Let the packing project begin!

This is stressful and frustrating. One second I'm thinking to myself, "There's not really that much stuff, I'm sure I can fit it all in my suitcase, no problem!" and after laying everything out on my bed, I'm thinking "Holy crap this is never going to fit."

Please note, I was NOT planning to take the cat (or the elephant).

Yes! It fits! Wait... what about the shoes and my pillow and....

Vacuum space bags to the rescue! I've now packed and repacked the space bags about 5 times, and still am not satisfied. Since I'll be staying in a hostel for at least a week, I will need to access the bags as little as possible (as I'm sure I wont have a vacuum to help me reduce space). So now my task is to organize one bag into outfits for a few days, and let the rest be sorted however they pack best. Sigh.

In other news, I am currently only enrolled in 2 courses. It is a slow manual enrollment process, and since I have been approved for all my courses, the ones that aren't full or don't have a clash time I will likely be enrolled in :) But to be safe, I added a few extra courses for approval. Because of the apparent lack of bio courses in the semester I will be studying, I am determined of 2 things:

1) one upper division qualifying course (generally 2nd or 3rd year courses)

2) one language course

My language options at current are (of open courses): intro Greek, intro German, and intermediate French. So I am brushing up on my French, just in case (they will make me take an assessment test and its been a few years!).

Only 11 more days. I guess I better stop procrastinating so much.

¡Feliz año nuevo!

Happy New Year!

May 2013 bring many adventures, good health and much success!

I am keeping busy jumping through hoops to make my semester at UNSW as smooth and enjoyable as possible. Sadly, they are not making it easy for me thus far. Right before they closed up for the holidays they informed me that I was not enrolled in any courses. I had to rake through hundreds of courses and put 8 choices on my application (ranking 1st and 2nd priority) and I have been put in NONE of them. It was like pulling teeth to find classes, and I have to do it all over again. I emailed them asking WTF but they were closed for the holidays (convenient, eh?), so I'm waiting for them to sift through their undoubtedly large amount of unread emails and get back to me. On top of that, the site I used to submit my application has been down and wont be back up for another few days, so I haven't been able to glean any information off that. Sigh.

I am also hitting the hurdle of my future living situation. I haven't yet heard from student housing about available apartments, though their website shows they have many spots available. I emailed them as well, asking when I might hear from them, and trying to ensure I was in fact on a waiting list. Still waiting to hear from them (love the holidays...). But, in order to keep the ball rolling, I have started my sifting of apartments ("flats") to rent and share in neighboring areas to the university. Hard to tell what anything is, quality wise, but this is why I'm arriving well before term starts.

I've been having fun trying to get all my ducks in a row in regards to packing. Figuring out what I have, what I need and what I probably should end up leaving at home. It's hard to pack light when traveling for such a long period of time.

Regardless of how scared, or nervous I am now, I know its going to be a great adventure, and I look forward to my time abroad and sharing my experiences here with you :)

Happy Birthday Sharell!!

Happy Birthday to my best friend, Sharelly

Through the years, we've had some crazy times...

The most random adventures, the best laughs...

I wouldn't trade those moments for anything!

Happy Birthday to my HBOO

Cheers to many more!

with love and peaches,

Tanda

Throwback Thursday

I used to be the poster child for my dad's printing business.

See what replaced me at

matsguy.com

Collectors Edition!

OK, alright, I know... I'm sorry.

The answer to what was in the jar from last post: the lens of the left eye of a Squalus acanthias (spiny dogfish) we were dissecting in lab. Don't judge me. It's sitting in vodka, seeing as that was the best preservative we had in the house, and unlike the rum my dad has in the cupboard, it's clear. Speaking of clear, normally (i.e. when the shark is still alive) the lens is clear, but probably since this one is a lab specimen, its now opaque. Kinda looks like a cat's eye.....

Now, what you've all been waiting for! A sneak peak into my crazy little world... hence the title of the post: Collectors Edition!

I have a large collection of...

playing cards!

That's right, folks! I have 34 decks that I can account for. I am sad to say that I used to have some awesome decks but wasn't collecting and got rid of them (a round deck, a deck shaped like a lion's head, a really super tiny deck, and some magic (as in magician) cards).

I make a point to buy a deck from every place I go to as a souvenir (if I'm there for at least a weekend). Some of them are just fun to look at, and others I do play with. At least 12 of these are still in their unopened condition (plastic wrap and all!).

My favorites to actually play with are the blue jumbo index bicycle deck, and Dora the Explorer. The worst two to play with are the Superman cards, and the pink bicycle cards (they are ALL BRIGHT PINK and really hard to tell whats what if colors are helpful to you when you play).

Looking forward to adding a few decks to my collection from Australia and maybe New Zealand!

What do you collect?