Days 55-61

This past week, I've been good and studious, in that I turned down party offers to stay in and study. That doesn't mean that I was holed up all week reading for classes, though.

Wednesday night, a few of us got together and did some yoga together in the house with a video Megan downloaded from online. That was good, a nice study break. We managed to get IHMA (the members assoc of IH) to buy us a yoga instructional dvd to use. It came in, but not until Thursday, so we'll use that next time. After yoga, I stayed in and read for classes while other people went out to a bar.

Thursday night a group of 9 girls (including me!) went to see and aboriginal dance performance at the Opera House. It was really cool, but completely unexpected! They mixed traditional aboriginal dance with modern and hip hop dance. It was also theatrical, though they didn't speak english throughout, so you had to follow the storyline by listening to their tone of voice, watching their expressions and movements, and listening to the music. There were undercurrents of racial prejudice and white dominance in it as well. It was called "Wrong Skin" if you want to look it up on the opera house website. After we got back, we met up with other people in the coffee room at the house and a bunch of the rest of the group went out to a club later.

Friday, I went to my internship again. It wasn't too bad. Friday night, I did some reading, then joined a bunch of people who were partying in the coffee room of the House. It turned into an impromptu dance party for a small group of us, which was a ton of fun!

Saturday, a group of us took the ferry ride to Manly Beach after lunch. I was so happy for it to be decently warm again and to smell the salty air and stick my feet in the ocean. It was great. Then the group split up, some people went to OceanWorld, which was apparently pretty small and ghetto. Dora went shopping and Megan and I got gelato, walked around the town and hung out some more by the beach. We made it back to the House just in time for dinner. After dinner, Megan, Claire and I took the train to one of Megan's architecture friend's apartment. He invited us over to watch a rugby game on tv. It was New Zealand vs. Australia. It was a good game, but I didn't end up paying attention much. Most of the time, a bunch of us just talked (the friend had 4 other friends there as well), mostly about the differences in american and australian cultures. After the game (new zealand won 23-22. apparently that was expected), we walked down to this lookout down the road from his apartment. We could all of downtown from the other side of the harbour than we're used to.

Today, is study day. We also have to practice our dance for iNight this saturday. I'll tell you more about that next week. After practicing, it'll be dinner time, then church time, then more reading.

The group (minus Claire) at Manly Beach