What do you mean you've never been to a crayfish party?

As of this past Saturday, the 20th of September, 2008 I can now officially utter the phrase above. I am no longer a crayfish party virgin, like a good percentage of the rest of the world. Apparently, this time of year is crayfish season in Sweden. And what do you do when it's crayfish season? That's right, you have a party! Now, this isn't your average party. This party has hats. Hats with crayfish on them. There's songs too. Songs about crayfish. And bibs. All the bibs have crayfish on them. Are we starting to see a trend within the crayfish party? There's a lot of friggin' crayfish.

The night started out awesomely. I put on my blue and yellow plaid shirt. I had to represent the country where this fine tradition originated. I made it over to my good Swedish friend Martin's flat with the party decorations. We had a crayfish banner and crayfish place mats. We had photocopies of all the crayfish songs. We made Martin's living room into the ultimate crayfish party place. As people started arriving, and putting on their hats you could begin to feel the excitement. The food was brought out and the air was rich with crayfish juice, garlic, and pure, unadulterated joy for the upcoming feast.

The crayfish themselves were kind of creepy. Just like tiny lobsters. They had eyes. stared at you. Always judging. Martin grabbed the first of many crayfish and demonstrated the correct way to gut a crayfish. Each motion made a delicious yet sickening crunching noise. Twist tail. Crunch. Pull tail. Crunch. Insert fork under shell, lift up. Crunch. Remove shell. Crunch crunch. Remove crayfish poo. Squish. Crayfish is now ready for eating. The best way to do it was to put Eyes that it on a piece of bread and smother it in this homemade garlic aioli sauce. It tasted so much better than it sounded. By the end there were heaps of mangled crayfish lying everywhere and everyone reeked of garlic, so you know it was a good party.
I became very fond of the crayfish hats throughout the night. I ended up with two for a good portion of the party. That's me and my friend Karin above, I was rockin' the dual crayfish hats. As the party progressed, if it ever started to die down, one of the Swedes would demand we sing a song. My favorite was called Helan Gar. They tried to translate it and it basically states that if you don't take a shot after singing the song, you're a wuss and no one will like you. That actually seemed to be the gist of all the songs we sang. Hmm...odd. Well let's just say no one was calling me a wuss and everyone loved me by the end of the night. I am a HUGE fan of crayfish parties. SKOAL! (That's 'Cheers!' in Swedish, a helpful word in these situations).

P.S. I won't be posting again until the second week of October because I'm venturing into the Australian outback for a 10 day trip. I'll be sure to post again after that! Adios!

"She just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich"

Ah, the land down under. Majestic, with its rolling mountains in the Outback, the trendy urban lifestyle, the accents. It really just makes you want to put a shrimp on the barbie, eh? Hmm, now let's see. I haven't put any shrimp even close to a barbie. In fact, they don't even have shrimp here, only prawns. Hey wait a minute, I haven't been given a ride on a kangaroo either, or fed a koala! Australia is such a ripoff! Ok, maybe if I was completely disillusioned the previous statements might make sense. There seems to be a lot of stereotypes about the Australian culture when it is in fact extremely similar to that of America's. I haven't met anyone even closely resembling, in behavior or dress, Steven Irwin or Crocodile Dundee. I haven't even come close to seeing the Outback (I will in about a week though!). I haven't learned to play the didgeridoo. Nobody has proclaimed 'Crikey!'. The only people who say 'G'Day' are on television. And while I may have met quite a few laid-back Australians, I've met some uptight ones too, and some crazy ones, and some intelligent, and some not so. The point is, people are complex and it's hard to lump a group of them into one file folder in your head, under the label 'Australians'. This goes for any nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or age. Don't get me wrong I love the song "Down Under" by Men at Work, but no one has yet to offer me a Vegemite sandwich (not that I would take it, Vegemite seems to be an acquired taste, and I don't plan on acquiring it).

So I'll most likely cringe when I return home and the first questions I get are the most stereotypical. "Did you see a kangaroo?" "Did you go surfing?" "Where's your accent?" When the real questions should be about the people I met, the real experiences I had, the undeniable truths I learned about myself and my fellow human beings. I'm not here to be a tourist.

Ok, reading back that all sounds a bit defensive. So, no I haven't seen a kangaroo, yes I have been surfing, and I don't have an accent because I was born in the United States. That makes Q & A a little easier.

In Australia, Footy is king.

Every country has a sport that its residents adore. For most of Europe and Brazil, it's Soccer. In the US it depends on the season, but I think most would consider Baseball to be 'America's favorite past time' (at least that's how it's billed). In Australia, Aussie Rules Football (AKA Footy) is more important than life itself. And now I know why. It's awesome.

I went to my first footy game about 2 weeks ago. A friend got a free ticket so I went to cheer on the Fremantle Dockers. I had seen it on TV and understood a little bit of it. One of my flatmates is a Footy fan and filled me in on some of the rules and game play. Although she's a West Coast Eagles fan so I think I'm supposed to hate her. The game was so fun, so much better than any sport in the US, except Ultimate Frisbee, of course. It's so fast paced and intense that anything can happen in the game, and it usually does. It's basically the love child of American Football and Rugby. The guys who play are super intense. No protection during the game, except maybe a mouth guard (but only if you're a wuss). The goal is to get the ball through the goal to score six points. You can only kick the ball or punch it to your teammates, no throwing. Oh, and you can totally wail on anyone, at anytime. Just no pushing or face shots. Other than that, it's all fair game. Sometimes fights just break out on the other side of the field, nowhere near the ball.


Freo won the game by a lot but didn't make it to the playoffs :( They're going on right now in Melbourne I believe. There's 16 professional teams throughout Australia, with 2 in Perth. I guess each city has about 2 teams and Melbourne is like the Footy capital of Australia with like 9 of the 16 teams being from Melbourne. Watching the news is hilarious because it'll be like 10 minutes of actual news and then 20 minutes of Footy recaps and various news segments about the players. So funny. I guess Australians have their priorities straight.

Only one question comes to mind: How far can you kick a quokka?

Rottnest Island. A refuge for those troubled with life in a big city. Life moves just a little bit slower on Rottnest, and you now what, that's just fine with everyone. No cars on the island means that biking becomes the only mode of transportation. 63 different beaches allow for complete solitude while enjoying the raw beauty of nature. Even a few conveniences from the mainland make their presence known: There's a Subway and a Red Rooster. I know it sounds like utopia and it is! Humans and wildlife even live in perfect harmony...sometimes.

This is the story of how I, Luke Runyon, became a refugee from the island of Rottnest. I'll do my best to do this story justice and give full attention to all details. Here goes.

It was a beautiful day on Rottnest. 75F/24C, not a cloud in the sky. The sun beat down and 13 rowdy university students found themselves in the midst of Eden. My flatmate Amanda was turning 20, a big occasion and we planned to give it its due. With a bottle shop on the island they were practically begging us to drink. Enjoying the company of friends and the euphoric effect of booze, several party goers thought it a great idea to remove their clothing before taking a late night swim. The skinny dippers enjoyed their romp through town at 10:30pm seeing only one conscious soul in their naked journey from the beach to the cottage. After a night of laughter and naked swimming everyone was exhausted and tuckered in for the night, thinking nothing much of the romp through town.


Morning comes. I venture into town, grab some Subway. As I make my way back but what do I see but a Ranger's truck in front of our cottage. "Hmmm...that's odd," I ponder. I walk into the porch to find two large men (one with a beard that says 'Don't mess with me, k?') Bearded man goes on to explain to the group that while they did not approve of our naked romp through the town of Rottnest (which was captured on CCTV) it was merely a slap on the wrist. He also overlooked the fact that we had open containers in public, a girl left her bra on the beach by accident and that we had 13 people staying in an 8 person cabin. The real heart of the matter was that somebody kicked a quokka.
Let me pause for a second to explain the quokka. They're a marsupial. Try to imagine if a rat and a kangaroo had baby. That's what a quokka looks like. I had a few experiences with the furry beasts in the previous day, even stopping for a bit to feed one a eucalyptus leaf, which they love ever so much. I mean, I don't want one for a pet or anything but I would never go out of my way to hurt a quokka, or any living thing for that matter. I feel like the rest of my friends on the island share this sentiment.

Now the ranger tells us of the mysterious "eyewitness". Here's how the quokka-kicking went down according to the witness: A group of 3 people, one male, two female, were walking back from the beach. Females were naked, male was in board shorts. Enter helpless quokka. Male gets a running start and kicks poor, innocent quokka 3 metres over a nearby fence, only after proclaiming, "Let's play some quokka soccer!", in a loud and authoritative voice. Naked group of three then continues to walk away and enter into the cottage. I don't know about you, but this story reeks of bullshit. Apparently the ranger's bullshit detector was broken and our pleas to be heard were not of his concern. Excuse me, but if I'm going to be accused of quokka murder, I want a fair trial. Who is this eyewitness? What did they have to gain from framing us?

Well, we were told we were being "section 60-ed" off the island. That means that we had until 4pm that day to leave the island otherwise we would be arrested. All 13 of us. Not exactly the way I would've liked to have ended my stay on Rottnest. So we try to get on the last ferry from the island at 4pm. It's full. Oh shit, we're going to be arrested for staying on this beautiful island. Oh wait, no, what's that kickass speed boat doing? Really, we get to ride on that? Are you kidding me?! This is awesome! We need to get kicked off islands more often! WOOOO! He's doing donuts in the water! This is amazing!



And thus ends my brief, yet action packed trip to Rottnest Island.