Never Ending Blog Post.

Righto, there is a lot of typing to be done, and frankly it seems a bit overwhelming. Ha.

Thursday, Branch Day:

It was a good day. Same as usual. Not much out of the ordinary. There was a “keeper for the day” girl. She was from Mexico. She was very nice. It’s exciting when there is a keeper for the day because then they make us tasty snakes at smoko. We got little yummy sandwiches with our hot chocolate. Thank you keeper for the day. They made ham and pineapple sandwiches and chicken, mayo, and cheese sandwiches. They were both pretty tasty. I didn’t think people put pineapple in their sandwiches. It was good though. Since there was a Mexican girl there, Adam was attempting to speak spanish all day. Iris (She pronounced it like it started with an e.) the keeper girl taught him how to say monkey en espanol. I’ve always known it to be mono, but she says chongo for monkey. Adam has decided that he is going to name the little baby girl devil that they use for devil pats chongo. They used to have a devil named monkey. Hah. I think there is a pattern starting.

So yeah, branch day. That means that a trip into the bush for fresh branches in the crappy land cruiser was necessary. I actually really love going to get the branches. I like riding around in the cruiser. It’s a bit like riding with the top down I would assume, oh and no windshield.. So bugs hit you sometimes. Heh. So yeah, usually Adam goes to do the branches. Thursday Adam was showing the keeper for the day around, so Rob had to do it. Rob usually doesn’t do stuff. Everyone actually talks quite a bit of smack about him. Justine doesn’t like that, because she actually likes Rob. I would rather work with everyone else. Anyway, so I went with Rob and Aaron to get branches. I guess it’s leeeeeeeeech season or something, Adam always comes back with bloody spots on his pants from leeches getting him. I’ve never even thought about the leeches, but Thursday was different. Ha. We were dragging branches back to the car when Aaron was like, “Hey make sure to keep checking your legs for leeches mate.” So OF COURSE I’m going to be like, “Leeches? What? On me?!” and start frantically looking at my legs for a zillion leeches. I think I may be crazy. There actually was a leech on my leg though. So I flicked him off. They are gross. I don’t want to get my blood sucked. After that I kept obsessively checking my legs for leeches. Once we had all of the branches in the cruiser and the trailer behind the cruiser, Rob told Aaron and I to sit on top of the branches so they wouldn’t fall out. Of course, right before I climbed on, Rob was like, “Oh look!” and grabbed a leech off of one of the branches. They played with it for a few seconds and then tossed it. So now I’m thinking, “.....I’m going to get a billion leeches on me if I sit on all of those branches........ I will get sucked dry before we get back to the zoo.. goooooooood.” When we got back, I had two more leeches on my jacket. Aaron kept saying stuff from behind me on the trailer like, “Oh Caitlin you’ve got on your back!” ... Stupid Aaron. Then throughout the day Aaron and Rob would stop and like stare at my face or my neck or something, and when I asked them what the heck they were doing, they’d be like, “Leech.” Then have a laugh. Yeah yeah yeah. Stupid leeches. All I kept thinking of every time that someone said leech was in Princess and the Frog when he gets a leech on him and screams LEEEEECH! when he’s talking about his money situation with his parents or whatever. Good movie.

Amber I think sent me this video on facebook a while ago called The Creep or something. It’s a dance. I taught it to Adam because he’s a creep. He’s going to do the dance to Justine soon hopefully. Heheh.

I forgot to mention this, but on Wednesday or something, I drove an Australian car for the first time! Wheee! Hah. There was a ute that had to be moved like twenty feet... So Rob told me to move it. Usually they don’t let me drive anything because it’s all stick, but this ute was automatic, so I got to drive it. It was real freaking weird driving a car from the right side. Not really difficult though. Weird.

Oh also, I played with concrete. Hah. They are building more devil pens, so I went around smoothing out concrete that Rob put down in little crevices around the enclosure. Thrilling, I know.

So Thursday night is when mine and Justine’s flight to go to Melbourne was. Rob had said that he would give us a lift. Of course, Mel’s family was in town and they had stuff they had to do, so he gave us a lift like four hours before our flight.. We had to sit in the airport for foreverrrrr. The Launceston airport is seriously the tiniest airport I’ve ever been to. Probably. There is one security lane. One little thing to stick your carry on bags through to get x rayed. One little metal detector thing to walk through. All that jazz. Also, not one person checked my id with my ticket. I very well could have jumped someone outside the airport and stolen their ticket, and no one would have stopped me. There are three total gates I think. That’s it. Three. Hah. We couldn’t check in until an hour and a half before our flight, but luckily there was a cafe and store and stuff before the security check point. Of course, the only thing past the check point is a stair case down to the three gates. Hah. I tried a sausage roll. They have them everywhere. It wasn’t that great. The lady before me got a bag of fries (chips) with gravy. They ladled gravy into the bag. It was so strange. So we finally got onto the plane, and it took forever to leave because someone checked in their bags and then didn’t show up for the flight.. so they had to go in the plane and find his bag and get it off. Thank you mystery jerk. The flight is super short, so it wasn’t a big deal. We finally got there and Reid met us at the airport. Thank goodness because I would not have been able to find my way to his house. Reid is one of the interns that came with the big AustraLearn group. We met him in Cairns. So yeah he met us at the airport. We had to take a sixteen dollar bus into downtown Melbourne then catch a tram just to get to another tram then walk a few blocks down to his house. I was super sleepy. As soon as we got to his place, we all passed out. Hah. He is staying in a really nice house. It’s like a hotel house. There are like ten people living there, and they each have their own room that they have a key to and stuff. There is a big kitchen and living room. They have marked areas in the fridges and freezers, etc. It’s pretty sweet. It was a bit posher than my refurbished fishing cabin. Haha. Not as spacious though. So Justine (the shortest, smallest person of all three of us) dibsed the bed, which meant that Reid got the floor, and five foot eight ish little ol’ me got the teeny couch in his room. Did I fit on the couch? No. Was I comfortable? Not one bit. Did I get any sleep this weekend? Absolutely not. Thank you tiny couch.

Friday:

We woke up early ish because Reid had work, so he caught the tram into the city at like eight and we wanted to explore Melbourne until he got off at noon (Apparently Aussies think is weird that we say noon instead of midday. Noon is shorter. I don’t see why you would want to say midday). So Justine and I walked around the city, and decided to walk to the Royal Botanic Gardens. Amazing. You could spend all day there. It’s really gorgeous. Plus, it has an area called.. wait for it.. Fern Gully! Bahaha. Reid never saw Fern Gully so when we saw him later and were like, “They have Fern Gully there! So cool!” He was like, “...mhmm.. yeah cooool..” Pshh. Anyway, it would be a really cute date place. Have a cute little picnic there, and then walk around and explore the gardens. It’s a pretty freaking romantic place actually. Also, I decided that it would be a pretty great place to take engagement pictures. They had a cactus area there. I like cacti. They all look really silly. There was also a “volcano.” We saw a sign for a volcano, and we were like, “volcano! cool!” It was extremely anticlimactic. It was like a little teeny tiny hill with a pond in it. Boo. It was still kind of cool, but seriously.. why is it called a volcano. They clearly don’t realize how many people they disappoint with that title.

We passed a street called...... Batman Street! I was so excited! We mentioned it to Reid later and he ruined my hopes and dreams that it was a street fashioned after gotham city. Apparently there was some guy who had the last name of Batman and did something significant in Melbourne. I lost interest after he said, “No it’s not named after Batman.” I choose to believe it is.

There are lots of cool buildings. It’s weird. The city seemed like it was like half really old cool buildings along side modern businessy looking buildings. Kind of a bizarre mix. There was a place called the Australian Center for the Moving Image and they had a special Disney exhibit. I wanted to go look at it. Guess who didn’t care about what I wanted to do? Correct! Justine! She was just like, “I could care less about that. Let’s just keep walking.” Yes ma’am. Anything you say ma’am. If she isn’t careful.. I might just snap on her one of these days. I think I’m learning a great lesson in patience right now. I’m doing very well. Ha.

After the Gardens, we left on the opposite side that we went in on, and right outside was this big WWII memorial. It was a bit weird going to a WWII memorial for a country that isn’t mine. Hahah. I felt like I was in DC. We saw people standing on a balcony up at the top though, so we went inside and checked it out. We saw a sign for a crypt, and were like, “Yeah cool! Crypt!” It was basically just a basement with a flag. It had a sign saying that there were no dead people there though. Not really sure how it qualifies as a crypt then.. But thank you for tricking me. The view from the balcony was really quite amazing. You could see the river that goes through the city and all the big skyscrapers and the gardens. It was beautiful.

Reid got off work just as we left the shrine place. He called Justine and she was like, “Yeah well you can come meet us here then.” Uhhhh. We were on the COMPLETE opposite side of the city, and Reid was waaaay closer to where we were headed anyway. So she made him come all the way to us, just to go right back the way he came. Efficient, yeah? We stopped at a grocery store and bought stuff from the deli to make sandwiches and took the sandwich stuff to the beach and had a little pseudo picnic. It was actually really nice and relaxing. Of course, it wasn’t sunny.. sooo it wasn’t really a nice beach day. That’s okay though. I took a little nap on the beach and enjoyed being near the ocean and being out of my little zoo quarantine area. When we were walking to the beach from the tram, a drunk Aussie followed us and started talking to us. He was all, “What country are you guys from? Where are you from? What’s your nationality?” “We’re Americans.” “What the *bleep* are you doing here? *Bleep* *bleep* *bleep* Go home. Don’t you have *bleeping* beaches there!” “We are just here working man.” “Fine fine, enjoy our beaches and stuff, but don’t ever forget where the airport is!” Righto.. thanks for making us feel really welcome dood. Hah. It was actually really funny. No one has had that attitude towards us. It seems like a lot of people in Melbourne were really proud and hated every other state/country. When anyone there found out that Justine and I were living in Tassie, they very vehemently told us how awful Tassie is and how unfortunate our lives are that we are stuck there and that we should obviously rethink our lives and come to Melbourne instead. Haha. I actually really love Tassie. It’s beautiful here. It may be the “hick” state, but it’s charming and the people are a heck of a lot nicer than in Melbourne. Anyway, at the beach there was a seagull (Yes, I do understand how disjointed all of my thoughts are.) hanging out near me that was missing a foot. Poor guy. There was another seagull that chased every other seagull within ten feet of us away. Jealous little guy. It was pretty entertaining. My little AustraLearn backpack that they gave me before I came here ripped. It was just the little pocket in the front that ripped, but that was where I had put all my jewelry that I was wearing... Fortunately I didn’t lose all of it.. I only lost my pearl earrings that my uncle gave me for Christmas a while ago.. I freaking loved those earrings. I was soooooo sad when I saw the hole. I think one of the seagulls stole them. Sneaky buggers.

After that, we went back to Reid’s place, changed, and went to dinner. We went to this little Italian restaurant that was surprisingly similar to a lot of the little restaurants my family and I had gone to in Italy. We had a super cute waiter. His name is James. He came over to take orders and realized we were American, and he got so excited. Hahah. So he stayed and talked some more. By talked some more, I mean he talked mostly to me. After that, Justine and Reid were like, “Geez, get his number already will ya.” Of course, they sounded a bit sarcastic and more like they were trying to tell me that I’m a shameless flirt and they were disgusted or something. I ignored all sarcasm and disgustedness and responded with, “Well I wouldn’t mind having his number. He’s rather attractive” then I commenced drinking my water. Every time James came to check on us (me) they would make snarky comments after he left. Silly people. Other than that, we actually had a really good time at dinner. We all chatted and joked and had fun, surprisingly enough. Speaking of attractive boys, I’ve seen like a zillion since we’ve been in Australia. Before we went into the Italian restaurant, Justine had mentioned how she had not seen ONE attractive boy. Clearly she is crazy. There are so many good looking guys here. Not really in Tassie, since I haven’t really seen many boys since all I really see are animals.. Haha. So at dinner when she actually agreed with me that James was attractive, I wanted to be like, “Yeah sucka, the only boy you’ve thought was attractive wants me! Take that Wisconsin girl!” Justine has complained about how whenever people ask where we are from, they could not care less about Wisconsin, and I totally show her up by saying California. You’re right, I purposely fixed it so that I would be born in Southern California just so that I could tell people that and show up all you small town country hicks. I’m a conniving genius, really. Okay, I sound really mean when I talk about her in my posts. I apologize. She is nice and we get along sometimes. We just aren’t pals. I always feel awkward when I say things like, “Yeah I wish I had more friends and stuff around me” and she says, “Oh so I’m not enough?” She’s joking, but it’s still kind of awkward cause in my head I’m like, “Well.. yeah.... I would rather have someone who wants to be my friend living with me.. but you’re a nice girl I’m sure.” We did get along better this weekend compared to any other time. Thank goodness, because I would’ve been miserable if I was stuck in a different city without all of my distractions like a computer and ipod and books and stuff on top of having no one to talk to or do things with. We were all talking about snow at one point because they are both from places that get snow frequently, unlike southern California me. So when I had said that I didn’t think that I would like to permanently live somewhere where it snowed constantly, they thought I was a crazy person. I gave them about a zillion reasons why snow is unpleasant to live in. I do like snow sometimes. It’s fun to go sledding and it’s very pretty, but it’s cold and icy and you slip and fall in it and you have to put a ton of layers on just to take them off once you get inside a building and it makes your extremities go numb, etc. They still thought that I was crazy for not being 100% in love with living in the snow. They also started talking about how “hoity toity” southern Californians are, they were talking about it like I was not from southern California. I’ve never thought of myself as “hoity toity”.. Whatevs.

We were looking at a newspaper that someone left on the tram, and there was an article about a new game that someone came out with. It is a kissing game. It apparently uses magnets that people put in their mouths and the other person uses their tongue to bowl or something. I have no idea. It sounds extremely bizarre, and whoever came up with it is obviously a bit pathetic.

Reid has an Irish housemate. I talked to him for a bit. It was hard to understand him. Also, he dropped the f bomb like every other word. Haha. I still have a hard time understanding the Australian accent sometimes, throwing in another accent wasn’t helpful. He seems nice I guess. He was talking about how he wanted to be a personal trainer.. he’s skinnier than like a scarecrow. He then said that he decided to go in a different direction because that didn’t work out. Of course it didn’t. Ha. He watched National Treasure with us. It was on tv the night that we missed our flight.

Saturday:

So, we woke up early to go into the city and check out the Queen Victoria’s Market. I think it’s every Saturday and on like Tuesday nights or something. They sell lots of fruit and veggies and spices and nuts and meat and cheese and other tasty things. There was a little shop that was selling mini pancakes.. They looked SO good. No one else wanted them, so I didn’t get to stop and eat some.. I cried a little inside. There was also heaps of stalls selling jewelry and clothes and souvenir ish type things. Tons of cool stuff. I wanted to stop and look at a lot of the things, but no one else wanted to. It was a bit frustrating wanting to enjoy everything, but not really being able to do so to the extent that I wanted to. Oh well. It was still cool to meander about the place. After, we were going to head back to Reid’s because Justine was tired of carrying her purse because she just hates purses. (She’s a total tomboy. She doesn’t like carrying purses. She doesn’t like shopping. She doesn’t care about her hair at all. She doesn’t care about wearing cute outfits. Etc. She was talking about how a night on the town involves her throwing on a sweatshirt and throwing her hair up in a messy bun. I like getting cute. I purposely dress up and do my hair whenever I get a chance here because I don’t get that many chances. She just throws on whatever t shirt is closest to her. Not that I’m judging her for doing so, because I do that occasionally. I’m just whinging about how different we are and how I wish we weren’t so different.) Oh oh and before we went through the market, Justine had to have a coffee because she drinks coffee all the time. So we walked around a bit looking for a suitable place for her, and she did not approve of like any of the places and I was freaking hungry and wanted breakfast so every time she didn’t approve of a place, we had to leave and go look for somewhere else. After a while, I pointed another cafe out and she goes, “Uhm I really don’t like having all this pressure on me. I don’t NEED a coffee. Let’s just go to the freaking market, okay.” You just made us go to like seven different places and rejected all of them in the search for the perfect coffee, and then you say that you don’t appreciate us pointing out other places because we’re being nice and trying to get you your dang coffee and turn everything on us. Thank you. She makes it difficult to be nice to her sometimes. I’m doing my best though. Anyway, so we were heading back to the tram to go back to Reid’s place when Justine says, “Geez, can’t we walk or something. I actually LIKE walking.” So we went on a thirty ish minute or more walk back to Reid’s house because we needed to assuage the beast, I mean Justine. Finally, we got there and she wanted to sit down and relax for a bit. I just wanted to go to the zoo. So after a while, we finally headed to the tram for the zoo. Huzzah! It was a pretty big zoo actually. We stopped and got sandwich stuff to take with us to the zoo. We spent like four hours walking around and looking at all the animals. I loved seeing stuff that we have at our zoo too, and being like yeaaaaaah I get to go in the enclosure with those animals. There was a lot of stuff to see. They had lions and tigers and bears. Oh my! Also, snow leopards, pumas, echidnas, red kangaroos, western gray kangaroos, pademelons, heaps of birds, PLATYPUS, seals, penguins, fishes, tons of monkeys (gorillas, mandrills, baboons, tamarins, lemurs, gibbons, spider monkeys, black capped capuchins, orangutans (Fun fact: some people call gingers, rangas as in orangutans. Hehe), etc.), hairy nosed wombats (the wombat we have at our zoo is just a common wombat), elephants (there were two little baby elephants!), turtles, tortoises, bongos, and more. They had a sweet reptile house. They had Gila Monsters! Cool! I love Gila Monsters. I was talking to Adam about the Melbourne Zoo today, and he said that they used to have Komodo Dragons there. I was so sad that they didn’t have them anymore.. They also had tree kangaroos and a red panda and a macaw and sting rays and stuff. It was a pretty great zoo. I enjoyed myself very much :D

From spending all this time out in the sun, and wearing my toms.. I got a beautiful little awkward toms tan line. It looks funny..

On one of our tram rides, there was a poster for an Italian festival that they were having that coming Sunday. It sounded super fun. They were attempting to break the world record for largest pizza! Since we missed our flight that night, we were like, “Cool we can go to the Italian Festival and hit up the aquarium!” But the airport nazis said we had to go on the next available flight. That was fine though. So yeah, flight missing. Here’s the story. To get to the airport, we had to take two trams and a sixteen dollar twenty minute bus ride. Of course, Reid had told us that it would take about thirty minutes total to get to the airport so if we left at six for our 7:50 flight, we would be totally fine. I wanted to leave earlier because I didn’t want to take any chances. They were watching Scrubs though, and did not want to leave. In fact, when six came around I had to be like, “Uhmm... shouldn’t we be leaving..” I need to start being more forceful or something. I’m way to unconfrontational. So when we finally left, we had to wait for the trams and then pay for the bus ticket and catch the bus.. It took us like an hour to get there. When we tried checking in, the little computers wouldn’t let us. When I talked to the lady at the desk she said, “Oh you’re ten minutes past the time when we close the flight. Sorry. There is absolutely nothing we can do except make you pay sixty dollars each to wake up at five in the morning tomorrow and catch a different flight that you should leave a bit earlier for this time. Mmkay? Your life sucks. Bye!” ...Yeah she didn’t really say the last bit, but she might as well have. It wasn’t a horrible situation obviously, but we had to pay for another bus ride and take two more trams to get back to Reid’s house. Justine was pissed at Reid. It isn’t totally his fault, the trams took longer than he thought they would, but she blamed him 100% for all of it. So he felt bad. Oh, and it was raining by this time. We bought ice cream and food and watched National Treasure with Irish kid. I went to bed early. Justine and Reid stayed up and snuggled or something. She was putting her leg over him during the movie and stuff. She has a “fella” back at home. Whatever.

Sunday:

Woke up early. Reid paid for a taxi to the bus place. Paid more money for another bus. Got to the airport. Made our flight. Once again, some punk checked a bag in and didn’t show up for his flight, so we all had to wait around while they looked for his bag. Finally got back to Tassie. Had to take an extremely expensive taxi back to the zoo because Rob wouldn’t come get us. The taxi driver was really nice. He was telling us about all his traveling that he has done. He has been to every country in Europe except for one, all countries in Asia except for two, multiple places in Africa, all over America, and still has more plans for traveling. How awesome is that?? I want to go everywhere like that. He had all these cool stories about safaris that he has been on and stuff.

When I got home, the first thing I did was take a nice really long shower. It was fantastic. I got ready for church and got a ride form Jess and her brother Daniel. They are super nice. I sat with their family during sacrament, and felt a bit weird because I didn’t know if they cared that I was sitting with them or not, but I didn’t really know where else to sit because we showed up late so I just followed them into their row.. Hah. The talks were really awesome. Sunday school was way good. The teacher is really cool. She remembered my name. Lots of people did actually. I remembered no one’s names except Jess. Haha. Anyway, the teacher was chatting with me afterwards for a bit and she’s really cool. I went to Relief Society by myself because Jess had to leave early. A ton of people stopped me and asked me how I was doing and introducing themselves and stuff. It was awesome. So it’s really weird because no one in Relief Society knows how to play the piano! I’m used to being in these wards that have heaps of people who are insanely musical. The first Sunday that I was in Relief Society, they asked me if I could play the piano. Hah. So yeah, we sing all the songs in Relief Society without the piano. Totally weird. They announce birthdays and stuff, so this nice lady who talked to me before Relief Society got up and she had just been reading something and was all teary eyed. She apologized and was like, “Sorry, I was just reading a note. My son is on his mission in Christchurch, New Zealand and I’m just so grateful that he is okay and that all the missionaries there are totally fine.. etc” That’s so scary that her son was there! I’m so glad that none of the missionaries were hurt in the earthquake. The death toll from that seems to keep rising. Erin said that it’s at like 150 now.

So after Relief Society, I had to find Jess’ dad because he was giving me a ride home. I had no idea where to find him. I stood awkwardly in the lobby. Thankfully people kept coming up to me and chatting. Hah. This nice boy that may be around my age was chatting with me. He’s nice, as well as a few inches shorter than me. Haha. Everyone is so friendly in this ward. I love it! The boy’s name is Danny. Some girl came over to talk to him, and so she was talking to me because she had just gotten back from America recently. She was in Orlando working at DisneyWorld. Cool! She didn’t seem like she wanted to talk to me though.. Hah. I kept asking questions about it, and she would answer a little snobbily.. Oh welllll. So finally I found Jess’ dad and we left. He asked me lots of questions and we talked lots about differences between Australia and America. He served his mission in Salt Lake and was telling me stories about getting used to living there. Haha. It was so fun. Two of Jess’ brothers were with us. Luke and Joseph, I think. Hah. They were nice and chatty. Joseph is going to JAPAN with his school soon. What the heck? Why did Hart never take us to cool places like Japan for a school trip! Curse you Hart High!

Yeah this is insanely long, I don’t think there is anything else significant or funny or anything that happened. I’m exhausted.. and done with typing this post. Goodbye.

Feelin' Fly Like It's Quidditch.

Monday:

My brain has totally shut off.

Mmmm Monday Monday Monday. We did a great deal of moving animals about. By we, I mean that Justine and I followed Rob around while he moved animals. We did help a bit I guess. So yeah, they moved lots of quolls. This guy with a large mustache came to the zoo and brought some quolls for us. He also took our little boy wombat.. Rude. Mm he also took all four young emus. Justine and I watched Rob and Adam capture the little emus and stick them in this big cage on the back of stache man’s truck. They make this really heart breaking squealing sound. They were all freaking out in the back of the truck. It was so sad. Anyway, stache guy brought us four new quollies. We have so many. There are likeee eighteen or so quolls in the park, I believe. There are black ones and brown ones. The black ones are my favorite! I love them so much!!

I also about with Adam, feeding the monkeys and such. Usual zoo day stuffs. He kept singing this real stupid song that he only knows one line of. Something about sexual healing. Ha. He’s a pretty strange person. He also was singing that zippity do da song. The splash mountain song. I told him about splash mountain, he said it doesn’t sound that fun. Anyway, he was singing that song when we were at the mandrill cage. So later we were walking by Dick and Adam was like, “Dick you would not believe what Caitlin was singing to the mandrills earlier. Sexual Healing. I just could not believe it!” Dick was just like, “Didn’t you go to church yesterday? What kind of freaky church do you go to?” Adam was like, “Well she repented for all of last weeks sins, so she can do whatever she wants to now!” I just stood there pointing at Adam and shaking my head. I knew that Dick wasn’t being serious anyway. Everyone knows Adam’s a weirdo. Hah.

It’s weird working here. A few of my co workers are extremely vulgar sometimes. Not all the time. It takes me by surprise a little bit because I’ve been in the little Provo bubble for such a long time. Hah. It’s strange being in such a different environment from Provo. I miss my little bubble. Haha.

Aaron wasn’t at work. I dunno why. Speaking of Azza, that boy drinks like three monsters a day. Seriouslyyy. I told him his heart is just going to explode one day. We talked about it at smoko one day when it was just us, no one else showed up for some reason. He bought a monster, and I said some sort of witty remark about it. He responded by saying, “This is my last one! I’m going to quit tomorrow!” I was like, “Yeah okay you woman saying she’s going on a diet, and never going through with it.” The next day he actually didn’t get a monster. However, the day after that he promptly resumed to his twelve thousand monsters a day and his inevitable road to an exploding heart. There are always monsters cans EVERYWHERE around the park. He never throws them away. He just drinks them and sets them wherever he was working. I said something to him about it and he said something about how he is really surprised he hasn’t gotten in trouble yet. Ha. It’s probably because everyone else drinks monsters religiously at the zoo as well. Adam comes in every morning with a huge energy drink. Today it was a Red Bull.

At smoko we got tasty muffins that had been heated up in the oven plus our usual hot chocolate or coffee! Justine had the only blueberry muffin because she said, “I can’t stand chocolate in breakfast foods. It’s just cake if you put chocolate in it.” The rest of us thoroughly enjoyed our tasty choco muffins. Hah. They all tasted like blueberry muffins anyway from being heated up in the oven with the blueberry one. It infused all of our tasty cake muffins with it’s healthy flavor. Rude little muffin.
So we had little burn piles of dead trees and other stuff to clear the area for new devil pens. Justine, Rob, and I were putting stuff on the fire, and we started talking about camp fires and bonfires, etc. Justine and I were talking about smores and we asked Rob if they had them. He was baffled and so we told him what it was. He thought it was totally bizarre. They don’t even have graham crackers. What the heck? We tried explaining graham crackers to him. I don’t think we did a very good job. Hah. Adam walked up when we were talking about it so we told him about it. He was like, “Yeah I’ve heard of smores. It’s when you roast marshmallows over a fire.” We were like, “Well yeah, but you put it between graham crackers and chocolate.” He said that he thought it was just a roasted marshmallow. Hah. Later I was talking to Erin about it, and Adam walked by. Erin was like, “Do you know what this smore thing is?” He was like, “Yeah yeah it’s marshmallows and graham bread.” Graham bread..? Whaaaa. Haha. Everyone thinks it sounds weird. I wanted a smore so badly. Haha. We just kept talking about them all day. Since we were around a fire, Justine and I were also talking about campfire songs and stuff. She’s been a camp leader person a bunch of times so she knows a bunch. All I know are the ones from like girls camp. Hah. I didn’t know if people who aren’t LDS sing the same campfire songs.. I mentioned the shark one, and she started singing it. So we started singing the shark song together for a while. It was like the one time we actually bonded over something and enjoyed it. Hahah. Baby shark do do do do do do baby shark do do do do do do mama shark do do do do do do mama shark do do do do do do..... Etc. Hah that was always my favorite campfire song. We end our shark songs differently though. Apparently they have a part that is “Happy shark do do do do do do” and the hand motions are a fin on top of your head and rubbing your belly. Hehe. I like that one. Also, they end it with “Back to life do do do do do do” instead of “gone to heaven do do do do do do.” Clearly, us morms are more morbid than everyone else. Hah.

Tuesday:

More animal movings! We moved more quolls. It’s mating time apparently. So other than during this time, males and females are separate. So we had to put all the little quollies in pairs. There was this little tiny girl quoll that Rob said to put in with this massive boy quoll. Everyone else thought it was an awful idea and are worried that the big guy is going to kill the little girl. Anyway, so we stayed and watched them interact with each other for a bit, to make sure he didn’t kill her. The little girl immediately climbed up to the top of the viewing window, and wouldn’t come down. So when you walked by their enclosure in the nocturnal house, you saw the bottom half of a little quoll dangling near the top corner of the window. Hah. Adam finally went in and took her down. The boy quoll then chased her around a bit, and she just hissed at him and ran away. It was funny. It reminded me how laid back everything is at the zoo. Hah. We just stood their for like fifteen minutes watching quolls. We moved some devils, as well. I’ve never gone in the adult devil pens because if they bit me, they could potentially take off a foot or hand or something. Their jaw pressure is just under a saltwater croc. Eek. So when I was with Azza and Adam at the devil enclosure, and Adam said, “Righto, hop on in here with us Caitlin.” I was like, “................Sorry, what?” I thought he was kidding because they never let us into the devil enclosures. He was like, “Yeah we might need you to help us. Just get in here.” Then after I hopped in he said, “Actually I just wanted to see if you could hop over that fence.” The fences to these enclosures are a lot higher than the enclosures inside the actual zoo, the enclosure we were at to catch devils wasn’t in a publicly displayed area. I had zero trouble jumping over it. I got mad hops yo. So I was a little wary of being in the devil pen. One of them got a bit close. Adam said that if they got too close, to just stick the bottom of your foot out at them. In my head, I was like, “Yeah that’s defo not going to stop them from snatching my foot from right off of my body.. but whatever helps you.” They don’t seem like they actually want anything to do with humans anyway. They just run away from you. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t a bit nervous. Hah. They caught two from the pen back behind the zoo to switch with two inside the zoo. So they put them in these like dog crates and put them in the back of the zute. The zute only has two seats, so I had to jump in the back with the crates. I was nervous that one of the devils would get out of their crate and eat me. They were going crazy too. They did NOT want to be in those crates. At all. So when we got to the enclosure inside the zoo, he had us go inside that one as well and had US open the crates and let the vicious unhappy creatures out of the crates. Hah. I envisioned many scenarios occurring when I opened the door. One being that they would be so angry with me that they would immediately come at me and eat me. If that happened, there would be nothing left of me for my parents to bury because devils like to eat bones. Maybe if that happened, they would put those devils down and send the devils’ bodies to my parents to bury in a coffin in my stead. Hehh.

So usually in the quoll mix, we put grated carrots and apples and stuff with like ground hamburger ish meat. We didn’t have any defrosted meat today, so I put in a can of dog food and cat food and had to chop up some of the penguins fishes (Which I said that word multiple times today and got laughed at. Why can’t I say fishes?). Then I had to put a glove on a mix the whole thing with my hand. It was probably the nastiest smelling thing ever. Blech. I can’t believe something eats that. Erin was like, “Ehh they eat dead stuff, so they probably have really strong stomachs.”

So Melbourne is this weekend! Justine talked to Reid about what we were planning on doing. We want to go to Melbourne Zoo, but when she told that to Reid he was like, “...Well I actually went there last week solely because I figured since you guys work at a zoo you wouldn’t want to go to a zoo....” Hahah. I guess that was a pretty safe assumption, but we love zoos. Obviously we would want to go. So we are going to go and leave Reid for a bit. I guess it’s not too far from where he lives either, so it won’t be expensive to get there.

Erin is doing studies in Tourism apparently, so she had to do a “tour” today with an assessor in the crowd. She was super nervous. She just did a devil feed/talk, but extended it a bit. I watched a bit of it, but then Adam pulled me away to do works. I was there long enough to hear Erin talking about Tasmanian Tigers, and then when she went back to talk about the devils, she accidentally referred to them as tigers instead of devils. Haha. She didn’t realize she did it. Rob and Adam have been making fun of her all day, not because of the tiger thing, but because of another thing that she does in all of her devil feeds. During the devil feeds, they have a wallaby leg that they hold while the devils gnaw on it and pull at it and stuff. So before they start the devil feed, everyone always warns the visitors that they are feeding them a wallaby leg because it has fur and stuff, so people with weak stomachs would probably hurl. Ha. So Erin does this thing sometimes where she says, “I’m about to jump in with the devils, and I’m going to be passing around a piece of meat. It looks like a wallaby leg. It IS a wallaby leg.” Rob and Adam think it’s the weirdest thing ever, so they’ve been making fun of her. Like when we did groceries, Adam would say stuff like, “It looks like a potato, it IS a potato!” Haha. It was pretty funny, but I didn’t think Erin saying that was that weird.

Justine started singing Like A G6 today at the zoo. So everyone else has been singing it too. We started talking about the parodies that have been done about it. There’s a harry potter one. It’s the greatest thing ever. I’ve had it stuck in my head ALL DAY. I wish I could buy it on itunes or something. I just got reeeeallyyyy excited for the last movie!!! EEEKKK!!!





At some point Justine was like, “So Adam and I had an actual intelligent conversation earlier. We were talking about mustelids and blah blah blahhhh and blah blahhh blaaahhh.... I’m so glad I’ve finally had an intelligent conversation with someone. It’s the first one since I’ve been here!” I wanted to be like, “Awww thanks so much for calling me an idiot! I really love when people do that. I clearly am intellectually stinted compared to you and your gloriously well endowed brain full of knowledge. You’re just the best.” Instead I just nodded and said things at appropriate points like, “That’s way cool.” or “Uhhh huh.” So basically I sounded like the idiot she thinks I am, there ya go. Later, we were in the staff room with Adam, Aaron, and Erin and we were all just about to leave and Justine goes, “Adam thank you for having an actual intellectual conversation with me. It’s the first one I’ve had in a long time.” So now she’s just insulting everyone. Way to go! Earlier in the day or the day before, Adam was talking about how Justine always seems sad and he had finally gotten her to laugh really hard at something. I laugh at absolutely everything because I’m just like that. Ha. Justine just rolls her eyes and says snarky things at anything remotely close to a joke that isn’t up to par for her. I think I’ve figured her out. She is just a really blunt person. She doesn’t say things to be mean or anything, she just says whatever it is that she thinks about something. She also doesn’t seem to understand my sarcastic personality very well. I said a sarcastic comment about something she said. It wasn’t a mean one, but she responded like I had meant whatever it was seriously. I think it was about something she wished she had said, and I was just like, “You should probably just go tell them that now.” Obviously I was joking, that would be dumb, which she then informed me of. Sillly me! So maybe she doesn’t catch when I’m joking or something. Whatevs.

I said Aaron’s name properly when we were doing groceries, and Erin was like, “Oh you said it right! Can you hear the difference now?” I can only sort of hear the difference when they say it. So Erin started saying either her name or Aaron’s and we had to guess which she was saying. Haha. I only got it right a couple times. We didn’t play that game very long. It was funny though. At least I can say it right.. Haha. Justine doesn’t like trying to say his name because she thinks she sounds stupid. I think I sound stupid too, but I really could care less I guess.

I have to do some homeworky type stuff sometimes, but I have to turn it in via email.. My internet hasn’t worked reliably in like a week.. Suckkkkk. I got on for about two seconds. It was long enough for me to get to my email homepage.. and that’s it. Ha. Thank you for teasing me internets. You’re so clever.

Wednesday:

STILL NO INTERNETS! I NEED TO EMAIL MY STUPID HW THING AND IT WON’T LET MEEEEEEEEEE. Curse you internets.. CURSE YOU!!

Justine usually hogs the wombat. I wake up earlier than her, but I’m usually getting ready when she gets up so she goes and feeds the wombat. I fed the wombat today though! Take that!!

Speaking of the little girl wombat, Justine gave her a name. Her name is Rosie. All I think of when I hear that name is my old piano teacher/Mel’s current piano and flute teacher. Also, it is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day today, so I’m outside sitting on a towel in the grass watching the wombat meander and eat grass. It’s so cute. It would be a perfect day if I had someone tot play catch with or soccer or something. That sounds nice right now.

So work today was good. Just the same as any other day at work, I guess. I haven’t really had any bad work days. That’s pretty cool. People usually come home from work and are like, “Ughhh work sucked today.” I haven’t really felt like that yet. It’s more like, “I’m exhausted from work today.” or “I disliked this particular portion of work today.” Not the whole work day. Today, I disliked the bird feeding portion of the day. It’s just kind of boring. There are a zillion birds, and we go around with this little wagon full of different bird seeds and water and veggies or fruit. So we go to each and every bird cage, unlock it, change the seed, change and clean the water bowl, put fruit or veggies in it, lock it, go to the next one. It’s very monotonous and boring. Usually Erin does it, and Justine and I switch off going with her. Today was my day, but I went with Adam because Erin is at the Cup today. The Cup is a horse race apparently. I guess there are a few horse races that are a big deal. Everyone gets dressed up and goes and drinks wine. Or something. I really have no idea. So yeah, I went with Adam. Everything is pretty fun if you are stuck doing it with Adam. He’s silly and weird. Sometimes it is a bit much, but it’s alright. Today Adam was a bit abusive, on accident mostly of course. Haha. They fed bamboo to the monkeys today. I had no idea that the monkeys would eat bamboo. So Justine and Adam were doing that, and Adam broke off a little piece and whacked Justine with it. Not real hard, just enough to be annoying. Later, I was with Adam in the zute and we were feeding out, which is just when we go around to the animals that get the food that we stick in these buckets, so like to chooks, roos, wallabies, rabbits, wombat, etc. I hopped out of the zute to feed the chooks and when I one foot in the zute, Adam started moving the car and since I wasn’t ready for that, the edge of the car hit me in the back. It was more shocking than anything. Hah. After that he threw a bread roll at me and it hit my chest. Ruuude.

I was telling Adam about Festival of Colors, and when I said the word ‘chalk’, he got so confused. He thought I was either referring to a cut of meat (I still don’t really understand that one..) or chuck, as in to throw or something. It was so funny. We were arguing about it for a while. Aaron and I argued about the word ‘four’. They never pronounce their r’s. Ever.

I really want a silver kelpie puppy. Ranger is the cutest dog ever. One day, I will have one!! I don’t know how easy it is to get them though.. I will do it though!! Yesterday Justine went on a run and Ranger followed her and ran with her. So later Rob came over because he lost Ranger. Hah. He left to go look for him, and then like five minutes later Justine came back with Ranger. The poor dog was breathing sooooo heavily.

There were heaps of freaking bees and crickets around the zoo today. Agghh. So annoying. I wanted to bag up all the crickets for my Rem baby.

OAHSFKJASLKDJASK THIS NO INTERNET THING SUCKSSSSS. I feel 100% cut off from the world!!

Aaron doesn’t know what Ray Bans are. I thought everyone knew what Ray Bans were. Hah.

I’m going to Melbourne tomorrow after work! Yayaya!!

Tea With Cinnamon.

By Katzenjammer is one of my new favorite songs.

It’s been an interesting weekend.

Most exciting part: Rob came over yesterday and handed us ANOTHER baby wombat. Haha. I have TWO BABY WOMBATS in my house. The one he gave us yesterday (Saturday) is a little boy. He’s way smaller than crazy little girl wombat. He’s really skinny. He’s also terrified of the world. Ha. He hisses a lot, not particularly at anything or anyone. He crawled under my legs and was sitting there hissing, just because. It was actually pretty funny. He isn’t blind. His mama got hit by a car or something, so someone found him and brought him into the zoo.

Another exciting part: I discovered that little girl wombat does somersaults! Bahah. It’s the cutest thing ever! She seriously was on the carpet going in circles doing somersaults for like five minutes straight. It was insanely awesome.

I tried Vegemite for the first time! Haha. Mel took Justine and I with her and Cody to a wildlife park in Mole Creek. It was a pretty bad wildlife park. There were no paths or anything. They had the kangaroos just wandering around all over the place, which was really cool, but they didn’t keep it clean, so there was tons of poo everywhere. There were some devils and quolls and a koala, but all of the enclosures were kind of crappy. It was nice to get out though. We were going to go through these caves, but we missed the tour at the closest time to us, and the next one wasn’t for another hour ish. Plus Mel had little Cody who is three and unable to sit still for two seconds and absolutely wild. When we were at the park he kept running up to his stroller (which they call a pram?) when he wasn’t in it and pushing it away. Once it even just fell over and all of Mel’s stuff fell out of it. He’s a crazy kid. He pronounces his c’s as t’s and his f’s as s’s. So he was talking about fishing a lot. It sounds like sissing. I had NO idea what he was talking about until Mel was like, “Oh sweetie we aren’t going fishing.” I finally figured out how he says some of his letters. Haha. Next time I’ll have no problem understanding him. He had these little toy planes and made me play with him. He would tell me where to ‘sly’ my plane and to go ‘sast’. It was pretty funny.. if it weren’t for fifty minutes which was how long the car ride was. It got old after a while, so I would stop, but he wouldn’t be happy with that, so he would throw his plane. Anyway, Mel made Justine and I vegemite sandwiches because we told her previously that neither of us had tried it yet. Mel said that all Australians LOVE vegemite. Hah. So we tried it. Justine took one bite and was disgusted out of her mind and wouldn’t eat the rest. I didn’t think it was horrible, so I ate my whole little sandwich. It is REALLY salty though. It tasted a bit like soy sauce. I don’t think I’ll eat it again any time soon. Hah.

Saturday I didn’t do anything. I read all day. Did some laundry. Played computer games. Lazed about all day.

Sunday was a much better day than I expected it to be! I was planning on taking two fifty dollar cab rides to get to church and back. So I went to the front of the zoo to catch a cab, but Judy (Rob’s mom who owns the zoo) was like well the zoo van is going into town, just take that and you don’t have to pay for an expensive cab. So I was planning on getting dropped off in town, and walking to the church building from there. Church is at one, and I had left at 1130 because I figured it would be a long walk. Ha. The lady that drove the zoo van told me that she would take me all the way to where I needed to go because she had nothing better to do. I got to the church building at 12. Ha. So I walked around and sat on a bench outside the church building for a while. I went into the chapel like twenty minutes before it started. As soon as I sat down, this man (who I’m pretty sure is the bishop, but I’m not sure..) came over and introduced himself and starting chatting with me. When he found out that I don’t have a car, he was going on about finding a ride for me to church and to institute on thursdays. So he starts talking to people around us, and introducing me and stuff. After he left me, more people started coming up and being like, “Oh are you American?” etc. Haha. The ward seemed a lot different than the first time I had gone. Of course, the first time I went, I was late and left early so I didn’t get to talk to anyone. There were more people that looked like they might be around my age, but I think it’s because uni is starting back up or something? There is a cute boy who is studying to be a doctor. So he must be older than me or something. He explained to the sunday school class what exactly leprosy is. He was sitting next to me. Of course, I didn’t talk to him except for when he lent me his scriptures because the teacher lady called on me to read. So I don’t know what his name is or anything. Anyway, so I saw the guy I’m assuming is the bishop go up to this girl who looked like she could be around my age and talk to her about me. After sacrament meeting she came up to me and introduced herself. Her name is Jess. We chatted for a bit and then I asked if I could follow her to Sunday school. She’s super nice and friendly. I’m super glad I met her because she seems like she would hang out with me and stuff while I’m here! Yay friends! So the ward is reeeeeeally small. It’s so small that the Sunday school seems to consist of kids who were ranging in age from high school to college, and there was only like twelve ish people in the class. So maybe cute doctor boy is younger than I think he is. Haha. It was a really fun class though. Relief Society was reaaalllyy small too. Everyone seems really close though. It seems like a cozy ward. If that even makes sense. Hah. During Relief Society, the presidency introduced me and told everyone to introduce themselves to me. After Relief Society, like three or four ladies came and introduced themselves and chatted with me. Haha. One lady took the flowers from the table at the front and handed them to me saying, “Welcome to Australia!” Heh. Anyway, so I figured I would take a cab home from church, but Jess was like, “Oh no way! We will give you a ride home!” I felt really bad because it’s really out of the way, but she insisted. So I got a ride home from church! I thought that I would have to pay a hundred bucks today to go to church, and I ended up not having to pay any money! I was so happy! I brought Jess and her brother (Luke?) come in and hold the baby wombats. It was the very very least that I could do in exchange for driving me all the way home. Jess gave me her number and offered to drive me to institute and church and stuff. So nice! I’m so excited! Of course, I won’t be here this Thursday for institute or Sunday for church because I’ll be in Melbourne for the weekend. I’m actually a little sad that I won’t be here for the weekend because now I really really want to go to institute and church and make more friends. Haha. I am excited about Melbourne though. I think we are doing a beach day and going to Luna park which is like a carnivaly type place then the next day we are probably going to Melbourne Zoo! Wooooo! Anyway, so church was really great. I loved feeling so welcomed after such a long time of feeling so lonely. It was so comforting to be at church because it’s such a familiar thing even though I didn’t know anyone there. You can always count on everyone being super nice at an LDS church. Yeah, so it lifted my spirits and made me feel better about being out here.

Insert Title Here.

This is in reference to Thursday.. Yeahhh a bit late. I know.

I’m pretty sure that I smell like a wild animal, or possibly worse than that. Maybe it’s good that I don’t have friends up here because I don’t think they would want to come within five ish feet of me.

That whale video that I posted a while ago, the beached as one, is more of a new zealand thing, not an aussie thing. I guess new zealanders pronounce their o’s as u’s. Bru. All day today Aaron and Erin were talking like new zealanders. Any time I was with either of them and they would see the other one, they would start talking like a new zealander. Oh hey bru! Yeah it’s a bit funny actually that people actually say that. Aaron told me to never go to new zealand. Hahah. It’s actually kind of fun to say. Bru. Yeah Bru. Sweet as.

Mmkayy. So today was my last day of the week, and Justine doesn’t work on Thursdays, so it was just me. It was a super chill day. It was also rainy ish. I heard some thunder, it was exciting. I helped with monkey feeding, the usual. I tried feeding the baby wombat. She doesn’t always eat. She ate a little bit, but then she got really wiggly. She’s wiggly a lot of the time. Oh, so she was in this little box with a heating pad at the bottom. So last night Justine put a book on top of it so that she wouldn’t be able to get out. This morning I went in and checked on the baby wombat and she was still safe inside her little box, so I went to change into my work clothes. All of a sudden there was a noise in the living room, and I thought maybe Justine had gotten up, but when I looked out of the closet I saw that she was still asleep on her bed. So I went out into the living room and the baby wombat was crawling around running into walls! I can’t believe she got out of her box! She’s actually really surprisingly strong. She also has these killer huge claws. It was kind of sad though, the way she kept running into walls.. I hope she gets better! I would totally take care of a blind wombat forever. It would be so sad if she got put down.. Anyway, yeah so I attempted to feed her, and she wouldn’t eat much. She kept crawling out of her box, but it was in a bigger animal crate, so she couldn’t go anywhere. Ha. Uhmm. I helped with the rest of the branches that needed to be done. We changed the free flight aviary branches. It’s this big open area where there are a bunch of different birds. There was this cockatoo that was next to me and staring at my fee the whole time. He kept jumping at them and bite my shoes. Thank goodness for my nice thick work boots. Hah. There are so many wild cockatoos here! They are pretty big too. Huge white and yellow birds. Everywhere. I hear them all the time. There was a big truck full of bread out by the staff area, and I went back there and there was like twenty of them hanging out on the truck. It was pretty funny. Erin and I also changed the branches in the Debrazza and Capuchin cages. Those freaking Capuchins HATE me. I’m a bit terrified of them actually.. Ha. I went in there with Erin, and they start following me around, hissing at me, and baring their teeth. It’s pretty unnerving.. Aaron loves messing with them. He hisses at them when he’s in there and they try to steal his sunnies and his hat and stuff. It’s actually really funny. He teases all of the animals actually. Ha. I’m surprised they haven’t killed him yet. Mm I forgot, yesterday Aaron gave a fun fact randomly. Ducks’ quacks do not echo. I’m going to have to look into that. He could’ve been pulling my leg. He also told me today that Aussie’s don’t use the word creep.

Dick made fun of how I say tomato today. Dick is kind of scary. So when he was making fun of me, I didn’t know how to react. If it was Adam or Aaron, I would’ve made fun of them back or something. Soooo I just kind of half laughed and waited for him to leave me alone. Ha.

When I walked home from work, there was a huge pelican hanging out on the path home. It was pretty cool.

I’m listening to I See The Light from the Tangled movie. I’ve decided that I want that to be my wedding song. It’s so cute.

That’s about all that happened pretty much. I fed some quolls by myself. I fed Hitler the koala by myself. He’s silly. He followed me around the whole time I was changing his food branches. That guy has really large claws. I wouldn’t want to mess with him. Uhmm. I watched Romancing the Stone. Haha. Michael Douglas is young in it. Soo weird. I made mashed potato. Yes. One potato. It was tasty, except that it wasn’t totally mashed because I didn’t have one of those mixer things, so I was literally mashing the potato with this little squisher thing that I found in one of the drawers. Hah. It was still tasty. Yeahhh. I can’t remember any other cool things that happened.

They say ‘cheers’ a lot of the time instead of ‘thank you’. That’s actually pretty cool.

Something Good Can Work.

I've just been titling all of my posts after songs, so this is the song that I was listening to when I posted this. Yeaaah. I've become really uncreative with my titles. Whatever.

Erin collects feathers from the birds at the zoo, so she gives me feathers some times. I have two of Marigold’s very pretty feathers and one of Cracker’s feathers. Marigold’s are yellow and blue. Cracker’s are black and yellow, and the yellow part has tons of little black spots. It’s pretty cool actually.

I slept wrong on my neck last night. My neck has been killing me all day.

So today was pretty good. The weather here is more bipolar than Provo weather. It will be sunny and toasty one second, and then all of a sudden it’s chilly and rainy, but literally a minute later it’ll be sunny again. It’s the strangest thing. My hair does not appreciate it. I like actually blow drying my hair and wearing it in a pony tail at least because I like having reasons to do my hair or look cute or something. Today was a poor day to try doing my hair. It was fluffy all day today. My bangs were out of control. Speaking of my bangs, which they call fringe here, Erin just got an iPhone and she has those apps that you can make someone fat or old and she was showing us pictures of these little kids that she had made old and they were hilarious. I promise this actually does have to do with my fringe. So she made Aaron old and then fat, and then Aaron was like, “Yeahhh make Caitlin fat and old!” So it was my turn, but when she made me old, the phone put wrinkles in my bangs because it assumed that’s where my forehead was. Hahah. I looked freaking creeeeeepy. Bahah by the way, a previous intern used the word ‘creeper’ all the time apparently. I don’t really use that word. I say creep, but I don’t think I ever say creeper, but Adam was telling me about that and he is a bit of a creep sometimes, so I’ll call him a creeper. We’ll have a laugh about it. It’s good. I’m glad that I can have fun with some of the people I work with. Anyway, it’s really funny because they all have these stereotypical Americans in their head, so they ask about certain stuff. Today Aaron said, “Well yeah you guys all just carry guns around with you, don’t ya?” Haaa. I think people think Americans all have guns all the time and that we fight bears and stuff or something.

Okay, I’m listening to this song right now and it has the most fun opening ever. It’s wild. Bar In Amsterdam by Katzenjammer. I actually really enjoy this song. I just found it in my iTunes library like yesterday.

So yeah Aussies, crazy. Also, I asked Aaron what they call popsicles again because I forgot and they call them icy poles. What the heck? I also asked him what smoko means and apparently it’s just an Aussie term for break because it’s like taking a break for a smoke, but it just became a term for a break instead of just having a smoke. Smoke-o. Aaron also taught me another new word. Daggy. It’s like tacky I think. So if someone is wearing tacky stuff you would call them a Dag. Aaron tried doing a southern accent today, it was THEEE worst attempt at a southern accent ever. Haha. It was awesome. He sounded like someone trying really hard to be some sort of absolutely ridiculous attempt at a cowboy of sorts. I’m not sure. Ha.

Stuff that happened at work. Hmm. Well Adam was back at work today. He was sick the past few days I guess. I was like, “Yeah sure, you skipped to have an extra long Valentine’s Day break with your wifey.” He didn’t say no. Hah. But he actually did sound like he was still sick. I asked what he did for V Day and he was like, “Oh you know, hot air balloon ride over the grand canyon, etc.” I was like, “Ohhhh yeaaaah. Very romantic Adam.” (Dripping in sarcasm, because obviously he did not do that.) But he said, “No really, that’s what we did.” Whatever. How cool would that be though!? I want to go in a romantic hot air balloon ride with a boy. Fuuuuun. Yeah, so I fed the monkeys with Adam. I fed the wallabies, roos, emus, deer, rabbits, and wombat by myself today. The roos and emus are crazy. They know when they get fed, so they all crowd around the gate and attack the bucket in your hands. There are six roos and quite a few emus. It’s wild. Mm, Aaron and I finished mulching around the Debrazza cage. I fed Hitler the koala by myself. It’s not like it’s hard. We get him new branches of eucalyptus every day and put them in different spots in his cage. He was following me around while I was putting his branches in. He is so cute! He let’s me pet him. Erin, Justine, and I raked a bit of the roo paddy. Yeah, the raking seriously never ends. However, Aaron and Erin told us that we did a great job with the rabbit enclosure. I guess they had previous interns rake the rabbit enclosure and it took them seriously all day and it still didn’t look as good as it did after we did it, and it only took us a few hours. Take that previous interns!

OH OH OH! BAHAHA I witnessed the funniest/saddest thing ever for the first time!! So Adam and I had just come back from like taking dead branches to the tip or something (By the way, they call dumpsters, skips or something. That’s unrelated, but I just thought of that.) and Rob caught us and was like, “Hey Adam I’ve got some live chucks over by the stump (which is where we chop up the dead wallabies and stuff for the devils and dogs, the one with the cleaver in it. yeah.)” So Justine was there too, and Rob looks at us and says, “Hey will you girls go fetch Azza, I doubt you would want to go see this.” Then he starts talking about which devils he wants the chucks fed to after Adam chops their heads off.. Ha. I was like, “Wait, I want to watch. I’ve never seen them run around with their heads chopped off..” Justine goes, “Sick. I don’t want to see that. I would just get mad.” Yeaaaah it might make me a sicko to want to see that, but for serioussss when else am I going to get this opportunity. “Have a go” is apparently a popular Aussie saying. So I want to “have a go” with as many things as possible that I probably won’t be around in the States ever. Ha. Pretty sure I won’t be around chuck head chopping any time soon when I go home. Anyway, so Justine left to help with branches, which she thought she would get to avoid since it’s a Thursday thing, but I guess we didn’t have too much to do today so Aaron and Adam went and got branches today and she had to go help put branches in the tank aviaries and stuff. Sucka. Not that I mind branches, actually. It’s not too bad. Okay okay okay, so we just got these huge blue apron things that we have to wear when we sort through the groceries because lots of stuff gets on us. So Adam was like, “Righto let’s go put our aprons on and grab some gloves!” Rob saw him and was like, “Uhhh why do you have all that on..” Adam responded with, “Dunno. For fun, I guess.” Hah. We looked like butchers. Seriously. It was so funny. It was good that he had the apron on though. So we headed to the stump in our butcher garb, and there were two containers with live chucks in them. They were freaking out. I was a little worried, but if you don’t really think about the fact that you are watching some animal get murdered, it’s not so bad. Plus, it’s probably the reason those chucks were raised for anyway. They were just fulfilling their life’s goal? I dunno. Ha. Anyway anyway anyway, so Adam snatched one of the chucks by it’s legs, tossed it on the stump, and whacked it’s head off with the cleaver. Too bad the cleaver is kind of dull, soooo the head was still hanging on by a thread.. Bahah. He tossed the chuck on the ground and it started freaking out! It was so funny! I felt like a sicko for laughing, but it was hilarious. It was seriously doing back flips. It was spouting blood from it’s headless neck and doing BACK FLIPS. I wish I could do back flips. I’m seriously not exaggerating either. It kept running around and flipping. The other ones did flips too, but also just kind of ran around. One of them kept hopping into the air and when it landed, it would land on it’s stomach and it would squawk. Heh. It sounded like a dog’s chew toy. Anyway, it was quite an experience. Rob came over to see how I was dealing with it, and he saw that I was laughing and he just busted out laughing. He thought it was the funniest thing ever that I thought it was funny. He kept telling people that I laughed.
We found out today that the baby ringtail possum was gone! We kept trying to figure out what happened. Someone was like, “I bet it died and they are just pretending that they dunno what happened to it.” Ha. I was so sad. Turns out Dick gave it to some lady that raises ringtail possums. I’m glad it’s not dead. That quoll just died, and Bala the lion tail macaque is blind now. I don’t want more bad things to happen to the animals. Also, when that quoll escaped a while ago it killed some of the pheasants that they had.

There was a camera guy there today. I guess Dick was getting interviewed for ABC News. Random.

We moved the little wallabies that have been living in the chuck yard into the big wallaby enclosure. Erin was worried because Harrison is still a little boy and she was worried the bigger males would hurt him. In fact, she was so worried that she started crying when we were watching the bigger males chase Harrison all around the enclosure. I felt bad for her. She raised Harrison, and then had to bring him to the zoo. I think she’s know little Harrison since he was just a little baby. Dick got really mad because he didn’t explicitly tell her to move the three little ones into the big wallaby pen, but he had told Erin a long time ago to move them and she didn’t think they were ready. So Dick was mad and was like, “Well I meant eventually! Blah blah blah” There’s always lots of issues about what Dick says to do as opposed to what Rob says to do. Like with the mulch yesterday. Rob said to do one thing with it, but Dick said to do another. It gets hard to make decisions. Thank goodness I’m just an intern and don’t have to choose which guy to listen to. Anyway, so we moved the wallabies. There are three and it was Erin, Justine, and I. I got to hold Flora. She is absolutely adorable. I was holding her in her little cap that she likes to hang out in. I was scratching her head and she was snuggling and falling asleep. It was adorable. I love her.

So Demetri Martin has this thing about the word ‘ladies.’ “Help! I’m trapped in a well and I can’t get out!... Ladies..” I told Adam about that because he had sad ladies once and we were talking about it. Ever since then, he’s been saying ‘ladies’ ALL the time. Hah. Justine was like, “Oh my gosh. Why did you tell him that!” Hehe. I think it’s funny. “It’s like a jacuzzi with really high walls.” I think the whole thing is about how you can make any statement creepy by adding ‘ladies’ to the end of it... ladies.

Okay, maybe we do say this in America, but it sounds weird to me for some reason. Everyone says, “How ya going?” instead of “How’s it going?” or “How are you?” How ya going? That’s weird right?

So the really exciting thing that happened today.. Rob stopped me and was like, “Hey could you take the baby wombat home tonight??” Eek! So I have a baby wombat in my house right now! We let her walk around for a bit in our living room. Heh. She’s blind and so I think it probably makes her nervous to walk around, so she was responding really well to sound and would come to us whenever we made noise. We would set her down and walk away and call her and she would come running. It was SO adorable times a billion. I got a video of it. Hah. I hope she gets better, I would be so sad if they had to put her down.. Justine’s been hogging her though. She carried her home and then was playing with her and then fed her and put her eye stuff on her eyes and was like, “Yeah she’s asleep.” So I didn’t get much play time with the baby wombat. Sighhh. It’s okay though. I’m just happy that I have a wombat in my house.

I think that’s about it for todayyy. The internets are not working at the moment. I think it’s cause the weather is bad or something. Rob says that makes the internet not work well. I really dunno. So I’m going to go maybe work out or something. We will see. Hah.

Happy Valentine's Dayyyy.

I’m so sleeeeeeeepy.

Not much went on at work today. It was one of the hotter days I’ve had here. It didn’t really help that I was out playing with mulch for most of the day. It tired me out nice and quick. There were these big piles of mulch down by the Mandrills, Capuchins, and Debrazzas that Rob told Aaron and I to rake out and stuff, but then when we started, Dick came over and was like, “Uhhhh what do you guys think you’re doing?? I don’t want any of this over here, put it around these monkey cages.” So we spent the next like three ish hours putting mulch into wheelbarrows and taking those to the monkey cages and dumping it out and spreading it around. It was monotonous, but it actually went by pretty fast.

Adam hasn’t been at work this week yet. Not sure why. Justine and I have decided that we miss him being there because he is a well oiled machine. Things go way more smoothly around work when he is there. Not that it’s so horrible and unorganized without him there. He’s just a good leader, I guess. He’s also just chatty and fun. I’m not that chatty, I think I should change that. Try being more social or something. I’ve never been a big social person, but I would like to be. Probably. Whatever.

Aaron and I were talking about theme parks today. I was with him most of the day. It seems like one person will pick up one of us interns at the beginning of the day, and they are stuck with that one all day. Ha. Anyway, so I was telling him about Disneyland and he was like, “Uhhm, isn’t that a place for little kiddies..?” Hah. I was like, “Uh.. noo... I mean.. sort of, but not really.. grown ups can like it too.. and stuff..” I asked him about theme parks in Australia, and he said that Tassie doesn’t have any! Poor Tassie. There are some on the coast of Australia though I guess. Movie World and Dream World or something. I would really love to go to them! I love theme parks! Movie World has a batman ride and a superman ride. Sounds pretty much like Magic Mountain. Ha. It’s probably way better than Magic Mountain though. I was going to try and see how much it would be to get up there and go for a weekend, but then I remembered that I would be going by myself or trying to convince a person that I wouldn’t really care to spend a day at a theme park at to go with me.. I really want to find some LDS people my age. I would make one of them come with me. There’s still time for me to find some I guess.

So I was listening to my ipod on shuffle, and the song That Thing You Do came on. It’s a triple swing song and I really miss dancing! Sighhh. I just about started dancing when it came on.

So it was Valentine’s Day here yesterday. Aaron asked what I did for Valentine’s Day and then laughed. How sad is it that everyone knows that we can’t do anything so they already know that we wouldn’t have been able to do anything for Valentine’s Day? I was a little sad that I wasn’t at home for Valentine’s Day because our annual Disney road trip falls around V Day weekend.

I was listening to my ipod while we were doing mulching things, so Aaron would ask me what I was listening to and we would talk about different bands and stuff. I think it’s so funny that it seems like other countries love American music. He knew all the bands that I talked about, but then he would talk about some Aussie band and I’d be like, “Yeaaaaaah never heard of them.” America is taking over the world via music. Coool.

I was feeding the quolls with Aaron again today. One of the little quollys tried escaping on me! I practically squished his little nose in the door trying to keep him in. Ha. Quolls are very cute little animals. I love them.
The wild wombat was outside out house again today! Cute little bugger.

I took like a three hour nap today because I was totally beat when I got home. I kept setting my alarm so that I wouldn’t take a really long nap, but then I kept turning it off to sleep longer cause I was so tired. I think I’ll exercise again tonight. I did last night. I’m trying to get back into my p90x grooooove.

Yeah it wasn’t a very eventful day today. Haha. It wasn’t a bad day though. My legs are tired and sore.

Also, my fingernails consistently have dirt under them. It's a big gross.

Let's Dance To Joy Division.

I was in a horrid mood this morning. Last night at around nine thirty, I was laying in bed reading on my kindle. There was no way Justine did not know that I was in the middle of reading, but she comes in, turns the light off, turns her radio on, and goes to bed. Whaaaaaat the heck!? At least say, “Hey I’m going to bed. Do you mind reading in the living room?” But noooooo. Instead it’s, “Hey I really could care less about you, so I’m just going to pretend you aren’t even in here.” Thank you so much! So I stayed up with my little reading light and finished Firelight. Ha. It ends at a horrible spot. It’s all this crazy stuff happening and then BAM last page, and then you’re like, “Waaait.. what just happened and why isn’t there any more pages of this..?” It was a fun book. Mostly the idea behind what the main girl is. So coooool!! I want to be one. I’m not going to spoil it. Yeah, I’m really proud of myself because I started it yesterday and finished it yesterday. I’m awesome. I totally wasn’t tired when I finished it at like eleven. Sooo I sat in bed trying to sleep and failing horribly. I kept waking up all night. So I’ve been a bit sleepy today, to say the least.

Our power went out this morning. We also ran out of water, so I can’t shower right now. I certainly hope I can shower in the morning because I was basically buried in dirt all day today. In fact, at one point Aaron looked at me and was like, “Uhm.. you’ve got a smudge or something on your face.. Here look in my sunnies.” Sure enough pretty much a quarter of my forehead was covered in dirt. Also, I realized afterwards that maybe it was weird that I was looking at my face in his sunnies. By the way, he had new sunnies. I heard all the drama about the buying of them when we were sorting groceries. Apparently, a girl that is not his girlfriend bought him these nice $180 sunnies. His woman was upset because they were the ones she wanted to buy for him for his birthday. It’s all very dramatic.

So yeah, good day today! Only really because of a portion of it. Most of my day involved pulling grass from Cracker and Shredder’s enclosure because we are making it look prettier, then Justine and I spent about two and a half hours in the rabbit enclosure raking leaves. Now, the rabbit enclosure is split in half because I assume it used to be two different enclosures for two different animals, but they stuck some bunnies in there and cut a hole in the middle fence. I asked Adam why they had rabbits, his response was, “Asians reeeealllyyyyyy love to look at rabbits. Sometimes they dress them up and take pictures with them and stuff.” I didn’t know Asians really love rabbits, but today while I was raking the rabbit enclosure, a group of Asians came over and were all really happy to see rabbits and were taking a ton of pictures and stuff. It was one of those “Huh.. I didn’t actually believe it when I was told, but apparently it’s true” moments. Speaking of Adam, he wasn’t at work today so we were at work for an extra hour, but that’s okay, and I’ll talk about why later. Back to raking. So the rabbit enclosure is pretty big, it’s also full of tons of trees, which of course means tons of leaves. Also, it’s a rabbit enclosure which means tons of little holes. That means two things: lots of places for me to snap my ankle in half and lots of places for leaves to be in annoying hard to reach spots. Seriously, my right ankle, which is the one I recently sprained, twists like every day. The paths all have lots of rocks and stuff so I’m always stepping wrong and twisting it. It is NEVER going to feel normal again. Suckkkkk. Anyway, so lots of leaves and holes in a large area. When Aaron said, “Okay, you girls can grab some rakes and do the rabbit enclosure” he might as well have said, “Okay, you girls can grab some rakes and walk into the bush and rake all of that up, mmkay? Thanks!” It took forever. I also have some new blisters on my hands. Plus, I got the crappy rake that had little bits sticking out everywhere giving me splinters. After raking up every leaf, we had to get bags and put ALL the leaves in these bags. We ended up having about eleven completely full bags of leaves, and the bags are pretty large.

Other things I did today include, changing all of the waters! Huzzah! I actually don’t mind changing all the waters. I get to go into most of the enclosures and stuff. It was also bird feeding day. Seriously, there are SO MANY BIRDS here. Feeding them takes forever. Neither Justine nor I enjoy feeding the birds, but it happens twice during our days of working, so we agreed that I will do it Mondays and she will do it Wednesdays. It’s not horrible, it’s just a bit boring. I actually really love most of the birds here. They are all super beautiful birds. There are Australian King Parrots, gorgeous. Sun Conures, also super pretty and really bright, there are like three I think, two are bright orangey and yellowy and the other has a black head and the rest is like neon green, so fun. A Rainbow Lorikeet who whistles to you, and when you whistle back, it whistles a different thing. Whenever I work near it, I’ll whistle with it the whole time. It’s so fun. It only does like four different things, one of course being a wolf whistle. I had to feed Marigold today. I told Aaron that she hates me and would attack me if I went in there. So he distracted her with cashews while I ran in and set her food down, of course I had to set it down on the opposite side of her cage. I got to feed the Marmys today! I love feeding them. I could stand there and hand feed them all day! I love them! I usually stand there and give them some food for a few minutes and then set the rest down. Wouldn’t want to get in trouble or anything. Ha. I also fed the quolls today. We feed them this nasty mixture of grated carrots, potatoes, or apples and eggs (not cooked, just eggs thrown in there and crushed in with everything) and meat (sometimes it’s just like hamburger ish meat or full little fishes that we feed the penguins as well). It’s basically disgusting. I walked around with a bucket full of this lovely stuff and a glove. We have lots of quolls here. So we went to the quoll that snatched my finger last time, they call him Peepo (Like Peep O. I dunno. I think it’s because he was always trying to escape, so he was always peeping out the door when you open it). I was with Aaron so I asked him how he feeds this one efficiently because last time this quoll got antsy for his food. Aaron was telling me how he feeds him, but then when he opened the door, Peepo wasn’t trying to get out, he wasn’t even near the door. So Aaron looked around and saw Peepo.. lying where everyone could see him.. dead. So sad! I know he bit me, but it’s only because I had food in my hand. He was so cute! So Aaron grabbed him by the tail and tossed him next to the door for Rob to deal with. I bet he will be fed to something else. Poor Peepo. Speaking of quolls, there is this quoll that is always up on this little beam in his cage that is right next to the wire that separates us from him, but he has always ran away when someone gets to close. Today he was staying there. I touched his nose. Aaron says it’s a bad thing, because he is getting too tame which means that he won’t be scared when we open the door which means he will try to bolt. Ha. I thought it was exciting.

So to the best part of my day!!!! We were heading to smoko (I seriously don’t know what that even means. It’s pronounces like smoke-o. It’s just when we go to the cafe ish part of the zoo and they give us coffee or hot chocolate. Every day. I get a really tasty free cup of hot chocolate every day. It’s awesome.) and we saw Rob carrying a little case and he goes, “Hey girls can you take this back to the staff room. It’s a baby wombat.” On the outside I’m like, “Oh sure, no big.” On the inside I’m like, “OLSKJFLSKDFJKSDF BABY WOMBAT!!!! COOOOOOLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WANT TO SEE ITTTT!!!” I think he knew that’s what was going on in my head because he was like, “You guys can take her out and look at her if ya like.” So we took her back to the staff room and pulled her out of her little case. OH. MY. GOODNESS! SO CUTE! So I got to hold her when we brought her back, and then I held her again later when I was in the staff room and no one was there because I love her and then at the end of work we had to feed her which is partially why we had to stay so long, among other things like washing up bowls and stuff. I GOT TO FEED HER! Hehe. I held her in this little blanket thing and had a little bottle and had to open her mouth and stuff and feed her. It was the greatest thing ever. I felt really maternal and wanted to keep her forever and ever and ever. Someone has to watch her over night, so Rob asked Erin and Erin looked at me and was like, “Well Rob I think the girls would love to watch her.” At first Rob was like, “Yeah okay good.” I was so excited! But then he pulled my happy cloud out from under me and was like, “Nah I think I’ll keep her tonight.” Mean dream ruiner.. It’s really sad though cause the baby wombat is completely blind in one eye and about 60% blind in the other. The vet gave rob eye drops to help her combat the blindness because I guess it can be cured maybe. I don’t really know specifics, but if it doesn’t go away, they are going to put her down.. *sob* I said something to Justine about how sad that is, her response was something like, “Well not really, it makes sense so it doesn’t matter. It might as well be useful and get fed to something.” Rude. I would love to have a little blind pet wombat. I would feed it and love it. It would be happy.



Yeah that’s about all that’s happened to me today I reckon. I’m getting a really awful tan line from my long t shirt sleeves.. the back of my neck is getting pretty dark as well. I’m going to look real silly when I’m done working here.

Also, the title is another song by the Wombats because it was another wombat filled day. Thank you wombats and Wombats.

Party In A Forest.

Second weekend in Tassie. Huzzah.

We went into town again today. Of course, Mel had to drive us and drop us off at the grocery store while her and Cody went to a cool museum for two and a half hours. We couldn’t go anywhere but the grocery store and K Mart pretty much. Sooo we wandered around K Mart for a while. Justine bought this cool ipod nano that is touch screen. I didn’t even know they made touch screen nanos. They are so tiny. The K Mart is attached to the grocery store, so we just walked over there afterwards. Since we had an actual car, I wanted to get stuff that I knew would last me longer than a week. So I got quite a bit of stuff, but it actually wasn’t as expensive as I thought it would be. Justine kept commenting on how much stuff I was getting. She was saying things like, “Well you won’t need to come back the rest of the time we’re here.” Oh thank you Justine. I didn’t get THAT much food. Sheesh. They don’t have canned sliced olives here apparently. Or at least at that grocery store. Instead, they had little jars of olives, but they didn’t look very appetizing. Anyway, I’ve been trying to like talk to Justine, be her friend, something. She doesn’t help much. I’ll tell her some story or something, and she just is like, “Mm, cool.” We freaking live together! Be my friend! I want friends! Agghhhh. I think she’s really excited for Aimee to get here because Aimee drinks. Ha. She told me that she asked Aimee if she needed anything from the grocery store and Aimee responded with “Beer!” and Justine was like, “Yeah I’m so glad I’ll have beer in the house now!” I’ve never had beer in my fridge. I do now. First time for everything, eh?

So I sat in the back seat with Cody when we drove down to town. He had a toy gun. He kept saying, “I’m going to shoot you!” and “Okay I’m going to burn your eyes!” I’m not sure how he was planning on doing that with his gun, but whatever. He also hit me with an umbrella. Other than that, he was actually more fun to hang out with than certain people. I don’t know how his mom understands anything that he says. When he says my name it sounds like taylin. Bahaha he pointed at Justine and was like, “What’s his name??” His mom sounded so embarrassed! She was like, “No no hon! She’s a girl! She! Her name is Justine! SHE!” and Cody said, “Okay, what’s his name??” Heheh.

My mom sent me a package! I opened it and there was a letter from Australia telling me that I have thirty days to send the beef jerky that my sent me back to the sender or else they would destroy everything. I looked at everything in the box and noticed there was no beef jerky, so I was like, “Huh there isn’t even beef jerky in here..” Justine said, “Uh yeah. They took it. Duh.” Thank you again kind roommate. The letter sounded like I had to send it back to my mom or something. I didn’t know they just took it. What’s the point of telling me to send anything back if they already took it? Whateverrrr.

So I typed that before Aimee got here. The rest is post Aimee’s arrival.

Aimee got here finally at like six or something. It was still really light outside. In fact, it stays light until about nine. Ha. So weird compared to how it gets really dark by like five at home. So we walked up to the front of the zoo to get her and bring her back to our little abode. I was pretty happy because she was gushing about how we totally scored with our place. It’s way bigger and spacier than hers, and she’s in a place with like thirty rooms and a bunch of people who don’t know english well, etc. She also has to pay for laundry. Anyway, so Justine was excited because she had a drinking friend. In fact, to prepare for having a drinking friend, she drank three of her beers that she had just bought. We had gotten back to our place from grocery shopping at like 2:30 or something and she drank her first one shortly after we got back. Hah. So we chatted with Aimee for a bit. She kept saying stuff like, “Oh you guys are so lucky you’ve had each other. I was so nervous to be by myself. But especially since you guys don’t go to town much.” I wanted to be like, “Well we might as well be here separately. We hardly talk. But thanks for thinking we are buddies.” Ha. We actually got along most of the night. Chatted even for a bit. Aimee had met a boy in Hobart that lives here in Launceston, so she convinced him to drive the half hour to the zoo to pick us up. She met him at a bar when she had been a bit drunk, so she was like, “Yeah I remember him being really cute, but I’m not sure how old he is.. or if he’s actually cute because I was drunk..” Ha. So he showed up and we went out to meet him. He looked like he was probably late twenties or something. He’s also not that cute. Hahah. He’s a very nice person though. We went to Festivale. We weren’t going to go until Saturday, but he was like, “Oh there’s this band playing tonight that I want to see!” Festivale is twenty freaking bucks to get into, and we were planning on going Saturday.. So much money! So I’m not going Saturday, which is today now. Everything is so expensive, so I’m going to go hike later today instead of go spend a zillion dollars. It was twenty dollars to get in, and then we had to get food which was also expensive.

So Festivale. SO CROWDED. Seriously, I think every person in all of Launceston was there. It was insane. Also, they are really into wine and cheese. So everyone had these Festivale wine glasses and were walking around holding them and wine bottles. It was kind of weird to see these guys who looked like they would never touch something fancy like wine, holding wine glasses and stuff. Maybe that just seems weird to me. I also saw like twenty people with dreads. Haha. There were lots of cheese stands there too. It was in the City Park, so there were stalls set up all around the park, and a stage for bands. 90% of the stalls were for wine, 5% for beer, 3% food, 1.5% non food or drink related things, .5% non alcoholic drinks. Haha. So I was with three people who were drinking wine and beer and listening to music. The music wasn’t too awful. The band Steve, Aimee’s friend, wanted to see was actually really good. The next band was a bit too country for my tastes, but far enough away from being country for me to enjoy it, since I couldn’t enjoy much else there. Haha. No it was fun. I’m glad I got to go out and do something. Aimee ignored us the whole night pretty much though.. She snuggled up with Steve the second she got enough alcohol in her to think he was really cute. So Justine and I felt like a collective third wheel, which kind of sucked. Aimee would talk to us though, so it was okay. They had this booth there that only sold tempura mushrooms. It had a line that went for like half a football field, and that is not an exaggeration at all. I’ve never actually really tried mushrooms I don’t think, so I tried some. They just made me feel a little sick.. Hah. They didn’t taste horrible, but they made me feel sick. Texture maybe? I dunno. So the non alcoholic drinks they had there were so good! I had these drinks that were reminiscent of AME which is this drink my dad used to buy all the time from Trader Joe’s, we totally drank it for big occasions like Christmas and stuff instead of Martinelli’s! I missed it. It tasted pretty much like that. So good. It kind of sucks being basically the ONLY person in a huge park packed with people not drinking anything.. When Steve went to get glasses he was going to get four, but I was like, “I don’t need one, I don’t drink.. etc.” So Justine and Aimee were like, “Oh do you want a glass of orange juice! Bahahaha” They had a real good time with it.. I was just like, “Well actually I would love a glass of orange juice. I happen to love orange juice. Thank you very much.” They made a few jokes at my expense, but that was it. They spent a lot of the night talking about wine and beer, because it was freaking everywhere, so I couldn’t really participate much. Ha. It was fine though. Of course, I woke up this morning and felt like I smelled like wine and beer. My first thought was, “Seriously Justine? You’re drinking at nine in the morning!?” Anyway, yeah so that was Festivale.

Today I told Justine that I didn’t think I was going to go into town and stuff. She kind of scoffed at first, but I was like, “Seriously, it’s really expensive and I just bought a ton of food anyway. I don’t need to go spend more. Plus, I can go hike or something.” She was actually like, “Yeah it’s cool. I understand that. If you change your mind tell Rob to call me and maybe you can catch a ride with him.” So she actually made it seem like she would want me to hang out with them, which was very nice of her. I bet they are relieved to not have the sober girl ruining their fun though. Also, Justine gets a break from me, and I get a break from her! It’s a win-win situation really. Hah.

Also, did I mention that we did in fact find out how old Steve is? After Aimee had been snuggly with him all night, she was finally like, “Sooooo how old are you exactly??” His response was, “Promise you won’t run away..?” Uhm okay, here’s the first sign that she should’ve been like, “Mmkayyyy I have to go. Byeeeeee!” But no, she said, “Oh haha of course not!” He’s freaking 37 years old. THIRTY SEVEN. Oh my freaking goodness! So afterwards she told us and she was freaking out cause she’s like oh my goshhhh how did I get into this messs! I wanted to be like, “Well it probably started with the alcohol and the incessant flirtiness. I dunno. Just a guess.” Instead Justine and I were both like, “Uh don’t talk to him. It’s easy. It’s not like you’re going to be running into him all the time.” I bet she’s been texting him all day anyway.

So far today I have done all my laundry and made a tasty sandwich and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding! That’s a great movie. Yesterday before Aimee got here, I watched Serendipity. The main guy in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Kate Beckinsale’s fiance in Serendipity are the same guy! He has the same length hair in both movies, as well. He’s also a vegetarian in both. Well I assume he is a vegetarian in Serendipity because he’s this weirdo hippie guy, which by the way, what the heck would Kate Beckinsale’s character be doing dating a guy like that?? There is no way she would’ve fallen for that weirdo. I reckon it’s the money. I also finished a book today. The Thief. It was good ish. I’m going to start reading the fourth Artemis Fowl now.

Speaking of reading, I went on a nice walk yesterday until I came to a little pond. I sat down by the edge of the pond and read my scriptures for a while. It got really cold and windy all of a sudden, so I decided to go back inside. When I got back to my house, there was a little wild wombat hanging out in front of my house! I chased him around for a while trying to make him love me. I let him go eventually. Sighh. He was really cute.

I realize that this post is very helter skelter. I’ve been writing it over the past few days, so when I say today I never really know what I’m referring to. Anyway, up until now it’s been about Friday and Saturday. I think that’s it. So yeah, it’s Sunday now.

I was stoked about actually getting to church today. I was going to take a cab into town and then catch a bus the rest of the way, so that it would be cheaper. Instead, I missed the bus by a few minutes so I had to take a taxi (A fifty dollar taxi, might I add..) to the beginning of the street that the church building is on. Of course, the street it’s on is very freaking long. I spent about twenty minutes walking until I finally got to the building.. I arrived with like two minutes to spare until church started! However, I looked into the parking lot to see that there were no cars.. and then noticed that the gates into the church were closed.. and locked. So clearly, it was Stake Conference today or something. I felt really silly going all that way to just get shut down at the last minute. I walked back down the long road for about forty minutes, until I realized that I wasn’t sure if I was heading back towards the city or not. I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to turn on some street, or if I could take this street all the way back to the heart of the city. So instead I stopped at a grocery store and called the taxi people. This nice old man was driving my taxi. He had a massive white beard. If Santa was skinny and drove a taxi, it would’ve been him. The cab ride home was just as expensive. I feel like I wasted a hundred bucks. I’m so sad that I STILL did not get a chance to go to church. It makes me appreciate Utah with all the church buildings on every single corner. No one could ever miss church if they wanted to go. I guess I’ll stay hopeful that I’ll get to church next Sunday.

Also, it’s difficult to cook chicken in the dark. I cannot tell for the life of me if the center is still pink. I would turn a light on, but my roommate is watching Sex and the City again in the dark.. I would feel rude turning a light on.

Also, the title of this post is a Wombats song, in honor of the Wombat I ran into.