Things that I miss....

Since my parents are arriving today, which I am very very excited about, I've been thinking about the US a lot lately. Here is just a quick list of daily items that I've been living without for the past 4 months and am very excited to have when I get back to HR!! I also asked people that I've been hanging out with for the past 4 months what they were most excited to have when they get home. Obviously friends and family are first on our lists but here is other random things that people in America might take for granted:

-Dishwasher
-Non-communal washer and dryer
-Oven
-My bike
-My car
-A cell phone that was produced sometime in the past 2 years rather than the brick I have right now that dates to about 2001
-Stop signs (there aren't any here so there is always a possibility to get hit because pedestrians DO NOT have the right of way)
-A good breakfast for under 10 dollars (everything is going to dirt cheap when I get home)

Here are the responses from the Village:
- TV (Specifically watching baseball for my friend Emily O from Boston College)
-Really good pizza (also another suggestion from Emily) I agree with this one, pizza here sucks!
-Apparently they also don't sell bagels at the grocery stores here...Emily again
-Cheeze-Its (specifically white cheddar) and Goldfish (suggested by my friend Katie J from Wisconsin Eau Claire)
-Applebees (that's where Courtney from Wisconsin Eau Claire will be eating her first meal! And where she works)
-Regular coffee (everything here is made out of espresso beans) Meghan M from Boston who is obsessed with Dunkin Doughnuts suggested this one
-Kally is excited to eat at the cafeteria at her school so that she doesn't have to cook for herself anymore
-Laura from Penn State said that she misses Reeses Peanut Butter Cups that are cheap, at the market here I bet they sell for around $15 dollars for a bag!
-Kimbra from Boston also had a lot of things that she would miss: "shopping carts that you can control, having spices/flour, a full keyboard on my phone, a good chef's knife, more clothes, a second shower towel/set of sheets, and friends who keep the kitchen clean
-Some of the Germans also said that they miss the $1 burgers at McDonalds (Friedrich) and a good old American breakfast (Niklas)

It seems like the consensus is that all of us mostly miss American food

As you can tell most of us are VERY excited to come back home, either to the States or Germany, but I still bet that the next few weeks will fly by and all of us are very sad to see our time come to an end in Perth!!

See everyone soon :)

Emily

Guest Post: Heidi comes to Perth!

Hello there dear readers!

As you can perhaps tell already... this isn't Emily. It's Heidi! And I'm here to do a guest post and update you all on Emily's experiences here in Australia!

First of all, I would like to comment that this place is really, really, REALLY far away from Colorado. Like... so far. It took forever to get here! I was impressed. and surprised. 10,000 miles looks far on paper, but in person... oh my gosh. SO FAR. And I got stuck in Sydney on the way, so I was traveling for almost 48 hours from Boulder to Murdoch Uni! Crazy.

We've been doing all kinds of Australian stuff, and it's been fun and strange to be wandering around to all these specific places that Emily knows how to get to but I don't. Getting home from the airport we took a bus and train, and the whole time I was thinking... "What the heck... she is so knowledgeable! Where are we?!" It's been interesting to be a part of Em's life that isn't the one where she met me (in Boulder) and where she has tons of other (really nice and cool) friends who I've never seen before!

Some of our adventures include King's Park (in Perth), Cottesloe beach (where we were almost eaten by huge waves!) and a really cute coffee shop where we got some super delicious cakes a few times. Without further comment, here's some photos that sum up everything quite nicely!

Getting our African drum on at "Stress-free" day for Murdoch- free food! Woo!

 All the delicious looking food at the Freo (Freemantle) Markets, which run on weekends and are full of yummy things to eat. [Freemantle]

AMAZING gelato before we got beaten up by waves at the beach.  There's just nothing quite like gelato and sunshine to brighten a day! [Cottesloe Beach]

 The water looks so friendly... but no! Attack of the killer agua! I really liked this beach because it was so, so blue- I was very impressed. [Cottesloe Beach]

Fish and chips, post-beach. Several things to note here: We ate lots of different kinds of french fries (I'd definitely say we're connoisseurs by now), and also, food is super expensive. Kudos to Emily for eating out with me so much! [Cottesloe Beach]

Here are some artsy photos of our delicious slices of cake at the prettiest coffee shop ever! As a barista, I really like going to coffee shops, so this was the perfect Heidi activity! The first slice is Tiramisu (mine) and the second is Honeycomb Cake (Emily's). [Leederville, Perth]

We also made dinner quite often with all our market veggie purchases, my favorite of which was a huge bag of fresh basil for $2. That, combined with the food photography setting on my camera, led to some pretty serious cooking photo shoots!

I can't write a guest post without mentioning the amazingness that is feeding kangaroos. Here is a picture of me enjoying it immensely:

And just for cuteness' sake..... d'awwwwwww! A joey!

Yesterday we took a trip to Rottnest Island, where the only form of transport is bike and there's amazing beaches and mini Kangaroos who were quite friendly and all over the place. We snorkeled, I got sunburned, and the general carefree nature of biking around an island was just lovely! Here's our group:

Our first stop, where we saw lots of fish:

Emily and myself at the above-mentioned coffee shop:

And finally, we found the perfect way to personalize (excuse me, personalise) any pair of sunglasses in an extremely Australian way:

In conclusion, I'd like to say that I had a fantastic time in Western Australia and visiting Emily- Not only was it awesome to see my friend, but it was also cool to see how she had settled in so far from home and was so comfortable in a place that was totally foreign to me! (Cue sentimental music) I know it can be trying to be around the same person for such a long period of time, but Emily made me feel right at home and did a fantastic job of showing me the area and giving me a unique taste of Australia! Thank you so much for having me, Emily, and I hope I can do the same for you while I'm in Germany! Hooray!

Cheers,
-Heidi

Bali

Hello Everyone

Over my 2nd study break I planned a trip up to Bali with 5 of my friends that I have met at Uni. It seems like I have been doing so many trips since I've been here! Bali is just north Perth and is part of Indonesia. It's actually closer to Bali than to Sydney from Perth. Here are a bunch of the pictures that we took while we were there. I think that for this blog post the best way to describe the country and everything that I saw on my trip is through picture; so this will be a really picture heavy post. The main religion is Hinduism so it was really cool to see how much of that was incorporated into the culture.

This women is making an offering outside her home. This was done multiple times a day. Some of the items that were in the offering were crackers, candies, cigarettes, and flowers. 

The offerings on the street would start to pile up. They weren't thrown away but rather swept away or clogging up the sewer drain after a few days

This was the front of our hotel in Kuta. So beautiful and super cheap!

On our trip we went to Kuta which is a touristy in the South. This is where tons of Australians hang out at the beach or by the pool at the hotel. 

The view from out hotel in Kuta. We were right on the beach and the waves were the biggest that I've ever seen. There was no way that I was going in that water

After we spent two days in Kuta we drove up to Ubud which is a much more relaxed part of Bali. There are a lot of rice fields surrounding the city and its more of an artistic area. We hired a driver and he drove us all over the island to see all the temples and landmarks on the West side of the island.

There were a lot of these really deep canyons throughout the center of Bali

This is how a lot of the entrances to houses in Bali looked, the sons live with their families in the same home that they grew up in. So constantly the house needs to be expanded.

Floating Temple: there are stairs near the bank of the river that are always flooded. Along with the gate on the outside of the temple

This is at one of the monkey forests that we visited. The monkeys were all over the place and I didn't like the feeling of having so many monkeys around me at once. See the next picture to see how I really felt about being there :)

One of the most traumatizing moments of my life. Keeping your palms open was a sign that you didn't have food. No monkeys jumped on me but they all got way too close for comfort!!

While in Ubud we went on a bike ride through rice fields and local communities. This was the coolest part of the trip for me. Its was so beautiful!! All of the scenery that we rode by was amazing and all the people in the local villages were so nice.

Mt Batur, which I think is actually a volcano. 

This is the real color of rice growing! It was so green!!

 

Some of the rice fields on the bike tour near Ubud

The whole group during one of the stops on our bike tour

All of us drinking tea/coffee at a plantation near Ubud.

This was after our bike ride at the owners house. We ate a traditional Balinese meal which was amazing! 

I had so much fun the trip. It reminded me a lot of Egypt which I didn't expect when I first arrived. We couldn't drink the water and were always being ripped off since it was obvious that we were tourists. But the people of Bali totally made up for that. All of the people that we met while on our trip were so nice and genuinely cared about making your trip enjoyable. 

Currently my friend Heidi from CU is staying with me until Thursday and then on Monday my parents are arriving. Its going to be a busy month of May! I'll try to do more blog updates about Perth and local adventures that I've been taking rather than just trips that I take on my breaks. I leave a month from tomorrow. I can't believe that my semester is almost over and that I've been living in Australia for 3 and a 1/2 months!! Can't wait to see most of you when I get back to the States :)

Love

Emily