Thursday in Adelaide

It seems that Thursdays are pretty big for Adelaideans, both in the school and around town.  Cooper had a doctor's appointment to get to this morning, so I drove in to school with Brett a bit later than usual, so it was nice to get an extra hour or so to sleep in the morning.  After we got to school, I had a meeting with the principal and Fr Alex, a member of the school board.  They talked about what sorts of things I might be doing over the next few weeks here and wanted me to be thinking about it as well.  It seems like I'll still be all over the school, and possibly helping with some social justice programs and a mission they have in the Outback.  Not sure if I'll actually get to go there, but I can always hope!

For the rest of the school day, I was in a year 8 science class, where they were working on some movies they recorded.  They had the laptop cart in the room (or COW, as they call it -- Computers on Wheels), and naturally 14 year old boys plus computers in class equals high productivity...with video games.  Some of them wanted to see how I was at PacMan, so of course I couldn't turn that down, and then we played Sonic the Hedgehog after that.  The teacher didn't really seem to mind -- Australians are much more laid back than Americans with a lot of things, which the boys definitely take full advantage of.

After school ended, I started to walk towards the street to go to a coffee shop, but one of the year 10 boys who I knew wanted me to go with him to his hip-hop practice.  It was actually pretty cool (mostly because I didn't have to do any dancing).  There's a group of 12 or so high schoolers and a few primary school boys in the group, and it was really entertaining to watch them, especially the little ones!  When I left there, I decided to go grab a coffee at a bakery nearby.  I still need to work on my Aussie coffee skills -- the girl at the counter looked at me funny when I asked for milk and sugar.  But I'm getting there!

Around 6:00 we went to the Marion Shopping Center, a big mall just outside the city.  Most stores close at 5:30 around here, but Thursday is shopping day in the suburbs, so everything is open to the late hour of 9:00.  The mall was packed, but it was really cool to check it out!  It's funny to pick out all the little differences between Australians and Americans -- although I still can't figure out if people walk on the left rather than the right.  Sometimes I stay left and hope it works out, and other times I play the stubborn American and go right.  Good thing I don't drive down here!