Week One

Sorry Pteph, I shall try to update my blog more often according to your request, but maybe you should get skype like the rest of the family and people who care enough to spend 3 minutes hitting' download' and picking a user name....


Anyway, my first week - pretty good.

I had a wonderful date on Tuesday afternoon (his Monday night) with Brent. We both downloaded the new Underworld movie so we sat and watched it together while on Skype and drinking. Which, by the way, I think that the dude at the liquor store thinks I'm a drunk because I bought two bottles of wine Monday and then on Tuesday I bought a bottle of shiraz, three biggies of delicious czech beer and a caramelized onion and goat cheese quiche.... oh well, it all made me super happy.

I took a trek up to Cronulla Thursday night to hang out with Bry and friends. Took me a while to get up there due to rail track work, which in turn, made me have to ride a bus for an hour (vomit). It was great to catch up with old friends and to be around Cronulla again - it's such a beautiful beach town. Just sat outside, drank lots of beer, ate some pizza; it was great to have friends to talk to again.

As for Uni, my 'purpose' of being here - things are going well. Slow, but well. I met with my advisor and she is super nice and driven. Sounds like I am going to be crazy busy this next year with classes and research and everything. Which, I guess is good so maybe I won't miss home and everyone there as much. We talked about the project and discussed how upset she was that not enough kids smoke pot anymore, not even drink. She was complaining that most of the kids in the study are too straight edge and there is a group they are following, hoping they start to become regular users. I was quite taken back by this, but found it absolutely fantastic. I mean, how often do you get to talk to to professionals who are actually LIVID about the fact that kids aren't using substances... I love it.
Also, in the discussion of things, I slid in the fact that I was looking for a job and she offered me one! It will be basically working on the project more in the admin and general sense, on top of my research goals. This should be nice because then I will continue to be focused on the project work, and not completely involved in something else. But, it also means that I will have 'community program specialist' duties again I think, which DAMNIT! I thought I escaped all that in MN... oh well, CPS for life - word.

The clouds have finally lifted so I've seen some fantastic Oz sun, which is WONDERFUL. In fact, I was walking around trying to get enrolled and oriented at the Uni yesterday and acquired a nice little red outline of my tank top. I think I might try to go to the beach today if it clears up. It was suppose to be all sunny and warm, but now I just woke up to hardcore rain, boo to that.

Other than this all, there aren't too many updates yet. Just kind of been hanging around, exploring, and trying to get my barrings. I had a spout of missing home yesterday/ not sure if it was worth everything to come. I think that has passed, but its hard when I don't get to talk to everyone as much as I like. My dad did send me a picture of carnations with a post-it saying "Meg, Happy V Day Love Dad" sitting on the kitchen table back home, yesterday (the 20th)- which he then proceeded to mention in the email that email must be slow down here. I laughed :) Oh, MarieHot made me a wonderful silent movie with post-its and he trying not to get caught by her coworkers... it was the first thing I saw this morning when I woke up and it definitely brightened my day!! Yay.

For now, its probably back to watching Arrested Development on my computer and waiting for the sun to come out and play!