1) Anders and Marie (Norwegians) at my place
2) Goon bags ($12 4L bags of wine...provides the worst morning headache ever!) passed along the bus at International Pub Crawl
3) Katie, Andrea, Mossop and Jen at Hip-E Club
4) More pics from International Pub Crawl, Andrea and friends
5) Norwegian girls at my place

Sports and costume parties
1 & 2) My black eye from an elbow to the face in soccer turned out handy when I had to dress up as a hostage for our quiz night group raising money for Unicamp for Kids
3) Mossop and Boysa's Rugby game in Cottlesloe
4) One of the soccer girls had a hero and villian dress up party and I was a last minute dragon (it was a weak costume cause I didn't have time!)

Roomies:
1) Darren (left) and Ryan (right on the other side of Scottish random!) on a night out to see some local bands and a band from Melbourne
2) Ryan and I
3 & 4) Heather, Ryan's girlfriend, and I attacked Ryan's hair on a request for "something different"!!! He didn't originally want it short but with a slip of our scissors, he didn't have a choice.

My house in Subiaco:
1) My room before I painted it
2) A little gathering of International Students in my backyard
3) My room after I painted it
4) The front entrance way...notice the broken and cracked wall and arch!

Perth:
We were picked up at the airport just before midnight by Andrea’s 2 roommates Alex (Mossop) and Mike (Woodsy). They are great fun and took us on a Perth tour the next morning ending at a pub in Cottlesloe right on the beach, The Ocean Beach Hotel (OBH), which was packed in the afternoon for what the Aussies call “Sunday Sessions”. Perth is in a great little city and UWA is in a prime location bordering the Swan River. The river is home to dolphins, pelicans, black swans and other fascinating creatures and there is a great running path along the river into the city. The white sandy beaches and turquoise ocean in Cott is only about half an hour from Uni but you have to go a bit further north for good surf which is on my list of things to do in the near future. It’s a bit windy and rainy in the winter but I still plan to pull out my wetsuit and suck up the cold to get a few good surfing sessions in! After being Andrea’s couch bandit for a week I moved into my new shack in Subiaco. Subi is a great central location between the city and the Uni. It takes me 10 min bus and bike ride to Uni and a bit longer into the city but daytime transportation is great. It’s a little out of the way at night because the latest the buses/trains run is around midnight but I just bought some bike lights so I’ll be able to get around easily and now safely. After 2 weeks of painting, cleaning and more cleaning, I had my first house warming this past weekend which was fun but small because half of the people where still hung-over from the river cruise the night before so it was mainly the European/Scandinavian International students who are great fun. We headed out to the Subi clubs/bars later on which are apparently upper-class because everyone was in dresses and suits (not our student affordable scene so we won’t be going out in Subi very often). I’m joining the UWA women’s soccer team for their last few games before the finals because they invited me to be on their first team. It looks like the mens and ladies teams have a blast together on different pub crawls and such so I’m looking forward to meeting some locals and playing on a team again. I am in week 3 of classes but it hasn’t really started getting busy yet so I thought there was no point in rushing into things and starting school work just yet! I’m taking Neuromuscular Biomechanics, Bioenergetics, Skills Acquisition and Motor Skills and Coaching Psych, all of which are pretty interesting and applicable for my coaching and physio careers. I’ve been on the job search and may start working in a café close to Uni called Domes…I was rejected at many restaurants because I have never worked in a restaurant before but if I can handle coaching 20+ kids at a time I think I can handle making a coffee and sandwich so my fingers are crossed!
1)UWA Clock Tower...there are clock towers everywhere in Australia!
2) Marie and Lene, 2 Norwegian girls looking over South Perth from Kings Park
3) Woodsy, Mossop and Andrea looking over Perth city from Kings Park
4) Jen (Montreal) and Andrea on Cott Beach
5) Cott Beach

Brisbane and the Train Ride:

We had one fun final night in Airlie Beach and then headed down the coast via public train. Proserpine to Brisbane on the train takes 17.5 hrs, DO NOT RIDE IT EVER!!! It turned out to be filled with very poor, dirty people and the train itself was far from clean. Our seats had baby food smeared everywhere, a bag of squished rotten bananas and other trash under the seats, and according to a nice elderly couple we met, there was a mother picking nits out of her child’s hair one cart up from us. I was disgusted and we considered buying anti-lice shampoo in Brisbane but after clean showers at our hostel we were feeling better. I ran into Marie and Kari, two of the Norwegian girls from Auckland who I hiked the Tongariro Crossing with, another pleasant surprise and spent one final night with them (it was quite a coincidence because I couldn’t make their going away party in Auckland because I was finishing up my research presentation so we had our own party). The next day, Rob (from Toronto doing his masters in Brisbane) took Andrea and I around Brisbane, it was raining for the first time in a long stretch of sunshine though, so sightseeing was not great. I plan to stop through Brisbane again on my way to Fraser Island in December when the weather is more pleasant.

1) Parrots from South Molle Island (there are millions of these little guys in Perth and they are really loud)
2) Relaxing on the boat after Whitehaven Beach. Right to Left: Dan and Sara, Andrea, Gerard (Irish), Sadie, Ben(Irish)...???
3) The crazy Czech chick pretending she is a mole, who knows!?!
4) Not one of my most flattering pictures but I had a parrot on my arm!
5) The ginormous iguana that scared me half to death
6) Whitehaven Beach
7) Sara, Andrea and I on Whitehaven (I match the sand compared to these two!)

Whitsundays

The apparent 3-day sail trip with 20 people on the Pride of Airlie boat turned out to be a 2-day sail with about 60 people and was a great party atmosphere after the initial shock of boarding the boat late afternoon and going straight to the South Molle Island Resort. It was a nice family resort with a pool and hot tub, golf course, sport courts, a bar and great snorkelling about a 10min walk from the resort. Koala, the company that owned the Pride of Airlie, owned the rundown part of the resort with their own hostel-like dorm rooms and bar where everyone on the boat spent both 2 nights partying before we got onto the rockiest boat I have ever been on. We met a couple from Kamloops (Dan and Sara) and another from Toronto (Rob and Leslie) and many other International travellers. The Irish boys we met were great fun and boy can they drink and dance! There was a girl from Czech who kept the party going 24/7, finishing off a 26er every morning on the boat and loving every minute of life. She was definitely the craziest person I have ever met but she made the trip very memorable! The second day on the boat there were some spewers at the back of the boat so I stayed up near the front with those on the verge of spewing loving every minute of the waves splashing and rain! The sun came out just on time when we arrived at Whitehaven Beach where the sand is so white and fine that it cleans jewellery. I swam to shore then went into the bush looking for the toilets when I heard movement in the tree 3m from me. A huge iguana climbed down the tree right in front of me and I froze then ran for the camera and friends to protect me! After some beach soccer with the boys, and swimming in the clear turquoise water, we had to return to the boat for lunch. I was mad that I didn’t have time to go snorkelling because as soon as I got on the boat I saw 2 turtles where I was going to go. We returned to the resort and everyone played golf while I went snorkelling just off the shore looking for as many chances to see a turtle because there was only one more opportunity on the third day but I did not get lucky! The third day was rough for many more people after 2 heavy drinking games but I was chipper and ready to see some turtles! We went snorkelling in a well-known location of the Great Barrier Reef and I took some underwater pictures of fluorescent coral and fish. The sun wasn’t out so I don’t know how great they will turn out but it was fun chasing fish as deep as I could go until I got too close to the coral that really hurts and cuts when you touch it. When I was forced to return to the boat because all the others were too cold and I couldn’t be out alone, I stayed in the water near the boat where people were feeding bread to these huge flat fish and hoped a turtle would pass by. I felt some stinging on my foot and arm and when I caught a glimpse of a large enough jelly fish to scare me I swam faster than ever and stayed out of the water for the rest of the day…well we sailed back to shore so I didn’t have any opportunity but I was scared for my life. Poisonous jelly fish, poisonous spiders, and sharks are all on the top of my fears list.

1) South Molle Island Resort at night, the pool was freezing!
2)The view from the Resort, you can't see the colourful parrots in the trees but you could sure hear them!
3) The sunset view from the Resort

Airlie Beach

I ended up throwing away half of my possessions (including my jacket which was old and I didn’t think I would need one in Perth…very wrong!!!) and other old clothes and things I did not “need” to reduce our weight. Our travel agent from Student Flights (do NOT trust their knowledge!) misinformed us about weight restrictions flying to Proserpine Airport with Jet Star so Steve, a nice English lad, pretended he was with us so we could share his weight allowance. We arrived in the dark exiting the plane on a staircase onto a little tarmac where there are apparently heaps of kangaroos during the day so I still haven’t seen one! The airport was a tiny building and departing patrons were lined up outside to board while a tractor brought our baggage to us so everyone could fight over it all at once. We stayed at Beaches, a clean hostel but our room was right above their bar and the last couple World Cup games were playing everynight so the bar was always full and loud which was fine because we didn’t sleep very much anyways. The night of the final game the rule of the Beaches bar was that to watch the 5am game on their big screen you had to be at the bar before 3am so most people were there from early evening until 7am because of overtime. I tried to stay up but ended up just watching the last bit in our hostel room after sleeping through the noise keeping everyone else up all night…I’m very thankful to be able to sleep in any environment when I’m tired! While I was on my way to the internet café to tell Caitlin where on the entire East Coast of Oz I was, she was walking out of the kitchen as I was walking by and called out my name. It was so good to see a familiar face and we only had less than an hour together but it was a fun hour! The weather was only nice the day we left on the sail trip and there is not very much to do on rainy days in Airlie, which is unfortunate but we did get a few warm rays on the boat.

1) The English lads Steve, Tom (his roommate) and I at the Beaches bar
2) Andrea and I at Morocco's on our Whitsunday sail reunion the night we came back from the Whitsunday sail in Airlie
3) View of the Ocean from Airlie Beach
4) The Airlie Lagoon (often referred to as the gene pool due to it's reputation for being the location of intoxicated promiscuous activities), but it was very pretty!

Goodbye New Zealand, Back in Australia:

Sydney- Once again my awesome luck delayed my flight from Auckland by 4hrs. After Sandra and Amy took me to the airport at 2am so we could pull one last all-nighter, my plane didn’t depart until 10am. The positive was that my terrible luck brought about a fun goodbye with Sandra, my Danish sister/roommate, after realizing how we could have slept and had a normal night. Andrea, also from SFU going to Perth, waited 5hrs for me at the Sydney airport because we planned to travel together before school. We made it to Mia and Neeraj’s place, then headed out to run some errands such as planning our trip very last minute! Apparently in Oz it is a bad idea to book flights closer to the date because prices increase, especially during school holidays! That night we went to a German restaurant, Lowenbrau with Neeraj, Mia and her friend Trish. The food wasn’t great probably because I’m not too keen on sausages due to the disgusting New Zealand “lamb-flour-who knows what’s in them” sausages but they made up for their food with a cute elderly live German band. Trish was a great tour guide of the Opera House and gave us a little tour of the Rocks around the harbour after dinner. The next night after a long day of more trip preparations, Andrea and I stopped by the Lansdowne pub for a drink after pizza dinner while Neeraj packed for Chicago. We accepted an offer from a guy who worked for a promotions company to drive around in a limo tasting beer for 15 minutes. They had already taken 3 rounds of 5 people so we figured it was safe even though it sounded odd. We convinced 3 others: Paul, Brad and Vanessa, to come along for the ride and after our ride, we were offered to carry on to the next location, a gay bar on Oxford Street. Paul was in his glory because he is gay and the rest of us danced up a storm. I would have to say it was one of the best times I’ve had on a “quiet pub night” that turned out to be a random escapade!

1) Mia and Neeraj (Getting married Oct. 18th!!!) with Andrea and I
2) Vanesa, Paul, and Brad taking Andrea and I to our first gay bar experience on Oxford Street

Couples and friends I hope to see together forever:
1) Obviously my wives, Em couldn't make it in this one!
2) Steph (Canadian who I will live with if I go to postgrad school in Toronto) and Raveen (Kiwi)
3) Just a fun shot of Vane and I at the Casino bar
4) Anne (Dutch who will be coming to Canada to visit Eric) and Eric (Toronto)

Good times, fun people:

Second formal dinner pictures and a spoon session after the feast:
1) The Islander boys, who am I going to wake up for now???















2) My 3 Wives Steph, Vane and Em! The long distance relationship will be tough but we'll pull through it!















4) The after-spoon in my bed with Steph, Vane and Anne















4) A little Magnum/Blue Steel action!