Notes on Food, and Miscellanea

How're you going? as my aussie friends would say...

In my humble opinion, one of the most important and exciting things about being in a new country is trying the local cuisine.

Up until now, since I dislike sitting by myself in restaurants, and most of them are italian or thai, (i.e. there are no 'Australian' restaurants for me to explore), I've reverted to Lena and my patented Italy cheese and sausage picnic diet. This is actually going quite well for me as there is ready access to Nutella (in a squeeze bottle, no more messy hands), good cheese and bread, and plenty of parks for me to eat them in.

Also, since Canberra is apparently a huge cafe culture, I've been sitting outside at tables a lot and eating sandwiches. All i can say is, Australians REALLY like mayonnaise, and on a bagel with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado it is not too bad; in fact it was delicious and snaps for Sonya making me crave bacon.

Anyway, aside from my sausage roll on the train, I hadn't had any really australian food, until last night. Deki, or Deon as he goes by here, invited me over for dinner at his house. He picked me up at my hostel and his sister and three friends were in the back, leaving me with shotgun (on the left side of the car, really trippy). He has a video screen in the shotgun visor that plays music videos! Anyway, it turns out it was his sister's sweet sixteen and about a thousand macedonian people were there, including almost the entire dancing group I watched earlier this week.

Everyone was really nice and funny and there were mounds of food, pretty standard but delicious potato salad, chicken wings, sausage etc. (people Really like sausage and chicken here, there are tons of chicken burger places, and i have seen almost not beef burger places, but I digress) Then came dessert, with three different renditions of happy birthday, and three rounds of hip hip hooray; the pet bird, Deon's best friend who he adamantly defends against his friends, even screeched a bit. I asked for a small piece of chocolate cake and Deon's mom without asking put something very gooey on my plate from a Tupperware container. Apparently what i'd been given was not a trial for the meek, as many of Deon's friends told me they never ate them because they were so sweet and rich.

Imagine a churro, fried doughnut thing with crispy outside and soggy middle, that had been literally soaking in a container full of what seemed like simple syrup for an hour or two. It was epic, sweet, and I only finished about one bite. I have to look up what it's called and let you know later, but it was basically instant diabetes (that's for Wheelsy) in a tiny syrup covered golden brown little debbie snack cake form.

Today i am back to yogurt and sandwiches (they have the BEST yogurt here, it;s amazing) as i am still recovering from my first traditional aussie food experience, but i will keep you posted.

Miscellanea
For those of you who made it this far, I OFFICIALLY have housing, I move in with Michael and Manny in two weeks. I met Manny last night, very sweet and instantly let me know about all of the personal drama with the ex boyfriend, but nice anyways.

Cheers mates