Phew.

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Now THAT was a looooooooong week! I only have about 10 minutes to write because Eric and I are going out to eat to celebrate the end of the first week! I (unofficially) worked over 25 hours this week and went to 5 classes! At least I only have one more week of intense work and then I switch to one 4-hour shift a week. My classes all seemed pretty interesting (minus Theology...the professor made me fall asleep; it didn't help that the class is from 4:30-7:30pm!) but pretty tough. All of them seem to cover topics I'm really interested in; we even have a whole feminism unit in my Political Philosophy class : ) Other than class and work, I didn't do a whole lot this week, but its still been a lot of fun. Usually we (as in the Notre Dame US kids) end up watching a movie or playing cards after dinner, which is a fun way to get to know everyone. Eric and I have been doing lunches (usually spagehtti-o's or peanut butter and jelly...we're still keepin it classy!) because I get a one-hour break at work. In Port Lodge (my residence, along with all of the other ND US students) we get group dinners twice a week where a chef comes to our kitchen and cooks for us! = ) = ) Free food is always appreciated, especially when it includes dessert! The food here is pretty expensive (well, EVERYTHING here is pretty expensive) but we've mostly just been grocery shopping and preparing meals ourselves, which seems to work well. Overall, I've actually made more than I've spent so far, which I'm pretty proud of! The only other eventful thing we did this week was tour the old Fremantle prison. It was a flashlight (or "torch") tour that started at 8:45pm when it was already very dark. The tour itself was reaaally interesting, there were lots of cool stories because the prison only closed in 1991 so apparently they get a lot of ex-prisoners who come to the tours and fill them in on the details. It was also EXTREMELY creepy because they had a couple actors in the prison who came out at veeery *convenient* times and scared us all! Very Sneaky. One actor came out of the solitary confinement door RIGHT in front of me! After the tour was done, the whole group walked back together, but somehow Eric and I got separated from the rest on the very last segment of the walk and we managed to find ourselves in a VERY creepy deserted alley at 10:30pm...right after going on the creepy prison tour. If that wasn't scary enough, a man who was sitting in a parked truck on the street (who we didn't see) stuck his head out the window as we were passing and screamed: "Do you want some drugs?!?!" AHHHHHHHHHHHHH. We hurried out of there and caught up with the rest of the group; but it was enough to make for a VERY eventful night. And on that note, Eric is here...dinner time = ) Hope all is well back home!

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