A GREAT Coffee Date

The last couple days were really good.  Yesterday was nothing too exciting.  I attended an orientation session in the morning – SUCH a joke!... both in the “waste of time” and “this is really funny” waysJ.  It was the start of orientation week for the whole school so… LOTS of first years.  It was like freshman orientation all over again.  I left the “guided” tour early and went and bought my textbooks.  It’s actually cool how they do books here.  The professors put them together for each individual course and they’re actually compilations of textbooks and articles that we will be studying.  It is then bound in a Deakin University cover.  It seems much more efficient than buying a full textbook when you only actually read from a few of the middle chapters.  Anyway, I was impressed with that – go AustraliaJ.  After that I wandered through the clubs fair and saw all the fun things to get involved with while I’m here.  I went back home and decided to take the tram to Camberwell (a cute shopping suburb about 20 minutes closer to the city).  I walked around for a while and then came back towards Burwood (my suburb).  I got off about 10 stops early and wandered through shops closer to my house.  It was a LONG walk, but good to stretch my legs.  I made it home, ate lunch and then went back to campus.  I found a quiet spot and got caught up on my correspondence.  After that, I went back home and had a quiet night.  I have been SO exhausted the last few days.  I know that it has a lot to do with walking everywhere, longer days, and the fact that I’ve met a lifetime’s worth of people in the past week.  For an introvert, that is a tiring endeavorJ.  But, no worries, I’m staying strong and making lots of new friends!  Today, I slept in a little bit and then went to the gym, worked out, and came home to get ready.  My housemate Camille (from London) invited me to go downtown with her and try out some of the famed Melbourne coffee we’d both heard so much about.  I was not about to turn down a COFFEE dateJ, so we headed downtown this afternoon and scoped out a good place.  We found a little place in one of the laneways off Flinder’s street and ordered our coffee.  I picked the place because they had a sign that said they didn’t charge extra for soymilk… score! J.  The coffee was delicious and our conversation while we drank it was AWESOME!  We talked about our plans for the semester and things we want to do.  It turns out that our interests are really similar.  She wants to have house hang out time/dinners and get to know everyone we live with better.  I had been thinking that that would be SO fun.  We’re going to initiate it this Sunday and make dinner for everyone.  They don’t know yet, but they’ll love itJ.  I think I’ll introduce them all to American chili and cornbread.  She also mentioned that she wants to learn how to bake and I LOVE baking, so we’re going to do that together too!  I also told her about my lunch Sunday with my friends from Church at the Dumpling King.  Apparently she LOVES dumplings, so we’re going Saturday.  Anyway, apparently we have a lot of similar interests and now have lots of plans to do things together.  I’m excited to see how our friendship develops.  Tomorrow, we’re going to the beach.  Yay!  After our coffee date, we wandered around the city and checked out the small shops and kept discovering mall after mall.  It’s incredible.  I felt like they kept appearing in random places… we’d take a wrong turn and be in another mall.  It was crazy.  We also walked past the Victoria State Library and they had an exhibit for Australian Picture Books in their gallery.  We went in and wandered through paintings from kids’ books.  It was great!  And then we walked through the Greek Precinct and stopped in a bakery.  I got some chocolate and walnut baklava.  I didn’t know what it was, but I figured after all the times I’d called a balaclava (a piece of ski gear) baklava on accident, I had to see what I’d been referring tooJ.  It was pretty good.  It was like a piecrust with a jelly pudding, covered in chocolate and walnuts.  I liked it.  We finished walking around and made our way back to the tram and came home.  I finished my night with dinner, some Boy Meets World and laundry.  I have lots of fun plans for the last week of my “summer” break.  I’m excited for everything right now… this week, friends, school, life.  It’s a great place to be!  Life is good.