The Final Chapter of the Northwest Trip: Episodes 7-10

 Thursday, March 11th

Boy oh boy, we got to sleep in on Thursday! We woke up at 6:30, which was nice for a change... not that I didn't wake up at 6 anyway out of the instinct ingrained into my skull over the past week. After a lame breakfast as always, we were out of the camp by 7:45. Little did I know today was going to be the best day of the trip.

Walking to the gorge within which we were going to spend the majority of our day, we saw a lot of gorgeous scenery. It was quite pretty. After a few kilometer walk, we started to walk down into the canyon, and things got even prettier. Walking down into the canyon was quite easy for me, being the buff athlete that I am, but that wasn't the case for everyone, so climbing down was a tedious task. At one point we all climbed down a ladder and Barry was calling out numbers as we did so while we spotted us. He told me "8." Apparently he was rating everyone's asses, and I believe mine was the best out of the entire group.

Once we were on the floor, we walked a kilometer or so along it, climbing up over rocks and crossing ledges covered in water. It was quite cool down there, and a real pleasure to look up at the canyon from the bottom.

As you can see, I'm holding up this giant boulder to my mates could pass with safety. I am truly special.

Our first stop on our trip was a watering hole called Circular Pool, and boy was it beautiful. Apparently soon after we arrived and dove into the water, a King Brown snake slithered by us. This snake is one of the deadliest in the entire world. The average person could die 63 times with one single bite. Yikes. apparently Barry, who saw it, said he couldn't hear it as it slithered over dry leaves. Spooky!

Circular pool was absolutely fantastic though! It was such a cute little watering hole. The water was so fresh and tasted so good (a lot of us drank as we swam!). There was this cool little ledge that we were all jumping off of (see me below! Thanks for the picture, Justin!). The water wasn't too cold for 9, 9:30 in the morning, especially since the sun hadn't hit the water yet. It was such beautiful spot; I feel lucky to have visited! I also included a picture below of me posing in a speedo and cape, because I don't have any shame and I am quite a silly person. :-p

After climbing out of Circular Pool and drying off, we walked several kilometers (backtracking a bit) along the canyon to our next spot. This was probably my favorite walk of the entire trip because we walked through the coolest places ever. It was like walking through a whole new reality! The whole lot of us walked passed a python (not venomous) in a single file. There was a big scare until Barry realized it was only a python, not another King Brown.

Upon the end of our walk, we ended up at my favorite place on the entire trip, and the coolest place I've been to in Australia. Meet Fortescue Falls. I absolutely LOVED it there.

The water here was really, really nice and warm and tasty. The rocks were gorgeous and great for climbing and sitting on. The waterfall was really great but the rocks were in no condition there to slide down. We spent an hour and a half there at least, lounging around, playing in the waterfall, tossing a tennis ball off the cliff next to the falls, and having a generally awesome time.

After Fortescue Falls, we climbed back out, had lunch, and went to the Karijini National Park visitors center but it was really boring so I'm not even going to talk about it anymore than I have. I feel like I wasted space just mentioning it. It started to rain a bit while we were in the visitors center and we thought our tents were screwed (but they were fine). After we got back, we sent out on another adventure.

We headed back to Fortescue Falls (which you can see in the left of the frame down below) because hidden behind it was a third watering hole treasure. The walk from the Falls to the next watering hole was really cool too. just before the watering hole, I saw my first bats!

After the bats and around a corner, we arrived at Fern Pool, which is considered sacred by the aboriginal population. Fern Pool isn't on the map because they don't really want people going there because it is sacred. They believe a giant snake spirit lives in there (I didn't see it). It was nice there, but the only place to hang out there really was the fall way in the back which was a pain to swim to. It was a really cool place to visit nonetheless.

At lunch time earlier in the day, I used collected yellow ocre and the red dirt below my feet to tie dye a white t-shirt I brought along with me, specifically for the tie dying. I washed in here in the pool before we left. I haven't really worn the t-shirt yet and I'll have to be careful washing it because I was told the red dirt, which my running shoes are stained with as well, might wash out after a while to some extent.

We went back to the Falls as it got cloudier and started to drizzle. This however meant we got a rainbow. The BEST rainbow I've ever seen. Ever. If you look closely you can see a second rainbow on top of the first one. It was really fun being there and seeing it, as it was that bright for at least twenty minutes. My friend Paul and I climbed along the cliff below the rainbow until people started to follow us. As Paul put it, we trusted ourselves not to fall, but not others, which sucked because I wanted to keep going! It took this picture from there too, and it's one of my favorites (just above).

On our way out of the canyon, Ben took this picture of me shooting a rainbow, and I saw a dingo from the distance! My picture isn't that great, but one of my friends got really close to one earlier in the day. I'm really jealous.

Dinner consisted of a weird chili on pasta which was okay, nothing special. Post dinner was filled with ghost stories around the "fire" (the kerosene lamp) during which I heard the ending to Paranormal Activity. Sounds scary.

Just as I was about to go to bed, I went into two of my friends' tents, where the three of us talked for awhile. This was until one of them put their flashlight on the ceiling of their tent, and then the wall of the tent to reveal a 6-plus inch praying mantis. I mean that thing was huge. As a result one of the girls let out a blood curdling scream and woke everyone up. The other girl and I thought it was incredibly funny. I laughed.
Thursday: 9

Friday, March 12th
I heard a dingo howling in the wee hours of Friday which was really cool. I woke up, heard the howl, thought to myself "you're hearing a dingo howl, cool!" then promptly feel back asleep. We hiked back down to the Falls for a little while which was nice and allowed me to say goodbye. I really hope I get to go back someday.

We then left Karijini to drive to Newman, a mining town. Considering we were on the same highway from then until we reached Perth, we didn't drive that far. At all. Which annoyed us. Annoyed us all. I slept most of the trip to Newman which was a nice change. Because it's a mining town, Newman is incredibly depressing. Most of the people there are miners who work crazy long shifts for a couple weeks at a time before flying back home. The whole story of miners and mining makes me sad. Newman also has a crazy aboriginal population who just get drunk all the time. As such, you can't buy boxed wine unless it's Monday or Tuesday because they just buy it and get smashed all the time. That's even more sad.

Newman was boring and I hated it. This is what I did:

We went shopping at a Woolworth's complex.

I almost got run over by a giant truck.

I swam in a really gross pool at the campsite. I didn't notice the skin flakes floating in it until after I got out of the water.

Dinner sucked because we had like 2 hours to kill before we got it. Furthermore, I felt disconnected and excluded from the group. I ate dinner by myself. Everyone went out to the bar. But I didn't go. Why? Well because it was a scary and long walk and IT WAS IN A MINING TOWN. WHO DO YOU THINK GOES TO THE BARS IN A MINING TOWN? The answer is uneducated, homophobic, sexist, disgusting douchebag miners. That's why I didn't go. Turns out I was completely right about the bar. It sucked. Everyone went and didn't like it and was scared shitless on the way back because the aboriginals were drunk, a nuisance, and doing some voodoo dance (this is how it was described to me).

I spent my night talking to Craig who is really cool. I got a good hour in before some crazy, drunk miner joined in and made me feel uncomfortable. Another less creepy miner joined in later. Thankfully Craig had plenty to talk to them about since he knows mining quite well (apparently he used he used to mine but hated it even thought he money is crazy good). The miners creepily checked out my friend and took forever to leave. Oh well. I ended up having another late night conversation in a tent with a whole bunch of girls who complained about boys. It was sorta funny. Word.

Friday: 7

Saturday, March 13th
We woke up niiiice and early as usual and drove a long way, as usual. I got a bit of sleep on the bus and refrained from buying a $5 Mother (Australia's most popular energy drink) on our first stop, but ended up getting a Monster nearly that expensive at Shell just before lunch. And because lunch sucked so much, I went back and got another one and a bot of Tim Tams which started to rapidly melt within 20 seconds of going outside. Today was really boring and totally sucked.

We drove to a sheep farm that was several hundred acres. Pretty crazy. After hanging around the camp site for a while, we drove the 2 of the caravans to this nice little area to see a sunset which didn't happen because it was overcast. This is face I made when the sunset was lame as heck:

I really like Alison's face in the background. She's the praying mantis girl. The view from there wasn't too bad though:

Our sleeping quarters consisted of a giant barn used to shear sheep. It was really crowded so half of us, including me, slept outside under the stars (which were not impressive due to the clouds) without a tent. That part was pretty cool, but all in all, it was a kinda crappy day because I felt more disconnected from everyone and just wanted to be back at Murdoch.

Saturday: 5

Sunday, March 14th - The drive home.

We woke up... extremely early on Sunday. 5am. Pain of it was no one had their act together so it took us 75 minutes to have breakfast, get packed up, and onto the road. Everyone was eager to get back to Murdoch, hence the early wake up. However, waking up that early didn't end up being all that horrible, because we saw the best sunrise (which was better than all the sunsets too, besides maybe the one at Coral Bay the first night) I've ever seen.

Because someone completely new sat in the front seat, I was pushed back on the bus. To the way back. Between to German girls. ...it ended up going really well though. The German girl who I sat directly next to was really nice and we had some good conversations. Most of the Germans are (or were) really big fans of the Finnish gothic metal band Nightwish, who I really like. We played some on the bus and it was really cool to see my peers like a slightly obscure band as much as I do.

We stopped for lunch... even though nobody wanted to: we all wanted to keep pushing onto Perth! Alas, we had to anyway, and lunch was as boring as ever. Within an hour we were back on the bus though to make the final 2 hour or so push. We got in around 2pm and we were all extremely eager to bolt from the buses. After jumping up on the bus to unload bags one final time, and a quick goodbye to the tour guides, I ran my stuff back to my room, unpacked all my gross laundry, and ran to the laundry room. Cool German girl beat me there by 5 seconds, but we both got a laundry machine. Turns out most people wanted to do their laundry, for when I went to pick it up one of the Clark girls was unloading my laundry.

But yeah, trip finished.

Sunday: 7

One hundred and eighteen is a lot of points to score.

It's Tuesday morning (as I'm starting this blog--I have to run to lecture soon) and I haven't updated by blog at all since the previous Wednesday. Yes, I know this is absolutely ridiculous. The main reason why is because I've been studying. A lot. For this week I prepared a 2 page synopsis of a paper for Pollutants I'm going to write either within the next few days or next week (and apparently put way too much work into it, but then again that's less work I'll have to do on the final paper), a lab report for Microbiology (that I may or may not have to do a second draft of the week after next), a research fellowship grant proposal for this summer, and I studied for my Micro exam. Whew. That was a lot of jargon.

Next week starting on Friday the second I have my second study break. I'm pretty excited it's a total of 9! days. I decided I would try to get as much done as possible and get ahead in my studies. This means finish my paper for Pollutants that is due the second Monday we get back from break, catch up on my reading and possible read ahead in the text books from the library, write out some review questions I'm going to have to do soon anyway, complete some labs online to catch up, and compile first half study guides for two of my classes (I've already done one for Micro essentially because of the midterm this week). After this week, we're essentially have way through the semester. As of tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be home in 11 weeks. But basically in a nutshell, I have a bunch of work I've been trying to get done so I can have a more open break, so I canplayWorldofWarcraftwithmybrotherathomebecauseI'mnotanerdoranything. In my glorious defense, I haven't played WoW since I left home because I don't want to make time for it around my studies because that wouldn't be cool.

I don't think it's quite possible to do a breakdown of my last few days because I've lost track a bit. I know on Thursday, my easy day, I went shopping with Jesse at Coles before running off to a meeting with my American environmental studies friends, during which we talked about doing things during the rest of the semester. I'm a little annoyed because I was in a GREAT mood at that point so I said I'd do a lot of things, which I no longer have any interest in because I'm too busy. Oh well. It then took me a while before I got any work done.

Friday wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be because I didn't have my morning 2 hour lecture, and, well, the lab I hate so much ended up being really lame because they didn't have everything prepared when we got there. After messing around with the microscopes for about 2 hours I left. I'll make it up online because I wasn't passing in this lab. I was actually sort of annoyed the lab samples were not prepared by the time we got there. A lot of people left early so I did too, well, sorta. Friday night a bunch of us got pizza from Dominoes and we ate too much of it while watching Spongebob. It was a decent night but I was really out of it, so I went back to my room early and decided to look through my classes for the fall. This is when I found out I could apply for a research fellowship for this summer. The research fellowship is flipping sweet, but I won't go into too much detail yet because I'm still in the process of applying for it. Wish me luck!

In the fall I'm looking at taking French because I have to, two biology seminars (one 2.5 or 3 hour lecture a week) and a directed lab study (like I did last semester). This means because I don't have any specific times I need to be in the lab for my directed study, I'll have a very wide open schedule. I might even be able to pull it off such that I don't have to go into lab on Friday to get work done which would be great because I have Fridays off otherwise (and I hear a lot of really awesome people might have Friday off too). Next semester should be a lot of fun and I can't wait for it!

I woke up at a good hour on Saturday (notice how I'm breaking down each day even though I said I wouldn't) and worked all morning and early afternoon on my paper synopsis and research fellowship proposal. This proved difficult as someone named Alicia kept me away from my work on Skype and AIM. I was actually pretty happy with the amount of work I got done. After going for a run, shower/having dinner, and doing a little more work, Jesse and I shut off all our power in our rooms and sat out on my porch coming up with ideas for movie skits we'd like to do. We'll have to see if we even get to filming after break.

Jesse and I then went down to Connor's flat to see what he was up to. He and Greg were skyping with Clark girls, all of whom I knew. One of them screamed only a little bit when I walked infront of the webcam. It was cute. That skyping turned into getting my laptop to join Greg and Connor on their laptops to go onto the website Chatroulette. If you don't know, Chatroulette is a website where you have random video chats with people around the world. It is known for being an exhibitionist playground. Essentially guys love to expose themselves on there. It's sickening. Nonetheless, the night was filled with a lot of laughing and general nonsense as we messed around with people. Not to worry, I stayed fully clothed.

Sunday morning I woke up at a decent hour to do even more homework. Yay! I wanted to get as much done as possible before I had to go to the Australian Rules Football match with the CIEE bunch. Jesse and I left at 3 and took a bus into Freo and a train from there to an neighborhood called Subiaco. Subiaco Oval is home to the Fremantle Dockers, a purple-clad AFL (Australian Football League) team. Apparently, the Dockers are usually pretty bad. Visiting were the Adelaide Crows. However! This was the season/home opener! Additionally, we had pretty good seats!

The pitch, which is a giant, long oval, has two sets of goal posts, one on each end. The object is to kick (punt) the oblong ball through the posts, the middle set being worth six points and the outside posts being only worth one point. Eighteen players a side play, so it's sometimes quite crowded! I won't go into the semantics of the game, but the Dockers kicked ass! The final score was 118-62--a large margin of victory. The Crows did come back a bit in the third quarter, but the fourth quarter was almost all Dockers which was great because that was our end. All in all it was a fun game and I'd consider going to another game!

The train ride back actually wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I was expecting something similar to trying to ride the T after a Sox game. I mean, it was crowded sure. We decided to go into Perth and take the train back that way which was a much better idea than going back the way we came, because the trains back into Freo were JAM PACKED. I was actually surprised at that. The train ride back was good times. There were a handful of us CIEE kids going home together so it was reaaaal nice but we were all reaaaal tired. I went to bed soon after I got home.

Monday morning I went shopping at Coles and got a few things. The damn bus back home was 5+ minutes late (which is extreme for my bus line, so I started walking home only for it to pass me on my way back. I was pissed. I did however beat back the next bus that would have come on that bus line, so it wasn't terrible. Oh well. My lecture wasn't too too bad and my discussion which got moved to Mondays is in a much nicer room and a few more people turned up to that one. Unfortunately I over prepared for my paper which we were going over (the synopsis) and I felt silly for preparing so much. I was a little annoyed. After a run, I made pasties filled with a lot of goodness and did a bit of studying before going to bed around 11:30 (which is early for me!).

Today, Tuesday morning, I slept in until 10 which was great. My one class at 11:30--Microbiology--ended up not happening because the lecturer couldn't make it. However, I didn't end up leaving lecture until about 12:00 anyway because one of our lecturers came in to tell us the first lecturer couldn't make it and he tried to see if he had any lecture put together that would have been appropriate (but he didn't). However, my friend Tim (who I previously mentioned) came back to my flat to study for our midterm for a bit, not that we got much studying done. Basically we ended up laughing the whole time and talking about inappropriate things which is almost a fun, fun time. I studied a bit after that and I plan on going on a run today in a little bit once the sun's down a bit more. I hope to start on some homework I have planned for my study break, and I'll review for my Microbiology midterm a bit more in the morning perhaps before lecture. I should have at least 90 minutes in the afternoon tomorrow to review for it. The exam, which is only 15% of my grade, is at 3:30 (and I usually have the Micro lab at 1:30). After my class gets out at 12:30 tomorrow, I hope to meet this kid I met randomly on WoW. The story goes something like this: I was playing in a dungeon with a group of random people, all from different servers from me (meaning I wouldn't see them anywhere besides a dungeon). We wanted to do another dungeon because we were a really good team, but one of them had to go to bed and I figured out he was (at the time) 13 hours of me. I asked if he was from Australia and he said yes. Turns out he was due to be a first year at Murdoch. What are the odds of that!? It was absolutely ridiculous. After several failed attempts I hope to meet this kid in person just to say hi. I hope to then have time to have a nice leisurely lunch before taking my exam at 3:30. I'm not too worried about the exam. We'll see though! I hope to get a lot more studying done Wednesday night. Thursday I just have the one lecture before a meeting at 2. Then I'm completely done before break! No horrible Friday!! Yayy!!! I hope to get a lot of gaming in on Thursday and Friday and the weekend to reward my studies for the past two weeks. During the week of break I expect to get some good studying done though, so not to worry. :-p

Thursday: 7.5
Friday: 7
Saturday: 8
Sunday: 8
Monday: 7.5
Tuesday: 7.5

Northwest Trip, episodes 5 & 6: Snorkeling and Food Poisoning

Tuesday was the day I was looking forward to most: our full day at Coral Bay. Tuesday marked the first day we didn't step foot on the bus, and this was a welcome change. We woke up at a decent hour so we could get breakfast in before going over to the snorkeling and diving shop to ensure we could sign up for Tuesday's activities. A few of my friends, including Sarin, got to go on a snorkeling tour on which they saw a LOT of awesome things including a 10-foot hammerhead shark!

For $45 I booked a spot on a 2-hour glass bottom boat tour of the reef. As we were boarding the boat, they were feeding these large fish which had problem swimming in 1-foot deep water and getting right up next to us! Ningaloo Reef is one of the biggest in the world I believe. Australia is the only continent to have reefs on both coasts too! On this 2-hour tour we got to snorkel at two different spots, for a total of at least an hour. It was so much fun! The view under the boat was pretty darn good, but my pictures didn't come out so well. But I was really glad I got to snorkel again. I hope to do a lot more in the future!

(That's me on the boat with Brittany ["Pearl"], Brittany ["B$" - pronounced B-money], Nikki, Molly, and Nick - they all go to U Wisconsin Eau Claire)

After the snorkel boat tour, the lot of us went back for lunch in the hot, hot sun before going back out to the beach and having a good time floating around, throwing a football and frisbee. We were all very excited for happy hour at the local bar though, so we only stayed a few hours before going back to camp to shower and get ready for happy hour.

Happy hour at the bar was from 5:30 to 6:30, and it was my first happy hour ever (which makes sense since I haven't been of legal drinking age for that long). My friend Laura (from Clark) and I split a pitcher of beer, which was decent, before splitting a pitcher of cider (below; me holding the glass, and Laura with Justin, who is also from Clark). I was rather enjoying myself. It was a great atmosphere (there had to have been at least 25 of us there!), gorgeous weather (sunset below), and great cider. Let's just say by the time I went home for dinner with everyone at 7:30 I was very happy and tipsy.

In the picture at the table there is Ebba (from Sweden), Bri (from UW Eau Claire), Paul (from BC and Massachusetts) and my sassy self. Gosh I'm tan!

At dinner I had one and a half awesome veggie burgers. By far, it was most people's dinner of the trip. Very scrumptious indeed. After dinner, I had a delightfully tipsy conversation with a French gentleman on the beach about international soccer. Apparently my French accent is still good. I was happy with that. After a few hours, I went to bed. Great afternoon and evening!

Tuesday, March 9th: 9

However, my great evening ended, starting around 2:30 in the morning. I went to bed around 12:30 and woke up at 2:30 feeling sick. Naturally, I chugged a lot of fresh water and immediately felt worse. After a night of drinking, water always makes me feel better. I went back to sleep and woke up a few hours later and drank more water only to feel worse, again. I went to the bathroom very slowly and ended up throwing up. Dammit, I was pissed. I admit I drank a fair amount, but before bed I hadn't had a drink in over 5 hours and was well hydrated. Barry thought I was hung over but goddammit. I wasn't. I had food poisoning. To further make my case, I had stomach pains throughout the day like I've had with food poisoning in the past. I don't get sick from drinking alcohol because I'm not stupid. However, I didn't want to jump up and down and yell out food poisoning because my friends had made dinner. Justin, who also had the veggie burgers and had very little to drink, also felt a little sick from the food. I also had two different burgers which would have made it more likely for me to get food poisoning. Not that I'm pointing fingers, but I could see one of the cooks using the same turner to flip raw meat burgers and veggie burgers (which you're not supposed to do, especially since some people don't cook the burgers the same length of time). Either way, I was very sick and very worried and pretty embarrassed.

To make things worse, Wednesday was one of our biggest travel days (almost 900 kilometers) as we made our way to the Outback: Karijini National Park. I actually started to feel better halfway through our trip and was okay by lunch time, but I almost got really sick again on the bus. At lunch we saw grasshoppers that laid across the full length of our palms. Pretty big. Before getting into Karijini, we stopped in the last town before nowhere called Tom Price (named after some American). Tom Price was fairly cute, but very depressing. Not many people lived there and it was in the middle of nowhere. But they had a Coles! And I got a Monster energy drink. When I drank it outside the store, sitting on the sidewalk, it was one of the most pleasurable drinking experiences I've ever had. I'd rather have one of them than a good beer. Monster drinks make me so happy! :-p

On the way into Karijini National Park we saw a lot of cool hills from the bus. We got into the park a little while before sunset and were able to set up camp. Karijini, like most of the Outback, is covered in red dirt which will stain everything. Furthermore, there were a lot of poisonous (deadly poisonous!) snakes around, so we had to be careful. Dinner was alright that night, and I spent the night sipping extremely warm boxed wine with two of my friends. Wednesday could have been A LOT worse.

Wednesday, March 10th: 6

In Microbiology, Dylan and Tim & Co. are extremely inappropriate

Tuesdays are one of my better days, and as of next week, they will be my best day. Because very few people have been coming to my Pollutants discussion--5 last week and 4 this week--I'm being moved to the Monday discussion at 2:30. This makes my Monday a little longer than I'd like, but it's probably better this way since a) I'll have the discussion after the longer Pollutants lecture each week so Monday can be my main Pollutants day, and b) I'll have only an hour (well, 50 minute) lecture on Tuesdays from 11:30-12:20 and then I'll be done for the day. Wicked easy, ay? That means I can sleep in a bit, do some studying, have a short Microbiology lecture (which I sort of enjoy), and then be done at lunch time (which means I don't have to rush it) before I can go back to studying. I bring studying up a lot because I'd like to be studying a lot more than I already am, but I'm usually busy from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep. It's ridiculous! I'm not finding time to play soccer or footy because they're at really awkward parts of my day. I feel like I have to exercise around 5:30, 6 when it's rather cooler in the day and then shower and eat after, followed by studying time. I really like this schedule because it works well in my day and around my circadian rhythm. It sucks I'm missing out on footy and soccer, but really, I don't have much time for them anyway.

I sat next to my friend Tim in Microbiology lecture on Tuesday. Tim and his friend Mitch work across the bench from my (CIEE) friend Allie and I. Tim and I should not be allowed to sit next to each other in lecture, because we are extremely inappropriate, giggly, and don't pay as much attention to the lecture as we would sitting by ourselves. However, it's not our fault our (current) female professor makes a lot of comments that could be construed as sexual innuendos. Plus, both Tim and Mitch are 2 years younger than me (as is Connor) so it's much easier to be immature with them. That said, it's a riot talking to those two and it's made both Microbiology lectures this week a lot of fun.

An update on the storm that occurred on Monday night. It was the biggest storm to hit Perth in 50 years. It ended the biggest drought in some 110 years. They got something like 48mm of rain in a very short amount of time (I think maybe 10 minutes or an hour? A big difference but I wasn't listening to my TA who was going on about it...). A lot of stores and buildings were flooded and heavily damaged. Water rose up to people's car windows as they drove. Absolute mayhem. Too bad I was on campus during it and didn't get to fully see it! Within minutes of the storm, someone made a Facebook group called "I survived the Great Storm of Perth 22/3/2010" by the end of the day, some 23,000 people had joined (46,500 are in the group as I write this). Absolutely ridiculous! The storm gave way to a nice sunset though!

In the later afternoon, I went for a short run but didn't got very far or fast because I pulled my lower back/right hip really badly last week. I need to a) stop being sick so I can run for continuous stretches of time b) set aside time for proper stretching and minor conditioning and c) keep up with the running and building up time and distance. However, as of today, Wednesday, I still have a cough here and there and my chest hurts a bit when I run. It's a pain in the ass. The past few days my cough has been terrible.

After a dinner of potatoes, ground kangaroo, BBQ sauce, and garlic in puff pastry, Connor and I went to the library to do a bit of studying. As Connor was still eating and I had eaten way too much, I wanted for him to finish and my stomach to settle before venturing to the library. Jesse met us a little while later. Too bad the damn library closes at 10:30 (it closes at midnight at Clark) and the 24-hour study area is pretty small and filled with computers on all the tables, which people generally want to use. This meant the three of us didn't get much studying in. I might start using one of the study designated flats in the village. I've only walked past one of them and the tables are TINY and I like to spread my stuff out while studying!

I went to bed a little late to be waking up when I did (only 9am). I did my laundry as quickly as I could and hung it out to try with only a few minutes to spare before my lecture. As a result, I quickly ate some poorly made toast (burned because the toaster was being a prostitute) and some lame chai (my last two cups of chai have been rushed! Gah!!). This chai then spilled a bit on my labcoat in my bag, which was weird because I drank the entire thing before putting it in my bag at the end of lecture. The chai stain mostly came out when I hand washed it this evening.

Today's first lecture was Microbiology again, and Tim, myself, Mitch, and Allie all sat in a line. It was another lecture filled with fun commentary between Tim and I. Win. I had my second Pollutants lecture of the week which I am slowly enjoying more and more. I swear by the end of the unit I'm going to have a much better diet because of all the stuff we're learning in that class. Granted I think my professor is a little eccentric, but I already want to eat better so it'll be more motivation. I'm going to return to being a full vegetarian back in the states, since the extreme exception of kangaroo won't be available.

After a hasty lunch, I ran off to Microbiology prelab. The lecturer from the past two lectures gave us our prelab lecture which went on for too long, which in addition to our already long lab had me out just til 5 (and I'm usually out by 3:30 or 4). In the lab I got to work with Allie, Tim and Mitch which was a lot of fun. Apparently we joke around too much for Allie, but she's an awesome sport about it!

After getting back from my late lab, I went out for a run which was even slower today because my hip was rather tender. At the end of it my knee was hurting too. I'm falling apart! But I'm determined to keep my fitness up and get into the swing of staying in shape. I'm excited for it! =) After my run I quickly jumped in the pool with Connor to cool off (which makes my stretching after running a lot easier since I'm not drenched in sweat) and showered. I finished my laundry (took it in off the deck where it was drying and hung it up) and did a few housekeeping things and here I am! It's been a good past few days. Gonna be a long next 7 days though!

OH! And I got my housing assignment for the 2010-2011 school year at Clark! My friend Amelia signed me up for my housing (which I had to fill out forms for her to do so the school would let her) as I couldn't be there. I'm living down the hall from where I lived last semester in a single (room 315). In room 316 is my RA and friend Matt, so I'm really excited about that. Furthermore, my friend Justine (who is here at Murdoch with me, but I don't see her very often at all) is the head RA two floors below me. It's gonna be great. As you can see in the floor plan, the kitchen is JUST across the hall from me (and I'll be off the meal plan I expect), and the bathrooms are between rooms 321/322 and 323/324. It shouldn't be a bad situation. I am facing the car garage again though which is a pity, but I have a single and I'm very happy about that.

Tuesday: 7.5
Wednesday: 7.5

Onwards to Coral Bay! Northwest Trip, Episode 4

 Especially compared to the Sunday, Monday was kind of a boring day. It was one of those travel days. After helping pack up the caravans with everyone's bag like usual, I got in the front seat with Barry and we were off to Coral Bay. Last night marked the last night with one of our caravan drivers, Mark, who was filling in the first three days for Craig, who drove some insane distance to catch up with us. Craig missed the first three days so he could see ACDC in Perth, which is essentially the band's home town. Apparently the show was ridiculous.

While everyone slept on the bus in the morning as usual, I saw a whole lot of nothing which was too terribly boring. Barry and I talked a fair amount like usual, and we got passed several times by our own caravans. Because we're hauling heavy gear and such and there's very little traffic, the caravans often passed each other if one of them had gained enough momentum to do so (rather than waste the energy). It became good fun to pass one another. Sometimes we would make faces to one another.

We ate lunch on a river bank on the outskirts of town which was full of aboriginals. We were told to avoid them and to to pick any fights (apparently it's happened on past trips). Lunch was boring, as usual. I'm hungry, I'm going to go make myself a grilled cheese or two. Mmm... they're cooking. I've been melting the butter in the saucepan and adding garlic to it, then soaking the bread pieces in the buttery garlic before toasting them. As a result, I've been making delicious garlic toast grilled cheeses. They're to die for. Yup.

By the time we got to Coral Bay, where we stayed for two nights, it was late in the afternoon. We all ran to the beach after setting up camp since it was hot, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, just like I just enjoyed my two grilled cheeses. I was amazed at how shallow the decline off the beach was. We all got off the beach fairly fair before we couldn't touch. We saw a really cool sunset, one of the better ones of the whole trip here. The sand out to the point we ran to to take pictures was extremely mushy and soft. I'm pretty sure it wasn't sand. It felt like memory foam. Word.

A few of us went to the bar after dinner to see what was going on. ...Nothing much, really. I split a six pack of Carlton Mid beer (which I no longer like nor can really stand) with my friend Brittany, and brought them out on the beach late at night (which was the only place we could be loud at that hour). Unfortunately no one really wanted to go with me, so I only went with a few people. Didn't really matter, because I ran into Sarin and Crystal there and we had a great time being freaked out by millions of green and orange worm things swimming on the beach and very shallow waters. We also got fish to jump out of the water as we shone our torches on the water and we spotted a few sting rays. We also found a crab who looked like we was wearing 3 coats of sand on him, and then another crab who burrowed into the sand. I then dug him up with a stick. He wasn't happy. The end.

Monday, March 8th: 8

Skinny Jeans Don't Go Clubbing

Friday is my least favorite day of the week because it is my busiest day which completely blows. Let's just say last Friday didn't let me down... at all. My 2 lectures of 3 hours weren't too terrible, but they're not what I worry about. Yeah my 2 hour lecture for Plant Diversity is wearing a little thin on me, but it's my Plant Diversity lab I detest.

I thought I prepped well enough for it using the book. Nope, I was wrong. Friday's Plant Diversity lab was the worst lab I have ever attended and I am in no way hyperbolizing. It was the absolute worst ever.

I had a laundry list of things to do and didn't even get them all done. It didn't help it took me over an hour to get things working on my microscope because some asshat left it messed up and I couldn't figure out how to get it working again (but of course I thought my slides, which I had to make myself, were messed up--they were fine). So I wasted a lot of time messing with my microscope which already had me in a bad mood and really anxious. The worst of it all is I have to collect a small sample, mount it, find some cells, and label it correctly with a bunch of cell compartments labeled. Oh, guess what!? THIS ISN'T CELL BIOLOGY. I shouldn't be expected to do all this crap. Totally unfair. Doesn't help I have to do a bunch of these slides and they don't always show what we need, so we have to figure it out on our own out of the book or something like that. At one point I had to figure a life cycle of some brown alga we barely mentioned in lecture. Pretty sure I'm not familiar with the alga... at all... so how am I supposed to put pictures of it in order? To make things worse... there were duplicate life stages on the board that didn't look all the similar. Furthermore, when I asked the professor to help me, he himself goofed up and told me a wrong answer! And I'm supposed to get it right? Really?

I left earlier than I should have (after most of everyone had already left) extremely upset. I nearly cried I was so angry and upset with the lab. It's hell bullshit, that's what it is. It's almost this bad every week. I don't like any of the kids in the lab either, as they're all cliquey and stupid. It also doesn't help they don't put things back where they belong, especially when it's something like a premade slide they only have a few of to share among the 40 of us. I've decided to either start drinking heavily during that lab or take up smoking and taking smoking breaks every 10 minutes. That way I might make it through more or less alright.

I still have to finish the write up for the lab and spend at least 2 hours prepping for the lab on Friday. Thankfully, I don't have lab the following Friday and then I have a week break. I shouldn't have to dread going to lab as much as I do. Thing is, I was pumped to kick the lab's ass last Friday but it still got to me. I don't know what to do!

To make matters worse, everyone besides Connor and Jesse backed out on a dinner date with me. I had at least 7 other people who said they'd go into Freo with me for a beer and dinner (and get back to campus before too late) and almost all of them flaked. I was so upset I almost didn't go in with Connor and Jesse.

We did anyway and I had a decent time. I had a pint of decent beer and then a veggie burger from Hungry Jacks (Burger King) which was actually pretty good. We got back just before 9 and I soon after went to this Pirate Party being thrown by the student village. It was alright, nothing special, but all my American friends were there and it was a decent time.

I'm a little disappointed my best friends here are all American with the exception of Connor. I think it's really stupid Clark has the program here at Murdoch when very few Australians live on campus, which makes interacting with them much harder. Oh well.

Friday (day): 2.5
Friday (night): 7.5

On Saturday Connor and I went to the pool for a little bit, but it wasn't that hot out and the pool was freezing cold which was really disappointing. But since we were going out to Perth for the night to a club, Connor needed a shirt to wear so we went into Kardinya to get him one. We went into this Kmart and found absolutely nothing... it was actually kinda sad how poorly everything was displayed, but there are worst things. We went across the way and into Ed Harry which is a slightly upscale. We got Connor a shirt and I saw the COOLEST pleather jacket (I won't wear leather)... EXACTLY the type of one I've wanted for a while now. I went back today (Monday afternoon) and got it. I'm really excited. It's so chique!

Connor, Greg and I along with some of the other usual courtyard kids sat around drinking our wine for a few hours before we headed out. Connor insisted I didn't wear my skinny jeans, so I borrow a pair of Jesse's pants instead. Because we were sitting around watching funny YouTube videos for too long, we missed the bus to the train station by about 2 minutes, so we had to walk to 20+ minutes to the station which wasn't too bad. We being me, Connor, Jesse, Greg, Brendan (my former RA from Clark), and Connor's friend (a local) Josh. We didn't have to wait long to catch the train into Perth which was great.

The six of us went to this underground club called Ambar which Connor got us into. He was really excited because this DJ he likes was going to do a set there. Ambar was pretty small--much smaller than I thought it was going to be. The music was pretty good (I even recognized a song!) but everyone except Connor and I (and Josh for a little while longer) left early. Connor and I were having a pretty good time nonetheless, but he eventually got really hungry and we left to get food.

We got back between 3:30 and 4 which was kinda interesting. I then woke up at 11 and was yanked into an indoor soccer tournament by Greg. Because I didn't have any breakfast and I was out really late the previous night I didn't play very well. Not that it mattered anyway, because we had to field some kids who didn't play soccer. It was kinda lame, yeah, but there wasn't much we could do about it. I didn't feel good almost all of Sunday, which we ended the day by going into Freo (Connor, Greg, Brendan, Billy--our neighbor and friend--and I). Our trip got interesting when Connor snapped the car door key in the lock. Billy managed to pull the window down by pressing on it (since it was a manual window) after a while, so we could at least get into the car and drive home (since there was a different key for the ignition). For a little while there it was a little hairy.

Oh, and Jesse and I saw this cool sunset.

That night I ended going up to the new village to watch a movie with my Swedish friend Maddy (from the Northwest trip). She, our mutual German friend Theresa (also from the trip), and a few others who came in and out of the flat talked for a long while before we watched the 40 Year Old Virgin. I was laughing left and right, but it was probably a bad movie choice since a) I was the only guy and b) I was the only American/native English speaker there. Yeah, it was awkward. But I still had fun and I think they did too.

Today, Monday, was like any other Monday, but I went onto campus at 8:30 to meet with most of my group to finish our paper that was due today (and I hope was passed in by one of the guys who said he would). We didn't get all together until 9 which really sucked, and finishing the paper took forever (it didn't get done before I left for our 11:30 lecture). The one guy skipped lecture to finish it up and I really hope he passed it in, because I told him to please email me if he needed help (and I'd come find him on campus since I could help him for about 2 hours before it was due) or email me once he passed in the paper. So far, I've received no emails from him. Not receiving emails from Australians was the story for this group assignment. No matter how much we'd stress we would keep in close contact, it never happened. Maybe I expect too much out of Australians. Americans in my experience don't seem to have a problem. Furthermore, I didn't like any of their writing styles nor the way they went about doing the project. I hate group projects so much, and I hate how their is a lack of competent writers in this world. Additionally this project made me realize once again how much I dislike incompetent people who pretend to be smart. I want to kill them!

After lecture I had a very unsatisfying lunch and I took a short nap before Connor dragged me out of bed and back to Kardinya. We went into Kardi with Billy and this other kid... who I was hoping I wasn't going to share a car with...to go to Coles (I only needed a few things) and to get that jacket I mentioned. By the time we got back to the car, the grey clouds had grown darker and it started to sprinkle. It soon started to rain, and rain harder, and then hail. Once back on campus, it really started to hail and thunder and lightning and rain and get really windy. I took some video which I hope to post later. These Australians don't see this kinda rain that often and they got a little too excited. I heard even louder thunder than made me jump several times. The marble/golf ball sized hail was extremely loud on our roofs. Very interesting in general. Now I have to go eat and hopefully get some studying done. I'm not very good at getting studying done. Oh well.

Saturday: 7
Sunday: 5
Monday: 6

Buying Flip Flops Is A Four Plus Hour Endeavor

Yeah yeah, I know I was absolutely terrible about posting this week. I've been too damn busy! It's been kind of frustrating not having time to do anything. Showering and cooking after my runs takes up so much time before I have to run off to the library to study. I guess I'll have to work on it.

On Tuesday I had a lecture in the late morning which was one of those lectures I probably could have missed, and then a discussion after lunch. I'm not quite sure how many people are supposed to be in my discussion, maybe 15 to 20, but I was one 5 people. Yeah, 5 people showed up. Not only was this pathetic, but the discussion we had was boring as hell. I'm still not convinced my TA knows as much as she should given the topic matter. I talked to one of the kids who showed up at the discussion a few days afterward, and he encouraged me to keep going to them even if they aren't helpful because it looks good on my record and might help my grade at the end, even though the discussions are not compulsory.

I think I tried getting some work done in the afternoon, before meeting up at 4:30 to play Australian Rules Football (footy). A bunch of Americans and my Swedish friend Maddy met and walked down to the field, which is a beautiful complex, to have an introductory session on the sport. Let me just say this: there is a reason why footy hasn't gained a foothold in any other country. Why? It's as lame as FDR's legs. Yeah yeah, it's different and I should appreciate it, but it's stupid. It takes rugby and makes it stupid. Rugby I understand. Footy I don't. When passing the ball, you can't throw it. You have to punch it underhand style. It's almost like you're trying to serve a badminton in your backyard. It hurts your hand and it's inefficient. Throwing it rugby style makes so much more sense. I didn't enjoy my time at all and was uncomfortable most of the time despite my efforts to enjoy myself. I was going to go on Thursday but I didn't end up doing so.

On Wednesday I was ready to whip through my classes and lab and work all afternoon and do blogs and such. I didn't. I ended up playing soccer instead. Greg wrote on my Facebook wall he was going to go play with a friend, so I tagged along. We turned up at a social team's practice under the lights (which was really cool). It was actually more like a conditioning session... which sucked. It sucked even more because my tailbone started hurting as I was passing the ball around before we started. My tailbone hurt more and more through out the session. After we did a lot of conditioning (which wasn't all that horrible), we finally got a game going.

At this point, my tail bone really hurt and I couldn't run a lot. We were also using TINY goals with goalies which kinda took the fun out of it. Nonetheless, I did manage to score the only two goals of the game before I had to leave. Granted they were kinda scrap goals, but they were good nonetheless. I was proud. On the second goal, Greg beat like 3 kids before passing the ball into the middle, which I got on a deflection and tucked it under the goalie as he took me out. I did a super man dive over him and probably screwed up my back even more, because it hurt like a bitch in the morning.

I woke up wicked sore. I almost considered skipping my only lecture because my tailbone hurt so badly, but I went anyway. The lecture was boring. Oh well. I went into the library for a little while after and finished my lab report for Wednesday's lab and handed it in. After coming back to my room and having lunch (I made these FANTASTIC garlic toast grilled cheese sandwiches), Connor and I went to the library to get some work done. Unfortunately because this kid in my group wanted to pull the paper we're working on together, I didn't have much to do. As a result, we didn't stay that long in the library. Speaking of my paper, I've been given sparse updates on it even though I was told I would be frequently updates. Additionally, it looks like I have to do more work than I was told because one of my partners isn't getting it together as well as he would have liked. Bollocks.

Walking back from the library, I asked Connor if he wanted to go to Freo with me to get some flip flops because I needed a better pair than the one I got on my Northwest trip (my previous pair broke which sucked!). Connor told me yeah he'd go and drive me, but we could go to Kardinya because there was a surf shop there. We went in and didn't see anything worth getting, so he brought me to this shopping mall. As we were getting there, my RA whose car Connor was driving called and said she needed to go to work and thus needed the car. As we turned around, she called back saying nevermind, allowing us to go into the mall.

The mall was pretty cool and had a lot of fun stores in there. Connor and I went into a surf shop with more than three times the selection of flip flops than the previous store did. I got a really fun pair of Quicksilver flip flops for $20 and was very satisfied. From there we went into this other store and poked through really cheap shirts, finding it hard to figure out if they were women's or men's shirts. They were all kinda silly nonetheless, so we didn't get any but Connor bought me a cool pair of suspenders which made me happy.

We then went into a Coles in the mall and bought some food and supplies for dinner, which we excitedly planned on the way to the supermarket. We planned on making kangaroo meat pies (made out of the metal muffin tin Connor has). After Coles we stopped by Kmart because Connor needed socks and underwear. We also bought Jesse a thong because he jokingly said he needed a man thong in addition to the pasta sauce we got him. The drive home was really fun too. The whole shopping experience with Connor was a blast: it took us more than four hours to get my flip flops. Apparently we got sidetracked. Haha. One of our friends even called us to make sure we were okay because we were gone for so long.

Just as we got back and went off to find Jesse to give him his pasta sauce and thong, he came back with everyone from the second footy session that I missed because my back was hurt/I was out shopping with Connor. It was the perfect place and time for it. He was a real champ about it! Very funny indeed.

 Connor and I then went right to work on making our kangaroo meat pies. We used ground roo which we fried up, and to which we added frozen vegetables, garlic, BBQ sauce, and bread. Putting the pie crusts carefully into the muffin tin was a real chore and took forever, but it was still really fun nonetheless. I really enjoy cooking with other people, so it was a real treat! We listened to a lot of cool tunes in the process. (And no, Alicia--Connor and I are not developing a bromance.)

Connor went off to pick up the girl whose car we borrowed from work while the pies cooked and DAMN did they come out nicely! We were very proud of them! They were a little dry on the inside (we could has used a little more BBQ sauce) but were really good nonetheless. Next time we'll also use puff pastry on the top and they'll be fantastic!

Thursday all in all was incredibly fun. Flip flop shopping adventures apparently are a great way to spend an afternoon. I also need to cook with others more often!

Tuesday: 7
Wednesday: 7.5
Thursday: 9.5

The Northwest Trip: Episodes 2 & 3

We got a 6am wake up call and within 30 seconds, everyone was up and out of there tents. Why was this? Because we were already awake. Why were we all awake you might ask? Because within 2 hours of falling asleep, the most ridiculous wind tore through our camp, making it impossible to sleep. I had my tent in my face the entire night. Needless to say, none of us got very much sleep. I was actually very tickled to see no one got any sleep and felt a lot better about it. It was a sort of bonding experience.

We had our first breakfast which was basically just cereal and toast, nothing exciting. I think we all very soon got tired of cereal, toast and bad coffee for breakfast but there's only so much you can do, ay? My last meal on kitchen duty consisted of doing dishes which took forever because people are incapable of cleaning up after themselves.

I got shotgun again and we had a really pretty morning drive. We drove through this "province" that this old bloke claims is his own country. The Australian government sorta lets him get away with it because they're hoping he dies shortly. Out in this area, a 250,000 acre farm or plot of land is rather small. Most farms are half a million acres. Quite large. Apparently several Texans on previous trips have told Barry they have several thousand acre ranches with several hundred heads of cattle. That's nothing compared to Western Australia.

Our first stop was at these really awesome cliffs over the Indian Ocean. Driving up the the stop I saw my first live wild kangas but no one else did because they were all sleeping in the back. I got some good pictures of another kanga shortly thereafter when we were taking pictures of the cliffs. This excited me.

We got back in the bus after a short while and headed to our next stop which was on the coast, where we had lunch. We saw this awesome cannon which I climbed all over like a little child, of course. We had a lot of time before lunch was going to be made and ready, so a lot of us hung out on the beach. My friend Marie and I swam out to a rock about 100 meters off the beach and same some hermit crabs. Those buggers are legit.

Back on the beach, a large pelican landed in the shallow water. Trying to coax him inward where we could take pictures of him, I found a dead fish on the beach. Wrapping his tail in seaweed, I tossed the fish to the pelican. Yup, the pelican ate him very readily. It was quite fantastic. We then three random stuff into the water to mimic food and got the pelican to come in really close. It was so cool!

After lunch and another car ride, we stopped off at a gorge which was cool enough. After seeing several impressive gorges in the States, I wasn't impressed, but I still appreciated it nonetheless. Our next stop was Hamelin where we were to stay for two nights. After setting up camp (I got to climb on top of the caravan and unload all our bags, a duty which I would keep for the remainder of the trip), a bunch of us walked along a path to the ocean, a couple hundred meters away. Hamelin is known to be home to a lot of stromatolites, which are ancient cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, are one of the first photosynthetic organisms which made life as we know it possible as they generate oxygen (as do all photosynthetic organisms).

We stayed at the end of the rocky beach (on a platform above the stromatolites which are extremely fragile and might only grow 1 cm over 30 years) until the sun set, battling flies. I don't know what the hell the flies want from me because they're not eating me. The flies were extremely annoying and made me want to kill someone. But in general I didn't let them bother me too much.

After the sunset we all went back and shortly had dinner. Just a few paces from the kitchen area a karoake thing was set up. Watching my friends sing was a lot of sun, especially when they sang songs I knew and liked (especially songs from Grease!). It was a good time. We ended the day with late night conversations of everything funny and interested. It was a great end to the day!

Of course Saturday was my mom's birthday. This is the second birthday in a row I've missed. Oh bother.

Speaking of bothersome things, I left my contacts case at the last camp, which meant for the rest of the trip I'd have to sleep in my contacts a few nights in order to make them last long enough for the remainder of the trip. It was only a small inconvenience, but annoying nonetheless!

Saturday, March 6th: 8

We got a 5am wake up call. This was fantastic but was something I was going to have to get used to. This early rise allowed us to get to Monkey Mia, a little bay on the Indian Ocean nice and early. Early in the morning a handful of dolphins come in to feed. This was pretty cool. I got really close to a few dolphins (a few feet away). The people who work there know the dolphins all really well and know all their names, who they hang out with, who they mated with, and who their kids are. Only the female dolphins come in to feed. I learned if you're a snotty like 5 year old who make a lot of noise and misbehaves you'll get to feed a dolphin. Apparently I was 4x too old and too well behaved to qualify. Oh well. A lot of the dolphins had shark battle scars, especially on their dorsal fins. It's a sad story. The dolphins can gang up on sharks too though, because Cetaceans are cooler than cartilaginous fish. A few very large pelicans came onto the beach behind us while we were watching the dolphins. They're so funny looking.

After the dolphins we hung out on the beach for a few hours. The water was so damn salty we could float really easily. Is saw a cute little turtle swimming   about 30 yards away, but he wasn't interested in having morning tea with me. Little shit. Emus were hanging out on the grass behind us like we weren't there. Silly little birds.

The highlight of my day came with playing volleyball. I'm not that great, but that didn't stop me from diving all around in my speedo and lime green sunglasses. It was such a blast! It was really satisfying being one of the best players there, and having several successful diving digs. So good. I hope we can get kids together to play during the rest of the semester.

After the beach we went to a town a little ways away for lunch. The town, called Denham, was pretty boring. Aside from seeing a massive emu shit on the grass (one of the girls got a good picture of it accidentally), and dressing up in my speedo with a cape (and a make shift "bow" I found on the ground from one of the palm trees) it was a pretty boring stop.

After lunch we got back in the car and started to drive back. We stopped at another cliff where we saw loads of sharks from afar. Little sharks but still it was cool. We saw more cool cliffs and HUGE manta rays. Guys must have been as big as a Mini Cooper.

On our last leg back, we visited Shell Beach. It's covered in tiny little shells. That's all I have to say about it. It was kinda boring.

We were in Hamelin again for the night and saw a great sunset. Dinner and karoake again, followed by more fun conversations. The stars were pretty good, as good as a clear night back at home in Cornish. Unfortunately these were the best stars we saw all the entire trip. Oh well! I went out on a walk with a few kids to look at the stars. One of the girls, named Sam Adams (lol) goes to UNH. Her friend, also from UNH and on the trip with us, is from Middlebury.

Sunday, March 7th: 8