Aussie Expats Update – Be Alert for Aliens

Happy Friday everyone!

So, yet again, I’ve left the house every day this week: tonight we’re going out with James’ class to the Fort Sill Oktoberfest. In light of this recent troubling turn of events, I really think we need to implement an emergency protocol. If I get up a running tally of continually leaving the house every day, someone please step up to the plate, shoulder the mantle of responsibility and call the FBI: aliens have definitely taken over my body. James has a secret way of making toast (I can’t tell you what it is, in case the aliens are reading this), but I have no such defence mechanisms, bar this one: I’m a damn hermit. So take note of the above and be prepared to call the FBI if things start getting suspicious.

And weird things are happening everywhere: we found some Bundaberg Ginger Beer at Bed, Bath and Beyond on the weekend.  That is not normal. In fact, it’s downright weird. See? Crazy stuff is happening everywhere and there is a slight and rapidly increasing chance that aliens are moving in on us.

Stay alert people.

We had an international spouses dinner on Monday night with the new CG’s wife, which necessitated the cooking of national dishes… Um, Australia? (What do we have?) Ok, ok, ok: I’ll make another pavlova, if you insist! I would like to tentatively declare that I have definitely moved beyond the cooking catastrophe Ana of old (and cross my fingers really hard that I’m not lying to you all) and my pavlovas are on the up and up. It was a lot of fun and there was some seriously great food (and we all know I love to eat), plus the company was excellent! For a woman who doesn’t like socialising, it was great stuff.

Then I bailed early because I had my Psychology 102 exam on Tuesday: I passed (I assume), but oh man… The day was a debacle. I mean, for a start, the damn thing wasn’t scheduled to start until 1345, which meant I had a whole morning to kill: I’m not sure that’s a good thing before an exam. I’d rather just get in and crack it out and then chill, enjoying the just reward of my free time. But moving past that particular sticking point, and the fact that I have to have a supervised exam, which necessitates driving from Lawton to Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC for the initiated, which now all of you are: you’re welcome), and the fact that every exam I have to take over here costs me an additional $200… I was pretty positive about it all. Multiple choice exams? Get in my grill, no problemo neighbourino.

Except I got there and realised I didn’t actually know where to go. I had a building number, but nothing more than that, so I figured I’d just jump online and check the details: which is when I discovered that the alarm I had on my phone last week? The one I immediately dismissed because duh, I know I have an exam in a week’s time, why is this calendar alert even on here? Yeah, it was there to tell me that, according to UNE policy, I had to contact the overseas exam centre at least one week prior to my exam to arrange all the details. My stomach was 110% empty (seriously, I was starving), but if it hadn’t been, I think I would probably have vomited. I was so worried that I was going to walk in there and they would tell me that I couldn’t do the exam (which is a weird thing to be worried about, but I was). Luckily, that fear was unfounded. I hadn’t eaten lunch though, so I was planning to go and get a burrito before starting, only for them to be like ‘oh, we’re ready for you to take it now!”

So I’m about 5 minutes in the exam… And the lights go off. There was one still on at the back of the room, so I could somewhat see my paper and circle some answers. That was fine. What wasn’t fine was the incredibly high-pitched trill that went off every minute or so, for about a 30 minute period until they fixed the lights. Hmmm what’s the mean of – brrrrrrrrrp! Or what about the – brrrrrrrrrp! Huh, never mind. Not surprisingly, I had a splitting headache by the time the lights came back on, but: I managed to finish the exam without my head exploding, came in under the allotted time and got a really huge burrito on the way home. #adult.

I’ve been so wifey this week. For a woman who isn’t a wife, I did maximum wifing. Good example: James went out gallivanting to play sport on Wednesday afternoon (no swimming this week: good for my hair and my skin, bad for my weekly opportunity to beat James at something) with his students and decided to have a few casual beers… Except we don’t really drink. So we didn’t have any. And he was running really short on time, so I dropped him off and toddled down to the service station (I miss saying ‘servo’ and having people understand what I mean!) for beer and some ice. I even cleaned the esky before laying them out all nicely and dropping it off. See? So much wifeliness.

And then, it turned out that Fort Sill had some random sale-type thing on Thursday morning where we’d heard that we might be able to pick up some gear for the gym (I really want some kettle bells) and maybe a bookcase (because at the moment our books are piling up on the floor around the house… It’s starting to get a little out of control). So I wifed on over there to check it out. Even with getting there 15 minutes before they opened the gates, it was still too late to get anything we might actually have wanted. Sigh. The only possible solution was a Starbucks toffee-doodle frappuccino; sadly, while delicious, Thursday was also cold. So I guzzled it down and then sat in the shade freezing my extremities off. Oops. I then wasted the rest of the day and did no study for next week’s politics exam – but I did do some typing up of my novel. I’m at 28 000 words right now, which would probably be a lot more impressive if it wasn’t even a third of the total word count. Hurray!

James has decided to try out for footy this weekend, which means we need to go and buy some footy boots. Me, I’m just really pumped about eating schnitzel tonight: wish me an iron-clad stomach (ooooh, maybe I’ll have a pretzel!). Have a great weekend everyone!

— Ana.

[Sorry to anyone who is offended by the use of that hashtag bidness. It’s really meant more ironically than anything else. Promise.]