August 6

This morning I went to the baptist church again. I tried two slightly different ways of getting there (walking) and it turns out going through the mall actually cuts off about 2-3 minutes. It was still a 27 minute walk even with the shortcut though, one way. Church was nice. They had communion today. They also introduced and interviewed a couple of kids at the church that are going to compete in the special olympics soon. They both did track and field events. :-D

For lunch today I reheated the leftover rice and stir-fry that I made yesterday. I posted yesterday's blog update right before supper, so after that I went to the kitchen and spent about two hours in there cooking up a storm! First I cooked some yummy rice. Then I borrowed Sam's frying pan and I stir-fried some tofu, red capsicums (that's what they call red bell peppers here), onion, and green beans in some canola oil and soy sauce. After the stir-fry was cooked to my satisfaction I added some store-bought veggie stir-fry sauce to make it a little "saucier", and poured it over my rice. Mmmmm it was good! After my supper was done I chopped up my pumpkin (i.e. winter squash -- all winter squashes here are pumpkins, and I don't think they have REAL pumpkins at all...), baked it in the oven, then turned it into a pumpkin pie. Everyone on my floor that owns cinnamon wasn't around today, so I made it without cinnamon. It turned out alright, but not as good as it would have been had there been cinnamon available. No worries, it was still delicious. :) And I saved most of it for today!

Later this afternoon I went running around Lake Ginninderra again. I stopped once because I saw some cool birds -- a flock of about 10 welcome swallows (like barn swallows, only slightly different) and then a group of three beautiful eastern shrike-tits. I'm not sure why (perhaps due to body/bill structure), but it seems like every other bird here is a shrike-something. I've seen shrike-tits, a shrike-thrush, and cuckoo-shrikes so far. Funny thing is, I don't think they have any actual shrikes here! Anymore most of the birds I list are just new species for me. I've gotten pretty good at sound- and glimpse-identifying most of the birds I see regularly, such as the various parrot species, waterfowl, honeyeaters, and black birds (they have a lot of different black birds here!). Anyways, I ended up taking my "dirt trail" shortcut up a hill and through a field again today, and finished the run in 30:25. I have recently been adding the dirt-path shortcut because of the hill it's got. I need to run more hills.

For supper this evening I ate spaghetti and zucchini. Then for desert I polished off the remainder of my pumpkin pie. I'm stuffed now, but it's ok. I'll run it off eventually, I hope. ;)

Later this evening I talked to two of my fellow American friends here at UC and we finalised plans and made bookings for this upcoming weekend. The three of us are going to head up to Sydney on Thursday by bus and spend three nights, then come back to Canberra on Sunday afternoon after my City to Surf race has been completed. I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have when I'm in Sydney (i.e. I don't know how much I'd be willing to spend to go online!), so I may not have extensive updates every day when we're up there. But I will be taking lots of pictures and will get them uploaded within a reasonable amount of time after I get back. I'm excited. Speaking of pictures, enjoy these additional bird pictures from yesterday. The common mynah (brown bird with black head and yellow bill) is slightly bigger than a starling, and very closely related. It doesn't make quite as many annoying noises as a starling though, and they are present in rather small numbers and often in pairs. The ravens here have cool, white eyes and are probably anywhere from U.S. crow-to-raven size. It's hard to tell when they're up so close and don't have any of their American counterparts for size comparison. :)