all work and no play makes me a very dull molly

Alright. As is custom in my life (and I am quite certain ... most people's lives). I have fallen into the comfort of a routine life. Wake up, eat breakfast/lunch/dinner (depending on what time of day my job requires me to be up for), catch up on sleep if it's a free day, or go to work. At work, I wrestle with teenagers about cleaning their rooms (the irony isn't lost on me), convince them to go to school, yell "oi! mate, you're gonna need to calm down!" and "No, I will not let you "see" the keys to the car" and walking around like a jail warden with keys dangling at my hip.

And then Dad and I talked ... and he bestowed upon me wisdom that can only be imparted while at a Del Taco in Gilbert ... "oh so you're not even doing any day trips?"

Le sigh.

My exciting adventure down under had been reduced to being excited about taking exams for a class back in the States. BOH-RING. Right?

So after providing the usual excuses: Western Australia is big ... I have to go a long ways to get anywhere, and Boo! I don't know if my car could hack it ... blah blah blah I hung up the phone and thought, "what the hey?! Why not?" And within thirty minutes had booked a whale watching tour, and a stay at Ace's Motor Lodge and simultaneously crossed something off my bucket list.

Hanging with Humpback whales in the Southern Ocean ... and seeing the Southern Ocean for the first time? Cross, cross, double crossed off.  *Note: there is some debate as to where the Southern Ocean and the Indian and Pacific end. In Australia ... anything south of Australia is considered the Southern Ocean ... so while not everyone agrees ... I go with Australia's view since I'm here ... and it's cool to say that I've seen and been in four of the five oceans.

Luckily it's really easy to get to Albany (I didn't even bring a map) ... it's almost a five hour drive, but literally, all I do is turn onto North Lake from where I am, turn onto Beeliar ... which then turns into Aramdale, which then turns into Albany Highway ... and my road trip had begun!!

Almost as soon as I was on the highway, all signs of suburban Perth began to fall away and instead were replaced with trees, and green pasture land dotted with sheep, and little lambs that were so sweet, it was hard to resist pulling over and kidnapping one. It's a good thing that I enjoyed those sheep so much, because that is all there was to see for five hours ... well that and road kill kangaroos (that was sad).

Below are a smattering of pictures of my grand 'ole time down south! :)

The Town of Albany

The whale watching catamaran, with a 75 year old captain who would play the flute
to the whales and talk about environmental conversation

So I saw about five different whales ... haha, at least I'm pretty sure they were different. But didn't get a single good
photo, you can kinda see a fin over on top.

I sat with my feet over the edge the whole time, and look at the color of this water!!! It was beautiful. At one
point I realized that three was this light green colored thing moving beneath my feet, only to learn that it
was a flirty humpback whale swimming on her back beneath me. SO. COOL.

I LOVED the water ... and look at the surface ... it really looked like this ... this odd/cool glassy surface

A natural bridge!! How cool! I had seen pictures of this bridge before ... but what you can't tell by looking
at a picture is just how absolutely massive it is, really cool!!

So remember how I was talking about it's hard to tell how big the bridge was by the picture?
It was the same with the gap ... it's ooh, rock face ... okay. But just to give an idea of how massive
this is ... just look for the man standing on the upper left hand corner ... HUGE

Obligatory self portrait. Sitting with my legs dangling into the gap, all wrapped up in my warmest
to combat the winter weather that we have down here. 

I like this picture for a few reasons. 1. I like that you get to see the Spiderman sticker that came - free of charge-
with my car on my side mirror. 2. It's an obviously beautiful view of the Southern Ocean 3. You can also see
the Southern Ocean in my side mirror, so you get the view beside and behind me ... COOL! 

On my way back to "Ace Motor Lodge" where I was s drove past what must be a kangaroo farm, and decided to snap
a photo, kangaroos are so beautiful when they are mid kangaroo hop

Sins

Okay. So I know that finding joy in the struggles of others is wrong. Really wrong. Plainly wrong. I know this to be true ... which means that I have to admit that I am a no good dirty rotten sinner, because my cheeks couldn't be rosier.

But I can't help it!

My job is hard ... incredibly hard, but I'm surrounded by lots of amazingly talented professionals, and sometimes I wonder if maybe it's just harder for me. Maybe I just intrinsically am not meant to work with teenagers. While ... I think in some ways, this job has shown me that I am not quite the teenager-whisperer that I hoped I would be, it has shown me something else as well.

I am a lot tougher than I give myself credit for.

The turnover rate is very high in my department, and so they accept applications for employment all year round, and then put 10-20 successful applicants through the very expensive two and a half week paid training course, about every three months or so. As I just hit my three month mark (and my half way point as well, unfortunately), it was time for the newest recruits to be coming in. In Tucson I was used to being the girl with all the answers, I'd worked for the Department of Emergency Medicine for four years, they called me the Mollinator because I knew my stuff, and I had outlasted three business managers as a humble student employee (functioning as a administrative assistant/secretary). But since I've graduated, I've been here, there, and everywhere, and so in many ways I've grown accustomed to eternally being the new girl ... so being more superior than someone and training other people to do what I do just absolutely blows my mind.

Now, I am not suggesting that I torture our newest little recruits or anything ... but I do ... just like a comic book villain ... take some joy in the pains that our newest recruits have had to go through.

A lot of the newest recruits have already dropped out. The work is "too hard", the children's violent/emotional outbursts too much to handle. They spent a day in my shoes, and decided that they preferred to run in the opposite direction. One poor girl was given an impromptu little hair "trim" from a particularly mischievous 15 year old boy, so she went home immediately and said that she didn't think she had any intention of ever coming back.

Now, I feel for her, in fact the very same thing happened to me my first or second week of working, but from a different 15 year old boy ... I turned around to the kid, who was still holding the scissors, wiped the freshly cut hairs from my shoulder, and said, "thanks, I needed a trim." and immediately went back to what I was doing. He's never touched my hair since.

So I admit it ... their difficulties are helping me to realize that I'm a tougher bird than I think I am. When the going has gotten tough ... I've stuck it out and stuck around.

The absolutely sinful giant pat on the back is now done. Thanks for listening. ;)