final days

So staying at Viveks is pretty cool! He leaves at 8:00am every morning to go study for his PhD qualifying exams while I sleep in till 12:30 and surf around on facebook for a few hours until I have the energy to go outside and complete a 5 minute errand. I got in touch with my Dads friend Al Winchester who lives really close to where we are. He invited both Vivek and I for a BBQ at his place. That's right, free food! I'll try not to resort to overused Australian colloquialisms like "aww, put another shrimp on the barbie will ya?" while I'm there, but I'm not sure if I can control myself. That reminds me, I actually used 'crikey' in a sentence the other day just for fun. I swear I must have warped everyone's perception of Australia into something completely false. For example, Americans here think I have a really strong Australian accent!

I might be going SKY DIVING tomorrow! HOLY CRAP! Marissa has a friend doing Electrical Engineering who has some connection to the sky diving company for some reason (I don't get the connection either). Either way, I think we can find a super cheap deal if we skip out on expensive but mandatory safety equipment. I mean who really needs a spare parachute anyway? I feel kinda bad because a friend of mine, David, just went skydiving so he must think that I'm trying to 1 - up him.

Jonathan can't make it to Austin. I can't say I'm too surprised, but I'm not disappointed in him - I know it's a long way to travel just to see someone you haven't seen in 2 years. I'm glad that he at least put in the effort to get into contact with me and try to make ends meet.

I need to transfer my American dollars into Pounds and Euros in preparation for the final part of my trip. So I'm about to head off to the bank to do that now.

I've finally finished planning my trip to Europe! Well, the basics anyway. Travel and specific timings are still flexible.

I'm planning to travel to Hamilton Pool later on today. Apparently it's a beautiful natural pool that has engraved itself into rock which gives it a very special look. Yes I just made that shit up - I have no idea how it formed the way it did. But none the less, it's quite a touristy destination - so it'll be good to travel there!

Oh yeah, my ex roommate has made it his duty to text me a number every morning which corresponds to how many days I have left in Austin. I think it's a depressingly hilarious idea.