One Week Down

A 14 hour time difference is a difficult adjustment period...and I'm convinced that even after more than a week of living in this undoubtedly amazing country, my body has yet to become used to this newly arranged sleep schedule.  I say that because I'm on my blog...posting, well, information at approximately 6AM.  We'll see how this goes...

I'm not even sure where to begin with all that I've done this past week.  UWA's International Student Group did an awesome job of keeping us new students busy with opportunity's to meet one another.  Classes don't begin until February 28th, giving us another week of preparation before the actual semester commences.  In the past week, I've gone sailing, pet some insane wildlife, gone into downtown Perth for various reasons, attempted to surf, gone out at night to Northbridge (one of Perth's main nightlife spots)  and met the other new/current students of Currie Hall.  There are approximately 80 new students here at Currie, and I believe there's about 200 total of us.  I live in a suite-style building where there are 5 of us to one bathroom/shower/kitchen area.  The international recognition that we have is quite remarkable.  I am the American girl, followed by a Norwegian guy, a Canadian guy, an Australian girl, and a Scottish girl.  How does that combination even happen?!  Needless to say, we've all gotten to know one another pretty well; have come up with nicknames, began family songs, bragged about how great we are, etc.  We're kinda a big deal.... :)

If you caught what I said before, I attempted surfing.  Quite possibly one of the hardest activities I've ever done.  There was a group of 32 of us from the international students that took a bus to a hot-spot for surfing; Scarborough Beach.  We were split up into groups of 8, and were each given an instructor.  Our instructor was this crazy Brazilian man, that was maybe the happiest person I've met in Perth so far.  This dude was PUMPED to be teaching us, and it made the experience that much more memorable.  He taught us these 4 steps of how to stand up on your board, and while it seems elementary, simply walking past the waves to get far enough in the water is gruesome.  I was only able to get up on the board about twice...out of the million attempts taken.  While it was very tiresome, it was also a ton of fun!

Scarborough Beach.  The water is behind that small ridge, I promise.

Before we realized how hard surfing really is...