Oh The Place's You'll Go!

This post was inspired by 1) my background it was called "the places you'll go" and 2) Dr. Suess's book "Oh The Place's You'll Go".

As most of you know my family moved to Perth, Australia July of 2009 because of my dad's job. We were so excited because this is a once in a life time opportunity! And it was a very good career move for my dad. So the family came here and they loved it! Life here is slow paced, really relaxing. The beach is really really close by and there are beach bums every where!

So "Oh the place's I will go"...My mom gave me and my sister this book when we went to college because you never know the places or experiences life will bring you. I never thought in a million years that I or my family would be living in Australia! So I took advantage of the opportunity and took winter semester off this year to come home and relax after a pretty stressful semester. When I got here I knew it would be hard to leave. Because I love the sun, and the beach, and really the life to come with it. I once told my dad that if I could I would buy a boat before a car. He told me that it was stupid because how would I get the boat to the beach? DUhhh....FRIENDS. I am guessing if I could find a friend to tow my boat to the beach they wouldn't hate lounging and playing in the water with it. Anyway that is just info about who I am aka I love being in the water and playing!

There have been positives and negatives of being here. I don't mean to be a negative nancy but the hardest part for me was not having the close friends that I had back at school. Granted there are singles wards at school, but I didn't think it would be THAT bad down here. There was NO singles ward. The singles were dispersed among the family wards. Some had 10-12 other aka mine had 5. The singles here were not young either well the ones in my ward. The other wards are like 30-45 minutes away, and just never had the chance to meet them. Anyway the singles in my ward are a little older 25-30 and working or finishing up school. not really the crowd I would hang out with. So that has deff been hard for me. I have REALLY REALLY learned not to take friends for granted. Life keeps throwing these learning experiences at me it's like one thing after another every single time! I am just thinking, I have learned!! Everything has stuck with me, obviously I am not getting something though! All I can say is THANK GOODNESS for facebook, through this wonderous invention I have been able to keep intouch with many of my friends whom I have missed SO much!

POSITIVES of being here! There are billions of things I have loved about being here that I possibly could not right all of them down, cause my fingers would fall off and my chance of getting carpal tunnel would porbably increase by 75%. So to name just a few...1)Home cooking!! Even though I don't eat out THAT much at school my meals are nothing like my moms! I have loved just having the family eating dinner together and socializing with them, and eating delish meals that I have loved for a long time!! I certainly do not look forward to having to cook again (the stove and me aren't best friends yet). 2) Doing laundry. I have the BEST MOM EVER!! When I come home from school she does my laundry for me, and I am so grateful for that! Even though it is a small thing and if she asked me to do my own I wouldn't mind, it is so sweet of her to do it for me even though I am almost 20. I love her for doing that!! THANKS MOM! I have ABSOLUTELY LOVED living in the LAND DOWN UNDER. It is unreal here. We live a short two minute walk to the beach and it's pretty private. I am going to take a video of walking there so you can all see! I have loved the sunny weather and skipping winter for once in my life! I will be going down to the beach right after this to soak of the last days of the sun before I head back to the ICEBURG. I have tried surfing a couple times, not as easy as it looks! Waves should be getting a bit bigger soon so hopefully I can get a good ride before I go!

There are only 7 days before I depart this blessed land for another blessed land. I am so excited to be going back to friends and half excited for school.

I just saw a ghost!

After my shower today I put on a mask to rejuvenate my skin ahah. While waiting for it to dry I sat in my towel on my bed on facebook. My friend Brett posted a picture on facebook about his experience with WOW - mainly that it ruins lives. He looked so hilarious in it, my eyes filled with water from laughter. I though to meself..I mean myself I shall take some pics of my ritual of after the shower. Because everytime I shower I sit in my towel for a good hour. One day I had a mask on and my sister Katelyn says "Are you okay?!? You look like you've seen a ghost!" Hence the name of this post.

BALI BELLY

This past week was SRPING BREAK for the kidlets, and well the rest of the world. Instead of lazing by the beach for a week the family decided to go to BALI! Bali is in Indonesia incase you didn't know. And it is one of the shortest flights out if Perth (only 3 hours) so seeing that we have never been and will only be in Australia for a couple years we thought we should take advantage at how close we are to many places in this part of the world. So off we went.


We stayed at a place called Seminyak Suites, we had our own villa which had an outdoor kitchen/living room (pictured above). Each villa also had its own private pool (pictured below). I loved this part of it. I love to swim and just being in the water, so I swam every night and spent lots of time in the pool!


We went to a Hindu Temple where we had to wear colourful sarongs because we were wearing shorts (below)




This temple had hundreds of monkeys. They liked to find garbage and eat the last crumbs of some left over pringles (above). There was one teeny tiny baby monkey, and he was so cute!! He had the biggest eyes, and was a little camera shy. He came out from under his moms belly to peek out see everyone! (below)


Another day we took a little drive to this place where they had a fish spa. Basically you put your feet into this tank of these small fish and sit there for twenty minutes. These fish eat dead skin - which when you think about it is SO disgusting - it tickles a little bit at first but then you become desensitized to it haha. After twenty minutes you are done and your feet are so soft!! I would recommend doing this if you ever get the chance the way your feet feel is well worth it!


Next up was Bali Safari and Marine Park. When we got there we were hungry so we ate some food. It was SO unbelievably cheap just like everything is in Bali. They had several different counters you could order from ie. Chinese, Western, Italian. I got Pad Thai, every chance I get I eat this delicious dish! It was only $4.00!

Here we took a family (well minus me cause I was taking the picture and Brittany cause she is at school) picture infront of this HUGE elephant cave sculpture.


At this park we got see elephants bathing! So funny, you could feed them carrots, the little kids loved this!


In Bali the streets are VERY crowded and there really is no such thing as road rules there. A two lane road can easily turn into a 3 or 4 lane road. People were packed on there like pickles. (I say pickles cause they are packed tighter than sardines you'll catch on). Cars faced ongoing traffic at times waiting to turn around, if you wanted to pass someone just cross over onto oncoming taffic no worries. It's not AS dangerous as it sounds because driving over there although a thrill is pretty safe. People are in no real hurry and therefore are patient so it not like Germanic speed racing down the road. There is no public transportation system so everyone and I literally mean EVERYONE drives a motorbike. They are cheap and small easy to manouver through traffic.






Dad picked up some rice while we were at a restaurant. Rice fields are everywhere in the countryside. Rice is a staple crop here and eaten with pretty much every meal. I have seen pictures of rice fields but didn't know what the actual stem looked like, so here it is.


We went to a DVD store and got about 50 dvds for $50 bucks!! There are only a couple that aren't great quality but all the others are great! Everynight we lounged at home and watched some of the movies.


We had dinner at the beach the last night we were there, unfortunatley it was cloudy but still nice nonetheless. As we ate dinner this is what we looked out onto. I loved seeing kids playing in the sand, and people walking along the beach. While we were waiting for dinner I decided to take some pictures of the kids at the beach. I love them in black and white, and how they turned out, so natural looking.








This was our seafood meal, complete with king prawn, lobster, fish, crab, and mussels (i tried one mussel, but didn't like them enough to eat the rest) I loved the LOBSTER though.


Bali was a great place to visit! After a week we were ready to come home. While we were there we got a massage every night! A full body hour long massage there is only $20 dollars. I slept so good!! My body was so relaxed and my muscles were so loose. That was one major reason why I was so sad to leave, those twenty dollar massages were a luxury! But it is good to be home for a short two weeks before I go back to school!

Coming Soon

I don't know how many people read my blog, but for those of you that do I just want to let you know that I am not neglecting my small corner in the cyber world. I need to get a few more pictures to show all you some of the great things about where I live. Sadly I will only be living here for 10 more days, then I am back to the USA. Standby comrades.