Housewarming dinner

I think our housewarming dinner went pretty well. It was a bit hard with the international people and the Spanish because the Spanish spoke too fast for the internationals so the internationals reverted to their own languages, but when you're eating you're not supposed to talk anyway because then you either talk with your mouth full, which is disgusting or you miss out on the food. The Spanish are alcoholics. There were 14 of us, 2 bottles of champagne, 1 bottle of white and around 6 bottles of red and they were pretty much all finished by the Spanish end of the table before dessert was even served. I wish one less person had come because according to Agatha Christie, if you have a table of 13, the first to get up is the next to die. And I wanted to see if it was true and who it would be.

Reuben was supposed to try my hakarl (the putrefied sharkmeat I brought back from Iceland that I put in the freezer) but in the end, only Timon, Beza and I were brave enough to have some. Go us! We rock. We could only eat a piece each so I put the rest back in the freezer for when Lisa comes to visit. (Timon: Mmmm, I'll have some more thanks. Cath: Please, kill me now. Beza: Quick! I need gasoline!)

After dinner we went out to dance at the bars. We had an extra hour of partying because of the daylight saving change but I went home at the same hour I always do except now it was an hour earlier so I stayed up and watched Invader Zim.

Yesterday, The Fellowship of the Ring was on TV in Spanish. Frodo Baggins became Frodo Bolson, the orcs became orcos or orcas and Gimli the dwarf became Gimli el enano. I usually hate dubbed versions because the voices are so incredibly irritating (the females are always high-pitched and whiny and the men sound constipated) but this was pretty good. Still don't like Frodo. He's so useless in the film.

Clockwise at table from front left: Johanna, Ana, Timon, Beza's back, Reuben's nose, Fernando, Javier, Em, Mel, Alexis, Stefano, Gian and Tania.

Stupid Australian laws

I emailed the Australian Office for importing pets and the stupid person said that due to environmental reasons, turtles aren't allowed to be imported except by zoos. But he's so tiny. And so cute. With such a long tail. I'm absolutely devastated. Look at how tiny and adorable he is. I'm going to visit my great-uncle in Germany for Christmas, probably, so I thought maybe I can give him to his granddaughter. I'm so upset. I came up with all these mad ideas about how to smuggle him into Australia in a plastic container in my pocket but I don't want to be imprisoned or fined $50 000. But he's so lovely and... turtley.

It's my grandfather's funeral this weekend. All the international people went out for another dinner last night but I didn't feel like mingling so I came home after going to a free Beethoven concert and watched series 2 of Kath & Kim in one go. I bought Ghengis a rubber turtle model so he doesn't feel like his container's too empty but it's bigger than he is and has no tail. Hope it doesn't freak him out.

I finished and handed in my assignment four days early. Yay for me. I was just really irritable and tired for no reason, but fidgety and nervous at the same time so I decided to channel my energy into something positive. I suspect it's crap but at least it's done and that's one less thing to think about. We're having a dinner tonight at our flat, as a sort of house warming thing. It was supposed to be only around 8 people but ballooned to around 15 and I don't want to have it any more. Javier and some of his friends are coming which will be fun, but we also have other people coming that I don't know so well, so WHY THE HELL ARE THEY INVITED???

The new girl who's moving into the empty room came with her family yesterday to see the flat. Her mum is a fat, pushy, obnoxious, loud, racist, nasty bitch. I hate her daughter already. Mel and I were whispering to each other in English while they were looking around, and her mum was like 'Oh, Americans.' I replied 'Excuse me, not Americans, we're Australians.' And the fat cow said 'Yes, yes, I know, but to us French people, all people who speak English are Americans.' I should have called her a close-minded bitch to her face. And when she met Jian, she rolled her eyes and said 'Oh, a Brazilian boy.' And then later, when they came up again to move in the girl's stuff, I went to hide in my room but Jian kindly offered to help them with the bags and she asked him 'Where's the little chinese girl with the slanted eyes?' When she left, I had a rant to Jian about it. Firstly, I already told her I was Australian, and secondly, I'm Taiwanese not Chinese. Get it right you maggot-brained sow. And lastly, my eyes are not slanted, they're beautiful. I know because Allen tells me and he has very good taste in these things. Get that right too, you rotting carcass. If her daughter is anything like her, I'm going to make her life miserable. I'm very skilled at that- ask Allen.

Procrastination is the thief of time

Have been in an awful mood lately. I think I´m just over-tired and over-stressed, although I did talk to Alexis all the way in Mexico yesterday and she cheered me up some. Didn´t attend either of my classes yesterday because I woke up and realised it was 10 am and I´d already missed half of my first class, so I went back to sleep and woke up and realised I´d missed my second class too. Then I skulked around trying to avoid seeing anyone and spent the whole day indoors watching Kath & Kim, Spaced and The Family Guy.

Someone buzzed our door last night, at around 9 pm, and when I looked through the eye hole, there was some badly dressed old man with scraggly hair standing there. So I opened the door a little and a stench of stale alcohol, dirt and human grease came wafting in. He said he was looking for lodgings and he´d seen our ad for the flat. I told him the rooms were already taken and shut the door on him because he looked angry and ready to get violent. But we never put up what flat number we were, so I have no idea where he got it from, unless it was Druggie #1 who told him. They both shared a quality of... bumness. Maybe they´re friends. Maybe as revenge for rejecting him, Druggie #1 is sending along all his homeless friends to plague us.

Classes

This semester, I have three 'proper' classes. Two of them are infant/primary school teaching subjects and one (which I now regret taking because the classes are at 9 am) is contemporary philosophy. The teaching ones are SO MUCH FUN. The first one is called Plastic Expression, and all you do in the class is make crafts. I wove this scarf, which is around 150 cm long and took me around seven hours. Our next project is something to do with clay and papier mache. And our assessment task is making a puppet. The last subject is called Rhythm and Dance and you do what kids would do in a music lesson, which is beat in time with the music, dance in a circle with the class mates, form a train and chug along to the beat. When I get back, I'm going to teach my nephew all this so he can get an advanced start and be the most intelligent child in playgroup. I refuse to have dumb relatives.

I told Mum I'd put up photos of my new room so she could see what it looked like. I got the nicest room, the only one with wooden floors and the sun streaks through the window late morning to early afternoon so it gets warm in here. If you look carefully, you can make out photos of my little hairy ones. Alfie is there too. I'm back to sleeping in my Winter-snow-camping sleeping bag. It's amazingly liberating not having proper sheets. No washing HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. All I need to do is air it out once a week.

On the weekend, we had a dinner with around 22 people at a place that's privately owned, but they let you hire it out for a night. They let you use the kitchen and dining rooms to cook the food and then eat it there, so it's like a nice dinner meal with friends, withouth hassle of cleaning up. Food was divine. Thanks to Stefano, Em's Italian housemate, we got heavenly gnocci, four huge blocks of gourmet pizza and Javi made the best dessert ever. And it only cost us 6 euros. I swear I ate one of those entire pizzas by the end of the night.

Saturday, I went out with Javi's friends because it was Jorge's birthday. Went to the erasmus party before that but left early because it was so boring. Javi's friends are always very gentlemanly with me so after such a stressful party before (stressed from being bored), I went mad and had a crazy fun time. Was fantastic. Using the Spanish Night-out measurements, getting home after 5 is a good night out, the regular. Anything after 7 reaches the insane line. So I had a great time on Saturday night. The bakery across the street was baking at 5 am so I ran over and got 3 croissants and two burning hot barras of bread. The croissants were at the just baked stage where they reach a perfect balance of fluffy and dense.

Ghengis Khan

This is Genghis Khan, my new pet. He's a chinese turtle and I'm pretty sure he's still a baby because his shell doesn't seem to be very tough- when I picked him up he felt a bit squishy. He's slightly smaller than an Australian 20 cent piece. The guy at the pet store told me to feed him 2 to 3 mini shrimps a day and to leave them on the ledge part but I don't know if he can find them. I placed him next to them but he doesn't look interested.

Every time I walk into the living room I feel a phantom crunch under my right foot. I think Ezra may be haunting me.

I KILLED EZRA

I KILLED EZRA!!! I KILLED EZRA!!! I went into the living room to see how he was and heard this CRUNCH. I was too scared to look so I looked into his container, and the lid was off and he was nowhere to be seen. So then I looked down and on the ground were the broken remains of a little burgundy and white snail shell. With the flattened form of a tiny snail underneath. I am a murderer.

"I can fit all that in one go!"