Wow! I’m super behind on this blog thing!
So last thing I remembered that I wanted to put up here was that we made some chocolate chip cookies on our derpy cookie sheet. They were fantastic! We decided to be super stereotypical Americans and deliver them to all of the people in our apartment, a few who had just moved in, and had fun doing it. We left the extra cookies on a plate in the kitchen with a sign that said “Help yourself! :)” and I think they were all gone by the next night. It’s always nice to have your cooking appreciated 😀

Oh no, only one left!
Gosh, I wonder who ate the last one…

Oh, and our can opener doesn’t work. So we named him Petie and had to find alternative methods of opening the can of pineapple…

Our dysfunctional family of kitchen supplies that are… less than idea? But Fantastic.

I similar thing actually happened the other night. We wanted to make pancakes (Jenn had a dream about making heaps of pancakes) so we looked up a (fantastic!) recipe and made some chocolate chip pancakes. Only we had to go out for milk because we are both milk fiends so we were out. On our back from the 24 hour store around the corner, we pass a strip club called the firm. You know where this is going. Pancakes for strippers! No. Wrong. Pancakes for the bouncers! Really. They were kind of laughing at us walking around late on a Saturday night with 4 liters milk and told us so. We mentioned we were making pancakes and they agreed that was an awesome way to spend the night and asked us for some. They said they were working until 5 am so when we finished making pancakes while watching Zoolander, we delivered pancakes to our bouncers. They were absolutely astounded when we turned the corner and they saw us with pancakes. Their faces were priceless. We wanted to get a picture of them with us and the pancakes but there was no non-awkward way to do it. They invited us into the club and said they would even get us free drinks. We turned them down but, I now have confidence that if anyone messes with me on that block, I don’t have to worry 🙂

Anyway, other things that have happened since my last post. For one, I had my low point of getting through culture shock. I got really, really unhappy and decided that I hated it here and it was stupid. But then I decided, at like 3 am to sit down and figure things out. Because I knew I just had a bad attitude and needed to figure things out. So I wrote things out until they made sense. And since then I have felt just *Tons* better. I still have good days and bad ones but that was definitely a turning point. I am going to enjoy these next 3.5 months if it kills me! And I don’t think it will be very hard. Major points to Julia for an email that made me realize that it was okay that it took me awhile to adjust.

I dropped my fifth class (biomechanics) because it was conflicting with other classes and, let’s face it, I’m on study abroad! I want to have fun! Among several other reasons but mostly those. I’ve made a good group of friends in my STEMS class, although really I’ve made friends in all my classes. I even met another ballroom dancer! We’re going to try to go out dancing at some point. I had the shock of my first lab today. I got the document for it and was like, cool, let’s get to work on this. Turns out that what I thought was for one two hour lab session was for the entire semester of lab. Going to a normal people school is interesting.

I’ve been rockclimbing some more, Kiri and I go at least once a week. Last week we went to a gym that only has bouldering which was really fun since that’s what I like to do best anyway. Tomorrow is fancy dress night at the gym and we’re going. We thought it was costume dress up and planned outfits and we’re sticking with that. Fancy dress, dress up? All the same right? Jenn is coming with us! And I am trying to get some other people to come out too. More the merrier right? This weekend I got to go out climbing in the Adelaide hills. It was really fun! There were two really good climbs that I didn’t get to finish. In my defense, one of them was a route they moved late in a day and I had already changed out of my stuff since I thought I was done for the day after fighting the first really good one for like half an hour straight (like 30 mins without touching the ground, I was Dead) but, who’s surprised, I was fairly easily convinced to change back and take it on. I was the last climb of the day and I Almost got it. Totally would handle it if I was fresh 🙂 The other was super challenging and fun and I have SOOOO many bruises from it. I was using my legs to balance so I could rest in this one awkward cave-bit (it was called brainrack so that was the brain) which definitely isn’t the best way to do it and I have a wonderful art piece on my legs to prove it. Also managed to cut up my wrists in addition to trashing my hands and feet. I couldn’t walk (can’t walk, if I’m being realistic) but it was so worth it. And my harness came! I’ve been having to borrow ones from the club. They don’t have my size so I’ve been afraid of dying. But now I have my “well-loved,” fantastic, pink and purple harness. Yes! And while I was climbing outside I found a hex and a quickdraw. Yay for finding some climbing booty!

Top of a tough climb for my friend Anais!
She looks a little terrified… 🙂

It never did get sunny while I was climbing… It was still super fun though 🙂

Water polo has been good. Not the most serious team but Uni Games is apparently an excuse to party and I get to play so I’m not too concerned. I might be getting a ride to a better, more intense set of practices but we’ll see if that works out. But I’ve been having a lot of fun and found another player who has a similar style who I can run picks and stuff with which is Awesome. It’s so nice to have someone who gets you in the water. Unfortunately, he’s a 16 year old guy -_- I finally find a replacement for Georgii and I can’t even actually play with him. But ya, in general, water polo is awesome and I love all of the people. I stayed up to watch the USA vs. AUS women’s polo semi final with two of my teammates (who have rather adopted me) Shannon and Jodie and two other players I didn’t know until I got to the house where we watched the game. It was an awesome game but I was the only American. I couldn’t even celebrate properly since they were all so devastated. Good thing I had the USA shirt someone sent me to keep me company in my patriotism 😀 I may have woken up at 4 am to try to watch the gold medal round. So awesome! I only caught some but we trounced. Go USA! 😀

Urbanest (the student apartments that I live in) had some welcome nights involving free food. We went and met a bunch of people! It’s been fun hanging out with them. One of them just left back for Sydney but it was nice to meet him. The others are pretty cool and we went out to a few bars with them this past weekend. Since I’m legal here, while we were out a tried a sip of every drink one of my friends got. They all tasted Awful! I don’t understand… and it’s so expensive too! But it was really fun to just kind of go out and wander around, get warm in a bar, then wander somewhere else, do cartwheels in a random park, get Jenn “Direction challened” Rougeux to try to tell us which way was home… Life has been pretty good. Also met a Spainard who’s been nice and gets impatient with me when I don’t understand what he’s saying to me in Spanish and sometimes I want to kick him but it’s nice to have someone with the affection and language that I associate with being home 🙂 I tried to stay up with them to watch Bolt run his last race but got until like 5 or something and then gave up. He ran just after I left while I was still awake -_- And I missed a trip to the beach and Thai food because I didn’t want to get up but then I didn’t end up sleeping any later than I would have if I had gone. Instead, I decided prep for the lab that was super easy and 1/5 the length I thought it was. But water polo after and dinner with my adopted family and “the gappies,”  gap year students from the UK and South Africa, made it a good day anyway. This is my friend Ben’s going away party later that night:

Polish dude caught in accidental model pose. *the smolder* (this picture was a total accident, I caught him at Exactly the right time haha)

This is artistic. Not lazy. Definitely didn’t just leave this sideways by accident.

I’ll put up pictures soon! Also, I’ll probably add things that I forgot haha 🙂 Like that I found fantastic thigh high, green, salmon, and teal striped socks for $5. Who could say no? I wore them to the climbing trip. Everyone was jealous.

Also, 2 days until Kyle is contactable! (I wrote this a few days ago, he’s back now!)

And I put up pictures All over my room! It looks like home a Lot more now. Still a little too much white space. But it’s okay. I’m much happier. 🙂

Also, Crazy dress up pool:

She just walked into my room dressed like this… So I said we needed to go play pool

Inner gangster

Bam. We played monopoly and had quiz night instead of pool this week. We’re fantastic. 😀
Meet Jon. We drag him around with us sometimes.

One thought on “Things I haven’t updated you on (Take 2, the first one went a bit wonky)”

  1. It looks like you are having some great fun! Those cookies looked amazingly wonderful! I can see why they were all gone by the next night!

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