Turtle Island in Bali

We went to Turtle Island and got to hold all of these exotic animals.  Our tour guide was hilarious! He would just throw something on us (like a snake) and be like “Picture! Picture! Ok next.” Then we would move along to the next animal.  It was a fast tour, but well worth the trip!

He may not look heavy but I was straining to hold a smile while holding him!Tour guide with a day and a half year old sea turtle! They fit perfectly in my hand

When I first got the snake he wound tightly around my neck and I got really nervous. Right after this though he loosened up and just sat there on my neck.

Cute little monkey. We couldn't hold the monkeys because the "bad ones" were out whenwe were there. This one caught a plastic bag in the wind and played with it for awhile.

Spring Break in Bali, Indonesia

In front of another Hindu structure

Absolutely the most beautiful thing I've ever seen! The pictures don't come close to the real thing

All of us in front of the volcano

The Luau dinner at our resort. The entertainment for the night included the balinese dance (obviously), a magic show, and a guy that lit bottles on fire and threw them around. He was definitely the crowd favorite!

For spring break I was with my parents for half of it and the other half I went to Bali, Indonesia for 4 days with 5 of my friends.  We stayed in the Bounty Resort and spent a lot of time traveling through the city, bargaining with street vendors, and playing with wild animals!

In front of another Hindu structure

Absolutely the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! The pictures don’t come close to the real thing

All of us in front of the volcano

The Luau dinner at our resort. The entertainment for the night included the balinese dance (obviously), a magic show, and a guy that lit bottles on fire and threw them around. He was definitely the crowd favorite!

Weekend Trip to Rottnest

Quokka's are these weird animals. It's a mixture between a kangaroo, a rat, and a squirrel. They're nocturnal so at night time you walk and have to dodge them because they're everywhere!

One of the beautiful beaches in Rottnest which is a 30 minute ferry ride from Freemantle

Rottnest is an island made up completely of beaches. There are no cars so everyone rides banks around different trails

The main fixture at Rottnest

Margaret River

Winery that won the best winery award for 2008. We weren't too impressed with it though. I thought a lot of others were considerably better, but I'm not the judge.

Margaret River was my first weekend trip since I’ve been in Australia.  I went with my friends Kristin (she lives in Edwardsville, IL and goes to Indiana University), Amber (who goes to U of I), Jade (study abroad student from South Africa), and Jade’s friend Tom.  Jade has a car so it worked out perfectly to go with her so we didn’t have to deal with trains and renting a bus for the wine tours.  We decided beforehand that Tom would drive because he goes to Margaret River every month so he elected to be our tour guide.  We left Friday afternoon after classes and took the 4 hour drive there.  We rented a house that ended up being absolutely beautiful for such a cheap price.  The house was fully furnished with two king sized beds and a single bed in the living area along with a couch, bean bag, recliner and plenty of floor space (we already decided to go back again with more people!).  It also had a barbeque, fully stocked kitchen, jacuzzi bath tub, and more.  Basically we were living like royalty compared to our dorm rooms back at Tommy!

Me and Kristin slept in this room. We both agreed that it was our best nights sleep since being in Australia!

Kitchen and living area

Our outside patio

We got there around 9 Friday night so we just settled into our house and got to bed early for an early start on Saturday.  Saturday we went to a little cafe for brunch in the town of Margaret River.  Then we did a little bit of shopping in the downtown area.  Margaret River itself is very small.  It is pretty much in comparison with Roseville, but with little boutiques and cafes instead of houses.   We started our wine tour around 1 and it worked out perfectly that we went this particular weekend because there was an older crowd concert that took a lot of the attention away from the wineries.  In some of the wineries later during the day we were the only ones there so we got a lot of attention due to boredom from the wine reps.  We ended up going to around 8 wineries and we ended it with a brewery.  I had two wineries that were my favorites, Howard Park (I bought a sparkling shiraz there) and Gralyn Estates.  The brewery was also really, really fun, but it’s the only place we went to that you had to buy a tasting tray.  Kristin and I split one and we got 7 different beers each unique and having a varying alcohol content. 

A wedding was happening at this winery later in the afternoon. That'd be gorgeous!

Our favorite winery

I'm not sure which winery this is, but it looks pretty!

Wild Life Park

In the first few weeks  UWA set up day excursions for the study abroad students that were optional to go on.  I signed up for the Wild Life Park day excursion.  I was really excited to go there because I heard that you get to touch koalas and see all the Aussia animals up close.  We had to take a 45 minute bus ride to the place which was kind of tiresome, but definitely well worth the trip!  The first thing we did when we got there was go into the kangaroo pit where up to 50 kangaroos just hang out and wait for visitors to come feed them.  I was really hesitant at first to feed a kangaroo because i didn’t want it to bite me but they were really eager and friendly toward us. 

This is me feeding Jerry, a 100+ kangaroo at the park. He was the oldest one and you can see that his days are numbered!

He's sooo old! We kept saying that he was going to die as we were feeding him. He kept getting the food stuck and would try to hack it up. It was pretty gross, but funny at the same time

The other animals that we saw were really cool, but nothing topped that first kangaroo experience!  My second favorite were the koalas.  Usually on a private tour of a smaller size you get the opportunity to hold the koala, but we had 20 people in our group so we only go to pet them.  We had to pet them when the back of our hands because they are very sensitive to touch.  Also, the oil from your hands irriates their skin.

cutest little koala that I got to pet!

 The most surprising animal encounter I had was with a wombat.  I never realized what exactly a wombat was.  I think I assumed it was sort of like a bat, but I was definitely wrong when this fat thing came out!  It can weigh up to 50 kilos which is like 100 pounds and they live underground.  They can actually move surprisingly fast underground for their weight.

me and the wombat. This is all that woman did all day was just hold that wombat for different tour groups while we got to touch his leg and take a picture.

Assortment of Pics

Group of international kids living in Tommy

They took all of us “freshers” into a pit, gave us buckets of paint, and told us whoever got out with the least paint wins.

Me and Kallie, she's from Mass. but goes to school in Virginia. We clearly didn't win!!

St. Thomas More

Our awesome Tommy shirts. Getting ready for Oday games where we competed against the other colleges at various games

I arrived at St. Thomas More (Tommy More) which is my college (dorms in the US) it was a little sketchy.  All of the rooms are divided into blocks (A-O).  I’m in O block where a lot of the other study abroad kids are staying.  When I arrived here it was the day before Orientation for all of the International, Exchange and Study abroad students.  There were only 70 kids in Tommy by the time I got there.  I met a few friends right away and hung out with them the next few days.  I learned quickly that school would be a lot different in Australia than it is in the States.  For one, the process to sign up for classes is very very drawn out and was explained to us as being “complicated and a little unnecessary”.  We each had a different registration time to go to a big room, get our picture taken, go to another building and sign papers, go to another building to pick out which classes you wanted, then finally go to another building to pick out EIGHT preferences for which classes you wanted.  That whole process took me about 3 hours and by the end of the day I was definitely ready for bed.  Not only was it an exhausting process, we did not even get our classes that day,but had to wait another week to actually get our schedules.  I ended up getting basically the preferences that I wanted and am taking an Australian Culture class, Pyschology, Health and Fitness (which is basically gym class), and International Management.  It worked out so that I don’t have class on Friday so that gives me more time to travel on the weekends.

Over the next week (Oweek) we spent time going downtown and going to the beach or the bay.  The beach is a 15 minute bus ride away and the Matilda Bay is literally a 3 minute walk from my door.  I haven’t gotten burnt yet, but I’ve been applying the 50 spf regularly!  We also had meetings everyday about different rules throughout the college and the uni.  We also had Oday on Friday where all the clubs and sports had tents set up on the James Oval (which is similar to the Quad at U of I) and everyone signed up for different events and clubs.  I was planning on signing up for some sports club, but we found out that you have to pay to sign up for the club and then also pay for different activities.  That’s one major thing that I’ve noticed at uni, you have to pay for everything!

Before classes started we also had Oday activities where all the colleges (Tommy More, Trinity, St. Catherines, Currie, St. George’s) came to the Matilda Bay and we all competed in different games and then had a BBQ.  Everything here is really competitive amongst the colleges.  You basically onlyhang out with students from you college which is cool in some ways because you become really close with the people in your college, but also you don’t get to branch out very much.  I guess time willl only tell if things will become more integrated throughout the school year.

Traveling Down Under

Traveling to Australia wasn’t nearly as tiresome as I imagined it would be.  I left on a Tuesday and arrived in Perth on a Thursday afternoon.  My flight left from Peoria to Chicago to LA to Melbourne to Perth.  The flight from LA to Melbourne was a long one, but luckily I slept for the majority of it (around 10 hours).  The rest of the time was occupied by watching the featured movies they have to offer with the tv screen on each seat.  The food was surprisingly good, but they gave you very, very small portions.

When I arrived in Melbourne I was wearing my standard Illinois winter clothes (jeans, long socks, long sleeved shirt and sweatshirt).  Needless to say I was sweating pretty much immediately upon arriving since we had to walk from the plane indoors.   After going through customs, which took about an hour and a half, I anxiously awaited my next plane to make it to my final destination. 

Sean Gilleran picked me up at the airport and we retrieved my luggage which I was more than surprised to actually see arrived.  I stayed at the Gilleran’s house for 5 days with Sean, his stepmom Debra, and little brother Kirk.   Staying with the Gillerans was the best decision because they showed me around Perth and took me to “townie” restaurants, boutiques, and beaches.  The first day we went to the beach it was kind of a let down because it was really windy and overcast, but I was mainly just excited to finally see the Indian Ocean.

 

On my last day staying with the Gillerans I went shopping and was overwhelmed by the different styles of clothes.  Australians are very European and they are definitely behind the times from the US.  Everthing is also very expensive.  Tops/blouses that I would normally get from say, Express, are around $40-$50 where they would be $20-$30 at home.