It’s been ages since I’ve posted… oops. I knew this would happen eventually. I actually probably lasted longer than I expected to writing every day. In my defense, Monday and Tuesday weren’t our most exciting days. We did see our first Australian movie. It is called Red Dog and was actually really good and cute. I was expecting some old, bad quality, cheesy movie but I was surprised when I legitimately enjoyed the movie. Sharna did warn us that it is kind of sad but I liked it anyway.
The weather was absolutely beautiful on Tuesday, just completely, amazingly gorgeous out. We have this river right near our apartment that we jog at in the mornings so after skipping the information session we were supposed to go to, we got lost and decided it would have been super boring anyway, we went down to the river to Freeline. There’s this really nice, open boardwalk kind of place just near our house so we went there and Jenn learned to Freeline while I worked on getting better at it. It’s always really fun to Freeline somewhere where people have never seen it before. Which is pretty much everywhere. People tend to freak out and ask what on earth you are doing (if you haven’t seen it before, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrUZ3t-eYOI). Towards the end of the day I actually got pretty good and was going up small hills and happily weaving between poles and around this nice little flat spot I found. It was nice enough out that we were wearing shorts and t-shirts. I even took off my sweater for awhile (keep in mind that it’s their coldest month of the year right now). I wish I had taken pictures that day, but here is one from a lame cloudy day. But even that looks pretty nice…
Later that day we did laundry for the first time. We had just about the worst case of sticker shock that you can imagine. It was $3 for a 23 minute wash cycle. And twenty minutes in a dryer is a dollar. Apparently, they just don’t really use dryers here. Which means hang drying jeans. I wore damp jeans the day after I did laundry… It was rather upsetting but they dried fairly quickly after I tried ironing them to get them more damp than soaking 🙂
On Wednesday we were going to go do a library and have a generally unexciting day but on our way to the library we ran into a big group of other international students who were going to visit the German village up in the hills. By the time we ran into the second group of people going on the trip, which mostly consisted of good friends, we were pretty easily convinced that we should go to Hahndorf instead of the library tour. It was a really pretty drive up, more like going into the mountains than into the hills. It was nice and green and pretty and wooded. The town itself was colder and less exciting than was expected but it was still kind of fun. Here’s a few pictures. We enjoy being silly.
That night we went to go see the Dark Knight Rises at midnight with Mark (Sri Lankan roommate, not sure I’ve said his name before) and his girlfriend. It was so good! It was also just kind of fun since we got to see it so much earlier than everyone else since movies come out like a day earlier here and we’re so far ahead anyway. It was also nice since instead of having to show up hours (or days) early in order to get a good seat, you can just reserve a seat online and show up 5 minutes before the movie and have a great seat.
The downside to going to this movie was that we were out until about 3 am and we had to be somewhere by 8:45 am. And if you stay up talking on the phone later then that until, I dunno, 4:30 am? Not much time is left for sleep. But we had about an hour or so bus ride. On which both Jenn and I completely knocked out. We had to be up early because we were going on a trip to another wild animal park and a place called Victor Harbor. We played with kangaroos for like 45 minutes. Just feeding them and petting them and taking waaaayyy too many pictures with them. It was so great. Kangaroos are fantastic. And super soft! Here they are hopping: http://youtu.be/DtKYsif1cLw And this is a very poorly shot video that should have been shortened, but go to the middle and you can see how they walk. It’s really cool! They use their tails. http://youtu.be/MORf7mKvUQs
After the wildlife park, we went to Victor Harbor! It was soooo pretty. Just off the mainland is a small little island. There’s a bridge to it that you can either walk or take a horse drawn carriage across. We walked across since it looked really pretty and there were supposed to be penguins (although they apparently mostly come out at night) and we figured we would have a better shot of seeing a whale (it’s whale season) if we were on the side of the island with deeper water. It was absolutely gorgeous, we decided that it looked how we imagine Ireland or New Zealand. We found a nice rock on the deep water facing side of the island and ate the lunch we packed. It was a rather amazing way to spend lunch. We didn’t end up seeing any whales or penguins but we did run into some friends and generally had a good time. The camera doesn’t do it justice but here are some pictures.
The weather was a bit interesting though. It was cold but nice and clear when we were at the animal park but when we got to Victor Harbor the weather started to turn until it was kind of drizzling/windy/rainy. Which was actually pretty okay and kind of fun since it wasn’t too bad. The rain hit when we were walking onto a little break water so we went and hid inside a building for a minute or two and then we decided to brave the storm and walk back to the mainland. After that we kind of just wandered around. I got an ice cream and we bought a magnet for Sharna that says “Who are all of these kids and why are they calling me mum?” since we had randomly designated her mom (mother? mum? mummy?) during orientation. After that we found this little book shop and they had a huge bin of cheesy romance novels outside for a dollar. We looked through for the cheesiest one possible and then Jenn bought it. I think she actually finished reading it by the end of the night…