Goose!

So my intention was to go to Uni early today to get some work done but I haven't made it there yet and it's about quarter of ten. The other part of my plan though is to stay there all day after I finish class at 12 so that I can get some research done. Three papers due in about a week and a half! I'm freaking out!

On to happier topics...The past couple of days have been heaps good for the most part. Wednesday night was Exec Dinner where we had to get formally dressed up for dinner. Other colleges student clubs had representatives come and eat at the high table that night. This dinner was excellent! We got wine at dinner and the meal was just excellent in itself! We also got served our food, no buffet style! Anyway after tea the idea was to go out to a pub because it was pub night, but we weren't going to the Cathedral which is our usual pub, but to some other pub because it was a special occassion. Needless to say I did not make it out again... But it was still a good night. We finished off a bottle of wine in Jess and Mel's room and then headed over to Shannon's where heaps of our mates were hanging out having a few before the pub. Sunny and I sat and sang Ben Folds together, of course with the help of whoever else joined in, but Sunny and I did our best to belt out the songs in a terrible tone (at least I did). This is kind of lame to say again, but I got sick and ended up falling asleep for awhile and when I woke up lots had happened... a couple random yelling fights between mates, and people passing out. It was just weird. We had a little scare with one of our mates that night. After hanging out for a bit more with Amber, Sunny, Shannon and Woody we all headed off to bed. I was down for about twenty minutes when the fire alarm went off in Hannan and Beovich. so 4:30 am we had a fire alarm and luckily we were only out there for a little bit. I have no idea what set it off, not sure if anyone does, just theories that it came from the kitchen.

Thursday was a gloomy gross day and it didn't help that I had only had three hours of sleep. To start the day I had breakfast and walked to Uni with Beth and Lauren(two more American mates of mine -- hilarious girls!). This walk hilarious as because we were all just silly. We all lost it too when I got goose poop on my foot. Not on my shoe, i was wearing chacos, so it definitely got on my foot. We all about died laughing. Later while Beth and I were getting coffee before class there were advertisements for a restraunt called THe Greedy Goose that said "go the goose". Beth thought this was so hilarious and picked one up explaining to me that she would make a sign or something out of it for me because after I goose poop on me she had decided that she would now call me "goose". Class was alright, we were locked out of our room so once we got a room it went ok, but I wasn't much in the mood for class. I walked back home after and thought I was going to get attacked by birds in park that kept flying around me! it was weird as... The rest of the day was devoted to making myself feel better and trying to do homework. I got a bit done, but not heaps. After tea was spent looking for Star Wars Episode 4 so Dave and I could watch it but we gave up after awhile. I then spent the evening talking to Amber and Sunny and then watching Family Guy with them and whoever decided to join us. We had another scare with a mate who fell asleep in Sunny's bathroom. After we got them out and Bec took them to their room we kind of sat there in silence not knowing what to say. I just kept thinking about it and was feeling very concerned. After awhile we got to talking about again and then most of us headed off to bed.

Today will hopefully bring good things, like actually finding research that is relevant to the topics for my papers! here's hoping! It's actually sunny out today so that adds to the day. Tonight is the Fresher show and I get to dress up like a pirate! I'm excited! i think I can make a whole outfit from clothes and stuff I already have! The Fresher show is just a get together where we'll have fun games and stuff to do, drinks, and i guess a big air bouncy thing! woo hoo! It should be a fun night. I also have footy practice this afternoon to get ready for our first real game on Sunday against Lincoln College! I can't wait! It's going to be so much fun... this game is great! One other bit of excitement I received this morning was an email from my daddy telling me all about what's going on back home. New neighbors have moved in next door and dad has been building a deck. Kyle only has two days of school left and then he graduates I think next week! Exciting stuff!!! plus I got more pictures of Kyle from prom :-) what a cute little brother I have.
Some sad news I found out was that the mom of a girl I went to high school with just died the other day. It is all pretty crazy because it mostly happened because the hospital screwed up or something. At least that is the story I was given. Weird stuff.
Sorry to end on a sad note... should have shared that earlier...
much love!

smuder

Tuesday Night League Championships!

Wednesday! Woot! -- alright so actually I want to start with news from yesterday...

Tuesday was kind of a crap day at uni. I finally got the group presentation done which was a relief and we actually ended up doing alright. We missed a few things but otherwise our professors feedback was pretty good. WHEW! The rest of the day at Uni was not amusing. Philosophy lecture was pretty boring which was sad because the lecturer we had is usually pretty good with her lectures. The break in my day was great because I met up with some mates and had lunch and then my last class my Philo tut was not exciting. After a crap day at Uni I was sooooo excited for the evening! It was Tuesday night Frisbee League championship night!!!! YAY!!!!! Our Div 2 team played for 3rd place and won. It was crazy because two of our players got there late and we were freaking out! But things went fine, and the game was good. We had awards after which was really neat. My mates Dave and Allie won MVP for Div 2 (they weren't on my team though) they're both awesome and they both just started playing this year! Again, they are awesome!

Then we moved on to playing Div 1 games. Adelaide Uni (the team I play on and love dearly) was playing for first place against Flinders Uni. Sigh... it was a tough game. Flinders was ready for us and they have a pretty mean game, not to mention very tall and fast guys which helps them out a bit! Some of my mates who don't play div 1 stayed to watch the game and my friends Sunny, Bec and Nina from Aquinas came to cheer us on too! It was so nice to have them there. It was a tough game and I got angry easily especially when I dropped a pass or two, or didnt' make a good pass or two! Sigh... but all in all it was fun, and it was my last game with that team so it was heaps good and I'm going to miss playing with all of them! It was kind of sad but so much fun nevertheless. :-) They are great people and I'm going to miss them and miss playing frisbee with them!!! I could probably go on forever about this but I should stop... It's Wednesday morning and I have homework to do and class to go to later!

oh but i want to share this... I had an exciting start to my day... I first got an email from my mum saying that I had received $300 from a scholarship I applied for before leaving the states! YAY! more money to do stuff! and then I also received an email from Britta and Kim saying they were going to Oregon to see Krista and that they needed her number. So I called Britta and Kim, who were traveling through Wyoming I believe and got to talk to them!!! They already had received Krista's number from Marissa but hey...it was great talking to them!

cheers,

smuder

this is kind of a boring one...

so I'm not quite sure where I left off from last week. Somewhere around Wednesday I think...

Anyway, highlights from the past few days.:

Friday was Tutor teas. If I haven't already explained Tutors are like RAs back in the states. My corridor went with the kids from Gleeson bowling. It was heaps good, I hadn't been bowling in a long time. My neighbor Dusty won the first game in our lane and he was bowling with his left hand, which is not his dominant hand! After bowling the idea was to meet up at a pub with all of the other corridors and hang out, which I did until they started to kick us out because they were closing. While at the pub my mate Fiona started asking me about when i'm going home and all of that, which got me a little sad...but otherwise it was a good night. I got barely any sleep again...

Saturday I was at Uni at 8:30am to catch a ride to Victor Harbor with the frisbee folk. We had a little tourney that weekend. Very laid back and nothing too special, but it was heaps good. We played two games that day and instead of spending the extra 20 dollars to spend the night I went home with Karen (she's great, she was our women's captain for LSD at nationals) and a couple others. I'm glad I did come home. One is because I got to shower and the other is that I was so tired I fell asleep by 9-9:30pm!

Sunday: This day I had set aside for doing work and I got a bit done but not much. I term it as only slightly productive but it was at least a little bit. I ended up watcing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas later in the afternoon and then spent most of the night with Amber hanging out eating chocolate and watching episodes of Friends on the network.

It's now monday and it's pretty gross and rainy today so there's no reason why I would want to go outside, which means I really have no excuse to not do my homework. Big day tomorrow... I have my group presentation for my Labor Studies class. I'm excited to get this over with and I hope that my group does well! I really like my group, they're cool people. I went out to lunch with Selina and Shelley from my group on Friday. Very nice girls. Anyway this will also be the last day I have this class which will be so nice! Now it's on to writing three papers and then an exam with hopefully some traveling in there too.

well this one was kind of boring, but i must be off to start my homework for the day. I do have all day, but really I'll only use so much of it...

cheers,
smuder

'Oh the Horror!' , Hitchhikers, 'Exies', The Races and more...

Alright, now if that wasn't a long enough title, lets see how long I can make this.
To start, it's 4:30 in the afternoon and I should really be doing homework. I get feeling guilty all too often about this. I have a presentation coming up next week and still haven't started any of my three papers due in less than a month! eek! But in spite of all of that, life in Australia is good. Here's what has been going on lately...

Friday the 13th! : oooh creepy. Ok not really because I don't believe in superstition but this day gave us a reason to rent some scary movies and just chill. My mate Jess and I decided to do so and ended up with a group of us that went to rent some videos. What we ended up with was The Evil Dead, Long Time Dead, Desperado, From Hell, The Nightmare Before Christmas and 24 hour party people. We ended up only watching Evil Dead, Long time Dead and Desperado. I realize Desperado is not a horror, and well Nightmare not so much either, and 24hr party people? that was Rick's pick... not sure what it is exactly. After three movies, some chips and beers in Jess's room a few of us watched Donnie Darko in Shannon's room . Creepy, but not horror and well really good. Of course we all stayed up late talking...me? yeah.. way too late! 8am maybe? I'm terrible with getting sleep but once again I can not complain about the conversation...it is worth it.

Saturday: I spent most of the day doing... hmmm good question. I tried doing work i think, then it was a trip to the store, and then participating in Ben's group discussion thing that he asked us to do for a presentation he is doing on globalisation and the media. It went well. I freaked out at Bec at one point about using the word White Trash and talking about class. We'll leave that at that.... Later that evening I went to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with some frisbee friends. It was a fantabulous time. I don't see them much out of frisbee nights during the week so it was nice to hang out and see a movie and then grab pizza after. I enjoyed the movie although I was told after by Will that he didn't think I would find it that funny since I've never read the books, but I still enjoyed the randomness and the humor. I came back to watch the rest of spiderman on tv and then headed to my room for some studies and bed.

Sunday: Another day of footy! YAY! this time we played against the Exies (ex-Aquinians). They didn't have enough chicks to make a full team so I ended up playing for them instead of for Aquinas. It was fun but not a very serious game. I got at least one really good tackle in (against my own Aquinas team mate) which was exciting because I was told I had done well. The day was beautiful! I came back early to do work and then after Tea a bunch of us walked to get ice cream, although Sunny did push me through the park in a shopping cart for awhile. Star Wars Episode 2 was on tv so Mel suggested we watch it in her room (Jess and her are roomies). So group of us ended up doing that for the night. I then debated where to do homework or go to bed....

Monday: Adelaide Cup Holiday. That's right a holiday! A holiday for horse races! How great is that?! Ha Ha... So what do Aquinians do on Adelaide Cup Holiday? We go to the races to get pissed. (what a country! what a city! what a college!) Basically heaps of us got together, dressed up, and went down to the races to drink all day. From about 11-5. These people are nuts, but I love them! I watched only like two races, but other wise enjoyed the company of my many friends that were there. It was a good day, full of quite a bit of nonsense, but good nevertheless.

Tuesday: This is not an interesting day. i spent the whole day at Uni going to class and trying to work on my group presentation. I keep freaking out about this presentation. I just really need a good chunk of time where I'll just sit and work on it! I had frisbee league again, and although our Div 2 team lost it was a fun game and we play for 3rd place next week, our Div 1 team won! That's right Adelaide Uni beat out team Disco! woo hoo! we play in the grand finals next week! it was quite an exciting game! We all played so well! Our heads were in the game and the spirit was awesome! it was a great game!

Now it's wedesday. Had class and did some work and need to do more work. Frisbee fun and trainig tonight, more homework and possibly a movie later. It is pub night, but I doubt I'll go. Too much work and well I'm just too lazy again to go!
much love!

cheers.
emily

Grace Emily, Collapse, Tequila, Coffee, and Shorts that hurt!

Everyone like the title? Good! These are just a few highlights from my week:

Monday: I have no class these days and it turned out to be a rather unproductive day doing homework. I tried working on a group presentation but I am having a hard time getting that together. Monday night was great though... my mates Joe, Jessica, and Louise all performed at an open mic night at a pub called the Grace Emily. They were all amazing! The other people who played were also wonderful! We had a good sized group of people that went to support Joe, Jessica and Louise too. None of them had ever played open mic, so it was a little nerve wrecking for them but again they all did so well! They are all great musicians! This whole experience was awesome! the Grace Emily was really cool, the people were heaps fun, and the entertainment was great!

Tuesday: This is my full day of class which started with my Labor Studies class. All we did was work on our presentations and although I found a little bit more focus on my part of the presentation with the help of my mates in my group I am still freaking out about my part of the presentation. I really don't want us to do poorly! During class though I had my laptop with and I discovered the game Collapse on my computer! Oh joy! This game is so fun but heaps addictive. I've been playing it too much ever since. Tuesday ended with frisbee league. Our division 2 team won our game so we play in the finals? , i think next week! The division 1 team I play on lost, 8-12 but it was a good game. In both games I did kind of crap but they were still good games overall! Can't wait for next week! This was also the night I stayed up until 4am chatting with mates. And although it made me tired I do not regret it because it was some great conversation! ( I love these people!)

Wednesday: Apart from being tired it was a good day. I was excited to go to Pub night, but actually ended up not going. After I finished Uni for the day at 1 my mate Amber and I decided to stick around Uni for a bit and participate in the Uni's attempt to break the world record of the longest Tequila shot! we weren't going to stay but then we saw friends from Aquinas and figured we should join them. Unfortunately we did not break the record. They were looking for 1,050 people but only ended up with 800. It was all really funny. Wednesday was frisbee again which was good and then it was pub night. I had been planning to go, but since I hadn't finished my reading during the day I decided I would stick around to finish it. Plus I was heaps tired from frisbee. When I got back from frisbee my mate Jess was prepared to drag me to the pub. Luckily she didn't actually do so and I ended up in the Dining Hall with my mates Nina, Greatsy and Shannon. We sat there and drank coffee for quite awhile and then I headed to my room for some studying which was hard to do. I couldn't focus on the reading, it was rather boring.

Thursday: This was a good day...no hangover, because I stayed away from alcohol the night before! I had one tutorial for politics and it was good. We got our papers back and I did alright. It wasn't exceptional but it was good. After class I headed to the library to do some research for my next politics paper. It didn't go that well...i spent most of the day and evening trying to focus on some sort of work whether it was my poli paper, philo paper or labor studies paper/presentation. I had the worst time trying to focus my attention on anything! ugh! before tea though my mate Amber agreed to go running with me. I just couldn't stand thinking about work anymore, I was going crazy in my room trying to read! I decided I just wanted to run... anywhere! So we took a forty minute run, well more like a jog and it felt great! Except for the fact that my shorts were rubbing on my leg and have left a huge owie on my leg! stupid shorts! And then after tea I went back to not being able to focus and then ended up falling asleep early but getting some good sleep...

now it's friday morning. One lecture to go to today... and hopefully I will get some work done this afternoon. I really should just lock myself in my room and turn off the computer! Anyway... we'll see what the day brings...

much love,

smuder

Footy

First of all I realize that my last post is labeled for Friday when really it was Saturday that I wrote it. Sorry for any confusion, I forget to change the time and date sometimes to Australia time. lo siento...

Anyway, the weekend is gone and it's on to the beginning of a new week. Sigh... Monday... It's my day off and so far I've done nothing now that it's 12 noon. For once I went to bed early last night at around 11 so I got plenty of sleep but I have not done anything besides eat breakfast, write in my journal and listen to music. I also called home for Mother's Day since it is still Sunday back home. That was a lovely experience though. I got to talk to the whole family because Amanda was over and Kyle actually got on the phone. I got to ask Kyle all about his prom experience...sigh... my lil brudder went to prom. I'm feeling old...

Well the rest of the weekend was good. Saturday I went to a frisbee party at my friend Claire's. It was nothing extreme just people hanging out having a few drinks, eating some food and visiting. It was good because I got to catch up with my friend Blair who I hadn't seen much of during the week. I also got to get to know some frisbee people a bit better and Blair and I had a nice conversation with Chris, who was a frisbee player but doesn't have much time right now to really get into it. Although I think he plays league. He's great and he had much to talk about and ask us about to compare U.S. and Australia differences. I returned from that at about 2 am. Blair and I were lucky and got a ride home from our friend Warren instead of taking the bus or a taxi back. We took the bus to Claire's. We are, what you might call a little bit city transit impaired. Actually we weren't that bad at catching the bus and getting to Claire's although we did miss our stop and had to get off at the next stop which was luckily not too far from the one before it.

Sunday was a lovely day. We had a footy scrimmages on Sunday. Both the chicks and blokes played and it was great. Footy is also called Australian Rules Football. I think I might have described it before but if I haven't, it's wonderful. It's much more fast paced than American Football, has much more running, and is more brutal. We don't wear padding or anything we just kicked and handball it to our team mates to get it down the field and score either a goal(which is six points and is when the ball goes through the two tall poles) or a point (which is one point and is when it goes through the small pole and one of the tall poles on either side). Both of our teams won and the team that we played was really cool. The guys are so much better at footy than us chicks but it's still heaps of fun. It takes me awhile to remember that I can tackle and people can tackle me because I'm used to frisbee being so stop and go and not being and to touch the person. Oh another thing about footy...when you get the ball you can run, but only for fifteen steps, you can keep running if you bounce the ball or touch it to the ground. Otherwise you bump it with a fist from your hand or kick it, kind of like a punt, down the field. The other thing is that you can soccer it (kick it around on the ground) but we try to stay away from doing so. At least on our team, because it's not the best way to play, it's fairly inaccurate and it makes the ball just bounce around. I had such a fun time playing this game and watching the blokes after us. It's a great sport and I enjoy it much more than american football. Hopefully I will be able to find a way to show people back home how the game works. I definitely can not explain it all through a post, and well I don't actually know all of the rules either, but it's great. I for sure am planning on buying a footy to bring home! Haha... new game for us all to play! -- much love...

cheers!
smuder

Sigh...Saturday is finally here. I was so very much looking forward to the weekend ALL week! I know I said I was going to write more because I have been journaling more myself but I haven't even journaled on my own since about Wednesday. I guess I got kind of busy, well not really...probably just lazy. Nothing too exciting has happened in the past few days...

Thursday was nothing special. I went to my one class and it was interesting as usual but it's Aussie Politics and I barely talk in discussion because I don't know what's going on. My mate Beth, who is also American feels the same way, but she at least gets the courage to ask some questions. Our class is really cool, they don't seem to get annoyed with us being dumb and same with our instructor. :-) So it's all good... Thursday night was our pub night. It's usually on Wednesday night but because of basketball on Wednesday we had it Thursday. I haven't been to pub night in ages so I decided to go for once. Only thing is...I never made it to our pub the Cathedral. I went out for drinks at four with my mates Amber, Ben and Tom. We ate, and went out again at 8 to another pub, The British, but had to leave there and go home. I ended getting a little sick and crashing in my friend Shannon's room. But hey, I got heaps of sleep! So it's all good!

Friday felt like Saturday...I didn't go to my lecture. I decided more sleep was a better idea and a bit of homework. We also had some footy training. We have a scrimmage on Sunday, which should be interesting. This game is so awesome! Friday night was wonderful because I didn't go out. I just sat with some mates and watched movies all night. It was beautiful! Of course I stayed up too late again and got up this morning for breakfast. I actually had kitchen duty at 10 so I had to get up. The movies were great. We watched Sin City which I guess has been released in theatres in the states but not here. Some how someone here at college got a pirated copy. It's a weird movie but so good. A little gross, but good nevertheless. The other two were Aussie-made movies. Priscilla Queen of the Desert (very hilarious) and Strictly Ballroom. Anyway, that's all there is to say really. I ended up staying up late last night again because a bunch of us started having a pillow fight basically in Shannon's room last night after our last movie. We are such dorks, but we have fun! Now it's on to seeing what Saturday will bring...

cheers!

smuder

Toe Nail clippings

I've been thinking that I should write in this more because well I've been journaling more on my own time so I figure I'll share some of those things with anyone who actually reads this. I actually get a little bummed that I don't get many comments from people on here, but oh well. On with my life...

Tuesday night was great. I went out to play some frisbee! Tuesday night league is so much fun. I got to play two games last night. One for Division 1 and one for Division 2. Both games were a lot of fun which completely made my night. Our Div 1 team for Adelaide Uni won, which was very exciting. We all really got into the game. We had a white head band that we passed around to people who made a great effort on the field. I actually got it once which was very exciting!! I think that definitely got people going and got them more excited to play well and make good cuts and throws. Overall it was great. As usual a group of us went out for KFC afterwards because it's right across the street. YUM! Nothing like hot chips after a couple frisbee games! No, really, they were very very good! When I got home I was so buggered that I pretty much went straight to bed and ended up falling asleep in my frisbee clothes with my lights on and my door open. I did wake up after a few hours and turned off the lights and shut the door but was too lazy to do anything else.

Today, Wednesday, was a pretty good day. I got up early enough to get breakfast in along with a bit of homework before I went to class for a couple of hours. I ended up coming back after Uni and made myself a yummy grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This was a very crazy idea to the Aussies that were around. My American friend Dave thought it was ingenious though! And it was soooo good! I'm sure I've said this before but they just don't eat a whole lot of pb&j here. Oh and they get confused when we use the word jelly. Jelly is the word they use for Jello. And they just use Jam for what we call Jelly. It gets confusing but pretty funny. Most still think we're weird for liking peanut butter and chocolate together too. After lunch I actually got work done for my politics class and also a bit for my Labor studies class. Go me! It was such a beautiful day out that I went outside and sat and studied with my friend Amber. Sigh... it really was nice out! Just gorgeous in the shade! Oh another exciting thing was I got mail today! A parcel! yay! Mom was very nice and sent me my Five Iron Frenzy cd "The End is Near". This is one of my most favorite bands and I stupidly left the two copies I have of it back in the states! It was so good to pop it in and listen to it though! THANKS MOMMY!

Tonight was more frisbee. A little more low key than Tuesday nights, but it was still good. I kind of had to take charge and teach my team what to do because there were a few new people out tonight. It was cool though and I realized how hard it is to coach people. They were all really easy going, but I was concerned I wasn't explaining things well. Anyway we got through it pretty well. I think we won, but I don' tknow, I don't really keep score.

One last share... I just had a bit of a scare a few minutes ago. People are playing some basketball out on the court which if I were to look out my window, the court is right in front of me. And well even though there is a wall sometimes the balls go over the wall. I just had a basketball hit my window. Not only was it startling, but thank God it did not go through my window like the cricket ball did earlier this semester. The basketball also got the window where my computer is... not good if that would have come through!!! Oh, tonight was also basketball. Aquinas mens and womens teams had games tonight. The blokes lost but the chicks won. Very exciting, but i didn't get to see any of it. Well I think that's it for now. Nothing else going on. Footy training in the morning! ugh! too early to get up!

cheers!
smuder

--oh and I finally found my nail clippers so I got to clip my toe nails today :-) in case you were wondering

$600 less poor!

This is not really that exciting of news, but I just got the urge to write something... Today I was happy to find out, 1. The boring lecturer for Philosophy is done, she only had last weeks lectures! (thank God!), 2. I got my philosophy essay back, first thinking oh crap! a D?!?! but then remembered that they don't give letter grades. The give High Distinction, Distinction, Passes, and Fails. So really I got a Distinction on my paper! WOO HOO! Better than my Labor studies essay by far!, 3. My mommy was kind enough to put $300 in my checking account and...Dad told me he put my federal tax refund in there too, which was another $302!!!! I can now survive two more months of living in Australia with the possibility of traveling! yay!

Besides all of that the day was pretty... mmm crap. Well it was all gloomy out, and I was heaps tired. But that was my own fault for being tired. I didn't go to bed til mmmm 3 am! ugh! This is what I get for wanting to make friends! I finished my work for today so I first watched a movie. I got to introduce the movie Saved to some Aussies! (great movie if you like sattirical movies about religion) After that I decided to visit with Sunny and Greatzy (Greatzy is really Dave Greatz...Americans tend to call him Gretzky) and we decided to throw the frisbee out on the lawn at about 1:30 am. How genious are we?! After that I was entertained by drunk friends who had gone to the pub on a Monday night! geez! The best part was that I got a bed time story! We were talking about kids books and Shannon loves the book "Where the Wild things are" and he had it so he read it for us.

Well that is all I have. Nothing really exciting just something to maybe enterain anyone who reads this a bit. Tonight I have frisbee league and I'm usually there from about 6:30 til 11 or so... So it becomes a long night. It's time for some food, but I hope you enjoyed reading this.

cheers!
emily

a week of recovery...

So the week after traveling proved to be a hard week. I had an essay to work on that I hadn't really started but was actually excited to write. That may sound weird especially if you don't like politics, because it was my politics paper. My topic was on compulsory voting and whether is was anti-democratic (in case any of you really care). And though it may sound really boring, I actually found it really interesting to write about because it is something that doesn't happen in the U.S.

Anyway...I ended up falling asleep at random times of the day for the next few days because I was still so tired. It was no fun to go back to a full day of class on Tuesday where I went to class at nine for three straight hours at first and ended up getting back a bad paper! ugh! Luckily it doesn't mean I will fail the class or anything. Whew! Besides that I was stuck in my room most of the week working on that paper that was due Friday and for the most part it was a good week but I didn't see a whole lot of people because I was in my room so much.

Once the paper got handed in, which took longer than I had wanted because I screwed up my footnotes a billion and one times, I was able to enjoy my weekend. I had a date with some friends at the UniBar at 5. I got the paper in by 4:30 and made it there earlier. I met my friends Amber, Blair, Jess and Sam. This may sound weird but it was nice to sit and relax on a friday and have a few beers. Us girls went back to Aquinas and then we went out with a bunch of people for our friend Sunny's birthday. We went to a pub in the city which was actually not that cool. We had a few beers there and the "bouncers" were weird because they were all around and they made you sit down if you had a drink. We left after a bit, just me , amber, blair and jess and went to get some food. We all ended up crashing in Jess's room to watch a movie but woke up later to hang out in Sunny's room because he was back. My friend and Shannon and I kept ourselves occupied and entertained by trying to do as much as we could to Sunny's room. Like moving things around and putting stuff in the fridge. We also kept ourselves occupied with putting post its around his room and then began writing random words and messages all over them. Needless to say we are dorks because this kept us entertained for hours. Amber, Shannon and I actualy ended up staying up until 7:30 and then finally left Sunny's room.

Saturday was a very low key day doing work and going to bed early, and Sunday was quite uneventful with more homework and just a great day of relaxing. So needless today the weekend was better than the week but overall it has been good, and I'm still enjoying myself. I've decided I'm not allowed to think about going home or about the summer and getting a job and all of that yet. But I know I will have to sooner or later because I will be so poor when I get home and will need the money to get through school. Sigh... there are still so many things I need to take care of for the next year of school! sigh... oh well... I know this isn't the most exciting post but I felt the need to write.

cheers!
smuder

Southwest WA, Perth and Ultimate!

I'm back! YAY! Back in wonderful Adelaide! I truly love this city eventhough those from Adelaide question my sanity when I say that sometimes...Like yesterday. I don't get it, this city is wonderful! Anyway...
Why all the excitement? Well because I just returned to Adelaide Monday night from another week long trip! This time I went to Western Australia. My friend Blair and I traveled together. We flew into Perth Sunday the 17th and spent the night there then headed off for a three day trip pretty much down the coast of the southwest part of WA. It was gorgeous! A billion nice views to see and wonderful people to travel with. We saw a lot of the Indian ocean, great beaches like Meelup bay and Surfers Point along with some HUGE trees like the Gloucester tree (61m high I believe) which you can actually climb, the Valley of the Giants (lots of big trees) treetop walk (very cool), beautiful Nglili caves, had a bird eat out of my hand, almost got blown away by some blow holes and all the in betweens. Like... the bus rides...the most fun was the one going back to Perth. Alex, a guy from England, gave us more of a taste of his musical talents by playing guitar and singing some songs for us. He had shown us a little our first night in Margaret River when he participated in Karaoke. The second night when we were in Albany we chatted with some people not on our trip. Met a guy from Canada and talked to him about his travels. Most of the people on our three day trip were English, there was another girl from the U.S. and two Australians, who were friends of the bus driver. Blair and I were about the only two who were actually still studying. Most of the people on out trip were taking time off and just traveling for, times ranging from 3 months to almost a year!

After our three day trip Blair and I got back to Perth and had to stay at the Ozi Inn. Not the best place to stay. The place we had stayed at that past sunday was completely full. Just for reference, if you ever travel to Perth and need a hostel, try your best to get into the Underground and not the Ozi Inn. In simplest terms, it was a little dodgy. Blair and I got rooms at the Underground the next day because we had friends staying there that would be gone for the night wanting to get away from the hostel for the whole day and so we get their rooms. We were ultra lazy that day (Thursday, 21st) and finally got going around noon to get lunch and then we shopped. That was about the extent of our day. We stopped in a park and went on the craziest teeter totter I have ever seen, and also had fun on some little spinning contraption. Some of the frisbee girls came in that night and two of our other friends were there too so we just sat around and had a few beers with them. Well everyone else had a few more than me. Friday Blair, Rebecca, Amber and I went on a wine tour. There were 12 of us, all girls that went and it was great. I bought my first bottle of wine while on the trip. It was great overall...we stopped at a chocolate factory too! Yum! This is where we discovered chocolate massage oil. That night (Friday) we went out with frisbee friends along with Amber and Rebecca. It was good fun. I tried my first Long Island Ice Tea...wow! that's some crazy stuff!

After all the fun of seeing sites Saturday morning was frisbee time! YAY! We were playing in Nationals! Our ladies team is called the Leafy Sea Dragons (LSD). We had 12 players and we were ready to get our butts kicked, which happened but we still had fun doing it. Ultimate is still gaining ground in South Australia, it's not really developed yet, and considering that this was the first time all twelve of us girls were together playing was probably another factor. We had never all practiced together at the same time! The tourney went from Saturday to Tuesday, but Blair and I left monday during our second to last game for the tournament. We had three games on Saturday, one of which we won!, 2 on the second day, 3 on the third day (by that time we were so buggered) and then there was the one I missed on Tuesday. We finished 7th out of 8. The mens team from SA did pretty well I think, I'm not quite sure actually but I'm pretty sure they won more than one game. It was a great time getting to hang out with the girls and getting to know some more people through frisbee. It was great to see a team from the Northern Territory. They have one team from there and so it was so cool to see a new team starting out. They are a mens team and are almost all aboriginal teenagers. They just seemed to excited to be there and playing. Some of the boys were actually really small so it was funny to see them up against some of our bigger guys, but they still did well.

Overall my trip was great. I realize there isn't much description about this one, but really I should be doing homework right now before I head to uni for a couple of hours so i've laid off on a ton of description.

cheers!
smuder

Tasmania

(This one is long so be prepared!)
Back from the land of Devils (Tasmanian Devils that is)....
The trip to Tasmania was great! First of all it was wonderful getting to see all the IES kids again and getting to touch base with those that I have not seen in a long time and also to learn a little bit more about some of them! The trip started bright and early Saturday morning with a long bus ride to Melbourne. Once in Melbourne we had dinner and then caught a ferry to Tasmania. This was quite an experience...To begin with, before getting onto the Ferry you have to go through security which to me is really not security at all. Compared to lets say the Minneapolis airport or any airport in the U.S. this was like "Easy Mac" (you know the kind you microwave, and how any one can find that difficult or mess is up is beyond me). All they really checked for was fruit. You can't take fruit from Melbourne to Tassie ( you also can't take it from South Australia into Victoria and vice versa). They quick look in your bags and you walk through the metal dector and you're done. Very very simple. The boat was great, and we got rooms which were nice and tiny for four people but we managed. It was much better than having to be one of the people that just had a seat and no room. We arrived in Tasmania the next morning around 7 and got breakfast and headed for Cradle Mountain. Here we took a hike up the mountain to Marion's lookout. It was all very goreous and as we began our walk it was like walking towards Mordor (for those of you who are Lord of the Rings fans.) It was cloudy and chilly and actually began to rain but it was quite an experience nevertheless and it was amazing still! It rained the rest of the night and we all tried to keep warm in our cabins and tried our best to dry out our soaking clothes and shoes.

Monday was again an early morning and had a very long bus ride (about five hours) down to Port Arthur. We basically drove across the state in five hours, which as my friend Blair pointed out to me would barely get you a third of the way down through California. On the way when we stopped for lunch we got to see the Oldest bridge in Australia that was buily in 1823 by convicts. To get to Port Arthur we drove through Eaglehawk Neck which is a small piece of land (I think 100m wide) that connects Port Arthur to the Mainland of Tasmania. Port Arthur was great and is the site of a convict settlement. We started with a museum that gave us an actual convict to follow to find out what happened to them. We then got a ferry tour of the port and saw The Island of the Dead, which is easily explained as a cemetary for the convicts and others that lived at the settlement. All of the stories about the convicts were really interesting to hear. After the ferry we mostly just went from building to building to read about the different parts of convict life. The next morning we headed off for another ferry to take us to Maria Island (pronounced Mariah) which was another convict site. We started off on time, made a stop at "Doo town" (All the houses in this neighborhood had names on their houses that had the word Doo in them. Like "love me doo" and "doo little") and then had some time at the beach by Eaglehawk Neck while our tour guides ran back to the hostel because Susanna ( one of the guides) had forgotten her bag! We finally started off and made a mad rush for the ferry to take us to Maria Island. Luckily we were able to get them to stall and we made it across. Here we took another hike. The day was great, and everything was beautiful! we hiked up to the top of one on the Bishop and Clerk trail. It was hard but it was great. Once we were to the top we all took a break and were sitting in the middle of a cloud so we couldn't see much, but it was still pretty awesome. On our way back down and back to our rooms we saw some wildlife (kangaroos, lizards). The sunset that night was gorgeous and the night was wonderful. We got to try wallaby for dinner! it was really good! It was like a very tender steak! YUM! That night most of us slept outsides instead of in the converted cells. We took an early morning walk the next morning and watched the sunrise which was gorgeous as some really awesome cliffs. We left Maria Island Wednesday morning and were luckily the only ones on the ferry back to the mainland (there were a ton of elementary school kids on the ride to Maria island and so it was packed!) One sad thing that i did see over Tasmania and was even greater of sadness when taking the ferry from Maria island was to see all the tree cutting done. When on the ferry you could see this HUGE pile of wood chips on the shore of Tasmania.

Wednesday was again a wonderful day. We had a stop at a berry farm which was AMAZING! it was a short trip but we all got some ice cream and it was so AMAZING!! I had strawberry and blueberry which was... well words can not describe! it was good though! We then headed to our next destination where we would be hiking and sea kayaking! We split into two groups and my group went hiking to Wineglass bay, which was again gorgeous! When we hiked down to the beach I ended up taking a dip in the ocean with my friends Sam and Sam. It was great and was fun to do as a spur of the moment thing. Walking back all wet was not that great though. The next morning the groups switched and my group got to go sea kayaking. We woke up to rain but we decided that we would still have lots of fun and we did! We got taught what to do and got into the kayaks. Although it was raining the ocean still looked fine. We got out like 30 meters and then it got kind of rough so we didn't get to do the whole trip. We actually never made it that far from the beach. The waves were great, but it was hard trying out best to not capsize! Blair and I were lucky and never did but friends Amber and Jon did twice! After we got back in the girls took a dip in the ocean and then the guys went back out a to mess around near the beach.

We left that afternoon for Devonport again to catch the ferry back to the Australia mainland, but not without a stop in Launceston (Tassie's second biggest city, second to Hobart) where we took a little walk around a park which was home to the longest chair lift of some sort. I'll have to find a picture of it to show. Anyway from there we went back to Devonport where we cooked up hot dogs at a park. Here everyone seemed to be so full of energy and it was great! We also had ice cream with strawberries and different berry sauces that one of our guides bought at the berry farm! Oh it was great, i licked my bowl clean! We got back to Melbourne Friday morning and we headed to a great big breakfast at a place called Greasy Joes. YUM! We then all parted ways. Some people were staying in Melbourne and others were catching flights to Cairns or Brisbane. I took the bus back with Blair and Becky and the guides to Adelaide. Blair and I leave Sunday afternoon for Perth where we are taking a three day tour of Western Australia before we play some ultimate!! It's Saturday afternoon and I've definitely have gotten nothing done like I had planned. Homework needs to be worked on, clothes need to be cleaned, my journal needs to be written in, my body needs a shower and so on... and yet I have gotten none of this done because I went to frisbee and then out to lunch!

I hope you all enjoyed that! I probably won't be on a computer again for the next week so I'll update once I'm back from Perth!
much love,
smuder

Traveling Gal...

Well here I go... I'm off bright and early Saturday morning at about 6am for my first long traveling excursion here in Australia. IES is taking our group to Tasmania for the next week! I'm very excited to go and can't wait to see all the IES kids and hang out in what I have been told, beautiful Tasmania!! We leave Saturday the 9th and will be back on the 16th. I'll be in Adelaide for that Saturday and then after that I take another trip out to Perth with my friend Blair! I'm so excited for the next two weeks! It's going to be crazy not being around Aquinas and Adelaide, I love it here, I'm going to miss all the friends from around here, but I know I'll love the traveling bit!

Tonight is an exciting night before I head off tomorrow morning...I'm going to a Ben Folds concert with some friends and then there is a Frisbee pub crawl that I'm sure I'll make an appearance at before heading to bed at some grossly odd hour in the morning, only to get up to catch the but to Melbourne with the IES folk! That's about all I have for now... I'll try to update while I'm gone in Tasmania but if not, I'll do my best when I get back Saturday! Have a great week everyone!

much love!
Cheers,
emily

Sydney

Hope everyone had a fabulous Easter Holiday, I know I did! As I said before I spent my Easter in Sydney. It was really weird because it didn't feel like Easter, it just felt like another weekend. The weirdest part was toasting with my friends "Happy Easter" while we ate pasta at a pizzeria near our hostel. Anyway...

Sydney was great! It's a wonderful city! It was so beautiful especially taking the trip on the ferry around the harbor which let me see all the sites I wanted to see. Like the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the Opera House, some beaches and well just a great view of Sydney itself! The hostel that my friends and I stayed at was very close to Darling Harbor, which is a great area full of stuff to do, like the Maritime Museum, the Sydney Aquarium, and there's plenty of shopping and places to eat and drink. The Aquarium was a wonderful experience, if you ever go to Sydney make a stop there... it was great! There are heaps of fish and sea creatures to look at! The platypus were very interesting creatures to look at. They're adorable!

Day one was great except for not being able to pop my ears on the plane! I had no idea how much that sucks because I've always been able to, but being sick and stuffed up made it more difficult! Anyway Day One in Sydney was Friday, I got there in the afternoon and it was mostly spent checking out Darling Harbor (which I've already explained). A group of us checked out the Chinese Gardens which were really pretty, but we didn't really know what to do with ourselves there. They were still pretty great though. I also made it over to the Maritime Museum which has a bunch of sea stuff. And by that I mean parts of ships and displays about the convict ships and the expeditions made to Australia. I believe this was also the night that we discovered Chinatown which was mass crazy! So much Asian food in one place!!! Blair, Amber and I also enjoyed a movie at the Imax (Robots, which is really funny, and a great cartoon) and watching a street performer afterwards. The next day was the Aquarium which was great, and we also went to the Australia Museum, which was pretty cool, not my most favorite thing, but I enjoyed the exhibit about Aboriginees. I also got to experience The Queen Victoria Building! It's really a lovely building, but we went mostly for the amusement of how expensive everything was in the shops there!! $200 for a Versace tank top?! It was crazy, and we had fun looking at some goregous dresses, but there was just the overall feeling that I did not belong there in my t-shirt and rolled up jeans! This was also the day that our friend Andrew decided we needed to go to Kings Cross. Ha! There is no real need to go there, it's pretty dodgy, but for some reason we walked up to Kings Cross and experienced Sydney's dodgy-ness.

My last full day in Sydney was Sunday which consisted of first finding breakfast which took quite awhile, then missing the Ferry, finally getting on the ferry, taking a ride around Sydney harbor to see the bridge and Opera house, and then walking about in Paddy's Market. Paddy's Market is one HUGE market full of clothes, shoes, souvenirs... heaps of stuff! I bought the ever tourist-y boomerang while there. The place was just crazy full of people, but it was pretty cool. The rest of the day I spent with friends Amber and Blair buying souvenirs. By the way, this I have found is the hardest thing to do. Especially when thinking of friends and family back home. What the heck am I suppose to get for you people?! Whatever I do get, you better like it! :-) The three of us spent the rest of the night together first with a couple cheap drinks at the pub in the hostel where we met some other Americans that were visiting Sydney , but studying in Wollongong (about an hour south of Sydney). We then made our way to find somewhere yummy to eat at for Easter dinner that wasn't too expensive and we ended up at a Pizzeria that was really rather tasty! The rest of the night our large group (which totaled 10) spent at the pub in the hostel hanging out, where we once again got to talk with the Americans we had met earlier. It was an early evening for me because Amber and I had to fly out at 8:20 the next morning. Overall it was a great experience and a lot of fun. Sydney is a really great place and the company I had with me was wonderful also. One random thing about Sydney was that this was the first time that I saw a Starbucks and a 7/11. There were many 7-11's, which was convient because there was one two seconds from our hostel. Anyway that was my trip and it was great. It is now Thursday and I have lots of work to do! I have an essay due tomorrow which will hopefully not be too crappy. I just checked comments from my Easter post though and Cassie and Mandi... you two are terrible! Encouraging me to put off my essays! :-) hahaha. no worries! Mandi I'm glad you like to read these, Adelaide is great, I'm glad I came here! Well I should be off, it's about time for lunch and then lots and lots of "essay" writing to do! I keep getting made fun of for calling them papers, so I'm trying my best to call it an essay not a paper! That and I felt really stupid this morning with the way I pronounce banana. Oh and one more share, I watched Family guy with a bunch of Australians the other night, which was funny cuz I tended to laugh at things that they didn't...that was pretty funny.

cheers!
smuder

Happy Easter!

As I sit here realizing that I still have not accomplished much for homework this evening I find myself wanting to give a quick update of my life for you all.

Of course Uni is starting to kick me in the butt with three essays coming up! It could be better if two weren't due over break, when I'm NOT here! yes I will be traveling for two weeks instead of doing papers for two weeks! So for the two weeks before I will be scrambling ever so quickly and crazily hoping to complete what will hopefully not be three crappy papers! oh what fun!
Besides Uni life has been good, although I am beginning to get sick which is no good for my trip to Sydney this weekend. No worries, I will survive and Sydney and Easter Break will be wonderful despite my sickness and the loads of work that will be waiting for me when I return Monday morning!

A few other things: Frisbee has been great and I love all the people I have been playing with, it has been a great way to meet people which I am so thankful for! Here at Aquinas College things are well too except for everyone getting sick, which finally passed on to me! According to my neighbor he wanted to get rid of his sickness and said he was coughing under my door so he could pass it along to me. What nice thoughts. An interesting conversation that I would like to share with you all is the conversation I had with my friends Shannon and Sunny about peanut butter. This came up because I got reeses in the mail from my grandparents for Easter! YUMM! They find it fairly odd that we would put peanut butter on our fruit like apples and bananas, and that we would eat it with chocolate. I told them that some people like peanut butter and pickle sandwiches which lead into a discussion about what pickles were in the states and what they are here. I guess a dill pickle would be a "gerkin" (spelling?) ,um yeah, weird word. We also discussed some other differences in words after that, most of which I can't remember right now. I did however learn what a capsicum was the other day. It's a pepper, like a red, green or yellow pepper. We talked about the difference between those and ground pepper for quite awhile the other night at tea that the word pepper lost all meaning!

Anyway, this is my life in Adelaide... Just a few more things, Happy Easter to all! I hope everyone has a great holiday whether you celebrate it or not and I'll update as soon as I get back from my trip to Sydney! YAY! much love and safe travels to any of you that might be traveling.

cheers!
smuder

Excitement along with some bumps and bruises

Well this past week hasn't been anything too exciting but here's a quick run down for those few of you who do read this... I've been trying to catch up on sleep all week after that very tiring weekend in Melbourne. Tuesday was my friend Rebecca's birthday, which was also my first night of League Ultimate. After putting a somewhat drunk Rebecca to bed that night I ended up talking to my friend Shannon until 5:30 am! Him and I both only ended up getting three hours of sleep, which did not help my catching up on sleep situation. Wednesday night was pub night, before that though I spent time at frisbee again and then a little time at the pub to watch Rebecca skull a jug of orange juice and vodka. I then planned to do some homework but once I got back from the pub Mel asked if I wanted food, which of course I agreed to so we went to get pizza. Later Shannon and I got to watch a drunk Mel be pretty silly and entertaining while we sat in the hall for awhile. Thursday night was of course St. Patrick's Day and I had no idea that Aussie's actually somewhat celebrated this holiday but I guess they do. My day had been wonderful all day, I was just in a really good mood from deciding plans for the second week of mid semester break with Blair to finding out that Flogging Molly ( an irish punk band I am very fond of) will be playing for free back in MN on my birthday to acting silly at frisbee practice! Anyway the happiness continued as we got ready to go out to the pub. This was probably the first time in about almost two weeks that I had drank anything. The night was entertaining running into other IES friends and just hanging out at the pub and then getting food, coming back and eating ice cream. Friday was not that great of a day because well, I guess I actually drank enough to give me a bit of hangover. Now don't worry all , it's not like I do this that often or anything, and I was still alive and coherent but man was I tired! Anyway I made it through my one class that I had and then spent the rest of the day recovering, I guess is what you could call it. Friday night was entertaining after Tea when a group of us got together to throw the frisbee which turned into a game of 500( you know the game where you stand in a group while someone throws a ball usually a football up in the air and calls points, and whoever catches it gets the points and the first to five hundred becomes the next thrower?) -- this game though did not include winning points and turned into a game of pushing eachother out of the way so they couldn't catch the disc. Really it just gave us a reason to push eachother around which actually was quite a lot of fun. Most of us have bruises and bumps to show for falls and hits. I have a bump on my nose from a frisbee that Sonny blocked and ended up in my face and a bump on the back of my head from mine and Shannons' heads colliding. OUCH! Overall it was pretty funny. After this fun game I spent some time at our "casino night" up in the common room but then decided a shower was needed and spent the rest of the night trying to read until Rebecca came by to watch Love Actually with me. Saturday has been a some what productive day... i was just happy to get ten hours of sleep. Rebecca and I bought a drying rack for clothes, and some other goodies. I have spent most of the evening trying to read for a class because I have a ton of reading left for it. Now it's coming down to what to do with the rest of the night... do more reading or hang out with people? decisions, decisions...

cheers
smuder

Melbourne

Hello all... This weekend I took my first trip besides the one I had to Kangaroo Island at the beginning of my time here in Australia. I went to Melbourne this weekend with the mens and womens ultimate frisbee teams! Most of the men left here on Thursday while all of the women left on Friday around 3pm. The trip to Melbourne was a full 8 hours in the car with a few stops so that we could stretch, pee, grab food and toss the disc a little. I thought I would go crazy being in a car for 8 hours but it actually went pretty quickly. We took six people in the car, five of the girls and then one of the guys who couldn't make it out there on Thursday with the rest of the guys. We were able to entertain ourselves with card games and just talking, with a little bit of sleeping towards the end of the trip. The drive at night was gorgeous away from the lights of the city, because you could see so many stars! It was lovely. Once we finally got to Melbourne we had to find our way around the city and find the hostel that we were staying at. It actually didn't take too long because Claire lived in Melbourne for six months at one point so she knew some of the streets and stuff. How she could know them well enough was beyond because the streets of Melbourne were so crazy confusing! Just a little fact... Adelaide is, I believe, the only planned city in Australia. Melbourne definitely did not have anyone plan out the crazy roads that they have, and on top of the crazy roads they were even more confusing for me because I'm American and I haven't gotten used to the driving on the left hand side of the road!

Anway back to the rest of Melbourne... We finally got to the hostel by 1:30 am and went straight to bed and although I was in bed it seemed like forever before I got to sleep and I only got about 5 hours. In the morning we made our way to the fields and since our women's team only had 5 women we had to pick up a few other girls to play with us to make a full ultimate team. We picked up two girls from the town of Ballarat to play with us (Nikki and Emily). We played the hardest team first but the nice thing was that women from one of the Melbourne teams were nice enough to play with us too so that we would have some subs! We lost all three of our games that day and it was really hot, but overall it was a good ultimate learning experience and I can't wait to actually get a chance to play with our full women's Adelaide team! That evening we all went out to the party that the Melbourne host team was throwing at a pub in town. So both the men's and women's teams piled in two cars and headed over. We all went for food first and then enjoyed a few drinks, some dancing, and a live band and then headed out because we were all pretty tired. Overall the night was really entertaining because I got a chance to chat with not only the girls but with some of the guys. The next morning we, the women, didn't have any games and so we went shopping, looked for socks for our uniforms for when we head out to Perth for Nationals! After shopping and then a very yummy lunch we headed back to the fields and watched the men's team (Karma) win their last game. So I didn't get to see much of the city but I think I will have another chance to see the city over our mid term break. The ride home from Melbourne was another 8 hours of however we could keep ourselves busy which actually was pretty easy when we started playing the game celebrity heads, it was a very entertaining game! Overall the trip was a lot of fun and although I did not see much of Melbourne, from the looks of it, I think I like Adelaide better just because it's a little bit nicer and smaller than Melbourne which was pretty big and kind of dirty looking so I'm glad that I chose to go to Adelaide for the semester instead of Melbourne.

Today, Tuesday is my friend Rebecca's birthday and also the beginning of Tuesday night ultimate league. For league I think I will be playing on two different teams but tonight I'll only be playing on one so that I can get back for part of the BBQ for Bec's birthday and any other shenannigans that are planned for her birthday! She's turning 21 today!

Besides all of that today was a good day at uni, I'm finally understanding what I need to be doing for my Labor Studies class and I think I will enjoy it a lot, and overall classes weren't bad today. it was a little rainy but that didn't dampen my spirits a whole lot, it just made the heat go away a bit which was nice compared to the heat this past weekend. One other thing I should mention is that I played my first game of Futsal last night. Futsal is pretty much soccer but on a smaller scale and we played it on the tennis court here at Aquinas. I played most of the game and it was lots of fun. We only play with five people on each team, four on the field and a keeper and although i used to play soccer those skills were not really showing last night... I don't think I ever really had that great of soccer skills but they might have helped a little! We actually won our game 2-0 i think, which was great! Well that's all that I have for you all. Hope all is well with everyone.
Cheers!
much love,
smuder

Boots

The week has gone by pretty fast...It's already thursday and I'm preparing for a big weekend. This week I have managed to not spend a whole lot of money on food or alcohol or anything really. I have gained self control and have not had tim tams or shapes all week! This weekend will be a little different spending money-wise though. Not only did I spend fifty dollars today to buy new boots (soccer cleats) for frisbee , which are really exciting, but I will be spending the weekend in Melbourne, Australia for a tournament. I'm so excited to be going to my first tournament! YAY. We only could get five girls to go so we'll have to gang up with another team so we have a full one to play but it should still hopefully be fun. I don't know how much of Melbourne I'll get to see but hopefully I'll get to see a little bit! We're leaving Friday at about 3 pm and are packing in a car and driving to Melbourne which is an 8 hour drive...so plenty of time to either sleep or do homework! haha. Hopefully the trip won't be too expensive but I know I'm going to have to take a bunch of cash out for accomodations and food so i can survive!

Along with that Frisbee last night was great again! We had three games going on and I was so pumped to play and just heaps excited. Two guys that live here at Aquinas (Sunny and Gretsy aka Dave) play frisbee, not on the mens team but in the Tuesday night leagues, and so I was able to catch a ride with them. They are great guys and lots of fun, we threw the disc together just the other night too! A couple of IES kids have been playing too so it's lots of fun to go to frisbee and see them! It was a great time minus the crappy wind and the craziness that is new frisbee players!

Besides frisbee everything else is good. School is good, people are good, the whole lot. Last night was pub night but I skipped out on that and just hung out at the college with people who were still around. This was nice and relaxing especially after a night of frisbee. However, I need to learn to go to bed earlier! 2 am should NOT be my bed time! I had a meeting with my study abroad adivsor over here today. It was pretty much a check up to make sure I'm alive and well and am surviving Australia and my living arrangements and stuff. Anyway we were talking and I'm telling her everything is good, but towards the end she looks at me and says "well you look pretty tired today" and well I was... that's what I get for staying up until 2 am most nights.

Well I'm going to leave you all with that and I will give you all an update when I get back from Melbourne. So until then...
much love,
smuder

relaxed weekend

Well it's been awhile since my last post, and I apologize, although I don't really know how many people rely on this to catch up on my life, but whatever...

This past weekend was quite uneventful in the sense that I stayed at college all weekend and didn't go out to the pubs or anything. I think that if I go out too much I will definitely go completely broke! I'm trying to live on a budget which hasn't been working too well yet seeing as it is only the second week of March and I'm down to like $35! EEK! Now this is suppose to be my fun spending money, but some of that was spent on books. UGH. Besides running out of money this weekend was pretty awesome because it was so relaxed and just hanging out turned out to be great. Most of the weekend I just spent the evenings hanging out with people which can give you such a great feeling because I felt like I was sitting around with a group of friends. That may sound weird but I've only known people for a couple weeks so it was nice to have that feeling of acceptance. Although I didn't get much talking in during conversations I did enjoy very much just observing the conversation and the people I was sitting with.

Birthdays have become a very common theme around here and else where. My tutor has his birthday this weekend and my friend Shannon had his birthday also. Both turned 20, which seemed weird because they seem older than that. Rebecca and I went out and bought Shannon a gift for his birthday which was The Princess Bride dvd. Out of all the Australians that we have asked, Rebecca and I have not found one that has seen the movie or read the book The Princess Bride except for Shannon, who loves it as much as we do! This was so very exciting for us because along with the search for those who have heard of it, whenever we've mentioned it, the males mostly, have just been like "oh sounds like a chick flick"! For those of you who have seen it, you quite clearly that it is NOT a chick flick! Anyway to say the least Shannon LOVED the gift, not only that but the wonderful wrapping paper that Rebecca and I made by coloring pictures from my coloring book. How awesome are we?! :-) Sunday was his actual birthday and a group of us ended up going out to dinner and then watching his new DVD. Yay for Rebecca and I introducing the Aussies to a great movie... oh and they all cracked up and loved the movie. It was a fun time! Besides these two birthdays friends back home have birthdays this week and then Rebecca has her 21st here next week! Something about March birthdays I guess!

Other news that I received from the states was that my good friend Kari got engaged this weekend which just made me go crazy!If you know Kari and have not told her congrats! You should,this is such exciting news and what is even better is that I will actually be able to attend her wedding!

now it's on to the second week of classes and I have realized that doing homework would be a good thing to do, but it's so hard when you want to keep being social and meet people especially when things are going on all around you! EEK! needless to say my procrastination needs to drop out and I need to pick up that whole studying bug again! Today (Tuesday) is my longest day but it still doesn't feel that bad..class from 9-3 with an hour break. What was exciting today was the fact that I enjoyed my philosophy lecture, the tutorial was a bit harder, but still good. All in all it was a good day at Uni and was a beautiful to match! I love this weather! One great thing about the weather here is that you can hang your laundry out instead of using the dryer...yay for saving some energy! the downer to this though is that lint collects like mad on your clothes when they hang to dry and the clothes that you have stretched out don't shrink back to their normal form. oh well. Well those are my ramblings for the day hope whoever reads this enjoyed it!
much love,
smuder

Rainy Day

Well the first week of classes are officially over for me! YAY! I had one class today (Friday) and it was hard to pay attention cuz I was sitting farther back than I had wanted and the chairs in the room are really squeaky when people move around. Not only that but my lecturer's Aussie accent can be a little difficult for me to understand sometimes, it all depends on what he's trying to say. The week overall wasn't too bad, my classes seem pretty cool for the most part and it's really weird to not have that much going on yet. Besides classes the week was pretty low key which was nice, although we did have our first official "Pub Night". I also got to play frisbee twice this week and it was super super fun! I was soooo excited for Wednesday night frisbee because a lot of my american friends came out to play which was so awesome and there were just TONS of people. It was great!!

Last night was quite entertaining after I got back from ultimate practice. I ended up in Shannon's room (he's a tutor, like an RA) with a bunch of people hanging out listening to music. Most of these people I had never really hung out with so it was kind of a weird experience, eventhough I felt good being there, like they were people that I always hang out with. Overall it was a good experience... We all ended up staying up way too late listening to music and watching random cartoons online...

Today is a gloomy rainy day and so the plan is to sit inside and chill all afternoon, which I am really looking forward to, and I don't feel that bad staying in because of the bad weather. I was going to go to Cleland Wildlife park with my friends Blair and Will. Will is a frisbee player and used to go to Luther for those of you that don't know ( I don't know if I ever shared that but yeah..). So that's about it for now, there isn't much else to say.

much love,
smuder