Various happenings from a land down unda'

Usually my posts are focused on a particular event, well not this one. I've been pretty tied up with Uni work lately, all these deadlines and my prior slacking has caught up to me. Luckily (the school work) will all be done June 16th. That also means I'll be leaving Perth soon :( however, as you'll notice from this post, the weather is going down hill. It's your turn to rub it in Canada!

Anika buried on Cottesloe beach.. what can I say, I got bored.

Happy Birthday Alex!!!

Hanna, Anika and Nilesh...eating Alex's "German Cheesecake"

Janina, in my jumper. She's very short.

And here is the rain....lots of it.

Some more...this is what woke me up this morning. Torrential rainfall!

Since my last post, I've read a book called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyoski.. I recommend it for anyone.

Well, it's still raining... Perth can you please be nice and stop, I would like to go to the beach again!

I hear it snowed in Calgary today... ;)

Bugs!

We found this in our kitchen this arvo. Of course, I had to catch it to get a better picture! This little bugger is called an Orange Spider Wasp.
They can get up to 3.5cm long and for food they just attack spiders which are often bigger than they are and can be seen dragging them along the ground after stinging it to paralyze it.
They make burrows in the ground, and usually nest alone, not like bees.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_Wasp
CSIRO fact sheet: http://www.csiro.au/resources/Spider-Wasp-Factsheet.html

Here's a video I found on YouTube...enjoy!

Return to Canada!

As some of you may know, I've booked my flight back home. On June 24th, 2009 I'm leaving all my new wonderful friends (from all over the world) whom I've met in Australia and going home to all my wonderful friends back there. So many awesome people. Anyway, enough sappiness.

I'll be flying in high class economy on Air New Zealand. I leave Perth at 7:30pm on the 24th and fly to Auckland, New Zealand, where I get to spend the whole day exploring..I arrive there at 6am on the 25th.

At 9:30pm on the 25th I get on a flight to LA, and I arrive at 2:30PM on the 25th. Yes, time travel...I go back 7 hours in time. Actually, the flight is 17 hours (24-7 = 17). Lots of sleepin' to look forward too.

A few hours in LA, then to Vancouver where I then get on a ferry with all my 100lbs (46kgs for you aussies) of luggage and go to Nanaimo to visit my family for the weekend!

The 29th, I head back to land...spend the day and night with my friends (Alex & Kama) in Vancouver and fly home on the 30th and land at 3:25pm.

So, I'm also going to put countdowns here...It's mainly so I know how much time I have to spend with the awesome people here, and how much I have to wait to see my awesome friends back home again - I'm so torn.

This is a bit weird, because there are two time zones, so I need two different sets of count downs...one Perth time, and one Calgary time...here goes:

Calgary (GMT-6:00) time:
I Leave Perth in 2009-6-24 19:25:00 GMT-06:00!
I get Home in 2009-6-30 15:30:00 GMT-06:00!

Perth (GMT+8:00) time:
I Leave Perth in 2009-6-24 19:25:00 GMT+8:00!
I get Home in 2009-6-30 15:30:00 GMT+8:00!

Countdown until classes are done: ALL DONE!
Countdown until finals are done:2009-6-16 16:30:00 GMT+8:00!

Now, I must get on with enjoying the Land Down Unda'!

See you soon Canada - I hear you're starting to warm up for me! :)

Rottnest Island!

Rottnest "Rotto" Island is so awesome! It's 19km east of Fremo so instead of swimming we took the ferry there. You can bike around the whole island, It's only about 24km round trip! But we opted for the shorter trek of around 15km.

We made it to a few beaches and found some Quokka which look like a cross between a rat and a kangaroo. They are pretty cute, very soft and timid and they don't bite but all they want is your food and if you don't have any they go on to the next person or try to dig into your backpack.

After we finished biking we had some time to spend on the beach before we went back to Fremo, we found some pretty cool animals there...see below :)

Website: http://www.rottnestisland.com/
Wiki on Quokka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quokka

Perth CBD, such a great shot.

Me on the ferry.

A lighthouse in Fremo, on the way to Rotto.

A circle around the sun in the clouds! I know...it just looked cool.

Anika, Janina, Eddie and Alex jumping in the water.

Little salmon bay beach on Rotto.

Everybody biking...except me of course ;)

So beautiful!

Our own private beach..yep that's the whole thing.

Quokka!
They are only found on islands in Western Australia! Some people will tell you they are only found on Rottnest, but they lie :) We should have stuffed one in our backpack..or maybe two. Their baby's are also called Joey's.
They are almost as tall as Janina.

In the water with a stingray, obviously it didn't sting me.
We were all done biking the island and had to wait an hour for our ferry (we didn't want to be late because we almost missed it in the morning) so we found a nearby beach and also found these cool animals.

A Pelican...yep that close. He was searching for food..there was tons of little fish around.

Alex and Janina at the end of the Jetty,
you can see the Perth CBD between them if you zoom in enough.

Sunset soon..on the way back on the ferry and to
Little Creatures for the best burger I've ever had.

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AQWA: Aquarium of Western Australia

AQWA was pretty cool, I went with Angiolina. We did lunch in Hillary's Boat Harbour at The Breakwater which was a pretty nice place, food was good and so was the view and the weather. Then off to AQWA with full stomachs, so many cool things like Cuttlefish, Jellyfish, Salt Water Crocodiles, Nemo (Clown Fish), Tortoises, to mention a few...I'm just going to post a bunch of small pictures because I can't decide..they're all so colourful.

Website: http://www.aqwa.com.au/

SHARKS! duh-da duh-da duh-da...

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Australian words for the week

Chewy -> Gum

Sydney! Blue Mountains

We went to the Blue Mountains on April 18th, it is a day trip from Sydney which started bright and early. Their was lots of hiking involved but the views were pretty awesome. Got to see some Kangaroos, eat some meat pies and see the famous Three Sisters.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(Australia)

A kangaroo chewin' on grass...If it wasn't obvious.

Some bush and dirt.

You NEED to zoom in on this. This was a HUGE ant.

A cool flower..I thought.

The blue mountains..can you see the blue haze? It's caused by the Eucalyptus trees.

A waterfall..on our hike down in to the valley.

Aussie style lunch.. Meat Pie! It was good..didn't taste too healthy though.

More Blue Mountains!

The famous Three Sisters...

The Aboriginal dream-time legend has it that three sisters, 'Meehni', 'Wimlah' and Gunnedoo' lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe.

These beautiful young ladies had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry.

The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle.

As the lives of the three sisters were seriously in danger, a witchdoctor from the Katoomba tribe took it upon himself to turn the three sisters into stone to protect them from any harm. While he had intended to reverse the spell when the battle was over, the witchdoctor himself was killed. As only he could reverse the spell to return the ladies to their former beauty, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle for generations to come.

Funny enough, they are eroding as I write this and will eventually be gone...

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