Happiness is like this...

I know I said my updates would be less frequent from now on, but so much has happened once again that I feel it necessary to share with you my wonderful adventures Down Under :) Just to start of with a random comment, I never thought I’d ever describe a 30 degree day as a ‘nice cool change’, but coming from a record breaking 1 in 3000 years occurring autumn heatwave with daily temperatures at or close to 40, it actually felt a little cold!! And yes, like some of you have heard on the news, there have been some fires around Adelaide because of the soaring heat over the past two weeks and the absolute dryness of the land. We even had a small fire here on campus very close to my unit yesterday apparently!! I wasn’t here to see it though, as I was too busy being on a bus. More about that later…

Anyway, so last time I left off with telling you there was a night out planned at Shenannigans (or Shags as everyone calls it) the local Irish pub. I had spent the day wandering around the city and once again saw some Fringe festival street performers trying to get a crowd. Must be tough performing on the street all the time, but it brings a good atmosphere to the city :) Due to the heat and walking around in that heat all day, I was a bit dazed when Steve, Paul, Phil and some other random people came around to our unit before we went off to Shags. But I managed to quickly shake off my daze once we got to Ladies Night $1 Vodka happy hour at the pub :) Heather, my American house mate, just goes crazy when she has too much alcohol in her system, so every time we go out we get a free comedy show as she can get drunk on just one drink, haha. It’s very funny. So we had a few drinks and dances at Shags before moving on to New Yorks for more dancing. We pretty much just had a good time and danced the night away :)

The Sunday after that, Heather, Steve, Melvyn and Phil decided it was too hot for doing anything else but going to the beach, so we headed down there for a nice refreshing swim. Now people who know me also know that I have a talent for catching a wrong bus or train, especially when I’m new somewhere, but it turns out I’m definitely not the only one… So instead of catching a bus to Brighton beach as intended, we ended up on a bus to Glenelg :) Pip joined us there later on and then as the sun went down we all had a lovely dinner together in Glenelg. All in all a very relaxing day…

Then Thursday I left for Melbourne and I had a great long weekend over there!! I love being in Melbourne, not just coz of ‘my’ people there, but also coz the place just has this relaxed and vibrant cosmopolitan feel about it that I have yet to feel anywhere else. It makes me smile :) Thursday evening I went out for drinks with Phoebe and her friend Laura which was nice. Friday was a very relaxed day of reading my book (in Melbourne too it was too hot to be very active…) and going up to Eastland for some food and shopping in the evening with Seth and Phoebe. Then the big preparation for Kim’s 21st began!! Turning 21 is a big deal in Australia and Phoebe, Mel and Amanda had been asked to give a speech at Kim’s party. Their idea was to rewrite the lyrics to Wannabe by the Spice Girls for Kim and have a photo slideshow to go with it that would sort of match the lyrics. I was asked to help now that I was there anyway, so for Phoebe and me Friday night was all about finding and sorting through photos and writing the last bit of lyrics. Saturday morning we all did the recording of the song and it was so funny!! We were singing either not very synchronised or not very in tune or both, haha. Good times :) A large part of the rest of the day was filled again with prep for the party like putting the slideshow together and figuring out which photos to use and the timing of the song and the photos together, which was a lot more work than Phoebe and I had expected (probably coz we weren’t all that familiar with the program we used…) With a bit of creativity we eventually worked it all out though and we were all set for the party :)

The party itself was awesome and I felt very lucky that I was able to be there for it and celebrate Kim’s 21st with the beautiful birthday girl herself. And I saw quite some people again who I hadn’t seen in weeks/months/years, so that was of course pretty coowl too :) Some were, for obvious reasons, surprised to see me and I quite enjoyed telling them I was in Melbourne just for the weekend before clearing up that I was now studying in Adelaide and therefore in Australia for much longer, haha. So yeah, I had a great time dancing and catching up with old friends and seeing Kim’s nervous face break into a big smile by the time more people had arrived and everything was going smoothly :) The speeches on the night were really good, lots of memories and lots of laughs shared… Our slideshow unfortunately didn’t work on the big screen (we were shattered!!) but we played the song anyway and that went down pretty well. Kim seemed to like it, which is the main thing really :) It was a great night and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to miss it…

As expected after a late night of partying, Sunday didn’t come all that early :) So by the time Martine came over to pick me up for lunch, I had only just had breakfast about an hour before, haha. So I decided coffee was what I needed much more than lunch :) Catching up with Martine was good as always… Had sort of planned to tag along to one of dad’s gigs later in the afternoon, but by the time I got back from coffee/lunch with Martine dad had already left so instead I ended up having a wonderful little snooze and played guitar until my fingers were sore :) Great way to spend a lazy afternoon!!

Monday my alarm went off real early to catch my flight back to Adelaide. And like I said before, my relationship with public transport is not always a good one. After dad dropped me off at the train station, everything seemed to go smoothly at first as I managed to catch a train earlier than I had anticipated. Despite a delayed Skybus due to an accident along the way to the airport, I made it to the airport in time as I had already checked in and had no check-in luggage. I felt for sure that that would be my ‘public transport bad luck’ for the day, but of course it wasn’t. When I got to Adelaide, I had to wait for almost 50 minutes until my bus to Flinders uni would come. So when my J7 bus turned up about 5 minutes before it was due, I was happy to finally be on my way again!! Only 45 minutes to go until I was home again :) Anyway, I got on the bus, marvelled at how I couldn’t actually remember anything along the way, only to find out later why that actually was. It was because I had been on the J7 bus going in the wrong direction all along!! But I only realised that when my bus driver parked the bus, turned off all the lights and told me to get off as it was the last stop (and it wasn’t Flinders uni as it was supposed to be). So exactly one hour later, I was back at the airport where I started and still had those 45 minutes to Flinders to go, haha. Instead of having an hour between getting home and having to go to class, I now went straight from the airport to class and after finally getting home after my class, I was exhausted. The weekend in Melbourne, the little sleep had and the enduring heat had taken its toll!! Another little snooze was definitely a priority on my to-do list at that point :) So I thought I’d lie down for half an hour, only to wake up an extra two hours later, haha. Guess I needed my sleep… It was good preparation for the night though, as Monday was St. Patrick’s Day which of course had to be celebrated at Shenannigans!! Was a fun night, but I was very happy to go home and go to bed after a while too :)

So that’s my latest Oz adventures for you!! I hope I didn’t scare you off with the length of the update, but I couldn’t tell it any shorter. If any of you have their adventures to share with me, I’m always happy to read them however long they are and I love hearing what you are all up to even if I don’t always reply!! Hope everyone’s well and enjoying themselves :)
Love Carine
xxx