Just so you understand...

Hello All!

For some of you it has been nearly four months since I have talked to you. For others it has been much more recently. First off, I am living in a place called Hotel Cleopatra in Fremantle, Western Australia. This is a suburb of Perth, in the South Western corner of Australia. There are 20 people living here all from UP and over 50% are nursing students and I am the only male nurse ;-). There are three other boys living down here and its an interesting set up, as I have to walk through their room to get to mine, so far it has been fine, except sometimes when I open the door in the morning I am greeted by some man meat as the boys are changing.

It is a really good community, partly because we have to rely on everyone in the dorm to entertain us. Most of the Study Abroad kids stick to their own group and there are no dorms on campus so it isn't like we can hang out anywhere else. The designated hangout have been the Orient a bar right across the street Pizza on high street (lol) and Gloria Jean's a coffee shop several blocks away. Coffee is so weird here. The sizes are super small and they really don't like much milk in it, or as I discovered in one case liquor. Its so wonderful to be making our own food down here, and its HOT. There is a local market that we go to on Sunday when they are starting to lower prices. We can get a ton of produce for $5, maybe less if you flirt with the shop owners. As soon as they start to lower prices, it gets crazy. The aisles are filled with people and there is one notorious asian woman who screams “One dollar, one dollar, all produce one dollar!!!!!” Then we make the traditional run to Coles, which is the WinCO down here. But that can be an experience finding things as refried beans are in the gourmet aisle and none of the brands are the same. For example, Kraft makes just about everything, and there is no Campbell’s soup, its Heinz. And let’s not even talk about mayonnaise, they have the worst mayonnaise ever. It is amazing to cook food in the kitchen as everyone is in there. The kitchen isn’t half bad, we even have stainless countertops. Twice a week we have community dinners where a few people volunteer to make the meal. I made the first meal of yakisoba noodles, dim sums, and brownies with ice cream. Even though we had two huge pans of noodles left they were finished off the next day.

There are several other schools down here with study abroad programs. Notre Dame has a contingency of about 40 and St. John's / St. Ben's from Minnesota also have a large contingency of about 30 kids. And there are the occasional Sacred Heart or Iona kid. As a group we are definitely closest to the St. John's / St. Ben's crowd. They live about a block away in P&O hotel and sometimes we see them playing wine pong from our windows. Our play has definitely been decreased as Fr. Art ( the director of Study Abroad) is coming by this week. No one is excited to see him. Classes seem to be a lot easier here. Instead of going three times a week for one hour. We go to class for two hours and have a 1 hour tutorial. Many people have a day off a week. The workload is usually One big paper or two and a final exam. Grades are also really weird. 80%-100% is a high distinction, 70-80 is a distinction 60-70 Is a credit and lower than that is a fail. It creates a big problem in how the grades are changed back to UP. The friendliness from other students varies a lot. Some when you introduce yourself at the start of class just look at you like what are you doing, while others when they hear the American accent will jump at the chance to talk to you. In my ethics tutorial only like 3 other students had done the journal assignment, and in other classes I notice a huge malaise towards actually doing the work. It definitely reminds me a lot of Portland State as everyone is a commuter student. Some drive an hour to go to school, and many still live at home. But that isn’t to say that there isn’t a ton to do with the uni. There is the friendship bowl coming up which is a competition between study abroad kids and domestic students in a trifecta of touch American football, aussie rules footy, and soccer. They have pilates classes, trips to the zoo, and an outing to a Footy game. Footy is huge down here the paper has a section of ¼ of the paper committed to following the happenings and scandals involving the teams. This weekend we are having a back to uni party at one of the local bars (Harbourside) and there is free beer and pizza. Can you imagine a party like that at UP? The theme is pirates, so everyone is getting dressed up.

Cleo’s is in a great location we are two blocks away from the beach and walking distance from everything we need. There is a street known as the Café Strip about five blocks away that is where all the trendy restaurants are, the market and all the “good” night clubs. We went out last Saturday and the streets were FILLED with people. The lines to get into the bars were several blocks long and the aussies were out in their clubbing best. I can’t even describe what everyone wears. The girls are wearing next to nothing and the boys all look like metro’s. We have a great time going out. Everyone sticks together and we see all the other study abroad kids in the bars.

So much more to tell. But it won’t come in this form again, I set up a blog : http://cellardoor747.blogspot.com/ Go there and read about what is going on down here on a more personal level.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone especially Doug, and Krista as I don’t have their email handy.

Much Love,

Kyle