"Butter, sugar, cream cheese...this is so American!"

I’ve found it, my favorite word to hear people say with an Australian accent: “here.” Not only do they drop the “r,” but they also say it with two syllables, so it sounds like “he-ah.” It’s fabulous.

This past Friday Krista, a fellow American I met here, and I headed to the RNA showgrounds for a day at the Ekka! It was my first foray into Brisbane’s train system, and I have to say I was thankful Krista was there or else I might have been a little lost. But no worries, we arrived without a hitch and hopped off the train into glorious sunshine! (Side note: the ozone over Australia is basically gone. This means that the sun is much stronger here than in the States, and I can actually feel this difference when the sun hits my skin!) Our day at the Ekka consisted of lots of walking, watching competitions (horseback riding, dog shows, and my personal favorite, wood chop – yes, a competition based around chopping wood), trying tons of free food samples, and looking at/petting lots of animals. At night there was a show featuring a variety of different acts, from truck (or “ute,” as the Aussies say) racing to stunt driving to motocross freestyle to monster trucks, topped off with a fireworks display! Here are a few pictures from our day at the Ekka:

Wood chop - how dangerous does that look?!

Trying on some super Australian-looking hats!

Aussie cowboy and the sweetest horse ever!

Driving on two wheels, no big deal...

Fireworks to end the night!

On Sunday morning I got to experience Latin Mass with some of the people from the Newman Society at UQ. I’d never been to a full Latin Mass before, and I think I will have to go back a few more times before I really get the hang of following it! After that a bunch of us headed to lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant where I tested my chopsticks skills and tried bubble tea for the first time all in one go! The rest of the afternoon was spent studying here:

It’s amazing how one place (Australia, for example) can be so inspiring and so totally distracting at the same time!

Last night one of the other Americans in my college and I decided to introduce some of the Aussies to American culture the best way we could think of, so we baked a red velvet cake (complete with cream cheese icing!) from scratch! If you've never made this kind of cake before, you do not want to know the obscene amount of fattening ingredients it requires. It was super messy but so delicious, and it was fun to watch the Australians’ reactions: “I can’t believe it’s SO red!!”


This weekend our program heads to Lamington National Park, so "get keen" for some gorgeous pictures from that!