City of Perth
The streets of Perth
Right down the street from where I live..and a beautiful rainbow to top it off!
First grocery trip.. Notice the "Rice Bubbles"
Balcony outside of my room
This shows how high the ceilings are in my room!
French doors leading outside to the balcony
Martha, Micah and I @ the Orient..a bar right below from where we live
WHERE DO I START?!
Plane to Sydney:
After San Francisco, it was time for the 15 hour flight to Sydney. We boarded the plane (double decker, which I have never seen before) and went back to aisle 63.. I swear these seats were more cramped than a regular plane and I got really nervous for the long flight! Martha had the window, Micah the aisle, and I graciously volunteered myself to have the middle seat. I watched a movie, had dinner and then nodded off ( We got a free eye mask, socks, blanket and pillow!) The next thing I knew, I woke up and we only had THREE hours left..it was a miracle really. The flight went by so fast!! After listening to my ipod and watching one more movie, we landed in Sydney! We had about two hours to catch our next flight. After making sure everyone in the group had all of their luggage, we went to check in with Virgin Blue for the next flight.
Plane to Perth:
I was the first person in line to check in because everyone got held up in security. Apparently Virgin Blue does not let you have two suitcases to check in.. only one..which we didn't even know, and would not have even been possible! "You owe $210" I literally just stared at the girl with my mouth open and was speechless.. There was no way I was blowing this much money on such a stupid thing! After about 5 minutes she goes, well, I will just let you go this time.. I TOTALLY lucked out.. because every single person in our group had to pay the fine! But I figure, somewhere in the next 5 months I wont be so lucky!
We got on the plane to Perth and we all decided it was the LONGEST plane ride of our life. It was 6 hours long but felt like an entire day... Martha and I had three seats to ourselves so we tried to make a bed out of it with my cheetah blanket. FINALLY we arrived in Perth!
Hostel "Backpacker's Inn":
When we arrived in Perth it was pouring rain and quite funny trying to find our shuttle. The whole front of the bus was packed with our luggage and we rode in silence for 30 min to our hostel..all taking it in..We made it to the town of Fremantle and it is sooo pretty. I can't wait to show you pictures on here! We checked into our hostel (two rooms for 18 people) and met up with our instructors, Lynn and Charlie. They were so glad we had made it in one piece! They have a apartment just down the road from where we will be living and will have us over for dinner! They will also be teaching our CSBSJU senior seminar class. The hostel was very different from what I thought it would be! The showers felt AMAZING after the long flights, and we got ready to go explore our new town. We went to Bar Orient, which is right below the P & 0 Hotel where we live. (We couldn't move into that because we were there a day too soon). Since it was our first night in Australia, the bartenders gave us free beer (too bad I don't like it!) and we met some australians who lived in the town. Everyone was quite tired from traveling the past two days so we came home early and went to bed at 9!!! The time change was hard to adjust to! We are exactly 13 hours ahead of Minnesota.
Right away in the morning we moved our luggage down the street to the P& O hotel, where we will be living!!
P&0:
I have really been lucking out so far in this trip because I got the biggest room! Pretty much everyone has a roomate (even though we were told we would get singles) My roomate is Micah and Martha is right next to us. My room has a fireplace (that we can't use, but it looks pretty!) and french doors that open to a wrap around deck. It is SO awesome in the morning...we wake up, open the doors and hang out outside! It overlooks the town which is so cool. We have a bed, desk, closet (TINY) drawer, and a mirror in our room. It seems so empty but we really didnt have room to bring things to decorate with!! Right next to my desk I have a HUUUGE list of things I want to accomplish while I am here- things to do, places to visit etc. I can't wait to start checking them off! We unpacked our room, got our wireless internet working (after a looong day at IT services in the library) and explored the hotel. Downstairs there is a HUGE industrial kitchen where we each have fridge space, freezer space, and a locker to store food. There is a commons room with pool, a tv, computers and couches as well. After a long day of adjusting, we had our first community dinner. We will have one every Monday night with a meeting to follow. We are placed in groups of four students and we make dinner for the whole group! We had pasta the first night with ice cream for dessert! Besides St. Ben's and St. John's students, we have other students living in our halls as well. There are two boys from Australia that live across from me, and a couple girls from Tanzania as well. It is really fun getting to know them! We have two R.A's in our building- Tara and Anna. They are both very nice and easy to talk to.
Out and About:
The first couple of days we ate out quite a bit because we hadn't had time to go grocery shopping yet. Average lunch price would be around $11 australian dollars. Martha and I decided we can not do that everyday! They have a lot of similar foods, but many different things as well. One place down the street even has shark! I will try it soon but not yet! :) There are clothing stores ALL OVER our town. Everywhere you go there are cute little shops-the Australian style is SO cute. Even though I hate shopping..I could get in trouble here! I dont know.. we will see!! Martha and I went grocery shopping yesterday and it was really fun to see all of the different types of food that they have! We tried to be very healthy too but we will see how long that lasts :) Break, milk, juice, pasta, sauce, fruits, lettuce, salad dressing, and maybe some chocolate..that I already ate.. were on our list. We split the bill which was only about 70 australian dollars! We will see how our cooking skills work out this week :)
Today we went to the train station and bought a pass for 15 dollars. This is what we use to go into the city of Perth and to get around town.
Right now we are in Orientation week. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we are in all sorts of meetings and tours for our new school, the University of Notre Dame Australia. I can't wait for classes to start but it might be hard to concentrate!
I have class everyday except for Wednesdays.. here are my classes..
Cinema Studies
Media Analysis
Theology
Australian History
Senior Seminar
Each are around 3 hours each... I can't wait to see how they are different from American classes! I will start classes on Monday.
Other than the P&0, there are two other hotels where "international" students live (its so weird that I am an international student!) I have meet MANY students from Notre Dame in America and they are all so nice! We go out to the bars with them and are really starting to get to know them.
Tomorrow we are going into the city of Perth to explore!! I feel like I am still missing so much I wanted to tell everyone but I just wrote a novel! :)
I will write ASAP and add pictures too!
Love,
Abbie
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