blog move

hi guys!

i'm no longer at this blog anymore. i pulled a jefferson's and moved on up....to my own website.

you can find my new ramblings located at:

www.jamiestott.com

thanks so much for stopping by!

xo

jamie

r.i.p. laptop

Well it's official. My laptop is dead. The geek technician just dropped off all it's body parts and guts. Mother effin motherboard died. No blog posts for a while till I can get my fingers on some new technology. Sorry :( Wish I had a backyard to bury him in. Oh wait, I think he's got to be recycled cause o his battery. Either way, Noirin and I will give him a proper funeral. With chocolate. And beer. RiP laptop. You'll be missed

adventure!: part two

so i was home a total of 14 hours before getting on another plane to fly up north for work. not ideal lol.

six am monday morning i was waiting on my curb with a mug of hot coffee waiting for my cab to the airport. cabbies in perth are sneaky. they hear my accent and think im a tourist that they can drive around in circles. little do they know, im a local and got this shit on lock! haha. no but really,  i'd say 3 out of my last 5 cab rides i've had to tell them to cut the shit and take the normal way. makes me wonder how many times ive been travelling somewhere foreign and been given the run around...live and learn i guess.

super bonus! work switched airline carriers to qantas so now we get frequent flier points! we landed and hopped on the bus to cloudbreak. once we got to cloudbreak we had to get all our stuff from lockers (i also learned that little bugs crawl into your lockers and die so when pulling clothes out from the lockers, its best to give them a bit of a shake so you dont end up wearing a shirt...and a cockroach) and piled everything into two land cruisers and a flat bed ute. we had a mix-up with what cars we were taking and how many were allotted to us, it was a debacle and a half. looking back now i realize it was a sign from jeebus on how this field session would turn out lol. anyhow, we sorted out our rides and started the 3 hour trek southwest to the exploration camp of nyidingu (nyidi).

exploration camps are notorious for having terrible accommodation, and the rumors about nyidi were pretty extreme. so i was preparing myself for the worst. about halfway through our drive, the scenery started changing from a barren acacia and mulga landscape to a rich green one that was cris-crossed by creeks lined with big leafy eucalyptus, and these big green clumps of spinifex that were going to seed and looked alot like wheatgrass. i was totally digging the change of landscape. kirsten and i were cruising in the ute singing along to journey's "dont stop believing" heading into the sunset leaving a big red dirt cloud behind us. its funny how the same shit we did in the field in america is the same stuff you do in the field when youre across the globe and in another hemisphere. some things are just universal i guess.

we came around a bend and BAM! there was the hammersley range. i'd call them hills (compared to what we have at home), but out here they are considered mountains. i have yet to see any real topography since being here so even though they werent that big, they were still impressive. i was pretty stoked to find out that our camp was right at the base of them. i gave nyidi a mental "bonus point" lol. the camp was super small compared to cloudbreak, but it has a very local and personable feel that the big camp was missing. we were introduced to everyone (they all know each others names) and offered several welcome beverages. we hit the mess for dinner and i was surprised again by how tasty the food was (i gave nyidi another mental "bonus point"). usually the food tastes like dog kibble (...i'm mostly saying this for effect as i've never actually tried dog kibble) at the big camps, but i guess cause its a small exploration camp they put in some extra effort.

one part of the awful rumors about nyidi was that none of the bedrooms had toilets or showers. i was kinda dreading it until i saw their sweet set-up. they've got room blocks and then toilet/shower blocks nearby. the toilet/shower blocks are divided into 12 individual rooms with doors and locks so its sorta like having your own bathroom....just one that you have to walk to haha. it actually hasnt been that bad except for the other night when i decided that a chamomile tea before bed was a great idea. yeah, turns out that it wasnt. i woke up at 1 am BURSTING and didnt want to get out of bed and walk outside to the toilets, so i convinced myself for three hours that i didnt really need to go. i lost that battle at 4 am and trudged my way to the toilet through the dark.

surprise of surprises! the traditional owners were gathering around the cars in the morning when i hear "KETCHUP!!!" shouted across the parking lot lol. it was clifford and jr, two of my favorite to's from a previous field session who so lovingly nicknamed me ketchup (if youre confused, click here). i was excited that they were back and on my crew! our first go at survey was in area c. we started driving to it and realized that it was within the marillana cattle station. i tried calling several people to see if we had permission to cross into the cattle station, but couldnt get ahold of anyone (i took away one of my nyidi "bonus points". the cell reception out here SUCKS!) i decided i'd rather be safe than sorry, so we crossed the road and headed towards the station to give the landowner a heads up that we'd be working in the area. holy oasis in the desert! marillana is beautiful!

we got to meet lee, the station owner. he was an ooold time-y aussie cow poke with an amazing accent and the rattiest akubra hat ive ever seen. he was stoked for company and invited us in for tea but we had to decline (i bet he had some amazing stories). anyway, he said we could go anywhere we wanted, just to watch out for the python that was in the area. "that daaamn ole snake 'as bin gettin' all mah chickun eggs before i can git to em". lol, i kept an eye out but didnt see any snakes. dang? had a great day of walking and recording historic artifact scatters.

we got back to nyidi that evening and when word got out we'd been to marillana, everyone freaked out. i mean really freaked out. you'd think we ran over four small babies with dump trucks the way they were freaking out. i guess marillana station is owned by a rival mining company blah blah blah. big debacle. but at the end of they day i wondered who the genius was that decided our survey area should be on land that wasnt ours, that also happened to be smack dab on/around someones existing homestead? yeah, that guy probably should be fired. jafi.

so the next day we were instructed to avoid area c like the plague and to work somewhere else. i chose area e. no particular reason, maybe i was just feeling "e"-asy that day (lol, god i love puns). we did some walking and some serious 'bush-bashing" with the land cruisers. i cant decide if all australians just like to rally cars through the bush or if its just because they are mining vehicles and nobody cares what happens to them? either way, we were pushing them through some gnarly vegetation. the worst is when youre the driver and youre mowing through a dodgy area and hear a dead branch scraaaaape across the roof (think fingernails on a chalkboard), and you go, "ahhh fuck. wonder how bad that looks?" but you dont really dwell on it that long cause you've probably just done something equally as heinous right after that. im amazed that either of our cruisers are still operational.

we wrapped up survey and headed out to the main road (keep in mind we're in the bush, so when i say main road, i just mean a bigger than normal dirt road lol). arden and i are in one car and kirsten has the fellas with her in the other car. she volunteers to lead the way back to camp and takes off like a hoon (aussie slang for someone who drives recklessly and/or dangerously). arden and i were following her dust cloud when i saw a couple of roo's dart across the road. because im a stupid american and cant get enough of kangaroos, i made arden slow down so we could "ooh and ahhh" over them. next thing i know we are getting called up on our radio by kirsten. she frantically tells me they've rolled the car and to come quickly. arden and i start freaking out and take off down the dirt road.

about 2k ahead we see everyone on the side of the road and the cruiser completely flipped on its opposite end. i could see that everyone was alive and breathing, but the shock of seeing it all was pretty intense. it felt like my heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach. we pulled up and kirsten was hysterical. i told her to move everyone away from the car in case it was leaking gasoline (because it was going to explode? i blame hollywood for making me think that all cars in accidents are on the verge of exploding). arden was on the radios and sat phone calling for help, and i went over to clifford who was wincing in pain. he'd dislocated his shoulder during the crash and was holding his arm at a super awkward angle. i nabbed my first aid kit and sat him down so i could sling and swathe his arm. everyone was freaking out and i thought i was handling it all pretty well until i looked down at my hands when i was tying up cliffords sling. they were shaking like MAD! crazy how panic and stress manifests itself. i got him all situated and ran back to arden. none of our radios were working and neither was the sat phone. i tell ya, there is nothing more frustrating than sitting through endless safety meetings and listening over and over to safety protocols, and then when a real emergency happens, none of it works. arden hopped in the other car and went to marillana station for help, and i went back to everyone else. kirsten was sitting in the dirt crying, but otherwise okay, clifford was sitting on the water cooler cradling his arm and looking very much in pain, and the other guys were open mouth breathing and staring at the wreckage of the cruiser.

when i was finally able to get the whole story it went something like this: kirsten was crusing pretty fast down the dirt road when all of a sudden a flat bed big rig came plowing around a blind corner. apparently it was driving in the center of the road and left kirstens car no choice but to swerve out of the way. they missed the truck but she over-corrected and thats what ultimately rolled the car. the guy driving the big rig didnt even stop. we're still not sure if its cause he was a dick or if he didnt realize that he'd just caused an accident.

it took 40+ minutes for the ambulance to arrive. thank god nobody was suffering from any life threatening injuries or we'd have been in a real pickle. the medic ran over to clifford and loaded him up in the ambulance and then did a quick check of everyone else. he gave me props on my sling and swathe job (booya wilderness first responder!), and then decided all the crash victims should come with him into newman to get properly checked out at the hospital. the medic drove with clifford, and i escorted the ambulance with everyone else. let me tell you, there is nothing more nerve racking than driving a car full of recent car-crash victims on a dodgy dirt road. i thought they were going to have heart attacks every time i hit a bump.

we made it to newman before nightfall and spent the next three hours in the emergency waiting room. i was beyond grateful and relieved when the doctor gave everyone the "all clear" and we were free to go. as we were walking out i caught a glimpse of the mural across from the emergency room desk. not sure as to why this was in an emergency room seeing as how it has nothing to do....with well, pretty much anything lol. but it still gave me a sleep deprived chuckle.

the mining company set us up with some rooms near a racetrack that it owns. turns out that our "rooms" were tiny compartments in a set of caravans. it felt like i was camping. except all i had was my dirty clothes i was wearing, nothing to shower with, nothing to take my contacts out with, and nothing to brush my teeth with. again, not ideal. but word had spread to the racetrack what had happened and we were treated like mini celebrities. it was great, i didnt even have to wait in the dinner line! i woke up the next morning still sleep deprived and still stinky. translation: i was a jamie zombie. i was walking back to the cars when i saw another wonky mural! two thoughts manifested themselves in my hazy mind: 1.) why the fuck are there so many murals in newman?, and 2) if this guy is supposed to represent a miner, i think they got their depictions wrong. there are no hunky hugh jackman-esque types out here. its mostly just overweight rednecks with ratails. then again, i guess that wouldnt make for a very good mural. (or would it? lol)

we loaded everyone into the cars and made the long trek back to nyidi. all this drama and we werent even halfway through the field session! someone on my team must have pissed off karma. i have more field adventures to bore you with, but they'll be continued in part three of my epic word vomit.

lol stay tuned.

adventure! part one

holy cannoli! its been ages since ive done a post! ive been going a million miles an hour since april 30th, and today, right now, this very minute, is my first bit of spare time. and im doing what any proper geek would do: blog about their adventures :)

we got back from the field last swing and i was in perth long enough to write up a report and send it off to my client. getting pesky work business out of the way freed up time for more important things. like packing for my trip home and buying presents for friends and family. i tried to think of fun things to take home, but turns out that most things that you take home from somewhere else are inherently cheesy and tacky (sorry for buying you placenta cream mom lol). however, i DID buy $50 worth of australian chocolate and biscuits....i mean how many opportunities do americans have to try curly wurlys, freddo frogs, chokitos, white nights, or wonka mud sludges? (i had a blast buying all this! the names were so funny i felt like i was buying harry potter candy)

i could barely get to sleep the night before my flight cause i was so excited. luckily (?) my flight was super early and i had to leave my house around 3:45 am, so i didnt need to fight to sleep for very long. my travel experience went something like this: sleep on plane. arrive in sydney. wait in a long customs line. wait in an even longer immigration line. transfer my bags. wait in a quarantine line (no, im not trying to smuggle fruit, nuts, or veggies out of australia). get on another big plane. pull threadbare airplane blanket over my whole body like a mummy cause its cold as fuck and pretend to sleep for 14 hrs. get motion sick and yack in lavatory. arrive in LA. do happy dance cause in back in america. change clothes and have a hobo bath so i dont look like a zombie. sleep on plane. arrive in slc. do another happy dance. dart from gate to baggage claim (mow over mormon missionaries who may or may not have been in my way). see shane waiting for me with a rose. attack with hugs and kisses.

after seeing one love, i made my way to see my other love. indy.

my dad welcomed me home with a big ole hug. we grabbed some beers from the trusty kegerator and headed out to the sunny backyard to relax and catch up. my mom joined in on the reindeer games too! she came out to give hugs and loves. so glad i got to see both parents on the day i landed. very lucky to have such an amazing family.

next morning shane and i had breakfast with his mom and grandma before heading out to moab. great seeing and chatting with my bf's other leading ladies :)

after cramming food in my face we hopped in the car for a road trip to moab. best part of a road trip: eating crappy gas station snacks, listening to music way too loud (sorry about the ke$ha shane....), and awkward and slightly comical experiences at the price albertsons grocery store. the whole reason for the road trip? my mom had organized a family river trip through cataract canyon! i know youre jealous, and its okay to be. we had an amazing time!

river trip highlights? id go with shanes drowning turkey noises when we'd go through rapids. it started out as excited yelling, and then big waves would crash over our boat, and all i'd hear is excited water-logged garbling. our boatman was an over-eager hippie and was easily persuaded to re-run the rapids, so we got 3-6x more big water than the rest of the boats. loved having dinner and hanging with my family on the riverbank as the sun was setting (absolutely gorgeous!). and we did an amazing hike up dark canyon and got to swim in a turquoise pool of spring water, complete with waterfall. excellent way to be welcomed back to utah. thanks for the fantastic trip mama!

i purposefully didnt make plans when i went home because i didnt want to feel overwhelmed by a busy schedule. but it turns out that i had so many friends i was dying to see, that i ended up filling every spare second lol. i surprised shane with tickets to the jazz playoff game on monday! we made a date night of it and had tasty sushi and sake at tsunami before cruising to the game. despite all our cheering and yelling the jazz lost. dang!

i crammed in some mall shopping (omg, things are SO cheap in america compared to australia, i bought loads of crap i dont need. as you do when on vacation haha), and had lunch with my best friend allie (i love our lunch dates because they always include shameless gossiping and cocktails!). i did manage to forget what side of the road i was supposed to be driving on for a split second in the mall parking lot. why cant everyone play nice and all drive on the same side? it messes with my brain. i managed to pull myself together for an afternoon visit with my good friend rachelle who is about to have her first baby. she's due at the end of may and i cant wait to meet the little guy!

shane met up with me and we had an evening visit with my old neighbor and dear friend kate and her dogs sierra and cleo. kates fiance just accepted a post doc position at dartmouth and they are moving back east at the end of july so this was my last chance to see her before next year when i crash their wedding. yes kate, crash. and just like the movie wedding crashers, i will be requesting that the dj play the song, "SHOUT!" haha. love you :)

next morning i met up for coffee with my old friend and blogginista (is that a word?. it seems pretty awesome and i feel like it should be) janetha! crazy how when i met her we were young un's who had nothing better to do than snowboard and drink beer and now she's married with two dogs and im off frolicking in australia. crazy how times flies.

i made it home in time to help my dad plant his annual garden. i was stoked for a couple reasons: 1) i love hanging with my dad and this was no exception, 2) it was a gorgeous day to be outside, 3) i desperately needed his obi wan kanobi-like garden wisdom garden advice for when i plant my own next year. so we dug some holes and jammed some stuff into the ground. indians planting corn. not the first time thats ever happened in history haha....

i even had some spare time to play with the mutts. man i love dogs! especially my indy-pants <3

i cleaned the dirt off my hands and got showered up because i had a girls afternoon planned with my mama! we treated ourselves to pedicures. man, i tell ya, there is nothing more relaxing than sitting in a massage chair while getting a foot and lower leg massage. oh yeah, and my toes look nice now too lol. we wandered to the grocery store since she wanted to cook dinner for my last night with her (my mom is WICKED busy with her job and was leaving the next morning to hobnob with fancy folks in park city). me, my sweetie, brother, mom and wayne had an amazing dinner out on the patio, enjoying the sprummer (spring/summer) evening.  sad saying goodbye when i left, but it definitely wasnt as emotional as when i moved in january. love you mama xoxo

my brother from another mother, dillon, called and wanted to get together so we decided on the two b's: beers and bowling! dilly and i have a history with bowling alleys and due to an unfortunate incident with a bowling ball and an emergency fire sprinkler, we are no longer allowed at olympus hills lanes. anyhoo, i rounded up a crew of friends and cousins and we all met at fat cats. bowling is retarded. we all know that. but you cant deny that its super fun to wear dorky shoes, dance to bad music, yell taunts, and cheer loudly when someone gets a strike. my cousin tori and i had some "cousin magic" happening lol. we'd line up and bowl at the same time, and managed to put two strikes away for each of us before the cousin magic turned and we both ended up with gutter balls. damn!

we also decided that the fun shouldnt stop at bowling, so we went to the highlander for some karaoke! i cant sing a note to save my life, but that has never stopped me from picking up a microphone. shane was wise enough to decline a duet with me, but i suckered dilly into it. we managed to slaughter...er, i mean artistically perform a unique rendition of "just the two of us" lol. and to top everything off, we were joined by my pric allie! top night i say!

the next morning i had breakfast with my other best friend summer. we went to the belgian waffle inn, and i somehow managed to out-eat the pregnant lady. the food was there, and then WHOOSH! i had shovelled it in at lightning speed! what can i say? i like waffles. we got to catch up on everything id missed since i left, and talked about her new house and the little one on the way. she was a glowing mama to be on the day i saw her. today was her due date and looks like little baby nora isnt ready to come out. i can only imagine being that anxious and excited to meet your daughter and having her be late. thinking "water-breaking" thoughts for you summy haha. love you xoxo

and somehow during all the friend and family frenzy madness, shane managed to take me out to my favorite restaurant, and the scene of our first date...el chihuahua. he even got our original table. such a sweetheart. love you babe xoxo.

friday flew by in a blurr of coffee date-ness (shanes sisters and grandma. couldnt ask for a sweeter family to weasel in on lol) errands, packing, and goodbyes. said goodbye to my brother early in the day, he had to take off for an interview with a fancy hotel to be one of their chefs. fingers crossed man! and said goodbye to my dad in the afternoon before he left for work. sad, but like what happened with my mom, not nearly as sad as when i moved back in january. feels like i'll see them all again very soon ;) i wrangled both my boys into an afternoon bed snuggle and they made a jamie sandwich: shane, me, and indy. i soaked as much of it up as i could before having to get up and leave for the airport.

saying goodbye to shane is always sad, but im a very lucky girl and get to see him again in approximately 14 days 10 hours and 34 minutes! he's flying into melbourne and we get to celebrate our birthdays together in an amazing city. super excited!!!

it took me 33 hours of travelling to make it back to perth. and you know what was weird? as sad as it was leaving everyone in utah, it wasnt nearly as sad and lonely coming back here because i've made my own little version of home in perth. it was nice to come home to my house, my bed, and my irish family member who had been missing me terribly (i mean, who wouldnt? lol).

loved every minute of my trip. thanks to everyone for making it so amazing! 

xxxox 

sites and spiders

that about sums up my april field session in the pilbara.

my favorite pic from the field is this guy:

its weird how a 12 day field session can seem so daunting and go by SO slow, and at the same time completely fly by and i have no idea what we did for all those days.

our flight up was unusually early (8:30 am), as such the following things occurred:

1. i had to leave my house at 6:30 am to be to the airport on time (holy early batman!)
2. i had to make small talk with my cabbie who was unusually chatty. they love my american accent and always ask me a million questions about the states. i always get asked if i know any celebrities and i feel like a turd for never having a good response.
3. i had to get airport coffee (overpriced and never very good)
4. *bonus* i scored a two hour nap on the plane! (although i have a sneaking suspicion that my mouth was hanging open like a weirdo...)
5. we got to site at 10:30 am and my room wasnt ready so i accidentally barged in on some guy who hadnt vacated the room yet. haha oops?
6. our early arrival meant we had to work the afternoon (which never happens since we usually arrive at dinnertime)
7. *bonus* our afternoon work consisted of organizing boxes of artifacts! for those of you who dont know me, i love Love LOVE organizing!!! i let the ole ocd run wild :)

i always thought we rallied our field trucks at home, but after being here and seeing what aussies do with their field trucks, turns out i was wrong lol. the land cruisers we drive get pushed to the brink. we drive them through giant mud holes, up crazy hills, across creeks, thru stream beds, thru the bush, over bushes, into bushes, sometimes accidentally into trees....

i think mother nature finally had enough of us driving over her and decided to get even. that, or our driver was an r-tard and didnt see the giant stake sticking up out of the ground haha

eventually i got to do some archaeology. love the terrain and red dirt. maybe because it reminds me of home.

remember a few posts back where i mentioned the big gross spiders? well, turns out they were EVERYWHERE in our survey area. i mean everywhere. i could hardly look for artifacts because i was too busy checking my gps (to make sure i stayed on my bearing. i have a tendency to wander, but i cant be blamed. i just do what i want), and checking directly in front of me to make sure i didnt walk into a giant web of death (which i accidentally did once this swing. i screamed like a sissy and flailed wildly in an attempt to fling off any spiders that might have landed on me) lol, its always an adventure in the field.

we also came across the biggest site i've ever recorded in australia. it ended up being about 420,000 square meters in size. you might be thinking, so? why do i care how big the site is?....well, that means that i had to establish a boundary around 420,000 square meters of land, map the entire terrain, identify a the locations of surface artifacts and concentrations and record a 2.5% sample of that. i admit that i did see some fantastic artifacts, but sweet CHEESUS it was a nightmare to record. every time we thought we had a handle on it, someone would find more and we'd have to extend everything and do more paperwork. it took us about 7 days in total to document everything. but we had some great traditional owners with us, and they made me billy tea every morning :)

 on the last day, the girth of the paperwork stack was meatier than my ham sandwich haha. sure wish i had a photo of that. but i DO have a photo of this:

its a dead snake hanging from a tree. best we can reckon is that the snake stuck its head in a hole to eat something, got stuck and died. so now there's a mummified snake covered in ants hanging from a tree. it was super gross but really cool.

ive said it before, and i'll say it again. being in the field is a love/hate relationship. it is super lonely and sometimes you feel really isolated. but other times you totally connect with a place or a moment and its amazing. before the weather turned cold i got to sit outside my room in the mornings and watch the sun come up. loved it.

made it home in one piece and am in full on hermit mode. lol see?

going to spend the rest of my weekend getting everything all sorted and ready for my big trip home in 3 days 8 hours and 30 minutes. so So SO EXCITED!!! 

cant wait to go home. makes me happy :)

hope ya'll have a good weekend

xo



oz-mazing!

haha okay not really....

so im up north for work and the "man" has restricted my internet access. it wont let me upload any of my cool videos or pictures that i've taken (what a gyp! i blame all the stupid miners looking up too much porn...also, my spell checker is also broke-d so please forgive any spelling errors). so all i'm left with is a text-y post. and i sat around figuring what would be entertaining for a text-y post and reckoned that ya'll would probably dig more aussie-isms. i've been keeping a list on my phone of things that i found interesting, amusing, and downright hilarous. without further ado:

• higgly piggly (ˌhi-gəl-ē-ˈpi-gəl-ē) i heard my co-worker use it instead of willy nilly. i mightve choked on the water i was drinking. used in a sentence:"we've got to go to the storidge containa to orhganize the boxes, someones put them een all higgly piggly". willy nilly is a wonky enough saying, but i think higgly piggly takes the cake (speaking of cake, i want some....)

• capsicum. if you read that and wondered wtf i was talking about, its what aussies call bell peppers. pretty fancy name for a plain ole pepper. well, there must be something special about peppers over here cause to buy 3 at the grocery store will cost you about $10. i hope you just said "DAMN" out loud, because thats what i did in the store the first time i saw the price.

• oregano. yep the seasoning. its pronounced 'oh-reh-ghan-o' here. kinda like the state oregan, but say it with a canadian accent and you've got it. i was in the middle of a convo and didnt know what they were talking about, and then a little lightbulb appeared over my head and i chimed in, "you mean oregano? (but read it how we pronounce it)" and everyone looked at me and laughed. so i guess pronunciation can be funny both ways. but the aussie way is funnier haha :)

• how ya going? (ive learned a few things with regard to this one)
• number one: its not really a question, but rather, a greeting. so if you find yourself in australia and someone asks you this, just respond with a simple "hi". mostly because they arent really asking how youre doing, and secondly, because they'll have kept walking after saying it to you and will be halfway down the street by the time you blurt out a half-assed response (yes i know this from awkward experience haha)
• keeping with aussie tradition, it can be shortened. so far i've heard:
• (mumble)...ya going?
• (mumble)..yagng?
• (mumbling and garbled noises that sorta sound like 'how ya going' but without any actual words being said)

• boot and bonnet. nope, im not talking about the things that go on your feet or on your head. its what they call the trunk and hood of your car. i thought only folks from jolly ole england said this, but since australia is part of the commonwealth, i guess they say it too. wish i could say that when people chuck it into conversations that i'm cool and go with the flow. but alas, being a silly american i get a small smile and chuckle a bit when someone asks me to pop the bonnet.

• knob. this is a slang word used for....er, um.... well its definitly not something that belongs on a door. men have them?....
• if you didnt catch my drift, look it up on urban dictionary or just skip to my next aussie bamboozlement below

• thongs. get your mind out of the gutter. im not talking about the string underwear haha. its what they call flip-flops here. if you call them flip-flops you get weird looks from the locals.

• porta-loo. yep. its the aussie word for a porta-potty. and theyre FANTASTIC! i never thought id be one to rave about a portable toilet, but hot damn, these are pretty neat. id go as far as saying they are the rolls royce of portable toilets.
• first, they're quite roomy. i'd say i could could comfortably fit three average sized girls in one.
• secondly, they flush! yes, flush. no scary blue green water that may or may not smurf you. once business is "concluded" (lol) there is a fun handle that you pump and everything magically disappears.
• third, you can WASH your hands. no janky hand sanitizer, im talking soap and water. how cool is that? aussies are sanitation geniuses haha 

• trollys. nope not the san francisco public transport. its what aussies call shopping carts. again, probably the whole british commonwealth thing. either way, i still giggle when i hear someone call it a trolly.

• ta. its used in lieu of cheers, as a way of saying thanks. like if i held a door open for someone, they'd likely reply "ta!". it took me a really long time to work this one out. i could never tell if they were mumbling and i wasnt hearing everything that was being said, or if i was just retarded and didnt understand them. nope, they really were just saying "ta" and now that i know what it means, im spreading the word lol

• bikkie. quick! what was the first thing you thought of? i got five bucks that says you didnt think biscuit. which is what a bikkie is. and im talking cookie, not the fluffy buttery things you get at kfc

• partner. its the term aussies use to refer to your significant other. again, i was really confused until i figured this out. in america, when anyone says 'partner' in that context, its usually in reference to a gay couple (no judgement). like if i was talking about ellen degeneres, i'd say "her partner portia de rossi.....". welp, in ausralia it goes for everyone. my boyfriend is my partner, her husband is her partner etc. once i worked this all out it made loads of sense. but for awhile there i thought heaps of people were in same sex relationships. lol woops?

• billy. if you thought a person, you thought wrong. the boys the other day were talking about "billy tea" and i had to ask, wtf is billy tea? turns out its tea that you cook in a dinky tin/aluminum can with a handle. still confused i went to wikipedia for more info. here is what i got:
• It is commonly accepted that the term "billycan" is derived from the large cans used for transporting bouilli or bully beef on Australia-bound ships or during exploration of the outback, which after use were modified for boiling water over a fire.
• In Australia, the billy has come to symbolise the spirit of exploration of the outback. To boil the billy most often means to make tea. "Billy Tea" is the name of a popular brand of tea long sold in Australian grocers and supermarkets.

who knew? this girl does now :)

• putting "o" at the end of a word. i think i mightve touched on this before, but it still kills me how words are shortened here. you can pretty much shorten anything by sticking an "o" at the end of it. registration is reg-o, breathalizer is breth-o, bottle shops are bottle-o's etc. im going to start a jamie-fication of the australian language and just start making up my own words that end in "o" and see how people-o react-o (haha-o) (lol)....-o.......(okay i'll stop)

• bloody. yes the curse word! its used quite frequently here and i LOVE it! feels like i time traveled to england, or to the 1800s. i wish i could use it and not sound like a douche-bag. sadly, i dont think its possible for americans. just have to stick to the good ole basics: shit, damn, and hell. or if youre my grandma thompson, combine them all into one master curse word: shitdamnhell! haha, love you grams

• rockmellon. if you were hoping that some sort of new amazing fruit had been discovered, im going to burst your bubble and tell you that its just aussie terminology for cantaloupe. kinda sounds more badass than just regular ole cantaloupe tho. "yo dawg, gimme some rockmellon" haha (im a dork and its been a long day lol)

• nappies. the term for lots of small naps! haha, just messing with you. its what they call diapers here. nappies. put your baby in a nappy. savvy?

• up the duff. heard this gem this morning. its another term for being pregnant or knocked-up. sounds way dirtier than it is doesnt it? now this is a term that i can definitely slide into casual conversation. just have to wait till someone i know is up the duff.....

anyhoo....thats all i have for now. hope i didnt offend too any aussies, and hope i entertained/educated some of you at home :)

g'day

xoxo

wine not?

hey there!

last week i mentioned that i was going to bike to cottesloe beach...well, i did it and it was amazing! it was was an 18k round trip, and took about 45 min each way. it seemed so daunting and such a long way, but once i hopped on the bike and started going, it was really  a lot of fun. the route we took was gorgeous, following the coast the whole way up. these are some snaps of us crossing a bridge over the swan river

riding the bike is always an adventure. you never know whether a car is going to slow down and yell out cat-calls, or if its going to mangle you into a jamie-street-sandwich. thankfully all we got on this trek were cat-calls. although they didnt slow down enough for me to hear them correctly, i assume they were commenting on my general fabulous-ness :)

cottesloe is be-A-u-ti-ful!

we rode up to the ocean beach hotel for some lunch. its a very cool atmosphere, like a pub with several tv's showing aussie footy, and then the front portion is covered in floor to ceiling windows that open up like a garage door so you can enjoy the ocean view and feel the breeze. its a fantastic spot that i discovered with shane in february, and it was fun being with noirin and having her see it all for the first time.

aside from that my work week was pretty boring. however, it picked up again on friday. my old friend tina was in town! tina and i went to high school together. after graduation we lost touch and then ran into each other again when i started working at barnes and noble during my undergrad. life happens and we lost touch again until she found me on facebook a month ago. she was in town for business and we decided to meet for dinner. we had a BLAST! so much fun laughing and catching up. after about four pints, we somehow decided that a spontaneous road trip down south was in order! so at 7am the next morning, my alarm went off (i wanted to smash it with a hammer haha), i packed a bag and met tina downstairs at the coffee shop. we snagged some hangover survival food (ham and cheese croissant) and coffee and started driving. we decided to go check out western australias most famous wine region, margaret river.

its about a 3 hour drive from perth, and it flew by! we made it before noon and checked out the visitors center to get recommendations on where to go. we found out that our spontaneous road trip happened during the weekend of the annual margaret wine festival! (how lucky is that?) the only bummer was that the event was at a winery 40 min north in the town of dunsborough. had to laugh that in our spontaneous haze we drove right past it lol.

by this time we were starvin marvins and decided to grab lunch before driving to the festival. we stopped off at the colonial brewery. it was this side road off the main highway, the brewery itself was tucked in between giant fields filled with grazing cattle. not an average surrounding where id expect to find a brewery. it was a unique atmosphere with a great patio, fun music and a big fake lake that i quite enjoyed.

we ordered the brewery sampler and got to taste each beer

they gave us a tasting card with descriptions for each beer. omg, ive never seen anything funnier in my whole life. the descriptions were completely ridiculous and were likely written by someone who had dropped acid.

"deep amber in appearance, the colonial india pale ale is a complex amalgam of pronounced honeyed malt with grapefruit/citrus/earthy aromatics. the palate is bold, chewy, deep and rich, with a notable 'blackcurrant pastille' edge and a touch of residual sweetness, ahead of an earthy and warm 'forest floor of hops' supporting and balancing the malt character."

lol wtf? we had a good time reading the mini novels describing each beer before tasting them. we also ordered their brewery tasting plate which came with a variety of fancy meats and cheeses. some of the more odd things on the plate that i tried were venison pate and pickled octopus. the octopus was tasty but i couldnt look at the tentacles...they freaked me out (yes, i had to close my eyes like a 5-year old haha).

we then continued our drive to dunsborough. the scenery was absolutely GORGEOUS! it was like northern california had sex with italy and produced the margaret river wine region lol. the roads were lined with these big ole australian trees and then you could see these bright green vineyards behind them.

we parked the car in town and and rode the shuttle to the festival. i really liked how they coordinated transportation so nobody was drinking and driving. for $35 i got a souvenir wine glass and entry into the festival. it was held at the palmer winery. see how purdy?

the main venue was held under big white tents and each winery had their own table, and had every wine they made available for tasting. since im no wine connoisseur, i chose to sample from wineries that had fun logos or cool names (haha such a nerd).

lol). it was really neat because each winery would explain their wines as you tasted. i learned about grapes and fancy terminology.

if you didnt like what you tasted, they had little spittoon buckets where you could dump out the crap. i found out that i dont like semillion wines, or shiraz wines. but i did fall in love with pinot noir wines, and chenin blanc wines. it was fun tasting the differences and discovering what i liked, but honestly, you could give me wine from a box and i'd probably still think it was good (#classy). i purchased some of my favorites to bring home

when in rome...

cant wait to share these with my sweetie over dinners and sunset patio nights xoxo!

after festivaling ourselves into an oblivion, we took the shuttle to our hostel for the night. turns out that the hostel was essentially across the street from the winery, and we didnt even need to take the shuttle haha. oops? it was my first hostel experience, and i have to say it wasnt that bad. for $30 i got a bed in a girls dormitory room. we shared with a really nice irish gal from dublin, too bad noirin wasnt with us so they could reminisce about the mother country (can i call ireland the mother country or does that only apply to russia? hmm....) we were beat from our socializing the night before and after a day of wine in the sun. we mightve gone to bed at 8:30 pm. haha, can you say party animals?

we drove back early this morning so tina could make her noon-thirty flight back to sydney. such a fun spontaneous weekend of reunions, wine and adventure. i feel like it lifted my spirits, and eased up on the homesick feeling thats been plaguing me all week. now im in a great mood and great place and am looking forward to flying up north for work tomorrow. all i have is this field session, then i'm home for four days, and then on my way home to visit!!! so close i can almost TASTE it!

hope everyone had a good weekend. cant wait to ramble in a few days about my field exploits

xoxo

-j