Happy Oktoberfest!

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore: *steps outside and feels like crying but can't because she needs to conserve water*

Record high in Sydney today. Supposedly it reached 37 degrees. I believe it. There is nothing quite like the wall of heat that hits you as you step outside. I finished off my water bottle and scarfed down a juicy apple like there was no tomorrow, all before noon. And I had spent most of the day so far sitting in reasonably air conditioned rooms. A five minute walk between buildings was enough to induce mad scrambling for the water bottle.

Of course none of this stopped me from hunting down the group from SCD at Oktoberfest, out on the Wentworth lawns, during my 1 hour break (from 1-2pm). Or, more accurately, during the one hour supplementary seminar that the entire Marine Science class has deemed boring and useless. I rushed across campus at the end of lectures, praying I wouldn't burn in the 5 minutes it would take to reach the shade of the Wentworth Building. I was making a beeline for a shady corner when I ran into Matt, the Malaysian guy from Unimates. I chatted with him while digging out my sunscreen and seeing if I could spot Ching or the guys. I spotted Ching looking around and pulling out her phone. "That'll be her!" I felt the phone in my pocket vibrate.

"Hey are you coming?"
"Ching, turn around." The figure in the distance turned around as Matt laughed. "Ok, look up. A little to your left... Back to the right." I jumped up and down and waved my arms as Ching repeatedly questioned me concerning my exact whereabouts. She finally spotted me and came over. I made her help with the sunscreen. Suddenly John appeared beside us asking what we were doing over there and not at the table under the tent with everyone else. I told him I didn't feel like being red and crispy. He went to get a beer.

We collected Tim on the way to the table and joined Ian and Anya. Anya was complaining that the band wasn't German, it was Bavarian. Being German herself, she felt this was a problem. I looked around. Further down the table was a group that had clearly jumped right into the spirit of Oktoberfest the second the bar had opened. I looked again and gave a startled wave in return to the one Peter gave me. I'd last seen Peter about 10 minutes earlier in our Cells and Development lecture. "You know Peter?" asked Ian. "You know Peter??" asked me. "Yeah, he's a friend of John's." Small world.

It was a lot of fun to just sit and chat and sing with people while sitting under a tent on a bright, sunny day, sipping a nice cold German beer. Because it's Oktoberfest and because you'd think that one bottle of beer in an hour, while you sit and eat lunch, would be perfectly fine. But if you were me, lacking sleep and experiencing heat like you've never felt before, you would be wrong. The first 15 minutes of my prac were great.

Today was also Stress Relief Day. I picked up my free stress relief package from the CONTACT desk in Wentworth and now have a tealight (the ad said candles. a tealight really doesn't cut it), 2 sticks of incense, a bag of orange pekoe tea, a bunch of useless papers, and a Sydney Union stress ball. Can you guess why I wanted the package in the first place? That's right, the useless papers! Oh, and of course I can't forget to share the poetic wisdom on the stress ball: "Life is breezy when you take it easy"

I'll get right on that. As soon as my assignments are done.