1. There is no such thing as bell pepper. I ordered a salad the other day in the food court across the street a the mall, and you make it yourself, and there were red peppers and roasted red peppers as options. And so being the red bell pepper fanatic that I am, I asked them both to be put in. The man sort of looked at me funny. I gave it a second thought, wondering if perhaps I'd mentally lapsed and said something other than I'd like red bell pepper. No, I hadn't. So, I pointed to it. "Oh, red capsicum?" Uh, no, red pepper? Well, turns out he was correct. Wouldntcha know he knows better than I.
2. They don't serve ice in Australia. Probably my least favorite part about this country. At dinner, then bring you "chilled" glasses, which really just stay cold until they're placed on your table. Then a bottle of lukewarm water, not even cold water, it placed on the table. So don' t be disappointed when you order ice water and then bring your iceless water.
3. Stray animals like to run the streets. Last night on our way to dinner, across the street at Broadway, obviously, a man was walking down the sidewalk with his dog on a leash. Normal. But then we see running up behind the dog, NOT on a leash, a goat. Yep, just a goat trotting along behind the man and the dog on a leash. He seemed to find nothing strange about the scene, unlike every other person on the sidewalk, who cocked their heads muttering, "Wait...was the a goat?"
4. You can't purchase liquor anywhere besides the liquor store, which is so cleverly named LiquorLand or a bottleshop. Luckily for us we have two LiquorLands in the mall across the street, about four stores away from eachother, in the event that...yeah, I've got no explanation for why that would have been a necessity when deciding which stores should go where. But they close early, so the bottleshop in Landsdowne across the way is open until midnight.
5 . They have Crunchie Bars.
6. Aussies speak differently. Ha. Yeah, they speak English, but it's not the same. All their phrases are different. And after being here for awhile, I'm starting to use some of them by accident, they just slip out. Like "no worries" is a really big one, and just the casual use of the word "bugger". They say "have a chat at me" rather than come chat with me. And people tend to ask "How you going?" rather than "How's it going or how you doing."
7. Their cheddar cheese is ALL white cheddar, and pleasant surprise to me, when I forgot to buy white cheddar to put on my green apples, and opened my package of what I thought was yellow. And they differentiate sharpness or aging by "tastiness". So there is Lite Tasty, Tasty, and Extra Tasty. I prefer the extra tasty, because, well it's extra tasty!
8. Guys Speedo bathing suits are called budgie smugglers. That's all I have to say about that one.
9. Cell phones are NOT called cell phones. They're mobiles. I feel so much more sophisticated telling people to "ring my mobile" which the way the number is 0416865191. You can call me,if you can figure out how to do that, my incoming calls are free. I think you have to call the country code which is +61 then you don't dial the first 0 in my number...but that could be completely wrong, but give it a go! (They say that all the time too, not give it a try.)
Ok so enough observations for now, let me update you on what we've been doing since I posted last. It's still raining here daily, sometimes sprinkles other times DOWNPOURING. So on Friday, when half the group went to the Blue Mountains, the remaining six girls hopped on the train and rode up to Chatswood for a day of shopping. They have a five-level Westfield there, full of stores that I've clearly never heard of. Everything is expensive though! I did buy a dress at a little shop at the train station where every item was $10. Its a dress with purple and leopard print, just planning ahead since UTS is hosting a Vegas Night party on a boat on Friday, and for $10AU, I decided it was worth it even if it falls apart after the first time I wear it, which it probably will. I got one other shirt at the mall, sort of hippie/bohemian-ish, but it's cute. Once we got home Julia's roommate from back at Ithica had finally arrived and came and hung out with us. We attemped to go out, but it was seriously raining the hardest yet, and it was just chaos, so I went home and went to bed.
You guys don't know it, but I just took a two hour break from writing this blog. The reason for this: incredible news. IT'S SUNNY OUT! I walked out of my room to go to Julia's room to steal all her food from her since she's leaving with her family tomorrow until Sunday to go to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island, and didn't want it to go bad. And what do I see but blue skies! It was an event! Everyone was dancing in the halls! So I decided to go for a run. Ran over to where Erin is going to be living (she moves in tomorrow I believe) and it took me 8 minutes. Love it. Then ran around the USYD campus and all that. It was hot out, and I loved it! The boys went to go work out at the gym across the street, and when they get back we're meeting up with the Gumali's and going to Manly Beach. Apparently Manly is less touristy than Bondi, and it's where the locals keep telling us to go.
Saturday was Valentine's Day, and we all decided to go to dinner together, the AL (I'm gonna use that for AustraLearn from now on) group and Evan, Caroline and Jenny. We found some place that we thought was going to be really nice. I think you can guess that it was in fact not. It wasn't BAD, it just was...mediocre. The fact that Emily asked for her pasta in red sauce instead of white and the server told her she could not because it was already prepared in the white sauce kind of gave a hint. Anyways, back to the story. Everyone dressed up in cute V-Day apparel and the boys dressed up nice too. We took fun pictures like we were going to prom, real cute. Then we pregamed with some pink champagne and strawberries, which I've discovered is the best thing ever!
We then took three cabs to the Circular Quay and meandered around in the rain, with a nice backdrop of the bridge and the Opera House behind us until we found the restaurant.
You heard about the quality of that earlier. And the server was no better, when we asked to all pay separately he told us no, and there was nothing he could do. When we explained some of us had to pay with credit cards, he about freaked out, and so Emily took over and he like threw the pad at her and a menu and said, "Here, you figure it out!" First rude Aussie I've come across. But I suppose if they're that few and far between they're still 100 time better than the States. After dinner we headed to Gumal for a stoplight party on the roof, which was kinda lame since security broke it up after 15 minutes of us being there because it was too loud. So we headed to Landsdowne which was also lame, Saturday isn't really that pub's popular night. But I am in love with the bartender. Never spoken to him, but he's probably the most beautiful man in Australia...no big. I told my good 50-year-old friend Ed (he's the bouncer) this, and he proceeded to go behind the bar and TELL the bartender this. Well, thats not embarrassing at all. So twenty minutes later when I see Ed back at the door I run over and demand he tell me what he told him, and instead he hands me a piece of paper that has the bartenders number on it. Ha. No way I'm calling. After going home, we hung out in Julia's room and the scariest man to exist in the world, we like to call him the night stalker, came down and asked Julia if she had hindges on her door, and she said yes, and he said then use them! Then stalked his huge tattooed-self away. When I walked back to my room he was on the floor above us pacing back and forth with a black hoodie on. Hellllllllo scary! Good times.
Sunday we all went across the street to Victoria Park for Fair Day. This is the commencement of Mardi Gras, which is the world's largest Gay and Lesbian Festival. It was a prettttty interesting event. The whole park was filled, sort of reminding me of ribfest. There were food tents, and booths and concerts, and dunk tanks and all sorts of stuff. And EVERYONE was walking dogs. That was weird, I think maybe there was a dog competition somewhere too, not sure. There was a nice dance show, three incredibly toned and buff guys dancing around in their underwear to Britney Spears, it was quite the sight. And a Dolly Parton-esq draq queen was MC-ing. (S)he was pretty funny though. The weirdest part about it was there were TONS of kids there. Just enjoying themselves, with men making out all over the place. There was one lesbian couple groping eachother with their two little girls in tow...that's all I've got to say about that.
Then we came back and some people decided to go to the aquariuwasn't really in the fish watching mood so I didn't go. So the people that didn't go, Julia, Emily, the Lukes, Chuck and I went over to Broadway Cafe for pizza, it had been a few days, we were due back for a visit. Then I suggested board games and everyone was down. After dinner we went to Kmart because thats all that was open Sunday nights, and tried to find a game. Apparently adults don't play board games in Australia, because they seriously only had games for kids 8 and under! It was madness. They did in fact have Cranium, so we bought that for a whopping $60. Oh Australia. We drank and played that for FOUR HOURS! No joke. I'm not sure how it happened, but it took seriously that long for Luke and I to win the game. Oh yeah, we won! It was so fun though, I can't wait to play it again!
Oh, so the chances of me getting run over here are pretty high, so if i report being hit by a vehicle, don't be surprised. This whole driving on the other side of the road really gets me confused and I never know where to look and where the cars are coming from and when they're allowed to go! Ugh!
So excitingly fun news, Smat is coming to visit! He's coming for his spring break to see Guido and me. He got ripped off on coming to study here, so he's making up for it by coming for break. And now my sister might be coming as well. Smat is coming while my parents are here, and so Leslie might fly with him and so she'll be here for a few days that my parents are too, so that will be awesome!
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