Beaches and Burritos

I promised I wouldn't leave you guys in the dark anymore, but since the last post, not too much has really happened. With school starting, its a lot more work and a lot less play.  My schedule still is not nailed down, but hopefully by the end of this week it'll be set. The whole drop/add process is a bit different here, as well as being an international student, so I can't just drop a class and choose another and pick it up, we have to send in things called e-requests, and only can do one at a time, and I haven't gotten my first one back, so I can't send another one until that happens. But that's the extent of educational news I have to report, nothing too exciting yet.

I've come to realize that our location is actually amazing, having Broadway Shopping Center right across the street, the grocery store and K-Mart are always just steps away.  Which means, as I've come to find, I visit the grocery store a lot, just for a few small things at a time. Now, I really want to explain some things about Australian grocery stores that I've noticed. First of all, the aisles are very wrong, meaning the things that share aisles with each other should not be sharing aisles.  It's weird, like panty hose are across the way from canned soup.  Light bulbs and hair straighteners are across from the refrigerated fruit juices.  Knives live right across from cereal. There are three mini aisles between the produce and the meat devoted to asian food, that can't be read by someone who speaks English.  Oh and the eggs are not kept refrigerated, they just sit there on the shelf next to the olive oil. And those are my observations of the grocery store.

Friday night ended up being a laid back night.  We hadn't come to a conclusion on what we were doing for the night, so I went down and hung out with Scott for awhile, learned about how their surf camp went (great, minus Nate having to get stitches across half his upper eye), then Guido and the IU girls came back from the rugby game they were at. Scott hadn't gone with because Nate had called him earlier in the day to take him to the hospital since blood was now leaking into his eye, so he was with him all day. I decided I was going to go out with this group for the night, but as it turns out, plans with them didn't work out either.  We'd planned to walk over to Nate and Lucas' apartment, which is sick, so nice, and then head to Tank.  But once getting to the guys place, everyone decided they were too lazy to go out, so we just hung out there and chilled for the night.

Saturday we decided to head to the beach since it was 90 out.  But the fact that we insist on traveling in groups the same population as some small rural towns, it takes awhile to get everyone set to go.  On Friday we'd set a goal to be at the beach by noon Saturday, but people weren't even up by then, so I started the wake up call by knocking on everyones doors making them get up.  Two hours later, we were just leaving UniLodge.  The plan was to stop at Sumo Salad on the way to the train station, and I was so excited for it. We get on the train and open up the salad, wrong kind of lettuce. And thus, the downward spiral of my day.  It sadly ruined the rest of my day.  Once we got to the beach, I was still annoyed about my salad and the fact I had to sit with Luke M the whole way there, where he proceeded to show me every picture on his iPod and annoyingly annotate "this is my brother." "this is me eating a corndog" "this is my brothers friend who is an alcoholic" "this is the fourth of july", all while I'm attempting to listen to my iPod.  Luke and I have a relationship unlike any other, pretty much we cannot stand each other, disagree on everything, but at the same time we're still somehow friends.  He strives to annoy me to the point of explosion, and in turn I make fun of him every chance I get.  Everyone in our group calls us the angry bitter divorced couple who fight like it's their job.  And I know what everyone says, you must like each other if you fight so much, this my friends is not the case, ask anyone in our group, they will confirm.  And I'm sure everyone reading this is thinking that I'm being really mean, but we understand our relationship and are perfectly content with it, right Luke? Anyways, we got to the beach and Chuck came to find that calling me princess was his new favorite thing to do.  Now, he calls me princess the same way my dad calls me princess, neither of them actually meaning I'm a princess.  "Is this spot on the beach ok with you princess? Can we get you anything princess? What can we do to make YOU happy princess?"  I suppose I deserved it, I was in a pretty foul mood. I did call my dad to tell him that Chuck had adopted his nickname for me though. He got a good laugh.  But when I got in the water, I did cheer up a bit.  The waves were insane, and I actually finally ventured out into them, and had a blast.  I did get taken under a few times, once really bad and cut up my knee pretty bad in the sand.  Emily proceeded to tell me I looked like ridiculous as it was happening, which I'm sure was quite sure. After long enough I had to give up, the bathing suit was having some trouble staying on as the waves progressively got bigger, and though Bondi is a topless beach, I wasn't quite ready to join in with that crowd.  I've been wearing SPF30 since I got here, but now I feel like I'm not getting color, so I'm going to need to downgrade to 15, though they're hardcore about skin cancer here, so I haven't seen anything less than 30, I'll have to have my mom bring me some when she comes.   Since we didn't get there until 3, we stuck around until about 7:30, being one of the last groups on the beach, then headed home.  The night ended up being pretty scatterbrained, with people not being able to get into bars for being too drunk (which would never happen in America, money is money, they could care less about the well-being of people), ending up in bars in which we were the only white people, and losing people along the way.  It ended up being a mediocre night at best, but I suppose any night in Sydney is a better night than most :)

This morning when I woke up I turned on tv, and as I've mentioned previously, there isn't much on the five channels that come thru.  Though they are completely obsessed with The Biggest Loser, it is seriously on every night of the week! But anyways, this morning an old Elvis movie was on, and Mrs. Sargent always used to tell me that I needed to watch the Elvis movies,  and I never had, so I left it on, and it was actually really funny.  When we all gathered a bit later, Chuck mentioned he was watching it too, so I turned it on in Julia's room when I went to pick her up, and we came to understand why all the women would have gone crazy for the guy, Elvis was hot! Later,  Emily, the Lukes, Chuck and I took a walk down King St. to get lunch at a place that I discovered earlier in the week. The place is called Guzman y Gomez...the Aussie version of Chipotle.  When we were walking down the street and I finally saw the sign, it was like a beacon of hope!  One month. It had been one month today since I had a Chipotle burrito, and I was on the verge of a breakdown, so the fact that I got a burrito today...heaven.  They weren't Chipotle, they were very good.  White rice and all. The walk to the place is a good haul though, so the fact that we had to walk there and back to get it made me feel a little better.  But now that I know it's there, it'll be tough to stay away.  The goal is not to return until Leslie gets here in two weeks. We'll see how that goes.  Once we walked back we went across the street and bought a DVD player and got Blockbuster memberships.  We rented season one of Summer Heights High, a series that was on HBO or Shotime about a public school in Australia, sort of like a mockumentary.  I hadn't ever watched it, but a couple of guys from home were talking about how funny it was before I left, and some of the guys here love it too. Well, to go along with our day of doing nothing, we watched the entire season, which technically isn't a full season, just 8 episodes, but that's still pretty bad. We then decided we should do something with our lives, so we went to Broadway for pizza...very original, I know. Then we came back and sat around and did more of nothing, oh Sunday nights of a college student.  

Emily and I realized we hadn't gone to mass while walking to Broadway, so since I don't have class until 5 on Monday, I'm going to go tomorrow. We're also joining the gym tomorrow.  For lent I decided that I'm going to work out at least four times a week, and I've given up chips and cookies. I was going to do bread, but for lack of an actual kitchen, meals here are mostly soup or sandwiches if you want to stay within a budget that isn't going to bankrupt you.  So I realized that wouldn't be a good idea. Plus I read somewhere bread is part of that food pyramid, and on the bottom, which I heard means you need the most of...?  I couldn't possibly go against the Food Pyramid! And Emily and I have also decided that we're giving up swearing.  And if we slip up, it's 15 extra crunches at the gym for each time. And considering the fact we're with each other 23 hours of a 24 hour day, it shouldn't be difficult to keep tabs on each other. Chuck suggested we wear rubber bands on our wrists and every time we slip up one of the guys gets to snap them, we vetoed that idea quick.  

So here's a fun fact. In the past three weeks, there have been three shark attacks at various Sydney beaches, one just yesterday morning, at Avalon Beach.  The one I mentioned at Bondi, and then a day before that one, a Navy diver in Sydney Harbor.  This latest one was a 15 year old boy, but his father, who was out surfing with him and was a senior patrol captain for the surf club at Avalon, was able to rescue him and got him to the shore safely, or as safely as you can be after your thigh has been chomped on. Good thing I haven't learned to surf...yet. And cue Jaws music.

On a lighter note, I'm moving.  I'm not sure if I've complained much on my blog about the size of my room, but it's tiny. Really tiny.  All the AL students were put in small studios with AirCon.  Mine would probably be considered a super small studio.  Everyone in my group has larger rooms than me, substantially larger.  My laundry basket literally sits in the middle of my room because it's the only place for it.  I'm in a corner room, which is why it is smaller, but the fact that I'm paying the same amount as everyone else, I came to the conclusion this was no longer going to work for me. So I went down and spoke with the woman in charge, and she proceeded to tell me all small studios are the same size. I, in turn, told her she was wrong. She apologized and explained they had no other rooms available for me. I, in turn, told her my parents would be arriving shortly, and she'd really rather deal with me than them. She then magically had rooms available.  She offered me the room next to mine, another corner room, which was the same size, I graciously turned it down. She then offered me a large studio, but explained small studios are the only rooms in the complex with AirCon, I again declined.  After being in Jenny and Caroline's room and Guido and Scott's rooms I've come to find rooms without A/C are living hell.  She then told me there would be small studios available on the 13th of March and I could move in then, so that is the plan.  It's on the 4th floor though, but directly above Luke's room, so not a far walk from the lifts.  But on the upside, at least I'll get to be neighbors with Night Stalker now! Can't wait.  Leslie and Smat get in that day, I'm sure they'll be so excited to help me move as a welcome to Sydney first activity!  Sorry guys!

Ok bedtime. and by that I mean I'm going to watch a few episodes of Entourage season 2.  I wanted to rent Nip/Tuck season 2, but someone had checked it out earlier today, I was not happy about that, not one bit. But they have to return it at some point I suppose.  The plan is to get up early, go to the library to do some homework, church, maybe lay out at Victoria Park and read, then class 5-8. 

Last note, Oporto fries are out of this world. That is all.