Hello all! Here are some updates on my life and fun events that have taken place in the past week:
-Fremantle Prison Tour- We got a guided tour around the supposedly super haunted prison in Freo, with several scares and surprises along the way from the rather odd and frightening prison staff.
-Perth zoo- I took the train to Perth to explore the city and check out the famous zoo. It was a great day full of incredible animals: alligators, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, giant snapping turtles, and many, many more!
-Community Dinner- Team Awesome (aka myself and 3 of my fellow residents) were put in charge of buying and preparing this weeks community dinner to feed all of the P and O hotel (37 people). We decided to make a mouth-watering Brinner (breakfast for dinner) and it was a blast as well as a huge success! We had popcorn as an appetizer (nutella corn, caramel corn, kettle corn, and regular popcorn), and our main course included scrambled eggs, hashed browns, french toast, and Francakes with all the fixins (nutella, peanut butter, jam, yogurt, and syrup yuuuuum). I could never come close to matching my mother’s knack for creating hand-crafted culinary masterpieces but the Francakes received several votes as “THE BEST PANCAKES EVER!!!!!!!!” Needless to say, some P and O-ers were flabbergasted when I informed them of the mountain of cottage cheese they had unknowingly consumed in the delicious treats. For dessert we had a scrumptious fruit salad and some melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon rolls. For 150 bucks, that’s not too shabby if I do say so myself!!!
-Our first inter-house competition sport competition- basketball. Every Thursday night the three residence halls engage in vicious competitions to fight for Notre Dame study abroad supremacy. It’s actually somewhat similar to the house cup in Harry Potter in that one can earn points in other ways (such as team spirit and sportsmanship) except that there are way more sports than just crappy Quidditch. We all dressed in black and put on ninja war paint to intimidate our inferior opponents. Fun times!
Several other important things to note:
-I am now officially an old geezer. 21 years of age. Ugh. I’m counting down the days until my hip replacement. The celebrations and festivities were rambunctious, wild, and crazy and my friends/housemates treated me to more drinks/concoctions than I would care to mention but I survived slash rallied to make it to my 8:30 AM class the next day, albeit with a thunderous hangover and a pounding headache.
-I bought a guitar! WOOOOOHOOOO. It’s a 200 dollar Cort that is very basic but sounds great and plays like a dream. Next on the to-do list: buy a didgeridoo!
-Being too stubborn to go to the doctors and check it I am unsure of the extent of the damage, but I may have broken my thumb playing Aussie Rules Footy. Whoops. Here’s the scenario: The awkwardly shaped ball is dribbling down the field towards the middle two posts (which is 6 points). I sprint towards the end line and extend my hand to stop it from rolling over the line and scoring. At the same time one of the players on the opposite team also scrambles to kick it in before I can stop it. In a freak twist of fate his powerful kick just misses the footy and instead directly jams into my thumb. OUCH.
-Classes are fun, interesting, and not impossible (it helps that I have no class on Mondays and Wednesdays BOOYA). I am enrolled in World Literatures (interesting but with tons of reading), Math for babies (seriously. We are covering adding fractions, order of operations, and exponents. It is truly insultingly easy), Epistemology (3 straight hours of philosophical shinanigans/mumbo jumbo but it is made bearable by an incredibly smart and funny professor who has already made references to Flight of the Conchords and Tenacious D in his lectures), Scripture and Morality (3 hours of torture. The class consists of myself, two other Americans from the P & O, and approximately twenty-five “students” who are all over 50 years old and all studying to obtain a masters degree in Religious Studies. I’m talking about Priests, Monks, and Nuns taking a religion class with me. Wow.), and Australian History and Society (great class, great professor, incredibly interesting to learn about the origins of Australia and get an insiders perspectives on Aussie culture).
-I took my first splash into the Indian Ocean; it certainly feels like a hot tub compared to the old Oregon Coast and the Pacific. I can’t wait until it gets warmer outside (although it has been beautiful the ENTIRE time I’ve been here, holding steady at around 60-65 degrees per day) to partake in some more water playing, especially surfing and snorkelling.
That’s all for now, in case you can’t tell I am having the time of my life and loving my set-up in Australia! I would love to hear from any/all of you so here’s my contact info:
pjansa@gonzaga.edu
Patrick Jansa (on facebook)
paddy.jansa (skype)
19 Mouat Street
P & O Hotel
Fremantle, WA
6160
Cheers!
-Paddy
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