I am back. It was such an awesome trip. A wonderful experience. I used that word a lot while I was there, because more than anything else I felt like that’s what the trip was about. Not the time, not the food, not the movie…the experience. Meeting fantastic new people, eating different food (with that one herb that they put on everything that I can’t figure out what it is), calling familiar things by odd names, and then there were the unfamiliar things like white chocolate kitkats and “lemonade” which is really sprite, there were surreal animals that we were close enough to touch at some points, beautiful landscapes, and beaches that looked like something that was pulled from a Calfornia shore except for the clear blue water, flies that are brash and will leave you alone when they feel like it despite your waving hand, tastey wines (of which we brought home 9 bottles), sprawling grasslands that it seems we don’t have the space for here, too high prices (which after you did the conversion wasn’t all that bad, but as a penny pincher I have to complain), desserts that weren’t always that sweet, but tartare sauce that was, more fish than you could shake a stick at and bay bugs (which we learned were crayfish. like a mini lobster), lots and lots of real butter and real cream, an afternoon wind called the “Fremantle Doctor” that kept us all from loosing our cool due to the heat, fighting my own linguistics which tried to throw me into a mock Australian accent (at times my American accent sounded so foriegn to even me), little tiny cars that the US has never seen the likes of, and being used to seeing those cars on the other side of the road, long long flights that give you a sense that you really are going somewhere, and that make you so glad for that post flight shower that you fantasize about spending the remainder of your trip in the bathroom, ockas (or maybe it’s Okka) and dingos, and roos, and yobbos, and bogens, and bikies, and greenies, and brekkie, and stubbies, and tinnies, and cuppas, and long blacks, and flat whites, and passiona, and lift, and biscuits, and crisps, and chips, and potato mash, and petrol, and sooooo much that is sooooo different. I could never equate the trip to anything other than a whole experience. It was fantastic.