Friday, February 27, 2009

Thank God I'm a Country Girl?

So my host family is away this weekend on their parents' farm, and I needed to stay home to do my online class posting. So I am in charge of the house, which includes the animals. There is a cat, a budgie (bird), four chickens, 2? adult crayfish, many baby crayfish, goldfish, and a whole bunch of stick bugs (some of these pictured below with the kids, courtesy of my host mom's Facebook).Tonight, I had to find the cat that was missing all day (hiding on a seat at the kitchen table), feed it, feed the crayfish and goldfish, and get the chickens back into their hutch. Which, by the way, was impossible. They were perched on the laundry drying rack outside, and would not get down. At first I just tried clucking at them and running away, hoping they would follow me, like a dog. No luck. Then I tried picking them up, or scootching them off, both to no avail. They would just flap their wings and scare me half to death, so that I'd let go and they'd stay right where they wanted to be. I finally got one of them off, and another one followed, but getting them into their hutch was a whole other story. I practically had to chase them in. Finally, I got all three of them safely in the hutch and called Michelle to tell her, and she said, oh, well there are 4 chickens, not 3! Luckily for me, when I went out to check on the 4th, he had gone into the hutch all on his own... What an adventure...
On another note, my internship at
FilmInk magazine started on Monday, and as soon as I finished the tour, I got started working! They had me watch a French film (English subtitles), transcribe an interview that Dov (the publisher) had done with the lead actor and then write a profile on the actor. I did the same thing the next day with a different film, an American one this time (Sex Drive with Josh Zuckerman). On Wednesday, they had me watch a documentary-type movie, American Teen, which followed 5 high school seniors for the entire school year, and write a DVD review, which I felt kind of unqualified to do, as I don't really know very much about film, but I think I did an okay job of fudging my way through. It's a really small staff, so I think I will be getting to do a lot, which is great. I'll let you know when my articles are online!
The one bad part of the internship is that it is in Bondi, which is a little over an hour away, by bus, train, and then bus. I have to wake up around 6:45 to get there on time and don't get home until after 6. It makes for a really long day, and I am usually exaughsted when I get back home. Welcome to the real world, I guess!
Thursday we had class with the pop/rock star again, and I got my ID card (with a free jump drive!) and my travel stipend, which is really exciting.
Class went well, and then we raced (figuratively... realistically it was a half hour bus ride -- we got stuck on the bus that seemed to stop at every house) home to get ready to meet up with Paddy, a 19-year-old Australian bartender that the boys at met at their local hangout, who was going to take us out and introduce us to some of his friends. We got ready, Tyler's host mom miraculously gave us a ride to Steve's (saving us a mile and a half walk, at least) and Paddy picked us up. He was a really nice guy, and is actually going to be headed back to America this summer to travel and work at a sumer camp in Maine, which he did last year too. We got to the club where his friends were, and we couldn't get in because we didn't have our passports on us. So disappointing. We decided to go to The Greenwood Hotel, where we tried to go last week, but the line was too long.We got in this time, and it ended up being pretty fun, lots of dancing. Today I just had a lazy day. Tomorrow I am either going to go to the beach or the zoo, and then the opera at night to see The Magic Flute!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG... I had to corral cattle once. but I had help of 2 friends on horseback.. the chicks sound much harder!!! I'd love to see the fotos of that !!! lol

xoxJody

Anonymous said...

JD loved Australia, thanks for remebering him in your blog title.
love,
dad