Valentine's Day

I can’t believe that Ithaca got its first snow day since 1984 and I was not there to see it.

There, my lamentations about how I’m missing cold weather are done. It’s been in the 80s and 90s since I’ve been here. It’s pretty sweet (though my snowboard is probably crying itself to sleep at night since it’s going unused).

So let’s see. I spent my Valentine’s day in Fremantle, or “Freo” as the locals call it. It’s I guess what you’d call a suburb of Perth (though to me Perth itself is mostly suburbs surrounding a small city center). It’s a pretty cool town, with apparently great nightlife and shopping which I didn’t get to see a whole lot of during my day. We definitely have to go back. On the way there, this college student heard our unmistakable American accents and started asking us all about the States. (this occurrence has happened 8 or 9 times since I’ve been here). She was curious to hear about Boston College, where she wants to study abroad. She was really nice and helped us find our way. On a side note, she also looked like the Prime Minister’s assistant in Love Actually.

We went to this Australian Maritime museum and learned about shipwrecks and ocean exploration. Apparently, when all of the explorers were trying to chart the world (Vasco de Gama, Colombus, etc.), they thought that New Zealand and Australia were one big attached continent, and had no idea of the shape of most of the country/continent. They also thought that the inhabitants of the South Land must be upside down like their country, so they thought they had feet on top of their heads. Crazy.

Then, we ate lunch at this brewery called Little Creatures which had great food. We shared a few kangaroo kebobs, which were awesome. They supposedly tasted like venison, but I wouldn’t know since I haven’t had venison. (I realize that this is hypocritical, after I spent my last entry gushing about how cool kangaroos are. In my defense, in Australia, kangaroos are analogous to our deer, and are actually used in cat food. So, I thought I had to try some local cuisine despite its cuddly origins.)

After dinner, our whole group went to a bar in Cottesloe that was on the beach. Supposedly it’s really hopping on Sunday nights, but we were the only ones there and so there was nobody dancing. Except for Andrew, who was dancing enough for all of us. We shared each other’s company, so it was a pretty good night. I finished my day with a Valentine’s date with Dan, via Skype. What a great ending to my day <3

Today we met two of our teachers for our class here, which is a media class. It should be right up my alley, we’re doing TV, photo, and print stuff. Class starts on Monday!