Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey guys! Things are good. I dropped in the New South Wales State Library for a few minutes to write a few lines. I'm on their computer so no pictures today.

I was in Cairns Sat-Wednesday morning. Then I flew to Sydney and have been here for a little over a day now.

Cairns was tropical, hot, beautiful, and happy. The first day we got settled in and I slept by the pool. The second day was spent on the reef (snorkeling and SCUBA diving). I spent the rest of the time in the rainforest...biking or hiking.

So far in Sydney I've been to Olympic park, the bridge, the Opera house, the tower, and a few other places you probably have not heard of. I hadn't until today.

All my love,
Brittney

Rottnest Island

I will attempt to multi-task right now.  I need to wait 40 minutes for lunch, procrastinate from studying fluids, and keep my avid fans up to date.  The first two I can do no problem, and I am not convinced I have any avid fans, so it will be easy to keep them up to date.   I'm feeling successful already.

More likely I have just bought into the Autralian mindset as I saw it on a sign outside of a

 bookstore: 

So, compared to Notre Dame, I have been doing a whole lot of nothing here and it was about time I rested.   So we (all 30 Notre Dame kids) went to Rottnest Island to rest.

What an amazing place to be!  I missed the camp-out and the lake, but if we come up with like $50K for airfare, either event could be held at Rottnest.  Rottnest is a nature preserve, so you cannot own land and if you don't work at

 one of the little shops you can live there.  Australia has very few natural predators so the animals are pretty bold.  There are not cars on Rottnest and it seems people respect the animals.  What all these equates to is a whole lot of Quakas, snakes, lizards, and birds.  

The snake picture is from when Marty and I were just riding along...we acutally saw three during that bike ride.  The quaka picture was taken at night.  We would see them during the day, but they are a noctorinal animal, so at night they would be out in flocks, just eating grass and leaving little quaka pellets everywhere.  On Wednesday Elizabeth and I were at a cafe and one came strolling in.  He left some pellets, moseyed around the cafe for a while, then strolled out.  We were quite entertained.  

Becuase you cannot own land on Rottnest, it is just full of these little cabin and houses, nothing elaborate.  There weren't big beachside mansions or condos, because you can't own the land to build them on.  It was a very laid back kind of place.

I had a take-home final due Monday.  I do not think Notre Dame knows what that concept means, but I am a fan.  It was a final though and I wanted to put a little more time into it before turning it in.  The group took the 930 ferry, but I waited and took the 1130. 

Unfortunantly I think I inherited some genes from my mother, as I felt pretty bad most of the ride over.  There was a group of third grades going to the island for a school trip and a couple of them joined me in the back of the boat.  Only they had puke bags.  I almost had to ask them to share, but then we arrived!

Once on the island, I realized I didn't know where we were staying, but realized that with 29 other kids moving about on a small island, it wouldn't be a problem.  It wasn't.

A short while later I was cruising the island on a bike.  What a place to ride!  Gentle hills, beautiful scenery, the wind carrying you half the time, no cars, and it was a Mon-Wed so there weren't a whole lot of other bikers.

We would have big dinners then hang out in our two cabins and play cards, eat cheese, drink wine, and be compleatly content with life.  I must note that we had a really good group.  The food got cooked, the kitchen got cleaned, there was drinking, but no one was out of control.  Based on what I hear about the Notre Dame Perth group 2 years ago, I am very lucky.

Saturday I went snorkeling.  It was ok...Ningaloo was better, but I think Ningaloo is better than the majority of reef in the world.  There were a lot of fish, just not as many types and the water was pretty cold.  I perservered though.  I had lunch then set off on an epic bike ride.  I went back and calculated and it wasn't really that far, maybe 20-25 kilometers or 12-15 miles, but I haven't been on a bike in a while.

Nevertheless, driving my knees in cycles felt pretty good and I was just so happy and full of potential hanging out on Rottnest Island.  We passed some capgrouds which I initailly thought would be a lot of fun to stay at (minus the fact we don't have any tents or sleeping bags).

However, it ended with a Griswald-like situation.  On Wednesday morning Elizabeth and I thought we would go for an epic bike ride.  I'm not a weather wimp and Elizabeth is from Seattle, so a little rain wasn't going to stop us.  The weather was susposed to be bad the entire weekend, but until Wed, other than a few showers, it had been pretty nice.  

The ferry offers a convieiant service where they pick your suitcase up in the morning on the day you are ferrying back to Perth so that you do not have to carry it all day (check out from the cabins was at 10 am).  So we send all of our dry cloths and set off on this bike ride.  We start and spent like 20 minutes trying to get out of town because basically every road on the island curved, so you couldn't just assume that becuase a road appeared to go south you would end up to the south if you followed it.  In most cases if you started south you might end up 30 meters down the road after going in a loop.  But we made it out of town and we are chugging along, into the wind, but I had been going into the wind the day before so that was no big deal.  And it starts to sprinkle.  Then rain.  Then the wind picked up.  Then I think it might of been hailing at one point.  Remember, Perth basically has droughts every summer.  

But it's me and the girl from Seattle and we are both pretty positive people, so we are like, "oh it's going to pass over."  But it didn't.

We finally gave up and headed back to town.  We met up with some friends and sat in Red Rooster for 1.5 hours until the ferry left.  Elizabeth and I were both compleatly drenched and didn't have any dry clothes.  But now I have been biking on Rottnest Island during a rainstorm.  And it was fun.

Wednesday I turn my bike in (sadly) and to my surprise all of the bike story employees are watching the election results on the news on this little black and white tv.  Remember we are on an island off of Perth, Australia.  That is, an island off of one of the most isolated places in the world.  It just reaffirmed to me that the US is a big deal and we better live up to it because our decisions affect a lot of other people.

I took a ferry back, was a little seasick, then got back to Perth around 4 pm.

ND Trip #3

I liked this ND trip the best.  I didn't dislike the others, but this one had less driving, less sleep deprivation, and less information flying over my head.  By now the ND kids and Martin and Jane are all more comfortable with each other and that helped the group dynamic.  

The trip was once again Friday to Sunday.  This means I have missed my single Friday class (Fluid dynamics) 3 times, but I think I can recover.

We left at 0740 and unlike 2 weeks ago I was not the last one on the bus.  You should be proud.  

We started with a tour of a mine.  We stayed on the bus and drove around while a mining engineer explained what happened at each part.  They mined for mineral sands...I didn't know what that was either.  Apparently it is in make-up and some random stuff.  What was really interesting is that based on the land ownership system, the mine had rights to this huge plot of land.  That same land was also used by farmers for grazing.

  So when the mine was ready to dig a hole, they just told the farmers and the farmers had to figure out where to move the cows to.  

The mining process was quite interesting becuase it was much different than the mines we saw earlier in the semester.  The other mine was just a huge hole and they pulled dirt out of the hole and built a huge hill next to the hole.  Here, they would put the top soil in a pile and then dig a big hole.The mineral sands would be sifted and otherwise removed from the dirt and the dirt from the new hole went to fill a previous hole.  The top soil was put back on and the native plants were replanted.  After an area was mined, it looked the same.

Also at the mine was an old farmhouse with plants growing out of the gutters.  I thought it was funny.

We stopped and made ham

 sandwiches for lunch where Elizabeth convinced me to try an avocado sandwich (shown in the picture).  After my recent discovery of guacamole, I attempted the avocado sandwich, but I can't say I was impressed.  Maybe it needed more than only avacado.  

We drove into Margaret River in the late afternoon.  The town was a typical tourist place.  A lot of little shops, a few cafes, a few tavs, and a chocolate shop I heard about, but never quite found.  Disappointing I know.  

We only had about 30 minutes in the town and then we met with the planning engineer of Margaret River.  I don't know if it was because we were in Australia, or specifically Margaret River, or just because I think individual rights are important; but I was surprised how much say the town and the townspeople had on what developers could and could not do.  You have this huge country and so much space, but Margaret River didn't want certain things in their town.  In one area Martin claimed that the builders weren't allowed to put 4 story buildings in and instead had to settle for 2 story because there was such opposition.  It was not becauses it would impede the view of the people living behind them...they didn't have any neighbors.  The people claimed that the reason was that they didn't want to alter the natural landscape.  I fail to understand this because there is so much landscape.  Based on what I saw over spring break they could build oceanfront houses for a long time here and not run out of space.  But either the Australian people really like nature, or they are jealous/ selfish and don't want anyone else to have such a nice place to vacation.

Enough rambling.  We grabbed take-away dinner at a local bar and grill and ate it at the beach.  We had pre-ordered the dinner (a good idea when you have 33 people eating) and it wasn't quite done when we arrived at the restaurant.  We waited inside and watched this guy (actually a contender on Australian Idol a few months ago) set up his equipment to play guitar and sing.  He was in the middle of his first song when the restaurant finished preparing our food.  So the guy finishes his first song and all 33 of us leave the restaurant.   He had been talking to Martin and Jane before he started to play, so he knew we had to leave, but it was still pretty darn funny.  We came back later that night and listened for a little while.  He played some John Mellencamp to humor us Americans.  

After chocolate cake and coffee at the motel, we spent some more time in Margaret River, visiting a local cafe and bar.  The cafe was interesting because we watched John Walsh (a ND kid who is always hungry and always full of energy) argue with the cafe owner about the US government.  The cafe owner was convinced that 9/11/2001 was planned by George W. Bush and John was trying to convince him that that was ridiculous.  The interesting thing is that John, who is majoring in both English and engineering atNotre Dame... a smart, smart kid with all of the facts and reason on his side, could not convince this Australian store owner that the United States did not bomb our own buildings.  It was an interesting insight into how the US can be viewed by other countries.

Back to the motel and sleep.

Saturday = canoeing!  We were in 3,4, or 5 person canoes, which was a new experience for me.  We would drift along, listen to a crocodile Dundee dude talk about the Aboriginal (native) people.  Which was interesting, because the aboriginal people were as far from crocodile Dundee as you could imagine.  We stopped at a cave along the way and had some bush tucker (bush = bush and tucker = food; bush tucker = bush food) for lunch then scooted through a tunnel in a cave.  It put my ROTC low-crawl training to the test.  

The river was beautiful, and if you actually read all of my ranting you will remember that the town has a lot to say about where people can build their houses.  Well they weren't allowed to build along the river.  There were two houses, one of which was the first house in the area (built in late 1800s) and the other was owned by the president of UWA (his vacation house).  

One particular canoe was having trouble with steering, so when the crocodile Dundee tour guide offered a bottle of wine to whichever canoe won a race at the end, he allowed them to get a head start.  Poor idea.  The rest of the canoes take off...And my canoe is ploughing along...when I look up, and see the steering-challenged canoe straight ahead about 1 meter.  I hear "I hate you, John Walsh" (John was in the front of our canoe) and watch as the boat we rammed turned upside down, dumping the three passengers into the (very cold) river.  There were good sports and the whole thing ended up pretty funny.  If you haven't already guessed, neither of our canoes finished first.  

Afterwards we visited a cave that was 1 million years old.  Pretty cool.  One of those things I could write a lot about, but not really capture for you.  It was a cave, it was beautiful, it was quiet, it was dark...  The museum inside did list a "hall of fame" of caves, which included Mammoth Cave in KY, which I got excited about.

We came back for drinks, appetizers, and dinner.  Since this was out last night together and we are getting a (useless towards engineering) credit for taking these trips, we had a discussion afterwards.  It got kind of long, but it was interesting to see what I had learned and how I viewed Australia and the United States differently (that might be a different blog entry).

After the talk we had chocolate cake and coffee and retired early...so we could wake at 0600 to go surfing!

In my opinion, if you have the ability to 1) walk in a straight line and 2) not drown, you will find surfing amazing.  I have found that both time I have attempted to surf, I have been able to completely focus on trying to swim, stand up, and keep my balance.  School, life plans, home...they all go away.  I'm not all that good at surfing, but I don't think that is the point.  (Don't think that each time I lot balance and fell off my board I wasn't super jealous of the person who was cruising, but I could deal with it).

At the right time, the surf instructor told us to try one more wave, then head in.  Except the wind died and the waves petered out for a while.  Finallly we finished and changed into dry clothes.  Then we board the bus.  Then we get to church at 1030 for 1000 mass.  Not all 33 of us were going to mass, but around 20 did.  We stroll in during the offertory and I spot a pew midway up that 3 of us could slide into.  Mistake: that was the pew the people who were taking up the offertory had been sitting in.  They came back, gave this confused look, then found somewhere else to sit.  

After mass, there was coffee and biscuits (Australian for cookies).  An older man sat down and I went with my typical question of, "Do you live in Margaret River?"  Its a quality question because it allows the person to have the option of giving a short answer which means they don't actually want to take to a random person, but it also allows him/her to elaborate on why he/she lives here and how long or where he/she is from and where he/she is traveling to.  

He choose to elaborate.  He said he did live in Margaret River and was dairy farmer.  He then said that he had lived in Margaret River his entire life, 87 years (this was especially impressive considering Margaret River was only settled 100 years ago). I told him that my grandpa was a dairy farmer and didn't quite understand why I wanted to go so far away.  I think the Australian farmer understood Grandpa's mentality perfectly.

After spending as much time eating cookies and drinking coffee as we had spent in actual church, we headed to Vasse Felix.  Apparently the rainfall comes at just the right time and the the seasons are just right that Margaret River is an ideal place to grow grapes.   We hung out at this beautiful vineyard long enough to taste some wine, have a light lunch, visit the visitor shop, and walk outside a little bit. 

 

The guide for the wine tasting was excellent.  He was really good at making the wines sound amazing...talking about full flavors and plum, cherry, sweet tastes and bursts of flavor.  At first I think I was drinking the wine, rather than tasting it, and had no idea what he was talking about.  Once I slowed down it was a lot better, but I still lack the class to be a wine snob.

We spent some time at the Aboriginal Warden Center.  The tour guide did a great job, but 80% of what the lady presented I had seen before.  One new and exciting piece of information was concerning the very useful piece of paper tree bark I am holding in the picture.   Can you gues what it is?

Afterwards, we were ready to get back on the bus so we could get back to Tommy (our dorm) for homework and sleep.

But Martin and Jane wanted to take us to this beach.  To which we though, "there is a beach in Perth.  Why do we need to go to this one?"  But we were wrong.  The beach was do much better than just a beach.  There were these huge rocks that was being pounded by huge waves.  It was great to just sit on the rock and ponder and feel the two forces, water and rock, put up such a battle, that both were competing so well in.  Then there I was.  Small, insignificant.  

It was a good reminder to tackle life.  I can't compete in that tough battle between water and rock.  I would get pummeled in a minute.  But I can watch such beauty and feel love and just experience all there is to take on.  And what kept coming to mind was the poem "High Flight."  I don't have the whole thing memorized, but the lines "done a hundred things you have not dreamed of" and "put out my hand and touched the face of God" kept running through my head.  It was nice and I realized how glad I am that I am here.  Don't get me wrong, at this point I have accepted the fact I might be homesick my entire life, whereever  I am or however  long I am there, but it's a small price to pay.

We got back on the bus, stopped quickly for pizza, said good-bye to Jane and Martin for the last time, and returned to Tommy.

This week I have a history research paper to work on.  The plan is to take my laptop to the beach and read and compile information.  We will see how that goes.  I figure I need to put in some significant blocks of time into the research anyway...why not be at the beach at the same time.  

Chelsea pizza Tuesday and Saturday.  Shopping Wednesday.  Football game Sunday morning

My finals schedule includes tests on November 8,15, and 21.  At 0050 on November 22 I am leaving Perth for Cairns (location of the Great Barrier Reef).

Have a great day.

Brittney

ND Trip #2

Hello again!

ND decided that if they were going to pay for us to live in Australia they better make sure we see Australia. Their noble efforts include 3 bus trips for the 30 of us to various parts of western Australia to get an idea of what the people and region are like. This weekend we went to Albany and Denmark.

Friday: After a 1.5 hour bus ride we arrived at the Forest Heritage Centre. They had big trees and sweet flowers there. We saw a logging camp which was pretty dang primitive and probably pretty cold in the winter.Australia has some of the hardest wood there is, from the jerrah tree, so the loggers had to constantly sharpen their saws.  The center also offers a 2 year woodworking degree, so we saw some of their work and it was beautiful.

Lunch at a park, then we visited the Kodja Place Interpretative Centre. This small town museum seemed to share the history of the native Australians and the English settlers. It shared the positives of both, but seemed to skip the battles and the arguements. Maybe it is better to remember history like that, peaceful with out all the fighting.   That is how I like to remember my house.  jk.  sort of.  We had a tour guide Jack Cox who was an animated character and made tea over the fire for us.  Later we found a younger version of Jack in pictures and film clips in the museum.  It reminded me that the white history of Australia is only a little over 100 years old.  (the pictures are of me in an Indigenous house and the links surveyers used to measure huge chunks of land with)

I have never been a huge advocate for sustainable living; it seems like it should be inconvieiant and uncomfortable. I wasn' t compleatly thrilled when I learned that we were going to stay at the Denmark Centre for Sustainable Living.  However a lady talked to us about sustainable living when we first arrived. Some parts were a little odd, she basically uses an outhouse in her house. But some things just made sense.  It was neat to go about the daily parts of living and notice small changes the centre had made to help the earth.  Some things weren't very big, but over a long time or if a lot of people did it it would help.  A lot of the beds had quilts, the toilet water was gray water (reused shower water), and the lights were florescent.  Then today I was at IGA and both of the women in line before me had brought their own cloth grochery bags.  I decided I will need to bring one next time.

Saturday morning we climbed to the highest point in Western Australia.  It took about 1.5 hours (it wasn't really that high).  We had lunch at the top and it was neat to see the farmland on one side of the mountain and the sea on the other.

We drove to Albany after lunch to check out whale world.  It was a great museum for anyone with ADD.  The whaling company had closed when synthetic oils became available and the goverment regulations to protect the whales increased.  The company had donated the land, factory, and 3 ships to the town so that they could make a museum.  I had heard how big the whales were, but have never been up close to one.  The picture shows a skeleton of a blue whale.  That dude is huge!  

The whaling process is actually really interesting, once you get past the fact that they were killing beautiful whales.  The 3 ships would leave in the morning and go to the spot of ocean that the search plane had found whales at.  The whaling company had to catch whales that were within 6 inches of a length set by the goverment regulators.  The captain could be persosnally fined if a whale that was too big or small was shot.  Therefore, the captain was the one to shoot.  So the whale is shot with a harpoon and then air is pumped under it's skin, so it will float.  A light, radio, and tag are attached and the ship left the whale to go catch another.  The dead whales would just float out in the middle of the ocean until the day was over and then one ship went around and collected all of the whales.  They were tied to an island, then the next day one by one the whale were towed to shore to be cut into pieces.

Murrey Arnold, UWA Phd student was scheduled to talk to us about Aboriginal-European contact next.  To my surprise, Murrey was like 60 ye70 years old.  He had completed his undergrad degree from his farm at age 65 or something and now was just continuing his education.  It was remarkable and ridiculous at the same time.

Dinner at the Tanglewood Brewery.  Good food, we followed with cakes from IGA.  Classy yet cheap.  

We went back to the sustainable living place and drank coffee and attempted to watch a movie.  Which means I say the previews and first 10 minutes and fell asleep.  

Sunday was church.  It was a little bitty church with kneelers without cushions.  It was brutal.  The stations were painted onto the walls and the flowers were picked from someone's garden.  It would have been gaudy and cheap...except it was a church.  So it was a simple display of giving "all that you have."  The regular priest was getting some sort of operation in Perth, so they had a visiting priest.  When he went to make the announcements, he was going along fine, but when he forgot something or showed the slightest sign of confusion, the congergation told him the anwer.

We went on a tree top walk next.  Western Australia has these huge trees that only the outer 6 inches is alive.  Which means the inside is dead or dying and creates a cool place to take a picture in or drive through.  So many people were coming to see the trees they were hurting them, so WA built the tree top walk.  They weren't allowed to use heavy eqipment to build it and had to follow other rules, but it turned out really cool and it was neat to see the tress up close.  It was also pretty cool to watch the rail fall that far.  You could watch it all of the way down. 

After the tree top walk it was time to go back to Perth.  We stopped for dinner on the way where I found this sweet bathtub.  It's not just Ohio that uses them for water troughs.  

Sorry for the delay.  I have  a few thing to talk about before we leave for the long trip at the end, but I need to read about AIDS and apartheid right now.  

Have a wonderful evening.

All my love,

Brittney

Spring Break

Hello!

So I had this amazing week.  

Friday: It starts when I get back from work and then try to work on my philo paper Friday night.  It was a struggle, but I got done.  Then I said, "It will be here when I get back," avoided doing my laundry, packed a bag, and went to sleep.  

Saturday: The next morning the bus was here bright and early and 17 ND kids, 3 Germans 

(Kate I'm looking at you), our driver Graham, and I headed North.

It was a fairly small bus, but that made it better for lots of games of Euchre (which Joan and I slowly improved at) and general chit chat.  

We made our way to the pinnacles, which are just

 big rocks.  They were created over thousands of years and are in this desert in the middle of a green area.  

We would just drive for hundreds of miles...er kilomet

ers... without seeing anything.  Apparently no one owns big portions of the Outback.  There isn't much fresh water, the land is far from anything, and it can't be used for farmland.  It made me appreciate how isolated this place is.  The bus driver said Australians in the Outback always wave at passing cars because you so rarely see other people.

We attempted to sand board, but there were locals at the dunes with 4-wheelers and dirt bikes (which looked pretty fun, though mildly dangerous) so the driver said we would come back at the end of our trip.

We got to Kalbarri when it was dark and stayed at a hostel there.  The hostel was set up like a big house.  There were 6 bedrooms with 4 sets of bunk beds each, a kitchen, living room, and front porch with picnic 

tables.  After dinner we walked down to the 

beach.

Sunday: We drive to Z-bend gorge.  Only in Australia, they say Zed...not Z...  So Zed bend gorge is a river in this big hole in the ground where the water has cut through the weakest rock.  We took some sweet pics, I absailed down a small cliff, and realized how much I loved nature.

We drove more, then arrived at shell beach. 

 It was pretty cool, but the shells were small and they hurt my feel.  We get there right at sun set which was awesome.  We visited in the most westerly town in Australia.  We spent the night at Monkey Mia, a little tourist town.  We laid on the beach before going to sleep and attempted to find the Southern cross.  None of us knew which stars it contained, so I made up my own.  I could find it almost every night.  But later we were told that it wasn't the real southern cross.

Monday: We woke early so we could watch the dolphins feed.  My friend Joan was picked to

 feed one and that was pretty cool to watch.  The dolphins would swim just a few meters from the shore.  

I built a turtle, attempted to read my history for like 5 minutes, played volleyball, swam with the dolphins then at 1100 it was time to drive to another beach for lunch.

There are 22 of us and someone needed to make each meal, but not all 22.  I usually attempted to help, realized there was nothing for me to do, then found ways to be entertained (also usually my strategy at Christmas and Thanksgiving.)  Joan and I walked down the street in search of something of interest.  We found this lady who lived across the street from one of the most beautiful beach scenes I have ever seen in my life.  She had this shop attached to her house where she sold trinkets and made clay pots.  I really wanted to buy something because it was such a neat place, but I don't' like trinkets so I couldn't.  She fed us coffee from these 4 oz coffee cups (the smallest I have ever seen in my life) and told us about her family.  If someone solves all the world problems before I get a chance, I think I will just build a house next to hers and live there for the rest of my life.  

We stopped at a bottle shop where I bought some wine for the first time ever.  The lady didn't ask for my id.  I was a little bit disapointed.

We visited some stromatolites then spent the night at a hostel that had only salt water for cooking and showering.  I saw some sting rays on when Lindsey and I went for a walk that night.  Only we thought they were manta rays, which would have been a lot cooler, and probably a lot safer as I attempted to get close to them to take their picture.  We saw more the next day in the sunlight.

Tuesday: This is my first encounter with a coral reef and basically I think they are one of the

 coolest things I've ever seen.  We started with a glass bottom canoe, which was pretty sweet, but I think we scared the fish because we didn't see a whole lot.  Later I went back out with my goggles and saw all kinds.   We saw the plants from the boat, but with just my goggles I got to see a lot more fish.  Except I could only hold my breath for so long, then would emerge sputtering and spitting.

The Ningaloo reef is close to shore and very accessible.  The Great Barrier Reef (which I will visit from Cairns) is about an hour boat ride from shore, but has bigger fish and plants.

I took a nap on the beach, fed the fish some bread, and played some soccer.  Then late in the afternoon it was time to drive to Exmouth, which had freshwater showers.  They also had a sweet resturant with lounge chairs by the pool (both associtated with the hostel/hotel).  Some other ND kids and I ordered ice cream and hung out there for a while.

Later we met up with another tour group with 23-28 year-olds from Ireland, Scotland, and England.  We chatted with them for a little while.  One girl said that she had toured South America and whenever she ran out of money she would stay in one place for a little while and work, then head on her merry way when she had enough saved.  We were going to challenge them to a game of volleyball, but it got dark outside.  We probably would have won.

Wednesday: We woke up late and got some snorkel gear.  Then I spent as much time as I could in the water.  The fish aren't scared of people.  I swam an arm's length away from a tu

rtle, we both move at about the same pace, and once I looked up to see a turtle and shark swimming together.  It was awesome.  I saw clown fish, zebra fish, an octopus, a skate, and a thousand other fish I couldn't identify.  If you imagine flies swarming rotten food...then replace the flies with colorful fish the size of your little finger and replace the rotten food with a gorgeous red sea plant, that is what I saw.  I could have stayed longer, but we had to return our gear and make dinner.  Oh and we stopped at a windmill on the way back to the hostel.  We could see whales way out in the water frolicing and shooting up spray.  There was an older man there watching the whales with us and after asking if he was from around there he said he and his wife were retired and lived in the area, but his wife was in the car talking to their daughter in England.  The top of that hill that the lighthouse was on was the only place she could get reception.  I thought that was hilarious.  As we were leaving a bus of older people arrived.  I decided their trip was probably markedly different than ours.

For some reason, I guess the windmills didn't churn out enough power, there wasn't any electricity at our hostel from 2200- 0200.  We went to the beach instead, then returned and went to sleep in the dark.

Thursday: I did a little of my school work on the bus, but also played more euchre and slept.  This day was the most driving.  We stopped at a few gas stations.  That sounds like no big deal, except they would be the only sign of human life (minus the road) for 150 kilometers.  Each had gas, snacks, a puclic bathroom, and some wildlife (kangaroo, birds,...) to veiw.  They were all overpriced, but the tour didn't include snacks or drinks, so I bought some ice cream and diet coke from time to time.  We stayed the night at a farm.  The farmer made kangaroo soup and chicken soup for us.  It was very good.  He also said things that I have heard many times in the States, "Farms are getting bigger or dying."  "The farmer is not getting much of an increase from year to year, but the price of food keeps increasing."  I tried to ask intelligent questions so when I talk to dad or grandpa next I have something intelligent to say about farming in Australia.  The fields are monsterous there, so I asked how big of a combine head they use.  He said a 45 ft is the biggest and after that the hills cause a problem.

We had a fire and marshmallows, then it started to rain and we called it a night.

Friday: At this point I was about done with traveling.  We rode for a little while.  Visited the Hut River Province.  So in 1970 Australia joined some sort of Union with the Europeans or something, but the important part is that they were no longer allowed to export wheat to certain countries.  So the wheat demand dropped 90%.  So the government said, "Yo farmers, you are only allowed to grow wheat on 10% of your farm."  This was a problem for a lot of people.  One dude decided it was illegal for the government to do such and decided to secede his land from Australia.  He send the government a letter saying such and then took the next year to read everything he could about the legalities of suceeding from Australia.  To this day he calls himself a prince and his wife a princess.  He prints money with his picture on it and knights people.  The Australian government doesn't want to invade his land and force him to do anything, but they can't seem to legally force him to stop.  I thought the entire thing was ridiculus.  Oh and the guy's name was Leonard, prince Leonard.  He offered to let us sit in the royal chair.  I passed on the chance.

We drove a little longer, then went sandboarding. It was fun, but not better than sledding.  And the sand is a pain to climb back up the hill in.   

We visited Greenough Wildlife Park.  I saw a lot

 of swee animals.  There was a bird that said, "hello."  A miniture horse a camel, emu, lots of kangaroos, a croc, some lizards,  birds...then there was this ostrich.  The Park gave us food we could feed to the noncarniverous animals.  The ostrich is noncarniverous, so I wanted to feed it.  But it had a beak that looked like it could put a hole in my hand.  So I was standing there with a pellet in one hand contiplating how I was going to feed it to the ostrich and the bag of pellets in my other hand.  I'm enjoying the sunshine, trying to solve this problem...when out of no where, the ostrich swoops it's head down and grabs the entire bag of food.  The horse runs over and the two of them eat all of the food (and the bag).  I was just standing there stunned...then realized the hilarity of the situation.  We arrived back in Perth at about 1915, ordered some pizza and learned of the Notre Dame victory over Michigan.  We talked to the 4 ND kids who went backpacking, apparently it rained (as in torrential downpour) 4 of the 6 days they walked and was 40 degrees at night.  I think I will wait for November to try such an endeavor.

Saturday and Sunday: Wrote a philo paper, watched ND lose to Michigan State, and got excited for life.

______________

I don't know if you find any of this interesting or not.  I guess if you don't think it is interesting don't read it.  I hope to do descriptions like this for travling and emails for chatting.  Sometimes I lie though.  We will see.  

Notre Dame put together a weekend trip to Albany and Denmark for us, so I will have more stories on Monday.

Cheers,

Brittney

My First Week

I forgot the following items:
toothpaste
my cord from my camrea to my computer
my electrical adapter

This is rather unfortunate because I couldn't upload pictures. However I have temporarily solved the problem by making friends with the girls who live next door and borrowed a piece from them that allows me to get my pictures to my computer! Exciting I know.

This week was a lot of orientation for international students. I met kids from China, India, England, Texas, and Singapore. A few of Australia, but I think I will meet a lot more of them tomorrow in actual school. This is their second semester, so they just got back from break over the weekend.

I don't have any complaints about the continent. They drive on the wrong side of the road. Which doesn't seem like a big deal because Notre Dame made us sign a paper that says we will not drive during study abroad. However, when I cross the street I look both ways twice and am still surprised to see a car coming at me down the wrong side of the street. Also, I have been jogging and find myself playing chicken with other joggers as they are on the left side going one direction and I am on the right side going the opposite direction.

The food is good. Fresh fruit and ice cream every day. They have american cereal with australian names and some odd peanut butter looking stuff that is really some sort of yeast and is called vegimite. It sounds awful.

Other than the vegimite and driving on the wrong side of the road, based on the physical place, I'm still in the states.

The difference and the interesting part of the trip are the people. If you look through my pictures you will see a guy with some birds. He was so excited about those birds. I met a kid last night from a farm in southern West Australia who talked about his family growing Australian wild flowers and killing rabbits cause they eat the grass and the sheep cannot. Rabbits are not native to Australia. The English brought them so that they could hunt them. The guy from China was an only child and said he spent a lot of time by himself growing up.

A bug difference is that people from Perth travel. To leave the city of Perth you pretty much have to get on a plane. Perth has 1.4 million people and the state of Western Australia (which is 1/3 of the continent (I think) has 1.9 million people. The outback, which is Western Australia minus Perth is just a desert (with kangeroos). People get a lot of vacation from work and use it to go see things.

It is hard to not have close friends and family around. But the city is pretty cool and the people are very nice, so I think I will make some. Also, it makes me realize how much I love the friends and family I do have.

Things to look forward to this week: classes, getting a job, taking a circuit class at the gym, and getting to see more of King's Park!

I hope you have a fantastic week!

Brittney

We were in the news!

Like any trip the Dudley's take, there has been a slight change in plans. Check this out: http://www.smh.com.au/news/travel/bomb-threat-delays-qantas-flight/2008/07/19/1216163203330.html

I got to LA just fine. Spent the night at Arthur's house and we made it to the beach on Thurs before our flight. We were sitting on the beach when one of the kids got a call that our 2230 flight was delayed. I've never had a flight get delayed, but I hear about it from time to time.

We got the call in the early afternoon, so we spend a little more time at the beach, had a grill out at Arthur's house, then went to LAX to assess the situation.

Yep, a Qantas engineering strike had been screwing up their flight schedule and Qantas could not fly us until Friday morning at 10. They took our bags and we hung out at a hotel (paid for by Qantas) and had dinner and breakfast at the hotel (paid for by Qantas) then returned to the airport. We were all happily on the 747 and I had inspected the bassinet, tray table, and tv near me when the captain said that there were some security issues being dealt with. Then everyone was told to get off the plane and they took all of our luggage off the plane.

We went through security again. Sat at the gate. Ate some Burger King. Then the captain got off the airplane and said that the FBI had arrived to fix things because there wasn't anything else airport security could do. Then they sent us to a hotel for the afternoon and told us to come back for a 2300 flight.

So again we're at a hotel, had a nice dinner, and the Qantas repreentative said we could order anything we want (paid for by Qantas) . This is the high class vacation I never had, except I have a legit reason to wear bball shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops.

In summery, I'm still in LAX, I'm leaving tonight at 11 (2 am Ohio time), and there was no bomb on my plane.

Also, the best part of the story: Qantas is giving everyone on Qantas 12 a free plane ticket to anywhere!