Blogs from Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 14

Well, I have just celebrated my second birthday and also my 9th wedding anniversary in Australia. The first one was 5 years ago and was spent in Cairns on the beach in glorious sunshine watching wild dolphins swim by this year it was a working day and raining and grey so just like being in the UK! We decided to just have a quiet night in and celebrate at the weekend instead and thankfully the weather picked up so we had sunshine! On the Saturday night Doug cooked a lovely dinner and we had a bottle of champagne ... lovely! On the Sunday we went down to the beach with the dogs and had a lovely walk until we were rained off! You could see the weather coming in from the ocean really fast. It is ... read more

So...surprise surprise, Eric and I haven't done a whole lot of "partying" in Australia despite the fact that we can legally drink. Sure, we've had a couple of fun nights out, especially on Mondays (a club in Perth offers free bbq and free drink vouchers just for showing up on Mondays!), but overall we usually end up having fun spending the nights hanging out in Freo. Last night was no exception. There was a surprise party for a girl from P&O (where Eric lives) at a local club and everyone was invited. Eric, Karla, and I all decided to check it out and basically ended up standing around for an hour with all of the other study abroad students in a secluded room of a club...it was alright, but we knew we could have WAY more ... read more

We went to the Perth Mint where they make the collectable coins. Years ago they used to make Sovereigns for England. They had a display of what it was like on the goldfields during the gold rush. I am holding a replica of the “Welcome Stranger”. The biggest gold nugget ever found. At Kings Park we saw some ducks with 9 ducklings. They were really fluffy and really scared of us. We went to our friends (that we met in Coral Bay) for a couple of plays. They live close to the Caravan Park where we stayed. We had tea there one night. On Wednesday we went to Rottnest Island. We took the ferry from Perth and had a cruise down the river before picking up the rest of the passengers. I saw some Quokkas. One ... read more

Tomorrow is the FIRST day of classes!! I'm not sure I'm ready for 3-hour-seminars = ( That's how they do it here; I'm taking 5 classes and each meets once a week for THREE HOURS. *sigh* My attention span SO does not even come close to lasting that long. Also, my crazy-busy bookshop schedule (or "timetable" as they say here) starts tomorrow. I am working 23 hours a week for the next 2 weeks (which, *shhhh* is not exactly allowed...apparently I'm only supposed to work 20 w/ my student visa but the manager really wants me to and is just going to roll over the hours to the next weeks. *guilty face*). Its going to be crazy super busy with the beginning of the semester rush. The bookshop is TINY and I can't imagine more than ... read more

Well, I'm FINALLY HERE in Fremantle, Western Australia, now officially deemed the most amazing place on earth...but more on that later. First, I have to describe the CHAOS that was arriving here. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/qantas-bomb-threat/2008/07/19/1216163229812.html Yep, that’s right…the link does say “Qantas bomb threat,” and who else could possibly end up on the ONE Qantas flight that had said bomb threat? I guess the upside is that we are all famous and made world-wide news = ) So, here is what happened: Thursday night I was in LA with my parents (I had just spent 2 days at the Happiest Place on Earth) and about to finally leave for the airport when I got a call from the ND travel agent. Our flight had been postponed due to a Qantas engineer’s strike. She said that she had ... read more