Bottle of red, bottle of white...

Song: "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" by Billy Joel

May 2nd

So I slept for one and a half hours, then woke up, got showered and dressed and ran out the door at 6am. I was supposed to meet the bus in St. Leonard's, and I was early so I bought some chocolate mud pie at 6:30am (I eat dessert for breakfast. Get over it.).

Anyway, from there I found the bus, and essentially passed out on the 1-2 hour drive to the Hunter Valley wine country. My iPod was my best buddy for the long drives. The people on the bus didn't really start talking to each other until we started our first wine tasting.

From Hunter Valley

From

From Hunter Valley

The group was a lot of fun. We had a hen's party (bachelorette party), a guy from California on business, me, a couple from Ireland who had just established residency in Australia, another couple, and a group of three folks who knew each other (I think a couple and a sister/friend). And our tour guide. It was a good group.

We went to about 5 wineries. I drank a lot of wine. You're supposed to dump out what you don't want into a bucket, but the hen's party was not having it, and kept encouraging me to drink all the wine because I paid for it, and it was wasteful, etc. They were hysterical.

We went to wine school to learn about how wine is made and how to properly taste it. Something about washing it around in your mouth. I wasn't really paying attention. 1.5 hours of sleep does that.

From Hunter Valley

We also went to a cheese shop. Definitely a highlight for a cheese addict like myself.

From Hunter Valley

Next door was more wine tasting:

From Hunter Valley

Cute couple and me (I think the bartender took this.)

From Hunter Valley

More wine at the last winery. We were all at our finest.

From Hunter Valley

Gorgeous:

From Hunter Valley

From Hunter Valley

From Hunter Valley

The girls of the hen's party. They were a blast.

From Hunter Valley

Here I saw my first, live kangaroo in the wild. It was awesome.

From Hunter Valley

From Hunter Valley

From Hunter Valley

So cool. My Australian life is pretty complete now.

After our last winery we hit up a chocolate shop, which while a bit of a disappointment, was ok. They had some pretty humorously packaged chocolates:

From Hunter Valley

I got some chocolate caramels, which were not very impressive.

On the way home, we played a celebrity game with the drunk bus full of winos. I found out that I know nothing about Australian pop culture compared to how much Australians know about American pop culture. I'm ok with this.

The bus eventually dropped me at Circular Quay and I grabbed a bus back to Macquarie. I was all pumped to go out again because it was Saturday night, but I slept through my alarm and into the next day. It was probably for the best. :)

That is why we'll always make it...

Song: "My Favourite Book" by Stars

March 20th

Successfully made it to Optics, albeit not quite on time. With four people in the class I actually am starting to feel guilty about this, so I made a pact with myself to start being punctual. We'll see how that goes.

I wrapped up my homework and got it stapled at the library, then went with my homework to Physics. I was incredibly on time; I beat my professor to class. I must have really felt bad about being late to Optics this morning. I felt pretty confident about the assignment on the whole, and felt even better as soon as it was turned in. It always feels so nice to have the burden of an assignment of your back, until you remember the next one's due on the 31st. Blergh.

After class, I went back to my apartment. I went to the gym for the third of my tri-weekly trips there, then went home, cleaned up and ended up at 52: house of awesome. We had some wine(s) and I had absolutely nothing to do the next day, so I turned to Bernie, creator of excellent ideas, and asked what she was up to. We decided we were going to the zoo. We watched some rugby (I think it was rugby...) which I couldn't stay interested in, and then Christian and Alex, two of our Australian friends came over and wanted to see if anyone wanted to watch Friday the 13th (the new one, released this year on Feb 13th at home, and March 13th here). Christian had somehow gotten a hold of it. Now I normally hate scary movies. Really do. I flinch and cower and cringe and jump and generally do not enjoy watching them at all. However, with enough wine in me and a growing sense of ennui with that rugby game, I quickly agreed to join them. Alex is really cool; she's 17 and lives in the Gold Coast of Australia, which is far north of here. Christian is really cool too; he lives fairly far south of here around where our surf camp was. They were excellent company for this movie.

The movie had Jared Padalecki - or as Alex and I kept calling him, "Dean" (from Gilmore Girls) - and several other actors I didn't really care about. The plot isn't worth explaining here, but I do remember them playing "My Favorite Book" by Stars. I really like that song, and I've played it on my radio show back home for sure. This made me smile.

After the movie, which was fairly entertaining given my condition, we played some wrestling game on Christian's gaming console. I beat Alex, but Christian destroyed me. After awhile, Christian walked Alex and I home. It was definitely an enjoyable evening. Yes, it was an enjoyable evening involving a horror movie; I never thought I'd say that.

I'm going faster, you're going backwards...

Song: "Faster" by Rachael Yamagata

March 6th

Today started out well. I had optics at 10, then a short break where I ran home for lunch, physics at 12, and then not much of anything. In my short break, my roommate Bethany let me know that a group of folks were going shopping at Macquarie Centre for Mardi Gras accessories and outfits and I told her I'd call her when I got out of class to meet up.

I found the girls (Cam and Andy had split off from the group. Probably too much estrogen for them) and we went around all over the place looking at all sorts of excellent pieces of ridiculous clothing. Erin got the greatest pants ever which were shiny and gold. They were bold. I know that I'm incredibly picky when it comes to buying things, so I mainly just window shopped while the rest of the group bought things. I did get a mask kit at the craft store with everyone else, but I waited until the end of the day to grab all the clothes I wanted. I eventually ended up getting a blue dress, orange ribbon, and a pink headband and $5 leggings to go under the dress. I was incredibly proud of myself.

The rest of the girls were gluing their masks together at the same time my class at the gym was, so I decided I'd put mine together afterward. Unfortunately, they ran out of glue, but I got resourceful and got some tack at the grocery store, which I think worked out even better. I figured I could use the rest of it to hang posters in my room, which is currently barren minus my 30 Rock calendar. At my grocery store trip, I also invested in my own bottle of sweet chili sauce. It will be the death of me.

I got home and ended up at a BBQ at Becca's apartment. I was a bit late, so I missed out on the food, but I had a good time regardless. I played guitar with Dan and Christian, and hung out with Hilde, Vilde, and a bunch more people outside. Suddenly, I looked up and half the house had left, and Bernie told me that everyone was shifting to her place, so I walked with her and Ben over to her apartment, and continued to have a good time. I like living on the east side of the village because everyone who lives here is great and we can just walk to the next person's house and it's never far.

I stayed up until I can't quite remember when, and had just enough wine to know that I was done for the night, and ambled home a few doors down. East side. So convenient. Note: The Australian slang word for cheap boxed wine is Goon. Also, my circle of friends jokingly refers to wine as "wines." As in, "I have to get me some more wines from the store" or "can I get you a glass of wines?" I think Bernie started this, but I like it.

When I got home five seconds later, I was feeling mildly homesick so I wrote on a ton of people's Facebook walls. Then I went to bed and slept incredibly well.