Welcome Home

I may not have had a full on Australian birthday party yet, and who knows if that will happen given that my birthday is rapidly fading into the past, but I did get one of the best welcoming home weekends ever upon my return to Sydney. Apparently my house mates tried to arrange to pick me up from the airport, but I foiled their good plans by only giving them vague notions of when I was arriving. I really didn't expect anyone to pick me up from my 6:30am flight.

The great thing about arriving on a Sunday was... Sunday night dinner. My first night back and I get to see most of my closest friends in Sydney. I saw them baking a chocolate cake that I thought was for dessert, little did I know that it was actually a pre-dinner birthday cake for me, complete with Jewish-themed messaging, "Eat me, I'm Kosher", which I recognize as a reference to our Mardi-Gras adventures, where we saw men wearing clothes labelled that way. This chocolate cake had bourbon and chile in it, combining many of my favorite things and was very delicious.

The rest of Sunday dinner was tasty as well. It was apple themed and we had some steaks with an apple chutney, and these delicious apple fritters for dessert (all after the cake of course). And I got to play Borderlands, which I'd been wanting to do for weeks since I'd left. I'm totally addicted to that game. When I get done writing this blog post, it's back to that.

The next night, Monday, the house mates and Yasmin were all hanging around and the evening was wrapping up. Little did I know it, but they'd been trying to lure me to my room all evening and failing to find a inconspicuous way of doing it. Then as Yasmin got ready to go home I made some crack about how she should be staying here instead and she makes her way (jokingly) to my room. Of course she wasn't really going to spend the night with me (Ginny might object), but hey, it's fun to joke. So I follow Yas up to my room, the house mates all sneaking up behind me. And when I get to my room, what do I find but Ginny

the bear, a birthday present from my house mates. Ginny Bear is quite furry, but her fur is soft and she likes to cuddle, so we've become fast friends. I'm hoping she and Ginny the person get along when they are both in Sydney. I think we can come to some sort of happy arrangement.

Foreign America

My trip to the US is about three weeks long, which I think has been enough to acclimate me back to the United States. But, I've definitely adjusted to life in Sydney. As I got off the plane from Maui I was waiting to get off the plane and looking and listening to the people around me. I distinctly remember thinking wow, there are a lot of Americans on this plane!

I've been surrounded by Australians for months, and hearing and seeing so many Americans was a shock. I think it didn't hit me till then since in Hawaii I was mostly among the small, and more familiar, group of Ginny's family. And it carried forward a bit. Every time I hear someone say the word basil, I think of the Australian pronunciation (more bah-zil, than bay-zil). My first instinct these days is to refer to uni not college.

I've borrowed a car to use from time to time during my visit, and out of courtesy I thought I'd fill it up with gas. Lots of confusion ensues as I use an Australian credit card and the gas machine asks for my zip code. Uh .... 2009? Oh, you don't accept Australian postal codes. How about Google's MTV one 94043? Oh, well I accept that you don't like it. It is the wrong one afte. Guess I can't use this system. Luckily gas station attendents have been quite nice about manually running my credit card and activating the pump for me. But it wasn't a problem that ever occurred to me to even think about before. It'd be amazing if there was a card / interface that could accept credit cards from all over the world and still use this sort of verification method.

While the two countries may both speak English, they are definitely culturally different. It's amazed me how something like what side of the road you drive on impacts so many things. Because it's not just what side of the road you drive on. It's what direction your train is coming from, where your escalator is, where you stand on the escalator if you're not walking, what side of the sidewalk you should walk on, etc. I find myself just looking both directions many times before I ever cross the road. Every so often I look at a US car and think, that driver's seat is on the wrong side.

I'm not a huge burrito fanatic, and I actually really like Flying Fajita Sister's, a Mexican restaurant in Sydney, so I haven't mixed Mexican food too much. But I can say I've loved having real bagels again. I went to House of Bagels in Mountain View and have gorged on both asiago and pumpernickle bagels over the last week. I've also just gotten an opportunity to get to some of my favorite restaurants, even if they are a genre of food I can get in Sydney. But, I really do miss my wedges. If you ever get out to Australia do yourself a favor and get some potato wedges with sour cream and sweet chile sauce. They are awesome. Sydney has introduced me to the greatness of sweet chile sauce. I love it. I must put it in many more things.

That said, I'm ready to go back to Sydney. I really like my life and my friends there (not to say I don't like the same in San Francisco and the rest of the US, I haven't made my life easier with the move). And I'm totally addicted to Bordlands on the Xbox 360. I really hoping I get back and can take over the Xbox in Christie & Brendan's room and play with Ann for a lot of my first day back.