Shopping, Beach, Coffee, & Focus!

Today was another absolutely great day! First off, my skin decided to stop peeling!! YAY!! I refused to wear a tank top because I was embarrassed about how much I was peeling (it was quite disgusting). But now, I'm just splotchy (if that is even a word) from the white part (where my skin fell off) compared to the tan part (if you can believe that.. me being tan.. craziness! :P )

When I woke up this morning, I went to the living room/kitchen area to have breakie (cereal) and my mom was on skype! So we skyped and it was neat because they were eating dinner while I was eating breakfast. At our dinner table, we always sit in the same seats, so the computer was in my spot so it was almost like I was there :). After that, I jumped through a shower and went to the international office for a meeting with Melanie (and the other international students from the UWP people (UWP= University of Wisconsin-Plattville... the group that I went through). After the meeting, Kim and I went the the Hunter Street Market where we went to probably 10 or so shops that were having $5 sales on summer clothes (since it will be autumn here soon (the Aussies do not call it fall)). I ended up  spending a whole $7.50 on a floral tank top so I think I did a pretty good job! We walked around for hours before we walked back to our flat. We had lunch at the "hamburger haven" and it was really interesting because the hamburger patties in the US are so thick whereas the patties here were very thin. I actually liked this a lot better because it was a much lighter meal and I did not feel like I overate.

Kim and I went to a second hand book shop and we both bought cookbooks because.. realistically we cannot live off off frozen pizza and ramen noodles :). The recipe book I bought is really interesting because it has over 340 recipes and each recipe has 4 ingredients (or less). This is so great because it forces the recipes to be simple and cheap (which is my favorite type!). Tomorrow we plan to sit down together and kind of make a menu and map out our meals for the next week or so. This way, we will save money because we can look at the grocery ads to see what is on sale and then compare that to our recipes.

After that, we had a barbie on the beach (barbie=bbq.. surprise! another bbq with sausages :P). This time, it was with a group called NCS (I believe that stands for Newcastle Christian Students). It was on Nobby's Beach which we could have walked to, however, since we had been walking all day we preferred to have a ride. A girl named Dee emailed me so she said we were free to call her if we needed a lift, so we took her up on her offer. She was very nice! She is also an education major in her 2nd year @ Uni, so hopefully we'll see each other again! There were MANY people at this BBQ and after we ate, we took a walk down to the lighthouse and once we got to the end we stopped to talk about NCS. We met the different leaders and we found out about "Focus" which is a small group for international students. Kim and I are VERY excited about this group!! After we talked, we went back to Nobby's Train Shed and they served us ice cream.. (so I had ice cream two nights in a row)... YUM! (but this time, it even had sprinkles :). After the sweet treat, we broke up into our small groups (so Kim and I went to the Focus group) and we played a small ice breaker game where we went up to someone new and said our 1) name and where we were from 2) favorite food 3) favorite TV show and 4) worst haircut. My answers were 1) Jen from the states 2) any type of pasta 3) HOUSE!! 4) in 3rd grade when I cut my hair short and it went into an afro type stage (commonly referred to as the 'bird nest').

The focus group did that for a while but we still wanted to get to know each other more, so we went to the Depot (a coffee shop on Darby Street). I sat with Emma (from Aussie), James, and Harris (both from Korea). This was so much fun!!!! I learned so much about them and things from other cultures. Emma and I really bonded and we shared our phone numbers. She said she would cook kangaroo for me and I told her I would make her banana pancakes :D She also is going to show me some Australian music and things like that. I'm so excited to be involved in NCS and more specifically Focus because I get to meet people from all over the world!! Everyone is so nice and we've all shared so many of the same experiences (leaving home, being in a new country, coming here not knowing anyone, etc.) It's so great to be able to talk about it with someone who has been there, too! It's kind of like our second family and I cannot wait to get to know them more.

PS. One (of the many) birds in Australia have a very unique song. I wake up to this very unique song every morning and it reminds me a lot of R2D2 from starwars! It's a very beautiful bird and call and I learned today that it is called the Australian Magpie! Here is a video of it's call (watch the whole thing to hear all of it!) : 

Until then :) xoxo