40,320 minutes

I’ve been here a month. And I’ve never seen “Rent”, but I know one of the songs…so, following that,

How do you measure a month?

- My phone has rang 4 times
- Received 2 pieces of personal mail
- 4 hugs
- Fed 1 elephant
- Read 4 books (I’m also in the middle of a few right now…)
- Rented 5 movies
- $960AUD in rent
- 2 trips to “Mackers” (what they call McDonalds)
- Watched 1 guy get arrested (at the shopping center in Surfers Paradise – nuts)
- Been offered alcohol at least 5 times
- Watched 1 Rugby game
- Seen my first R rated movie (okay – okay – the movie rating system here is completely different and at least half of the movies are rated “M” – and it seems pretty parallel to PG or PG-13 and so there was this movie on TV rated “M” and who knew “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was rated R anyway?)
- Haven’t been tired once during the day since my first couple of days here (this is the most amazing thing of all)
- Seen 1 sunrise
- made 1 person laugh hysterically
- Gone running about 20 times
- 2 pieces of toast with Vegemite (Vegemite is this huge Australian thing and they love it but it’s disgusting. But if you’re coming to visit, you must try it.)
- Spent WAY too much money
- Picked up a bit of the Australian vernacular: "no worries", "mate", "toilet", "good on ya"
- Gone to 1 court proceeding
- 10 trips to K-Mart
- Been asked by 1 person to be a bridesmaid (I can't wait, Beckie!!)
- bought 1 tacky souvenir
- Sent 1,000 emails (okay – that might be a bit of an exaggeration…I hope)
- Gone through 2 packages of Rice (I am obsessed with rice)
- Watched 16 episodes of the Simpsons
- Eaten 7 meat pies
- Finished half the conference Ensign
- Read to Jacob in the Book of Mormon
- Zero callings. (For the first time since I was 12 I don’t have a calling! And I was informed I probably won’t get one because I have actually been attending the wrong ward but the ward I’m supposed to go to meets at a building inaccessible by bus so they said to just keep on coming to this one. Plus, I realized that I will only be attending my ward 3 more times, so what’s the big deal?)
- My blog has been read 279 times
- 1 year older (and wiser, too)

Well, that’s it! A month in Australia. I read this list and it makes me see how pathetic my life is…haha! But no worries – the next two months are sure to be far more exciting. Things to look forward to:

- 1 trip to New Zealand
- 8 visitors
- kayaking with dolphins
- Driving on the left side of the road
- 1 visit by an apostle
- 1 trip to Sydney
- 1 trip to Melbourne
- 1 trip to the Great Barrier Reef
- The "Australian Outback Spectacular"
- 1 ride on the "Vomitron"...what a name
- …a lot more rice consumption?
- THE ZORB