A little update

This week was pretty relaxing so I can't regale you with many fascinating stories or photos. Classes are mostly quite interesting and - even though it's winter- my ten-minute bike ride to campus already has got me arriving to class glistening with sweat. It's about time for all the Swatties in the US to be returning to campus, which has got me a little nostalgic, but luckily I'm enjoying myself too much here for that to be a problem. Among the week's highlights I might mention going out to Uni Club (the club on campus) with friends on Thursday and going to Cactus Jack's for chocolate nachos on Saturday. Cactus Jack's is a fairly nice restaurant/bar in town that serves TexMex food but also has a signature dessert dish that was just irresistible. For chocolate nachos, Instead of tortilla chips, the chips were chocolaty and coated in chocolate sauce with a mound of ice cream and whipped cream on top. It was delectable... The following day, I went to the pool and swam 2500 meters before water polo practice.

I've been attending water polo three times a week, and am really enjoying getting exercise, refreshing my degraded water polo skills, and befriending the other players. Practices are co-ed and the team consists of mostly Australians with a few Americans thrown in and it's really a fun group of people.

I can also report that my cooking skills are slowly but surely improving, as this is the first time in my life that I've had to shop and cook to provide my own regular meals. My successes so far include burritos and pasta (duh), as well as soup, tofu, asparagus, baked potato, and most recently couscous. It's not quite the makings of a gourmet menu, but I feel like I've already come a long way already and am continuing to try different dishes.

So there you have a little update on daily life. What I'm really looking forward to at the moment is my dad's visit - this upcoming weekend we will be traveling to Papua New Guinea! Let's hope we don't contract malaria or typhoid or dengue fever or Japanese encephalitis or... Okay, don't worry. We have vaccines and pills and DEET. Nonetheless, expect next week's post to be full of wondrous tales!