Sunday October 17, 2010

Sunday I once again got up fairly early because I couldn’t sleep with my morning cough…again, lovely I know. I also still had no voice, which I realized I had lost mostly due to my cold, although I’m sure Oktoberfest didn’t help. Later that morning I had volleyball, so I went to that and spent the entire day playing. It was another gorgeous day out and I couldn’t think of any better way to spend it. I got back from volleyball around 3:30 or 4 at which point I decided to make an early dinner because I was going to go see Eat, Pray, Love at 6 with some friends from volleyball. Before anyone comments, yes Australia is really behind in their movies, so ones that may have come out two months ago for you guys are just coming out for us now. Personally I thought the movie was great, and I can’t wait to read the book, which I heard is even better than the movie. People that had already read the book said that the movie wasn’t nearly as good, which makes me glad that I decided to hold off on reading the book. Once I got home from the movie I just relaxed for a little while before getting to bed pretty early. I still had no voice due to the cold and thought it’d be best for me to get some rest.

Saturday October 16, 2010

Saturday was the first beautiful day we’ve had in weeks. It also happened to be Oktoberfest, so Carrie, Sam, Camilla, Dani and I decided to head to the Brisbane show grounds where they were hosting a huge Oktoberfest Festival. Supposedly it’s one of the biggest Oktoberfest celebrations in the world, although I’m sure it doesn’t compare to Oktoberfest in Munich. We didn’t have any lederhosen so we had to settle for just doing pigtail braids. I’ve honestly never actually celebrated Oktoberfest before, so this was quite the experience for me. Considering the fact that I’m not a huge fan of beer, I was pleasantly surprised by the beers they had at the festival. The whole experience was amazing. There were people dressed in lederhosen with their beer steins everywhere and they had a huge tent with a real German band playing and people doing crazy dances. There were beer stands all over the show grounds along with tons of German food. We only ended up getting beer and huge pretzels, which was enough for us and they were delicious. I don’t remember the last time I had a soft pretzel, or a pretzel at all for that matter. We ended up staying at Oktoberfest until around 9:30 at which point we headed back into the city to go get some “dinner”. We went to Pancake Manor, the most delicious pancake place I’ve ever been to and got some dessert pancakes. Dani, Carrie and I all got pancakes with grilled bananas, walnuts, chocolate ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream on them. Pancakes don’t get much better than that. By the time we left Pancake Manor it was about 11:30, and after a day at Oktoberfest, Dani and I had completely lost our voices. It was actually quite entertaining to hear us try and talk. When we finally got home it was close to 12 and after such a busy day on our feet (there weren’t many places to sit at Oktoberfest), we all just crashed.

Friday October 15, 2010

Friday morning I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep because I kept coughing…lovely I know. Since I couldn’t sleep I just decided to get up and try and get some work done. That ended up being an epic failure because I was so tired, so I decided to try and go back to sleep. I must say at first I felt awful for trying to sleep in the middle of the day, but the weather was not good and I realized that when I used to stay home sick from school, that’s what I was supposed to do. That was slightly comforting to me and I definitely needed to just relax, but I still hate sleeping the day away. On the bright side, when I woke up I felt much better. That night I once again made myself a good dinner, some chicken tikka masala. Interestingly enough I’ve gotten into some very different foods since being here; foods that I will miss when I go home due to Cheshire’s limited international food selection. After dinner Zach, Carrie, Dani and I needed to go to the wine store, so we walked to Hawken Drive (the “downtown” area in our suburb) and ended up also getting some delicious gelato. When we returned home we had some friends over before going to another friends house that night. It was great to finally just get to hang out with people at a house and get to talk to everyone.

Thursday October 14, 2010

Thursday the weather was finally starting to improve, but sadly my cold was getting worse. I had class in the morning and then worked on my math assignment on campus before my class at 12. Mom and Dad before you comment on my procrastinating so much on my assignment, remember that it’s for the class where I’m supposed to do most of the assignment in class with my TA. Anyway, after my class I headed home to get some lunch. After having my usual greek yogurt and granola I headed back to campus to go to the library and get some work done before volleyball at 5. After doing some work I was quite happy because I think I’m finally starting to understand my circuits course, but it will still require a lot of work. Continuing my good mood, volleyball ended up being particularly fun and we got to play 2s for a while, which most of us find more fun that 6s. That’s probably mainly due to the fact that a beach court is smaller than an indoor court, so to have 6 people on one side on a beach court is kind of hectic. After volleyball I decided to make myself a decent dinner, which means that it involved meat because I had pretty much been living off of pasta for the past week. Since I had a cold I decided it would be best for me to have an early night and just get some sleep, which felt amazing.

Wednesday October 13, 2010

Wednesday I had class in the morning from 10-12, and then I sat outside on campus for a little while getting some work done. Once again the weather wasn’t too great so I ended up heading home and more or less just lounging around and hanging out with friends. Upon arriving at home I did my laundry, which was much needed. I also got some work done, which was good, but I don’t have any more assignments due until the end of the semester, which is quickly approaching ☹. While writing this I’m realizing that it sounds like I’m not doing anything, but fairly enough, I think it was needed after the last two weeks of insanity.

Tuesday October 12, 2010

On Tuesday Dani and I were considering going to the beach, but I was getting a cold and it was crappy weather…again. So instead, I took the day to just lounge around for the first time in weeks. I was slightly productive and went to Toowong to get some food and internet, but overall I felt that with the amount of work I had had lately, I deserved a day to just relax. Later that day I went to volleyball, per usual (although with my work I hadn’t been able to go at all the week before). On the down side, it wasn’t great weather so I ended up only staying for a little bit before heading home to get some dinner. That pretty much sums up my day, relaxing, volleyball, dinner and hanging out with friends.

Monday October 11, 2010

Monday morning Sam and Linds had to get up around 6:30, and I got up around 7. They didn’t leave until 8, which was nice that I at least got to spend a little bit more time with them. We discussed the prospect of my staying another semester, and although I think I know what the right decision is, I’m still not entirely certain it’s what I want. On the other hand, there really is no right or wrong decision, this is one of those gray areas that doesn’t really have an answer. Anyway, once they left Dani and I made our grocery list and headed to the store in the pouring rain. Some people thought we were insane for still attempting to host Thanksgiving, but we thought it was well worth it. Upon returning from the store I read over my paper again to make sure it was ok and then proceeded to start preparing stuff for Thanksgiving. Since we’re in Australia and they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, we had to make some substitutions on some stereotypical Thanksgiving foods. For one thing, they don’t sell canned pumpkin, so we couldn’t make pumpkin pie. Instead I just made two apple pies using CLC’s amazing recipe. They also don’t sell anything but frozen turkeys and we didn’t have time to thaw a turkey, nor could anyone spend the day watching it. So instead we substituted premade chicken, which personally, I think chicken and turkey taste pretty similar, so I was ok with it. Besides it took a huge stress off of Dani and I. Around 12:30 I had to go to campus to hand in my paper and go to class, so I was only able to prepare the apples for the apple pie prior to leaving for class. Class itself was fairly interesting, we discussed Native Americans for a little while and related the way we treat our Natives to the way they treat their Aboriginals. Like I said it was actually pretty interesting, and brought to my attention the fact that our schools neglect to really teach us about Native Americans. It made me feel like in America we go with the concept ignorance is bliss. If most citizens don’t know about the wars and history of the Native Americans then we won’t judge them, and hopefully vice versa. Quite frankly, it upset me to realize that we know so little about our natives. It also made me realize how segregated they are from us. I have never really met a Native American, which when you think about it, is really strange. Sometimes it’s pretty scary to think how little we know about things. It was also kind of ironic to have this discussion on the day that we were celebrating Thanksgiving. Speaking of which, once I got out of class, I had to kind of rush to get everything together so that we could actually eat that night. On the bright side Dani and I had a lot of help from some really great friends. We held the actual celebration at our friends Erin and Augie’s house. They live just down the street, but they have a much nicer house and a much bigger/better kitchen. We ended up cooking the pies in their oven because we needed our oven to cook potatoes. At our other friends’ house they cooked the green beans and some potatoes for us, and we made the sweet potatoes and some of the mashed potatoes. I must say, I never realized just how much work cooking all this stuff is. Granted we cheated on a lot of foods due to limited time, but it was fun getting to cook with everyone and just having everyone come together for a big family dinner. We ended up eating around 7:30, which personally I thought was the perfect time. There were 18 people that came and it seemed like everyone had a great time. Dani and I definitely felt proud of ourselves for our estimates on how much food we would need and for just pulling off the whole thing in general. Like I said, it was great night with great friends. It was also a great celebration for me for finally being done with the obscene amount of work I had had the past week. From that point out it’s pretty smooth sailing for me. A bunch of us hung around Erin and Augie’s house until 11 or 12, at which point we were pretty tired and headed home to get some sleep.