August 31 - spring break trip

Now that I am back from my trip and settled back in at school, I am going to update this blog with more detailed accounts of what I did over break, inclusive of pictures. The first day of my spring break trip was August 31, so this will be my first "back post" account of the trip.
------------------------------

After going to bed at midnight last night, I woke up this morning at 5:00am. At 5:30am I woke up Adrian, a friend down the hall who agreed to drive me to the airport. When I woke him up, I'm not so sure he was very excited about having agreed to take me. :-P We left for the airport at 5:45am in his Toyota Hilux utility vehicle, and at 6:00am he dropped me off at the airport. By this point it was already getting light outside. I guess the days have gotten quite a bit longer since I've been here!

At 6:45 my flight took off. The 45 minute flight to Melbourne was nice, and there was only one or two people per row -- poor Virgin Blue didn't make much (if any) money off this flight. I had a 1.5 hour layover in Melbourne before flying from Melbourne to Perth. This plane was much fuller, and the flight was 4 hours. Melbourne to Perth is just a little shorter than PA to California -- Australia's a big country! I got ahold of Diane, a friend of my aunt and uncle, yesterday, so she knew when I was going to arrive. At the airport Diane met me by holding a sign that said "Ben". We waited for my bag to come through the baggage carosel, then we got in her car and started driving around.

Diane took me first to Wireless Park, a park in the Freemantle area, where there were some observation towers where we could see the city of Perth, and lots of wildflowers. She showed me some kangaroo paws, a really cool green and red flower with a red stem, that looks superficially a lot like the front paw of a kangaroo. Pretty neat. She told me about some of the other wild flowers and the trees and stuff, some of which were really cool and really unique.

After a short walk at Wireless Park, Diane drove me around the Freemantle area, which is an old shipping port town and it was pretty nice. Part of the town had old historical buildings which was pretty cool. She showed me the harbor, and I got to see the Indian Ocean for the first time (for those who were wondering, it doesn't look much different than the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans...) We stopped and parked where there were some shops and coffee shops, etc. and decided to eat at the Dome coffe shop. I had a veggie wrap and a cup of coffe, and we talked a bit about Perth and Canberra and stuff before going back to the car. Back in the car, Diane drove up along the coast to her house, showing me the various beaches along the way. Her house was literally just two blocks from the beach, and after we got there and she showed me the room I could stay in I went out and got some pictures of the beach, including my first sunset over the Indian Ocean. It was a partially cloudy day at this point, after being mostly cloudy and a bit drizzly when I first got there. The breaking clouds made it possible for there to be a nice sunset, though, which was really nice. Her house had a lot of glass windows, so I think there was more glass than there were other types of materials in the wall. Being that the Perth area doesn't get very cold in the winter, I can and she was so close to the ocean, I can understand why she would have so much glass, as heat isn't often an issue. I was actually there during a particularly cold spell, and it was only inthe upper 60s.

I met Chris, Diane's partner, after he got home from work, we had supper, and then I went to bed early so I could recover from the lack of sleep, the early morning, and the two hours that I gained on the flight (Perth is currently 2 hours behind Canberra, and exactly 12 hours ahead of home... so I guess I'm exactly on the opposite side of the world from home right now! :))