save the roos!

for an animal that truly respresents australia as its icon - featured on the australian coat of arms, on some currency, and used by many australian organizations, such as the airline qantas - i was shocked to hear about this story of roo abuse. i guess ever since i did a shoebox "diorama" on the kangaroo as a 2nd grader, i've been a fan of these furry friends. why would anyone want to hurt them? at least it sounds like the community is combatting the event with a pretty strong response! a lynching - yikes!
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Roo killers spark community outrage
26th March 2007, 7:00 WST

Residents of Preston Beach, near Mandurah, are incensed at the senseless barbarity of hooligans who deliberately mowed down four kangaroos, including a joey, on Saturday night. Peel Supt David Parkinson spent most of yesterday morning with retired police officer John Watson putting down dying kangaroos whose broken bodies were left on the streets of the quiet enclave. He said he had no doubt the kangaroos were deliberately targeted and police were trying to identify a white station wagon used in the attack in the hope of tracking down the offenders. "I had about 15 people come to my house down there...several of the comments were that they would start a vigilante group and that they wanted retribution," Supt Parkinson said. "The community are absolutely livid about it."

Supt Parkinson said he had information that one of the hooligans attacked a kangaroo with a golf club after the animal was struck by a car. "It really is disgraceful," he said. One resident, who did not want to be named, told The West Australian the community was outraged by the crime, saying some of the kangaroos were favourites among residents and were hand-fed and regularly seen lazing around front gardens in the suburb. "They were deliberately run over," one resident said. "It was pretty traumatic...there will be a lynching if the community find out who has done it."
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a walk in the park

i wouldn't be so quick to say that life has been a walk in the park this past week, but it certainly is great that we have found plenty of time to take advantage of the beautiful area in which we're living. the photo here is taken in the botanical garden at king's park, which is one of our favorite places to walk. in the background, you can vaguely see the "federation walkway" that stretches above the treetops of the garden and has amazing views of the river.

as the aussie's say, my course is pretty "full on" right now and i am already forgetting what it's like to have hours of free time on my hands (as was the case a few weeks ago). i volunteered last week with another girl in my educational leadership class to do a presentation this thursday on the theories of educational leadership. we are also looking at how the role of the 'educational leader' has changed over the past 50 years or so. definitely an interesting subject, but a heavy workload for this week. i know it will be good to get this out of the way early, and our professor even said he'd go easy on the first group (that's us) as we haven't learned too much in the class yet, but he also made it very clear that we are setting the bar here, so it better be good! :)

this past weekend we cheered the western force on to win another match against the queensland reds! then on st. patty's day we saw dave hughes, a well-liked aussie comedian, do a show at the historic regal theatre in perth. i was a little worried i wouldn't understand all the jokes through his strong aussie accent, but no worries there - he kept us rolling with laughter straight through the whole show! we had tickets in the 2nd row right in front of him which made for an even better time. luckily, he picked on others around us to poke fun at and we were saved from any embarassment there!

heat wave!

ok, ok. so i think i spoke too soon with my last entry stating that since it's "fall" now, the weather will be cooler and more enjoyable. I was punished for jumping the gun on that and witnessed the following days after i wrote that to have temperatures reaching between 100-108 degrees fahrenheit! (by the way, i just did the conversion now - before that i just knew it was flippin' hot!) i heard on the news that the day it reached 108 was the hottest day on record for perth in march!

this lovely heat wave coincided with my first week of classes! I am taking 4 "units" (or classes) in total this semester, but the schedule is a little different than the traditional full-time load that i was anticipating. 2 of my core units, 'language acquisition' and 'language teaching methodology' are both being taught in "blended" mode, meaning we have a face-to-face tutorial only every other week and then an online tutorial (with a posted report/discussion) the week inbetween on the assigned topic. then i have one regular unit, 'educational leadership' that meets weekly, and the fourth unit, 'qualitative inquiry' (to fulfill a research methods requirement) is only offered in "compressed" mode meaning that it's taught during the second week of our 2-week break in april every day. so that's the courseload for this semester. i think it should keep me busy for a while! keeping with the education theme of my course of study, i think it will be interesting to see which style of class works the best for me.

in other developments, after a long and painful process dealing with the student administration and the uwa campus news & gifts store, i finally received my student fare bus pass last week. i don't even ride the bus that much, but once they started being difficult with me, i declared war and was determined to get one! it is a great deal less than the normal fare and since it's a smartrider card, you don't need to worry about carrying change with you for the bus. today, i even used it to go to the drivers licensing center downtown to get a drivers license. unlike the hours (even days?) usually spent at the mva in maryland (some of you know what i mean here!), i was out of there in less than an hour and should have the license mailed to me within a week! talk about getting all my transportation needs fulfilled all at once! tonight we're off to our 2nd match of the western force vs. new zealand hurricanes. don't know how much support the 'hurricanes' will get tonight - there's a cyclone (george) currently hitting western australia in the north!

an end to summer?

officially, summer has come to a close here in perth and autumn has begun, but i don't really seem to notice any of those same signals i would normally see back home. instead of leaves changing color, some of the trees and brush have just sort of remained a dullish shade of faded green from the dryness. i think things will start to get greener in the winter months (june-august) again. one thing in common with the fall that i know and love is that the days aren't quite so unbearably hot as they were a few weeks ago, but are now pretty much that perfect warm temperature for being outside. after having no rain for quite a few months, thunderstorms have rolled through this past week and the rain has also been a nice change from the solid hot days. we took advantage of the great weather this weekend and spent the afternoon at cottesloe beach yesterday. we also got internet hooked up at home on friday - hooray! - so it should be much easier keeping up with email, etc. my first class at "uni" - language acquisition - finally starts tomorrow! i can't even explain in words how nice it will be to get going with this master's program now, after having all this time off! more updates on that to follow soon...