G'day, mate!: Life's a Beach!

Although the last visit to the beach may or may not have done permanent damage to my photographic memory, we decided to give it another shot and go back to the beach on Wednesday (I'm writing this on Friday). A large group from my college (Currie Hall) and Megan's college (St. Thomas More, "St. Tommy" for short) took a bus down to Cottesloe Beach. Turns out you have to stay on the bus a few minutes longer than where we got off before; running off the bus once you see water is not always the best solution, as previously learned. This beach was, again, extremely beautiful and the water is terrific. Kinda cold, but definitely not worth complaining about!

Within the same day and later on in the afternoon, UWA held an event entitled "A Day by the River" for all study abroad/exchange and new full-time international students. Just to clarify, "exchange student" here means that you've been waived your tuition and do not have to pay (although I still have to pay some to good old UIUC). "Study abroad" means you're here for well...studying abroad, but are still a fee-paying student. And then there are full-time UWA students that are also international. Terminology can be difficult at times. But back to the day. We signed up for different activities to do, and I chose "yacht sailing." A member of the UWA's recreation sorta group took about 8 of us out on a yacht and we helped him in sailing down the river closer to the city. It was extremely cool, although from an outsider's point of view, we probably made it look like our boat would capsize. Woops... Our campus runs right along the Swan River, which leads into the Indian Ocean about 15 minutes driving distance southwest from campus. The portion of the river we butt up to is called Matilda Bay, which is where this event was held. AND WE SAW DOLPHINS! :]

Matilda Bay

The city from the river.

Just a liiiitle excited!

Yesterday (Thursday) was the most eventful day here so far. Again, UWA took its international students on a bus ride to Caversham Wildlife Park, which is farther in the "outback," if you can even call it that. It was a mix between a petting zoo and a normal zoo, but you were given many opportunities to interact with the various animals they had (mainly marsupials, which are obviously native to Australia and only Australia). Being an Animal Sciences major, this was right up my alley, and I'm pretty sure I squealed like a little girl when I got to pet and feed kangaroos. Real. Live. Kangaroos! Our tour guide was just a spilling encyclopedia of animal knowledge, and guided us around for us to see some dingos, kookaburras (yes, the ones that sit in Gum Trees), wombats, and koalas. I was extremely impressed with this event, as my expression surely read. After this, we took an extremely random sidetrip on the way back to a place called The Margaret River Chocolate Company, which imports and produces their own chocolates in this building we visited. It had been open for 11 years, and apparently is very successful. And yes, there were many free samples, if you were wondering. They put Fannie May to shame!