I bid a fond adieu to Leila and Hedi who are leaving us for a year to head off on their seperate adventures. Leila to travel the world and Heidi to China to study at a chinese university. I'll miss you!

Well, now I've had a O'Week (or O'3 Days as one of my newly joined clubs names it). Which was suprisingly quite a lot of fun - even despite the fact that I didn't participate on any of the crazy pub crawls going on. I meant lots of v. cool and random arts students (and some engineering people too - through renee and caitlyn - esp. these two canadian guys, one of who looks like Viggo!). I have waited my whole life to become an arts student at melbourne uni it appears - I'm loving it!! I have joined 5 clubs: the dance club (studiously ignoring the fact that I can't actually dance), the anti war club (breath - it's not a crazy socialist club - well I don't think so anyway...), the french club, Weekly Watchers of Wobderful Anime and CHAS (Cosmic Hitchikers Appreciation Society) - oh and M-ASS (the Melb Arts Students Society). I'm quite excited actually as tomorrow (tuesday) i have my first club event, the CHAS lift party! It's either a party in a lift or a part to cheer-up the lifts, either would be fun.

Today was my first day of actual arts classes. I went in extra early to buy some books - which was just as well as it took me an hour to locate and then stand in line to buy three subject guides. I ate lunch with the eltham crew (renee, caitlyn, brendan, simon and martin) and pushing myself through the massive crowds at union house to buy a piece of pizza - which was v. nice (do eat the pumpkin pizza from Pesto's). The off to my first class of the day (at 2:15 - i love the arts student life) .... MODERN LITERATURE! YAY Our first lecturer was v. good and interesting, our second one less so - but the books we get to study make up for it all - kafka, woolf, orwell...the Wasteland, A Dolls House etc. All in all a total of 11 books for me to study and read (and buy) just for the first semester for lit! crazy. Had a break (lying on the grass on the south lawn) then my first french lecture with Caitlyn - half in english and french but from now on all classes will be completely in french which should be fun (no really - it will :) After the lecture i had a french discussion class (like a tutorial) which I was pretty nervous about but which was actually fine and even fun. By the way - can anyone out there think of a french adjective the begins with k? We did this thing where we said "Je m' appelle kate et je suis k..." (My name is kate and i am k...insert adjective here). But when it got to me I could not think of a k adjective and neither could anyone else in the room when i gave up (even my tuter failed).

I didn't get home until 7:30pm - so i'm really tired. 2 hours of public transport a day kills me.
So good night everyone, kate

Today
I felt like doing
something different; a blog
condensed into haiku:

Return to the City
This time no man
in a top hat, instead some
dodgy pad thai

You are all nutty
and completely mad and
I will not move!

Pay for three tops but
only receive two - is that
a very fair deal?

Water reflects the
sparkling city lights as
we climb on ropes

The next day a
long sleep (almost forever),
cocopops then goodbyes

A Party
Mocktails with pomegranate,
cheerleaders, but no gelati
and comfy, slumpy chairs

Didn't we all enjoy the fabulous Excellence Assembly! An hour or so about how wonderful we all are - unfortunately drowned out by the cheers of the junior school swimming carnival.

However, before that me, heidi, vicki, leila and caitlyn had a fun filled night (and day) at Leila's wonderful inner city apartment at 99 Spring Street (or rather her grandma's - still not sure if we should have been there...) Me, heidi and caitlyn caught the train in on tuesday afternoon to Parliament station. There we stood on the corner of Collins Street and Spring Street and saw a sign saying "2 Collins Street". We all agreed that we would have to walk for ages to find Leila's apartment when suddenly... POP! A short man with a moustache, a walking can, a top hat and a bow-tie appeared out of nowhere and asked us mysteriously "Are you looking for 99 Spring Street?", "Why, yes...actually" we replied feeling rather suprised. '" It's that red building there" he said, pointing, "And there is another entrance off Little Collins Street"... then POP! he went and suddenly disappeared again. It was so random, it was like something out of a musical or film when the hero/heroine is in trouble and mysterious help arrives. We decided later that we should all have a directions-giving guardian angel who pops out when you're lost then diappears again.

After a minor complication of not knowing which of the 26 or so floors the apartment was on we finally arrived...and stood amazed. The apartment wasso big with great furniture and jaw dropping views of parliament house, the old treasury building and gardens, the Princess Theatre and the MCG. WOW! I think we kept saying wow and being generally really impressed and envious for at least an hour. Later that afternoon (when Leila and Vicki returned from their hard days work) we went to Flinders Street to buy some provisions - it was so crazy doing grocery shopping in the city then carrying bags and bottles of juice back on the tram. For dinner we (well, mainly caitlyn) cooked v. yummmy spaghetti bolognaise - and Vicki took our orders in true waitress fashion (at one point demanding "Kate! what do you want?"). Brendan arrived rather lonesome as lots of people hadn't turned up and soon we were dressed and ready to go out. We went to a bar that Caitlyn knows called Cookie (on Swanston Street - see left) - it was v. cool, with random murals (and Alice in Wonderland) as well as quite good music. We all shared a massive Strawberry Daiquiri - to the amusmant of many onlookers as all 5 of us (except brendan) drank it at the same time (through straws).

Back to the apartment (contemplated a late night swim - yes the apartment building has a pool too!) and had a little more Bacardi before sleeping with the view of the city. (Left is me dressed up to go out to Cookie). The next morning Heidi, me and Caitlyn went all the way to the Vic Market only to discover that it was closed! noooo... we bought some random asian foods then did some shopping at melbourne central. We caught a train back home with Vicki later that afternoon. Unfortunately Vicki had Leila's yearly ticket and had to sprint barefoot through Parliament Station in an attempt to make it for the next hurstbridge train. But just as she ran down the escalator the train left... So we had 20 minutes of waiting before we finally got on a train and got home.

Wow! I haven't blogged for some time. I knew that my initial vow to blog everyday was too hopeful. What a lot has happened since my last blog! - quite a few minor things (eating, sleeping, reading childrens books - hehe), but also some major things such as our unofficial schoolies 2 to Phillip Island.

I spent a week in Heidi's 5 star luxurious beachouse - but many other people came and went and stayed: Heidi, Loren, Sam, Sarah, Daniel, Simon, Brendan, Cathy, Jason, Renee, Caitlyn, Vicki, Jack... We spent our time there in a similar way to Kennett River - except for one catastophe, the dvd didn't work on the first day! Shock, horror... Some may have seen this as a chance to reconnect with our earthy, non-technological roots and get back to nature - but not us! We tried every way to get it to work but in the end had to plead Cathy and Jason to bring up another dvd player in the car. As a result of this dvd defficiency we all spent our time for most of the week in different pursuits; such as swimming, reading (for me Schindlers List and Alias Grace - Daniel's book), playing poker and nintendo 64 and .... cooking!

This was definitely a dessert filled week with meringues, cakes, muffins, cookies, jelly, trifle, chocolate pudding and banana cake all on offer. I hope Heidi won't mind me sharing her wonderful chocolate pudding recipe with you:

Chocolate Pudding
2 ozs butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup S.R flour
2 level dessertspoons cocoa
1/2 cup milk
vanilla
Cream butter and sugar, add unbeaten egg and vanilla- mix well, then fold in sifted flour and cocoa alternatively with the milk. Put mixture into greased dish and sprinkle over it a topping made by mixing 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 level dessertspoons cocoa. Finally pour 1 and 1/2 cups hot water gently over it and bake in a moderate oven (6 and 1/2 minutes in a microwave).

We had a cocktail night where Sarah invented a Ventnor Sunrise which lived up to it's name ;) and drank quite a lot of strawberry champagne. The days were filled with shopping at Cows (and spending $2 on dodgy lucky dips) and at the beach - either the local 'wild' beach or the overpopulated Smith's Beach. We went for long walks along the beach and some brave souls rediscovered bike riding (and bike helmets!) The last day those who remained cleaned up and tried to fulfill Vicki's 'challenges' which involved Heidi eating 5 eggs, me eating massive amounts of yoghurt and tinned fruit and Vicki almost collapsing from overdrinking fruit juices.

Since we returned I have been lazing around - and learning to drive (a rather frightning experiance in research with all it's massive hills and gravel roads - i just looove handbrake starts!) I don't think I'm ready to be let loose yet on the unsuspecting driving population.

Last night was Louis's party - which was fun until I became really tired at about 11 o'clock. My favourite part was dancing in the deserted garage with heidi, caitlyn, lachlan and various other randoms. Oh! we also had the rather dodgy year 12 reunion - 3 months later! It was a sausage sizzle and year 12 video watching night where everyone ignored each other (except for friends).

I hope you enjoy the photos of our fun week together - before everyone goes in different directions - to uni and travelling.




Vicki asleep on the hotplates...





Cathy and Vicki at the beach.









ME!







Hello little liver, only 72 hours to go... the Broadway Musical!







Heidi, Vicki and me on the way home.









Caitlyn - eat that orange!









Renee (or Toad) in her beautiful new hat









Leila making the arduous journey up from the beach to Heidi's beach house.









Sarah mixing a Ventnor Sunset.










Hello Heidi!






Renee








Playing pictionary






Vicki and me (in a towel sandwich)







Daniel...









An action shot







Ventnor!! We finally made it.