Operation MEET AUSTRALIANS

This week my goal was to branch out and meet some more Australians. At first we tried to set some Australian traps at dinner by sitting only 3 or 4 Americans to a table with a bunch of empty seats for brave (or unsuspecting) Australians. However, we only ever caught other Americans. That's when we realized that to meet Australians, we'd have to do a little infiltrating. It sounds so easy, but when it's time to sit down at a table of all Australians, 2 times out of 3 I chicken out. I don't think I'm cut out for a life of espionage. Electrical Engineering is a good fall back, I guess.

Speaking of electrical engineering, classes continue to be boring. I had my first homework assignment due Friday, and Thursday night all my suppressed memories from last semester came flooding back. On a cheerier note, I have successfully switched into a different Robotics class that I think will be a lot more interesting. I think for the first half of the semester we'll be working on simulating Soccerbots, which are little robots who play soccer (no, really?!) and we'll move on to programming real robots. The real robots are supposed to navigate an obstacle course using information from a GPS system. I think it'll be hard, but really interesting. Our professor seems really excited and knowledgeable about robots, so I think it'll be a good switch.

Right now everyone is planning our fall (spring?) break which comes up in mid-September. Half of the group is going up to Ningaloo reef, which is supposed to be comparable to the Great Barrier Reef, but on the West Coast. Another big group is going to hang around Perth and go backpacking for a week along some trails in the bush. My friend Tricia and I bought our tickets to Bangkok a few days ago, and we have been trying to convince a few other people to come with us. So far we have successfully enlisted Tricia's boyfriend Jeff and his friend Marty, and we have another girl, Krysta, who is still on the fence. The main reason I decided to go was for the food, but I've also started doing a little research, and I don't know how I can stay away now. I think we're going to spend a 2 days in Bangkok, go up to Chiang Mai in the north mountains for 4 days, and then spend 3 days at the beach. The itinerary is all still up in the air, though. All I care about is eating as much authentic Thai food as possible in 9 days.

We had two birthdays in our group this week, and on Friday night we had a combination Birthday-Olympic Opening Ceremonies party. We all split into teams of two and dressed as different countries. We had groups from Kazakhstan, Antarctica, Vatican City, Jamaica, Kenya, and others I can't remember. Nicki and I dressed up as Canada. We basically just dressed up as lumberjacks. It was a fun night.



The training for the half marathon continues. My legs are really tired. This is the determining week; if I can run 10 miles by next Monday, I'll sign up.

This weekend we're going on our first Notre Dame Weekend Trip. We're going to Kalgoorlie, which is a big mining city. We're going to visit some ghost towns, the Superpit, which can be seen from space (awesome), a sheep station (EVEN MORE AWESOME), and go to an authentic Australian horse race thing called "the trots". Apparently Kalgoorlie is also well known for their brothels and brothel tours are one of the must-do activities, but it's not officially on our itinerary. If it's part of the culture, though, I don't think we should miss it. We'll see if we can work something out.
Here's a picture grabbed off facebook of my friend Lindsay and me at the formal dinner last week. I need to get better at taking pictures. Maybe that will be my goal for this week. Operation Take Pictures of Australians.

That's all for now--
SIGNING OUT!