Wednesday, April 29, 2009

$5 PIZZA NIGHT!!!

this goes out to you, eagleboys, for providing us with a stellar $5 pizza every tuesday.
who knows what will happen once i can't devour a meatlovers pizza every tuesday?



better learn to appreciate it now!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

post secret

so, i totally realise this has absolutely nothing to do with australia, but that's okay.

anyway, when i was registering for classes for next semester at bridgewater, i was also listening to bon iver. the website to register was taking FOREVER to load, so naturally, i checked post secret (http://www.postsecret.com/), and voila; a lightbulb.

putting post secret and justin vernon together seemed like the perfect plan.
alas, the justin vernon post secret postcard was born.


now all i need is an international stamp and it will be on it's way to america!

if you haven't checked out bon iver, it's some incredible music.
go to http://www.boniver.org/ and listen to some sweet, sweet songs.

Friday, April 24, 2009

luke is legal

lastnight, a couple of us went out to celebrate my friend, luke's, birthday. he turned 18, so he's finally legal.

i can't even explain the ridiculousness that this night entailed, but let's just say that by the time we got on the train to go home, two men in our group were shirtless; one was wearing his briefs as a shirt (?), and my pants were ripped. i mean, ripped. like..down the seam, all the way down the seam.

on our walk home from the train station, chris acquired a road sign. he managed to get it safely back to his flat.

to make the story even better, i should mention that there was karaoke in the bar next door. we made an appearance and witnessed a drunk asian man singing 'rehab'. my life is complete because of that.

sidenote: who knew there were so many mullets in australia?

that's right, we went on a mullet hunt. so what? it was too good to pass up.

Monday, April 20, 2009

brisbane, oh brisbane.

i woke up this morning at 7:30AM because my brain is still on brisbane time. this past week, like i hoped, has been full of ridiculousness. i miss it already.



day one, after being on the airplane for what seems like forever, i leave the gate and find anthony john spinaze waiting patiently for my arrival. with him is his friend grant. i am overcome with happiness. it is so so so good to finally see him! we go to his friends vic's house, where i'll be staying for the next week. immediately, the adventures begin. ant takes me to a gay bar called 'the wickham', where he goes regularly. tonight, though, was not a regular night. after being introduced to some of the odd brisbane night life, raver pants, etcetera, ant and i decide that the wickham is just too weird tonight. we spent the entire night crouched in a corner of the club, clutching our jug of beer, and trying to not attract any attention. not attracting any attention, though, is hard for both of us. ant immediately drops his pants to reveal to me his new tattoo on his leg, which causes way to much attention. the weirdo's in the wickham, in all there fur collar and acid jean delight, are all staring at us. after finishing the jug of beer, we realise that now is our escape. right before we leave, though, it suddenly get's busy and we are SURROUNDED. we see a minor trying to sneak in by going under the fence; he's not to suave about it though, and the bouncer totally sees him. when everyone was looking at the minor being chastised, ant and i make our escape. contrary to what we actually believed at that time, we actually made it out alive.


day two is easter! i'm jewish, and i've never celebrated easter, but that didn't stop me from celebrating my first easter with ant's entire extended family. ant and i take a bus too his sister, tina's, house. of course, we had to take pictures of us on the bus--it was necesarry. once at tina's house, i met his mom, a bunch of his siblings, his neices and nephews, and i saw cath! a little bit of background may be needed here; ant and i met while working together at camp jewell. his sister, cath, also worked there. i hadn't seen her in forever, so seeing her and her girlfriend, jenny, was really great. We ended up playing singstar with his neices and nephews and had boxed wine, which was apparentally invented in australia, who knew? it was just really really nice to get to meet all of ants family. ant's mom, sandra, gave me australian chocolate, and so did cath! it was a great first easter :)


day three consisted of us going to south bank to get breakfast and then heading to the new QLD state library. we also went to the 'sciencentre' and parts of the brisbane art gallery, where grant works. while we were in the 'sciencentre', we saw these wooden cutouts of dinosaurs and bugs and you could put your head in them and take pictures. ant, being 26 years young, and i, being almost 20, decided to take pictures of us being ridiculous. the pictures turned out to be hysterical. we were probably the only people over the age of 6 to be taking pictures in the wooden cutouts. 10 points for us.

day four, and i woke up to ant watching an australian movie called 'praise'. DO NOT WATCH IT, i repeat, DO NOT. it's actually gross. we couldn't even finish the movie because of how horrible it was. a while after we stopped watching the movie and got our appetites back, Iain (vic's brother), ant, and i went to a bakery to get some food. then, iain dropped us off at ant's house, where i saw his mom again and played with his cat, mamadukes. then, ant and i headed to queen street in brisbane city. after that, pucki (iain and vic's other housemate) made us dinner, and grant, ant, vic, and i went to baskin' robbin's for some ice cream :) it was really nice to walk by the river at night. for some reason, baskin' robbin's peanut butter and chocolate ice cream is just so much better when you eat it while looking at brisbane city all lit up.


day five, ant had to work from 9AM-6PM, so i was on my own. i decided to hit up queen street again because i needed a new pair of jeans. it was really fun, and i was excited because i knew just enough of the city to be able to navigate myself in the right direction. of course, i ended up buying more than just a pair of jeans. queen street reminds me of perth, in a way. grey brick streets, shops, street musicians, lots of fun.

side note: i'm reading a book called 'shantaram' and it's absolutely amazing! it's definately a novel, so it's been taking me awhile to read it, but i got a lot of reading done during the plane rides, and i picked out a poem i read from it and it's incredible, so i'm totally going to write it here:

to make sure non followed where you led
i used my hair to cover our tracks.
sun set on the island of our bed
night rose
eating echoes
and we were beached there, in tangles of flicker,
candles whispering at the driftwood of our backs.
your eyes above me
afraid of the promises i might keep
regretting the truth we did say
less than the lies we didn't.
i went in deep, i went in deep
to fight the past for you.
now we both know
sorrows are the seeds of loving.
now we both know i will live and
i will die for this love.

day six, and ant worked all day. i ended up heading to the QLD library again, and found my way to queen street. hung out, walked around, and then headed back to vic's for some quality 'simpson' and 'biggest loser australia' viewing pleasure.

day seven, jenny took ant and i to lone pine koala sanctuary, which is the oldest koala sanctuary in australia. it was really really fun! i got to hold another koala, two times in three months, pretty sweet, eh? we also got to hang out with some roo's, and of course, i took way to many pictures to post all of them here. check out my facebook for the entire album, but i posted the picture of me and a kangy and me and teresa the koala :) after lone pine, we all headed to tina's house again. jenny and i played '90's singstar' and '80's singstar'. needless to say, i am completely in love with nineties music, i can't help it. it was also great to see some of ant's neices and nephews again.


day eight, i met up with hills and her boyfriend, joe, who is visiting brisbane for two weeks! they just came back from new zealand, and it was my last full day in brizzy, so it was the perfect time to meet up with them! joe and hills and i hung out at queen street, saw some of the griffith campus, walked around brisbane city, and went to pancake manor, a 24 hour pancake house that used to be a church! it was so good to see them!

day nine, my last day in brisbane. woke up early, headed to the airport, bid farewell to ant and his friends, and headed back to perth. it's definately good to be back at murdoch, i missed all my friends here, but i'll definately miss brisbane. it was a great trip.
goodbye brisbane, don't know when i'll see you again!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

goldilocks

on thursday during my ELED260 tutorial, you know, the education class where i got to make origami and colour with craypas?--well, this week we started working on our performance projects.



in groups of no more than five, we have to pick a fairytale and reset the story with a different plot. my tutorial picked 'prison' as the plot.



i suppose now would be a good time to tell you that my groups fairytale is goldilocks.


guess who get's to play goldilocks? me. you know why? because my group wanted goldilocks to have an accent. obviously, i'm the only american in my group, meaning i'm the only one who has an accent in my group. pronto, i'm goldilocks.


there is a little bit of a problem, though. the cover of the book shows goldilocks looking proper with, well..golden locks.


now let's look at a picture of me. i do not have golden locks. i do, however, have an accent, so i guess if goldilocks needs to have an accent, i'll be perfect for the role.


so, i'm pretty sure the whole goldilocks in prison thing kind of confused some people, so i'll give you the background to our new plot.



once upon a time, goldilocks is exploring in the woods and comes across a house. she's really really tired, so she goes into the unlocked house and falls asleep in a bed. while she's sleeping, a burgular comes in and breaks the chairs, eats and porridge, and breaks the bed (all while goldilocks is sleeping!!!) the bears come home, find goldilocks sleeping in the bed, and blame the whole ordeal on her. poor goldilocks is sent to jail, and wa-lah, you have the setting.

before you know it, i'll have this goldilocks thing set pat. my tutor came up to me and commented on how i should really play guitar and sing during the show--i had a HUGE project due for this class, and included was a powerpoint. the backup song to my powerpoint was a recording of me singing 'ain't no cover' by regina spektor. i guess my tutor was watching it and realised it was a recording of me singing. i haven't gotten my grade back, yet, but if she liked the song, hopefully she liked everything else.


tomorrow, i go to brisbane to visit ant. can't wait can't wait can't wait!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

ocean



a song that will always remind me of australia, "ocean" by jbt.

Monday, April 6, 2009

apple crumble!

today, my lovely finnish roommate, laura, made us apple crumble for dessert! naturally, i was PSYCHED! first of all, it's been so so long since i've had homemade dessert. secondly, australian apples are to.die.for. like..actually incredible. i couldn't really help with the directions because they were all in metric, but i tried. basically, it's wicked easy to make and it turns out really really good! you need three apples, butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon, and oats--that's it.



I'm not a chef whatsoever, but i could totally make this at home and i totally will. if only the united states had australian apples...


Because i'm actually ridiculous, i decided to post the recipe on 'with love, down under'. not really for any particular reason, but if you want to use this recipe, totally go for it.


but you'll have to convert metric to english, first...



Our flat doesn't have an actual oven, it has a convection microwave, so it takes a little longer than 30 minutes to bake, but it's totally worth it!





i cannot explain the pure goodness and joy i felt when the apple crumble was finally ready to eat. IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER! I want laura to come to the united states and make apple crumble for me everyday. i wish the commute from finland to the states wasn't so long (and expensive).

i actually love my roommate a whole whole lot. i'll have to pay her back for this somehow...

Sunday, April 5, 2009

sunrise, sunset (pt. 2)

Saturday, April 4, 2009

tom's day of birth

lastnight, we celebrated tom's birthday. it was a night filled of beerpong, flip cup, and absolute ridiculousness.

i've come to the realisation that i suck at beer pong. it's taken me a long time to finally admit that--for a while i tried to blame it on my lack of coordination, but really, i just suck. despite my complete suckiness at beer pong and my horrible flip cup skills, lastnight was real fun.

i'm also now a member of the wednesday club. can't tell you much about that, though--it's a secret. all i can say is that it's amazing, complete with a handshake and all. i've said too much already.
per usual, i'll end the update with some pictures of us celebrating tom's birthday.




Thursday, April 2, 2009

really?


i'm actually speechless! i cannot believe how quickly time goes. as i was writing down the date yesterday, i almost died. two months? really? two months? i guess people were right when they said experiences like this go by so quickly. i'm just going to have to enjoy every moment from now on, eh?

what education majors do in australia

flashback to mrs. campbells art class from elementary school--seriously. apparentally, australian education majors get to do cool things in their workshops.


this morning, i walk into my 'learning through the arts' workshop. jazz is playing in the background. amazing. the days already gone off to a great start because of that. this week's topic was about 'exploring improvisation & exploring transformation within one art form'. We studied different types of art:
-representational art & story telling
-representational art; the pinnacle
-impressionism
-optical mixing
-pointalism
-expressionism
-abstract
-modernism & pure abstraction

& we learned about Wassily Kandinsky.

Wassily Kandansky was an abstract expressionist artist. he believed that colours, lines, and shapes should be like music--vibrating through your body.

task one: pick out a Kandinsky painting and, as a group, talk about what you like about it. our group chose 'homage to will grohmann', which was painted in 1926.
what i liked
-the outside border looks like watercolours
-the square in the middle has miniature coloured squares in it
task two: pick out a Kandinsky painting and choose a square of it. tape around the square and copy that part of the painting onto a piece of paper. the image that we copied had to be 'positive', whatever that meant to you. to me, positive meant bright colours. (this would be a good time to tell you that i really am a terrible artist). i chose 'homage to will grohmann', and decided to tape around the square in the middle, with all of the miniature squares inside the bigger square. we totally got to use cray-pa's, which was awesome!
task three: tape a square of a 'negative' piece of the same painting. this time, don't copy it, but take inspiration from it; make it your own. like 'positive' meant bright colours, 'negative' meant dark colours. i chose an area of the painting with more black in it. since we had to change it up, i used blue, purple, and red to bring in more dark colours.
task four: as a group, take all of your picture squares and create a quilt.
this is a picture of my two pictures together. below it is a picture of our final product.



Wednesday, April 1, 2009

april jean pollock





happy 21st, april!
in honour of her birthday, i've created a list of why i love april, and australia in general.

the list
1. april sings songs on her guitar when she's drunk--and then asks me to join in when i don't know the words.
2, drunken dance parties.
3. flip cup.
4. kardy
5. april and her drunkeness in general. which include:
-recording videos which she won't remember
-passing out on tables
-passing out on couches
-passing out in general

april, this one's for you. happy twenty-first, lovey! hope it's a good one :)
 
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