South West Road Trip

My fellow North American nannies and I  have realised the clock is ticking on our time here in WA and we wanted to get in one last touristy weekend so we made a plan to drive to Denmark and Albany this long weekend. This should have been about a 4 hour trip to Albany it took us 9. One way . Highlights included ..

-Being lost in a giant, Blair Witch style Forrest for about 3 hours

-No cell phone or navigation signals for the majority of the time

-Searching for a waterfall that turned out to be down a 40 min hike

– Being literately the only car in most areas for many, many hours –

remember the weird cowtown we drove through on our last trip? Well guess what we got to see again!? Thats right! Good ol Cowmarup. More disturbing though we find a bunch more “themed” towns..

  We got so lost but we wouldn’t change a thing ! Mistake number one was driving through Margret River then Augusta (“are we sure we need to go through Augusta?” “Yah definitely”. Wrong. So wrong ). But We saw a huge pod of dolphins in Augusta so clearly getting lost was meant to be ! I’ve never seen dolphins in the wild it was amazing . And we were the only ones at this random spot to see them so that made it even better .

Augusta

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More importantly though … We finally saw kangaroos in the wild ! Huge tourist check mark !

 

 

We got to Denmark by about 930 pm . We thought we’d be there around 2pm. Yah right . the next day we hit as many spots as we could though as soon as we got our lives together ..    The blow holes were most certainly NOT blowing that day. We treked down the fifteen min staircase esque pathway, stared at the rock for about 20 minutes waiting to see the water shoot up. No deal. Oh then it poured rain and i got to sit in the car with wet tights on for 2 hours. Great feeling. we hit valley of the giants on the way home and the next day, possibly the best part of the weekend…. GNOMEVILLE. As I said before, WA loves the theme towns.  We also found some sort of disturbing scarecrow themed town.. scarecreows with giant pumpkin heads. And of course we drove through it in the middle of the night , in the rain, just to make it that much creepier (naturally we got out and took pictures).

 

All in all, perfect weekend, grateful for getting lost!

bali time

Like a true W.A. resident I made my first trip to Bali a couple of weeks ago. I ended up with about ten days off cause Anzac Day melding into a week I already had off, so that was perfect. I’m always down for a solo trip,  so I booked a ticket and headed away for ten days in beautiful Bali! Everyone back home should note that Bali is like our version of heading down to Mexico, cheap, easy enough holiday and everyone and their dog goes like five times a year, so Bali’s no big thing to Aussies, but of course for me, the ever keen tourist, it was amazing! I ended up meeting an insane amount of Canadians which was so nice just to hear that accent and be around people who are talking about hockey playoffs, Tim Hortons and winter. I even met someone who worked for the same restaurant company I used to work for! So nice to have some familiarity a million miles away from home.

I generally avoided Kuta at all costs besides one big night of partying. Fell madly in love with Canggu and Sanur, everything just felt more calm and kind of zen in those areas. Kuta was everything Id heard it would be , tourist central and just a bit.. too much,  but if you wanna party then its the perfect place. I had an awesome, dance till 4am kind of night on my last day and it was great.  Canggu however, literately owns a piece of my heart, I can absoutley see why theres so many aussies and foreigners settled there. So peaceful, and had such a good mix of local people, expats and tourists.

Rooftop frolicking in Canggu with my green hair. And sweating to death. Of course.

 

In a nutshell, I got a sick tan, lived like a hippie (showering, no.), saw monkeys, got lost for a solid 3 hours on foot, my hair turned green from pool water and I survived motor biking. As I’ve said before, I’m a fairly high maintenance girl so for me to do all of those things (and do them with a huge smile), is a big thing. So grateful I got that nice little bit of time off. And the best part is I go back in a few weeks w/ the family I work for, albeit for a bit more of a luxury kind of vacay and not the poor, dirty traveller kind of trip.  But I’m perfectly OK with that. Obviously.

 

Last day sunset in Kuta

 

 

 

Why finding a random family to live with abroad is a great idea :

Lots of people ask me about au pairing , how it works etc . And for me it’s always worked out pretty good. You literately cruise the internet for a family hiring , use your best judgement to determine if they’re gonna kidnap you or not and book a ticket . Which to many people I suppose sounds crazy , but hey it works !

Moving to another country requires alot of organization, finda job, home/hotel/hostel, friends, car, etc etc. However, choose to be an au pair and BAM none of that stuff is an issue, it’s pretty much done for you. Being an au pair has both pro’s and con’s of course, but it’s got a whole lotta pro’s…

1. You have an actual home to live in. Not a hostel, not a hotel and not couch surfing. Normal bathroom, bedroom, furniture. Having a TV w/ Foxtel/satelleite channels. I also have the huge bonus of a pool and hot tub or “spa”. You literately get a home away from home.

2. FOOD, most au pair jobs come along with “room and board” which covers your groceries. I’ve seen some families that only say they offer a strict “3 meals a day” kind of thing, but still thats 3 meals a day you’re not paying for. For the most part though most families I’ve worked with and what my nanny friends tell me, most families just tell you to throw whatever you need in the cart when you get groceries. My family even shares their wine 🙂

3. A vehicle- not all au pair jobs have this perk, but many do. I have a vehicle at my disposal every single weekday, and weekends and evenings, as long as I plan ahead. I cant even begin to explain what a plus it is to have a vehicle when you’re abroad. Lots of people travelling don’t get this huge plus.  I’m even still allowed to drive it after I’ve scraped into a pole .. or 3.

4. Family- You get an insta family. This can be good or bad, I’ve always had it work out really well personally. The family I’m currently with even came along with an awesome neighboorhood with the nicest people. Just on our street alone I met a ton of people who’ve been so so kind to me (boat trips! Parties! Extra side jobs!).

5. And you get paid- Sometimes I forget, this is actually a job. I have an amazing situation where I only look after one child, who is in school the majority of the day (besides school holidays of course, then I legit WORK).  This would be pretty plum even if all I got out of it was the room and board, but I do also get paid a good weekly wage.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but it’s a pretty sweet way to see the world, get paid and legitimately LIVE, not just travel through, another country.

Journey Down South

Right when I arrived another nanny I met told me she was going to Margaret River on the first weekend of April and invited me, so I booked into the same hostel as her, and I was good to go for my first out of Perth adventure. I drove the van (yes, in addition to the giant SUV I cannot drive, my lovely host family also has an even bigger vehicle, that, you guessed it, I cannot drive) up to Bunburry where American Leandra lives and she took it from there in her convenient little car.

The weekend itself was perfect, I didn’t’ realize how good a weekend “away” would feel. This is starting to feel like home, and the everyday vacation feeling is slowly evaporating so away time was perfect. In a nutshell though, mainly we spent our weekend going out and being social, and maybe having a beverage. Or several.

The Good: 

– The Hostel, Margaret Rive Lodge– dirt cheap, met so many people, got a private room without paying for one , and the owner was super nice. We checked out WAY late on Sunday and he didn’t charge us or anything. As an essentially poor person, that’s much appreciated.

– People– Met SO many great people from everywhere. I love meeting new people, I could talk to strangers for hours. And got to spend the whole weekend with my fellow north american au pair, which is always fun!

The Bad:

People– I’ve mainly only met really nice people here so far, then there was the mouthiest girl at the hostel, and guess what!? She was CANADIAN! I assume any Canadian I meet here will be my BFF, cause, hello, were in one of the most isolated places on earth, and were both from Canada! That should be enough to forge a lovely, forced friendship. This girl however.. not so much.

Packing-  I HATE packing. It stresses me out. What if I pack too much? Too little ? What if it rains? Nude heels? Black heels!? Thus I took an obscene amount of stuff. I promise I used/wore at least half of it.

Ill pack my runners cause of course ill work out while im there. Idiot.

– Showers- OK the one thing I couldn’t hack about hostel living was the questionable, luke warm showers. What if I saw a spider in there? I’d never recover. I basically stuck my feet in then ran out as fast as humanly possible, then lived on dry shampoo all wknd. I am a suck, what can I say?

 

And The Loser Tourist Moments:

– Lemon Tree’s,  I’ve never seen a lemon tree!! I took one off the tree and put it in my water bottle of diet coke and vodka and it was perfection! I hope you can just pop lemons off those tree’s and use them, and they’re not some sort of protected species or anything…?

 

– The Jewel Cave,  This was our token tourist activity for the weekend, and I loved it! Other then some unfortunate folks who smelled very questionable (think dark, cramped cave tour, close quarters..not good) , the tour was great! The lady who ran the tour was so into it and made it fun and interesting. Worth the $25 bucks.

– Cowtown..? On the way home we put “home” into the nav and basically zoned out until… we found ourselves in a town full of cow statues! Then we realized we definitely were taking the scenic route but oh well. I can’t remember what this little town was called but something with the word “Cow” in it, thus, they’ve decorated the town with cow statues! Have to put “Cowtown” on my tourist town to do list…

 

 

au revoir

When I decided to come to aus ( I don’t understand why people spell it “Oz”, it’s AUStralia. Oz makes me think Wizard of Oz..) and leave my lovely little Canadian life , I decided this only about a month before I actually left. I told my boss about two weeks before I left, my parents about two wks and 2 days before and my best friend/room mate about two wks and a day before I left . Most people I didn’t tell at all. Thats what Facebook and gossip is for riiight? Right. I find goodbyes unnecessary at best. Texting, skype, and the Internet keep people so connected I feel like it doesn’t matter all that much weather or not I’m in the same country as everyone, you can always stay connected. I refused any sort of going away party thing despite my lovely friends trying to name our last night of drinking just that. My mom lured me into a “last supper” by buying me a  a DQ ice cream cake (I have a mad love for DQ cakes).

I hate telling people I’m leaving despite the fact I rarely stay still for more then six months, I still hate telling everyone when I leave . I sweat, I panic, I stumble my words. Exactly why I prefer to just sneak away, but I don’t think my parents, job, friends etc. would appreciate  that all too much.

I made myself a list of people to tell, work, parents, roomie, and slowly checked them off. I also kept a running list of “things to do before I’m allowed to be excited”. The bulk of that was telling all the key people in my life, booking my ticket, actually seeing if I could afford this, successfully flying across the world, and last but not least meeting my host family. I booked my one way ticket one week prior to leaving and did absolutely no organizing what so ever in that week, cause hey, what if it doesn’t work out for some reason….maybe it does! Maybe it doesn’t! Stay tuned….