The End of a Very Very Short Era

I will update about Uluru soon, I promise, but this is important. Today was my last day in Australia. I'm going home tomorrow. It was raining at first but it turned out to be a beautiful day. Sydney is beautiful. I went to the Australian Museum and to Bondi and I just wandered around a bit. I got to see a couple of marsupials, some lorikeets, lots of cockatoos, and lots of flying foxes so I could say goodbye to them. I'm really really really going to miss this country. I love it a lot. There's so much I didn't get to do here. Four months seemed like forever at the beginning but now it doesn't feel like long enough. I really hope someday I can come back.

Tomorrow I have something like 24 hours of travel and then I'll be home. I can't really wrap my head around that yet. It will be wonderful to see everyone, I'm sure, and it's not that I'm sad to go back there, I'm just sad to leave here.

Mammoth Post of Ridiculous Proportions

So I’m sorry I haven’t updated in ages and ages. Lots of things have been going on!

Denmark

Last Sunday Berenice, Sam, Perrine and I woke up at the crack of dawn and drove down to Denmark to do the trip in one day instead of two. A little ridiculous as it was something like three hours away, but that’s okay.

It was FREEZING that early in the morning. I saw my breath! In Australia! It was so wrong. The ride down was absolutely gorgeous. I love roadtrips. I especially love driving here and just looking out the window at the landscape that is so…Australian! I love it.

Our first stop was the Valley of the Giants Treetop Walk. It’s a huge suspended walkway among Tingle Trees - giant eucalypts whose roots are extremely delicate so you can’t walk on them. They’re beautiful! Also I cannot accurately describe how amazing eucalypt forest smells. It’s fantastic.

(I’m sorry, I had a bunch of pictures to put here, but in the interest of getting this up in anything remotely resembling a timely fashion, I’ve taken them out. Everything will be on my Facebook or maybe Picassa or something once I get home!)
The balcony was very thin and very wobbly and very high up. The pictures really don’t do it justice. There was another part called the Ancient Empire Walk where we got to walk on boardwalks around the base of the trees. Equally awesome, in a different sort of way.

Then I went on the Treetop Walk again. It was really beautiful. And I saw a fairy wren! Not a bright blue male, just a female who is not as bright, but still cool.
On the way in I had stopped to talk to this very friendly guy who had a little table at the front with information about the wilderness in the area. I told him about my studies and he showed me maps of the area and told me that this area had been largely free of logging and was completely free of invasive species – both incredibly rare in Australia. On the way out I waved to him again and told him I thought the walk was wonderful, and he made me a deal. He gave me a big book full of pictures and writings about the area as long as I went to this website and voted for Walpole as the “tidiest town in Australia” or something like that. So obviously I agreed, and here is where you come in. Go to this website: http://navmanpeopleschoice.com.au/ and vote for Walpole, WA if you have a couple of seconds, please! To help the nice man who gave me a beautiful coffee table book for free!

Next we went to Denmark to an alpaca farm that Berenice loves. Along with alpacas it also has kangaroos, goats, sheep (who are mean! It kept attacking the tiny goat!), bunnies, koalas, parrots, emus, donkeys, highland kuhs, etc. I cannot decide whether or not I felt guilty about being here. It wasn’t a terrible place, but it was like a petting zoo kind of a thing and I felt sort of weird about it. But, on the other hand, I talked to the owner guy who said most of the kangaroos were rescued babies after their mothers were shot or run over or something. Also, they were ADORABLE.
I felt weird about petting a koala and having my picture taken with him, but on the other hand he was mostly asleep. They do sleep for 20 hours a day, and I didn’t disturb him by picking him up and didn’t try to make him pose for a camera or anything and he probably didn’t really notice. I don’t know. I couldn’t decide if I thought that place was ethical or not and I felt a bit weird about it, but I got to pet a koala and a kangaroo and a bunch of other animals so what’s done is done I suppose.

We got lunch from a grocery store and ate it at a lookout overlooking a gorgeous beach. After a little while Sam told me that it wasn’t just any beach, I was looking at the Southern Ocean! Somewhere in that general direction was Antarctica. I got really really excited about the idea of the Southern Ocean. I had no idea that we were that far south! So I asked if we could go down to the beach. They didn’t take me to the one in that picture, but to a different one a little further away. Also beautiful.

And so now I can say that I have been swimming in all but one of the oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Southern. All I’m missing is the Arctic! New life goal.

The day was perfect and totally worth working longer hours and the ridiculously long drives. The drives were beautiful, anyway.

I did end up getting 200 hours in and on the last day Berenice and I went on an eco cruise to see the dolphins one last time. We didn’t get nearly as close as we did on the research boat, but it was still good to see them one more time before I left Bunbury.

Riding my bike back to Valissa’s house to give it back I was just thinking how glad I was that I hadn’t hit anything, messed up the bike, or myself in the course of the month and then the wheel caught on something and the bike went flying. Somehow I ended up on my feet with the bike seat wrapped around my leg. I got a scrape and a couple of big bruises that are still there, and the bike got a bent back wheel so it didn’t turn anymore. I had to carry it the last two blocks to Valissa’s. But I got it there and we talked for a bit before I left.

That night Berenice, Perrine, Sam, and I went out bowling. This is the only thing I have found that is cheaper here than it is back home. Partially because they don’t make you rent shoes as long as you are wearing flats. Perrine had never bowled before, so that was exciting, and I am not very good but it was still fun. I got a strike! And a spare, and I ended up in second place. We went out to dinner and it was just a really nice last night. Then I packed like crazy and woke up well before dawn the next day to catch the train at 6:00am.

Perth

The train ride was lovely. I really enjoy trains. I finished my book, which was wonderful. I got to watch the sun come up, too, which I rarely if ever get to see. I love the Australian countryside. There is something so magical about watching fields of cows and sheep roll by when suddenly there’s a flash of pink or green and you realize there’s a flock of parrots flying past.

I also didn’t have my glasses on so I got to play a fun game that I started calling “Is that a Kangaroo?!”. It is an easy game to play. Here is how it typically went: I would see something off in the distance in a field (which is where kangaroos like to hang out, especially in the mornings and evenings). “Is that a kangaroo?!” I would say to myself. As it came closer I would realize that no, it was just a cow. Or a horse. Or a sheep. Or a tree stump. Or a hay bale. Sometimes I would think it was one of these things only to find out it was another. I did this almost continuously for two hours.

At one point the train stopped. They never did explain why, but only for fifteen or twenty minutes and then we got rolling again. We weren’t too late getting into Perth and I didn’t have anyplace particular to be, anyway. Perth is having construction right now on the two worst places to have extensive construction: the train station and the airport. I had to go a couple of blocks down the street to get to the taxi bank but I found it! The taxi took me straight to my hotel which was nice but not as fancy as it had looked on the website.

I got there at about 9am so of course no rooms were ready yet. The woman behind the counter asked me to wait and said one would be cleaned and ready anytime now. So I sat and drank tea and waited impatiently. When she noticed me fidgeting and being impatient she brought over a couple of guidebooks to Perth for me to pass the time.
“French or German?” She asked sweetly.
“What?” I responded a bit dumbly.
“The language you speak. French or German?”
“Um…English?” I was utterly confused, considering I had already had a conversation with her in which I spoke. Is it not immediately obvious that I am from the US?
“Oh, are you English?” She asked, surprised.
“No, American.” I said, completely baffled.

I am perplexed when people ask me where I’m from in this country, but to actually think I am from somewhere – anywhere but the US is just ridiculous! The only thing I can think is that my accent is so midland and un-accenty that it ceases to be recognizable as anything, even American.

Anyway, she brought over some English guidebooks for me, one of which she actually let me keep, and I perused for a while, trying to figure out how best to maximize my one day in Perth. I decided to go to King’s Park and Fremantle, and maybe the Perth Museum if I had time.

Just when I was getting antsy and went up to the front desk to ask if I could just store my luggage and leave, she handed me my key. My room was on the “first floor” she informed me (which means the second floor here. What.) and I had been “upgraded” from a single room to a double with two beds – not exactly an upgrade for a single person, but whatever. The room was nice and the hotel was extremely liberal with freebies – including free movies! But for the time being I dropped my stuff, rubbed some sunscreen on my face, and headed out for the town.

The woman behind the desk showed me a few key things on the maps they had there, including a free bus system! It goes around the whole city area and stops right in front of the hotel every seven minutes all day every day. Brilliant! Five minutes later I was on a bus around the town, heading towards the harbor where I could catch a ferry to Fremantle, the nearby city that everyone raves about as being cute and artsy and generally hippyish and worth an afternoon’s wander around.

The ferry was nice, although we had to walk pretty far from the dock into the town. It was a cute place to wander around. There were a lot of fairly silly shops. Lots of fairies and wizards and stuff like that, which I was not expecting. And I found a gaming store, first I’ve seen in Australia. Apparently all the nerds are in Fremantle.

There were a couple of buskers, too. One who was playing the drum started talking to me. He could talk and play, which was impressive to me. He said he was from New Zealand (and I couldn’t believe I didn’t realize it before he said it, his accent was exactly the same as Bret’s from Flight of the Conchords! This has not been true of any of the other Kiwis I’ve met) and his name was Jason. When he said that I got a huge wave of homesickness and wanted to hug my big brother. You’d think with how common the name Jason is supposed to be that I would be used to this by now, but actually I haven’t met very many Jasons in my life and every time I do I still sort of think “No, you’re not, he’s in Minnesota!” Anyway this Jason was very nice and a very talented drummer. We chatted for a bit and he gave me his card so I could Facebook him. I still haven’t done that yet, which makes me feel bad.

I shopped a bit, bought a present for a friend, and managed to navigate the train system back to Perth, and then find the free bus back to the hotel! I’m proud of my public transport navigation skills. Minnesota barely has any, especially not in my area, so it’s all sort of new to me. I love it, though, and I am really getting the hang of it.

I dropped my purchase and a lot of the heavy stuff at the hotel and then wandered over to King’s Park. King’s Park is a huge park on a hill above Perth. One thing that I love about Australia is that every single city has a botanical garden and from what I have seen they are all excellent. King’s Park incorporates the botanical garden of Perth, but it also has lots of bush paths and big open grassy areas where people do exercisey things and tennis courts and playgrounds and war memorials. This is one thing about Australia that I find extremely interesting: you cannot move in this country without running into about six war memorials, almost all of which are for the soldiers from WWI and WWII. They are literally in every town and city across the entire nation, plus the big ones in certain places and all the bridges and roads and buildings dedicated to them, etc. The place where I entered King’s Park had a few really huge ones.

To some extent, I understand why Australia does this. Their contribution to these wars is largely ignored. I mentioned this to Bobby and he said “Wait, Australia was in the World Wars?” and he is not an uneducated person. But it’s true, we never learned about Australia’s contribution in school, there was no Australian character on Hogan’s Heroes (although that would have been highly entertaining, I wish there would have been), no one really thinks about it. Sad, really, when according to Bill Bryson Australia lost more men per capita than any other country and very nearly got taken over by the Japanese. Also, Australia is a very young country and has never had any civil wars (genocide of an indigenous people doesn’t really count as a war) or extreme conflicts with its neighbors, or done any “nation building” or “democracy spreading” so the World Wars are really Australia’s only military history and probably seem a lot more recent because of this. So I understand, and I think it’s actually pretty cool, but at the same time these things are seriously all over the place and sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous.

Anyway, King’s Park was lovely. There were views of the river and the cityscape and the surrounding country. There were flocks of noisy parrots. Because King’s Park is so many different kinds of parks in one it took me a while to find the parts I wanted to see – the bush paths and the quieter botanical parts – but eventually I found them. I had a special interest in King’s Park partially because Bill Bryson saw an echidna here, and I still long to see a monotreme, but alas it did not happen that night. Oh well. It was beautiful nonetheless.

That night I had my first experience dining alone in a real restaurant. I thought about going out but was footsore and tired so I just ate at the hotel restaurant. It was good, and eating alone was not as awkward or sad as I had anticipated. I used my free internet (which it turns out was only 100 mb, barely enough to check my email and reply to one message before I had gone over the limit), pretended to do some work, watched part of The Castle (brilliant Australian movie my host family introduced me to) and fell asleep.

The next morning I caught a cab to the airport, and spent the rest of the day on various aircrafts getting me across the country. I took a lot of pictures out the window and worked on some of the work I had to get done.

Cairns

It didn’t really hit me that I was going back to my friends the whole day. In fact, it wasn’t until I met my friend Gwen at baggage claim that it really sunk in that I was going to get to see them all again. I wish I had written about it at the time because it seems so long ago now. Gwen and I shared a cab back to the Greenhouse and talked nonstop the whole way, trading various stories. About half of the people were already there, so as soon as we dumped our stuff we raced in to the other room and gave everyone hugs. Just after we got back, a few of the other girls came back so we had all but two of our people back. We sat around in the other girls’ room and talked for hours, exchanging stories and news. It was really wonderful. I hadn’t really realized how much I missed all the people in our group until then. We all went out to dinner and then attempted to work on our papers but actually just sat around and talked some more instead. It felt amazing. I really have gotten incredibly close to all of these people in a very short period of time.

The rest of the week is sort of a blur. We were all frantically writing and finalizing travel plans and buying last-minute souvenirs and catching up with each other. Somehow we all finished our papers and gave our presentations. I was actually pretty pleased with how both of mine came out, in the end.

It was amazing to see everyone again and I gradually stopped being quite so paranoid about bedbugs after a few days (although my skin is still really dry from being on the west coast, and Cairns isn’t as humid as it was when I first got here, and so I would have some red bumps or itchiness from that and every time I even remotely have the urge to scratch I am afraid they’re back somehow, even though I did everything I possibly could). As sort of a last hurrah we had one last overnight trip, a mystery trip. We didn’t find out until the day before that we were going to…

Chillagoe

Is a tiny town inland of Cairns. It’s by far the driest most “typically Australian” looking place we’ve been with the group. We stayed at an adorable little hostel and toured a couple of different cave systems. They were really cool, and I have a zillion pictures. We got to get back on the bus, which was fun, and the caves were beautiful. I did have to sit out one part of the cave that had to do with squeezing through a tiny hole. I absolutely hate not participating in things but I know that I would not have been okay in a tiny space like that. It was annoying.

There were lots of cool outside rock formations, too. This whole area is where the Great Barrier Reef was several million years ago, so there are ancient beautiful rocks everywhere. We got to climb on some of them. One of them is called “Balancing Rock” and looks exactly how it sounds.

At night in the lodge we all sat around and had story time with Jack about crazy stunts other SIT and School for Field Studies groups have pulled in the past. Apparently people are insane and did not get in trouble for a lot of things that they probably should have gotten in trouble for. Wow. But it was lots of fun to just sit around and talk with the group and with Jack. I like Jack a lot. And the group. And everything. I miss them.

On the way home we stopped one last time to look for platypi, mostly because I told Jack I didn’t want to leave Australia without seeing a monotreme in the wild. We watched the river for something like half an hour close to dusk when we should have seen them but we did not. *Sigh*. We tried being silent and then at the end just because it worked with the dolphins we tried singing to them. It did not work, but we got a pretty great song out of it. I think “Build Me Up Platypus” is going to be the next big hit.

Cairns (Again)

That night we all dressed up and went out to dinner. It was good to be with everyone and to eat good food that was completely paid for. We talked and laughed and then got presents! We finally got to see the shirts that we all designed together on Lizard Island. Two of the girls perfected the design and sent it off to the printers and they are basically the best shirts ever. I love them. I’m going to wear mine until it falls apart. We also got beer holder things (called “coozies” here apparently) from Lizard Island and a secret surprise present in a poster tube. It’s a tradition not to open them until we get back to the States, so I mailed mine home to avoid temptation and too many things in my suitcase.

The last day was spent frantically packing, tying up loose ends, and buying presents and souvenirs for ourselves around town. The last night the bartender from the hostel threw us an “American Party” – a hoe-down. It was awesome. He even decorated the bar with red white and blue streamers and balloons and we all dressed up in the most western gear we could muster –which was not much considering none of us packed for costume parties. Each one of us got a drink named after us and Jack even came and celebrated with us. It was so much fun. At one point I believe we sang the entire National Anthem. Afterwards a bunch of us went to get hotdogs from this cart which apparently sells the best hotdogs ever. Obviously, I didn’t want one, but I wanted to hang out with the people that did so I went along. As a joke I asked if the guy would give me just some pineapple (why are they putting pineapple on hotdogs? I don’t know) for a dollar (the only money I had left) and he said yes! Best hotdog vendor ever.
I packed frantically and slept fitfully – we all woke up at 3:30 to see Gwen and Mike off, and then again at 6 to see Katherine off, and then again to get ready to go by 9:30. It was really sad saying goodbye to everyone, but it honestly hasn’t really fully hit me yet (even though – to skip ahead – as I write this I am sitting in the Northern Greenhouse and none of them are with me). I really hope we manage to make the reunion thing work, or at least that I get to see everyone again at various points. I miss them a lot and I can’t believe how close we got in such a short amount of time. Anyway, we were sad but Rachel and I were also really excited to start the next phase of our journey: the Red Centre.

Well this is an absurdly long entry already and I’m tired, so I’ll get to the adventures in Alice Springs and the Rock Tour soon. For now let me say that it was fantastic and amazing and wonderful and now I am back in Cairns and tomorrow I will board my last Qantas flight to Sydney. I will miss Qantas, it is by far my favorite airline ever. To be fair, this was not a hard contest to win. I don’t have a lot of criteria for my favorite airline. I will have flown Qantas ten times after tomorrow and on every single flight they have given me at least one meal, no matter how short the flight was or what time of the day it went. The meals were delicious, too! And they had tea! Hands down, best airline ever.

Goodnight, I love you all, and I will see many of you soon!

P.S. Going back to being mistaken for French or German – tonight in the bar I was mistaken for a Canadian. Twice. Once by an actual Canadian. I was also mistaken for a Swede or Dutch. Granted, the guy who guessed both of those was quite drunk but still! How do I not sound just totally American? Also, I learned that apparently May 17th is Norwegian National Day (or something) from the Norwegian girl at the bar. She was very excited about it. Happy Norwegian Day!

Still Alive

Sorry, I have not had time to update! I'm in the middle of writing a long blog post with lots of pictures but I don't know when I'll get to post it. Today is the last day of SIT. I'm done with my paper and my presentation and everything. Tomorrow Rachel and I fly to Alice Springs to go to Uluru. I am sad but excited. Hopefully I'll have time to post about Denmark, Perth/Fremantle, frantic paper writing, and Chillagoe later tonight but if not I love you all and will hopefully update about Uluru from Sydney (or else I will post all of this when I get home on May 20th).

I'm Sorry I'm Not Doing Anything Terribly Exciting Right Now

So it appears that I am not, in fact, going down to Denmark with Berenice and Perrine. Apparently I have not worked nearly enough hours for Valissa, which is funny, frankly, because the only days I haven't come in to work are the days she told me not to, but whatever. So I need to work eight hours a day for the rest of my time here in order to get to 200 hours, which was our agreement. I just wish she hadn't waited until yesterday to tell me all this. So instead, I think I'm going to work ten hours a day (at least) and take a day trip with Berenice and Perrine instead. Hopefully we can still go somewhere fun. I'm also way behind on my paper. Ah! But hopefully I should get the data tomorrow, so that would be good.

And at the end of all this I get to spend a day in Perth and fly back across the country and see my friends and frantically write my paper and then go to a big rock in the middle of the desert and then do...something. I still haven't decided what else I'm going to spend 3-4 days doing before I go home, and then I get to be home.

I feel bad, I shouldn't be looking forward to going home so much. I know I should be "in the moment" and enjoy every minute of Australia while I can, but my brain has moved on to the next thing and I can't stop thinking about all the things I want to do this summer (many, if not most, of which will probably not happen). This whole paper/work stress thing is not helping. I'm sure I'll be able to focus on being in Australia when I go to Uluru, and probably even during that day in Perth, hopefully during our daytrip. Until then it is work work work.

Although on Saturday Berenice and Sam (her Aussie boyfriend) did have a party and I met real Australians! It was fun, if a little crazy. It was weird though - they're all about my age but they seemed so much older! I'm not sure why. Not that they were mature or anything, they just seemed mid-twenties as opposed to just barely twenties. I can't really explain it.

Also on the bright side, bed bugs appear to be under control for now. I washed and dried on the hottest cycle every article of clothing I own (which, I found out afterwards, was probably overkill. The article said I needed to do either, not both. So that makes me feel better), and everything else that is remotely papery is in the freezer and hopefully it is cold enough that ten days will kill anything (it said two weeks if you're not sure how cold it is, but at that point I didn't exactly have two weeks). I still have to clean that house, though, and throw away my old suitcase, and every time I go back is opening myself up to new attack! Ah! I feel like I should be wearing a hazmat suit or something.

Oh! And one more good thing. Today a dolphin finally came into the beach! I've been waiting for that to happen since I came here! They have a little interaction zone where you are allowed to stand very still and watch the dolphins if they choose to come in. The one today was Osho and he seemed very content to just swim around in circles, often about a foot away from us. It was amazing. Not quite as amazing as being really in the water with them - I was only in about up to my knees - but still pretty spectacular. I think I'm going to see if I can go on an eco cruise before I leave, too, so I can actually get some pictures of these animals! I don't mind working late one night to go out on a boat in the afternoon sometime this week.

Wish me luck with my pile-o-stuff to do! I need to get back to fin-matching. Sorry life has become boring, I'll try to work on that.

Stress. What Else is New?

So in a lot of ways this week has been disappointing. We drove down to the lake on Wednesday, put on wetsuits, got in the water, sat on the boat, and Valissa was helping me get the wakeboard on when the boat suddenly died and wouldn't restart. We sat there for a half hour to an hour trying to get it to work, but it didn't, so we went and ate pizza instead. The only good part was that I got to see red-tailed black cockatoos in the wild, which was pretty cool. Hopefully we can try again sometime before I leave.

When I got home I decided to check my bed one more time. I found a live bedbug, so I squashed it and put it in a plastic bag as evidence. Then I found two shed skins, one on the bed and one in my suitcase. Gross. I slept on the couch and got covered in new bites - enough that the next day I took benedryl to make the itching stop and then was loopy and dopey all day. Valissa and Holly rightly told me I needed to move out.

I called to set up a meeting with a guy who runs the sharehouse, but it's all the way across town from my house so I'd have to somehow move all my stuff there, after washing it thoroughly. I called Berenice to see if I could keep my clean/new stuff there while I tried to move it and she said I could just come live with her so after asking about seventeen times if she was really sure I said okay. I went to a laundromat and brought a first load of stuff - just enough to get me through the next few days. I washed and dried everything on the hottest setting, and I dried it for almost a full hour. Heat is supposed to be the only thing that kills the things. Unfortunately, it also shrinks things. Including my brand new sweatshirt. Crap. But it's clean! Valissa's partner gave us a mattress (and later a base for it) and we took it all over to Berenice's house. I'm terrified that I'm going to infest it, so I'm being as careful as I possibly can. Not bringing anything over until it's been washed, as soon as I come into the house in clothes that have been to the old house I change and put the old ones in plastic bags in the backyard. I'll feel like the scum of the universe if I get bedbugs in her brand new house (and in Valissa's mattress) thereby infecting the two people here who have been really really wonderful and helpful to me through this whole thing. But if I had gone to the sharehouse there was no way I could get any laundry done that night, so I couldn't have moved and would have had to be bitten for another night.

Luckily, the owners have been really nice about the whole thing. I sent them some information on exterminators and called a few but they were all thoroughly unhelpful. I have a lot of cleaning - both of my stuff and their stuff - to do before I can fully leave the house, and it's going to take a lot of time. A lot of time that I should be devoting to my paper! This is ridiculous and I'm never going to get done on time.

I'm also scared because they recommend putting books in the oven on 120 degrees for 3 hours in order to get bedbugs out of them. Not only do I have mostly other peoples' books here, but I have assignments in notebooks that I need to turn in! Plus some nostalgic papers and stuff that I want to keep but don't know if I can. Plus I feel like I'm going to burn the house down. I've already just bought a new suitcase and am going to trash the old one. I might be doing that with my backpack, too. Too many little cracks and crevices for them to live in. Augh! This is taking up way too much of my time/energy and making me worry way more than I have been since I've been here and it's driving me crazy.

Last night was rugby which was also more or less disappointing. It turned out it wasn't the Allblacks, and they didn't do the haka. I was misinformed. It was still fun to watch, but none of the people I was sitting with really knew what was going on either, and with most sports I found my attention wandering because I'd rather play than watch. It ended up being the Western Force (Australia) and the Crusaders from New Zealand. The Force was way behind for most of the game but then came back to win it, which was pretty sweet. Also they played the Imperial March when the Crusaders came out, which made me happier than it should have. Also I enjoyed sitting near the crazy screaming fans. The guy behind me was especially loud and especially excitable. They were screaming "Go the Force" instead of just "Go Force" too, which made me giggle.

Oh! And I bought french fries from a stand called "American Fast Foods" where they were flying not only the American flag, but also the Confederate one. Awkward. They were serving something called a "dagwood dog" which Berenice's boyfriend asked if it was really American. I think it was something like a corndog. He said they have corndogs here, but it's just deepfried corn. Weird.

I still can't decide if it's worth going to Brisbane/Gold Coast for a couple of days or if I should spend a couple more days in Sydney or if I should just go home after Uluru. Gah!

Not a horrific week, just less good than it could have been. I have a lot of things to stress out about and it's hard to determine which ones I should stress over first. But I suppose I have to remember that if I were at school it would be much the same, only replace bedbugs and travel plans with yet more papers and finals.

Interesting Australian facts:

A comforter is called a "doona"

Australians are not very good at houses. They don't do insulation, or storm windows, or central air or heating, or really much of anything. Having individual air conditioners in every room makes a lot of sense and worked perfectly well at my host family's in Cairns, we only used them in the room we were in. It was nice. Less good for heat, since two of the houses I've been in have only had one heater for the main room and that's it, plus you wouldn't need as many heaters if you had insulation. But, you know, whatever.

In Which Things are Looking Up

Sunday during the day was also not great - not as bad as Saturday, but I was not doing a very good job on the boat and I think Valissa was getting exasperated. I realized that I probably wasn't actually doing that much worse than usual, but that previously I'd had an unusual (for me) amount of patience with myself while I was learning something new. On Sunday I fell back on the old habit of mentally beating myself up for not knowing how to do something, or getting defensive instead of just trying to remember and learn from my mistake. Very annoying. I think it was just because of my bad-mood carry over from Saturday.

However, after work everything started to get better. I stayed in the office for a little while to use the internet (because I'm always afraid I'm going to go over the ridiculous limit here and end up owing thousands of dollars) and got to see the really sweet Dutch girl and the nice guy from England again before they left on Monday. They were both dolphin centre volunteers and were some of the last to leave.

It was a glorious day so I decided to go to the beach. The ocean here is very different than it was in Cairns, for one thing, there aren't stingers so you don't have to stay in the stupid nets. It's way way colder, and there are WAVES. The most intense waves and undertow I've ever swam in (not that I've had a lot of oceanic experience). I made sure to swim near other people, a nice man and his kids. We talked a little bit, and after they left I stayed in for a while and then lay on the beach in the fading sun and read my book. Lovely.

I ate and sat down the veg out for a bit, then Berenice texted me and invited me over. We were planning on going back to the video store because it had been a week and we had to take our movies back and get new ones. I came over and we sat and talked. Her boyfriend had his friends over and it was so weird - the boys sat in the kitchen and talked and cooked and the girls sat at the dinner table and talked. I don't know why, there was almost no crossover. It was weird. Valissa came over for a bit, which was awkward. I just don't know how to interact with her. Sometimes she is really fun and nice and great and sometimes I feel like she is sorry she said I could come help her. I like her, I just don't know how to deal with that or the stress of my project.

Then we went to the video store and I took too long picking out my movies. I'm happy with them, though. I got a nice array: girl power funny (Whip It), what Maria would call "guy humor" funny (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), 1920s British funny (Jeeves and Wooster), New Zealand funny (Flight of the Conchords), and Shakespearean funny (Twelfth Night). I trust you are sensing the theme. Then we went back to Berenice's and I got my wish: she, Perrine, and I watched a movie. It was so nice. We put a blanket down on the floor (they haven't gotten their couch yet, it's still being ordered) and had a picnic of watermelon and watched Whip It, which was an excellent movie. I had to explain a couple of words or idioms, which was fun. I've never really been in a position to do that before. It was really really nice.

Monday was my day off. I had stayed in on Saturday night because going out would have been a terrible idea, so Steph, the German girl from the hostel and I planned to hang out on Monday. I woke up, talked to Bobby and my mom and a few other people for a little while, and then went to yoga with Berenice. It's not really yoga, it's called Body Balance and is sort of like tai chi/yoga/pilates thing. It's okay, and is really good for my legs and stomach, but I really want to try real yoga ever since I did it with Katherine. Then I came home, changed, and ran to the beach to meet Steph. We lay in the sun and talked and tanned and went in the ocean a little bit, but the waves were fierce so we didn't stay in long. I read my book for a little while and fell asleep. It was lovely. I found out when I came home that the sun had been ever-so-slightly off to the side so now one side of my back and the opposite side of my front are much darker than the other sides. Oh well. I showered and changed and walked into town, thinking I had plenty of time to deposit my rent money, but it turns out that banks here close an hour earlier than they do in the states, so I got there right after it had shut. I went back and cooked and read and watched Australian TV (and American TV on Australian TV - they played Myth Busters!) and bought my plane ticket back to Cairns (May 6th, hopefully with a day stop in Perth first).

Then I decided to take Steph up on her offer to hang out with some of the people from the "other hostel". It was the other American's last night before he started his travels around the rest of Australia. We sat and talked and I realized that maybe I do not quite fit with the typical backpacker. It's not that I don't like them, because I do, they're fun. But the whole travel mentality they have is completely different. I can't do the completely free, gypsy traveler kind of thing. It sounds nice, on the outside. I mentioned to a few people that I've been homesick lately and they say that they're not, they don't want to go home. One of the older Australian guys was talking about how he had been travelling for fourteen years, seeing all of Australia because at the end of this year he was going to leave and he was never coming back. Never? I don't understand that. I love travel, and I hope that I do a great deal of it in my lifetime. It would be nice not to feel sad while I'm here, but at the same time I think it's sadder not to miss home. I will be sad to leave Australia, I really will, I love it here, but I love home too and I have friends and family and a great internship waiting for me. I can't imagine not having people and places that you are so attached to that you want to go back there. I hope I travel a great deal during my life but part of travel is having a home to come back to in between. It won't always be the same home, probably, but I love that there are people I love waiting for me, even when it makes me sad.

Today I worked in the office most of the day. I got to meet Lars! Lars is my advisor's advisor and has been off studying dolphins in Shark Bay the whole time I've been here. It was particularly exciting to meet him because I just read two of his papers and cited them in the last paper I wrote. I've never met a reference before. I felt sort of nerdily in awe and felt like I should ask for his autograph.

The itchy bites have gotten worse. I vacuumed and sprayed some more and have been sleeping on the couch, but they haven't stopped. Valissa suggested I talk to the chemist so I stopped on my way home. I showed him my arms and asked what he thought. He said it looked to him like sand fly bites. He said everyone reacts to them differently but that's what they looked like to him, and that you don't feel the sand flies land on you, often the bites don't appear and start itching until the next day. This would explain why I woke up with bites I hadn't had before, and why the bites only started last week (after the first time I went to the beach and to Big Swamp Wildlife refuge). And why the bites have kept happening - I've been going to the beach most days since this started. He said they could take up to a week to heal and said that the flies would not have come home with me. I'm trying not to get my hopes up but I'm going to stay off the beach and away from the swamp for a few days (which will be hard, believe me, especially since I have so little time left with the ocean!) and see if they go away. Cross your fingers for me!

So I couldn't go to the beach today. Instead, I sat at the table on my back porch - a lovely little area overlooking the sea and surrounded by potted plants - and filled out my course evaluation and then read my book while the sun set and the waves rolled in. It is a fantastic book for reading in this beautiful spot, and for reading at all while you're travelling, especially alone, especially for a long time, especially if you are interested in spiritual and religious things. It's called Eat Pray Love, and I'm the third person in the group to read this exact copy, the first two loved it so much. I'm almost done with it and I'm at that point that I get to with books where I don't want to put it down but I also want to read very slowly because I don't want it to be over. I also ate lots of chocolate eggs. The left over easter candy is ridiculously cheap right now and I cannot stop eating them. Well, now I can because they are all gone.

One really amazing thing happened today, also: Rachel decided to come with me to Uluru after all! We booked our tickets today. It was more money than I've ever spent in a single sitting but we've got spots on the tour and plane tickets there and back. All we need now is accommodation! I'm so excited! I still need to figure out what else I want to do before I go home, and when exactly I'm going home, but I'm getting to Uluru and I have someone to go with and I am happy.

The rest of this week is looking really fantastic, too: tomorrow I'm going water-skiing with Valissa and maybe some other researchers and people. Friday we're going to the rugby in Perth, Saturday is Berenice's house warming, Sunday we are having a Crepe party with the two French girls and their Italian friend (and I will attempt to speak French!), and then hopefully sometime next week we are going down to Denmark and the Treetop walk. Somewhere in there I have to work 40 hours a week and write my paper. Ah! I will make it work. I will start right now. I will be motivated, and not get distracted. Wish me luck!

I love and miss you all and thank you for being there for me.

Long and Ranty and Sad - You Have Been Warned

I'm freaking out. Today marks 3 months since I left Minnesota and I think it might be my limit. Yesterday and today I have felt so intensely homesick! Even though I've had plenty of things to do and have been around people. I don't know how to shake it and it's driving me nuts.

The other thing that is driving me nuts is how itchy I am. I really think this is making the homesickness worse. You see, a couple of days ago I found some big red itchy bumps on my arms and I thought that was weird because I haven't seen any mosquitoes around here. Then I found a bug on my wall and I squished it and it was all bloody which means it's probably been feasting, right? So at Bobby's suggestion I looked up bedbugs online and it looked like the thing I killed! So I washed all the sheets on hot and put stuff through the dryer and even dried the pillows and the comforter (although I didn't have time to fully was them, it's heat that kills the little buggers anyway) and I washed all my clothes and I sprayed the room. I don't know because I didn't mark the bites but I think that I got more that night anyway. Last night I sprayed the room again and I sprayed bugspray on before I went to bed and once again today I can't tell if any of my spots are new ones or not but I am sick and tired of itching! I have no idea what to do with a house with bedbugs in it. I am afraid that the people who live here are going to make me deal with it/pay for it and I don't know how and I'm so stressed out. I love the house but if I were living in the hostel this would be easy. I would freak out at the managers and they would fix it or I would leave or both. I don't know what to do. I'm itchy and I'm sick of being itchy. I was supposed to recuperate from the mosquitoes and the horseflies here! Most of all I'm afraid I'll bring them with me when I leave.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that I worked today for eleven and a half hours. I went out last night with friends (the two French girls and their Italian friend) which was lots of fun and we even came back early but I only got five hours of sleep (max) because this morning I woke up at five. I got to Valissa's house at 5:30 and we were on the boat by sunrise (a little after six). We were on the boat until 3 and at the office until 6pm. I didn't have my bike so I had to walk home, and that is when all of this really majorly hit. Oh, I also haven't eaten very much today, and I know I haven't been drinking enough water.

On the boat Valissa and I talked about my paper. She was very nice and helpful about it but it is so ridiculously stressful! Everything is way more complicated than it seems like it should be. She doesn't want me to use this for my senior thesis (which I am not as freaked about now because I'm hopefully going to use Zoo Internship Project for that) she was really concerned about how I was going to cite everything - especially my methods - and apparently everything is going to have to go through her and maybe one or two other people before I turn it in or present on it. She will ask Berenice to help me analyze the photos but she wants me to do them her way (in addition to the ones I already need to finish to help her) on my own time and she just texted right now saying she doesn't want me to use any of her previous data (which she said before I could use) so now I can't compare seasonality at all. I'm so screwed. I have like three weeks to do this.

Also, people are backing out on me for going to Uluru. Originally three people were all as stoked as I was to go see Uluru after the program and now none of them are interested and I had said that I wanted to go whether they were or not but considering how much I miss everyone right now the thought of voluntarily going through all this travel and stuff alone again does not sound worth it. I almost want to not change my flight to later at all and just come home after the program is done because I've already seen Sydney (which suddenly people are interested in). I know there's more to see and I know I will kick myself later if I don't do more here but right now I'm tired and lonely and homesick and stressed and itchy and I just want to go home and be hugged by people who love me and go to sleep in a not-bedbug-infested-bed. That is all I want.

I don't know how to deal with any of this. The German girl from the hostel invited me to go out with her and the few remaining volunteers from the dolphin centre and being with people sounds nice but I don't know if I should stay awake past, like, nine tonight, and I'm scared about getting home at night. What I want is someone to stay in and watch a movie with me, if I can't do the abovementioned going home, etc., and Berenice and Perrine might do that with me if I asked them but tonight they are in Perth.

Sorry about all this, I just had to get it all out. Everything was going so wonderfully and then it all fell apart and I'm not sure what happened. Except for bedbugs. Goddamn it.

In Which I am On a Boat and Life is Good

As usual, this is going to be a long entry. Let's see...nothing really happened on Thursday, I think. Friday I woke up super early for our very first day of data collection! I learned a lot about the boat right away. Berenice, the French research assistant was with us that day but wasn't going to be the next so I had to learn how to do everything she did really fast. I got to drive the boat! I'm not entirely sure this is legal, but it was fun. Boats are difficult because there is a significant delay in anything you do - turning the steering wheel or changing the speed. But I got the hang of it.

The boat trip was long and sunny and cold and windy! Even though I braided my hair and had my hood up most of the time my hair was in ridiculous knots when I got back. My poor hair. It has put up with so much since I’ve been here. Sun and wind and salt. Anyway, it was all worth it because I go to see more dolphins! Obviously not from inside the water but it still made me happy and excited every time. We also saw a couple of penguins! And cormorants, which I love.

A good thing about waking up so early is that we get done really early. I was home by 2:00 on Friday, which was nice but also kind of scary. I’ve found most days that as I’m riding my bike home I start feeling homesick and lonely, with a lot of hours to fill between the end of work and time to sleep.

But! I came home on Friday, opened my computer, checked my email, and there in my inbox was something fantastic. It was an offer for the behavioral management internship at the Minnesota Zoo! I applied for it last summer and didn’t get it and the woman said that me being persistent put me over the edge. It sounds so amazing! I can’t wait. They’re getting a new exhibit in and so mostly I’ll be monitoring the new monkey groups to make sure that they are behaving normally, adjusting to their new surroundings and to each other alright. I also get to observe the grizzlies. And I could even get to do a special project!

After that I was feeling pretty good. I decided to wander around Bunbury, so I brought my camera and set off. As soon as I left my house I heard the weirdest noise. It sounded like R2D2. It was a magpie sitting on the powerlines across the street. I took a ton of pictures and tried to take a video but I think it might have been too windy to catch the noises it was making. Then I heard a raven from down the street. Australian ravens make the most ridiculous noises! Something like a crying robot baby. I tried to get a video of the raven, too, but I don’t think it worked. Then the weirdest thing happened! The raven and the magpie attacked each other! I got a couple of cool pictures and a very shakey video. I watched them for a long time. They kept separating and I thought it was over but then the attacked again! The raven even went and got one of his buddies, but I think in the end the magpie still won. It was really cool to watch.

I wandered towards the main city area, taking pictures as I went of the sea and houses I wanted and anything that caught my eye. I’ll post these on facebook sooner or later. Bunbury really is a cute little town. I like it a lot. I got some groceries at the store and while I was staring at the produce trying to decide what to eat for dinner one of the volunteers from the dolphin centre came over and said hi. We chatted for a bit and she invited me to a barbeque at their hostel that night! It was really exciting, I’m so glad I went grocery shopping! So I bought some fake hot dogs and buns in addition to what I was going to buy, then I bought a reusable shopping bag and carried it all home. I didn’t think my house was that much further from the city until I had to carry a jam-packed shopping bag all the way there! Boy was that a workout for my arms!

But anyway, I sat around for an hour and then headed over to the barbeque. It’s a little awkward because they’ve all been together for six weeks and most of them are leaving soon, so I feel like a bit of an outsider but it was still fun. They are from all over the world and it’s so fun to be surrounded by so many different cultures and so many hilarious people. I planned on just eating dinner and then going home but that turned into sitting around and talking and then they taught me a new game and then they were all going out to a club and I decided – against my better judgment, since I had to wake up at 6 again – to join in. It was the same one we went to before and the music wasn’t great, but it was fun anyway and nice to be around people. I stayed longer than I meant to because I didn’t want to walk back alone, but I was happy anyway.

I only got a couple of hours of sleep, but the next day in the boat all by myself for the first time was good anyway. On the way home I got the same homesickness but I biked past a large open field not far from my house where there was a horse show/country music thing going on so after I went home and ate an entire chocolate bunny that I got on sale after Easter I headed down there with my camera again.
I love horses. I thought it would make me sad and miss Lark to be around them, and it did, but it also made me so happy just to be around horses. I love watching them and how they sound and I even love the horse smell. The weird part to me was that it was a hunter jumper show but they had country music. In the US if there was country music involved it would only be western riding. It was just a strange combination. But I guess it is like Australia, the rough outback frontier country-ness mixed with the prim proper Britishness.

Anyway, while I was petting one of the horses an older Australian guy came over and started talking to me. Apparently his sister lives in Iowa. He used to be a sheep and wheat farmer and now he is a construction manager or something so we commiserated about how we miss farm animals. Then he got a little weird and was saying he wanted to keep in touch and take me to see things I needed to see in Western Australia and stuff like that. This is something that’s happened to me frequently in Australia. Actually, the first time wasn’t even in the country! It was on the plane ride over! It’s usually olderish Australian men and I cannot for the life of me decide if they are being nice or creepy. Is it my American paranoia that makes me nervous when they really just want to be nice and show off their home, or is it naïve to think that they are being nice? I have never been able to decide, so I always err on the side of caution. I did give him my email address, but didn’t tell him where I was staying or give him my phone number and I told him I was staying with people, not on my own. He gave me his phone number and address and everything, but he hasn’t contacted me yet so I think I’m going to ignore it. I know I was just complaining about not meeting Australians, but this just gives me a bad feeling.

After that I wandered down the beach back towards my house. There are very few things prettier than the sunset over the ocean and I get to see it every single day here! It was gorgeous and the waves were crashing and the water was all foamy and it was just wonderful.

The third day on the boat was probably the best. It was still just me and Valissa but I’d gotten better at driving. It was rough getting to the transect but once we were there it was nice. I made the first dolphin sighting which made me really happy! And then the second time we saw dolphins I noticed a mum and calf pair that Valissa hadn’t seen yet and it turned out to be two new individuals! That was really exciting. The calf was brand new and tiny, too! On the way home we saw some kind of sea eagle flying, which was cool. Oh! And on the way to meet Valissa in the morning I finally saw a galah! Galahs are beautiful pink parrots and I’d wanted to see one ever since I’d been here so that made me really happy.

Just as I was starting to feel that familiar homesickness on my bike back that day my phone trilled. It was Berenice, the other research assistant. She was moving into her first house with her boyfriend and wanted to know if I wanted to help her put her brand new Ikea furniture together (I’d offered to help her move before). I jumped at this and went straight over to her house (right down the street from mine). It was fun! I liked putting the furniture together, and I love talking to Berenice. She’s sweet and fun and nice and her accent is fantastic. Her boyfriend is a nice Australian, but very quiet and shy which is rare for Australians, it seems. Seeing her brand new house with all her brand new stuff made me really excited to get my own place and my own stuff. Jeez, I can’t believe that will happen in a little over a year! Crazy!

Well while I was there Valissa called and Berenice handed the phone to me. Valissa explained that they were going to a rugby game in Perth in a couple of weeks and one of their friends just backed out, leaving an extra ticket, and did I want to come? It was Australia vs. New Zealand, which is why they were particularly keen to go (Valissa is a kiwi). I asked, just to be absolutely sure, what kind of rugby it was. Rugby League. The New Zealand League team is the All Blacks! The one sporting event that I really wanted to go to while I was here and figured I had basically no chance of getting to, and here it is! Obviously I said yes, so in two weeks I get to see the All Blacks Haka live. I AM SO EXCITED!!

Berenice and I were also talking about places I should visit in Western Australia and she has a friend coming to visit from France and wants to take her south to a town called Denmark. Denmark is apparently an adorable little community right next to the Karri and Jarrah forests and the Tree Top Walk which Bill Bryson mentioned and I really want to see! She invited me to go with them, but we still have to figure out when. I really really hope it works out!

I also just happened to mention that I wanted to go rent movies and they said that they needed to take theirs back and I was welcome to come along! The people I’m renting this house from have a fantastic TV but only like 6 movies. So I went. Everything is just sort of lining up for me lately, it’s really and truly amazing *knocks on wood*. Anyway, I forgot how much I loved video stores. I know that with Netflix you don’t have to leave your house, but I really loved wandering through the store and grabbing whatever I felt like watching, right then at that moment. I got five movies (one of which was actually a season of Jeeves and Wooster) for something like $7. Lovely.

Yesterday I had a day off. I talked to Bobby for probably way too long on Skype and then went and wandered around town some more. I bought a sweatshirt because while it’s warm enough to wear a tank top and shorts during the day here at night and in the morning it gets incredibly cold. Plus, it’s a good excuse for me to get something with “Australia” written in large letters across the chest and an Australian flag on it. I did some work and sat out on my balcony listening to the waves crash and reading my book as the sun set. I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral. It was a good day.

Today I have another day off. So far I’ve been sitting in my bed talking to people online and typing this up. I’m trying to decide between going to the beach and going to the wildlife preserve. I should probably do some work at some point, too, but that may or may not happen. I should definitely do some laundry. Tonight I’m going to yoga with Berenice and Valissa and then we might be watching Mama Mia (at least, Berenice and I).

In short: I am very happy. Even when I get sad I know that if I just force myself to do something, even as simple as leaving the house instead of just sitting around and moping, I will get happy again. I know that I’ve only been living in this town for two weeks and this house for one and a half, so maybe it will get worse in the coming weeks, but for right now it feels really good to know that I can be happy on my own and make friends and have fun and just be. It’s a good feeling.

As always, I miss and love you.

MY LIFE IS THE MOST AWESOME LIFE THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED!

I just got back from SWIMMING WITH DOLPHINS! What?! It was probably the most amazing experience in the midst of this huge experience which is the most amazing experience of my life. The Dolphin Centre where I'm doing my research does swim tours which usually cost something like $180 but since I am a research assistant it was free! So I woke up ridiculously early this morning, came down here, suctioned myself into a wetsuit and went out on a boat.

We saw several pods which was fantastic in and of itself. I was right on the bow when a couple of them started bow riding right underneath me! We also saw a brand new baby, only about a week old. This was all just from the boat. I was actually really impressed with their system. I was a little concerned about swimming with wild dolphins, (about them, not about safety) but they way they handle it is really cool. For one thing, the boat has a special engine that makes all the noise above water, and little to no noise underwater, which is sweet. Also, every group they see they watch its behavior before people are allowed to get in. They look for signs of mating, fighting, or feeding, and don't get in if they're doing any of those things. When they do get in, it's about 100 or 150 meters from where the dolphins actually are, and then its the peoples' job to be as interesting to these naturally curious creatures as possible, in the hopes that they'll swim over and see us. You're not allowed to get in the water anywhere near a new calf, and if you touch a dolphin there's a fine of multiple thousands of dollars. There's absolutely no guarantee you will get anywhere near dolphins on these tours. I'm pretty pleased with this system!

So anyway, we got in the water near a group of big males all swimming together. The water was freezing and very murky, by the way, nothing like the Great Barrier Reef. The people on the boat recommend that you make noise, in and out of the water, duck dive, do anything to make them want to know what you are. So we started singing "You're the One That I Want" from Grease and all of a sudden we started seeing fins coming towards us. Straight towards us. Suddenly they were all around us! I could hear them clicking and whirring underwater and then there one was, about a foot away from me, casually swimming by on his side with his belly towards me. It was the most surreal experience I've ever had. I think I got a picture of just how close he got, I believe it is just a close up of dolphin belly. It wasn't really until we got on the boat that I realized what had just happened. It was so fast, too!

Once they left we got back on the boat and saw some more socializing behavior which was cool. We were running out of time but we saw a mother and older calf who looked like they might just be foraging or sort of chilling so we got in the water again. From the water we got to see some more dolphins further away surfing on the waves! There would be a big swell and the dolphin would ride right with it and jump completely out of the water. It was SO cool to see in real life, even if it was far away!

We were trying to get their attention again and I suggested we try "You're the One That I Want" again since it worked the last time. The other two people who were really singing before laughed and agreed so we sang it and sure enough, they swam right under us! They kept circling and coming back, too! I swear both of them were about a foot away from me, swimming right under me in the water. I was in such awe that time that I completely forgot about my camera.

I seriously cannot believe that just happened. I'm actually still shaking a little bit. I swam with wild dolphins in the Indian Ocean. Oh my god. Even if my project is terrible and working for Valissa is terrible and I don't get to see anything in Western Australia or make any good friends or have any time off for the rest of the month, I'm pretty sure it will all be worth it for those few minutes of being that close to something so beautiful in the wild. My life is awesome.

In Which I Don't Have a Lot to Say, But I Say it Anyway

Today marks one week since I came to Bunbury and eleven weeks since I first came to Australia (although technically eleven weeks ago today didn't exist for me because of the whole international dateline thing). This is positively crazy! It feels like it's going by so fast but also like I've been here forever. Depending on my travel plans I only have something like seven weeks left. I want to go home but I also don't feel like I've really experienced Australia fully yet. There are so many places I want to go that I know I won't get to. But more than that, I feel like I still haven't met that many real Australians. Staying in hostels there are always more foreign visitors than people from Australia. There are a few Australians in the hostel I just left that I talked to, but not that many. The thing is, the Australians that live here don't need to talk to random strangers from other countries. They've got lives and friends of their own here, and just go about their business. I don't really know how to get to know Australians here, although I have a few more weeks to work on it (I've given up on finding Australians in Cairns, there are very very few).

I guess that's sort of my problem. I love doing the touristy things and seeing the country, and there's so much that I want to see, but just seeing the country and doing tours with other tourists isn't really the same as experiencing it with real Australians. I did live with Australians for two weeks, and now I'm living like an Australian, but not with them, so I guess I don't really know what else I could do to experience the country, but I feel like there should be something. Maybe that's another reason for me not to live in the hostel, I can try to meet more locals somehow.

On the other hand, I might have so much work the next month that I won't have time to worry about meeting locals, or foreigners, or seeing things, or being lonely, or anything except for dolphins. The past two days it's been dawning on me just how much forty hours per week is and writing a paper on top of it, especially when I have no idea how to write this paper or what to write it about. A month just doesn't seem like nearly enough time to collect enough data to get a 20-50 page paper done (much less enough time to get the data and write the paper). Ah! I was hoping this could double (with some extra work next year) as my senior thesis, but now I'm thinking it might be too crap to use for that and I'm freaking out a little. But not really as much as I normally would about something like this, so that's good.

Anyway, in honor of this quasi-anniversary I will leave you with a few new Australianisms:

"______ as." as in "If you take the seat out that car would be spacious as." (I assume it's just taking off the "anything" from "spacious as anything" but this is something I've only heard since I've gotten here (although mainly from a guy from Sydney and one of the German girls who went to school for a while in Adelaide, so maybe it's not a regional thing. Anyway, it's weird)

"to spit the dummy" as in "Boy did she ever spit the dummy after that." (This takes a bit of explaining, as it's actually double slang. "Dummy" is a pacifier, so to spit the dummy is to throw a tantrum - like when little kids get so upset they spit the pacifier out of their mouth to scream - but it's used for people of all ages throwing tantrums)

"...hey?" They say this instead of "What?" when they don't understand what someone says (apparently they find it rude when people say "What?" which I just found out, so I've probably been pissing off Australians all over the place), also used like "eh?" to get someone to agree with a statement you've made.

"Esky" is a cooler - like you would put beer into - taken from the brand Eskimo, I think. Don't sit on other peoples' eskies, it's very rude, because then they have to ask you to move to get their next beer.

Anyway, I should get back to work. Sometime in the next couple of days I will try to take pictures around Bunbury and post them. Also, wish me luck with my interview for my summer internship tonight, and swimming with the dolphins tomorrow morning!

A Night Out (Followed by a Day In) In Small Town Australia

Tonight I went out with the German girls from my hostel, a girl I met from Albany (Western Australia, not New York), and a bunch of the volunteers from the dolphin centre. I was sleepy and didn’t want to go but decided that since I might end up hermitting for the rest of the month I should at least make an appearance and try to make some friends. Plus, I was interested to see what Bunbury Nightlife would be like. Oh boy.

We went to a place called Fitzgerald’s (the German girls called it “Fitzie’s”) that advertised itself as a “late night Irish pub” or something like that. It started out fairly normal. There was a small, sparsely populated dance floor. They played older but still good dancing music, there were some trampy-looking overdressed girls (I felt super underdressed because I’d packed all my skirts and my one dress in the bag I already brought over to my new house!), but generally it was all good. Then it turned out there was also a live band. I think they were called “Perfect Strangers” (which made me laugh, obviously they never got that 80s show here) and were pretty decent. They mostly just covered American rock music from the 80s. The lead singer looked like a Jon Bon Jovi wannabe (complete with feathered hair), but that’s okay. They were decent and although none of it is great dancing music, I do get a kick out of belting out “Livin’ on a Prayer” with a huge crowd of people (judging from the volunteers it turns out that people all over Europe know every American song). We mostly tolerated them and then every three or four songs they would take a break and the DJ would bring back the good dancing music.

The dance floor was small but it was decked out, unreasonably so. It had a many-pointed star-shaped disco ball, colored lights that were programmed to move and change and all sorts of things, and even fog machines. It was a little ridiculous. But fun, nonetheless.

My favorite thing was the people. The volunteers were fun. I felt awkward because I’m not really part of their group but it was nice to have people to (sort of) dance with. I was asked by a Canadian if the college bar scene in Wisconsin is "just like the movies". I had no idea what to say so I said yes. What movies are there about Wisconsin college bars? I got hugged by a very drunk girl wearing a mauve taffeta dress. Twice. I saw a guy who looked like his name was probably Slippery Simon the Used Car Salesman, or possibly Vinny “The Rat” Macchiato. Complete with bowling shirt and awkwardly younger than him fake blonde bimbo. But the piece de resistance was the greatest hairdo that has ever existed in the history of the world. I wish I had had my camera. It was a mullet, but the back was all in dreadlocks, and to top it all off he had tied two of the dreadlocks around all the others so that it looked at first glance like a rattail. I am not kidding. I didn’t know it was possible to be so many kinds of ugly all at the same time! Even if everything else had been terrible that would have made my night, and probably my week.

I need to go out in Bunbury more often.

Today I moved into the house. I sat around here feeling vaguely awkward most of the day while the owners frantically packed (I was frantic trying to pack for this trip, I can’t imagine packing for two months away with an infant!). I positively wallowed in the internet. I will go ahead and admit this: I am an addict. It’s true. I love the internet. A lot of it is that I’m homesick and so I am facebook stalking people from home quite a bit more than usual, but I just love the internet in general. I didn’t realize how much until I couldn’t be on it whenever I wanted and had to pay up to $6 per hour. It’s not a problem when I don’t have it, it turns out. On the Aboriginal camping trip where there was just no chance I could even see a computer I was totally fine, but sitting in the hostel using my laptop but not being able to check on my friends or my favorite websites is sort of like torture. It’s pathetic, I know, but it’s true. Of course, it’s been worse since I got to Bunbury because there’s been no wireless and internet is more expensive here than it was in Cairns, and I don’t have other things (like real live friends) to distract me as much. So I’ve been on the internet basically nonstop since I got here around 11 this morning.

But that’s not all I did! I also played with a baby. Shannon and Jeremy, the people I’m renting from, have an absolutely adorable 9 month old named Kaylin (I don’t actually know how to spell it). I got to hold her and play with her and watch her while they were packing and she loved me. I am mostly afraid of babies, because I haven’t been around them very much and I’m always afraid I’m going to damage them or they’re going to damage themselves while I’m supposed to be looking after them, but actually getting to play with one (especially one that grinned every time she looked at me and followed me around as best she could, not walking yet) was really fun. I was a little sad they were leaving, so I wouldn’t get to play with her anymore.

I’ve decided to give myself the day off. Today is a relaxation day. Technically this is bad, because yesterday and the day before that were days off from work, but I was doing school work. I still have a paper to finish for school, and I’ve been meaning to go out and explore and do things around Bunbury so I don’t become an insane shut-in, but I’m not going to do that today, either. It’s Easter Sunday and everything in the entire country is closed, anyway (that is one thing I’ve noticed here, they don’t at all have the “I must be able to buy stuff every minute of every day” mentality that there is in America. Almost all businesses – even malls! – close at 5:30, except on Sundays when it’s earlier and Thursdays when it’s “late night” shopping night and things stay open till 9. If grocery stores stay open “late” on other days it’s until 8. That took some getting used to and some mad runs to buy things at 4:45. My question is: how do people ever shop if they work until 5? But I digress). I am lonely and homesick but exhausted from constantly being around strangers, so just for today I will do what I want to do. I will lounge. I will enjoy having a brightly sunlit house (hostel rooms NEVER have enough light) and I will read my book(s) and I will cook stirfry for dinner and I will watch one, if not both of the Shrek movies they left for me to take back to the video store (in return for letting me use their account, which is sweet). I will continue to look at everything on the internet, and I will probably eat several more Tim Tams dipped in Nutella (because I am a fatty and it is delicious). My hope is that if I relax and abuse my internet privileges today, then I will be able to focus on work more tomorrow and will have gotten it at least somewhat out of my system. I think my plan is a good one. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been able to just relax for a day, and I think it will make me feel a lot better. That’s the hope, anyway.

As always, I love and miss you.

Brief Update From the Edge of the World

Since the previous post was written things have gotten better. I actually really enjoyed wandering around town by myself the first day. I met some people at the hostel and the people I'm going to be working with and they all seem very nice. One of the couples I met are going out of town for the next two months and offered me their house to live in while I'm here, for cheaper than the hostel so I think I'm going to do that (I was worried about being lonely, but I think it will be good. They should be calling to confirm sometime soon and I will say yes! Yay!).

I've been a little more homesick just because I don't have anyone here, but I think this will be a good experience, overall. I need to focus on my work a little more but I also found a whole bunch of touristy things to do in this area that I might have money for with the money I'm saving on where I live! Plus I might start taking yoga or surf lessons or something like that. I will find ways to talk to people. I will find out what it's like to be alone, which is an entirely new phenomenon to me (even when I went off to college I started out knowing at least a couple of people). Plus, it's only for five weeks. I'm feeling very optimistic at the moment.

I really need to be doing work, though. Love you and miss you!

Written My First Morning in Bunbury (Not Posted Till Now Due to Internet Difficulties)

OH dear god what I am I doing here? Currently I am sitting in my new bed for the next month, in an oddly shaped and quite run-down single room (thank god it’s a single at least, totally worth the extra money) in Bunbury, Western Australia. I am thousands and thousands of miles from the nearest person I know. Right now I am feeling a lot like I was on that second day of the program when I completely freaked out. Except, I’m not completely freaking out. Most of me is, but there is this part that is saying “You’re alone. Freaking out won’t help, you just have to figure out how to make it work.” Which I think is lots and lots of progress from a few months ago.

Let’s start a little further back. On Saturday we hiked up the highest point on Lizard Island. They told us that sports sandals like Tevas would be fine to wear so that was all I brought, but it turned out that some parts of the “path” were up sheer rocks. Oh yeah, and it was spitting rain so everything was covered with a nice slippery layer of wet. I slipped and fell a couple of times, but I didn’t break anything so it’s okay. I like hiking up things but hate hiking down. After that we had our last ever snorkel which was actually really cool. I saw another octopus! We watched it for a long time and it seemed to be digging. It would disappear into its hole, then come back up a little while later and spit sand out of the hole, go back in, repeat. I have a very shakey video of it. We also saw a bunch of sting rays and a remora! Pretty cool.

Sunday was hard. Three of our number were staying at Lizard Island for their ISPs, so they came to the airport to see us off and basically everyone was crying. It’s amazing how close you can get to people in just a couple of months. When we got home the group felt small and not entirely right. We worked on our papers for the next two days, and then Monday night everyone who was left decided to take me out for my last night in Cairns. We ate at a delicious Asian place and then went to the Irish pub, P.J. O’Brien’s. We tried to go to a dancing place but it was a Monday night and there was literally no one there. So we all ended up back at the hostel bar, hanging out with the bar tender and talking. I ended up having a very heated discussion with a drunken American English major who claimed that science fiction/fantasy could never be literature, it was all just pulp. Conversations I never thought I would have in a bar in Australia.

Anyway, there was lots and lots of hugging and “I’m going to miss you so much, you’ll have so much fun”, etc. Then they came down with me in the morning and we did it all again before I got in a cab to go to the airport. I was really really sad but it hadn’t quite dawned on me yet how alone I was going to be. Actually, it still sort of hasn’t. And even though I hate saying goodbye and leaving people I was kind of excited to travel all by myself.

Most of the day went off without a hitch. Things I need to remember when booking flights: pay attention to where your seat is, and get one by the window, and ask for a vegetarian meal. But Qantas (Australian airline) is lovely and gives lots of food (even if it is mostly carbs) so I was pretty much okay. The man sitting next to me on the first flight even switched seats with me so I could try and see Uluru when we were landing (unfortunately it was on the other side of the plane, but I saw it a little bit. I’ll be back, anyway).

Ayer’s Rock airport is the tiniest airport I have ever seen in my life, besides Lizard Island. We got to walk down a set of stairs straight onto the tarmac like they do in movies but I have never done in real life. Stepping from the rainforest into the desert was pretty cool. Anyway, I walked into the airport, went through security again (I had a pocket knife in the top pocket of my backpack the entire day, I realized, but they didn’t seem to care), went to the bathroom, bought a packet of chips, and then they called my flight. We walked outside and got back on the exact same plane I had been on on the way there, only a few rows up.

This time I sat next to two British ladies. We didn’t talk much. I was super lucky, though, because one of them had ordered a vegetarian meal and didn’t want it, so I got half a vegetarian sandwich and didn’t feel quite as gross, because at least I ate a few vegetables that day.

At Perth I found my bag, and all my stuff got sniffed by an adorable beagle quarantine dog looking for fruit or other things brought into the state. I followed the signs to the shuttle that would take me to the train station but I couldn’t find it and just as I was backtracking to find someone who could tell me where to go I ran into the bus that took me to the same place.

Perth is an adorable city. The houses are small and cute and Australian. Everything looks fairly new (because everything is fairly new in this entire country) and there was a lot of construction, but things were bright and happy and welcoming. Also, I didn’t notice how few Muslims I’d seen in Australia until I got to Perth where I started seeing women in long skirts and headdresses like at home. I also didn’t notice how few fat people there are elsewhere in Australia until I got to Perth and there started to be some again. Also, all of the school uniforms I saw in Perth are the ugliest ones I have ever seen.

The people were very nice, though. I hate buses here (I don’t know if this is what it’s like everywhere else) because they never tell you what stop they are on. This happened in Cairns, too. You have to know where you’re going in order to use the buses here. It took me a long time to get the courage up but eventually I asked the old man next to me where St. George’s Terrace was and how to get to the train station from there. He was very nice and told me when to get off and how to get there. I got a lot of funny looks walking through the city with my Adventure hat (which had gotten somewhat mangled on the plane) and my luggage. I was also wearing real shoes, not flipflops, which I hadn’t done in so long that I got a blister on my heel. I am a pro at asking people directions now. It turns out that the train station is in the back of a building marked “Medical Centre” (which makes perfect sense, of course) but I had to ask at least three more people before I found it. And then I asked a security guard how to get to my train, and he told me to go down a lift into what turned out to be a tiny area outside the station, blocked on all sides by huge gates because of all the construction, with no place to sit and one old man with a handlebar moustache sitting there smoking. He turned out to be really nice too. He was going on the same train as me.

I had two hours to wait, so I went back upstairs and got a croissant and some water, and then I found the only bathroom – which I had to pay fifty cents to use! Let me tell you, that bathroom was not worth fifty cents – and I had a sneaking suspicion that where I was waiting was not where I was supposed to be waiting, so I asked the bathroom guards and one of them actually walked me to where I was supposed to go. That was maybe worth fifty cents. This waiting area had seats.

So I sat and read my book and talked to the man with the handlebar moustache (who had also found his way to the right place) for the next two hours. He was nice and very talkative but somewhat weird. He thought I was fifteen. Do I look fifteen? I do not look fifteen. He also asked me if I had been in Australia my whole life, after I had spoken with my extremely American accent and told him I was studying abroad in Australia.

The train ride was nice, although the sun set pretty soon after I got on the train so I couldn’t watch the country fly by. I read and listened to Bill Bryson (all three of the books I am currently reading/listening to are about people travelling alone, which I think has been helping me out) and talked a little bit to the nice lady sitting next to me, and fell asleep.

When we got to Bunbury Station I thought “Yes! I made it!” My boss for the next month, Valissa, had told me she would meet me at the train station at 8:30 and take me to the backpacker’s hostel, presumably telling me on the way how to get to where I was going to be working, when she expected me there, and lots of other stuff she hadn’t mentioned in the emails.

She wasn’t there when I first got there, which was okay because the train was a little early, it was only 8:20. I watched everyone else get picked up or jump into taxis, and every new car that turned into the station I thought “Oh, that must be her!” But it wasn’t. None of them were her. I stood there for half an hour, with the station security guard standing anxiously behind me, obviously needing to wait until the last passenger was gone before she could shut up the station. I used the payphone to call her but it went straight to voicemail. At 9:00 I left a message telling her I was here and needed to leave the station so the security guard could close up and telling her where I was staying and my cell phone number (although I didn’t have any money on it, so I have no idea if that will work or not). Then I took a cab to the hostel.

Oh yes – sidenote – the security woman thought I was from Canada, which I thought was funny.

So I pulled up at the hostel late (they close at 9 but had said they would wait for me when I told them my train was at 8:30). The woman (who was maybe Dutch or something?) seemed annoyed and said “Did you walk from the train station?!”

She showed me my room and the kitchen and checked me in but said I wouldn’t be able to get any internet access until 8:00 the next morning when the next office person came in. The hostel was less than I was expecting. It’s small and the hallways are dark and windy. My room is extremely tall and long but not very wide at all, and the paint and wallpaper are cracking and peeling, the wardrobe doesn’t close all the way, and there are cobwebs on the high reaches of the ceiling that make me nervous because I have no idea what kind of spiders live in Western Australia. I have one window that looks out directly onto another rooftop and a sort of metal wall.

But, at least it is a single. I dumped my stuff and tried to call my mom, but the payphone was horrible and ate my money. I ended up putting money on my phone specifically so I could call, but then that didn’t work either, so I used my phone card with my cell phone. It worked and I got to talk to my mom and then Bobby which made me feel better, until the phone cut out in the middle of my conversation with Bobby, saying that I had used up all the money on my cell phone. All in all I think a conversation and a half cost me nearly $30 and I’m not sure how using my calling card on my cell phone used up minutes on both. But I got to talk to both of them and that’s the important part.

I thought I would completely fall apart as soon as I was alone, but I sort of haven’t yet. I still feel like I might but I have things I need to do and crying won’t help. I want to thank Daniel very much because last night what I did instead was collapse into my bed and watch Disney’s Robin Hood on my computer until I fell asleep (which was about ten minutes). I have a feeling watching movies alone in my room is going to be a thing I do a lot for the next five weeks, and the only two I have are both Disney movies I got from Daniel, so thanks.

I miss you all. All I really want to do right now is go home, it really is a similar feeling to last time. But instead I’m going to go eat breakfast, figure out a way to post this, email my advisor here to ask what’s going on, and my advisor at home to try and set up a ridiculously hard semester for next year. Hopefully I’ll be able to call Bobby and finish the conversation from last night, and maybe even meet some people in the hostel. I love you. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it.

P.S. Everything is slightly better now. I met a nice old British man who was telling me about his travels and about how he was really scared to travel all by himself, too, but he’s loved it and doesn’t want to go back to England. The woman working this morning couldn’t print me off an internet time code for some reason, so I spent most of the morning roaming the streets looking for somewhere to get internet. The German girls here told me there was a McDonald’s with free wifi not too far away, but I think they meant by car because after half an hour or so of walking I gave up. I did find an internet café eventually, and I used their computer even though it was ridiculously expensive (a dollar for ten minutes). Valissa still hadn’t emailed me (although I did have an email from one of the other potential advisors I had emailed a month ago, telling me I could go back to Queensland and do research on wallabies, which briefly sounded like one of my only options – and not a bad one either, that actually sounds pretty cool and is way closer to people I know. Damn). I emailed Valissa and was freaking out to my mom on gtalk and just deciding to go down to the dolphin centre and see if I could find her when my phone rang.

Apparently Valissa thought I was coming in tonight, not last night. She was really apologetic and kept saying “Oh you poor thing!” and told me she’d come here at 11 and bring me a bike to use to get to the centre. Also, apparently there is a barbeque tonight that I’m invited to.

On the way home I found a café that said it had wifi, so after I meet Valissa I’ll go back down there and hopefully post this and talk to people while I eat lunch. Bunbury is a cute town and I’m starting to get the feel for where things are already (although I haven’t been able to find a Newsagency to pick up a new phone card yet). I get the day to myself today and start work tomorrow, it sounds like. Hopefully I can throw myself into my work and time will fly by and I will not be as lonely. Having internet would also help that. I couldn’t even get on Facebook at the internet café, but I could see my inbox full of people commenting on it wondering if I got here okay.