Strange happenings and the first study break

Remember when I said my flat was at full capacity with two Americans, two Australians, one German, one Singaporean, one person from England, and one person from Papua New Guinea? Well, the two Australians left, so now it's all just international students in the apartment. One of them, who was very very shy and never really spoke to any of us except to reply to our greetings and to tell us to move so he could fill his glass with water from the faucet, left with merely a message on our common room whiteboard saying "I've moved out."
The other Aussie moved out a week ago while most of us were out for study break (we get a week off every three weeks of classes!! Thanks Australia). His specific reasons for moving out are also rather mysterious, but I suspect it may have something to do with the strange occurrences that have been going on in our flat. I'm not saying he did any of this but a couple days after we reported everything that had happened to the village director, he was gone.
Since the beginning of my stay here, some people's food has gone missing without explanation. It wasn't anything major, and accidents can definitely happen when you're sharing fridge/cabinet space with a bunch of other people. Still though, I don't think any of us truly minded; we were merely slightly disturbed by the lack of honesty and communication.
A couple weeks ago, somebody found a knife in the freezer. I kind of shrugged it off as someone being really forgetful, but it was still a little funky.
One of my flatmates also got punched by another one with zero explanation. I'm told there was an explanation later, but I don't know if it's a trustworthy one.
Then, the final straw came in the form of slashed curtains. Yep, you read that right. My flatmate and I both went into the kitchen area and noticed something was wrong with the balcony curtains. They looked like they'd been slashed by a knife or something. This was deeply unsettling, so we decided to report it, if for the very least just to avoid a fine for destruction of village property.
I left the next day to go to my cousin's house for the week, and learned that the remaining Australian man had moved out. I'm still a little confused as to the culprit of all the strange happenings in our flat, but nothing's happened since I got back a couple days ago, so let's hope things are okay now.
I told Paul when the curtains got slashed and he looked both concerned and amused and said "this is certainly an interesting semester." I agree!

My first study break wasn't all that eventful, but I enjoyed it regardless. It was a semi-relaxing week spent with my family, just going about everyday life. I got to look after my six-year-old nephew (technically first cousin once removed, but honestly, who has the time to say that?) while his parents were either working or on a business trip. This involved getting him ready for school and walking him there, and then picking him up afterward. It was kind of the first time I'd ever been responsible for a child, so I was a little nervous, especially since my nephew, though sweet and adorable, is also stubborn and very temperamental. The first morning I managed to get him to dress himself and he was very happy to comply, probably because he sees me as a friendly figure rather than a parental one. We walked to school together and I was reminded of when I walked to school with my grandma as a little kid. Afterward I picked him up and he was still happy to go along with me, so I considered the first day a success.
The next couple days were tougher, because he got used to me being around and thus felt more comfortable defying my requests to dress himself and clean up after himself.  I do think it was a good experience for me though, and I'm very glad to have gotten to help my cousins out, because they are amazingly diligent and doting parents who work very hard.

Apart from taking care of my nephew, I got to go explore the Lakeside Joondalup shopping centre, which is apparently the largest shopping mall in WA. I didn't recognize any of the store brands there except H&M and Lush, so it was a small adventure seeing what the different shops had.
I spent the rest of the week studying, writing poetry, and finding new music to listen to; essentially, just taking a mental break. Since getting here it's kind of been one new experience after the next with barely any time for me to just be lazy and do nothing productive. Because that's healthy too (in great moderation, that is).

Also, I booked tickets to visit New Zealand during my third study break! I'm going with my friend Cara and we're both super duper excited about it. I've always wanted to go to New Zealand, ever since I had the idea of running away there disguised as a sheep when the going got tough in the US (I was a middle schooler during the time, so bear with me). Jokes aside, it'll be the first time I'm visiting a country where I have no relatives, and I'll truly get to explore the place on my own terms. We're staying a hostel and everything, so I really look forward to that life-altering experience.

This is a rather short blog post, I know. I'm thinking of trying something new: I started this blog partly to update people about my study abroad experience, but also in part to write about issues I care about. That way when nothing interesting happens during the weeks I can still make posts that are interesting (or at least I think they'll be interesting) and educational! At my very core I am someone who loves to teach and inform, so this will be good practice for me.
Until next time,

~ JP

Exploring Fremantle and going to prison

The weekend after my first week of classes consisted of me being practically mute because my throat was so sore that I lost my voice. That combined with the fact that I love exploring places all on my own led me to Freo for a day. Since I don't have classes on Fridays (can I get a hip-hip-huzzah?), I decided I'd go and finally explore Fremantle to my heart's content. 

I caught a bus and walked along as many of the streets as I could, taking my time and going into any shop that caught my eye. The architecture of the buildings in the main areas of the city center are really interesting and kind of reminiscent of pictures I've seen of Bourbon Street in New Orleans (which, by the way, is another place I'd love to visit). I was enjoying walking around so much I forgot to take pictures, but I have a feeling I'll be in Freo a lot this semester, so I'll be sure to get some snapshots later on. The streets were lively yet relaxed and there were many eclectic eateries, bars, and shops. In this regard, I was a little bit reminded of Williamson Street in Madison, which has some neat little shops and a diverse assortment of restaurants like Freo. I had a great time from morning till late afternoon, and it was just a very pleasant, laid-back day. 

A little courtyard of sorts between buildings on South Terrace

The main entrance to the Fremantle Markets, similar to a swap meet

The next time I was in Fremantle was not laid-back in the least. The next Friday, Paul had all us CIEE peeps meet at the Fremantle Markets for dinner, then a nighttime torchlight tour of the notorious Fremantle prison. Dinner was really nice because Paul told us he was giving us all "red vouchers" that we could "exchange for food," then proceeded to pass around $20 bills to everybody. By the way, Australian money is colorful and made out of plastic and in my opinion is much cooler than US money. Just saying.

I bought a poke bowl, which came with rice, lettuce, avocado, salmon sashimi, and various other toppings and it was fantastic. Towards the end of my meal, I was informed that the prison tour would be scary. Not just scary because it was at nighttime in a potentially haunted old, maximum-security prison which only had stopped housing prisoners in 1991 (yes, it was THAT recent!!), but the tour would include jumpscares.

I. Hate. Jumpscares.

Filled with nervous energy and very sure that horrors were quickly headed my way, I walked with the group towards the prison. Once there I was getting very anticipatory about what would happen on the tour and made a playful jab at Paul for not telling us about the scary nature on the tour. He told us about a thing called Uncertainty Avoidance which basically refers to a society's tolerance to ambiguity. Apparently, Aussies are very tolerant towards not knowing exactly what lies ahead. I told him I liked adventure as much as the next person, but I like to be told explicitly what's happening. Paul only smiled and said "oh, there'll be adventure tonight." This did not comfort me.

He didn't actually go on the tour with us, saying only that he'd been on it enough times and that when we reached Solitary Confinement to stand in the back of the group.

The torchlight tour began, and by torchlight I mean we were given dinky little flashlights to shine on the floor so we could see where we were walking. Otherwise, it was eerily dark within the prison. You could hear and feel the wind blowing through and there were plenty of cockroaches skittering around. I saw a huge one the size of my thumb. 

Everything started out tamely enough, and our guide was very informational and very much enjoyed making morbid jokes. We walked through the different sectors of the prison and saw where inmates spent their time outside, as well as the kitchen area. The only scary part there was when someone screamed and threw a dummy dressed as an inmate from a cell on an upper level, which then landed with a horrible thud on the rigid metal netting just above our heads. This was, of course, staged to give us an example of how the netting worked. The metal netting was put in place to prevent inmates from committing suicide by jumping to the limestone floor, and also to prevent them from dropping their metal buckets (which they used as toilets) onto unsuspecting guards' heads on the first floor.

Other unsettling parts were when we went into the solitary confinement building, where I failed to stand in the back of the group. An actor posing as an inmate burst out of his cell and loudly rambled at us, showing us by example how awful the mental conditions of inmates in solitary confinement could become over extended periods of utter isolation. Part of the act included him picking out somebody in the tour group and essentially hitting on them, making eyes and doing suggestive dances and making verbal advances. Guess who the lucky victim was for this tour? (Hint: it was me)

Let's just say I was the most uncomfortable that I have ever been in my life. 

We walked through the rest of the prison and saw the gallows where they hung inmates, the flogging post where inmates would be punished, and then headed down to the basement where another actor leapt out to terrify us and told us a story of a prisoner who had attempted to escape the prison. 

Those who warranted punishment were tied by the wrist and ankles to this structure, then flogged severely.

Art classes were provided in the prison's later years, and some inmates took it upon themselves to paint on their cell walls.

The tour guide then brought us to the "dead end," where we concluded the tour with a visit in the morgue. The smell was dank and sort of moldy. As we left, he warned us to be silent lest we wake up any spirits. Then he set off a very loud noise which to me sounded like popping a balloon, solely to startle us, and laughed, saying we had to "end the tour with a bang." I think he enjoys his job a little too much.

Afterward, Paul bought us all some well-deserved and well-needed ice cream before we all parted ways. I promptly headed back to the uni village with some friends because if anything, that tour was exhausting. I do recommend it because though silly at some points it was educational. We even got to keep our torches as a "consolation prize" (yippee, right?).

The next morning, I took the train to my cousin's house since I hadn't been there in a couple weeks and was a little homesick. I can't stress enough how nice it feels to have family all the way out here, and that on the weekends I can just catch a train and take it easy with them. Ironically, it's such a difference for me from being at UW-Madison, where I have to go months without the comfort of being with my parents. 

See, I haven't spent all my time studying! Though admittedly I probably should commit more seriously to actually studying, because it's harder to do than I originally thought. There's so much to do and see, and new people to interact with, so academics aren't the only thing pulling at my attention here. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, so long as I keep up with my readings. :)

Until next time!

~ JP

What classes am I taking?

I know what you may be thinking. You're thinking, "June, I was under the impression you would make a new blog post every week! Where's last week's post?"
I'm not going to make excuses. We could all go on and on (and on and on) about how busy we are and all that, but that's boring and quite frankly I think it's annoying. (Think about it! How boring is it when your friend texts you or you see an old acquaintance and they apologize for not getting in touch because they've been soooo busy?) I know it's absolutely true; we ARE busy and we have to take care of ourselves first, and I'm not trying to downplay anybody's experiences, but it's an established fact that in this day and age it's hard to find free time. This just means you have to make time to do the things you enjoy. I have little patience for people whose sole excuse is that they were "just busy."
In my case, let's say I haven't been responsible in making time to write my blog posts. Now on to the good stuff, the stuff you're here for.

Do you ever wake up with a sore throat and suddenly you just sort of think back to the day before and regret every single potentially-health-endangering thing you did/ate? That's how I felt the very first day of classes for the semester. Yes, I know that's very unreasonable of a thing to think about right when I just woke up, but if you know me, you know that I am the biggest worrywart you'll ever encounter. And if you've ever lived with me, you'll know that I am miserable and mildly angry at everything if I feel even the slightest bit unwell. And I ended up feeling unwell for a week and a half, so I was not a happy clam.

So what am I actually doing here at Murdoch? Good question. I'm taking four units (that's what they call classes here), worth 3 credits each. On Mondays I have Nature-Based Tourism, a class revolving around the different types of tourism which take place in and around nature areas, like ecotourism and wildlife tourism. There is only one workshop per week for this class, so it's about three hours of combined lecturing and group discussion/work in a small classroom setting. For the first workshop, we talked about good ecotourism and what makes it good or bad. I found it all very fascinating and we even touched upon the ethics of some aspects of tourism, like the environmental impacts of it when it isn't conducted or managed properly, or when there is just so much visitor traffic that it affects the ecology of an area that is meant to be protected. The professors (there are two lecturers) are very fun and make the long class session go by fairly easily, and there's plenty of time given for us to work on our group projects both inside and outside of class. The overarching project for the semester involves coming up with a tourism management plan for a selected nature-based tourist site. My project partner and I were given Lake Gwelup Reserve, a city park, to work with, which we've found a little challenging because it isn't what one would normally consider a tourist location. I am confident, however, we'll come up with something great. In fact, we've already gone and visited the site and even went to IKEA for lunch afterward. I mention this because I'd never actually been to an IKEA before (yes, I know, it is shocking), so it was a very memorable experience for me.

Overall I think the park was ugly and had large fields of plain grass, but there was a nice boardwalk and some trees partially submerged in lake water

On Tuesdays I have lecture and a tutorial (a discussion section) called "Spies, Saboteurs, and Secret Agents." It's a super cool title for a class, and the subject matter is also very interesting. I wish I could say the same for the readings, though, because there's a lot of it and some of it is very dense. The professor for this class is a very passionate and well-informed man who has an affinity for lame jokes. He's also Canadian so it's much easier for me to understand his accent. During tutorials, he challenges us with questions about the readings and is very enthusiastic to just sit there and discuss, which I appreciate.

The product of a tutorials' worth of discussion...make of it what you will.

On Wednesdays, I have an Australian Indigenous Studies unit titled "Country, Nature, and Identity: Indigenous Sustainability." This class is very fascinating and encompasses material I'm passionate about: environmental issues, the meaning of identity, and underrepresented groups of individuals. The prof for this class is, I've been told, the "rock star" of the indigenous studies department at Murdoch. I agree with this statement because when he walked in on the first day I thought he was Guy Fieri for a wild moment because he was wearing a button-up short-sleeved shirt with green dragons printed on it and had wild tousled hair. He immediately told everyone to put their phones away, so clearly he means business, but at the same time he's a bit sarcastic and cracks wry jokes with a straight face. That's my type of humor, and combined with the subject material, the 1.5 hour workshop goes by fairly quickly.

On Thursdays I have Water and Earth Science, which is essentially a soil sciences class. It's not required of me for my plant pathology major, but I figured it'd be good for me to have a basic grasp of soil science. So far we've covered basic geology, and the first lab session merely consisted of looking at rocks and identifying them. I got to impress a couple people with my basic knowledge of geology because of my tour guide position at the UW-Madison Geology Museum, so that was nice. There are lots of field practicals for this class, so I'm pretty excited to go out and learn about soil!

Though classes these first two weeks have been a lot for me to take in, I find I am more or less enjoying them just fine. The manner in which we must study for them is way different and perhaps more difficult in a way than I'm used to. Since there is practically nothing due each week unless the prof assigns a paper, it's hard to keep focused and it's hard to just sit there and do the readings. All I've done so far is read and take notes on what I read, which is monotonous. Plus, I haven't had to study since December, so I'm slowly relearning my focusing skills.
I really like how friendly and easygoing workshops and tutorials are here. I don't know if it's because of the specific classes I'm in, and the professors I have, or if that's just how it is in Aussie unis. Tutorials consist of just talking about the material, and there is no homework. This I feel is a little dangerous because that means in most of my classes, there are only three or four grades which make up the final mark in the entire unit. This consists of projects, essays, and exams which are thus all high-stakes. I'm a little nervous as to how that will all turn out, but as always I am going into the semester headfirst and stubbornly determined.

I think I'll end this post here, though attending classes has obviously not been the only thing I've been doing the past two weeks. I apologize for the radio silence last week, and I'll make it up to you (and myself) by publishing this now and immediately writing about the other stuff I did recently! Until next time!

~ JP