I'M ALIVE!

sorry folks! the truth is... i haven't been posting... not because i've been ultra busy... b/c nothing too crazy has happened that i thought would be interesting enough for a posting.

maybe i should have posted about the australian version of the biggest loser.

maybe i should have posted about burning pancakes b/c i didn't have a spatula. i thought a fork would be good enough.

maybe i should have posted about having 21 fire alarms this month. 3 of which took place within one afternoon. and one night we had a fire alarm at 7:30... then one at 7:42.

a few reasons why there were fire alarms:
someone tried to 'bake' cookies in their microwave. it then blew up.
someone tried to cook chicken in their microwave for 40 minutes.
somone boiled water and forgot about it until it went dry... then apparently smokey.
someone wanted to cook on their stove, turned it on, put oil in the pan... realized he didn't have all the ingredients... LEFT TO GO BUY THE INGREDIENTS with the oil burning on the stove, and returned to everyone standing outside due to a fire alarm... that he caused. and he had no idea it was him.

maybe i should have posted about my norwegian friend leaving school and going back to norway :( sad!

or about one of their TV channels had a week devoted to heroes... with news stories, interviews with policemen, and a movie about the tsunami.. and capped it all off with the movie THE PERFECT STORM. i had no idea the epitome of heroes was about marky mark fighting with the ocean.

or about all the dang mullets here. it's boggenlicious.

or how white people call themselves 'skips' here. i told them i'm a cracker. a delicious saltine cracker.

or about spending 250 bucks for groceries.

or about the confusion over the US states. 52? 51? no no, it's 48. does puerto rico count? what's delaware? "hi... i'm in... delaware" are your states small? b/c australia has 6. 50 is way too many. are all the states the same size? have you driven to alaska? if there are 50 states, why do you talk about the "Lower 48"? what's the most southern state... is it near new york? no, i heard new york was the most northern. what!? maine is more north? what's in maine?

or how i bought a univeristy hoodie... but i guess that's something only the american students do. a girl from california did it, a boy from pennsylvania did it... but none of the australians. i sometimes wear it over my undergrad intramural championship shirt with my nebraska shorts. i go all colleged-out.

or perhaps about ALL THE COLLEGE DRAMA. of which i am proud to say i am not in the middle of. blank made out with blank. but blank likes blank while blank likes the other blank. and blank said this to blank about blank because blank kissed blank but those two blanks aren't friends anymore because of blank. and i can't stand blank anymore. did you know blank flirted with blank in front of blank? yeah......

so i'm sorry i didn't post. i didn't think it was interesting enough.

and i'm sorry i'm cutting this one short. i do actually have some stories, but i'm in the midst of living them. i'm in sydney for the weekend. it's a beautiful city. and i'm gonna tell y'all all about it when i return.

i just wanted to write a little something so you guys won't forget about me... unless you already have cause i waited so long.

and congrats to my grand sister and her fiance for picking a place for their wedding!
when i told a friend my sister was engaged his immediate response was 'is she pregnant?' cause apparently in darwin, that's the only reason to get married.

i will be back in less than 50 hours! won't you join me?

Let Freedom Ring

ok, so one of my favorite stories from this experience is as such:
my friend J was having a fun little conversation with our german friend. he made a joke about her, so she joked back. and his reply was "we are quit"
j said: we are quit? what?
german: you know. we are quit. we are quit.
j: no.. what?
german: you and i are both done. we got each other. we are quit.
j: even? we are even?
german: yes! we are even.

so now when any of us make jokes with each other, we reply with 'we are quit!'

not only do stores here advertise their sales, but they advertise their REDUCTIONS! reductions here! reductions rack! reductions at 30%!

in america we have words as dweeb, nerd, loser... here they have so many words that i have never heard before in my life. like: Bogens, Pikies, Wogs.

i just had a long conversation with a turkish boy. we talked politics. he apparently likes clinton, based on the fact that there was no 'war' during clinton's time. we had a war during george bush, and now durying dubya, but 'nothing' during clinton's reign. he also blames 9/11 on bush. and he also thinks hilary is our next president. i most honestly believe america will sooner vote an ethnic man before a woman. he thinks i'm wrong. i guess we'll see soon enough. (and i'm not saying that obama is that ethnic man, but america likes men more than women, despite race. so i believe another man of any race will be elected before any woman) (but what do i know, i'm just a redneck texan). that's how the rest of the world views texans: as rednecks. we are uneducated, slow, and ignorant. much like the way america views arkansas. hahaha, just kidding. (which is bill clinton's home state, fyi.) and rednecks are worse than bogens. rednecks are scum to australians. and seriously world, BUSH IS FROM CONNECTICUT. THEY ARE A CONNECTICUT FAMILY. but i will no longer talk politics. but i am trying to change the world's view of americans, one australian at a time ;)
although... they all believe america will be blown up within the next 10 years, so that's something to look forward to y'all.
one more thing, when france didn't vote for turkey to be a part of the european union, turkey boycotted anything french: clothes, makeup, any exports from france, and turkey won over france. when france didn't support america going to war, we changed french fries to freedom fries. we sure showed them.

as i was explaining to my father, my stories are becoming less and less amusing the more i stay here, because the less shocked i am by the cultural differences. although, there is no country music or line dancing here, and when i do show them the one line dance i know, they all giggle.
i no longer find it weird to hear the accent 24/7. HOWEVER they have no respect for 'articles' in the grammatical sense. seriously, on the news, in any day conversation, they say things such as 'he was sent to hospital', 'she's at bar', 'i'm going to airport'... no THE. no A/AN. and they think themselves proper... furthermore, for my turkish friend, not only is english an absurdly hard language to learn and know, but then he is confronted with accents. he has problems with understanding "can't". australians say 'cahn't' and i say "cain't". but afterall, i am just a redneck.

we had a poker night the other evening. where i was actually the most educated on the subject. (thanks celebrity poker). i threw out words such as 'trips' 'river' 'big blind'. then we went out dancing where a friend tricked me in to dancing with a 53 year old indian man. i quickly pretended my turkish friend was my boyfriend and i wasn't allowed to dance with other men.

and tonight was st. patrick's day!! we went to an irish pub: King O'malley's and sat in the 'study' room. it had bookshelves full of encyclopedias and big study chairs. it was awesome. irish? i'm not sure. but it was another evening full of conversation, some highlights centering around: nascar, parliament, the office (the tv show), gangs, bogens, cyndi lauper, the bible, their rugby team the brumbies (which i think just means 'mustangs'), and etc.

monday is a holiday... Canberra Day. i don't think any festivities are planned... one friend put it as "a day to celebrate being in the lovely canberra". which apparently means: the whole city will shut down so you stay home. furthermore meaning: no school or work.
they need better holidays here.

on their habit for abbreviating:
deries = derelict
cinnies = movie theatre
ciggy: cigarettes
(and these abbreviations aren't just used by a few people, or just every now and then: these are used at all times by everyone)

also:
thongs = flip flops
g string = thongs
rubbers = erasers

they never say purse or pocket book... it's always 'handbag'

australians seem to find one word, and use it exclusively. they never allow for synonyms apparently.

my friends have started to say 'totally' and 'y'all'. my work here is just beginning.

but i must be going, i'm burning my freedom toast.

love!!

myblog.com.us/holiday~australian_fireworks

so i talked to my sister today on the telephone. and she's quite confused on how much free time i have. as am i. well not confused on the idea of free time, but that i have so much of it... in a post-grad program. guys, really, come visit, because i have a lot of free time. whereas my undergrad friends have class 5 days a week. 5 days! i pretty much only have class 1 day a week. cause tuesday and thursday don't count... with 1 class at 9am. today i woke up at 8:45, went to class at 9, returned to my dorm, printed out articles for a class tomorrow (articles i'm not REQUIRED to read, not really even encouraged to read... but figured i might as well do something for this class), then went shopping and walking around with K for 3 hours, and now i'm back in my room looking at the articles before i head to the gym. this is almost my everyday schedule. i do work that i'm not required to do... because i have so much free time!

however, my sister criticized my activities in her, i presume lovingly, sister way, that i'm not using my free time to explore australia. however, i don't want to go on 'holiday' by myself! sure i have 4 day weekends, every weekend, but i don't want to explore sydney by myself. and yes, i have friends. friends who are FROM australia.. who don't want to explore places they've visited throughout their whole lives. i must become better friends with international students.
HOWEVER i have signed up for a 12 day camping trip to the center of australia. i'm very excited. it's not until june... and it is 1,000 bucks (love you mom and dad!), but it's transportation and food included and i'll be camping in the AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK. isn't that why i'm here? yes.

but on saturday night, for some reason, canberra held their annual SKY FIRE. which is just a 25 minute show of fireworks over the lake. so we went. and it was beautiful. i think all of canberra was there... maybe 1,000 people? ok, there must have been more, but canberra is small folks. and my friends were loving it.. and i mean LOVING it. then i realized... huh, "y'all don't have many firework displays, do ya?" "no... not many" then i reminded them we have Independence Day. funny story... my birthday is July 5th.. and of course, as any typical american family, we saw fireworks on the 4th (sometimes also on the 3rd if we were lucky) in celebration of our country's independence.. but my parents threw in a little twist here. when i was young, they told me the fireworks were in honor of my birthday. Birthday Eve Fireworks if you will. and I BELIEVED THEM. boy did i look like an idiot in kindergarten.

i should be making a list of all the different words i come across between the 2 cultures... cause i know i had about 5 more to tell y'all about... but alas i've forgotten. i'm not a very good blog writer if i can't remember my material. however my friends do think it is unfair america just has .com instead of .com.us. all of their websites are .com.au. i laugh in their faces. yes, .com has become the central point of my american pride.

however, i do desperately need my ritalin. i had coffee this afternoon, and now i'm all jittery. oh sweet ritalin... i miss you. it's amazing how it can make me focus. instead i am left to my own devices. which so far has gotten all my school supplies color coordinated, all my articles in a binder, my march madness brackets filled in, itunesdownloadedand postcards written. i guess it is a good thing i don't have a lot of schoolwork since it probably wouldn't get done... because i don't have ritalin!! that's also the reason this blog is all over the place... blame the coffee.

so back to my original point... COME HOLIDAY HERE! cause then i'll have friends to do touristy things with. canberra has about a day's worth of things to see... then we can go to the beach, sydney, new zealand, melbourne, perth, brisbane... all of those places!! i can't go alone folks. i need your help. my friend K really wants to come to texas. she got an american tour guide packet today. which doesn't even mention texas. it has a whole chapter on nashville. umm.. yeah. let's go to nashville, forget about texas. the alamo. austin. the stockyards.

now i'm off to the courtyard to underline and highlight these unrequired (is that a word?) articles so i will have something to say in my tute about genetic diseases.

and a shout out to my cousin who's birthday is tomorrow (in american time... here her birthday would be halfway over). she might not even read this, but now you all know it's her birthday. and that makes her a lucky girl.

have a good tuesday everyone!

It's All Relative

we share 50% of our genes with bananas


and as complex as a species we are, we have about 32,000 genes in the human genome... while that crazy rice has 45,000

Give me 500ml of Juice, STAT!

Oh man, i spoke too soon. I'm sick.

calm down parents, calm down, let me explain.

i went to bed monday night with chills. i couldn't sleep actually until about 4am. i'm pretty sure i had a fever, and my throat was killing me. so at around 1am i made hot tea and minestrone soup. i eventually passed out. i woke up tuesday after about 4 hours of sleep and my throat was on fire. so i gargled. yeah, you know it' s bad when i willingly gargle hot salt water. i then talked myself into going to class... 'only 1 hour. only 1 hour then you can come home and sleep.' and i made it through, thanks to my nalgene full of warm water.

on my way home i bought more soup. soup in a box. they don't have a lot of soup in cans. and let me tell you, soup in a box is pretty gross. and not many options for vegetarians. luckily my friend S and K and I were planning on going to the grocery store. where i stocked up on juice, soups, fruit, and lots of lolipops (they don't sell a lot of hard candy, it's all chocolate or gummy type creatures) (sad). also, i've been craving pizza, so i thought i'd buy a small frozen one. nope. here in australia we demand meat on all of our pizzas. any meat will do, as long as it's an animal product. CHEESE AND HAM! MEAT LOVERS! SUPREME! BACON AND MUSHROOMS! nothing plain? no margarita? fine. no pizza. but at least they had chicken flavored mac and cheese.... gaa-ross. and can we just take a moment to talk about their cereals??

rice krispies are 'rice bubbles' and snap, crackle, and pop are different drawings!!
frosted flakes are 'frosties' they even commercially abbreviate their cereals
cocoa krispies is "coco pops"... and they have a really weird cartoon monkey
AND they don't have any cereals with marshmallows in them. my friends thought i was crazy asking where the Lucky Charms were. that's all i wanted, for my sick little body, was marshmallow sugar cereal. instead i just stuck with the bran cereal. :(


anyway, i came home and watched my newly downloaded movies and ate 4 lolipops and had soup. then today (wednesday) i woke up for my most grueling school day: 9-6.. with only 1 break. and my throat wans't nearly as bad as it was tuesday morning! home remedies can really help! (i also started taking my calcium, b-12, one-a-day, green tea, and echinacea pills) (which i should do everyday, but it took an illness to help me remember).
and today wasn't that bad. for an hour i heard about the theories of chromosomes changing during evolution, then an hour on gametes, mitosis, and meiosis (i still remember from highschool when jen p. said before a bio test 'mitosis and meiosis are my b*tches!' haha, that was funny), then an hour video on the race to find the insulin gene, and then further mutation of genes for agricultural reasons, then an hour discussion class with the post-grad students in my 'race' and genetics class (of which there are 4, including yours truly. all girls. and it just so happens, at least 2 of them are in each of my classes. we will all shortly be best friends. or sick of each other... either way....), then an hour on the post-cranial skeleton. then hey! i had a break. where i had to refresh my brain on what the post-cranial bones look like so i wouldn't come off as an idiot in my lab. then i headed to said lab. and played with bones for 2 hours. and by play with, i mean tried to articulate the radius, ulna, and humerus for about 15 minutes until we had to call over our professor. but my partner and i did get the femur, fibula, and tibia to work together nicely, without help! and even add on the patella! we're brilliant.

and now i'm home. and my throat hurts again. but that could be cause i was just talking to S for about 40 minutes. i shouldn't talk so much. but now i'm gonna have soup, watch Arrested Development, and miss having coffee with the girls because i want to get well :( and because they are going out at 9:30! why would you go have coffee at 9:30?! i hopefully will be sleeping.

but i did find out i will be giving a presentation on inbreeding in a month or so. what is inbreeding? what different varieties of it arise? what is the evidence for genetic ill-effects? what are the pattterns of occurence of inbreeding?
so if any of y'all are knowledgable in that area... share your wisdom. it's gotta be a 30 minute presentation, so if we all put our heads together, i think we can pull it off.

and i have a new favorite abbreviation: BESTIES.
for best friends. i'm so excited to use this.

love and hugs to all my besties!! (that means all of you)

My Weekend in a Flash (correction: icy pole... not icy pop)

sooo…. It’s been a long time folks! Missed me? Ok, well when I last left y’all I was going to the beach. And that I did. I went to an Australian beach with Australian, German, and French friends. Never thought I’d be doing that in my life. And it was awesome! However I didn’t realize my camera battery was dead until it was time to go and so I didn’t take any pictures. But my friends all want to go back, so I’m sure I’ll be able to get some later. Anyway, we went there and the beach was almost empty, just a few families running around. We had some food before heading down to the sand, and this mom and pop shack actually had a vege burger! I’m sure it touched utensils soaked in meat juice… but I didn’t want to think about that too much. Anyway, we walked down this little bridge and ta-da! It’s the ocean! And it was beautiful. And there was this huge island that just looked like a big rock off in the distance and I kept wondering if the LOST castaways were hanging out over there. Anyway, we walked up and down the beach and laid out and even though I just put my feet in the ocean, some of my friends tried to body surf. They didn’t do too well. But the water and sand were so clean! A good amount of seaweed was washing up, but no shells…? I saw maybe 2 tiny shells, I thought that was strange. But over all it was amazing to a) be at a beach, it’s probably been about 2 years since I’ve been to one and b) get out of the city!

On the drive down I did have some funny conversations with the german:
He first of all asked if I knew the “May ver ee icks”… and it slowly came to me, but I got it: the DALLAS MAVERICKS! Heck yeah I know them! Then we talked about Dirk. Ohhh dirk.
I then tried to introduce the game of “Slug Bug”… or as you northerners call it: Punch Buggy (that’s so silly. The name… not the game. The game is good. Cause I’m good at it.) Then he said something to the point of ‘de nancies drive de beetle” but then later I think he was saying Nazis.
He also spent years of high school in a boarding school in Connecticut, of all places!! Crazy! He then told me that Connecticut has “small villages” and said he was so surprised how cheap “the wheat” was. Then I thought maybe he was saying ‘weed’ but then he says he doesn’t do drugs. So I guess he was, in fact, talking about the wheat. So hey, wheat’s cheap in Connecticut, who knew!

Anyway, other funny things occurred throughout the day, they are bound to with mixing so many cultures.
Australians do indeed love their abbreviations: Breakfast is Brekky. Even the Macker’s commercial refers to their bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich perfect for brekky!!
All of them pronounce Adidas: Ahhh deee dahs
We then all got in a long conversation about cell phones. The german kept asking about our ‘portable’ phones. “Well, dey are portable, are dey not?”
He also kept calling the suntan lotion his ‘sun cream’
Whenever the French guy talked about his older sister, he referred to her as his ‘Grand’ sister. I kept giggling.

Anyway, like I said, the day was great, learned a lot about Germany… even some German: Achtung! Achtung! And then we came home to hang out at the dorm’s BBQ (which the australians believe they invented and any BBQ in texas wouldn’t be good enough for them) (but I don’t think they even have/use bbq sauce. They use olive oil??)

So we all ate, showered, then went out to a bar called Mooseheads. I actually came home early, I was so tired, I blame the sun. But came home to some friends sitting outside, so we talked for an hour or so while they all smoked (omg, everyone smokes here. I was sitting outside tonight with 5 smokers, and my throat started to burn… I had to stand away… ewwww). Anyway, that was my Thursday!

Friday 2 of my friends went home for the weekend so I didn’t do much that day. In fact I stayed in that night because I don’t have enough money to go out every night and I don’t have enough energy to go out every night. I ended up watching Silence of the Lambs on tv at about 10 at night. I got pretty freaked out… until I researched the Buffalo Bill character, the skin cutter, and he is now Monk’s detective boss on Monk! So I wasn’t so scared of him anymore :) furthermore, it was nice to wake up Saturday morning and not be tired :)

Saturday I walked around on a campus a bit with a friend and on the way home she kept saying she could really go for an Icy Pole. Omg… what? Ends up she wanted a popsicle. They all call them icy poles here!

They say 'i reckon' heaps. "I reckon she's a pretty nice girl" "i reckon there'll be heaps of students at mackers for brekky skipping their toots"
Also they don’t say chug, they say scull (I guess that’s how it’s spelled) It’s so weird: I dare you to scull that olive oil!
And any sweater or sweatshirt is called a jumper. Even hoodies and zippies. All jumpers.

So at night we went out to Academy again and it was fun, even though 2 of our friends weren’t with us.
I’ve seemed to have made myself quite a core group of girls:
S, A, J, and K. now you can know who I’m talking about :) haha, sorta
But they’re great and remind me of how I was freshman year of college. Hyper, loud, energetic… now I’m like ‘hey, it’s 1am, let’s go home’ “oh don’t be silly Texas, the club’s open for 3 more hours!” I am too old for this.

Anyway, Sunday was a nice day. I slept in and enjoyed a lovely (everything here is ‘lovely’) relaxing Sunday. At night I got a call, one of my friends had returned, J, and she wanted all the ‘goss’ from the weekend. So a few of us congregated downstairs and talked and talked and talked. Then we made some dinner and watched CSI. They love them their CSI here. I went to grab some chips and salsa from my room and my friends were intrigued by the ‘white corn’ chips. They usually use Doritos with salsa. What?? That is so weird. And sounds pretty gross. But I then retired to my bedroom for the evening because I figured Monday would be a long day… now that the campus was going to be back in order… I was going to be looking forward to a day of errands.
But then I was kept awake by the lineup of movies my few tv stations offered… no no Australia, don’t show the good movies during the day. Keep showing Lawn Bowling and Lifetime movies from the 70’s, but at night, when I want to sleep show High Fidelity and Adaptation. Thanks for keeping me awake til 1am.

So moving on, today was fairly busy… with it starting at 11:00am. I hit snooze for an hour and a half. Anyway, I went and got myself an Australian phone! It is a Nokia, so my father can’t be mad :) Anyway, it’s one of those pay as you go phones and I think it’s gonna work out nicely. And it’s pink! And a flip phone! I’ve never had a flip phone.
I also signed off on my loans, so now I’ll have money to live off of! (from which to live, grammar kids.) So then I came home and apparently had the biggest urge to clean. Psha, I know, so not like me. I actually scrubbed my kitchen. Scrubbed y’all. I then put away all my clothes (on hangers!) and started to organize my desk until I realized it was time to go to the gym for the bodycombat class. I then found out the $110 dollars at the gym gives me access to ALL the group classes they offer. I thought I had a to pick just one class. I’ve learned that here in Australia, there are many catches, so I prepared myself for the worst, and was very pleasantly surprised when I was told how much the 110 really buys! Hooray! So I did bodycombat, came home and my friends were bbqing outside and my other friend S had just gotten back from her weekend from home, so it was a lot of fun! I showed off my new phone and the phone numbers here are so weird. They all seem to begin with like 0404 or 0403 then followed by 6 numbers. I guess that’s still only 10 numbers, but it certainly isn’t the American pattern. They also all started to plan for their Easter holiday. They all invited me to stay with them over the break, so we’ll see where I end up: either Melbourne or Sydney. So after, I then made my way upstairs to shower and as soon as I shut my door, the dorms fire alarm went off. Omg people, please learn to vent your steam!!!

Anyway, just a few minutes ago my Adelaide friend downloaded a program onto my computer, where I don’t even have to be online, just have my Ethernet cord plugged in (so it won’t use up my MB’s), and I am now tapped in to the network where I can download anyone’s file. It’s like being back on phynd.com or whatever that place was in undergrad. I love networks. I also love downloading the last few episodes of the office for free in under 5 minutes. I don’t think you people realize how excited I am. So now I am off to watch “Phyllis’ Wedding”. Tomorrow I have one lecture at 10 and then I’m off with S to the grocery store to stock up again!

Life looks pretty good right now.

Love and hugs to all of y'all