Here's my run-down of Nationals. The best stories are in the pictures, though, so be sure to look through those... Tuesday - The Departure I woke up bright and early Tuesday morning for my flight to exciting Newcastle, New South Wales on the east coast for the AUSTRALIAN FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS!! Almost the entire team was on my same flight, which had a stop-over in Sydney. The highlights of the trip included the AMAZING views of Sydney from above and the wonderful plane for the 20-minute flight from Sydney to Newcastle. Danae and I had been joking in Perth that it would be one of those tiny planes with propellors and stuff - and we were actually RIGHT!! I was in row 9 and it was the LAST ROW!! Fun stuff! Anyways, that night we basically ... read more

Alright now begins my story about the greatest place on earth, BROOME!! In the interest of getting caught up I'm going to cram all 4 days into this one entry so it might get a little long (and there will be LOTS of pictures). I appologize. Flight to Broome and Staircase to the Moon Thursday, August 2nd I headed to Perth airport for my flight. When I arrived at the airport I had the unfortunate news that my flight was slightly delayed - oh no! Luckily I had decided long in advance that for the 4 days of this trip I would be officially on 'Broome time' and go for the 'no worries' attitude that is so famous in Western Australia. I had a nice trip with a nice nap and I arrived safely at 'Broome ... read more

There was some sort of server failure on Travelblog last week so a few of my entries have been lost. I'll try to recover them (I've recovered 3 others which were lost) or re-write them, although the details will be less than accurate at this point in time...The entries were all from a few months ago, so faithful readers will not be missing anything... Blades of Glory! Alright so Danae and I had wanted to see 'Blades of Glory' since before it came out, but all our attempts to organize a team outing were foiled. And now that the movie had been out for, like, a month, most of our team had gone to see it on their own. So we decided that we should just go see it. So Tuesday night, after our fitness class, ... read more

This blog entry was lost in the recent failure, and all the pictures went with it. It's quite time-consuming to upload pictures so I won't be re-uploading all of them. States On July 7-9 we had the State Championships at skating. All the best in the west came out to gain a spot at Nationals next month. We skated our short programme on Sunday and our long on Monday. Both went well, no falls and a solid effort by all. And I got to bring home a shiny gold medal for our uncontested victory (there are literally no other teams). A judge from the east came to judge and gave us some feedback on our programmes. With no more competitions until Nationals, we're hard at work to show the country what we've got! SoS July 9-13 ... read more

Perth revisited On Tuesday, I had myself a little day trip into Perth City. The main purpose of my trip was to help out the food co-ordinator of Students of Sustainability, an environmental conference being held at Murdoch in July. I've signed up to attend (might as well see what it's all about) so I thought I'd volunteer to help out beforehand. I went to a few stores and looked for bizarre items I've never heard of before. So it was an educational experience, and I got to help out a good cause! After walking to all the stores, I decided to explore Perth a bit and found myself at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Admission is free, so I went walking around. It was pretty, although VERY small. Everyone was trying to get ... read more