These are better days, baby.

I have the best flatmates in the whole wide world. Really. My experience in Australia has been so, so wonderful because of them.

Hi everyone (: Jess and I survived the week-long ecology project (we boosted our energy with several delicious dinners cooked by her flatmate Darren - tacos, curry, Asian cuisine one night, mmmmm) with only a few (read: TONS OF) scratches and mosquito bites, and at least fifteen hours staring into microscopes...overall I really enjoyed it though. The biology geek in me was in transecting, dissecting nirvana. The follow-up lab reports I have to write will be pretty difficult, but I have awhile before they're due...so if I get motivated to work on those soon, I should be alright.

Jess and I went to see a play in Northbridge one night - a one-man show called The History of Drinking. SUCH a cool concept. The audience is at most 22 people, and with your ticket you are given a drink menu, with about 25-30 drinks on it. Most of the drinks are alcoholic, but there's also soda, water, coffee, tea, etc. The actor, who's about 25, he also wrote the play, he acts as a quizmaster before every scene. If you get a question right (the questions are super easy, it's mostly a race to raise your hand first) you get a drink off of the menu. The catch is that each drink can only be ordered once, so you want to get a question right pretty early on to get what you want. After you get the question right, the actor will turn into a very sarcastic, very bitter waiter, and he'll come to your cafe table, ask you what you want and make it for you onstage. Then he'll give you your drink and do a scene that has something to do with the drink, or maybe just the name of the drink, whatever. Some of the scenes were hilarious, others were really tragic. It was a great night. Our friend Dave was stage managing, so we hitched a ride home with him - awesome.

Saturday a few of us went to Cottesloe Beach to celebrate our friend Blaine's 21st birthday - WHAT a nice day. The weather has finally decided to cooperate - no more rain, it's about 75 degrees every day now. Perfect. The beach was really, really pretty. It's pretty small but it wasn't too crowded, and even though we didn't swim much (or at all - too cold), we had a lovely time. Threw the frisbee, laid in the sun, read for awhile...very relaxing. And no sunburn in sight. The people-watching down here is a lot of fun - there was a dad and two boys (one belonged to him, the other was probably a friend or cousin) playing cricket - easily the most boring game ever invented, but they were having fun...there were two wedding parties taking pictures, there was another dad telling his teenage daughter to be home before dark...and probably some locals looking at us looking at them and saying "look at them. They're American."

So I've also had an amazing birthday down here. I feel like my birthday lasted about three days - Lauren made me dinner Sunday night - chicken carbonara with asparagus, as well as birthday cake and a really nicely decorated living room. Jennifer made chocolate macadamia fudge, muy delicioso. We had a little family dinner and watched Australian Idol and Knocked Up afterwards. Also, Lauren got me a bottle of champagne AND she made me the coolest scrapbook (she's the best scrapbook maker I've ever met) full of pictures of BC and a few of our time down under so far. I looooooove it and can't wait to show everyone at home. I am so lucky to have the flatmates that I have.

Yesterday was my for-real birthday, and I didn't have any classes, so I spent a lot of the day lying in the sun outside Jess and Keith's flat, had some champagne, threw the frisbee around for awhile, played some volleyball...a very sunny, very relaxing day. Darren made burgers, and he put fried eggs and Japanese mayo on them. Sounds weird, but it may have been the best burger I've ever eaten. Even better than (BC people don't get mad) the burgers in Hillside, I KNOW it doesn't sound possible, but I think it may be. THEN we had a little shindig at our flat, which I was pretty nervous about, but it turned out to be wonderful. I think everyone had a good time, I definitely did, and we totally didn't get fined for noise violations. We did get asked to be quiet by who we think was an RA, but she never came back after that. What a night. Had some serious clean-up to do this morning when I got up, but it was totally worth it.

I guess that's all I've got for now (: I got to Skype with many members of my family this morning, which made me cry, in a good way...and talked to Crystal for awhile after that, got all caught up on the happenings at UConn...life is good. I wrote a whole dang essay today too. I think we're going back to Cottesloe tomorrow - weather forecast says sunny with a chance of beautiful.

Until next time!