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Alright, welome to my third post of my excellent adventure. This is post is going to have a little bit of everything in it. I will talk about the places I have stayed, and what I have done in those places. I will also explain what my job is, and how it is going. Last time I left you was when I was in Cossack. Cossack is a historic town in the outback ofwestern Australia. There are about three historic buildings and the population is 2. It is also located right on the water. The next day after my bear gryles experience, I decided to walk the coast of the water. I ended up seeing all kinds of wildlife. I saw numerous stingrays, octopuses, all kinds of tropical fish, crabs, and scared plenty of kangaroo out of the bush. That evening I went back down to the water because I had nothing else to do. I ended up walking up to a younger aboriginal mate called Shane. He was fishing, and I thought I would bother him for a little. He showed me a new type of fishing I was not used to, he called it hand line fishing. Its basically a big spool of line. So you tie a hook to the end of it, bait it, and throw the line out. You then pull in a fish by hand. We sat there and fished and talked for the rest of the evening. He told me that he was a mine worker in one of the local mines. He quit school when he was 11 and now he makes 6 figures. I will tell you about the area and its workers later. Now it is dark so I go back to the no AC building and I find that there is one more person staying there. It ends up being a very elderly lady that looks like she has been on the road for a while. We end up talking for about three hours about her and my travels. She has been all over the world. She told me about all the places she has been in Australia, and told me were to go. So the next morning I decided to walk the beach again, but it was different this time. I told the lady about my misfortunes with my wallet the night before, and I guess she decided I needed a mom. So before I went outside she would not let me leave until I showed her I had plenty of water, sunscreen, bug spray, proper shoes, and told me to be back in an hour or she would come looking for me. It was nice for her to take that role, but really annoying because I wanted to do my own thing. Anyway I ended coming back just to please her.
That night the rest of my team showed up. The team consisted of two Canadians called, Adam, and Jessica. They are about 26 and are a couple that have been traveling the world for about a year now. There is a Swedish girl named Catherine which is 24. Also there is a Dutch girl named Maike that is 25 and has also been traveling the world. Adam is really quiet and chill, while Jessica is quite goofy, and loud. Catherine is probably the nicest person I have ever meet. And Maike is a very strong, and built individual that does not hesitate to tell you how she feels. This is where another challenge has become introduced into my travel. I am very goofy, and love to use my humor anytime. I also kind of like to be the center of attention as well. These people come from all different cultures and life styles. It has been a very interesting challenge to try to balance my personality and their personalities as well. It is just interesting to learn from people that are not from the same area you are from.
Ok this is a little bit about my job. I work for a marketing company called Zen Marketing. This company is contracted out by charity organization. The charity organization that the marketing company is contracted out by is Medicins Sans Frontiers or Doctors Without Borders. So what I do is go from door to door knocking and giving a pitch and asking people if they would like to sign up to the organization. The organization is based on regular supporters. So people sign up for a monthly donation. They can sign up for as much as they want but most people sign up for about 20 to 40 dollars a month. I then fill out some information and the money comes straight out of the bank or credit card until they cancel it. The way I get paid is, lets say I sign someone up for about 30 bucks a month. So I would get double that. I get 2 dollars for every dollar amount I sign up. It's a great job, but pretty hard. I am in the sun for about 7 hours a day. On average I get 3 sign ups a day. That is about 10 to 20 percent of people sign up. So I have to get used to getting turned down. The best and worst part about knocking on doors you never know what your going to get. I have gotten ladies that answer the door in their underwear. I have also had guys answer in their underwear. I have had really drunk people answer, and really stoned people answer the door. I guess especially in these smaller towns there is a lot of break ins. To stop that people have invested in very mean looking dogs. These dogs sometimes are just out for blood, those houses I skip.
Alright we have been working in Western Australia, in Karratha. The first day I was at work it was about 45 degrees out, so about 100 degrees at home. And this heat is different, the ozone hole is right over Western Australia. It is freakin HOT over here. It has been cooling down a little bit. The economy in Karratha, and neighboring towns in Western Australia, is mining and gas. There is nothing to do in Karratha. All there is, is a shopping centre, and mines for work. People from all over the world come into Karratha to work in the mines. The miners make six figures a year. The problem with having a town where the majority of people make a lot of money is that everything in the area is over-priced. Australia is expensive to begin with, but it is really expensive in the mining towns. A six pack of beer is about 15 to 20 bucks! Some time you might find some on special for 10 dollars.
During the time we have been working in Karratha we have been staying in Cossack. The weekend of the second of April the team and I went to camp out at point Samson. That was a great getaway after the first week of work. The first day we took a long day at the beach and went snorkeling. It was quite amazing. Just the sight of a completely different kind of beach was good enough for me. Im used to dirty water and brown sand. This beach had rock outcrops, and clear blue green water. We snorkeled next to an old jetty during the time when the tide was coming in. Me and Adam found a little cutaway in the rock were there were little angelfish feeding on the rocks. The best part was a little farther out there was a gar fish feeding on little shrimp and fish. I have posted a video of the fish feeding on the little fish. It was really cool, because it knew that we were there but didn't mind us. The next day our team leader decided to put on a treasure hunt for us. It was the first treasure hunt I have ever done, so it was quite an experience. We had to find all kinds of stuff. We had to find a crab a feather, seven leaves that looked like a celebrity, three 50 cent pieces with the same date, an ice cold beer, some narly underwear, a piece of coral, 3 rocks with a purple strip, pink flip flops, a bare bum, and a raunchy turd. I ended up bending the rules a little bit, but I found the treasure. The reward was fifty buck! That was the end of our nice relaxing weekend so we moved back to our nice steamy accommodations in Cossack.
This next week we started working at 2 in the afternoon till 7. Since it is a working town, most of the people are at work during the day anyway. Like I said the Cossack accommodation is right on a bay. So one of the days in the morning I decided to go fishing in the morning. I ended up catching about three small fish the size of perch. I caught a flounder, and a gar fish about 2 and half feet long. That night there were two ladies that were spending the night at the place as well. They were very entertaining and welcoming. The team and I had some beers and talked to these two ladies for hours. One of them is visiting from New Zealand, and the other lady was Kelly Monson. She is a teacher at a local school in Karratha and works with local aboriginal kids. They told me about a lot about the local community and life style. Some of the aboriginal communities here are horrible. There is a nearby town called Roebourne were 95% of the people are aboriginal. If you drive through the town at night you would find kids the age of 5 standing on the corner of the streets, because the parents are passed out drunk at home. This is everywhere. Houses I knock on the kids say my parents are drunk inside, and this is 3 in the afternoon. Not all aboriginals are like this there are a lot that do work and make a living in these small towns. These ladies also told us that you have to pay for public education! That's crazy to have something mandatory to go to, but you have to pay for it. Remember the caretaker lady that gave me food the first day I showed up. Well, turns out this lady is really rude and anal. She almost charged us fifty bucks for leaving onions in the sink. So the lady comes out at like 11 and tells us to be quiet because we are being too loud. The team and I and these two ladies are the only ones staying at this accommodation, so we were too loud for the caretakers. Its not like she has a job to do in the morning. All she does is clean around the accommodation. So it turns out that Kelly decides to offer her house for us to live in for a couple of days. We are talking about sweaty, no ac rooms, to houses with freezing cold rooms, big screen TV's, drum sets, guitars, PS3s, WIIs, and a massive DVD collection. It was paradise for FREE! It was a very nice gesture and if you read this post I thank you so much.
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