Culture & Aussie BBQ

Thursday, November 6th,

I started my morning at 8:40am with a run, since exercise has been at the bare minimum lately. I ran a bit past the reservoir train station and back. By the time I got back, Steph and Bernice were up and showered. We did a quick wash, ate breakfast, and made some phone calls. Steph is still disputing a wrong charge on her Capital One card since August. I had the chance to catch up with Alan and Louis, which was nice. By 12:30ish, we were ready to leave Natasha's place. We walked to the reservoir train station, it took us an easy 20mins. I'm a pro at getting to the train station now.

The breakfast cereal didn't hold us up so well, so we stopped by the Hamburger bar by Federation Square for a quick bite. The three of us (Natasha had work) shared a steak sandwich with chips (fries). With full bellies, we went to check out the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) Australia and International galleries. Unlike New York galleries, it doesn't request a donation. It was in Federation Square. We saw many interesting pieces, some I liked from the international gallery were: Edward Burne-Jones - The Garden of Pan; a vase of the women from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women; and John Young's ad 706 summer/autumn. There were others I liked from the NGV Australia, but I didn't jot down the names. I do have the pictures though.

We spent a good 3 hours in the gallery, and by the time we were done it was 4:15ish. It was too late to go to the Immigration Museum that closed at 5pm and not enough time to check out the aquarium. We decided to go to Gloria Jeans coffee instead to read Obama news for an hour. At 5:15pm it was time to head back to Natasha's place for our aussie bbq at 7pm.

We had some time before dinner, so we snacked on some bbq shapes and rice crackers while watching Kath and Kim (our new favorite show).

Natasha's parents, brother and his girlfriend, and snez and her husband and kid came to the bbq. There was tons of food. We had steak, lamb chops, sausage, kangaroo sausage, spinach and cheese pastry, rice balls, fries, fried rice, and salads. Needless to say, lots of delicious food. The whole dinner we spoke about different tv shows, which I realized I have a lot to catch up on. I apparently don't watch any tv. So out of touch. It's also funny how people know Americans from watching tv. We had a great time.

After hours of fun the families left, and we continued (more like the rest of the girls minus me) talking about shows. I was a bit lost. We eventually started watching Newport Harbor, which is like Laguna Beach but in a different beach. We almost watched the whole season...Steph did though...before bed time.