"so far so good"

ive been sleeping well, in bed at midnight every weekday since arrival :) but im sleeping light, so when Melis gets up and the walls here are paper...and then doctor gets up...  it takes me forever to fall back asleep, if im even able to. so, ive been sleeping 5-7h nights. im okay though.

so Aldi was way cheaper than Cole's as we suspected. maybe i wwouldnt shop there if i lived here and had a local salary but right now its juuuust fine.

butter (not my choice, i NEVER user butter even though its trendy now!) 1 euro
frozen pizza 2 euros
white wine 2 euros
1kg of onions 1 euro

special mention goes to the Rekorderlig copy (down to the color scheme!), a cider for just under 3 euros.

then, one night i actually cooked. pasta, carrots, zucchini, onion, cream.. both doctor and Melis seemed happy!

near the beach. 10min walk from the house. very...aussie? daytime temperatres have been around 30-35, the upper end of which feels just perfect! in fact i thin around 33 feels like body temprature, although i realize its not. but in a good way, i feel perfectly comfortable. even a breeze of wind cannot make it chilly. 

random street in the neighborhood.

a fish & chips place. the fish & chips (9,5 aud/7 euros) are tasty, but the menu seems to have expanded to other things...

a local shop (called The Bitch is Back) with nice decor items. there are tons of these both in St Kilda an in the center. a sign that the peeps here have extra money and too little worries (thats sounds snarky but of course its a good thing, i want to spend my paycheck on thee things too!)

the tram, night time.

on tuesday i looked for couchsurfing events in the area. they have at least one ike every day! well okay, nice! so on wednesday me and Melis went to this "ladies night meet up", it felt safe to start with some fellow females. we met at the Spice Market with was a really exotic night club looking place but totally empty at 7:30pm...  anyway, met a few foreign women there.

 after a couple drinks we decided to change places and joined another CS meeting; 'Mundo Lingo' (language exchange). at 10:30p it was already quieting down but we hung for about an hour and made some friends. and i noticed how hard it is to change languages on the fly; from turkish to suddenly swedish to suddenly german...

ive started hunting or flats but oh boy, its still so hard. its the 1,5 month period that is SO challenging. there are places catering to that time period, but theyre looking at the business crowd mostly, and the prices are according to that. and there are some serving foreign exchange students, for ex. we went to see a 2 bedroom flat today at Unilodge on the "main street" of Melbourne (Swanston steet), and not only did it not match the photos in the ad, there were cockroaches. to be honest since i dont have much experiences with cockroaches, so i dont have any reason to be scared of them either, but i get the feeling they are a sign of bigger problems, are surely the flat was a bit eh...   but at least we have started the process. we have 1 more week o find something.

notes:

• aussies prefer calling to txting

• cafes are open only until the afternoon, bars start closing around midnight

• when using visa electron/credit card, they give 3 options; cheque account, savings account, credit - still confused... 
• the variety and selection of sushi places makes me CRAZY. even if i check one place per day, its hard!
• aussies like to say "no worries" and "perfect"