Just another day in paradise...

Snakes... on a plane!
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Been a quick few days here in Perth, and I'm sorry I haven't written more frequently.  Blake and I have had a good time though, and I'll try to get to all of it.

First off, and perhaps most importantly, Blake, Kez, and I went to see Snakes on a Plane a few days ago.  It was the most tremendous, singular, superlatively bad movie any of us had ever seen, but it was so bad that we didn't stop laughing through the whole thing.  The rest of the audience was with us in that assessment.  It wasn't so much the movie itself but the experience that I enjoyed the most.  I could have just as easily been at home with friends from Colgate or Greeley, sitting and laughing at the skillful (read: painful) acting of Samuel L. Jackson.  It was the first time in a long time that I had felt at home with a good group of friends, and in that respect, it was well worth enduring the thin premise and the shouts of "Mayday, mayday... we have snakes on a plane."

Yarmulkes on one side, kefiyyas on the other
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Yesterday was nice as well.  Hung around until about 1 or so, and then went to the University of Western Australia Model UN's debate on the Israel-Lebanon conflict.  It was really interesting to see, and the speakers on both sides were well-informed and erudite.  What fascinated me most about it, however, was the fact that afterwards, the crowd broke up into their various cliques (nothing unusual there), but that those cliques were very definitely along religious or racial lines.  I had seen this before at UWA as well.  Blake, Benji, Kezzo, Brody, Gerson, Karen and Sivan Gore, and everyone else we hang out with are all Jewish.  Almost all of their friends are Jewish.  When I sit in on classes with Blake, we sit with Jewish people, and when we meet people for lunch, we eat with Jewish people.  It was in stark contrast to Colgate, where I could have just as easily made friends with pretty much anyone.  I'm attributing this observation to the fact that Perth really is an isolated community, albeit one in a large city, and the ability to survive and thrive as a community may well rest with their ability to remain a cohesive unit.

L'chayim
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At any rate, the Jew Crew and I went out for drinks last night to a local bar and had a blast.  One thing I have to credit this community for is its ability to cross secular/orthodox lines in the name of friendship.  Most Jewish kids go to Carmel School, the Jewish primary school, so a good number of these guys go back years and years at this point.  Some became very religious, and others shunned it altogether.  We all sat around and had a pint or two together last night though, even if one was wearing tzitzit and one hadn't been to shul in months.

So that's that.  No word on the plans for the next few weeks, but I'd really like to make it out to Kalgoorlie sometime and see the four Jewish families there.  It's been a great few days, and like I said before, it's not where you are but who you're with that really matters.  Denham and Shark Bay had amazing, pristine beaches and wildlife, and I had a good time with the English backpackers, but Perth (for all its windy, gray weather of late) feels much more like home.