as smaller ones that visitors stayed in, as well as a few small houses (where the people who ran the place lived) and a mess hall with kitchen area. The first thing we did was to take our stuff out of the van and girls (10) went to our (for lack of a better word) trailer, and the guys (3) went to theirs.

 There were 6 twin sized beds and everyone who had a single room at the P&O cept Maddie and Sara got one of those.

 Part of our 'kitchen' that we never used because for the most part we cooked at a camp site as will be explained later. We did use the fridge for food storage so we wouldn't attract any extra bugs. Fridge is located to the right of the table. The bed you can see through the doorway is where Brooke and I stayed.

This is Rachel and Tasha's bed with Rachel sprawled on it.  There was also a bathroom attached as well as a 'trailer' with bathrooms but you had to walk outside to those. 

After we had put our stuff down we went for a walk with Peta. We learned how to spot spiders in the dark using our flashlights. Their eyes glow. I couldn't get it to work but pretty much everyone else could. It was actually pretty cool because you (not me though) could see the spiders like 10ft away and say 'it's right here', walk up and there one was. 

For dinner (our only meal cooked for us the whole week) we had kabobs, chicken, sausage, salad, and bread with apple pie and custard for dessert. It was SO good. While we were eating we met some of the Aboriginal people who were hosting us. 

Around the campfire we learned some basic things about the Aboriginal culture.

• Skin groups. These are kind of hard to explain but I'll try. There are 4 skin groups and they have nothing to do with skin. The 'traditional' family of mom, dad, kids, grandparents etc. is present but skin groups are equally important to them. Certain skin groups are supposed to marry, certain are taboo and you can't marry, mother in law skin groups can't even make eye contact. Claire, Kieran, and I would all be part of different skin groups. Each skin group is a 'family'. Every person has multiple roles in the family. Kieran would be the 'father' of Dad-dad because as Dad-dad got older he would need more help and it would be Kieran's job to take care of him - no matter how young Kieran is (tasks within reason at least). Who Kieran is the father of (2 generations above him, not his kids) wouldn't necessarily need to be grandpa, it could be great uncle also. The skin groups are recognized throughout Australia and if someone in your skin group approaches you anywhere and needs help you are obligated to take care of them. This is part of the reason that Aboriginals have trouble adjusting to Western culture. Because they have so many close ties that are severed due to the nature of Western culture that their support system is taken away from them when they leave the Bush. Many Aboriginal people live in a mix of West and Aboriginal culture because it is easier than all West and it is becoming harder to follow their traditions because of encroaching Western culture. 
• Poor reputation and struggle with Western Culture in Australia. One of the biggest health problems that Aboriginal people have when they try to transition to 'modern' culture is depression and suicide. It is common for them to turn to drugs and alcohol (just like for white people) when these things happen. A really negative stereotype has formed around that and there aren't adequate health services to help them. In health psych we talked a lot about how the care and language of the care has to match the culture. What being 'healthy' means to them isn't a direct translation to what it means to us. Making the people in the pictures brown doesn't mean that the methods for psychological health for white westernized people will work for them. 

Hopefully I kind of explained those things well enough. It's hard to do. Especially with the skin groups because it is difficult to explain something I only 75% understand. It was really cool though because their support system when practicing their culture and they aren't separated by hundreds of miles and cities is so strong and makes a lot of sense. Geneticists have done studies also and found that their taboos etc. related to who can marry whom is the simplest way with 4 groups to have the maximum genetic diversity. 

There are more than 200 or 500 I forget which one, I think 200, different Aboriginal languages because each People has their own language/dialect. We stayed with the Woongala people. 

Day 1 AL375 Trip

Alright friends and family. Here I am again. Most (hopefully all) of you have heard from me since the last time I blogged. I have been crazy busy with school and of course also with not school things as well like travelling and eating.  Right now I am on a plane to Melbourne for study week (November 3^rd). This blog is going to go all the way back in time to September 16^th. About 7 papers and 2 presentations ago….might be more, it’s totally possible I’ve repressed some of them because there have been so many.

For AL375, Australian History and Society, we took a field trip for a week up to Kalgoolrie (pretty sure that’s how you spell it, it’s hard to sound out because I have trouble saying it properly). The CSBSJU students went on a different trip than the students from Portland, and Notre Dame IN. They went to Broome. Getting to the point now:

16/9/2013

            Brooke and I set our alarms for 4:15am. We actually did get up then because we HAD to be outside the P&O at 5:10am to walk with Larry, Johanna, and Peta (works for UNDA and was sort of leading the trip) and the rest of the CSBSJU people. We took the transperth train to East Perth where we then went to the transwa station. When we got to the station I fell asleep in the chairs during our wait. I would half wake up every few minutes when it got quieter because I thought they had left without me. They never left without me. We got on the train (for 7 hours). I sat next to Peta on the way there and she had a lot of interesting facts to share. Well, after I had taken my nap anyway. These are some of the fun facts that I learned:

·      The Transwa (wa for Western Australia) runs along the highway that runs from Perth to Sydney! It isn’t much of a highway. It has one lane in either direction.

·      The water supply that made the gold rush possible also runs by the train tracks and is still one of the main ways that Perth gets water as well as the places between Perth and Sydney.

·      I learned why the land is white in many places. (I also later learned this in class.) The Europeans arrived and didn’t understand how the native plants worked and treated them the way they did in Europe (bad, bad idea). The roots of the trees go down really deep – 100m or about 300ft – because it is often dry in Australia and Australia goes through periods of drought and large amounts of rainfall. Well when the Europeans tore them up the water level began to rise and the salt followed (OSMOSIS). Now there are large natural salt deposits that make the land infertile and turn it white. White = not farmable.

The land out of the window looks kind of like a mix of Ohio and Africa. It looks kind of like Africa because many of the trees are related from when Australia was a part of Meganesia (I think that’s how it is spelled but spell check was no help). It looks like Ohio because we have the corn fields and part of what we passed were fields of crops.

The train was actually really comfy. There was probably 3x more leg room than the plane. There was a buffet, TVs, big windows with blinds, and bathrooms from the future! The doors opened when you pushed a button and they slid sideways. To lock/flush/turn on the water etc. you just pushed buttons! 

I tried to add pictures to this one and it isn't cooperating so I'm just going to go onto the next one and hopefully I'll be able to get pictures onto it!

Random parade while lying on the verandah not doing homework...

The title of this pretty much sums up what happened earlier this week but I figured I'd write about it a little bit and put some pictures up because it was something that was out of the ordinary in Freo! And I know it was out of the ordinary because I know what ordinarily happens here; I'm practically a local.

Anyway, I was lying on a giant bean bag on our verandah getting some sun with some friends and we heard the cannon go off from the roundhouse down the street. This is averagely normal, it doesn't happen often but it does happen. But it went off probably like 5 times in less than an hour. Then we heard the sounds of the parade. It was a very somber parade made up mostly of clergy and (I'm assuming) people who go to the local churches. After they passed the cannon went off a few more times and then there was what sounded like solid gunfire for about 5min straight. (It's really hard to relax and tan when all this is happening).

Anyway, not sure what the whole thing was about but I did learn that before taking pictures of a parade from a verandah of a church parade you should put more clothes than just a bathing suit on, otherwise it's a little bit awkward.

 Innocently trying to get some sun. Yes Mom I had sunscreen on and even though I wasn't doing homework at that exact moment I did get some done that day :)

 Mary in Aboriginal form? Like Our Lady of Guadalupe?

 Oh yeah, there was a band also...that's how we knew they were coming.

This is about a 4th of the people in the parade. It ended (I think) at Esplanade park - around the corner and down the street - I'm not sure where it started.

BUCKEYES!!

In honor of the first Ohio State game of the season, Regina and I decided to be adventurous and true Ohioans and make our own buckeyes! Of course, no one knew what we were talking about. But we did. And as soon as we said that we were making balls of chocolate and peanut butter (which was ironic because for our last all hall dinner -the day before- the hall in charge of desserts had made peanut butter, oreo, and chocolate chocolate covered balls so everyone thought at first that we were making those. We had to explain that we were making something better. Like Reese's? Yes, but again, better.
So we went shopping for our ingredients - peanut butter, butter, a LOT of powdered sugar, vanilla, and chocolate. Which, I don't know if I've mentioned, we usually go to Coles for grocery shopping and I'm now so used to it that I don't think Kohls, instead of Coles. But we did find a cheaper grocery store this past week, it is just further away. Anyway, back to the point. We got all the way back to the P&O and reread the directions and realised that we needed toothpicks and didn't have any. So Regina biked to Coles this time while I slowly started making the peanut butter mix.
We soon discovered that it is ineffective to try and mix a cup and a half of peanut butter with 6 cups of powdered sugar (which they call icing flour here or something like that). So Regina put on the latex gloves usually reserved for raw meat and mixed it by hand.

Next it was time to make the peanut butter/sugar mix into balls and put tooth picks in them so that we could dip them in chocolate after they had chilled for awhile. 

These are 2/3 of the balls made haha we ended up making almost 80 buckeyes!

MELTING CHOCOLATE! Fun fact - there was a lot of melted chocolate left over so we went at it with spoons and ate more than we probably should have.

Speed dipping the peanut butter balls in the chocolate with Tasha our excellent photographer!

Regina and I each took a plate of 20 and donated the rest to the community shelf in the fridge and I took some to the movie night in Anna's suite (our Hall Supervisor) for the Tangled movie night! Everyone LOVED them!! 

-we know this because they were all gone before the next day-

GO BUCKS!!

Fremantle Dockers Footy Game!

The Saturday after Cottesloe (as in, the next day) we went to our first footy game! This is Australian rules football, I think. I'm pretty sure that they are the same but to be honest I could be completely confused. It is one of the 3 sports that I don't really know what is going on but they are on in our common room all the time. Guess that is what happens when you live with a bunch of Europeans and only get Australian channels. Yes, this means that unless we pay online we cannot see the American Football games. *deep-sigh that is only partially sarcastic...

Anyway, this is roughly how the game is played. There are two teams. Four goal posts at each side (so there are three field goal looking things on each side). The one in the middle is worth 6 points if the footy ball goes through it and the two on either side of it are worth only one point each. In order to get the points they have to kick the ball - like a field goal but it is just during play, no special set up, they can kick from anywhere. The ball can be passed (it kind of looks like they are punching it to a teammate) or kicked to get down the GIGANTIC oval field to the side that they want it on. If your teammate catches one that was kicked to him there is a time limit (like 3sec) before the other team can basically attack/block him - it's like a bonus 'yay you caught it' kind of thing. They don't wear any padding and it is VIOLENT. It is speedy like soccer, tackling kind of like football, and the checking of hockey...there was a fist fight like 3min in. But they fights aren't encouraged because you can lose playing privileges in some cases. All of the players are in really good shape. It's crazy. Fremantle's team is really good and they won that night. Oh, and they are purple and white so it reminded me of DHS football games haha it was even a white out that night! And I actually got to wear white instead of a band uniform :)

 This is the pre-game show thing like they have at baseball games.

 This is Hakan (the one making the face at me) and Julian and their reactions to my questions about how the game is played. Now that I think about it Hakan gives me that look a lot...

 From L to R. Jen, Rachel, Regina (FROM OHIO) and Tasha. We attempted to figure out the game together, got hot crisps, and cheered together.

It's hard to see but these are the players - I only had my ipod for pictures so I couldn't zoom - they look farther away from us than they actually were. The blue head on the right side is a guy from Notre Dame in Indiana. They got really into it. Even though it was the wrong color...

Going to the game was organised by the Study Abroad office so we had really good seats (so it was good when they were on our side of the field but we literally couldn't see what was happening on the other side - good thing they have the big TV things). We (Cleo's, Port Lodge, and P&O) were the first 5 rows closest to the field behind one of the goals. It was really fun learning about the game and getting into the spirit of it but the take away message (that's what my Health Psych prof tells us is on each slide in the presentation) was that the hot crisps (french fries) were ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. So so so so delicious. Best part of the game was that we (the Study Abroad) section started the wave that lasted 6x around the WHOLE SOLD-OUT STADIUM!!!! It was so cool!

Johanna's Birthday and Cottesloe Beach

Almost 3 weeks ago now...was Johanna's surprise birthday party and the first time we went to a REAL (as in we couldn't walk to it) beach. 

Larry and Johanna are our program directors for the trip. We found out that Johanna's birthday was coming up soon and we decided that we should make her cheese cake for her birthday and Larry said he would make sure that she was at their flat when we needed her to be and that he wouldn't ruin the surprise. We decided to do it after our Australian History class on Friday - we'd go and pick up the cheesecake after our walking tour (probably the 3rd one of Freo but it was in class and we weren't going to complain that we got to leave the class room) and then head to their flat from there.

On the Wednesday beforehand a group collected money from all the CSBSJU students and went shopping for ingredients. Then on Thursday Juhaan (only person who had made cheesecake before) and a few of us actually made the cakes. I made the crusts for both and I must say, I make an excellent chocolate cheesecake crust. One of the cakes was white chocolate and one was chocolate. 

These are the delicious things that we carried over to the flat. :)

So all 13 of us trooped over to their flat and then realised that we didn't have a plan for what to say if it was Johanna that buzzed us in...We made Maddie push the buzzer and when Johanna answered we all whispered things to say and she ended up saying something like "Hi, I was just in the area and thought I'd come by and say hi...". Johanna tried to buzz her in but it didn't work so she (thank goodness) sent Larry to come down and let us in. We all went up the 6 flights of stairs and as we walked into their place we started singing Happy Birthday! This was her reaction: 

She teared up a little, just like Larry said she would. Oh and the paper she is holding is the card that Rachel had made that we all signed. Then we took some group pictures before cutting into the cake. 

This is almost all of us in the best picture that I have of it. 

Needless to say it was a complete success! She loved the cakes and we loved them too! We left there to head to Cottesloe beach!!

The beach was about a 10min train ride away and then a five-10min walk from the train station to the actual beach. It was beautiful!!! The water was cold but once you were in you kind of went numb and it didn't matter anymore haha. We played frisbee, keep the ball out of the water while standing in the water and getting hit by waves that are almost as tall as we are, snacked, and just relaxed on THE BEACH! 

 Don't worry Mom, I know that their UV is much stronger than ours and I put sunscreen on like four times and only got a little bit pink!

 This is Brooke also - this is time number 6 trying to get a picture where she is looking, not drinking water, and not choking on said water.

 The view as we left in the evening. (This was supposed to come after the next picture but I couldn't get it to switch with it. So the after picture is coming before the before picture...)

This is right after we set up before the waves picked up. :)

27/8/2013

I have a lot to catch you guys up on!

First! I haven't done the whole - this is where I live and who I live with!

People!
I may have touched on this earlier but there are people here from all over! My closest friends are a few from CSBSJU, and also from Ireland and Germany! I've decided that when I have money and am touring Europe then I am going to visit them as well as my friends from England! FREE HOUSING!! :) There are a few cultural differences between Americans and Europeans that I will now highlight.

• They say funny things. And now I'm starting to say them too...ugh. Time is one that I've picked up. Instead of saying eight thirty they say half-eight. Another funny thing is pants. For them pants =underwear, and what we think are pants are trousers or jeans. What's the craic? (Apparently that's Irish spelling - said like crack) That means like  What's up? We high five more than they do; they think it's kind of weird. Instead of saying How are you? they'll say howiya?
• Their accents were really obvious at first but now I'm used to hearing Australian, German, etc and it's just as normal as hearing American voices. 
• Biggest difference between American guys and guys from not America. They call all the girls love, sweetheart, gorgeous, darling, etc. just on a regular basis in regular conversation. Talk about an ego boost or a way to make you feel better about life/yourself. They also totally ok with hugs and don't need an explanation if you just say you want a hug. 

Place!

I live in the P&O! It is possibly haunted. It's a great place to live. I think it is the best of the 3 housing options. There is also Port Lodge and Cleo's (The Cleopatra Hotel). The people from Notre Dame (America) live in Port Lodge...we aren't there biggest fans...they are uhm exclusive. One of the girls from there even said 'If I wasn't a part of this group then I wouldn't like us'. The people in Cleo's are mostly girls (only 3 boys in the whole building). They are from University of Portland. They're pretty nice :) We mostly get along with them. By we I mean the people who live in the P&O. Here are a few pics of my living arrangements! 

 Balcony outside my room!

 Cleo's directly across the street.

 Balcony in the other direction!

This is our common room :) We have movie nights here probably 4 times a week :)