Ridin' the EAC, dude...

Today was a fine Friday morning. The weather was warm with a nice cool wind. We woke up kinda late and hung around the apartment. The great plan for the day was at 12:30 we were going to Bondi to go Surfin!!! (Picture: us rockin' the wet suits)
Couple guys caught the bus before us and we caught a cab up to Bondi. The place we were renting the boards from was on the north side of Bondi. Board and wet suit for 2hrs was only $30, not bad really. I managed to get a MASSIVE board. You know how most people carry surf boards under their arms? Yeah...no...this one required two hands. We get down the the beach and head where the waves are decent and (naturally) the surf school people are there. But we made do with the space we were in. It was kinda hard just getting out into/past the surf. Being pummeled by waves is only so much fun. I tried a few times to catch a wave or two. It was hard enough just trying to keep my balance on this foam board. Didn't really have much success at first, "caught" a few in more or less like a boogy board. Right before we took a small break I did manage to get a few almost standings. We broke for a bit and sat on the beach just talking and headed back in. This time I stayed in shallower waters and got decnet at the "stand up, wobble, fall" routine. Did a few of those. Then I actually road a few in standing up.
.....I was a God. You know those moments in life where you feel like the King of the World (like Titanic just less chick flicky and corny), yeah...it was one of those. I rode standing up about 8 times during the last portion of the day, one of which i rode until the board just sank into the water. Very cool. Will probably try to go next weekend if possible.
Two hours ran up and we were all exhausted. We caught the buses back to Coogee and everyone dissapated to either go rest, eat, or other.
That night the girls at the "Haunted House" (it's what they called their house, i guess based on looks) were throwing a stoplight party (green = single, red = taken, yellow = complicated). Six of these girls were actually on the wine tour with us. Inordinate amounts of green were at this party with specs of red and yellow. It was a good time, nothing to special. Had an amazing schnitzel afterward and headed back home to crash. Surfing wore us out.

En Flambe!

Hmm...thursday.
Well the plan was to get up, get a hair cut and go to class. Never did get that haircut. Chilled around for a while around the apartment doing stuff. Went up to class. Lecture was about Port Hacking and sand movement...woo... Kim and I just entertained ourself. After class Kim and I hung out in her room thinking about adventures and travel plans during and after semester.
Heading back down to home. I'm really loving that walk.
It was a little late at this point, so the guys were thinking about food already. I kinda wanted to try this hole-in-the-wall pizza place farther up Coogee Bay Road. Everyone's been wanting to try it because it just remind us of some small place back home that has the potential to be really good.
Naturally, we ixnayed that and decided to go for Thai. One of the Thai places was just re-done and has a new name, we thought about there until we realized that there is one DIRECTLY across the street from our apartment building.
This place was pretty nice looking, complete with mood lighting and candles on the table. The guys, in the spirit of trying to equally compare all the thai restaurants, got Pad Tai. I did not. I wanted something different and I was really in the mood for seafood. Wound up getting this Mixed Seafood dish. The waitress comes out carrying a plate with this tin foil package. Looked like an overturned bowl with a square base of tin foil around it. But more imporantly, it was ON FIRE. (wish I had a camera) The blue flames were all around the base of the "bowl" part and through the opening in the top. Didn't really know what to do, so I waited for it to go out and tenatively pulled back the foil. It was really really good. What made the dinner better was that all main courses were 30% off mon-thurs. So it was pretty reasonable too.
The night was a hang out night. Some of the guys were just planning on hanging around. James and Charlie got some beer to just hang around with. Everyone else was writing papers that night. I mean everyone. I broke into a few glasses of the wine stash from Sunday but not too much. We three went over to Aubrey's to distract them from paper writing and just hang out. The guys wound up going through a little too much and were having much more fun than just about everyone. There was an intense game of Egyptian Rat Screw (card game, don't get hung up on the name if you don't know it...it's fun) that we battled at for a while before American Pie was sung and we left. The girls were kinda kicking us out b/c they had work to do, but whatever. Twas fun.

blah, blah, steak, blah

Woke up round 9-10 and had some cereal while talking with Ashley. Within one hour I wrote the reading response of ~900 words for God Life class due in an hour, ran through the shower and hopped on a bus to campus for tutorial. God Life was...pretty off topic for the day. Conversation seemed to keep drifting. Grabbed a small bit of food afterward at the Fare.
Sport Law talked about...yeah who am I kidding I never fully pay attention in that class. The design of the class is such that lecture is COMPLETELY useless. Whatever learned in there has NO bearing whatsoever on your grade. It's more of a pass the time, and to make sure I go to tutorial. I do remember that what they were talking about at the time was somewhat intriguing, although obviously not memorable, and that David (my tut professor) had managed to get free tickets (13) to a Rugby class and that he was offering them to us. We had to email him at 7:30 that night, but I would of course be at steak night at that time. Oh well...if I do go tics are only about $22 anyway.
The hour between the parts of Sport Law is the most annoying hour, just want to get it over so I can go home. Today Chris had to go meet with some of his partners for a Civil Engineering project of some sort in the library. So I just went to the library to do stuff. Wound up just doing a little blogging, emailing, other just to pass the time. When class finally came around it wound up being a total waste of time. We got there, our professor has just gotten back from China that morning so he didn't have any time to put together pictures and such. We talked a little about the Olympics and what he had seen (Beach Volleyball, Athletics, diving, and 2 others I don't remember). He showed us his ticket and guide book. The tickets were intense. I'd say at least a 5x8 kinda index card size, thick paper, lots of hollograms, really cool designs and colors, bar codes, and later to find out that one side had a huge flat microchip under it just to identify it as real. Crazy Chinese...
Tut let out 30 min early. The only productive thing we did was think about the sections in our paper due soon. They really are emphasizing the structure of the paper. We caught the bus after a bit and headed to steak night. Chris stayed behind to do more work so I wound up eating dinner with one of the guys in my class, who I forget his name to this day. We went back to hang out and I think we may have just watched a movie for the night? Dont' really remember. Steakday nights tend to be uneventful because it's such a long day.

Sam demanded an adventure...

Sam told me on Monday that she demanded an adventure for the day. I tried, actually turned out to be a fun day.
Class in the morning (too early) was a little surprising. Topic for the week was "space" when it came to media. The topic was a little boring overall, but we did talk about some sort of "game" i guess that I had never heard of. It's called Second Life. The YouTube videos are very crazy. Here's what it's about. It's a virtual world where you create a character (like yourself or not) and create things there...create your second life. So for any of you know the Sims, it's like that but you pick a character and "play" with others around the world (similar to WoW or other online games). Now here's the kicker....it uses real money. Real....like US dollars. The money in the game actually exchanges against the US dollar. So you go in there and pay for things (like a cell phone that doesn't work) or something else for your character. I don't get it. I can understand other games where it's creating another world more fantastical or more of a God type game where you create and control everything, but a game where it's basically where your life stops and this life starts in a world destroyed with a single stroke of a delete key....it's beyond me. So we discussed this for a bit.
I stayed on campus for a bit in the library trying to find a few articles for one of my papers. Afterward, I decided to try a new place for lunch. I went....to a roatating sushi bar right near campus! Even better, Tuesdays are a special day where every plate, no matter what it is is $2.50. So cheap, good, rotating sushi. Amazing. Never been to a rotating one before. Even tried octopus again.
Headed back home to get some work done. Did my readings for the next day, or at least tried to. Dinner was another concoction. I made Lemon pepper chicken, rice and corn for the roomies and myself. They enjoyed.
After, another week of Scruffy Murphy's. Hadn't been in two weeks. Both times before were heaps of fun. Other groups, alfreda house, other houses, ppl from the colleges came later. The people were loads of fun, the band was good. They seem to play the same thing each week but it's all great songs that everyone know. So when they come on for a bit, and everyone's a bit tipsy, much...much singing ensues. Actually took a lot of pictures that night, might post a few on here. It was a late night. We got back round 3:30-4am. Ashley was going to go back to Aubrey's but couldn't get in touch with her so she just crashed at our place. We acutally stayed up about an hour (made a little pasta) just talking. So it was a 5am bedtime. No idea how I had all the energy I did the next day.

So, Sam, it wasn't a massive adventure, but a very fun day. Does that count?

Movie day!

Monday was a slow day. The afternoon I just watch a few movies in between readings for class, all of which I have never seen before ( I think they were The Number 23 and The Butterfly effect). Lazy day overall. In the afternoon, the guys came back and they wanted to go see Taken that night. For any of you that have not seen the previews, the movie is basically Liam Neeson trying to get back his daughter who's been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris. The movie was, for lack of a better word, kick-ass. Liam Neeson just drops people, just #%^$*s them up. Very cool action flick. Kinda like the Bourne series in the style. The director is actually the one who did District B-13, the movie I was talking about before (only 2 movies he's directed). Anywho, good movie, acutally doesn't come out in the states till January (ha!), but see it when it does. Came back, stayed up a little longer writing the reading responses beore bed. Woo...

*singing* Red, Red wiiiiine....

The alarm goes off.
It's 6am...
Why am I up?!?!

Oh, that's right.....WINE TOUR!!!

Today was a glorious adventure. (Read: this will be a very long post) Alex C had arranged for Kim, Aliza, and myself to go on a Wine and Wildlife tour up to Hunter Valley. They were impatient. Bad news was that I had to get up early and be at the Macas (McDonalds' nickname) at 7am. Normally this would have been awful but with the proper motivation, I was there 20min early.
We waited a bit to find the right bus (several other wine tours were also starting from there...including one most of the Alfreda house was going on). Bus driver was a really nice guy, more on him later. We picked up Alex over near U Syd along with other passengers and made our way up to Hunter Valley.
This trip was pretty cool because instead of just stopping at a gas station half way up to hunter valley, we stopped at another Wildlife part, except this one was more reptile based, at least it seemed that way from the entrance. Wildlife park began with getting a bag of food for the kangaroos and heading down to the koalas. This place was much bigger than the other place we went to, much more open space. The koala area had a lot of them, with one particular fenced in area for petting/taking pics with koalas (no holding, apparently that's illegal in NSW and not in Queensland). As we stood there, a koala in one of the trees starts climbing down RIGHT next to me while others were taking their pics. The caretaker guy comes over to coral her and take both of them over to the other cage to put the female away. While dealing with the female, the guy failed to notice the male went for the getaway and made for a tree outside the cages. The guy tried to get him, but really...the koalas just better at climbing. Then, the guy JUMPS on the tree and starts climbing up after the male (this is a really thin tree), but the male just went higher than the guy could possibly go. Pictures continued.
We moved from the koalas, to the birds, to the kangaroos taking pictures while taking turn feeding/petting them. Passed by dingos, monitors, wombats, baby kangaroos feeding from mothers pouches (I have a video), on to the spider's section. They had some big ass spiders. They also had a showing where they milked a spider for venom research (cool to me, don't care what you think), but it wasn't too eventful. We then wen to the Platypusary (greatest name ever), saw a platypus and left. We were running low on time. Pit stop in the bathroom, snapped a couple of pics on a run through (literally) of the snake/reptile exhibit, and back to the bus.

First Wine Tasting:
So we arrive at this little place called Savannah Winery and are directed into this small cabin looking place. I personally don't really know how we do this all the bus driver said was "dive right on in." So we get a list of what wines are available and someone eventually starts requesting which to try. We all naturally say we want to try it as well. We started with the whites and moved, eventually at the reds (a trend that would continue for the rest of the day). The girls were very much into the whites. There was one in particular that was this sparkling pink something, I forget the name, that was actually pretty good and right up their alley. None of the girls like the reds as much, although they tried them. They were scrambling for cheese and crackers (this was the only place to have them). I was loving most of them, some were a little off for me. The dessert wines/sweet wines were enjoyed by everyone. I love port...
At the end, it was time to buy whatever we wanted and get back to the bus. We were told by the driver that if we wanted to get decent wine for cheap this was the winery to do it because you could get a case of clean skin reds or whites for $60 ($5 a bottle) whereas individually they were $10. I tried to round up people to split a case, may of them were not interested. Eventually got two other girls and the driver to split it with me. Joy! Wine!

Wine Tasting #2:
We boarded the bus, and headed on to the next vineyard. This one was called Tulloch.
Here a few of our group headed off on the Wobbly Wine tour where they went on bikes through the vineyard. We went downstairs to where they had our wine tasting set up. This guy was much more informative than the first. He tried to explain more about the valley, soil types, types of wines, how they were made, etc. He also tried to throw in a few anecdotes. We went through the normal list of wines. After the tasting, they invited us to go upstairs and try a few more of whatever else we wanted. The girls tried a few more whites and found one they like and got them. We took a few pictures with the vineyards in the background and went for lunch!

Food!:
Driver man set up reservations at a place called Oscars. Lots of options but I got this burger known as "the works". Basically as Australian as burgers go. Picture included. Let me preface by saying it was actually really good. Ingredients: burger, lettuce, tomato, beet root, egg, pineapple, bbq sauce, and some sort of bacon/ham. Strange, yes...but good. Probably not the most healthy thing in the world, but whatever.
We finished a little early and goofed off in the park taking a few more pictures.



Wine Tasting #3:
This place (I forget the name) was a little more laid back. The guy who served us just kinda served one and then walked away for a while letting us, I guess, taste at our own leisure. This was a much larger wine company with vineyards all over the place (I think they may have said even all over the world). The one thing they had that was interesting was "Early Harvest" wine (in a white and a Rose). Basically it's a wine that they pick the grapes early so they have less sugar. Less sugar means less alcohol and less calories so it's almost a "diet" wine of sorts. Not my type of wine though. This place did have some dipping sorts of stuff such as olive oil or vinaigrettes with bread which was nice for kinda taking that "edge" off from all the wine. By this winery, the girls has basically stopped tasting the reds. They just walked away, found the restroom and perused through the shop part.

Wine Tasting #3.5/Olive Store:
The last place wasn't quite ready for us yet so we had a stop over. There were two places at the stop we went to. One was an olive/olive oil store. They had lots of samples set up of dipping sauces/oils/others as well as some olives to try. Very good, tried the majority, but a little too expensive, so I didn't get anything. We still had a few more minutes, so we headed to the other building where we had a few more wines to try. A few red and a few sweeter wines. Me and this german guy that I kinda hung out with on the side went in and basically just asked for something "different." He gave us a spanish wine as well as a few others to try. Some were very "interesting", not really sure what made them like that, nor did I really dislike or like them. But we had to hurry back to the bus and basically ditch the guy mid wine tastings to get to our next one.

Wine Tasting #4: This one was pretty cool. This one was call the _____ Winery. We basically walked up to the bar and the man, who was very cool and Irish, got us all on the bar and basically flew right into it. He was the opposite of the last guy. Right as we finished one wine he'd bring on the next. And the next, and the next, and as you can see from the picture...we had a lot of different wines. Here was where most people bought some wine. Alex bought a really good white wine that she and the rest of us liked. I decided to get a small bottle of port to enjoy some special evening when the evening calls for it.

Cheese Shop:
The last stop on our tour was a cheese shop. In fact, it was called "The Smelly Cheese shop" as you can see from the sign. Wasn't really sure how this place worked, but it was acutally pretty similar. You just went up and said "can I try some of that." So we tried some blue, some parmasean, some others and a triple creamed brie that was REALLY good, but I still kinda like the single creamed better, dunno why. We saw some of the other wine tour groups and joined up with the wobbly wine tour guys. Not too long of a stop, so we just got back on our way round 4:30 in the afternoon.

So we got back to Coogee round 7 something when it was dark. I went back, took my wine and put it up for later consumption. The rest of the guys gotten back from the blue mountains at this point so we just exchanged a few stories from the weekend.

Food?
Sleep
(to be edited later with rest of night and some videos)

Wade(ing) at the Beaches

Decently early morning. Kim and I met decently early to do our assignment. Basically what we had to do was to visit 3 different beaches: 1) on the ocean (we chose Bondi) 2) sheltered from the ocean (Coogee) and 3) One on the harbor (we chose Watson Bay...it's at the northern most point of the southern coastline). At each beach we had to do several observation including measurements of beach height, sand grain, wave height, wind speed/direction, water clarity, wave motion, etc record them and make some conclusions.
Originally we had planned to do the Coogee to Bondi walk then catch a bus up to Watson Bay, and head back.
The weather was also awful. It was cold and reeeeeally windy. So we revered out trip starting at Watson Bay and working down thinking that if weather worsened we could just go back to the closer beaches later. We hoped buses to Watson bay. The beach was about 2 ft. wide with little to no surf. Part of the fun part of the assignment was wading into the water, so I wore shorts and sandals volunteering my body for science. The water was really cold. We had to grab some hot chocolate/tea to warm back up at the warf afterward. Walked around a bit and headed back to Bondi. There the waves were HUGE. We did our measurements, my shorts got all wet, we headed for the nearest heat source and food. Found a noodle bar (it's just so good) and got some really hot food indoors where I dried out a bit.
On our way back we stopped for a bit in Bondi Junction looking around. We actually did a little perusing and went to K-mart and Coles. I wound up getting a pan (so we don't have to keep getting disposable ones), and Kim wound up getting some brownie mix although we look for other things too. (See where this is going?)
We went back and did our quick dip onto Coogee Beach, getting wet again, and then went back to my place to hang while Aliza was napping. We made the brownies...ahem...remember what I said about my oven being funky? Brownie Directions: mix, cook at X degrees for 10 min. Total cook time....1hr+. I hate this thing. More tinkering required.
After she left, I got ready for Janessa and Rachel to come over for dinner (we rescheduled). James and us 3 had a dinner that I concocted from recipes. I made tomato feta bow tie pasta that was delicious. Rachel and Janessa provided ice cream and Tim Tam's for dessert while we watched Ocean's 11. They eventually headed out and James and I put on some Arrested Development before I went to bed early. Have to get up early!

Beer Olympics

Friday was miserable weather. It rained hard in the morning and was cold all day long. It became "one of those days"...without class, and with no intention of going outside, I did some reading. Charlie had lent me his copy of Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. We did the great book swap (don't know if I put this in the blog already). I gave Eldest to James, James gave Eragon to Charlie, Charlie gave me this. I had read somewhere between 100-200 pages before today

.........I finished the book.
I couldn't put it down. Between the weather and the action in the plot, I read it all. It's a long book. It's a really good book. It was great.
Most of the other guys at this point had left to go to the Blue Mountains for the weekend by train with a full list of events to do. James, Jason and I were about the only 3 left of the guys we know in the building. James and I figured it would be a rather lonely weekend.
Emerging from my cocoon...James and I went for dinner at 5 O's looking forward to this BBQ chicken pizza. Twas good.
We debated on what we were doing that night, made a few phone calls and heard of another B-day party for a guy named John (different one that I didn't know) over somewhere. We google mapped the way and headed out. It was frigid. It was far. It was aaaalll uphill, steep too. It was somewhere south about half way to campus. We got there and the theme was Beer Olympics. How best to describe it? Um, basically it gave us a taste of home as a typical but really nice frat party (oxymoron, I know). It was basically all the Study Abroad kids I knew and many more that I didn't. James and I became kings of the pong table for a while before they ran out of beer at the end of the night.
When people started to head out it was pouring. We all kinda headed separate directions, don't know why. I wound up helping a girl from the Alfreda house get home as heels, rain, cold and alcohol don't really mix. got her home and headed back meeting up with James and others on the way. Twas a very good night.

Tropic Thunder

Horray for class at 2pm!! Mucho sleep. Briefly went over an assignment for my Marine Env. class adding a few more comments and went to school to print it out. This whole getting to campus early to print is getting kinda old, but everyone seems to do it. In fact, half of the class seemed to be there printing out the same assignment.
The class was something about surf and sand. By sand, I mean this guy was talking about the grain of sand, it's sorting, it's porosity. All I could think of is that someone devoted their life to studying the size and nature of sand... poor chap. But at least he/she would have gotten lots of beach time. Instead of paying attention, Kim found us a nice addicting game involving entrepreneurship and farm animals, and I let Alliance roll. :D Figured you can only be so productive after taking care of emails and such for the day.
We did find out some bad news. Our field trip to Port Hacking was cancelled for this weekend due to high wind warnings for Saturday. Boo! So instead the entire class had to do the alternate assignment. We decided to just substitute the trip for the assignment and kept our Saturday morning plans (see saturday for assignment description).
Eventually headed back after doing some more printing. Tonight I was planning on making dinner with Janessa and Rachel, but plans got changed as the guys wanted to go see Tropic Thunder at 7. We, instead, went to Pizza night at the palace ($10 for a choice of one of 2 pizzas...so 5 bucks if you split one). Tried an interesting "flavor": potato, bacon, and pesto...sounds weird, I know...but REALLY good. I mean, it's hard to go wrong with pesto and bacon, but the potato actually was a nice touch, kinda like a baked potato. Don't knock it till ya try it.
The movie was amazing. Really funny. If you enjoy any of those actors, go see it. The only surprising part was figuring out that Tom Cruise was in it. Took a while because of his crazy roll and a lot of makeup. Half the crew didn't figure it out till the credits.
On the way back, the guys stopped at BWS (liquor store) to take advantage of slightly cheaper liquor. The deal was 3 for $78 ($26 for each 700ml bottle). Still ridiculous, but better. Most figured it would make for easier pre-gaming than goon...*shudder*.
None was used that night, everyone just kinda lounged and crashed.

A new dawn of DC++

Woke up early this Steakday. Had to write my response paper for my God Life tut. Eventually headed up to campus to print it out, as is weekly routine. Actually saw all the other Study Abroad kids from that class up there doing the same thing, great minds think alike.
We headed down and stat in class. Today's topic was a little more of problem of evil and mostly argument from design. Discussion was interesting till about the end when one of the guys...(i'll describe soon)...decides he wants to participate.
This guy (pardon the rant) just gives off this ignorant vibe...like he wants to argue but does it veery badly...very badly. When he starts to speak we just all cringe and chuckle. It's kinda a shame. He also, as evident from today, had no idea about statistics and probability.
Tut was interesting. As I said, I find myself participating more than I would expect. There are about 4-5 of us that will basically beat around ideas while the others sit idly. The only problem/frustration I've found is that there is so much to respond to and there's no time to do it. So have the time I have to sit there with good arguments/examples or questions and not be able to use them or see what their counterpoints are. Almost just want to have a personal debate with this professor.
Hour break, grabbed a sandwich. The cafes on campus are really good. The rest of the hour was spent in the library (it's not nearly as scary as the Hopkins one...it has windows and light all around).
Sports Law was pretty basic. Topics revolved around AFL and sporting in relation to wartime efforts. Last bit was pretty cool with stereotypes and how sporting continued or stopped during the wars.
Next hour break (this one gets pretty annoying...rather just get it over with), I dropped off money for the AFL game to Mike and headed down to the roundhouse with Chris. Happy hour and computer recharging is about the only good part of that break. However, today was special. Mona, the girl we were waiting with, gave us some wonderful news! Apparently UNSW has a network like DC++ here on campus (which also apparently works from my appartment?) called Alliance. Both being from Hopkins and in withdrawl...we were excited. So we set that up.
Tut was with the other prof, since ours took the week and went to Bejing to watch the Olympics (lucky bastard...he's got connections...but promised to bring back lots of pics and give us a presentation next week, horray!). We had 2 presentations on the same topic, how boring, but were dismissed directly afterward.
Steaknight! 'Nough said. Even better we got one girl to have them ordered by the time we got there instead of waiting 30 min in line.
Stuff & sleep.

Mon/Tues blend

Monday morning was a bit of a lazy morning. Actually missed both of my classes, whoops. But, no worries, they are tutorials and the lectures (actually voice recorded) are online, not that they contained anything vital.
Instead I wound up reading for Class
Read for class, figured I should do something productive.
Don't really think I did anything notable for the rest of the day. If I do then I don't remember it...the price of not blogging more expediently.

Tuesday was class at 9am getting there early to print off my response paper. Class was interesting talking about how the media interacts with society on a developmental level. Kinda cool. Actually find myself participating much more than I would expect in the two tuts for the "interesting" classes. (those would be God Life and Media)
Came back...read. Tends to be the trend with Monday's and Tuesdays.
Either today or Monday we went for Thai at a new place...yes, another (don't worry we still have at least three more to try around here. Was good, but not as good.
Uneventful days...

The Chilli Fiasco

Sunday morning started off with the other guys leaving again to go surfing. I, while eventually wanting to go with them, needed to stay back and do some reading. Made some b-fast and took my books out to the cliff to read. Really windy, which made it rather cold, so I didn't stay out there for long, but it was a beautiful day. So read more inside and the boys eventually came back. Apparently they weren't renting surf boards because of the water (guess the wind really made a difference).
...hmmm...what else...stuff and things.
That night the boys got the great idea of making chilli and cornbread while watching Cool Runnings (in spirit of olympics and such). So I broke out my recipe and went to the store with Matt to gather supplies. Came back and started the long process of cooking it. The guys gathered and some of the girls came over. While cooking, we decided to have some fun by playing mafia. We had about 11-12 ppl so it was a great number. I amazed them with my awesome narration skills since I was still stirring. I eventually played one round before eating.
The food was really good. Little too spicy for most people's taste because I didn't really have any measuring devices. The cornbread was another feat because 1)there was no cornbread mix at the store and 2) what they did have was corn flour with a recipe for something like "corn something spongy bread." We tried it. The first batch was nice on top and kinda...um...custardy on the bottom. The second batch was more bready, but I kinda like the first one better.
Due to some protest by a girl or two, we didn't watch cool runnings (crime, isn't it?) but we put on Old School. Good, but not as good. Overall a successful night.

Aussie sport > American sport

This morning was rather quiet. I woke up as everyone was leaving or had left. James decided to do the RSA course (same one I did) and Matt and others were going surfing again. So I just had the place to myself. Didn't really do too much during the morning. Wound up doing some reading, olympic watching and others. Apparently during the day a mother and calf Souther Right Whale came into the coogee bay area and swam around breeching and stuff. I missed it but apparently it was amazing. The guys got back later that afternoon and we talked about their days for a bit. I need to go surfing with them one of these times.
The real fun of the day came in the afternoon. Mike F, up at Uni, with some of the Aussies he knew got tickets to an Aussie Rules Football game (AFL). For those of you who have never heard of it (as you most likely haven't) the sport is ridiculous and amazing. I did a youtube search and found some really cool videos along with another explaining the rules.
Here's the rules one:

Australian Rules Football explained
Here's another fun one with some amazing footage:

Aussie Rules Football Promo
Ok, there's lot of explaining to do. So we met up at the college, mike got me some food from the dining hall...reminded me of freshman year terrace...really bad, but free. We got our stuff together and headed out to the bus stop. The stadium was out in olympic park (bus and train ride away, bout an hr or so travel total). The bus was packed...i was the cutoff line and was standing next to the driver. The train ride was nice...got to know the other 4 aussies better.
Olympic park was spectacular. The buildings and stadiums were very cool (google or wiki if you can). We were in ANZ stadium and got there just as the game had started.
Now here's the kicker...
Andy (one of the aussies) had gotten us 4 members seat tickets for free (through his dad) and 2 we paid for right next to them of which we split the cost. The seats were ONE ROW FROM THE FIELD, at midfield where all the players were running on an off. To give you a better visualization, one girl made the comment that you could see the dimples in the guys ass. ....THAT close.
The game was between the Sydney Swans and the Geelong Cats (syd is ranked 4th and I think the cats are #2), so needless to say it was amazing. The game never stops so it's always moving. Even if they are injured they come off the field, get patched and head back on. No pads, no cups apparently, no nada...just colliding, kicking and full on running. These guys are brutes...
So clearly enamored with the game (Mike and I were beside ourselves), we watched as the swans got smashed 94 to 133. After the game we headed out into the town. We were gonna meet some ppl at a bar. We wound up trying to go to star bar but Chris (one of the aussies) was in dire need of a Kebab (pronounced, by them Ke-BAB, not ke-bob...almost like Boston accent or something). The kebab was reeeeally good. So then we headed to the bars but most of them were full up, about 3 or 4 that we passed, so we walked....a lot...a lot a lot. I'm guessing we probably walked 7 miles that night.
We met a strange phenomenon while walking. On George street late Saturday nights, apparently all the, what I will lovingly call, douches come out with their pimped out sports cars (2-4 guys per car) and just drive....in loops...down George, with music blaring and just STARING at ppl. I don't know why. I guess they think their cool. But their not and just look stupid. (although one or two of the cars were cool)
After walking from Darling Harbor to Circular Key, we finally went to Jacko's bar where most of us just got waters (from walking) but hung out at the bar and played some pool with the locals while just kinda hanging out. The music was amazing as most of it did or could of belong on the Pulse CD (really upbeat 80's dance music...like "Rhythm is a Dancer"). Round 2 or so we caught buses back. Still having lots of energy I made a few phone calls to family and friends while walking on the beach watching the (full) moon and stars as Orion rose from the horizon. Just cool enough to be a beautiful night.
Pictures!!!

This is how close we were...i think that's the guy with the ass she was commenting on too. But, yeah...one row, grass players. To our left was where the sydney players off field were.






Part of the action








The crew that went! (left to right) Andy, Mike F, Frankie, Chris and Jess.







Me and Mike excited about the game...yeah...we were giddy.







Some action down by the goal posts.

Dark Knight, round 2

Another beautiful day. Morning was a little lounging and a little cleaning. We vacuumed the floors (these floors were just covered with dirt so your feet are basically dust busters every day) so now you can walk without dirt accumulating on your feet!! how exciting! (it's the small things)
Only other plan ppl had for the day was to go see the Dark Night on IMAX. I had already seen it, but basically all the people I knew were going. By the powers of peer pressure and realizing that staying here just meant doing nothing, I went for round 2. This time I came armed with coupons! so it was much cheaper this time. We got some food at this turkish place before we left that was basically like a stromboli, but turkish...pretty good. The movie itself was amazing again (so much fun in the IMAX). Some of them thought it was too much, but I think they just couldn't handle its awesomeness.
We came back and everyone did that "what are you doing? you going out? I dunno, I might I might not" routine. I also did it, but then realize I couldn't go out with anyone because I had done laundry today and all of my jeans were wet. Here, as I may have said before, you can't go to bars/clubs without long pants and decent shoes (aka no sandals). So I resigned to staying in more by necessity. James and I eventually put on Eragon. He had just finished the book and curious to see how the movie was, even though I told him it was bad. I hadn't seen it in a while and forgot the magnitude of it's suckiness. Yeah, baaaaad as some of you know. Oh well...

Turned in Job App!

Today I got up fairly early having gone to bed at a decent hour the night before (aka 8 hrs of sleep), but I didn't have class till 2. So I made myself a nice, big breakfast. I also decided to do a nice big overhaul of the kitchen, as there were still dishes from taco night. Washed all the dishes, wiped down the counters and hardcore cleaned the stove. Even with all of that, still had some leftover time before needing to head to class. I headed out and turned in my application at the Palace, the guy I gave it to said he would pass it along to the manager...don't know how long that will take.
Walked up to campus and decided I should get some small sort of snack/lunch before class. I had about $5.50 change to work with, so I went to a cafe and asked how much a muffin was...$3, sweet. "I'll take that and a coke zero" "That'll be 6..." *huh?* "uuuh, sry...I only seem to have $5.50" "that's fine, no worries"
....I love Australia, they really are just so laid back. (although a coke for $3 is kinda disturbing unless at a sporting event)
Class was increda-boring. The lecturer tried to be engaging but all he got was crickets. I wound up just working on the assignment we had due for that class for the next week.
Kim and I decided to hang for a while before she met up with Aliza at 5, so we went back to her college (read: dorm) and went up to the common room where they had a projector and screen where we and some aussies watched some more of the olympics (girl's swimming was pretty predominant).
We left, she met Aliza and I walked home stopping for food and some bread at the bakery for general supplies and dinner. I decided to make my Orange Rosemary chicken with orzo and broccoli (figured something healthy would be a nice change from bbq type food). The guys decided we weren't really in the mood to go out out tonight. So we got a few beers and hung around the apartment for a night of games and watching US play basketball. Good times. Also pulled out the fortune telling trick for some additional laughs.

Crazy mullet

Steakday morning started out with a beautiful day. The water on the ocean was extremely calm and blue. Deciding to bus it since I needed to print my response paper, I went to the bus stop that had this half mullet-half afro hair due. To give you a better image: short hair up front, but hair on top was pretty long (almost 80's-esque) and the back looked like a glorified (wide) rat tail slightly combed to the side. I chuckled.
My God, Life tut today was kinda funny. He had told us that he had marked the wrong readings this week, but naturally half of the people forgot. So about half the class did the wrong readings, so conversation was split btn people who did one set and the ppl who did the other. Still somewhat interesting.
Went to lunch with another guy after class during my hour break and had a really good cool chat with him while eating some indian.
Hiking over to class, Sport Law gave us a nice 20-30min long video (for the 2 hr class the 1st hour is always a video for the ppl doing the 6credit version of the course) that was about the South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby club and how the working class was really what founded it. The end of it focuses on the progression of it being owned by Russell Crowe and some other dude.
Chris, Ashely and I went to the roundhouse for our second hour break. Most of it was spent uploading pictures to facebook (for them). The final tut was simply about 20 min of lets talk about the olympics, 10-15 min of a presentation and 10-20 min of what essay topics did u guys come up with, are they good, and what sources can I give you to use. I love this class.
We hopped on the bus to Coogee and went directly to Steak Night where I paid for my steak, chips, salad and drink with change. :D
We came back and I pretty much just watched olympics with the guys for the rest of the night. Some of these events are just crazy...

mmm, taco

An early tuesday morning. Not too too much happened this morning. Mostly just some reading. We did have a guy come by and explain how our stove worked. It's a gas stove and has a few more buttons/steps to getting it going. The guy had a really strong Australian accent so much that after the demo he tried to make small talk with James, and all James could do was just smile and nod.
Got the confirmation email for my work visa. Got a chance to talk with Laura B, good times.
Later that evenings, there was talk of making dinner w/ the two girls, but they had work so I joined in on Taco night with the fellas. They, naturally, overbought on food and we had massive amounts of tacos even though we had 7 ppl eating. We watched some olympics with dinner and after dinner put on District B13 (at Drew's prompting). Very cool movie for those of you who haven't seen it. It's a French action movie, and is probably the only good French movie I know. Btw, John and others that introduced me to it, apparently there's gonna be a sequel coming out next year, who knew?
Everyone returned to readings/homework.
Sleep.

Rachel's B-day

Monday = class again.
God Life had moved on to miracles, Media has moved from cell phones to TVs. Sections are much more interesting than the lectures, and unfortunately today was all lectures.
Class ended at 12:30 so I did some quick uploads and emails in the library. Then got some food at the Fare. I walked up to the Study Abroad to check about my work visa. Now, here's where I get to do a little ranting.
So being proactive is not necessarily the best thing in the world *cough* mom *cough*. I looked up the information about the work visa and found that work visa are included in student visa, so need to worry, right? Ha, there's an if...that is, if that visa was granted before the 26th of April. I pulled up mine and I apparently got mine on the 22nd. Yeah for being early!! So I went to one of the Study Abroad ladies and she said I was probably the ONLY person to have this problem, but we fixed it with an online application and a $60 fee, joy.
Afterward, I walked down to the roundhouse where they were having a poster sale (really cheap to, had some that were buy 2 for $19). Saw some really cool posters: Black Knight posters, Ironman, other funny ones, Angelina, etc. Our apartment is bare, so it woulda been nice to get one, cept I had no cash, so I got none.
Walked home to wait for the email confirmation about my work visa, but it never came (was supposed to come w/in the hour) so I did some reading. James eventually made some pasta for dinner. We found out our TV actually does get channels, we just had to plug it in, we hadn't tried yet, so we watched some Olympics with dinner.
Later that night I joined Janessa and Rachel (and many others) over at their house since it was Rachel's (20th) b-day. We had some cake and later went out on the town to Scubar. kinda a cool place. It was a little boring at first but people loosened up and the dancing ensued with some free give aways and a guitarist playing along w/ the music. Most people headed back early, but we three stayed since rachel wanted to stay. It was a good night, and a well celebrated B-day.

Aquarium/downtown

Pictures: 1) Seal, was litterally that close to us. 2) Oceanarium, with lots of big sharks just swimming overhead 3) same things, just with me 4) The GBR exhibit, incredible isn't it? 5) A Ray Shark, apparently...looks very odd, but really cool.

A glorious Sunday, well... kinda. Today we got up with the intention of going to the zoo and exploring. Unfortunately when we got to the bus stop it just started raining (it's an outdoor zoo), so we edited our plans a bit. We got off the bus at Circular Quay (pronounced "key") and joined up with the others who took the bus right before ours in the Sydney Museum. Five dollar entry...was pretty crappy..not much to mention except for the pictures it had of people in the 50's with the most ridiculous looking haircuts.
We moved on to Darling Harbor (we were gonna take a ferry over, but barely missed it so we bused it) to grab some lunch and go to the aquarium. The place we ate was a little café on the harbor. Very good, most everyone got a burger, one guy got kangaroo, and I got some really good Turkish open-faced sandwich. The aquarium was spectacular. It started off as most do with some really cool larger animals in some tanks later. The really cool exhibits were three “rooms” off the central area. The three exhibits were the seals, oceanarium, and the Great Barrier Reef. The seals were kinda boring, but fun to look at. The oceanarium was mostly rays and sharks in a large tank you walked under (domed walkways so they swam over you) very cool, huge sharks. The GBR was SPECTACULAR, the variety of fish and corals they had in there you could just sit and look at for hours. In fact the very end of the aquarium was just a place to sit and look while they played some classical music in the background. There was one portion where you were surrounded by glass on all four sides. I’ll post some of the pics I took (hard to get good ones b/c of glare from glass or having no flash on).
It was dark by the time we exited and we decided to head back and do food back in Coogee. I wound up just making some BBQ chicken, corn and mashed potatoes for myself, and people just scavenged the leftovers. We just hung around for most of the night before crashing.

Saturday

New header for the blog! Actually this is the center part of a picture I actually took in the blue mountains...be jealous.
The morning I woke up really early to go take that RSA course down town. Expecting some dumb boring instructional session, this was the total opposite. The lady we had was hysterical. Her sense of humor, while a bit weird, was great. Her basic strategy was to cover what we needed, doggy-ear the pages with the answers on them for the test, and go over stuff that would actually be relevant to us. Everyone in the class except for 3(probably 20 ppl total) were originally from other countries (Holland, Russia, UK, France, Napal, Inida, Mexico, etc.) Very dynamic, really fun, she spent a lot of lessons recounting related stories of her own exploits to us as well. We had a break for lunch (went to a Thai place with 3 others in the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) food court) came back, and eventually took the test. We got out around 3pm so I decided to do some exploring on my own.
I decided to walk around the QVB and just kinda window shop. I found the Australian Geographic (similar to National Geographic) store...some of you may be receiving presents from there, we shall see. I also wound up getting a pair of jeans and a nice shirt (at another store, not Australian Geographic) considering they weren't their normal $80 pair of jeans and however much for a shirt.
Post-wardrobe expansion (it's limited), I strolled through Hyde Park and over to the NSW Art Gallery. Seeing as it was free to enter, I took a look around the main floor just kinda wasting time and looking around. Found some really cool paintings. Really enjoyed some by a surrealist named James Gleeson (google if you please). Got a phone call from a few of the IES kids for plans for the evening as the Palace was supposed to be having something with free drinks from 9-10. So I veeeery slowly walked back to the bus stop taking my time to enjoy the Bells from St. Mary's Cathedral and the gorgeous trees of Hyde Park (wish I had my camera). As I got to the bus stop, I actually saw three guys out in the field with two cups and a bottle each practicing bar tricks (like flipping bottle around your head and pouring, etc.) Kinda cool to watch while waiting.
Aliza, Mike, Alex C., Kim and I got food at Thai Me Up for dinner (yeah, it's a Thai chain with a great name...and yes, I had Thai twice today...it's just sooo good). We went back to Aliza's for a bit to watch the Olympics but headed back out a little too late to get the free drinks at palace. We were at the bar JUST as they stopped. So we played a few rounds of pool while watching Olympics there and watched th rest back in Aliza's place. Check blog later for some fun photos of tonight.

Friday

This morning I woke up with some motivation. I meandered into the living room, opened up my laptop and started doing some planning. I got a calendar together for classes, tests, breaks, etc. Hooray Outlook! I tried to figure out when I would have some long weekends I could exploit for traveling and when would be good times to be doing other things.
Most of the morning was done getting some productive things done on the computer. I threw a couple of movies up on the TV while working to keep myself entertained. Saw Hancock and half of We Own the Night.
Stuff, stuff, stuff...

Fajita Night! Shapiro and the boys decided it was time for Fajita night (again, for them). Grocery shopping ensued. And they were delicious... Shapiro made some really good Guacamole and chicken fajitas while a couple others of us made Nachos. We tried a mexican beer with dinner (Ariba) kinda like Carona and some other one that had no flavor whatsoever (not mexican...tasmanian).
Around 10 we headed over to the sports bar to find the nearest television that had the Olympic's Opening ceremony on. There was no sound, being a bar with other music playing, but WOOOOW, that was amazing.
We were having debates on the tile performance part whether it was motorized or if there were people under it. I was floored when they all crawled out and started waving. Conclusions 1) China has too many people 2) those people have too much time 3) their extra time is used to fuel their OCD perfectionism.

Supplemental post: My apartment

So it's hard to believe that I've been here for about 3 weeks, craziness. I also just now thought that i haven't posted any pics of my apartment. So, instead here's a small guided tour. I apologize for when it turns sideways, you may have to tilt your head a little.

Walkin' like crazy

Today was a nice recovery day from the work of the days before. I woke up and read for a bit, in a leisurely way. Eldest at this point is practically impossible to put down. So afterward I headed out on my mission for the day. Reclaim the wallet! Ah, yes...a key part of the story I forgot from Tuesday. So on the way back from Tuesday nights revelry, I seemed to have lost my wallet (don't freak, mom, it all worked out). I realized that I had to have it when I got on the bus to use my bus pass, so it had to be w/ the buses. The next morning (wed) I called the bus station to see if they had found my wallet, and they had. Since yesterday was so full, I had no time to go get it. So I walked to the station (3.2 km each way) and simply picked it up w/ a few signatures.
On the way back I stopped in a random park I saw, not much was there, just lots of cool plant life. I headed back watching a storm front roll in. Stopped in the Backpacker's World Travel store and got lots of brochures while talking to a guy, then in the rain, headed to the Palace to get a job application. The guy there asked if i had a RSA cert (responsible service of alcohol), and said to essentially come back when I did. I headed back and did some internet pursuing (signing up for an RSA course for Saturday at 9:30am) and finished Eldest (veeeery good book).
Later we grabbed some Thai (amazing, as always) and went to go see Pinapple Express at the local theater. Funny, not bad, not astounding, but amusing. We thought of heading up to UniBar afterward, but it was later and not worth it. Grabbed some cheesy bread at the local dominos (sooo goooood) and went back home.

Presentations Galore

Wednesday began a little bleary eyed. Woke up and tried to do some of my remaining work for the day. As I said in my last post, there were a lot of stories exchanged between the events of the previous night. Finished my response journal for the God, Life class and then began to head up to campus around 11, the bus was necessary. Got there, printed out my journal in the study abroad office and then headed to class. Class was rather uneventful, but the tutorial was much more interesting. Luke and I gave our presentation of the reading (it was more of a discussion leading than a presentation), and the debates and comments that ensued were much more engaging. Luke and I actually put on a pretty good duo. I do have one complaint about the professor. He's a very very bright man, very interesting, very astute, however he is very biased. He provides very good arguments and is excellent at voicing them, however all of his points are on the atheist side. I feel almost slighted because I would like to see strong arguments on both sides.

During my breaks I was busy working on the one page summary for my Sport, Law class. Sport Law proved, again, uneventful. Printed that page during the break, and then went to tutorial. Here I mustered my last bit of strength (I was dying by the end of the day) gave my presentation, talked a bit about the Olympics and such with the lecturer, and left to go to steak day. Ate, talked with some people. Came back, read some and watched There Will Be Blood. Bed never felt so good.
Note to self: goon is a bad decision...

B-days!

Tuesday began at 7am. Oh the joy! Got up and got ready to head out shortly after 8 so I could walk up to campus and get there in time to print of my journal response for my media class. On the way, because it was so early, I got to see a lot of the kids going to school along Coogee Bay road. There are a surprising number of schools on that road. And most, if not all of them seem to have uniforms. Now, those of you in Charleston may think BE, but no...these were beyond that (some were similar). These looked like traditional english school boys (picture for example). Any of you girls would have done the "awwww, how cute," trust me. So, that was interesting.
Class was not bad, some gernal discussion on technology mainly revolving around the cell phone. We eached talked in groups and did our own biography of our cell phone, from when we first got it, how we used it, how our use of it has changed, etc. Actually kinda weird to think back to it. Try it sometime.
So class was over by 10:30. I worked in the library for a while trying to get some reading a writing done. I got most of my summaries for my God, Life class done, afterward I gave my reader to Rachel since she needed it for class. I eventually headed back to do some more reading for classes (mainly the Sports, Law reading). Read and read, wrote some more of the summaries, etc.

For dinner we all decided to go to 5 o's pretty early in the night. Dinner for $5 is so wonderful. We decided to do a little pre-game celebration for Chris and Drew's B-day over at the Alfreda St. house. There was goon, lots of goon. Later that night we decided to go to Scruffy Murphy's as seems to be our new tradition. It was a lot of fun. It was mayhem, everyone had a crazy night. The next morning was a lot of interesting "whoa, what happened?" or "here's my story." They had a good b-day to say the least.

Monday, Bloody Monday

Well it started out as a beautiful day (and stayed that way at least in weather). I walked up to campus and attended my two classes for the morning. God, Life was pretty uneventful. Rachel actually just switched into that class, so I helped get her up to speed. I'm kinda wary of this professor. I guess I need to get a better feel for him but he seems pretty quick to discount arguments or argue that things are full of holes. Hmm, full opinion to come later.
The other class, Media, was also nothing too spectacular. It was a lot of talk about inventions and their effect on society and about some of the readings which, having just switched in, I had not done. On a more fun note, those readings (3 of them) are due tomorrow with 1 page responses for two of the three!! More reading!!! whoo hoo!
On a strange note, both of my classes showed this exact same picture today. Not sure why, but they did.
So I walked home to get some lunch after visiting a few other informational locations on campus. On the way home I noticed for the first time how many what we will call "Baby walkers" there are around Coogee Beach. There are an inordinate amount of people walking who are pregnant or with strollers or some other child they carry/propel.
Lunch was a sandwich and from there, guess what I did? Oh, come on, guess!!
I READ.......
All of the motivation I had this past week was drained out of me in one night. Now I've been trying to read/write with breaks as motivation whether it be this blog or reading Eldest (good book, much better than Eragon), but to no avail. These journals and readings are painful. Such is my retrubution for being in Sydney, right? Yes, all you people back home may relish in the fact that I'm doing stupid work right now if it helps you justify the world. Whatever, I just have to pass. Back to finish at least the assignment due tomorrow.

Worst part is that there are many other things I need to try to sort out this week before it gets to far into the session such as GRE (yes, mother, I know), joining clubs, finding a job, and if I will do any of the study abroad designed trips. Tomorrow I'm done by 10:30am so hopefully I can get much done then. Either that or I'll just go swim in freezing cold water or sunburn!

Spaghetti Night

So today I woke up and began more reading...such is my life. This stuff got a lot denser and I don't appreciate it. We all just kinda had a lazy morning. But it was a beautiful day. I went out and did some grocery shopping while it was nice out. Got back, unloaded, grabbed my books and headed up to the Park/Cliffs to do some readings. Found a nice sunny spot and a tree to lean against. It was a combination of reading dense stuff and people watching when I was bored. There was an interesting group of girls talking to two loud Irish guys that were entertaining for a while, other people that walked by, etc. The WEIRD thing that happened though was a noise I heard. For all those familiar with it, I swear I heard the jingle from Power rangers when their communicator/watch things go off. It was clear as day. Very strange, no idea where or what it came from but I heard it. So I continued reading till the sun got a little lower and I got a little chilly and I moved my shindig inside.

I had mentioned doing some cooking that evening, and the plans snow balled from there from few to many. We decided to do some easy spaghetti, but the people who went shopping were determined that we wouldn't have enough to feed everyone. We had 8 people eat and let me tell you what we cooked:
3 lbs. of ground beef w/ one onion mixed in
4 lbs. of spaghetti
4 containers of tomato sauce (w/ 2 carrots, 2 tomatoes, and 1 lg green pepper inside)
It was all I could do to keep it in the pots and pans. They also got some ceasar salad and garlic bread. So we feasted and we didn't make a dent. We put a LARGE pot of leftovers in the fridge. We watched a few more episodes of Entourage (pretty funny show, it's growing on me) and retired to either sleep or reading.

Uneventful Saturday

Spent most of the day just kinda lounging, working on my presentations and watching a few movies. Got to talk to momma on Skype. Gotta get that going with the rest of the family, but requires coordination and I'm still trying to get a schedule down. Other than that, yeah...not much. Lot of planning (well thinking about it), wanderings, and random ventures.

hmmm..probably the shortest post known to man.

Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!

So this fine Friday had a pretty uneventful morning. Woke up sans alarm, read a little, worked a bit on readings for classes and mostly stayed around the apartment. Nothing much to speak of.

This afternoon however was rather fun. Rachel and Janessa had talked to me yesterday about going to the Star City Casino tonight. It's the only Casino in NSW (the state), and it's pretty large. My response..."could be fun." I expanded the plans a bit and offered to make dinner for whoever was coming. I figured I could whip up the Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo I learned to make. It's easy, simple, and pretty cheap. I took some food over to their place (ironically they are located on Alfreda St) and the three of us went to the store to get the rest of the supplies. There were about 7 of us eating in total. Most of them stayed downstairs while Rachel and I cooked upstairs (someone had to show me around the kitchen). A bit later be brought down the food to enjoy bowls fo pasta and what little ceasar salad we had bought. Most of them were pretty funny from the goon they had already broken into.

Post meal and wine we headed to the bus stop and met Alex and Victor there. Some of the guys (twins, Shapirro, and others that I won't bother with names) had gone earlier since were more into poker than we were. It was a decent walk ~20min or so from the bus stop to the Casino having to walk over the bridge connecting the two sides of Darling Harbor.
We got there and this place was pretty massive. Not knowing where to start, Rachel and I tested the slot machines. No surprise there...won some but lost most of it.
We spent most of our time watching the other guys play at three card poker and blackjack, it was pretty fun even watching. Eventually I wanted to have some fun of my own so I headed over to the cheap black jack table and grabbed a seat when it opened. I had my peanut gallery of Victor, Alex, and Rachel behind me giving either random advice, most of which I already knew, or more importantly the "should I or shouldn't I" luck divinations. My luck was horrible. Most of the games I spent in the red and were dealt more 14's and 15's than any man should get. But it was a good time, and that was more important really, no more than I would have spent on a bar or club.

SOS

So today was an alarm clock-less morning. The lab I had for my Neuropharm class was "not on" this week, as they say. So I slept in a bit (still means I got up round 9, but I got up at my own time). Figured with the excess time, I'd put a larger dent in the book since I want to finish it being so close to the end. So I read for a bit and blogged a bit. Round 1 I headed up to campus for my Marine Environment class. Tad bit difficult finding the room (again...these people need better signs).
Class was pretty laid bad. The lecturer didn't quite control the class as well as she should have, but whatever. Basically this class is 200 people (didn't look like it though) and a majority are study abroad kids. The class is gonna be taught by several professors with three field trips on Saturdays: some place I forget the name of, the Sydney Aquarium, and Botany Bay. Should be fun and easy and a tad interesting. The second hour of class was spent just watching part of the Blue Planet series from the BBC, and we still got out about 45 min early. There was a mad rush at the end of class because for the first field trip we had to sign up for the either the am or pm trip. Kim and I chose the am trip figuring we could just get it done and have the rest of our Saturday.
Afterward Kim and I milled about a bit and eventually headed up to the Study Abroad office. I convinced myself to switch out of my Neuropharm class. While it didn't seem to be hard and very doable, I did realize that it serves no purpose for me back home besides my enhanced knowledge, and that my time might be better spent earning that third humanities credit that I need. So after much searching (and a very frustrated person in the study abroad office...she wasn't that knowledgeable) we managed to find a Film and Media Studies class that seemed vaguely interesting. We shall see.
New schedules for those that wish to know:









Translated:









So after that I grabbed one of the books I needed from the book store, met up with Janessa and walked back from campus. I got back to our room and the big buzz for the night was the Olympic Fever SOS (Start of Session) Party down at the Roundhouse on campus. It was supposed to be their blowout event for the beginning of the semester with performers like the winner of the Australian Idol show. The twins, Shapirro, Jason and I grabbed some food at an Italian Pizzeria/Pasta place on Coogee Bay (decently cheap but good). After dinner we looked into catching a bus but the stops we were near didn't have those buses running anymore, so we walked up to campus and got to the party a little after 9. The theme of the party meant that people were encouraged to dress up like their country. There were some funny costumes, some unfortunate spandex, and a group of people with shirts saying "the Norwegian Drinking Team". It was funny. So we hung around, danced, talked, had some cheap beer and eventually went back around 1-2...probably closer to 2. We walked back as well, and because some people suggested food we actually did a random stop. Now, not much is open at 2am, but there was a Turkish place and a place called Garlo's Meat Pies. Curiosity got the best of me and some of us got some little meat pies (mine, I believe, was Chili Beef) and at them partially there and partially back at the apartment. Not bad, really. More just like eating chili with really flaky bread.

Then sleep.

Oh, picture is of (from right to left) Jenessa, Rachel, and myself