JC Weekend and Oktoberfest!

John Curtin is the dude that founded Curtin Uni. The Uni thought it would be a great idea to name a weekend after him, which is what JC weekend is. For JC weekend, over 400 volunteers go out to small communities around the Perth area and stay for the weekend doing work on various projects. I think I managed to find the smallest community in WA, maybe even the world! No i'm just kidding, I'm sure there are way smaller, but Wyalcatchem is the smallest community I've ever seen. There are only about 300 people that actually live in the town of Wylie (which looks like a scene from the 1950's with it's one "main street" which really is not a "main street" at all.) and only about another 200 or so people that live in the shire surrounding the town. Don't ask me what a shire is because I really have no idea. But I saw a sign that said that so thought you guys might find it interesting too! Anyway, the entire weekend was a huge success and I had a blast. Wylie members are incredibly nice and welcoming and have a way of life that appears on the surface to be relaxed and stress free. Some of the people we worked with were born and raised in Wyalcatchem and had not been farther away than Perth, 3 hours south of the town. The actual town is situated right in the middle of the WA wheat belt so the town is run around harvesting wheat. We got a tour of the wheat bins where billions upon billions of grains of wheat are stored. We got to climb to the top of the wheat shoot where we could see the entire town spread out in front of us. The rest of the weekend was spent painting, caulking (sp?), and working on improving barracks for cheap housing. We also got to help dust a tractor museum down the street from the one bar and general store. Don't be jealous that I got to see first edition John Deer tractors guys, it was really cool, but still, don't be jealous of me. I was just doing my volunteer work. ;) It was really fun to go away for the weekend and meet all these new people and learn about their lives. It was a home-stay weekend and I was with Scott and Mel MacKenzie and their 2 adorable little boys, Campbell (yes, like the soup) and Finley. Campbell called Claire and I his "ladies" and didn't want us to leave. I guess we just had too much fun "breaking into the park down the street" and having tea and scones... aka rocks and sticks with imaginary tea. Needless to say, when we got home and told Mel that we'd hopped the fence into the playground we found out that a gate farther up towards the school was actually always unlocked... whatever, it's more fun to hop fences anyway and it sounds cooler too. (until you hear that it wasn't even locked and then i guess we just end up looking like idiots.) Anyway, it was a blast and Wyalchatchemins' will always have a special place in my heart. Awwww.

Ok so next is a weekend of partying. (Don't worry dad, I did work during the day!) It actually wasn't an entire weekend, that's an exaggeration. Wednesday night is technically the start of my weekend (you can be jealous of this one guys) and of course what would we do on a wednesday night but go to waterford! We ended up pregaming at 32 and learned a fun new drinking game (which apparently American's are already supposed to know b/c I guess it's an American drinking game...) called "ride the bus." Basically, like most drinking games, it gets you wasted pretty quickly... I'm not sure where the name fits in, but it doesn't really matter as long as you're drinking so who cares. Anyway, we were all in fine form and had a wicked fun night at Waterford listening to karaoke and dancing the night away. There was also a bit of fun gossip when 2 of our advisors kissed in the middle of the bar... repeatedly! Hahaha... way to go advisors.

So night 2 of partying was last night (Friday) for Oktoberfest. (I don't have pics yet, but will ad one as soon as Lara puts them online.)Yes, I know we are not in Germany, but Curtin thought it would be fun to celebrate the German Beer festival along with Germany, just for fun. On the way to the festival, the group I was with decided it would be fun to make up fake names for the night. (Don't ask... I have no idea why we thought this was so funny.) Will is now known as Chad, Lara is Maddison, Renee is Alexis, (not lexi!) Mville is Jinny or Jenny or Jilly or something... I think Sarah was Haley and I'm now known as Gertrude. Ha. At one point Sarah and I thought we should be called Petrey and Little foot, you know, like from land before time? Cool huh? So anyway, basically, the entire student guild section of campus was turned into a festival setting with loud music, steins, workers in customary german outfits and lots of beer. It was pretty cool to see the transformation of the campus and the place was packed people having fun. Of course there was the typical drunken events... drunk girls falling on the floor in the bar (yikes), security throwing people out (one guy tried to hold onto a wall to keep security from escorting him... not a good choice of things to hold onto man... you've really got nothing to grip!) and there was even a guy who thought it would be fun to "moon" the crowd from up in a tree. Securtiy got him down pretty fast and the guy had a classic "what'd I do face?" that made everyone laugh. It was crazy, but lots of fun dancing and listening to good music. Elon really needs to get on the band wagon with fun festivals like this. Seriously Elon, think about it. We can celebrate with German beer too!

So I think that's about it for now friends and family. I miss you guys! Hope you are all well.

Eloners, have fun on fall break.

Catch ya'll on the flip side!

Kate

I Love Flies... seriously.

So I guess I have a bit of catching up to do... ok a lot of catching up to do. It's been a while and of course, OZ is always a happenin' place with lots of fun stuff going on that I haven't filled you guys in on. Last entry I left of about to go White Water Rafting down the Avon River in WA. Ha, quite the experience. The "white water" turned out to be more of a quick current than rapids. Will, Lara, Mville and I left early in the am in the pouring rain on our adventure after a late night out. Of course, you can imagine our excitement of sitting on a cold river in the rain all day... but as always, the weather in OZ is continually changing every 5 minutes and although it was chilly, it stayed sunny the entire time we were on the river. We actually ended up having a lot of fun in our raft which involved water fights with the old people in other rafts (they must have loved us), jumping ship to other rafts, and attempting a helicopter maneuver which landed our entire raft in the water... a few times. It was great though and at the end, at the most "rapid" point in the river I got to stand in the front and do a "titanic" impression with arms outstretched as we went down a "waterfall." Lexo... I think you would appreciate the little flare of the dramatic there ;)

Ok so the next big event was the party up in Flat 32. Acutally that might have been the night before WWR, I can't remember. Anyway, hahaha we spent the beginning of the night drinking and playing circle of death. (Franco didn't play, but showed us a little leg in stead ;)) It's always great to play that game for the first time with people you have never played with before. You sure do learn a lot about your friends! Of course, we are all angels and nothing interesting came of it. ;) We broke out the video camera all night though and got some pretty fun quotes to remember the evening by. I do believe that the night also included Marty and Franco having copetitions to see who could climb higher on the hall wall, a lucky red ticket that got a lot of looks and Sarah... oh Sarah... she did not even make it out of the flat! She did get a great wake up call at about 2am from Renee, Ash and I. I'm sure that made her night worth it! I believe Ash also poured water on her in bed at one point... I'm sure she loved that the most. Yeah Sar? I knew it. Hahaha. Good job my friend... very classy.

Speaking of Sarah Hartman... Happy 21st Birthday for like the 8th day! Sarah's birthday happened to fall in the middle of our outback tour up north so we've seriously celebrated her birthday like 3 times in a week. It's been great. Hope you are enjoying being legal my friend! We got 2 birthday dinners out of the celebration (one free!) and a really good chocolate cake complete with norweigan singing on the outback tour. Quite the way to spend your 21st Sar.

Ok... so now onto the bulk of the blog. First, let me start by saying that the Australian outback pretty much defines what you mean when you say the "middle of nowhere." Seriously, we drove for hours at a time with out seeing any elevation about the bush (which is like half my height) or seeing other cars pass by. A road train would rattle our bus ever now and again, but that's about it. The landscape is incredibly beautiful though in a very infinitely barren way. I even managed not to get car sick! Bonus! We spent half of our time on the trip traveling through the outback in a super cool tiny bus with the most uncomfortable seats I've ever been in. We found ways to amuse ourselves though including "bug splat bingo" on the windshied, hangman, singing to some awesome blasts from the past, and playing other random car games. It's funny though... you can't play the license plate game or any games including signs b/c well there just aren't any cars or signs around except ones to say beware of roos crossing.

So anyway, to start off the trip we decided it would be fun to blow out a tire. Once fixed we made it up somewhere north of Perth along the beach and stayed in a beach house. All the accommodations on the trip were way better than expected and were pretty much hostle style. We drank and had stew as the sun set over the water. It was beautiful. The next few days we traveled along the coast stopping at the Kalbarri Cliffs and the Kalbarri Gorge where we took some pretty cool pictures pretending to be rock climbing. We all know that I like to get myself in trouble so what would a trip to the gorge be with out any trouble? Acutally... I just ended up hurting myself, but what else is new right? So Renee and I were lagging behind the rest of the group and saw a sign that said something about "Danger, be careful b/c you're basically standing on the edge of a cliff" type message. Ha... me being the ass that I can sometimes be thought it would be funny to get a picture where it looks like i'm haning on to the sign to keep from falling down the cliff. So anyway, I get down in the dirt and am hanging onto the sign to keep from falling down the slope when a stupid fly lands right near my eye. I proceeded to jerk my head to the side and smashed my forehead right into the post I was hanging on to. I lost a shoe in the process and it almost fell out of reach... I also managed to take a chunk out of my forehead which is why you can see the cut in pretty must most of the outback pictures online. Ha. I was fine, but I had a lump on my forehead for a day or two and got a headache from the entire process. The important thing though: we got the picture. :)

After Kalbarri we traveled up to Monkey Mia where we saw dolphins and went sailing on a catamaran. The next day at Coral Bay we got to go out on a glass bottom boat and went snorkling at one of the reefs in the bay. It was beautiful and freezing at the same time. I hadn't been snorkling since 5th grade in the Carribbean with my family so it was great to get back in the water and play with the fishies. At some point during the trip we stopped for a picnic lunch on Shell Beach. There is no sand on Shell Beach and the shore line is literally made up of thousands and thousands of tiny white shells. From a distance it just looks like white sand, but up close you can see each individual shell in full form. I've never seen anything like it.

Exmouth was the next stop and the farthest North that we actually went. We stayed there for 2 nights and had a champagne sunset at the lighthouse overlooking the ocean where we could actually see whales surfacing behind breaking water. I've never seen anything more beautiful... the way the light hit the lighthouse and caught the edges of the flowers in front of it. The picture doesn't even do it justice. Also at Exmouth, we got to spend an entire day playing on the beach at Turquoise Bay. I've never seen sand so white or water so many shades of blue. We played frisbee, listened to music and had a bbq chicken picnic lunch.

During one of the last 2 days we ended up blowing out another tire in the middle of nowhere. The big bus in front of us didn't see it happen and continued along their merry way leaving us to fend for ourselves in the middle of the Australian Outback. Ha, that's a bit dramatic... we were only stuck for like 30 minutes and some guy in a yellow truck came and helped us. I amused myself by pretending I was roadkill on the side of the road. We got some fun pictures of that and some fun footage.

The one thing I did not enjoy about the trip was all the flies that are around on the west coast. I don't know what the deal is, but they were seriously everywhere! Not a day passed that was fly free and while outside (which was a lot) we spent the majority of our energy running in cirles to escape them or just swatting them away as much as we could. I was incredibly jealous of all the old people who had the really cool fly nets attached to their hats. Seriously... it would have become the new fashion statement if we had found any on the road.

So the last day of the trip was completed by making a quick stop in Geralton where the wind blows so hard that the trees literally grow bent over horizontally. After windy Geralton, we stopped at the Pinnacles desert and played on the large rock formations (shhh... don't tell that I actually stood on one! It's not allowed!) as well as spent some time being dramatic in front of the video camera pretending that we had been lost in the desert for days with no water. Ha... fun times. I should have gone to acting school. :) It was a great trip though and minus the flies I loved every second of it.

Ok so for all you Blue Dragon fans out there... we had a game on tuesday night and totally kicked ass! Woohoo! We beat the Bull Horns 17-10 which is a huge margin for us. We actually played really well as a team for once. Mville and I celebrated by dancing down the middle of the street all the way home while belting out lyrics to our favorite songs. Hahaha... cars passing us must have thought we were crazy. (I'm not kidding... we were litterally breaking out all the moves right in the middle of the street.) Classic.

Ok, I've avoided work long enough today and have a lot to do. Miss you all friends. Stay classy mates! ;)

Kato