Yet another Week

The past week hasn't really been anything too special. Classes as usual, hard at work on 3 essays and just being lazy. Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, so Jess, Tahlia, Nikki, Elli and I decided to get a little dressed up and check out the nightlife. It wasn't near as exciting as I had hoped unfortunately. Jess decided to draw clovers on all of us with make up and tie a piece of cloth around my neck... i felt like a 'chip'n'dale' mixed with Fred from Scooby Doo. Interesting. Tahlia was the ribbon queen, tying ribbons everywhere on us. She loves dressing up so I just let her run with it. Anyways, the weekend was spent in the library trying to finish up a paper thats worth 1/3 of my grade. Nikki turns 21 on Tuesday so I'm trying to be proactive and get my assignments done so I can celebrate with her. Other than that, we're in the planning stages of our intrasemester break (spring break as us Americans say) travels! Planning is exhausting, but hopefully we get things figured out soon! This weekend coming up, Jess, Nikki and I are off to the Whitsunday Islands! We leave friday and will just hang in Airlie Beach, Saturday we have an all day sailing trip that will take us to Whitehaven Beach, and Sunday we get to explore Airlie and then return home. I am sooo excited to go. I'll keep you more than updated on how that goes!

I'm still not used to the fact that people drive on the left side of the road (I still look the wrong way when crossing the street), they walk up the left side of the stairs...so awkward, and I definitely am not used to the metric system. kg, km, liters, and degrees celsius is not very adaptable! Counters are benches, the trunk of a car is a boot, hair bangs are fringe, they don't have the same candy and chocolate as in America (they have snickers, kit kat and milky way but taste completely different) Cadbury is Australian made so thats what most chocolate is ( Picnics are delicious, a mix between kit kat and snickers), they say 'reckon' frequently, thank you is 'cheers' and they 'ring' their 'mates'. Also, one of my favorites (because lots of people here dislike redheads for some reason) is Wranga. Some of the language here is definitely worth bringing back to the US. 'Heaps' for instance is better than 'lots'.  At uni, you call your professors by their first name, unlike the US where we refer to them as professor or Dr. I'm still getting used to that. It seems so informal and at UND you'd get yelled at and they'd say "I didn't go though 8 years of higher education to not be called DR!"

Its amazing how fast time is flying here! I'm loving every minute of it and can't wait until my big excursions begin! Tonight Nikki and are taking advantage of the Red Frogs Service. Its a group affiliated with our uni and they come pick up uni students for free, bring them to a Christian church for a free dinner and then mass. Its not Catholic for me, or Lutheran for her, but I think Christian is as good as we're going to get. I haven't seen a single Catholic church since I've been here, mostly Anglican churches. So, hopefully its a good experience so we can make it more regular (who could pass up a free nice dinner right?).

Buh Bye for Now!


Here are some picture of me feeding elephants and kangaroos at the Australian Zoo! Just got them from Nikki :)

 (Mmmm Watermelon! They just suck it right out of your hand)

Amazing Trip!