So I met my new mum, Fran, and the two other inhabitants of the house: a little poodle named Maddie and a cat name Meisha, both of which are extremely friendly. I spent most of the night talking with Fran and getting to know what life is like down under. I told her about Chapman, my majors, Semester at Sea, yadda yadda yadda, you know the rest. Of course the topic of food came up since I’m going to be eating most of my meals here for the next couple months. I told her I that I’m not picky at all and I’ll eat anything that’s put in front of me and ask for seconds. She said that was fine and that she is doing the Weight Watchers diet, so I suppose I’m inadvertently now doing it too.

I forget how it first came up, but I found out that she is a part of a medieval club. A very, very, very, very, very, very intense medieval club. I’m talking about she sews her own medieval clothes and goes camping in a huge, round tent that can fit her whole bed (the one she actually sleeps in at home), her dressers, and still has room to spare. They have weapons training, which I don’t think she does, and there’s some sort of system where you can get knighted and stuff like that. She said that a family friend was getting knighted soon. It sounds a little weird… but I kind of want to see it. Don’t judge.

On my first full day in Canberra she took me out grocery shopping and to see the city. It’s weird how here they have grocery stores in the mall. I was talking to Sasha about that too, back in Cairns (when he was trying to find a liquor store) and he said that it was common to have grocery stores at the mall in Germany too. I guess not having them is just an American thing.
We went to a lot of the government sites and went to the top of a mountain that has a great view of the Australian Parliament building. For some reason they have an American war memorial here… I have no idea why. After a mini-tour of the city we went back home to have dinner right before going out bowling with the family.

We left for the bowling alley to meet two of Fran’s kids, Adam and Stacey. They are the two oldest and I think they’re in their mid-20s. While I was there I met my new favorite person down here, Stacey’s fiancée, Mike. Here’s the first time I saw him at the parking lot in a mini script form (because that’s how I seem to write everything these days…)

Thomas (20), young, vibrant, and extremely good looking, and Fran get out of the car and walk toward Stacey and Mike, also getting out of their car. Stacey extends her hand.

Stacey
(to Thomas)
I’m Stacey, how ya goin’?

Thomas shakes her hand with a firm, manly handshake.

Thomas
Thomas. Nice to meet you.

Stacey
How do you feel about tattoos?

Thomas
(caught offguard)
Uh… I don’t know if I would ever get one, but I don’t mind them on other people. Why?

Mike turns his back to Thomas and Stacey lifts his shirt up, revealing a partially completed Batman tattoo that covers half of his back.

Ok, so I might have gotten a little carried away with that and the formatting got messed up when I copied it over, but it was a classic moment at the time. I don’t think Mike had said anything, he just showed me this new lifelong sign of devotion to Batman he had gotten that day. I might have to say that that is the single biggest act of Batman dedication I’ve seen my whole life (AJ… I think you need to step up your game).

There are two things you should know about that story.
1) How ya goin’? Is the Aussie way of saying “Nice to meet you”, or “How are you doing?” It’s really strange and I’m not quite used to it yet.
2) A few weeks ago I heard a story about this last voyage of Semester at Sea where a student got a little intoxicated and while under the influence got a tattoo of a titger on his butt. Never in my life have I been tempted to get a tattoo until after I heard this story.

Well, I wasn’t very good at bowling. I actually got progressively worse, but I didn’t care too much. The night was fun and I got back home in time to rest for my first day of work.
Till next time!