Writer's Block

I feel like I should write something interesting cause my postings have been rather lackluster lately. Although maybe it isn't so much the postings, as the material I have to work with. But just like what your favourite tv shows do when there isn't much to work with, show clips from past episodes, I went rummaging through my gmail and found a group email I sent from about a year ago while I was living it up in Australia. I can't believe it was a year ago, this has been the fastest year of my life....

Hello!

Well we did it. We are officially finished school and now hold Masters degrees. It was a rough three months of going to school one or two days a week and occasionally having to take a night off from our hectic schedule of relaxing over boxed wine and watching old movies or visiting Coogee Bay Hotel, but now that we are done we can take a deep breath and begin to relax a little over here ; )

To celebrate, Kiki, Elissa, Ali and I came to Melbourne for three days. Little did we know when we booked our tickets three weeks ago, November 1st is the Melbourne Cup, a big horse racing event, that is actually considered a public holiday here (all for a 3 minute race!). Naturally, everyone from Sydney who heard we were coming were jealous that we were going to experience Melbourne Cup, as it is such a big deal, and they commended us on our planning of coming at such a prime time. In response to this we jus nod and smile and pretend like we knew all along that the Melbourne Cup was happening, and of course, this is why we planned our trip at the time we did. So this morning we left Sydney on the 6:00am flight to Melbourne, arrived at our hostel around 9:00 and were off to the races by 9:10. Not only is the Melbourne Cup a big holiday around here, it is also a great excuse for everyone to throw on their best dresses and hats and live it up. So that is exactly what we did. We managed to get tickets for a party that was happening right outside the stadium and included all of our food and beverages, which is important to have at 9:30 in the morning ;) Over a morning of 35 degree weather, mimosas and sitting around waiting for a race we managed to have great time, and the park grounds we were at were really beautiful. The pictures we took our amazing...unfortunately I managed to leave my camera in the taxi on the way back to the hostel and right now the camera and pictures are AWOL... : (..... although i managed to realize it within seconds of the cabby driving away so here's to hoping that the tracking and service people at Silver Top taxis will deliver it safely to me before the night is out... if not, you will have to take my word for how great it is, and believe me, we looked pretty hot in all of our dress up....

Work is still going pretty well, another chef has quit which means that I will be working a lot, in comparison to the fifty hour week i worked this past week. It seems that the days just keep getting longer, and the time change also did not help, as my 6:00 o'clock morning starts became 5:00 this past Sunday, which meant that my alarm was goign off at 3:45 in the morning. Nobody was more shocked by this early mornign start then our downstairs neighbour, Josh, who was still out partying when I left for work at such an early time and was shocked to see that people actually had to work at such an hour. The head chef has also asked about the possiblility of me extending my visa and staying thru the busy season until the end of March, which is when he will also be leaving. I haven't quite made up my mind on that one, although it is tempting to stay through such warm weather, verses coming home to a cold Ontario winter. I also finally gave into the idea of chef pants and now am in full costume at work, next on my list is a pair of chef shoes, as yesterday at work I managed to dump a pail of soapy water into a pail of oil from the deep fryer, which instantly errupted all over the floor and my shoes, which was a little scary and left me with images of my foot melting into my shoe... (lovely, eh?)

At the end of the month, Elissa and I will also be homeless again. We are hoping that we will be able to find a spot close to the beach and within walking distance to work, and be able to live there for a few months. Elissa has applied to the Canadian embassy for a communications job in Spain to start at the end January, which she is excited about as she has previously lived in Spain and would like to go back, not to mention how that would look on her resume, plus she is keen to do as much globe trotting as possible before heading home.

Hmmm...not much more is happening around, as I mentioned earlier, the time change happened this past weekend which makes us 16 hours ahead of you guys, not 12 (sorry for the early wake up the other day mom!)... so for those I have been chatting with the odd time over msn, it is now that much harder to catch each other with the time difference, although I will try and make a better effort at going now at convenient times, as now that I have been away for almost 4 months it is really nice to be able to chat with everyone and catch up with what is going on at home... so please also send emails keeping me up to date on what is going on!

As for now, we are off for dinner and a night out on the town in Melbourne!

Miss You all,

Love,
Diana

Wow...did anyone actually read through all of that, hard to believe I was longer winded then than I am now! Though in my defense I only wrote about once a month or so! I wanna go back to Australia damnit! Man if you had told me last year that I would be in Korea now I never would have believed it. If you had told me I would be teaching children the shock of that probably would have killed me!