what a weeeek.

you guys rock!

Thank you Natalie and Ella for the beautiful artwork that has brightened up my little white room soo much! I was so surprised to have mail from you guys and showed it off to everyone at lunch. They were all very jealous that they didn't have such creative and caring cousins to send them mail.

Its finally the weekend for me! I love having no classes on Fridays, we're going to the beach this afternoon and I'm pretty excited since it is going to be the best weather yet! Liz and I made a deal to see who could go to the most classes this week, I went 11/11! I win. I have shin splints, a charlie horse in my calf, and my feet are killing me but I made it to every single one of my classes. Success. Totally worth the pain? Doubtful, but it happened. I should probably leave for my classes a little bit early so I don't have to super power walk to class, but that means less time to chat and enjoy crumpets at breakfast so that is highly unlikely to happen.

Cottesloe Beach

I finally made it to the beach last Friday, which is when I decided that as long as the weather is nice it is going to become a weekly thing. I didn't go in the water last week because it was cold (not nearly as cold as in Marblehead) but I'm sure eventually it will get hot enough out that I will jump right in. The boys immediately started building a sandcastle and the girls just laid around and enjoyed the sunshine. I walked to the bathroom at one point and when I was walking back I stopped and talked to some guy who goes to Trinity College. We chatted for a while about all the cool things to do in the area and then he asked where my friends were. I pointed in their general direction and said they were the ones building the sand castle and said something along the lines of them being engineers so I was expecting a really epic sand castle. It was epic alright but it was not a castle...

tryna keep it pg.

Rotto in pannorammaaa style.

Quokka

On Saturday morning the IFSA crew caught the bus to Fremantle and then we took a ferry across the ocean to Rottnest Island. It is called Rottnest because when Dutch explorers first came there they saw these animals that looked like giant rats so they thought the island was a rat's nest. The giant rats were in fact Quokkas which are animals, that sort of look like giant rats but also have wallaby similarities, and are native to the island. It is called Wadjemup by the Noongar people, meaning "place across the water", since it is only 18km from Freo.  Also, fun fact, Rottnest is antipodal to Bermuda which means if you were to dig a whole on Rotto through the core of the earth you would end up in Bermuda. One of the boys in our IFSA group lives in Bermuda and he said he was really surprised at how much Rotto reminded him of home. Perhaps its because of their antipodal linkage.

sexy helmets.

the dock

The island is 11km long and 4km at its widest point. We rented bikes from the ferry and rode all around the lower part of the island. The one group biked to the opposite side and saw seals! I unfortunately am a bum and stopped biking at a really pretty dock and just laid around with Megan til we decided to bike back. The ride there was uphill, against the wind and overall really brutal. After our little break, the last thing I wanted to do was get on a bicycle. I literally had rug burn on my butt. Not sure how that happened but it was super uncomfortable. The ride back was almost all down hill, level, and way shorter and easier than the way we took there. Gotta love shortcuts!

the prawns have eyes. horror movie title?

After the bike ride we stopped at the Rottnest Hotel for lunch. Quentin ordered us so much food. I haven't eaten that much in such a long time. He ordered prawns for the table which I obviously can't eat since I'm allergic to life, but I took a picture of them anyway because they still had eyes! So weird.







When we got back to Freo it was obviously raining because so far both times we have been to Freo it pours! A couple of our friends from Currie took the bus to Freo and we all hung out at my favorite place Little Creatures. They have the best cider! I ate dinner there even though I'm pretty sure the food from the Rottnest Hotel would have kept me satisfied for at least a week.

cider and liz. what a doll.

So that's my week in a nutshell. Its been a really really long week and I'm sort of glad its over. The time here though seems to be flying and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Hope everyone is doing well, don't forget to keep me updated on your lives! xo
Shout out to my ChiO Mom! love youuuuu!

loveeeeee.

And last but not least, the most epic photo taken on the trip so far. It might not look like much, but it took a lot of coordination and perfect timing. Props to Megan Twomey for being such a fab photographer.