you can still get "the mondays" in australia

Today was the "longest" day I have had in Australia so far. I know there are more to come as well.. it's just the beginning! It is a tough transition to have basically a 4.5 day weekend and go into a day with 8 hours of class. Not that I can really complain, but boy was I tired today!!

There was a Chinese New Year celebration at the CYC during lunch today, and the line to eat was incredibly long (and hot, since half the time we had to stand in the sun in our uniforms.) There was a group of Chinese students banging on their drums and parading around in dragon costumes which was entertaining for a little while, but it's hard to have a conversation when drums are banging in your ears and hard to get your food when dragons are running through the food line! Many times the meals are something Asian, and I don't eat too much so I get hungry a few hours later. Luckily, yesterday I picked up some snacks including biscuits and nutella and a couple packs of "easy mac." Here in Australia they sell not only cheese easy mac, but also nacho cheese flavor and chicken flavor. Strange.

Today I was assigned a group presentation for tomorrow. We have to meet tonight to put together a 10 or so minute presentation about the Hilton hotels. It is not graded, but I just don't feel like doing a presentation so quickly! We shall see how it turns out.

I bought a new bathing suit (swimmers) this weekend. Of course the whole weekend it rained, but today while sitting in class I looked out the window to see a perfectly sunny beach. It is hard to concentrate on schoolwork when the surroundings here are beautiful. I don't think I would get much done if Albion was on a beach in great weather...

One last thing - the time difference is really tough sometimes. Getting done with my day, I came back and thought about skyping my mom to tell her some things about my different classes. That's when I realized it's 2 am back in Naperville. However, I'm already at week 2 of my 13 week term, so I really can't complain - it's all going by so quickly!!

Stay tuned to see how my first presentation goes!