home!

i cannot believe i'm home. i've been so so busy that i haven't even been able to update this and let you know that i've returned. i left sydney, australia on june 16th at 10AM, returned to LAX on june 16th at 6:45AM, flew to boston, and returned home at 11:30. The following day, I went to work at camp jewell. i'm no longer jetlagged, though.

honestly, this trip was the best thing that has happened to me in my life thus far.

i am a different person, a better person, and a happier person.

this experience has shaped my life into more of what i want it to be.

i will never ever forget this trip, the friends i made, and the experiences i had.

to end, i'd like to quote Lin Yutang

"no one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow"

too true, too true.

g'day.

sydney: day one!

today i met erin in the city after her last exam!

it was her friend, emma's, birthday so we went out to lunch with her a couple of her uni friends.

it was pretty sweet.

tonight, we went to a pub with her and her fam, and i got to talk to my mom which was sweet.

when i got off the phone with my mom, she said "see you in five days"

FIVE DAYS?!

crazy!

i'm looking forward to going home but i will really miss this place.

sydney, sydney, sydney!

i'm in sydney with erin!

saying bye to my flatmates was hard, it's definately weird to not be going back to WA.
my feelings are mixed, i'm so so excited to be here with erin but i really really miss my australearn friends.

i know i will definately keep in touch with them, though

and see some of them at the end of the summer--stoked for that!

"we had longer ways to go, but no matter, the road is life"

-jack kerouac

the final night in WA

i can't quite explain what i'm feeling right now.

i just said bye to april chris and patten, it was honestly one of the hardest things i've ever done.

my room looks so empty it echoes. it's crazy how quickly time went!

the people i met here have changed me for the better.

i will honestly never ever forget them

who's ready for a reunion at the end of the summer?!

i'm done with school now, though, and that feel great to be able to say! i just had a farewell dinner with my flatmates and now i'm going to finish packing.

heading to sydney tomorrow to see my friend erin! i'm so excited i can hardly stand it!

goodbye WA, the experiences i've had here will stay with me forever.

zooplankton

urban dictionary needed one more definition to be considered legit.

i took it upon myself to give it that one last definition.

ladies and gentlemen, the infamous definition:

murdoch uni in all its glory!

a lot of my friends want to know what studying abroad is like, especially what the school is like.

just for fun, i looked up murdoch uni on urbandictionary.com
the definition seems pretty right to me:

murdoch is CRAZY when it comes to finals, though. super strict! i took two finals yesterday and am real proud to say that i actually survived!

the first one was my biology final. everything seemed to go pretty well with that, but it was wicked long and took me the whole three hours to finish. i think i did relatively well, other than the fact that i defined zooplankton as plankton that lives in a zoo...

better than leaving it blank, eh?

the second final was for my 'principles of language and lit' ed class. this one was A LOT easier. the essay writing wasn't bad at all, and picking out the processes, participants and circumstances in each sentence was pretty easy, so i was psyched!

two finals down, one to go!

the first and final newport night...

every wednesday is dubbed 'newport night' after a bar in freo called, obviously, newport.
i could never go because i always had class at 8:30 on thursdays.

but since it's my last wednesday in perth, we decided to make an appearance.

good times!

the perfect study setup

free beer and wine to celebrate the end of the semester in the new student village.

of course i took part, i don't know when the next time i'll have tasmanian beer is.

and then, being the fantastic student i am, i went back to studying...

how interesting are invertibrates?!

the flatmate dinner!

okay, so in the past 4 months, my flatmates and i have always wanted to get together and go out for dinner. what was supposed to be a 'once a month' thing never happened.

well, i have less than 2 weeks here and we finally got our act together.

if you know me well enough, you know i love chinese food. actually love it, like more than any other type of food in the whole entire world.

kardinya is only about a ten minute walk from our flat and whenever we go to the shopping centre, we pass a chinese food restuarant and it's ALWAYS packed, so we decided to go there because it must be good.

we were right
it was incredible!

chinese food restaurants are different than they are in the western hemisphere. people in australia (and southeast asia, according to my two singaporean roommates) use both the spoon and fork to eat chinese food. i think americans are the only people who eat with only forks for the most part, because during dinner, laura (from finland) and angel and ailin (from singapore) asked me if i ever use a spoon.

my response: "yeah, i use a spoon if i'm eating cereal or soup or ice cream and stuff like that"
their response: stares.

it was pretty funny.

not going to lie, it took me a while to eat with only a fork, but i stuck to my american roots.

the dinner was really fun, we all had a great time! i wish we had actually gone more than once. but one time is better than none at all, eh?
i'm really really going to miss angel, laura and ailin

i love you guys!

dude, heat wave?

okay, so i'm nonchalontly sitting in my room skyping with my friend talia and we're talking about how i'm about to go to the pool and get tan while studying for my biology exam. she's like "i want to be tan!" i was like, "you will be, believe me" (sidenote: she's heading to the eastern side of australia in about ten days for six weeks). she said "no, it will be winter there". i explain to her that australia honestly has no ozone layer, so she'll tan even if it's winter.

that's when i check the temperature on my clock to see how hot it is in my room. let it be known that i have both my windows open and my fan on. this is what my thermometor said:

really? 110 DEGREES! really? it's winter here and it's still hot as hell in my room!

i laughed over this--in massachusetts winter time is easily in the negatives.

oh australia, how you still continue to amaze me.