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. :)