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 :)

I've decided I'm going to stop apologizing about forgetting to/being too busy to update this and just say it once more here and then just let you know that any other time that I don't update I'm sorry. "I'm sorry I didn't update the blog". Okay. Moving on now.

Today was Juhaan's birthday! We had cake and made cards and it was really fun!

I went to King's Park like a week and a half ago and didn't tell you guys about it! It was BEAUTIFUL. It is similar to the Conservatory in Columbus but it's bigger and in Australia..and has several memorials as well as Aboriginal significance in parts. Fun fact - Just 2 years after they established government here they decided that they needed to set up a place in the city to preserve the wildlife! King's park is about the size of St. Joe's (in MN) township lines. Here are some pictures: (I had some trouble uploading so they aren't in order that they were taken)

 On the free ferry back from Perth to Freo. It was free because the train was not running for the week. It's about a half an hour ferry ride. Margaret, Sarah and I were given Duncan's number on the way back. He was a funny, awkward, ginger Aussie with a huge beard. But he gave us discounts on our muffins and lattes!

 Going into Perth in the morning!

 Love Locks! Started in China. There were tons!

 We went to London Court which is basically Diagon Alley...It's old english street that has shops and stuff!

 Sarah and I at the entrance to London Court.

 Pretty flowers in Kings Park! There were so many beautiful ones!

 The Africa tree in Australia! For a reference on how tall it is - the green bush thing in front of it is taller than I am. And it isn't a bush, it's a little tree.

 A lot of their trees have like super smooth bark - I don't know if I would even call it bark actually.

 Jacob's ladder. So many stairs and it's super steep. People use it to work out on. We went all the way down and back up again and were sweaty and panting by the time we got to the top again.

 Giant tree at the bottom of Jacob's ladder.

 Perth!

 More flowers!

 One of the memorials at Kings Park, it was beautiful and very powerful.

It is so windy in Perth/Freo that trees often grow sideways so that they don't have to fight the wind. The tree I'm standing on grew that way, it wasn't knocked down or anything.

07/08/2013

I forgot to blog yesterday. Oops! Sorry!

Fun fact of the day is that they write the dates here dayday/monthmonth/yearyearyearyear. I think I may like it better actually.

So far classes are going well - I think. It is harder to tell here and I'm still not used to the teaching style. It is much less direct instruction so lectures (while interesting) are not as organised (that's Aussie spelling, I didn't spell it wrong thank you) feeling, they just seem to hop from one subject to another and the flow just is different than what I'm used to.

I ran all the way to South Beach and back yesterday! Yes people that is a full 30 min of running! Then I did pilates but to a girl who has a channel on the Youtube and it was REALLY hard. Her channel is blogilates. I think she's great haha and I've been sore all the times after I've done her workouts. I found out about her from my friend Joy (she's from Taiwan!).

Mostly I did homework all day because it rained a lot.

05/08/2013

I tried out a new class today - Theater 101. We basically will be making set designs and doing the lighting for AN ACTUAL SHOW! Woo! We had a field trip to UWA (University of Western Australia) to see all 8 of their theater spaces! It was pretty cool and the campus was BEAUTIFUL! It was odd though not being in a theater and working. It made me miss being in the box office and even miss wearing the (dripping in sarcasm here) stunning red shirts.

Our dorm has a soccer team and they had their first games tonight! I was able to go to the second one but not the first because I was in Theology learning about Luther and Calvin. It was a good class; I've never taken notes so fast for so long before though. The professor is really funny and half teasing and half real reassures the americans that we can do it and not to panic. :) Anyway, our team is really good - everyone on it has played at some point in their lives so it was pretty impressive to watch. They won their first game and then tied their second one!

So I am really bad at remembering and making time for this blog thing. So instead of feeling bad and trying to write essays for each of them I'm going to do a really short one each day. It may just be a fun fact or something I noticed is different here than in the US or a quick thing of what I did that day!

Today is just homework and market day! I'm pretty much done with my homework for the week. I decided to switch out of my archeology class and into a theatre class instead because I already had 2 other Australian history type classes (I don't even like history!) and it sounded super difficult and I wanted an easy class!

The market is the cheapest way to get fresh fruits and vegetables!! So we are going to that today because groceries (and everything else) are expensive! Plus it forces me to eat healthy which is hard because chocolate is all Cadbury and soooooo good and it's cheap!

The first week of class went well. It's a lot harder to be motivated when I feel like I'm on vacation half the time and I have only a class a day and then don't have it again until the next week. Their grading system is different and they only have between 3-5 grades that make up their final grade. I finished my first paper though (it's only a minor paper -15% of the final grade!)! I'm pretty happy with it so we'll see how it ends up.

We went to Caversham yesterday to the ZOO! For my Ohio people reading this - be happy with our zoo! It's pretty impressive and can make zoos that are supposed to be like 'whoa I've never seen these animals that close (like kangaroos) before' more mundane and not AS exciting. But it was really cool and I'm going to figure out how to put some pictures up with this post. hopefully.

 Feeding 'Roo! :)

 The Koala was not as excited as I was

 Sassy Emu!

 The Dingos ran around for awhile and then decided that lying on the ground was a better idea

 Opossum!

Me, Rachel, and the Wombat!