Spent most of last weekend hanging out with the Dson group. As college students, we've latched onto the cheapest form of alcohol, box wine. The exchange rate is slightly in our favor but most everything and especially alcohol is pretty expensive compared to the states. So finding $8 four liter boxes of red wine was a definite win for us. Monday, we toured the XXXX brewery, which is Queensland's beer. Apparently there is a strong pride for the particular beer brewed in each state (Victoria from Victoria, Tooheys from New South Wales...) and so most Queenslanders will vouch for XXXX as the best beer around. The tour itself was pretty cool, getting to hear a bit of the history of beer itself as well as the intertwining histories of XXXX beer and Australia/Queensland itself. Personally, I don't think its anything particularly special (ssshhh don't tell anyone!) but I do think its cool that they use only Australian products to brew it. I will say that its definitely better than the Fosters that they export off to us in the states... Best part of the tour was definitely getting to pour our own frothy brew from the tap, Australian style. Unlike England and other such places they don't like the head so they fill glasses in two steps. Fill and flick off the head, then fill to the brim! More beer that way they say and I'm inclined to agree with their logic! My friend Taylor and I took tally and realised that in the 6 days we'd been in Australia, we'd tried 13 different beers (my fave so far has definitely been a James Squire Porter) Don't worry mom, we party hardy but we're keeping it safe down under :)
Speaking of being safe, as part of our study abroad orientation today we had a session on every sort of safety while we're here from going out to swimming to the various creatures we should be careful of. Poisonous snakes galore, stinging jellyfish, sharks, etc. but as usual my big fear is still easily spiders. The lady giving the talk put up a picture of a huntsman spider, which are about the size of your hand, and explained to us that it was harmless. Then she showed us pictures of the little spiders which are absurdly poisonous. Herein lies my problem with spiders: the big ones are scary as heck and the little ones will kill you. Why the heck would you not be freaked out by them!?
Aside from all that, all is going pretty well. It looks like Taylor and I will be moving into another building because our college goofed up and put us on a girls floor. We tried explaining to them that this really wasn't a problem at all buuutt apparently they want to abide by their rules. Silly rules I say... Its been nice though, other students are finally trickling back into the college and by Sunday all 200 or so of them should be back and then things should liven up quite a bit. There's a really cool college culture here that I'm pumped up to join in on. Part of the tradition at Cromwell is that each student goes by a nickname that they're given as a "fresher" and they range from mild to downright ridiculous. For instance, one student (from Canada!) apparently looked seedy in his app photo and so he became Multigrain. Genius right?
I've also been really excited to be able to play piano again and was suckered into agreeing to play at one of our formal dinners. I hadn't played for two months before coming here and I have absolutely no idea what the heck I'm going to play so it ought to be interesting. Hopefully they like the Entertainer or some other fun little pop tune that I can pull out of my ass... Anyhoo its off to bed for me. I've promised myself that I'll actually check out the gym tomorrow before lunch so we'll see how that goes. Going to some play called "I love you bro" with the Dson group in the evening as well and that should certainly be interesting. Cheers!
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