Update

So I guess it's been more than a week since I posted anything on here, amazing how time flies and I forget to do stuff (it's actually a lot harder to get motivated to write about yourself than you'd think). Anyways, I know I promised zoo pictures a while back but the photo uploader is not working for some reason (very likely due to the internet connection here, which isn't great at the best of times and is even worse at peak hours, which is now.

Since I last posted there hasn't been too much exciting going on in my life but I'm still enjoying Australia a whole lot. Just based on the weather, I think it's been over 70 and almost entirely sunny every day for the past week. Classes continue to go well, although they're still class and dragging myself out of bed for an 8 AM lecture is just as hard here as in Seattle.

Highlights of the past week:

Last Wednesday we had the vice chancellor's dinner, where the UWA Vice Chancellor Alan Robson came and spoke to us. It was a nice, catered dinner and a good change from the usual Currie Hall food, which despite everyone's complainings isn't actually that bad but really more just monotonous (some sort of stewed-looking meat over rice is the typical entree, with semi-changing other options). The "dress-up" theme was 50's Rock-n-Roll, which a few people managed to pull off but I didn't have the stuff for. The res hall staff did, however, manage to bust out a vintage cadillac which we could pose for photos in/next to.

Friday is never going to be the best day of classes for me, 9 AM lecture and then an afternoon wildlife lab from 2-5 (this week we analyzed scat - for the unitiated that's animal, uh, dung - not exactly the sort of activity that gets you jazzed about going to campus late on a Friday). Friday night, however, was a lot of fun. St Catherine's, which is the all-female residence college, organized a scribble party for all the res colleges. Essentially, that means everyone wears a white shirt and has some sort of permanent marker they use to write on other people - phone numbers, pictures, witty and inappropriate sayings, etc. The party was at a nightclub in Northbridge which is sort of the hip/trendy area of downtown, and while I was there I actually bumped into Patrick, a fellow exchange student from Germany who I'd met before, and I hung out with a few of his friends until the wee hours of the morning. My ears weren't very happy with me after that night but I had a really good time.

Saturday we had interhouse volleyball, which was played tournament-style between the houses in Currie Hall (there's A&B Houses, which are the big ones and actually got divided by floors, plus C - mine - D, E, and M). I am happy to say that I helped C House bring home the championship and stay undefeated, apparently, in all the sports they've been running since the start of the year (volleyball was the first interhouse sport for Semester 2)

I blogged a while back about trying field hockey. Well Sunday was part II of the intercollege field hockey tournament and I actually remembered to get up on time to play in it. I'm decidedly nothing special at hockey but I think I managed not to screw anything up too bad, although we did lose both our games. Sunday afternoon a group of exchanges went out to Cottlesloe Beach, where we'd been before as part of the uni welcome trip where we also went to Fremantle but hadn't gotten to spend much time there. It was sunny but also a tad windy at the beach (we tried playing frisbee, with hilarious results when we tried to throw into the wind). I got a little bored just sitting there and so I got everyone else to bury me in the sand (they also gave me a lovely pair of boobs) and went for a run along the beach with Noam, which got me warm enough to go swimming. There were some decent waves so I was able to get a little bit of bodysurfing in. I had a blast; everyone says I was crazy to go swimming but I say they were crazy not to.

That pretty much sums up the highlights of the past week-plus for me. I've also started planning for a spring break trip up the coast of W.A. and I bought tickets for an Australian Football game next Saturday, which we'll have a group of people going to. I do have a story from today to share: I walked into my zoology lecture and sat down next to my friend Tanja. She had her laptop open and I just glanced over at it and did a double take because her background was a picture of the Space Needle, with a little bit of the EMP to one side. I got really excited, obviously, because seeing Seattle stuff anywhere is always a treat. Tanja was confused until I explained about how the building on her desktop (which she had no idea what it was; she says she just liked the look of it) was sort of my city's iconic landmark.

Hopefully the image uploader will be working tomorrow, and hopefully I'll remember to get back on and get some pictures up for everyone to see. I've heard the weather back in Seattle isn't too nice, I'll try to send some Australian sunshine over to you all.