Holy Emotions!

So I made it back to my dorm room from Thailand in one piece and with my dignity still in tact. I would definitely call that a success. Flying home from the layover in Singapore, I say the coolest sunset while flying into Perth. Every single color of the rainbow was in it. Amazing sunsets never get old, no matter how many times I see one. Really going to miss this aspect of Australia-seeing a sunset every day. This past week and this coming week are final weeks, play on words because my finals are in these weeks as well as my final weeks in Australia. I had my moral philosophy final on last Monday and it actually wasn't too bad for being 40% of my grade. Although, I did feel like I was taking the ACT. I was placed in a huge classroom with about 400 other students taking all different finals, assigned a seat number, and needed my ID to make sure it was me. Talk about hard core! After my final was done, I had all week to relax because I had 9 days off until my next final. I love having two weeks of finals instead of cramming 4 finals into 4 days. But I do have 2 finals on Wednesday and then my last final on Friday at 2:00. The very last final slot-I always get stuck with the last final slot on the last day of finals when everyone has been done for a few days. #yikes! So I have one final last week and then cramming 3 finals into 4 days. I would have rather had a few last week. Oh well, I have exactly one week left!

I went to the Perth Zoo Friday with some of my guy friends and then My RS Anna. That was a good break from being around Freo. It was the perfect day for the zoo: not too hot, not too cold and not raining. I saw some interesting animals, some that I have never heard of before. There were some baby dingos which were adorable, and a baby orangoutang which was only a week old. Freakin adorable. The monkeys were my fav. They had a huge display of all sorts of monkeys, and some that were no bigger than the palm of my hand. It is always an interesting time going to a zoo that is not your home zoo and seeing all the different animals that other places are home to. We went to a kangaroo exhibit and one of the kangaroos got out and was waiting by the gate for someone to let it out. I felt bad for it because people started taking photos with it and then it started boxing. I knew the stereotype of kangaroos boxing, but I never knew it actually happened. I was able to see a kangaroo box in its 'natural' habitat. I mean it is harmless, but we didn't want to stick around to see what happened next, we quickly got out of the kangaroo exhibit.

poor little guy, just wants to get out into the real world where people aren't going to stare at him all day.

Baby dingo, so fricken cute. If it wasn't a wild animal, I would want one as a pet. Surprisingly, the zoo trained these ones really well!

One week old orangoutang. 

We went to an elephant show and it was pretty neat, They put paint in the elephant's trunk's and the elephant sprayed paint onto this easel to paint this picture.  

Brad (in his corn rolls) me and Josh at the entrance to the zoo. 

Us three with the city of Perth in the background. What a beautiful city!

After the zoo was our goodbye dinner with the Putnam's. We went to a muscle bar on the pier the overlooked the ocean bay. I had the risotto which was phenomenal. We had left over money from out program fees so the Putnam's decided to use the money to take us out to a fancy goodbye dinner. This whole last weekend was a weekend full of goodbyes. I have been feeling pretty good about going home until this weekend hit and reality sunk in that I do not know when I will be coming back to this place that I have called home for the last 5 months and going to see all my Australian friends again. We had a goodbye day on Sunday, which consisted of relays (all three dorms against each other). The P&O came in 3rd.... out of 3. haha. Then we had afternoon tea and goodbye videos and speeches. Very sentimental.  One of the P&O residents, Gavin, left for home this afternoon already and I still have 3 finals left! how fair is that! haa. The mood around the P&O is a very different one lately. A lot of hugs, tear, and shared memories of the semester.

Sunday morning I went to go see the Dalai Lama. I don't really have previous knowledge of the Dalai Lama or Buddhism, but hey, he is a world leader and I wanted to hear what he has to say. Surprising, I really enjoyed it (besides the fact that I did fall asleep through the economy part because it was a 2 hour talk at 9am). He didn't stand up there and shove his religious views down my throat, he stood up there and talked about compassion and inner piece. He talked about how his religion is not that different than my religion and Buddha is just another name for my God. Given the fact that I already knew all of this, it was refreshing to hear it from his mouth. He discussed problems about the economy and addressed topics such as the killing of Osama Bin Ladin. But the theme that underscored all of the Dalai Lama's comments was finding peace of mind. He stated that every human being has the ability to show compassion through out common experience of the love we get from our mother. It is by use of human intelligence that we understand the long-term benefit of this inner value. A local Aboriginal man welcomed the Dalai Lama singing a song that is significant to his people. The Dalai Lama spoke for the treatment of indigenous people in Australia and said they should also make the effort to seek out modern education while preserving their culture. I thought this was surprising that the Dalai Lama was not only aware of everything going on in Australia even though it didn't pertain to him, he addressed the issue and had insight into the matter. Overall, I was very impressed by his talk and his cute old man laugh brought a smile across my face.

Tonight, I went to my host family's house for one last dinner. It was the first of many goodbyes--SO SAD. 

This is all of us: Peter & Samantha (dad&mum), Mackenzie, Zane & Macy (sisters & brother) and then us, Kelsey, Heather & Me. Such awesome memories with great people. I will miss them dearly. I said goodbye to Gav and this amazing family today... many more goodbyes to come. This week was full of its ups and downs, making me want to head home, but yet stay here and make some more memories with these amazing people. Talk about hard core mixed emotions. Soon enough I'm going to start feeling nothing because my emotions won't be sure what to feel anymore.