When The Sun Sleeps

A few notes I'd like to highlight before today's blog:
1) I absolutely love getting comments on my blogs, and I read every one!
2) Please be sure to check my Facebook for photos! I update nearly everyday! If you don't have Facebook, you can still see them here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025662&id=1561350045&l=c13de758ca

This morning those dying cat birds didn't bother nearly as much, even though I'm told they were as loud as ever. I hope this means I'm getting used to them! I didn't do anything in the morning which was kinda sad. Hey, actually that's not true: I did some errands.

I went into Bush Court to get some cash, put more money on my SmartRider card (for the buses and trains), bought some stamps, met my Clark friend Justine (who was here last semester) for the first time since she's been back, and swung by Paul's office to look for textbooks that previous students have left behind. I only found one for my microbiology class, but it doesn't really matter because I can get everything I need (besides lab manuals I think) in the library.

Us CIEE kids had two meetings: one for all the study abroad students (1-2 semesters at Murdoch) and another with Paul. Even though they were scheduled for two hours total, they weren't too bad. Afterwards, I wandered around Bush Court a bit with some of my mates who needed to get some errands done (nothing terribly exciting nor note worthy).

After getting back to my room, I set into action my plans to get to see the sunset over the Indian ocean. Initially, my plans were to go to Cottesloe Beach again with a few kids, but Jesse wanted to save on the fares and just watch it in Freo (Fremantle). I'm really glad that's what we ended up doing, because we had a great time!

Jesse, Sarin, Sarin's new flatmate Alice (from Tasmania), Amy (Clarkie), and Amy's neighbor Clancy (from SC) and I all took the bus into Freo in the late afternoon. We walked from the station to the nearby harbor, where Amy wanted to get a drink. I'm glad she suggested it, because the little seafood place we went to (which is basically to go) had Rockstar (energy drinks, which I love)! They had one of my favorite flavors. It was 3.90 AUD which is pricey compared to the States, but the cheapest beer they had was (not very good) 6.00 AUD (that's Australian dollars). Furthermore, I was able to greatly appreciate my Rockstar, so I feel like it was a great 3.90 spent (even though laundry is 3.00 a load, but hey, I need to appreciate things in the moment! Speaking of which, I'm trying to stretch loads as much as possible and still haven't done one yet but haven't needed to either, which is great!).

Top picture: Jesse, Clancy, Sarin; Bottom: Sarin (not actually) shoving Jesse into the wata!

After putzing around the docks, we went out to the wharf just beyond the seafood place. We got there about an hour before the sun was due to set (7:13PM today). We hung out on the rocks and had a grand old time! Here are some of my favorite pictures (go ahead and click on them to see them bigger):

Today: 9

Beach Baby Beach Baby

I woke up to the lovely sound of those damn birds. Again. They were particularly loud today.

It took everyone a while to get together today to get out and about, but we eventually did. Today was my first beach day (and the first for most of us). 13 or so of us took the bus into Fremantle. Apparently not every bus stop is a bus stop. The first one we went to at the very edge of campus isn't a usual stop. But it has a bus stop sign and a little bench and roof. Before the bus came, half of the group ran down the road without a side walk, dodging traffic to get to the stop just down the road. After a minute, I, along with the other half walked after them, only to see the bus coming round the bend, not giving us time to get down to the other stop. We eventually got on after being playfully ridiculed by the bus driver.

Once we got onto the train, it was only 4 stops along before we were able to take a bus the rest of the way there. The beach at Cottesloe isn't very pretty:

This is where I went on Thursday with my mate Angela. Gorgeous weather today too.

After sunscreening up, a lot of us went right in. I daddled a bit to let some of my sunscreen soak in more, but  I neglected my back, which I'll be sure to get next time (it's a bit overly red at the moment, but nothing too painful yet). The water was the warmest I've ever experienced before which was quite nice. However, there were plenty of rocks here and there that really should be avoided.

Several of us threw a frisbee in the water which was particularly fun. Diving all around and having a grand old time.

We only stayed about an hour and a half, two hours before we decided to go back into Fremantle. We split up so that some of the girls could try to buy cellphones (which they totally failed at) while the rest of us went to look for the pub I went to with Angela on Thursday. We found it but I didn't particularly feel like spending the money, so I ended up finding the girls again and going back into campus. The shower felt so good once I got back; I'm not a fan of sunscreen and general grossness experienced at the beach.

Last night I ended up going to the pool where a party was being thrown by some Australians. There were a lot of people there and someone was giving out free beer. I met some fun people, including a local who interns in Orange County for Blizzard, the company who makes the video game World of Warcraft (among others) that Graham and I play. Pretty small world. Bugger was supposed to add me on Facebook but he hasn't yet!

I'm dead tired but probably going across the courtyard here to hang out with some of the Americans. Nothing too crazy I don't expect. Right after dinner just now though there was a fantastic sunset. Good end to a sunny day.

I've started to record video for parts of my travels in Australia. You can follow see my Australia YouTube videos here.

My first video (from today at the beach) is here.

Today: 7.5

In Australia, We Race Grocery Trollies

I woke up to my alarm at 7:30 and decided to not sleep through it, even though I was rather tired. This was partially due to several thousand ravens making their dying cat noises outside my window. They literally landed on my window sill and had a dying cat noise meeting. I'm considering getting a shotgun while I'm here.

At around 10 we gathered around to go shopping down at the local mall called Kardinya. Ben, Greg, and Justin--all Clarkies--came with, in addition to Ben's flatmate Sarin (who is from WI but is not in our student group). Kardinya is the shopping mall I went to on Wednesday to go food shopping. Crossing the street on the way there is always interesting.

As you can tell, we all crossed at the same time.

We went into KMart first, because Greg needed a powerstrip or something or other for his computer. He described how sometimes his power cords and such would get hot and smell like burning plastic. I'm slightly worried for his safety. Everyone else got some things there themselves (mostly kitchenware) before walking over to Coles (which is in the same building as Kmart).

I lost my list somewhere between stores and I thought I had gotten most everything except for cream which I just realized, which makes me quite angry. The cream I was going to use in my pasta sauce, but I guess I can do that another time. Oh well. I did however get puff pastry and 2 kinds of vegetable patties so I can make vegetable pies. They're going to be delish. I also got a cookie sheet, milk, and probably some other stuff that I can't remember off the top of my head. Bastards next door at the pharmacy didn't have contact holder things, and I left mine at home (so I can't store my daily contacts if I only wear them a short while).

A few of the kids bought beer and wine and the packy nearby.

It's a literal drive through packy. It is most awesome. (That's Greg in the lower left there.) This is where I bought my melon liqueur a few nights back (which is alright, but I need lemon pucker to make a mean midori sour). After leaving the packy, we headed for home, and for a very short moment I thought a trolley race was going to start. Good times.

 

After a lunch of grilled cheeses for myself, Ben, Sarin, Jesse (who we met at Coles; he's a CIEE student in our group as well) and I wandered around campus for a while which was nice. We explored a little bit, including this Japanese pond before the main courtyard.

This is the façade of this passageway between the Japanese pond and the main courtyard (called Bush court). Yeah, Sarin took the time to read it out loud for us, which sounded like very broken English.

BROADWALK

THROUGH TO LIBRARY LECTURE THEATRES

ECONOMICS COMMERCE AND LAW SCIENCE

Not that you couldn't figure that out yourself ;)

Australians are quite insistent about sunblock, as the poster shows. Slip! Slop! Slap! Refers to slip on a short, slop on some sunscreen, and slap on a hat (it's those three things, but maybe not in that order). I wore sunscreen (only on my face) today for the first time. My poor nose is red!

I really like this tree. For any of you who have played Halo, you might think it looks like a Flood, which it does because it is one. I better watch my back!

The four of us continued to the pool, which is in the new student village (which is north of the older village). It was a much smaller pool than we expected, and only 1.8m deep at the deep end. Because it was rather cloudy today, it was pretty cold in the pool so we didn't stay too long.

It sounds like I might be really busy tonight with the Americans with dinner and hanging out and suchness, so I'm going to end this post here and perhaps write a nightcap if I feel up to it (or a morningcap to my previous night tomorrow morning). That was a well constructed sentence. I am awesome.

Today: (so far) 7

600 Million Rabbits

Whew. Today's been a long, long day.

I woke up a little earlier than I wanted too today, and I felt miserably tired. I snagged the Monster I bought at Coles the other day, but it did very little for me as I sat through several hours of orientation jargon in the morning. Something here or there was semi useful, but it was basically Freshman Week One stuff all over again. Fairly certain that's no use to me. The lunch they served--I had vegetable lasagna and a roll the size of my face--was pretty good, but not really worth losing sleep over by going to orientation.

After lunch, all the Americans and I met Paul over at his office, where we individually met with the enrolment officer to fix our schedules. I think I need to fix a lab, but this semester looks like Microbiology, Marine Plant Biology, and Pollutants and the Human Environment. Large load by the looks of it, but I expect to manage. I hope and expect to have a few Americans in each class which will be nice, but we'll have to wait two weeks to see.

DYLAN #4 - Australians pronounce names much, much differently than Americans do sometimes. "Natasha" is pronounced "Nuhtahsha," almost American Southern-like. Natasha helped us with our class sign ups today.

We finished our day with a nice BBQ put on by Paul. Yup, I tried kangaroo. It was pretty good: tasted kinda like beef tenderloin. I had a couple grilled sandwiches that contained grilled zucchini, onions, eggplant, and vegetable patties (there were a few different ones). I kinda just piled things on, but all in all it was all quite good. Tomorrow I expect to go back to Coles with some of the Americans and I'll look for some vegetarian food to make some more extravagant food (like meat pies with the meat replaced with whatever I can find). I'm pretty excited. Paul's wife Kate and their 3 kids--two boys, 7 & 4, and a girl, 18 months--were there. Apparently Tim, the 7-year-old, always picks a buddy for the semester. Yeah, guess who his buddy for this semester? ME. So stoked. "You're my buddy for the semester" he told me as I was leaving after everyone else had already gone. Real cutie. I love kids. I can't wait to have my own in a few years. I mean 7 or 8 or more.

I didn't bring my camera is dinner or to orientation. Sometimes I feel really awkward carrying around my large SLR, like a creeper or something. I really wish I had brought it to dinner, because I'd like to be able to post loads of pictures. My goal is to take a whole boat load tomorrow.

Everyone is going into Perth tonight, but I'm too tired to tag along. They're going to see the opening of an art festival or something, which tragically has absolutely no appeal to me. If we were going in to poke around the city and explore a bit, I'd drag my tired butt along. It's kinda disappointing really, but oh well. I just showered and hoped that would help, but I guess I might as well stay home and try to finally fully get on Australia time (I'm feeling more tired as it is right now). I'm actually a little surprised they all didn't want to stay on campus and get drunk, but whatever. It'll be better for them to explore, right?

If I really wanted to waste water, I could spend 30 minutes stretching and go for a run since it's nice and cool right now. But by the time I got out it'd be dark. These damn ravens fly back at this hour and in the early morning in large groups making a loud ruckus. Paul was telling me people will go around killing them because they get too many in number as they live off the people on campus. Sounds fun, really. At dinner we were discussing the dramatic rabbit problem Australia's had.

In 1859, 24 British rabbits were introduced to an estate in Victoria (southwest Australia), and by 1928 the population grew to not 1 million, not 100 million, but 600 million in an area of 1 million square miles. These little buggers were a severe problem because they are nasty little grazers, which hurt the preexisting grazers like kangaroos (which are way cooler than dumb little rabbits). Some of the control measures they used included shooting, "ripping," blasting, fumigating, poisoning, trapping, erecting fences across the country (3 fences going north to south were built), and introducing a genus specific virus. The virus (called Myxoma) was fairly effective after it was introduced in 1950, reducing the population to 100 million by 1953. However, it was too virulent and therefore couldn't spread quickly enough before it killed the rabbits, and other rabbits were able to build a resistance. They're still a nuisance today.

That's a lot of damn rabbits!

We essentially have the weekend off--we could have signed up for a discovering the campus "Amazing Race" sorta thing, but a lot of the Americans wanted to go shopping in the morning for food and shampoo anyway. Which is totally cool with me, because I'd rather discover the campus by ourselves with a campus map and just have fun with it. I should be sure to wear sunscreen tomorrow, particularly on my face. My nose is nice and red and hurts a bit. I've already gotten a nice tan line forming on my arms. On Sunday we hope to go to the beach if we can manage (back to where I went on Thursday). I really want to go swimming!

It looks like I only have 3 roommates, which is awesome because some of the flats have 8 or so people which seems absolutely ridiculous. Two of them are Chinese: Linda (Yibing) is from north east China, near Korea, and Christine is from Hong Kong. Catalina the third flatmate, and she's from Ghana. I don't know her as well, but the Chinese gals are super friendly. I walked back into the flat 3 times today to see Yibing in the kitchen cooking, which she found quite hilarious. There seems to be another room, so there could be another few people living here, since Linda and Christine live together. Don't know!

[Post Script: I've decided to try to rank each day, on a scale of 0-10:
10 - Absolute best! (very rare indeed!)
9 - Fantastic!
8 - Great
7 - Good
6 - Yeah, okay I suppose
5 - Okay
4 - ...meh...
3 - Bad
2 - Really bad
1 - Awful.
0 - Absolute worst! Kittens died!]
Today: 6

Indian Ocean? Yes please!

I woke up this morning at 6:45AM for the second straight morning, feeling like I slept in past 11AM. I went to bed exhausted at 10:30PM last night, and feel instantly asleep. I think I'm starting to get used to my firm bed already, but I guess I'll know once I try to go running again.

I went out to try to switch my classes around (because two of them currently overlap, which I don't know how they would let that happen) and get my guild membership (which will get me discounts and such, not too sure what else) down at the courtyard where I got my credit union account and such sorted out yesterday. I didn't get my classes sorted out but I can do that tomorrow, so I'm not too worried. I'm hoping I can drop Animal Diversity and pick up Microbiology (my other two classes would be Marine Plant Diversity--which would be awesome since I work in a marine biology lab back at Clark--and a pollutants class which I'm told has an excellent professor).

I came back to my room and ate canned spaghetti (much like Spaghetti-O's or whatever) because I didn't feel like going all out and cooking, while I waited for my friend Angela to pick me up. Angela, who is 25, is a local who I met online a few weeks back. After she made it to campus, I spent about 15 minutes going through the parking lots trying to find her because I wasn't quite sure where she was. I now know the parking lots better and when she eventually dropped me off, I was able to show her the parking lot closer to the village/where I live specifically.

Angela took me down toward the ocean, and we stopped off near the harbor and went into a brewery. We tasted 4 or 5 beers which was awesome, before both settling on a cider each. We drank our ciders on the harbor which was awesome.

DYLAN #3 - Australians are much less cautious about carding for alcohol (the drinking age is 18). On the plane over I wasn't carded, and I wasn't carded at the beach for our second drink of today. Angela and I were both carded at the brewery however. I was carded at the bar tonight but not at the packy next door.

We got back in her car (which was parked a 5 minute's walk from the pub) and drove to Cottesloe, off the ocean. We got another drink at a pub and then walked along the beach.

I got my feet (and part of my skinny jeans) wet by the Indian Ocean for the first time! It was pretty neat.

 

(crappy panorama I know... it was quickly taken!)

The water felt pretty warm (about 70°F I'd guess) but obviously didn't go in in my jeans. Oh, and they had these parrot things!

Before heading back, we went into this small restaurant and split a bin of chips (fries).

She dropped me back off and not 30 yards walking back onto campus, the first Clarkie (Tess Aaronson) spotted me from across the courtyard. I felt bad because I didn't recognize her at first (well, yeah, my vision sucks and she was wearing her glasses), but was delighted to see a familiar face! I helped her out with her internet just now; she lives a couple buildings down, and our fellow Clark classmate Ben Goldberg lives in between us.

Alright, just got back after being out with a bunch of the Americans. I think I saw every Clarkie--some of them came in late which sucked. Most of the group met at 6 for pizza and we all chatted which was awesome. Afterwards, I was going to show a lot of them around, but after a lot of deliberation and finding people, we went down into the town and had screwdrivers at the pub to celebrate one of our 21st birthdays ($7.50 for the screwdriver! So expensive... it was good though.) after which a few of us bought some wine and such at the next door packy.

Walking down with most of the Americans was really fun: I got to chat with a lot of them and they all seem really cool. It overwhelmed me to think it was only about half our group. It's going to be tough learning so many names! Two of them are from TCU--Texas Christian University. Yeah, I was taken aback, but they're two of the coolest Christians I've ever met. Unfortunately, we have a full day starting at 9am tomorrow and it's almost 10pm now, so I'm sorta rushing to get this blog done because I have other things to do before bed! I hope to write more about the Americans tomorrow. I'm so glad they're here! Lonely no longer!

(PS - be sure to check my Facebook for more pictures!)
Today: 9

I was working as waitress in a cocktail bar, that much is true.

Oh boy. It’s only 5 in the afternoon and I’m exhausted. I guess I’m allowed to be because I’ve had such a busy day up until now!

I woke up at about 6:30 on my own, thinking it was closer to 9. When I met up with Paul, our program director he asked if I had woken up closer to 4. After getting up, I decided to spend 3 hours watching “Avatar” on my computer, since I couldn’t really do anything until 9:30 anyway (because people weren’t up and open yet). I left the flat around 10, 10:30 and passed in my flat room condition card (Clarkies: RCC) down at the residential office, where I was given very poor directions to the CIEE office (my program office). I was told to go to this courtyard area where I knew the credit union was, so I went ahead, thinking I could hit 2 birds with 1 stone.

I found the courtyard even though at one point I was sure I wasn’t headed in the right direction (on the way, I got my first “good day!” from a Christian kid standing next to his stupid Christian tent, trying to attract members to their stupid imaginary friend worshiping cult). I didn’t find the CIEE office, but I did find the credit union very easily. I walked in to hear Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” playing which made me very happy because one, it reminds me of Alicia, and two, it’s an 80’s classic! The woman at the credit union was very helpful, and I got my affairs in order there. Looks like I’ll get an ATM card in a few days or so. Which reminds me, I need to figure out where I get my post! (My post address is like… 6? lines long. It’s ridiculous. I’ll post it up later (no pun intended).

I asked the woman if she knew where Paul’s office was, because he came up in conversation (since CIEE students get special deals with the credit union) and thankfully he happened to be real close by so he came and picked me up. Turns out his office is much further away from the courtyard than I thought, and much closer to the village. We stopped off at the office and talked for a while, before going back and getting my student ID card and my SmartRider card (for buses and trains).

At this point, I was feeling pretty good about myself for figuring most of this stuff out, but I still hadn’t gone food shopping yet. After stopping off at my room (and taking care of a few things online, like adding credit to my track phone—yeah, I figured that one out too!), I finally ventured out to go food shopping.

The supermarket I’m mostly likely to shop at the most, Coles, it about a 15 minute walk. I found it easily which made me very excited. I ended up winding in and out of the aisles, doubling back quite often to get everything I needed. Unfortunately, I purposely left behind a lot of things, like shampoo and body wash, so I ended up needing a lot ($159 AUD in all!). I only had $170 AUD on me at the time too, so I lucked out. I got almost everything I had on my list (which is impressive, because I thought I was going to have to go to a store like Kmart, which is right next door) and then some. The next week or so looks like grilled cheese and pasta (which oddly enough is all I eat at Clark, haha!). I was able to get a few things for breakfast (which I rarely eat) too. There were a lot of things I wanted but didn’t get, but will be sure to get the next time I go. I hope to make the food I got to stretch for a while, but I also know I won’t be buying as much my next shop. (The girl who ended up checking me out was really cute too—probably too young for me—and had a really thick Australian accent.) I ended up sticking to as many Coles generic products as possible. Their packaging makes me laugh:

It looks a lot like the Dharma Initiative food products from the TV show LOST (especially the cereal!). Oh, and guess which song I heard on the radio at Coles? "Don't You Want Me" by Human League (which is really cool since I was listening to my iPod for most of my shop which is kinda lame, I know).

Going back to the mentioning of being greeted “good day!”, I’ve decided to stick to my usual American greetings for now. I feel like if I used “good day” all the time, I’d sound stupid saying it. If I say “hello” in my slightly unusual accent, Australians will probably notice I’m American and be like “WOAH!” Yeah, cool dude.

After shopping and feeling very happy with myself, I went for a run. Then I became unhappy with myself. I guess spending 30 hours on planes and sleeping on a VERY firm bed (which I don’t like) made my back VERY, VERY sore. When my back hurts, there’s no way I’m running very far. I’d rather have sore legs than a sore back. So, until I stretch out my back and get used to my bed, I won’t be running for a while, which really bites.

Oh, Paul told me what that obnoxious dying-cat-bird is: a raven (or so he believes). Um, that’s not what they sound like in the states, right?

I’ve decided to come up with a list of cool differences between America and Australia, which I will display through out my blogs. I’m calling them “Distinguished Youthful Listings of Australian Nuances” or DYLANs. They will look like this:

DYLAN #1 – Australians by and large are much more friendly than Americans.

DYLAN #2 – Australians think it’s alright to drive contemporary versions of the El Camino. Not cool. (Everyone in the Perth area drive them: they’re one of the most popular car models I’ve seen so far. A maker I’m not familiar with and Ford make them. The Ford Falcon Ute is below.)

Most of my fellow CIEE students will be arriving tomorrow. I told Paul I’d be willing to go the airport with him and just chill because I have nothing else to do. We’ll see if I end up going, because it’s not something Paul thought would be very fun for me. I’m pretty lonely with nothing to do, so I’m looking forward to everyone’s arrival! Oh boy.

Well, I’m gonna go figure out something to do. It’s almost 5:30 now, so I might go make an early dinner. We shall see. Hugs & kisses & high fives!
Today: 7.5

The land down unda!

I'm sitting on my flat's porch right now.

It is gorgeous out--77°F and breezy--and extremely quiet. The view is nice enough. I'm sure I'm going to spend a lot of time out here this semester, even though I don't have wireless. [I HAVE to find out what this warbler/crow-looking like bird is. It sounds like a very upset cat. I laugh out loud every time I hear it.]

I got into Perth at 1:30PM local time (12:30AM EST). The last leg of my flight was only 3.5 hours, which was really nice considering my first flight (Logan to LAX) was 6.67 hours and my flight over the Pacific (LAX to Melbourne) was a whopping 15 hours! Fortunately for the 15 hours flight I slept at least 6 hours, probably closer to 8. I got window seats all 3 of my flights! Word!

My flights to Melbourne and Perth were on the Australian airline Qantas and boy are they awesome. Not only are they super friendly (in comparison to American Airlines) as Australians are stereotyped to be, but they gave us awesome food. I hate to admit I ate meat TWICE on my two lunches, but I did--chicken both times and both times they were excellent. I decided to give in and eat it (because there was no vegetarian option) because I was very hungry and there wasn't much food altogether. Additionally, I felt I should eat all I could given I was traveling for 36+ hours!

My first meal on my flight to Melbourne (the 15 hour one) was penne something with chicken. THE COOL PART WAS I SERVED BEER. Haha, the flight attendant (charming young man) didn't even ask how old I was (I'm 20, but could look younger than 18) and was really enthusiastic about trying the Australian beer that was available (but I forget what I had--it was decent though). I was probably only 40 minutes outside of the States drinking "legally." Awesome.

Because it was a super long international flight, I had my own entertainment thing on the back of the chair in front of me. I first watched "Zombieland" (which was pretty funny and a fun film to watch; however, it was extremely gruesome at some points) and then "(500) Days of Summer" (which I loved and didn't love) and finally "Public Enemies" (which lost me but I enjoyed it for the most part). The best part of this flight was being sat next to by the BIGGEST HIPSTER OF ALL TIME. I gawked when I saw him sitting next to me. This kid was in the dictionary underneath the term hipster. So awesome.

I had to wait a long ass time in line to get through customs, then get my bags, then go through another line--all in all it took me about 2 hours to do. I was able to go to the ATM to get some cash moneys out (gosh their currency is gorgeous!) and get some noms before my final flight.

I was met at the airport by this older gentlemen who drove me home and met Paul (our program coordinator--awesome guy) at the airport while waiting for my luggage. (I'm writing this pretty poorly I'm seeing and it really irritates me. I'm blaming it on being "jetlagged," which I'm not.) Australia so far reminds me a lot of SoCal. It's so gorgeous.

It's forecasted to be even cooler tomorrow, which means I'll try to get out and about and explore. I might try to go food shopping tomorrow, and I really should because I only have a wee bit of food here as it is. I *think* I know where to go, but we'll see. I really don't want to get lost.

My flat is quite cute (but not one of the new ones).

There are 4 rooms but only 2 of the 3 additional mates are here so far. They're both women and I need to get on learning their names. The first one I met I couldn't hear because the change in air pressure on three descents on the airplane killed my ears (very painful!). Four hours later and my ears almost feel all better. My room is small but definitely liveable. If I get some coat hangers and few other things I should be all set. My bed is... alright. I can probably live with it. I need to get some more pillows though (I use four at home :-\).

I totally forgot it was summer down here and as such the sun is still shining at quarter of seven. Awesome.
Today: 7