School Break Week 1 - A little of everything

As my first week off from school I had a lot of things I wanted to do and get done. School breaks are meant for two things: 1. get everything done you normally can't because you are too busy with classes, and 2. catch up on homework. This last week I focused on number one. 

On Monday Matt and I went to visit kittens and officially decided on an this adorable cutie. 

Matt named him Shade. We can't take him home until he's 12 weeks old which is perfect because we still have to wait for official approval to have the cat. Also, we get him the first or second week of November which is right when my classes end and I have two months to give all my devoted attention to the little guy. We're excited!  

After visiting the kittens we went straight to FHE with Brock and Kaytlin which is always fun. I did a lesson on goals and then afterwards we played a game of Skip-bo. I had a ridiculous win the first time where I had tons of Skip-bo's! It's always nice to know I can win games on occasion :)! 

Tuesday I started on a project that took me nearly two days. When we brought all our movies from the US we got rid of all the cases for the DVDs (with some exceptions) to save space. We decided we would use disc holders and use our MyMovies app to organize the movies by number instead of alphabetically. Once they are all sorted any new movies will just be assigned a number and go in the appropriate place. Naturally, I still wanted to keep all our old movies alphabetical. I took over the living room and made rows of DVD's so I could alphabetize them, assign a number, and then put them away. After completed nearly 30 DVD's Matt came home from mutual and I told him there were a bunch of movies missing. It turns out he put them with some CD's, and I had to redo more than half of the DVD's I had finished! Finally, by the next morning I had completed numbering and ordering all of our 264 movies! The good news is I'll never have to do that again. I wish I had more pics of the process, but all I have is of the completed containers.

A couple of other interesting things happened on Tuesday. I worked out (first time in weeks) while watching Jack the Giant Slayer. After over an hour of doing high intensity interval training and stretching I was pooped. After a nice shower I decided to clip my toe nails and while filing the edges I broke a nail! It didn't really hurt, but I was quite surprised! Wednesday I went to uni to meet with Martijn van de Pol who is a well accomplished statistician who has done a lot with mixed models which are often used in animal behaviour and animal personality studies. It was a fun hour to chat with him, but I wouldn't say our conversation was extremely productive. The most important information I obtained was that we would be use the R statistical program for the next day's workshop. 

Plant near the distribution center

After I left uni to go home I decided to go to the shops and get some stuff for feeding the missionaries that night. I took a different bus and on my way I realized I was near the temple and could stop and get the hymn book I wanted as well as some new garments. After walking from the stop to the Distribution Center where the church items are sold I discovered I was 30 minutes too late and they were closed. By this time I decided I better just go home and cook what I have for the sisters. My phone said the quickest way was by train so I walked all the way to the train station (about 15 min) only to discover I'd have to wait another 17 minutes for the train. According to the maps it would take me the same amount of time to just walk home. My legs were EXTREMELY sore from my workout from the day before so my 40 minute walk home was painful and exhausting, and I made it 10 minutes later than if I had taken the train but at least I saw some interesting things (see below). The good news was we had a wonderful dinner with the sister missionaries and afterwards they challenged us to make missionary goals each week. Awesome!

K 13 submarine memorial

Thursday I went to uni to attend the workshop with Martijn van de Pol on how to do Mixed Models. I learned a lot, but I'm sure I will forget most of it. At the end we were able to practice on our own data and I decided my honor's thesis on cheetahs would likely have been better as a mixed model than the nested ANOVA I did. I wanted to run the tests, but I had to reconfigure all my raw data into a statistical format which took me the rest of the time. Some day I'll play with that some more. Martijn says the best time to learn R and statistics is when you need it so you are working with it a lot, but this will also take quite a bit of time. Joy. 

Friday I had to leave home at 7:30 am to get to my 9 am hair appointment. It was well worth it because I had a fun chat with the hairdresser and they did a great job! I mentioned that I was going to a church game night later and next thing I know we were talking all about the church. She admitted she didn't know anything about the Mormons and I was more than happy to explain a bit about our beliefs. Somehow this led into an interesting conversation about people with the spirit and evil spirits which was pretty interesting. At the end I wished I had a pass-a-long card but I told her about mormon.org and she said she'd look it up. 

My good day got better as I went to the city to meet Kaytlin for lunch. I had a lot of time to kill so I just walked around for a bit. It was a day for good deeds as I saw someone's scarf fly to the ground. I picked it up and soon found the woman it belonged to who was very grateful. Not too long after there was a man with a dolly stacked with boxes crossing the street and half his boxes fell over. I helped him put them back and we eventually got them all to stay still. As I reflected on these two experiences I realized I was so willing to help because I had so much time and it made me wonder if I would have passed them by if I was in a hurry. After a quick trip past the Anzac Memorial in the city I finally met up with Kaytlin for a sushi train lunch. We learned that just because it looks good, doesn't mean it is. 

That night I made enchiladas for a family with a newborn and for Matt and I for the ward game night. Enchiladas were a big success and even Matt liked them! Apparently he just didn't like the enchilada sauces that I had used before. After dinner we played Monopoly Deal with the bishop and a couple of young men. The boy who won had a MASSIVE play that led him to wiping everyone but the bishop out giving him nearly 7 sets and $47 Million. Wow! I'm glad this will be a bi-weekly event as I think it is a great way to get to know more of the members. 

Saturday was our two-year anniversary! It's crazy how time flies! I made Ebelskivers for the first time for breakfast and I was pleased that they all came out perfect! Matt wasn't as thrilled as I was about them, but that's ok....the more for me to eat! As I cleaned and got some stuff done, Matt started painting the banister. It now is primed and ready for paint! 

We had an early lunch and drove to the Sutherland Entertainment Centre to watch The Phantom of the Opera starring my friend Tamasin Howard as Christine! It was their second show and I expected some technical issues or slip-ups, but I was blown away. The show was spectacular! I've never heard Tamasin sing in a show and every song she sang gave me goosebumps it was so good! It was a wonderful and professional performance and I'm very glad we went. 

Tamasin as Christine (from Facebook)

Afterwards we went to eat at Outback Steakhouse which was easily the most expensive dinner we have had yet. It was still very good, but I definitely don't think we will be eating there often. To finish off our night we rented Iron Man 3. It was a great day. 

Sunday was also quite eventful. Matt and I decided on our missionary goals and then spent some time just sitting in the sun and relaxing. At night we headed over to the Barnett's flat for a house-warming party. Erika and Mike are new to our ward and just recently got married. We had delicious burritos and rice pudding. It was also fun to see some people I already knew from either the Greenwich ward or from when I studied abroad! We played a game with pictures from everyone's childhood home and shared a childhood memory in that home. Then we had to guess who's home belonged to who. It was a really fun night and I got to know a few more people. We will definitely be doing more with them in the future. 

Now this week I have to focus on more school stuff! 

Home is Where Your Stuff Is...

It has come to my attention that I am a terrible blogger and picture taker. Unfortunately, for those of you interested in what goes on in my life, you will simply have to deal with the lack of pictures and very inconsistent postings. If you're reading this thanks for being a trooper!

It's been nearly a month since my last post and my list of blog events only includes five things so that should help explain my lack of posting. My life is pretty boring at the moment.

School is just that...school. I've started getting some grades back on assignments and I'm not failing! I'm now half way through the semester and it seems it is getting quite a bit harder to motivate myself on assignments. My Philosophy class is actually my favorite because we get together and just have great conversations about all kinds of things and its fun that I get to provide the only biological sciences perspective. The last few weeks we talked about bioethics and research on animals which led to me watching this awesome video.

Matt and I received callings in the ward a few weeks ago. Matt is now the second counselor in the Young Men's and is in church of just one young deacon. He's been enjoying going to mutual (weekly youth activity), but I think he struggles to have lessons with just one individual on Sunday. I got called as the Ward Music Chairman. Basically I organize all the hymns for Sunday. It's been fun to know what hymns we are singing each Sunday, but I feel I am very ill-equipped for such a calling as my slim musical ability has not been used in a long time. I'm also playing the piano in Relief Society which has been even more challenging. Although that is not part of my calling, I wish to help so I choose the songs and then I have to practice them so I can play well enough for people to sing to. So far I am failing miserably, but I am very grateful for this opportunity to improve and that the sisters are so patient with me.

The whole place was covered in loads
of containers and big machinery

At then end of last month we finally received our 13 boxes we had shipped from the US! Before the boxes arrived we had to drive to the airport to get our items cleared by customs and see if we needed a quarantine inspection, which we did of course. I was so glad I had put so much work into getting everything ready because it all went pretty smoothly. Apparently most people don't get all the paperwork needed, or wait till after their shipment arrives making it all more difficult. When we went to the port early in the morning we had to sit by our boxes for over an hour until the quarantine woman came. We only had to open two boxes to show her some things and I was so glad! I thought we would have to open and unpack a whole bunch of stuff. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a cargo van or trailer help so we had to call a taxi to get our stuff home. In the end we got about $5000 worth of items for only $1000 total! I would recommend UBox Worldwide to anyone shipping lots of boxes. Now that we've unpacked it all our place feels much more like home!

We've finally got a lot of those last items like a Blu-ray player and desk chair which I really needed. Our Sony Blu-ray player is awesome because we can stream Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix through it and it plays all our US DVD's and Blu-rays as well as Australia ones! I did the research to find a Universal player and I'm glad I did because it saved us a lot of money. We can now play wii games too and all I had was to get a cheap universal adapter online. Ebay has been my best friend to get plug converters, surge protectors, and any other item we need at a good price. Our next plan is painting which has been recently approved by the landlords. It's too bad we didn't ship most of Matt's painting equipment because he is struggling to find replacement stuff here, but oh well.

Odin on his new window
bed Carina got him

Once we got all our stuff I was anxious to get the cat documents so we could finalize shipping our Odin from the US. It turns out the official document declaring the cat importable is completely lost. In addition to this piece of bad news, some animal shipping companies quoted me $5000 for the whole process including the 1-month in quarantine here. I had planned on about $2000 according to others I knew that had shipped their animals. After some serious reflection I realized Odin had been through a lot and would likely have some behaviour issues if I tried to ship him. In the end, it wasn't right for the cat or us to have him shipped to us. I'm positive it was the right thing to do and we are lucky that my sister is a very affectionate owner that I know will take great care of him! I'm also lucky that she will send me pics and videos of him too! Although we can't possibly replace Odin we are in the process of cat shopping and I will let you know when we have something finalized! Matt is amazing that he lets me have giant stuffed panda bears and animals even though he is allergic.

On to other things...my love of public transportation has increased as it has provided the perfect time to read some new books that my sister recommended. For those of you interested I have now read A Posse of Princesses, Crown Duel, Mesmer Book 1 & 2 (Book 3 isn't out yet), and I'm not sure what to start next. I've been reading so fast that I have bought more books than usual for my kindle so I recently got my free library card so I can now borrow. It seems they don't have a particularly large selection though.

On my visit to the library I had a fun surprise as I ran into four of the sister missionaries in my ward (we have 6 total). They were going to the shopping center for lunch so I joined them and it was fun getting to know them better on their p-day (the one day off from proselyting each week). We even had a nice miniature lesson with a guy that was at the table with us and asked if we were Jehovah Witnesses. Missionary moments are always fun and I was so proud of the new sisters! We also saw the other two sisters so it was a missionary party at the shopping center! Two of the sisters are what we call greenies and have only been in the mission about a week. Surprisingly their trainers are also greenies and have been here for only a month or two! Two are Chinese with one on a Chinese speaking mission and the other is English speaking. There is also a brand new sister from Tahiti who is learning English! It's pretty awesome.

The next couple weeks I have a school break and the days are packed with stuff so look out for my next post!