One Short Day In The Launceston City.

Oranges are rather tasty. I bought oranges at the grocery store today, and I am very happy with the purchase even though they took up a lot of space in my four bags of groceries that I had to carry around town for a bit. Thank you grocery for having tasty oranges.

Okay, I have a blister on my thumb from all of the raking I had to do previously. I put a bandaid on it and I just took it off.. I have a tan line from my bandaid. How stupid is that! It certainly looks silly.

I feel like a bum today. I feel like a chubby lazy bum. It’s not a good thing to feel like. I don’t enjoy it. Another thing I don’t enjoy, the back of my monkey bit ear is a bit tender. Stupid Capuchins. I think I may develop a fear of Capuchins. It’s sad. They are terribly cute, and I would rather not be afraid of them.

Today was my first day off. I actually had the opportunity to go into Launceston today! So it’s not like I am actually lazy. Except when I sit around my house when I have nothing else to do and I’m not working.. I actually walked probably the same amount or more than I do at work. Az had been talking about he plays soccer to stay fit or whatever, but that he didn’t really need to cause working at the zoo keeps him fit anyway with all the walking and stuff. Anyway, I still feel chub right now. It’s probably because I ate a Bueno today.. Worth it. Okay right, town. So I went into town. There was a “bus” going into town to pick some people up. They apparently use the word ‘bus’ loosely. It’s a little van. It’s green and has animals all over it and says “Tasmania Zoo” really big on it. You can’t miss it. Hah. I had wanted to sleep in today, but I couldn’t because the “bus” was going into to town at nine, so we had to get to the front of the zoo by eight thirty. I’ve been waking up at six lately to get ready and be able to have time to eat and shower and use the internet before my roomie needs to use it as well. So I got up at six again. Sighh. It was okay though. Maybe I’ll turn into a morning person! How cool would that be! I’ve always kind of wanted to be a morning person. It seems more efficient than being a not morning person. Efficiency is good. Yeah so Robbo took us into town and dropped us off near the “mall.” Mall is also loosely used. It’s more of a section of streets that have shops that you would probably be likely to find in an actual mall. It was kind of cool because a lot of the shops were ones that I had never heard of. There was a shop called Wombat. I wanted to go explore some of the shops. You know, see if they had any cool ones and what not. My roomie did not care for any of the shops. She just wanted coffee. Blech. So we just went and got her coffee and headed for the City Park.

The first thing that happened when we entered the City Park was me stepping in a hole in the path and tweaking my already pretty tweaked ankle. So that was real exciting, my ankle is a little more swollen than usual now and hurts a bit more than usual. Time to whip out the brace. Good thing I knew to bring it along with me.. Thank you parents for the weak, tiny, easily twistable ankles. You know, I’m surprised that my ankles haven’t just snapped in half yet. It’ll happen soon I reckon. Ha. So this park was really beautiful. It’s pretty big. It’s definitely somewhere I would want to go have a nice little picnic and play frisbee or something on a nice warm, sunny afternoon. This park has a big enclosure of Japanese Macaques, which are monkeys. There were a ton of them in the enclosure. It was pretty cool. There is also a big building full of different pretty plants. I kinda forgot about taking pictures and stuff, so I didn’t get pictures of the monkey enclosure or the flower building. Hah. There is also a concert hall at the edge of the park. I bet they have really cool stuff there all the time. There is a gazebo, some fountains, a little pond, a little playground, etc. There was also a huge chess board with big metal pieces! Haha. How fun would it be to just go and play chess at the park on a huge chess board. So cool. After walking around the park, we left to explore the rest of the city.

We didn’t really know where we were going or what stuff we could do, so we just walked in some direction and turned every now and then. We ended up running into a cool looking art museum, but it wasn’t open yet so we couldn’t go in. We also saw a big Aussie football stadium. There was a game going on inside. I kind of wanted to go watch. I would love to go see a cricket game while I’m here. I’ve never seen a cricket game. I bet even though it’s seems a bit like baseball, which is a bit boring to watch sometimes, it would be cool to go see one! I have no idea how cricket is even played. I would also like to see an Aussie rules football game. There was a dragon bounce house outside of the stadium. I really wanted to go jump in it. No doubt if I was with my Provo friends, we definitely would’ve done that. Sighh. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been in a bounce house in years. It’s a bit depressing. Anyway, so we kept walking. We passed a McDonalds, which is unimportant, but it reminded me that I never mentioned how they call McDonalds, Mackas. Weird, eh? I don’t know why I just thought of this, but the other day I saw a guy with a tattoo (which sounds weird in an aussie accent) that said “Honour.” My first thought was, “Ha! Sucker spelled it wrong and he is stuck with that forever! What a loser!” My second thought was, “Oh wait.. they spell things different here..” So if I had a tattoo that said “Honor,” everyone here would make fun of me and say that I am the loser that spelled my tattoo wrong. Why the heck is it that they have to spell things differently here? Centre, honour, colour, flavour, theatre. It’s bizarre. Anyway, we headed towards the Tamar River. We walked through King’s Park to King’s Bridge which is near the entrance to Cataract Gorge. We originally thought we wouldn’t have enough time to go explore Cataract Gorge today because we figured we would be exploring town more, but turns out Launceston is a bit smaller than we previously thought.

Cataract Gorge is absolutely beautiful. It was more of a hike than I had anticipated, especially since I hadn’t thought we would be going there today. I had done my hair today and put on a cute outfit and wore my toms, not exactly hiking material. Ha. The walk there wasn’t really a hike, just a long walk down through the gorge. There was a bunch of people jumping off rocks into the water. So we walked for like twenty five minutes or so before we got to this big area where there is a restaurant and cafe and a swimming center and a suspension bridge and a ski lift that led to some more hikes I assume. There were a bunch of different paths to take to go on different hikes. I would really love to go back and go on some of those hikes. We explored a little bit, and then decided to take a different path back to king’s bridge, because at king’s bridge there are two paths to take into the gorge. The path back was called “Zig Zag Path” and the sign stated that it was for “Hikers Only - Very Steep”. I wish I had brought a water bottle or something with me. I was not prepared to be hiking up a steep mountain. It wasn’t too bad though. I didn’t really want to do it at first, but I’m really glad I did take the Zig Zag path. It took us like to the top of the little mountain on one side of the gorge and when you got to the top you could look over pretty much all of Launceston. SO gorgeous! Once we got out of the gorge we decided to go eat.

We ate at this place called Stillwater Cafe. It was ritzier than it looks on the outside, so we split the most delightful steak sandwich that I have ever eaten. It was on freshly made ciabatta bread. Yum. Things are expensive here. It’s annoying. So at lunch I learned a funny fact. Justine hates ketchup and has never actually tried it. How weird is that? She’s never had ketchup. Ketchup is on tons of things. How has she not tried it. I’m pretty sure she’s scared of it. Haha. She said that the smell of it makes her want to throw up. Aussie’s love their ketchup, oh wait, they call it tomato sauce. We get made fun of for saying ketchup. Azza told me that meat pie with sauce is as aussie as you can get. The cafe at the zoo sells a bunch of different meat pies. I tried some this past week. The first one I tried was chicken and camembert. It was actually really tasty. I even had sauce on it. So weird that saying just sauce means ketchup cause I feel like usually “sauce” would refer to something different, like J Dawg’s special sauce. That’s some good sauce that I wouldn’t mind having on like everything. Anyway, I also tried a regular meat and gravy pie. It wasn’t that great.

You know, today Justine and I actually made conversation and I didn’t totally hate having only her to hang out with. However, sometimes she would say something, and in my head I’d be like, “Yeaaaaah I don’t want to be stuck here with you either, but you don’t need to be so obvious about it.” So whatever. It could be a lot worse, so it’s okay.

After we had lunch, we needed to find the grocery store. We headed to the Coles. That’s their big grocery store. Coles. Another one is called Woolworths and sometimes they refer to it as Woolys. I don’t like not having a car because I had to be really picky about what stuff I bought since I had to carry the bags around town until we got picked up by Rob. I miss you little CRV. You are so useful. Also, you have the steering wheel on the proper side. The whole steering wheel on the right side is still so weird to me. I hate crossing roads here because I keep forgetting which way cars go on which side of the road. It’s hard to break the habit of looking a certain way and expecting cars to be coming from certain directions. I also got a new cheap watch because I guess I broke my other cheap watch. Sorry mom. Ha. I think it was either not as waterproof as it was advertised, or it’s not sunscreen proof.

Rob picked us up after we walked like six or seven blocks ish to around the “mall” ish area so he could find us. Six or seven ish blocks is not pleasant with four grocery bags, one of which has juice and milk in it.

Now I have nothing to do. I took a nap when I got back. I didn’t really mean to. Now I’ll probably be up late. Doing nothing. Maybe I’ll watch a movie. My days off are probably going to be lame. I might go hike around the areas near our house tomorrow, I guess. Maybe work out. Maybe I’ll put myself in a short two day coma. Maybe I’ll pretend I can sketch and go out into nature and draw things. Yeah, no, I’ll probably just mope around the house wishing I knew how to drive stick and drive on the wrong side of the car and road so that I could kife a car from the zoo to go to Platypus World. Yeah, that’s a place. I want to go so badly.