Anyway, I didn't run last week because I went for a bike ride and played net ball on my normal running days. The week before that when I ran I kept on getting side cramps that whole time. I made it about 5 minutes today and I could feel myself getting cramps so I slowed down and held myself back in order to prevent them from getting any worse. I stopped after 15 minutes and stretched them out as best as I could. Started running again and they were still nagging at me. I eventually had had enough and stopped holding back and ran as hard as a I could and as fast as I could and they went away. It felt so nice to just run with out any issues. This morning was also BEAUTIFUL weather for a run. It was just a little chilly but after running for a few minutes I could feel my body warming up. Even after exploding and running hard I never broke a sweat. A nice crisp morning, fall is getting near!! (Well they don't have fall. They just go straight to winter, which is really our fall).
Came back and showered and got ready for the day. I checked my email and finally received a message from my Australian Studies professor. We were to take and excursion today to the Perth Mint this is where they make currency and melt gold and stuff. She split us into 2 groups and emailed us which group and at what time and directions on how to get there. We have this class every Tuesday. She had a whole week to let us know. She informed us the morning of. She is so scatterbrained. So I stayed home until 12:40 and then took off with my roommate Kristen and a couple of her friends for the bus stop. We made it to the mint in plenty of time. On the way Kristen and I talked about some issues that were rising within the household and kind of figured things out a bit.
Here is a picture of the mint. Once inside we were not allowed to take pictures, except for the courtyard area.
We had a tour guide (for a 5 minute tour, no joking). He took us to the courtyard and explained how in the olden days when there was a gold rush people would travel by boat to Fremantle and step onto the beach expecting to find gold at their feet. They did not realize that had to grab a wheel barrow, pick axe, shovel, food and water, and hike 600 kilometers to a town called Kalgoolrie (this is where our friend Suzie is from). There were no roads at the time so when I say hike that is exactly what they did. Hike through the brush, sand, gravel, and summer heat 114+ F. He then showed us 3 different replicas of the 3 biggest gold nuggets ever found. Here I am holding up the biggest! It is called "Welcome Stranger" it is 70.4 Kilos or 155.2 pounds! See how strong I am!
This is a picture of Christy (left) and Alyssa (right) pretending to have dug up the 3 largest nuggets in the world.
After the tour we were allowed to wander around and look at all of the different gold nuggets and gold bars. They did have a display of a gold bar that was incased but there was a hole that you could put your hand into and try to lift the bar to see how heavy it was. They are much heavier than you think. Some girls could not even lift it! I could, no worries. 1 gold bar is 12.54 Kilos or 27.64 pounds!
There was also a scale where you could step on and it would tell you how much your weight is worth in gold. I stepped on and I am worth $2,272,400.00 Thats crazy!!
We also got to watch a demo on melting gold. They put it in a special granite carbon bucket, place it inside of a kilm at 1064 C or 1,947 F to melt it. Then they take it out with special claw like tools and pour it into a mould for it to become a bar. When the gold liquid and they pour it it is like staring straight into a light bulb. It is so bright and fluorescent it hurts your eyes. Also it only take 15 seconds for the liquid gold to become a solid.
After the demo we were pretty much done and were able to wander the gift shop (which was pretty much all jewelry and gold plated keychains ($49). So I didn't get anything. I wondered outside and realized that the group of people I was with were going out to eat. I wanted to get back so I could go to work and get some more hours in. But I didn't know how to get back. I just tagged along with my roommate before and didn't pay attention. AHHH!!! So I wandered around downtown Perth until I found a bus stop. The stops are on both sides of the street depending on which direction you want to go on that route. I was on the wrong side. I saw the bus coming but the traffic was too thick and I couldn't cross the street in time. I finished crossing as the bus pulled away. So I stood there surrounded by construction workers (there was a site right beside the stop) for 15 minutes. I finally caught a bus going to Curtin!! Eventually I got home around 3:30, dropped off stuff, made a dinner so I could work for 4 hours until 7:30-8 or so and not starve to death. I got to work and had finished entering all of the data for the paper food records by 7! Which was really good because I was hungry at 6:30 and realized I left my dinner on the counter back in my unit! Ugh! So I shall go in tomorrow morning and get trained on how to record all of the food records that were take via mobile phone.
Real quick to clarify. The project I'm working on involves student keeping track of EVERYTHING that eat over a 2 day period. 50% wrote it down on a special log paper, and then other 50% took pictures of everything they ate with the camera on their mobile phone. So now I have to look at a bunch of pictures and decipher what it is that each person ate. (this get tricky with food items like chinese food because it is hard to tell if they had pork or chicken, or what kind of vegetable since they are finely chopped up, etc).
Anyway came home and ate dinner, watched some tv, finished my homework, and had a nice chat with Suzie.
Suzie is a full blown lesbian. It is very obvious because her head is shaved and she wears T-shirts that say things like "dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians" So you get my point. Suzie is also a first year college student and is religious. So she joined the Curtin Christian Club. Tonight she went to bible study and they spent over an hour "politely" kicking her out. Anyone reading this who is religious, I'm NOT picking sides, just stating what happened. They said "it is ok to have homosexual feeling and orientation, but it is not ok to identify yourself as one" (This does not make sense to me, nor does it to Suzy). I understand that because of her sexual orientation that the other members could not consider her a Christian. But I believe that they were wrong in singling her out and all ganging up on her to kick her out. She came home crying. I felt so bad for her. Whether anyone agrees or disagrees with the group for kicking her out, I still think they could have done it differently in a more tactful way.
So she came to my room and we discussed things. She wanted to build a case against them for discrimination. But I told her that even if she won and they were forced to let her back in it would still be very uncomfortable and awkward. I told her to just start her own gay and lesbian religious club. That did cheer her up, so did the chocolate cookies.
About 10 minutes later Nickey came in and wanted to discuss some issues she was having with another one of our roommates, mostly about a lack of respect towards everyone. So we talked about that for a while as well.
So I have done my deed as the mother of the household for the evening. Everyone is feeling better and should be able to sleep peacefully tonight. YAY!
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