Day 53, or is it?

I'm starting to lose track of the days here, but regardless this one was pretty "brilliant". After school and a lunch with with Roger, I headed to the mall to meet my friend from "down under" Sophie. She is a classmate of mine, and I knew right off that we'd be friends.

The first day in class I asked her - Do people in Australia really say "throw another shrimp on the Bar-B!"?
No! She laughed. We never say that! 
For a moment, I was a little disappointed and confused by this common phrase I'd always heard and it's  association with the Aussies but she explained - "We don't have shrimps, they're tiiiny! We have Prawns! And we don't throw, we chuck!"

She helped me pick out a food processor which she calls a MagicMixer, love it. It's a purchase I have been thinking about for a while now. Every morning I walk through master chef Paul Bocuse's food market on my way to school, and I've decided to step up my cooking skills since there are so many delicious resources around. Cheese, meats, seafood, wine, desserts, as well as herb and spices are the culture here and why not embrace them fully? I'm not quite yet ready in my french skills to join a culinary class but I've gathered up some wonderful french cookbooks and gorgous pots and pans to begin practice. Not to mention several kilos of authentic Catalonian olive oil at our disposal!

Anyways, we finished up our shopping and went out to the terrace to grab a couple of Japanese beers and relax in the afternoon sun, just gabbing and philosophizing about life. She traded a life of kite surfing every evening in a Melborne bay to cross-country skiing in the Alps in absolute serenity on the weekends.

After we parted at the "Centro Commercial", Sophie left to hop on a train and I started on my walk just two blocks back to the apartment. I remembered that I had something to pick up at the post office, and I absolutely dreaded going in. However, there was nothing to fear! There were 4 or 5 workers helping customers and even one manager directing people and making sure they did not wait for something as trivial as a stamp. The man in front of me told me to go first and I was in there 5 minutes max! This never happens in the states...
While I was in there, this short came on the tv. It made me laugh out loud, so cute.


Oh and in under 3 weeks I will be in Paris with my BFF from San Diego Jen! Everything is booked for our Paris, Rome, and Lyon escapade! All I have to do now is buy my train ticket for the 2 hour journey north.