Week 16: Rotary and Birthdays

First, apologies are in order. I don't know why last week's blog didn't show up on the table of contents. If you click on April's archive, it should be come up. Don't ask me to explain. Also, this blog is a little late. It's actually Thursday morning here, but Karl didn't come home until late last night, and because he had to get up early to work, I couldn't be on the computer. We did, however, rebook our flight from Sydney to Melbourne (after the Down Under Bowl in Gold Coast) last night. We needed to stay an extra day, and we only had to pay the rebooking fee of $26 each b/c the flight hadn't gone up in price. Aren't we lucky? Now, all we have to do is figure out how to change our flight from Gold Coast to Sydney to Brisbane to Sydney. Are you confused, yet? I am! I hate when people back out of things (the New Zealand team that the Australian national team was supposed to play in Sydney backed out, so we're now playing an American "national" team in Brisbane while the Down Under Bowl is still being played in Gold Coast.)

Enough boring ramble and onto our 16th week (we're getting close to halfway through).

Thursday: I had my final class! Of course, I showed up and the prof didn't think I was coming, so I had to hang around campus for 2 hours until he was out of another meeting. Who cares? I'm done, and he offered me a part time job editting the department's online journal! I'll turn in paper #3 later day, and I've started on paper #4. I'm so close, it's killing me! And yes, it's my final class while I'm in Australia. I'll still have meetings with my supervisor, but no more class--just thesis. Oh, yeah, Karl pushed trolleys and went to practice.

Friday: I woke up at 6 am (over three hours before normal) to go to a Rotary celebrity breakfast. I collected money at the door, and then ate an Aussie breakfast of a hashbrown (no ketchup), scrambled egg on toast, think bacon, a link sausage, and a tomato (of which I didn't eat.) After the celebrity speaker, a 1940s cricket player, gave his talk, I won the raffle. It wasn't yet 9 am, and I had two bottles of wine. As I walked back to my table, I decided I was now obligated to pay for the $30 breakfast, so I did. When I got home, I woke up Karl, and we called Derek to wish him happy birthday! He and Laura were out celebrating at a restaurant, so we didn't talk to them long. We really enjoyed the conversation! The day went along slowly after that with my writing paper #3, and Karl doing the grocery shopping. Carol did cook us a feast of bbq ribs for dinner, though. Yum!!!!

Saturday: Similar to Friday's slowness. I continued writing, and Karl referred a football game an hour and a half away. His team had a bye week, so they have to supply 2 officials. You're supposed to get paid $60, but Karl's money went to the club since they had paid his playing fees:) The positive is that Karl got to watch the team we're playing this weekend get killed 80-6 by a team that only beat us 22-6 (the one that had 47 players vs. our 18). I think we've got a winner!

Sunday: We decided we needed a fun day, so we went downtown to the Queen Victorian Market (Vic Market). It was a beautiful, Springlike day, so we walked around the open air market for several hours. Karl got a long-sleeve polo shirt and a couple of stuffed animals for his mom. I got a beautiful, lined windbreaker that has "Australia" embroided on the pocket. AND, it's reversible. AND, Karl convinced the saleslady to give it to us for $32 ($25US) by telling her that what's we saw it for at another place. Well, we did see it for that price, but that was the children's jacket! We're so clever. That night we called Karl's mom to wish her happy birthday! So many June birthdays. We also took a picture of the animals we got her, and emailed it to her. This way she won't have to live in suspense until December when we come back.

Monday: Not overwhelmingly exciting again. You guessed it, I worked on a paper, and Karl pushed trolleys. The twist is that I didn't spend 4 hours on my own papers, I editted our RA's 15 page paper again. She thanked me with Columbian candies and dessert. Once Karl got home from work, he quickly got ready, so we could go to a Rotary meeting. This time we were simply guests, and I didn't have to give a presentation. It was a club's birthday, and they invited us to celebrate with them. Karl got asked if he'd like to have a "roll" by our host. She was mortified by the insinuation, but we thought it was funny. The club auctioned off double-yolk eggs as a mini fundraiser. These eggs were huge! If we had more than two small shelves in our fridge, we would have bought a tray. The best part of the night was when I met several Preston RC members. This was great because I was speaking to their club on Wednesday and didn't yet have a ride. Got to love Rotarians:)

Tuesday: Another wild and crazy day of editting papers and working. Karl had a great day at work because there wasn't hardly anything to do. I think I received over 20 text messages from him, most of them concerning this great deal for paintballing. For $64, 16 people can play all day. An extra 100 paintballs were $22 though. We asked around, and we got enough support for him to buy them. It was going to be a great, semester break outing. Too bad we found out yesterday that it is not an hour away like the salesman said, it is FOUR and a HALF hours away! We got screwed!!!! Hopefully enough people will want to make a weekend out of it....

Wednesday: The great day that I finished paper #3 and spoke at the Preston club. Well, enough details, onto the word of the week!!!!!


Word of the Week!

This week's category is ways to say you're welcome. I think most of us have already heard about "cheers" and "no worries," but they also say "ta." We have no idea where this comes from, but when you thank say, people sometimes respond ta. It sounds like baby-speak to me. We've already started to adopt no worries, and we say cheers in ajoking manner, but I don't think ta is going to squeeze its way into our vocabulary.

Hope ya'll fine people have a beautiful week! (Beautiful describes everything from weather to food here.)

Britt