An interesting combination to be sure!
Last Saturday a fellow instructor from dancing hired out a hall for her 22nd birthday, along with a couple of stage poles and a snake man, as you do.
There were a few teeny tiny palm sized snakes, a mid sized snake that would always want to climb upwards, and a massive 2m snake that was really cute but unexpectadly heavy. They were all really friendly, and would snuggle up and curl around you everywhichway they could to share your warmth! The combination definitely made for some interesting photos.
My favourite one was the big snake. The feeling of his muscles contracting on your skin as he propelled himself along was awesome. The way they move about seems a little bit like magic to me!
Happy Birthday Tammie!
Also, my hair is brown again :)
Today I climbed the Central Park building with the Pole Fever Girls to help raise money for the MS Society. The Central Park building is Perth's tallest, and comprises of 52 flights, 1096 steps, and a whole lot of pain!
It was pretty brutal, but I managed to complete the climb in 15 minutes, no where near the world record of 5mins 40secs (very impressive!). All together we managed to raise $795 for a worthy cause, something I'm sure I will have to keep in mind tomorrow when the soreness kicks in.
Last night I went to a dress up party where the theme was to dress up as something starting with the letter T to celebrate Tammy's birthday. Since this lined up with the day my hair went pink, I decided to go as (strawberry) Teabag. I thought I'd document the making-of the giant teabag costume in case for some strange reason someone else might want/need to make one!
I started off by looking at an actual teabag, and decided that it would be fun to recreate a giant realistic version. I took a look at how the material made up the teabag, and thought it would be quite easy to make out of crepe paper.
Firstly I laid out 4 large pieces of thin white tissue paper, and sticky taped them together:
I made two folds parallel to the longest edge of the giant rectangle so that the ends met each other forming a tube of crepe paper, then I sticky taped the two edges together:
Folding the giant tube in half gives the two "compartments" of the teabag:
I used a piece of cardboard to make the bottom flat:
Scrunched up pieces of pink crepe paper made up the "tea" filling:
I split the "tea" in half and filled up each of the sides of the teabag:
The top of the teabag is made by folding each corner in, and then folding the centre over itself. I used quite a bit of sticky tape (and help from my mum!) for this part:
The whole contraption hung around my neck via a long piece of twine that was stapled to the teabag in two places. On the end of the twine, I tied the teabag "tag", which I made by laminating a pink A4 piece of paper folded in half. I made the design on the tag myself using the real lipton logo and some random pictures of strawberries:
And that's it!
Needless to say, I was the only Teabag at the party! There were so many clever outfits, including Tomb Raider (Tammy!), Topless waitress, Teacher's Pet, Toy solider, Teenage mutant ninja turtle, Traffic lights, Terence (from Terence and Philip), Tweedle Dee, a Tourist, and so many more. I love dress up parties!
Along with eating and drinking way too much in one day, an Easter tradition in our family is to make coloured boiled eggs called Oua Rosi (which literally means red eggs in Romanian, even though they're all different colours).
This year, Mina and I made a batch of 30 eggs in red, yellow, blue and green. We used powdered egg colouring from the ReStore.
We didn't quite follow the instructions on the packet (which suggested boiling the eggs in the colouring for 15minutes), but instead we pre-boiled the eggs and dipped each one in the colouring until it was nice and bright. The instructions also mentioned to add vinegar in the last couple of minutes of boiling, but we just added that at the start when we mixed up the pots of colouring in boiling water.
After taking the eggs out, we dried them off on a bunch of layers of newspaper and paper towels, making sure to roll each egg as it dried so that there wouldn't be too much of a spot on the bottom. This definitely made for some interestingly coloured paper towels!
The last step is to rub each egg with a lightly oiled cloth (any cooking oil will do) so that they get really shiny. I think they turned out really beautiful!
Yesterday I went to the Fremantle Chilli Festival to experience all things chilli in the inappropriate 41 degree Perth weather.
The festival was held in the Fremantle Esplanade which was fenced off for a huge variety of stalls featuring everything from chilli beer to chilli popcorn (both of which were really delicious).
My favourite stall was the Worlds Hottest Chilli Salt stall, which had a variety of salts (one of my favourite things) that were seasoned with chilli and other spices. We actually had to take a break after this stall, I ate way too much salt!
The highlight of the day was trying the world's second hottest chilli, the Ghost chilli. It had just been beaten in hotness 3 weeks ago by the Moruga Scorpion chilli. It was... a completely different thing to regular chilli! I had a tiny slice on a piece of cracker, at which time one of the boys hosting the stall starting recording us on his iPhone - never a good sign.
The guy at the stall had said to give it a couple of minutes to set in to maximum heat, he wasn't kidding! The burning set in straight away, but I could still talk and function and had motor skills (enough to buy a pod of the Moruga Scorpion!) until about a minute in, where I was rendered completely immobile and sat on the grass feeling very sorry for myself. It was certainly an experience! I think that the pod of the Moruga Scorpion will be strictly for ornamental purposes, I don't even have the courage to open the packet!
Happy new year! Today is my last day in beautiful Switzerland, and tomorrow I'm heading back to Perth. My stay here has been awesome, and I've had such a fun and different holiday season this year.
On the 30th, we drove to Champex to spend the night at Tom's chalet in the mountains. It really was in the mountains! We had to walk through a massive path of snow (that's usually a road) to get there. The chalet was beautiful; made of wood and decorated with cosy furniture and creepy old paintings, with nothing to see outside the windows but trees covered with snow, it really made us feel like we were the middle of nowhere.
That night we walked to a restaurant in Champex where we had a different kind of fondu (fondu a la tomato). It should have been a 15min walk each way but I think it took us double the time because we were playing in the snow! The snow was like powder, it was so much fun to play in.
On new years eve (after dislodging the car from the snow) we drove to Le Chable where Yvonne had hired a dorm at an awesome backpackers place. The place was directly next to the train station and the tele ski, so it was really easy for us to catch transport to and from Verbier (where we spent new years). Yvonne organised an amazing new years eve with a bunch of friends all staying in the same backpackers.
After some drinks in the common room, we caught the bus to Verbier for dinner at Fer a Cheval, a rowdy pub with hearty meals and cheap steins of beer. Dinner was amazing, I'm so glad it was good because it prepared us for a big night of street drinking! We had a couple of rounds of shots, and for some reason it's tradition in Switzerland to chant (starting low and going up to a scream) before taking a shot. It turned into a bit of a competition between the tables at the restaurant, and I think we lost dismally to the English mob on the table next to us.
Next we headed onto the streets of Verbier where there was music, street drinking, random fireworks, and snowball fights. It was nuts! To be honest I was even a little scared at times, because people had their own fireworks and were launching them quite low just above the crowds. There were a couple of policemen around, but they didn't seem to concerned, it was crazy! The countdown was my first new years countdown in French, and my first without a boy to kiss! However it didn't matter because everyone was hugging and going crazy, so I didn't feel too lonely.
We managed to push our way into the front of the line to catch the bus back to Le Chable where we had some more drinks over another game of jenga in the common room.
This morning we started 2012 with the long drive back to Neuchatel. We gave up and decided to stop for McDonalds; I'm a little ashamed that maccas was my first meal for the new year! It's actually the first time I've eaten a burger from McDonald's since I was 15, but it seems much better in Switzerland (the smell didn't make me feel sick for one). It was really nice! Maybe I just really needed a burger after last night.
Tonight we're going to relax over a movie, and I'm going to try and pack for my trip back tomorrow. And so my swiss holiday comes to an end!
Today was a shopping day in Geneva, yay! I bought some awesome shoes! That's pretty much all I've got for today.
We're settling down to a quiet night in with raclette for dinner and a scary movie over some junk food. Tomorrow we're heading off to the mountains, but the weather is looking awful so skiing is probably a no-go. I'm not really too fussed, and to be honest I'm more excited to see it snow!
Bern, the german-speaking capital of Switzerland, known for it's bears and Einstein cafe (ok maybe that's what I know it for).
I got very excited today when Yvonne and Stef told me that in Bern there is a hole in the ground in the middle of the town centre with bears inside. I was like, is it on purpose? And they were like yes, but someone recently fell in and got eaten. I was sold! So today we took a day trip to Bern to see the bears, do some shopping, and have a drink at the Einstein cafe.
Our first task was unsuccessful. Apparently bears hibernate in winter, so there were no bears, stupid bears! However the bear thing was exactly how Yvonne and Stefan described it. In the middle of the city, there's a giant pit decked out with things bears would enjoy like big rocks and caves and the like (minus the bears). We took the next best option and played on the wooden bear statues in the old enclosure.
Shopping was very successful! Our first purchase was leg warmers for me and a jumper for Yvonne (we highly overestimated the temperature). I also got some great souvenir shopping done.
Our last stop was the Einstein Cafe, built under the house where Einstein stayed in Bern for a while. It was lovely and warm, a perfect end to a capital day.
Today Yvonne and I did snow shoeing (raquette) in Vue Des Alps. We left behind a massive fog blanket in Neuchatel to find a clear and sunny perfect day in the mountains. We chose to do a 2h long trek which was half through the valley and half through the forrest. The two halves of the trek were really different, and at the middle of the track there was a restaurant where we stopped for a much needed hot chocolate and sandwich.
Raquette through the mountains was very serene (I love the crunching of the snow), but also quite hard! There were a lot of sections that were very steep, and even downhill was quite taxing because you had to be very careful not to slide and hurt your ankles. We definitely got a workout, so hopefully that earns me a few more macarons.
On the way back we stopped at a hot bath to warm our weary muscles. This is something that I'd never heard of before - in Switzerland there are open air baths (kind of like giant swimming pools with jets and showers and the like) filled with naturally hot water from the mountains. There were people of all ages, but I have to say it was mostly young people getting all hot and heavy all over the place! Despite the awkwardness, it was very invigorating and I definitely appreciated it after a long day of raquette.
Well, just a little about myself.
I was born in Perth and have lived here my whole life, and I count myself as an Aussie even though my family are all extremely Romanian.
I went to Mercedes College - the one with the winter green uniform and the poo brown shoes.
I'm putting my Bachelor of Engineering/Computer & Mathematical Science at UWA to use at a mining equipment simulation company, and working as a fitness trainer in my spare time.
I have a pet bunny named George. He's a white dwarf lop and we love each other very much.
I have a weakness for anything peach flavoured, especially peaches, and I never say no to fairy bread.
There were a few teeny tiny palm sized snakes, a mid sized snake that would always want to climb upwards, and a massive 2m snake that was really cute but unexpectadly heavy. They were all really friendly, and would snuggle up and curl around you everywhichway they could to share your warmth! The combination definitely made for some interesting photos.
My favourite one was the big snake. The feeling of his muscles contracting on your skin as he propelled himself along was awesome. The way they move about seems a little bit like magic to me!
Happy Birthday Tammie!
Also, my hair is brown again :)
