It's Registration Wednesday!

Lame, I know. We are all at the student hub registering as fast as our little phalanges and browsers can. We have specific time slots that we have to sign up for our classes and it is a bit of a race to get the tutorials that you want. (Those are like labs.)
Man, we have so much to catch you up on! These past few days have absolutely flown by and we have had so many interesting experiences. On Sunday, our roommates all woke up and went to the 8:00 Eucharist service at the neighboring Christ Church Cathedral. It is an Anglican church that is literally five steps out our door. It is such a beautiful building and the people there are extremely friendly. I think we heard four or five times how nice it was to have "young people" at the church. Apparently they don't see many people under the age of 50 very often. At the very last minute on Sunday night, I decided to go to Church 180, a more contemporary church, with the guys. It was a little bit more what I am used to and I got to talk to the pastor for a while after the service. I think I'm really going to like it there. Afterwards, they had a Switch party, which is for 18-30 year olds. It was pretty much a Valentine's Day dance party. We had a blast, laughing at the funny way that Australians dance and introducing them to some of our sweet moves :)
We learned that the Anglican church was having a pancake night on Tuesday (last night) so we all decided to attend, including five of the boys. We showed up, payed $5, and had the best night we have had yet. It started with a glass of wine and ended with a cup of coffee. (The only way I made it up past 11 last night.) The bishop got up before we ate and said he was going to "embarrass our American friends and thank them for coming." We felt a little overappreciated but it was heaps of fun. (Like my Australian slang?)
So we got a little information before eating about what they exactly mean when they say pancakes, since they announced which meats were being offered. We started with dinner pancakes, which are filled with your choice of a veggie, chicken, beef, or tuna filling. It was different but very good. We were just glad to have real food. Then they had a little dinner entertainment. A man played the piano while this woman named Kim sang and it was probably one of the best short performances I have seen. They were amazing. The food wrapped up with "dessert pancakes," which just means maple syrup, cream, strawberry jam, lemon, and sugar toppings. We obviously liked those a lot. After being legitimately stuffed, we helped them break down the tables and Lindsey mustered up the courage to ask what they were doing with the leftovers. Needless to say, we now have an entire fridge full of pancakes, beef filling, and syrup. We are so spoiled.

Something we have noticed is that everyone's favorite question is "what part of the States are you from?" When we answer, it almost always leads to a conversation about how they like or have been to California and New York. I think they always walk away disappointed that we are from Beverly Hills or something. In fact, a boy that I met on the beach the other day was from Melbourne and after we had that conversation, I mentioned how everyone wished we were from California and he was like "yeah, pretty much." He wasn't my favorite person in the world.

Anyways, this was a little more of an information post than a fun post but we have continued to meet a lot of people. All of our neighbors have moved in and seem really fun. I'm sure we will talk more about them later. I also met two Germans who are studying here and got to play some beach volleyball with them. Hopefully we will settle in with more locals soon. There is a sweet family from Church 180 that may take us surfing on Saturday. Trust me, you will want to read the blog after that :) I'm sure there will be plenty of laughs :) Brandi's face is continuing to heal from her sunburn. We regularly have a laugh about her still limited facial expressions.

We also made it to the Farmer's Market, which was an experience we will have to repeat. We got stuffed off of samples and found some fun local people. As a Valentine's Day date, us roommates went to see the movie Valentine's Day. We learned that students can go to movies on Mondays for $8. That's exciting, since everything else around here costs at least that much.

Yesterday, when I was talking on the phone to the gas and power company, she couldn't understand me because of my "strong accent." Look who's talking, I can hardly understand anybody around here. She guessed that I was Canadian. Not bad, I guess.

Well, that's pretty much everything that you could have possibly wanted to know! The weather is still hot, although they say that it has been unseasonably humid and it should calm down a little bit soon. I hope so, we sweat our little hearts out. We miss everyone at home but are so happy here. Talk to you all soon!