My Birthday!

Sunday was my 22nd birthday! My house mates woke me up at midnight and they had two cakes for me, and they sung happy birthday. They were trying to open a bottle of champaign and wanted to shake it over me, but I said I didn't want to get all sticky cause I was in my pjs. They finally got it open and acted like they wouldn't do it, but then Siddhant grabbed the bottle and chased me with it and got my backside! So, I was holding the knife I used to cut the cakes, and turned and hit him with the flat side wiping cake on him. Haha, it didn't dawn on me until later what that must have looked like, me going for him with a knife! ;P He was completely safe, cause I knew what I was doing, and even so, it wasn't a sharp knife, but I did feel a bit bad about it later. We had a good laugh about that though. ;P We stayed up for a bit and talked then went back to bed. I had to work 3 hours that day, but it was good cause I didn't have anything planned anyway. At work Anita bought be a big cookie. ;P Work that week was even more fun than usual cause Sue and Allie were gone (that's not the reason) and so Judy, the lady who trained me over at Corio (and who works at the Corio store) came over to help while Sue and Allie were gone. She's a really fun lady, I just love her! It was even more interesting cause we have two milk wands on the coffee machine, but one wasn't working properly (it took FOREVER to warm up the milk). The good thing was that the other wand was even faster than normal at warming the milk, but it's more inconvenient. So, we have the coffee grinder, then on that end of the machine the wand that was working, and at the other end is the one that was poopy, and that's the one we usually use cause it's easier for someone else to make shots that way. So, it was really busy both Saturday and Sunday, so when normally two people on the machine is enough, we had a circus of three people cause one would stand in the middle with the milk, while one person danced around the milk person getting shots ready, while the third person dusted the drinks and handed them out to people. It was hectic, but one of those things that is just fun cause it's different and doesn't happen often. ;P

When I got home from work, later that day Sachi and I went to the gym to work out and I picked up an application; the guy let me work out for free that day. :) I have been trying to decide for a long time whether or not I wanted to get onto the DUSA swim team, it had a lot of pros and cons associated with it. I would get to break up the monotony of my life of work and study, be motivated to work out more (cause I would be paying for the gym), would get in better shape (which also always motivates me to eat better), I would get to meet new people and go to fun functions with the team, and during mid-semester break I would get to compete in Melbourne! The cons were mostly money, it's quite expensive to join, plus I would have to buy a one-piece swimming suit, which I don't have, goggles, a cap, and most of all, a gym membership so I could train. I finally decided that my health and well-being is more important, and I officially joined yesterday, paid my fees and all. After going to class, dropping muffins off, and going to lab, I rode my bike to the gym today. Siddhant drove me to buy swimming stuff earlier today, and we also stopped by the bike store so I could get a new pedal for my poor bike. We saw that the cheapest pedal was $13, and so I went up to the guy in the store and said "my entire bike cost $79, so I really don't want to pay $13 for a pedal, can you help?" He went in the back and gave be this heavy-duty white pedal for free!! It was very nice of him! My bike's still not fixed yet cause the medal part from the previous pedal is still in there, and we don't have any tools for me to get it out. So, it looks like I'll have to take my bike down there, I just hope they don't charge much or at all to take that out... I might ask around and see if anyone I know has some tools. :) So, I did ride to the gym with no pedal, but it wasn't that bad, the worst part is that it's been raining all day, so it was cold and wet, but not too bad. It felt good to get out there and ride again. :) So, I turned in all of my stuff and paid the first fee at the gym. Overall I think it's a good deal, cause you get to attend classes, use the pool, sauna... and you get to talk with someone to set up a work out plan for what you want to accomplish. :) Anyway, it felt good to get back into the pool, but man I'm out of shape!

Oh, another little exciting thing, when I dropped off muffins to Laura in the STA office (she's the one who's helped me with my Tassie trip and my Alice Springs trip, she's originally from the US as well, but's married to an Aussie... she's not too much older than me) she asked me if I'd been to the Werribee zoo yet, and I said no. She said that her and some friends were planning on going there some weekend, and that they get in free with their STA cards, so she said we could grab one for me, and all go together! I am excited! I just hope it all works out with work, I'm sure it'll be ok. :) The only reason I say that is because Anita resigned (numerous reasons) and so did Deb (health reasons), so Sue and Allie are a bit stressed at the moment, so I've been trying not to ask for too much time off. I have let them know about this swimming thing already and they seem fine with that. :) One more thing before I go, yesterday Ane (my Norwegian friend) took me out after work for a late birthday dinner, sushi and ice cream. :P She also gave me a big block of Dime (Norwegian chocolate she got at IKEA) for a present! :P Yum yum. Ok, I'll finish off this novel now. ;P

Muffin Break staff party

On Thursday night I made Janel's Scotch-a-roo recipe. I am really happy it turned out cause I had to use honey instead of corn syrup (they have it here but we just couldn't find any at Safeway). My housemates absolutely loved them and they look forward to me making another batch just for the house. :P Anyway, after work on Friday I stuck around with Sue and Allie (my bosses) and went home with them while they got changed and got some party platers ready, then we all went to the staff party at Anita's house. As far as who I work with, most people are high school age, or my age; there are 3 older (and by that I mean just older than me) women, 2 probably in their 30's and one maybe in her 40's. One of them is a baker. :) Anyway, we hung out outside on the covered patio where there was a heater and chatted for a while whilst munching on party food. :) The Scotch-a-roos were a huge hit! Sue bought her and I drinks, so I had a few bitch beers. ;P Later we all went into the music room, in which there is a fireplace, and made s'mores (which I brought the ingredients that Dad sent me), they were also a huge hit, although not everyone tried some. I played around on the didgeridoo and Anita played the piano a bit. We talked more and messed around, during which time people slowly trickled out. Later we put on the Greese record and sang along to that for a bit. ;P After that we decided to go out on the town. AJ, Sue, Allie, Anita and I all went out to a bar called Mr. Hyde, they were playing Sin City on the wall (which you could only see cause the music was on) and I had a rum and coke. We sat there for a bit then went to another place I forget the name to, but they were playing the olympics on the wall there, the US won again Japan in volley ball (I think at least, I guess I didn't see the end, but they were up quite a bit when we left ;P). Sue and Allie met a few of their good friends there (a couple), we then all left together when they were about to close, so just before 2:00 AM. Then we went and stood in line at Club4Play. The bouncer wouldn't let Sue and Allie's friend's in cause they were "too drunk" and Allie didn't have his ID on him (don't know why), and Sue leaned over to kiss her friend on the cheek to say goodbye, and she thinks that's why the bouncer wouldn't let her in (cause maybe he thought she was with them and since they were drunk she was too). Anyway, since they wouldn't let her in we all left. They thought later that it might have been an age thing too, but we're not sure (they're in their 30's so not that old). We then went to Lambie's (it's a pub underneath the wool museum, I love that! ;P Anyway, we got in there (Allie had gone and got his ID out of the car) and we went inside and danced the night away until they closed. We headed home (I was staying the night at Anita's) at around 3:15ish. I slept in Anita's brother's room, which I realize sounds kind of funny, but he, for some reason, sleeps in the den. :) The bed was SOOO comfortable!! I got up at 9:15 that morning to shower and get ready for work. I got all packed up and had some toast and chatted with Anita's dad for a bit, then Anita came down stairs (she didn't have to work until 1:00 but got up anyway, how nice ;P). I talked with her and her mom while munching on some of the left over crackers and things before they drove me to work. Anita's mom insisted I take some food with me, which I didn't mind, cause there was heaps! I left some s'more ingredients with them as well as some of the left-over scotch-a-roos. Haha, Sue and Allie had also brought over a bunch of muffins, and needless to say none of them got eaten, which we all knew would happen. ;P We're all a bit muffined out. :) All in all, it was a good night. :) I really like Anita and her family, they're all so nice!

pics on Facebook

For anyone who's interested and has a Facebook account, I have posted my pics from the trip up there. If you don't have a facebook account and would like to see the pics, just leave a comment to this post with your email address and I can send you a link to look at them. :)

David leaves :(

On Friday morning David and I got up early to catch the earliest bus again (6:12) to the train station so he could take the shuttle to the Melbourne airport. I was going to take it with him, but we both figured that I would just have to say goodbye right after we got there and we'd probably just sleep on the bus anyway, so it was worth saving $35. So, I said goodbye to David for the 2nd time that morning. :( I started walking back to the bus stop but decided that I wanted to walk down by the bay and watch the sun rise, I got some really nice pictures, and it was really relaxing, just what I needed. Later that day I found that the post man had come while I was in the shower and so now I had to go by the post office and pick up my package that Dad sent me. It was quite windy and rainy out, and this was actually the first time I had ridden my bike since I'd moved into this house (funny cause I used to ride it everywhere before, I just don't need to know that I'm so close to campus). I noticed that the right pedal was loose, that was annoying, and I am out of shape. The post office luckily isn't far away, but I found (as I thought might happen) that the box wouldn't fit in my bag, so we opened it and then I could fit it all. :) The older woman and man at the post office were very nice and helpful, they took all of the packing peanuts for me. :) On the way home my right pedal came clear off, which made it much more difficult to pedal, but I made it. :) Luckily the last leg is downhill. Anyway, Dad sent me my three text books I ordered online, and some s'more ingredients! I also got an early birthday present, Janel made me a blue, duck-print pillowcase! I love it! Dad also sent along a bunch of clippings and letters in Norwegian that they found in Grandma's house as well as Grandma's diary from her trip to Norway in the 50's! I am going to try and translate it all, it'll be easy for the songs and clippings that are typed, but the letters and diary will be hard cause I'm not that good at reading cursive. Also, some of it is older Norwegian, I can usually make it out on typed stuff, but it'll be hard on the hand written stuff! Anyway, back to Friday, I spent the rest of that day and saturday catching up on classes and I worked on Sunday and then studied some more. I have been doing nothing but studying and watching Bleach on Youtube ever since really. Don't worry, mostly studying... I think. ;P I have a good 20 hours of work this week, so that's good, work from 9:30 am- 9:30 pm on Friday! Wow. On Saturday Anita's having a Muffin Break Staff party at her house, that should be fun. I am going to bring the S'more ingredients that Dad sent and hopefully (if I can find all of the ingredients here) make some of Janel's famous scotcheroos (peanut butter rice crispy treats with chocholate on top). Did you know that over here they call them Rice Bubbles? :P

David and I around Melbourne

So, after getting back from our trip, David came to most of my classes with me, I think he enjoyed it. :P I wanted to have a day to wonder around Geelong and Melbourne with him before he left, so we only had that week. I had a lab scheduled from 2-5 on Tuesday, but otherwise no classes that day, so instead of going to Melbourne that day (like I was planning before I saw that I had a lab that day) we wondered around Geelong for the first part of the day. We walked along the water, went up to the Botanical Gardens and further. It was a beautiful day, we couldn't have asked for much nicer. We then went to this sushi place for lunch, they had the most amazing chicken, so good we talked about it up until he left. ;P We then caught the 1:00 bus home so I would be in time for my lab. I got all of my stuff ready then walked over to the school, David was staying in my room till I was done. I got there and there was no one there, I found out that I had had the right date, but it had recently been changed and I hadn't recently looked on the schedule (cause I assumed that the dates would stay the same!). So, I didn't have lab that day, I was a little mad cause if I had known then I wouldn't have had to skip class again on Wednesday to go to Melbourne, but it was ok. We went to Melbourne the next day (took the earliest bus to the train station), we got there about 8:00 and were surprised that a lot of stuff didn't open until 10:00!! Crazy Australia, even in the big city places don't open until 10 and close at 5 on weekdays!! We walked around Federation Square, then went to see if I could find this place that I wanted to show David as a surprise. I thought I knew where it was, but my memory thought it was where it wasn't. ;P Luckily some people I asked knew where it was YAY! So, I took David, and made him close his eyes as I lead him down the stairs, which made him uncomfortable. ;P It was totally worth all the trouble of finding though when he opened his eyes! It's a bookstore of all language books!! It's amazing they have EVERYTHING! They even have books written in Latin! Including Virgil and Harry Potter! It's just awesome, I knew we would love it, and he did! We agreed that it was kind of a tease at the same time cause we didn't have money to actually buy anything. ;P Anyway, after that we went to the Australian Centre of the Moving Image where they had an exhibition on independent and student films, which we watched a few of. It was really neat.They had just taken down the big exposition (and the big Mario out front :( ) on video games. Oh well. :) I was on Youtube a few days ago and just happened to see a video that they had a figure of the main character of at the ACMI! I recognized it and so watched the short film, it's quite cute, I recommend it. Geoffrey Rush narrates too! Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouyVS6HOFeo

Then we went to the Arts Centre, looked inside the art gallery and found they had artifacts from the Aztecs and Egypt and Greece up! It was really neat, we were both very glad we went in there! We then went to the Botanical Gardens, which were very lovely. We sat by the lake for a while and there was a lame bird laying on the grass near us just eating grass. He seemed to be doing quite well for having a bad leg, he would get up and waddle closer every now and then, by the time we left he was sitting right next to us! Some of the other birds were funny too cause they would chase each other, quite violently too! One also chased a seagull and wouldn't leave it alone! It was hilarious. We couldn't have asked for a better day that day either! What luck!! We got a little grub at KFC. We walked all over town, we passed by the old gaol (that's how they spell jail here... weird I know ;P), I wanted to go in and see Ned Kelly's armor, but it turned out to be like $18 admission and I didn't want to see it that badly. We then walked over to the Queen's Market, which we found out once we got there that it was closed on Wednesdays!! That was sad, but oh well. We then went down to the docklands (where I had heard there were good places to eat) but there was a lot of construction going on and we didn't see anywhere to eat! Some areas were neat, but there was just too much construction. At the very end of our walk it started to get grey and rainy, we decided to just head back to Geelong and eat there cause we didn't see anything really appealing that was nearby and (at least) my knee hurt. :) We did have to wait an hour though cause we had a return ticket for non-peak travel time and it was 5:00, peak stopped at 6:00, if we wanted to leave earlier we'd have to pay extra. We wouldn't have wanted to do that anyway cause there were LOADS of people heading toward the train station, we had to time our walking down the sidewalks to in between crowds! So, we sat in Gloria Jeans (a coffee place) on the corner across from Southern Cross (train station) and shared a white chocolate; it felt nice cause by then it was getting quite chilly. When we got back to Geelong we ate at a mexican restaurant just near the bus stop, and then took the last bus home (8:42). It was a really good day.