All I want is tuna!

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore: Queues rather than line ups. And those right hand turns are still giving me mild heart attacks.

We were at BiLo, the big grocery store in Broadway Shopping Centre, today. I decided that getting a can of tuna would be a good idea. I could use it for sandwiches, or put it in pasta, or any number of other meals. It should have been a simple task. Instead, I found myself standing in front of the shelf of tuna, completely dumbfounded. Sundried tomato and pepper tuna, tuna in brine, chili tuna, tuna in vegetable oil, orange and peanut butter tuna (ok, I made the last one up). There was an endless assortment of everything BUT just tuna. I don't know how long I stared, but I did eventually find what I figure is tuna as I know it, way down on the bottom shelves. And it's dolphin friendly. So now I have tuna.

And where is this tuna being stored, you ask? In a bin in the kitchen in my new house! Today was moving day. Billabong Gardens called us a station wagon taxi because our stuff would never have fit in a normal taxi. It was quite a site. Once we had all our stuff in Ching's room, and had dusted and upacked, we had a quick lunch and headed to Broadway. Our goal was to exchange the single sheet Ching acidentally bought yesterday (it must have been on the wrong shelf), to get mattress covers, buy a teatowel and some cleaning cloths, and do some grocery shopping. We reached Glebe Point Road at the end our street and saw the Glebe Market. We knew about this market. It's every Saturday on the grounds of the public school. Unfortunately, we had forgotten all about it and completely lacked a contingency plan to keep ourselves from getting sucked in. And so we spent a good deal of the early afternoon wandering about the market, admiring gorgeous but overpriced jewelery and funky clothes. Somehow we managed to disentangle ourselves from the market and continued down the road. We reached the Glebe Discount Store, which we had determined to be the only dollar store we've seen in Sydney. We went in.

Sometime later in the afternoon, we made it to Broadway. We popped into Kmart, bought sheets, mattress covers, and lingerie bags for doing the laundry. I was very impressed when the guy at the cash put the change in my hand and then put the bill on top. We headed down to BiLo, wandered the aisles collecting food, found some cleaning cloths, cleaner, and laundry detergent, paid for it, and sat down on a bench to have a quick snack. We stared at the bags of heavy groceries and groaned at the prospect of walking home with them.

"We forgot the tea towel."

Ching sat on the bench outside Kmart, guarding our stuff, while I ran in to get the tea towel. I looked at the check out lines. The line by the wonderful guy who puts the change in your hand first was short and moving along quite nicely. I chose the next line. I didn't want to explain that we'd forgotten one of the main items we'd come for.

There's a free wind ensemble concert at the Opera House tomorrow. They're playing Eric Whitacre. We emailed for reserve seating but never heard back. So we're just going to show up and see what happens. Triona ("treena") and Vikki are meeting us there. Triona is the Scottish exchange student who was in our room, and Vikki is another Scottish exchange student that Triona met at her daily arrival session. We all went out to Kelly's, an Irish pub on King St, last night and got to know each other. It was so nice to just hang out and not have anything to worry about. We have a house, classes are three weeks away, and we now have two new friends. And Triona is going to be living really close to us. She said she seems to be attracting all the Canadians and Scottish people; she's moving in with a Canadian PhD student. She also lived in Toronto for a while so she actually knows what Ching and I are talking about when other people just stare questioningly (I'd love to give an example but I'm too tired to remember one, just take my word for it).

This day has completely worn me out, and we have to get up for the Opera House. So that's all for now!