Days 46-49

Week 6

And so, deadlines begin to approach.

It has finally reached the point where I have to do actual work for my classes, I know, weird. Sometimes, I don't know where the Australian's minds are. Doing work in classes...pssssht.

I completed my first Biology Lab assignment this week on sclerophyllous plants and their adaptations to arid environments (aka Australia). The work wasn't hard so much as time consuming. Honestly, I didn't mind it except for the the technical stuff. I had forgotten how tedious lab reports can be as far as references and how things are stated. Honestly, I could've tried harder on that one, but somehow, the fact that all of my classes this semester are Pass/Fail keeps ringing in the back of my mind. As long as it's passing.... Plus, I don't really need the class. I just took it for my own benefit.

Taking it may have been a bad decision though, because honestly, after every lecture I'm ready to throw rhetoric and sentence structure to the side and jump feet first into the rain forest to study Pygmy possums or something along that nature (ha).  I think zoologist may be the most persuasive people out there. All they have to do is show you something fluffy with big eyes and tell you it's dying because humans are being greedy and you are on board to save the trees. Coming at this from a marketing perspective, I can see why the "Eco friendly" movement has caught so much momentum. They finally figured out what motivates people. Animals!

Tuesday consisted of grocery shopping and lunch making. I finally got back around to cooking, now that my life has slowed down enough to allow for it. It wasn't anything fancy, just sauteed veggies on white rice, but honestly, I'm not hard to please.

Wednesday, after settling in for the night and completing everything necessary for the next day, I found myself in a nostalgic mood. The cause? Country music. I rediscovered it, I guess you can say. I think one of the reasons I transitioned away from it was because it was overplayed in N.C. And because the majority of today's popular country music has become commercialized to fit a certain niche that is labeled "country" which actually consists of an overbearing southern twang, the topics of pick-up trucks, bars, cut off jeans, tattoos, reminiscence, or all of the above, and a guitar or banjo. Which, there's nothing wrong with (debatable), but I came across some older country music in my iTunes playlist that struck such a chord within that I couldn't help but be reminded of home. And not even just the image of home, but distinct memories with distinct faces. I remembered times and places and friends. Love, hurt, joy. It was all there in those chords and lyrics. And so, I came to once again appreciate the genre that is called country music, if only for its ability to call up what has now passed, the ability to imprint itself on memories we now hold forever.

But then again, that could be true of any music, ya?


Thursday marked our first workshopping day for the drafts of my fellow writers. We critiqued two pieces. You can always tell how a creative writing class is going to go by the first day, and judging by Thursday, it's going to be hell.  There is always that one person in class who has to disagree with everything the teacher says. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with having your own opinion, but workshops are set aside specifically to give a writer feedback on their whole piece instead of spending the majority of the time honing in on more minuscule aspect that at the end of the day, may be superfluous. Enough about that. Overall, I can tell that there is going to be a lot of class time wasted on class debate of technicalities. Yay.

I did happen to turn in my first draft of my short story this week. It will be interesting to see the Australian writers' take on my writing as opposed tho the feedback I've received back home. I'm curious to see if there are differences, and if so, where they lie.



Sunset on Brighton beach in St. Kilda.

I went out tonight (Friday) again with a friend of mine who used to be in my short fiction class before he switched out. His name is Benjamin, and he's from Melbourne. He was kind enough to show me around St. Kilda today. After catching up over a coffee, we parked and walked down to Brighton beach to watch the sunset. As always, it was beautiful though the wind was bad enough to cut through both his overcoat and mine. Things as superfluous as wind can be ignored though, when in good company

Unfortunately, my cold has returned, though not as vengeful as before. I guess after no sleep last night due to fits of coughing, hours next to a wood stove in a cafe and walking full fledge into the wind wasn't the best thing for it. As a result, my eyes are bright red. I hope this is a short lived effect, or else people might think I'm using substances of an illegal nature, ha. Not to mention the fact that I would kind of like to see clearly again.


Alas, we shall see. (Ha, ok, even I'll admit. That one was bad.)