Not all sunshine and rainbows...

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

- Alexander Pope

     I know I haven't posted in a while and that is because, well I'm not doing anything super exciting.  I give moms of toddlers and babies so much credit!  It is really, really difficult to stay at home all day and try to entertain kids that cannot entertain themselves and need to be constantly watched.  I try to get away from the house at least in the morning and do some activity with the kids but the activities are really limited as it is 100 degrees Fahrenheit before 10:00 AM most mornings.  That's all to say that I am struggling a bit.  I've made a few friends and that has helped, we try to have play dates just to have another adult around.  I also didn't realize how hard it would be to live in someone else's home again.  I have lived on my own for 10 years now (wow I'm getting old!).  Its really hard having your schedule dictated by other people, asking permission to use a vehicle, and not being able to eat or cook whatever you want to.  

 I know it seems to be ridiculous to complain as I'm currently living in a foreign country but even in a fantastic location you can still be let down with what you expected and what the reality is.  I have 107 days left and I am going to try find joy in those days.  And on days where both kids don't nap and I am ready to lose it, I will once again look at my countdown and then at the spreadsheet I have already created for my trip once I'm done here. 

 Because its so hot here and I live in a very small town, really the only thing to do on the weekends is go to the beach and there are some beautiful beaches!

Last weekend I went with a group of au pairs to the beach and it was fantastic until we saw something very large swimming around us.  It could have just been a fish but it also could have been a shark or a stingray, so we exited the water quickly. 

 This area is a huge source of natural resources.  There is an iron ore mine, gas plant, salt mine, and fertilizer plant.  One of the towns nearby used to be a closed town.  Only people who worked in one of the mines were able to live there.  Now anyone can live there but there is a train and a mine truck at the entrance of the town to remind people of its history.

We had a lot of fun trying to climb up on the huge tires!

I also went to visit a ghost town called Cossack.  The town was started in 1863 and quickly became important for the pearling industry.  The town started declining in the early 1900's, when the pearling industry moved to Broome and the harbor wasn't deep enough for the bigger ships.  The town was completely abandoned in the 1940's.  Today there are a few stone buildings left. The picture below on the left is the school building. 

The building on the left is the former customs house and bonds store and on the right is the former courthouse. 

 Its amazing the even in the middle of nowhere, there is still a market for food trucks.  This food truck serves kebabs, paninis, German sausages, crepes, hamburgers, and ribs.  I'm scared to try food from there.

I have also joined a kickboxing class.  Exercising in this heat is super intense!

So that's basically what I've been up to for the past month and probably what I will be up to for the next three.  I have mini breaks though in that time as both sets of grandparents are coming to visit, so I also have countdowns to those.  If this post seems super sad, its really not that bad.  I have just realized that I am ready to be done with this nomadic lifestyle.  I am very excited to get home, get my own apartment, and move onto the next chapter of my life.   

The unexpected...

"Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn't meant to take."

- Angela N. Blount

     Tuesday I went back up to Perth.  Originally I was just going to go up for one day to meet up with one of my friends from Copenhagen, Lucy.  Then I decided to take two more days and go on a daytrip while I was there.  

The first stop on my tour was to Caversham Wildlife Park, and I got to pet a koala!  Weirdly the koala's fur feels kind of like a lamb.

 And a wombat!!!!! These guys are so cute and fat! But they had signs saying that they are supposed to look like this and that they are a healthy weight.  These guys are also marsupials, so they have a pouch for their baby but because they dig burrows their pouch opening is by their butt.

 This is a possum, which is no relation to the North American opossum which is a hideous and scary looking thing, but these guys are adorable!

The bird is a kookaburra.  When I was little we learned a song about a kookaburra sitting in a gum tree and I thought it was a made up animal.  Turns out its real. 

No matter how many kangaroos I see, they will always amaze me! Look at the babies just chilling halfway in the mom's pouches.

 For lunch we went to a vineyard.  This area is a big wine making region so there are hundreds of wineries around the area.

The point of the trip was to visit a place called the pinnacles.  Its a desert with these crazy rock formations, there are hundreds of thousands of these rock pillars throughout the park.  Its very weird that these only formed here in this one place.   

Here is a guy explaining how these formed.

So now we know how they formed but I'm still wondering why only here?

The erosion on the pillars is also really cool to look at.

This one has fallen over, and looks like a fish!

After the Pinnacles we went sandboarding! Its just like snowboarding, minus the cold. 

This is a naturally occurring sand dune a couple of miles inland from the coast.  The sand was perfect soft white powder!

How weird is it that this is not snow?

So on the way back to Perth from our exciting day, the tour guide pointed out an arena and mentioned that a tennis tournament was going on there and that the previous day Serena Williams had played Roger Federer. I didn't leave Perth until 6:00PM the next day so I though I would have a look at how much tickets were, and they were only $40! So I spent a day watching this amazing woman play tennis!

Now I have no interest in tennis and after an hour, I was ready for the game to be over.  But it was incredible to see one of the greatest athletes ever play!

Serena won her singles match against this British woman.

Then we were onto the mixed doubles game.

Unfortunately they lost but it was still cool to watch. 

Her husband and daughter were there, too! 

Here's some videos of the trip; sandboarding, tennis (because its pretty boring I sped up a point to 30 seconds just so you can see), and the last part is the crazy 7 month old that I am watching who thinks he can start walking now!

It was such an unexpected thing and turned out to be the highlight of my little trip.  Now on Sunday, we will begin the 16 hour drive to our new home of Karratha! I'm sure I will have lots of stories and pictures from the drive!