Pad Thai in Melbourne

PSA: If you look to the right-hand side right under the "Blog Archive", I've added a widget that allows you to subscribe to my blog by email. It feels tacky every time I post on Facebook that I've written a new post so I will probably stop doing that, though I know a couple people (ahem - Mommy...) who will want to know the instant I write something new. So this is for you! I've tested it out and it seems to be working, but I guess we'll see.

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It's been a couple of days since my last post, and I actually did fun and exciting things!

On Tuesday, I met up with a couple of other international students downtown. My first purely social outing here in Australia! It was fun. They were all exchange students - just at La Trobe Uni for the semester. I had been talking with one of the girls for a few weeks before arriving, so we made plans to finally meet up. We went to see a movie - which was only $10 (instead of the regular $16) because of a deal the cinema has on "Super Tuesday". Not quite up to par with the Davis movie theater's $5 Tuesday's though!

We watched The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I actually had no idea what we were watching, and basically hoped that we weren't going to see a horror film. The movie was surprisingly enjoyable, although it was really long though - we went to the 6:45 showing and were so hungry at the end of the movie since it was almost 9:00! It was also interesting to look around in the theater - it was somehow all full of old people. I must admit that I seem to find myself in these situations a lot... Maybe that says something about me :)

One of the benefits of going downtown the day before my trip to Melbourne was that I could check out what it was going to be like biking to the Bendigo railway and back home again. And what I discovered was that it was super easy to get downtown since it was all downhill, but it was much too tiring to bike back. I ended up having to get off my bike and walk the last bit home uphill because I was so tired -- I guess it's time to get back into shape!

Yesterday was my adventure into Melbourne to teach tutorials at La Trobe's Bundoora campus. Public transit takes a long time, but it wasn't too bad. It was actually sort of nice taking the train. I got my first good look at a group of wild kangaroos who were running (or hopping?) alongside the train. Before yesterday, I'd seen kangaroos along the road late at night when Pauleen and I were driving back to her place from Melbourne, but that was it. I've been told that there are kangaroos that live on Bendigo uni campus, but I haven't seen them yet. Melbourne is nice, it's definitely got that big city feel to it. It also has sea gulls (I think), which I don't see in Bendigo. I guess that makes sense since it's on the coast. Melbourne also seems to have way more FOOD! I had to stop and grab some dinner during my trek home and luckily there were about a million and one different food options at the Melbourne train station. I decided to treat myself to Pad Thai, and even though dinner with an iced tea was $15, it was definitely yummy!

I'm really excited to be leading tutes for Pauleen's Human Animal Relationships course. It's a very interesting subject and we'll be going over a lot of controversial topics. We had some pretty good discussions going for the first tute, especially in my second class, but hopefully as the semester goes on more people will feel comfortable talking and sharing their opinions.

This weekend I'm moving out of the dorms into my new house. Yay!!! Of course I like the people who are at Orde House, but the "college" life was never really for me, and now I have the excuse of being "too old" for all of that nonsense. I might also be going back to Pauleen's on Saturday to test out some training protocols with the dogs, and if I do, I will definitely bring my nice camera along and get some photos of the dogs!

Cat tax for a post full of text. This is the kitty that struts around outside of Orde House demanding pets. We're good friends.