The Curse of Culinary Nerdery

Candy bar update:
Twirl- the wrapper said "chocolate twirls covered in [milk chocolate]" and by golly, that's what this was! It's chocolate that's been poured to make twirls... I suspect it blooms a bit, because the twirls were crumbly, and then covered in non-blooming, soft chocolate. I enjoyed it. I think crumbly chocolate is popular here... which I don't understand, but it still tastes pretty good.
My next major goal is to try a Violet Crumble ("It's the way it shatters that matters!"), but I keep finding other candy bars on sale.

We're into the second week of classes, now, and I'm still excited about them... although Rainforest Ecology is not all that exciting, since the interesting stuff is more the field trips (I hope, anyway).

It rained almost no-stop this weekend, so I didn't do much... My housemate/landlord and I decided to stop being the last two people on earth to have seen Avatar on Sunday... I feel silly writing about an American movie on a blog about studying abroad, so I'll just say that as a sci-fi version of a kung-fu movie, it was pretty good. Not award-winningly so, in my book, but as good a thing as any to do on a rainy Sunday.

Enquires to housemate/landlord (I'm just going to call him my housemate, since landlord sounds a lot more formal) have revealed that Cole's grocery stores change their prices based on the economic layout of the neighborhood, and since we live in a very nice neighborhood, he always goes to a different suburb to shop. So, come Monday (my official shopping day until I find something exciting to do on my long weekends), I took the bus down there, picked up a prepaid phone in the mall, and got some groceries.

And they are cheaper there. Is this how it is in US cities, too? I've only ever lived in small towns...

It was not very condusive to my exploring a new country to put me cooking for myself for the first time while in said country. The culinary enthusiast (I think they call themselves "foodies" out on the web) in me is very excited to just be cooking to the exclusion of all else, which is just fine with the rest of me, which is shy and doesn't like meeting new people. So any ambitions I have to be social are pretty much foiled by the combination of not being in a dorm, not being social, and cooking.
...This would be ok with me if it exploring the town alone wasn't so much more awkward than doing so with friends.

(...I realize that a lot of people who don't see me every day follow this blog, so some of you might not know that I whine a lot purely for sympathy and don't actually expect you to worry too much when I write paragraphs like the one above.)

So, here are a few more pictures:
The performer at the opening ceremony- blurry.

A lizard

A cockatoo. There's a flock in the park across the street from my house- I've decided they're kind of like blue jays- pretty, but loud and dirty.

I'm pretty sure this is one of those hanging nests that weaving birds make... I was always fascinated with them as a kid and I was Very Excited to see this:

One of the 300 fliers the anime club put up overnight. (I know it was 300 because I asked.)

And the anime club itself. I was *very* happy to see them, as you will recall, and may have come off as just a bit of a creeper, but they let me take a picture, anyway.


I don't have the cord to get pictures off my camera with me at the moment, but I have some photos of a very cute Australian possum and some of the highly nobby houses in my neighborhood.

Sorry that my pictures always get a little cut-off. I can't find a layout I like that doesn't do that.