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Sometimes I think about when I very first arrived in Australia, on July 1st, 2008, all alone-y on my own-y.

Without knowing, I got one Aussie thing completely wrong, and one Aussie thing completely right.

THE WRONG

After a 12 hour flight from Beijing, I arrived in Sydney and blearily walked through customs and immigration were an officer lady said “How ya going?” in a friendly way.

I thought about how I was going to be getting to the couchsurfing house I had arranged and replied “BY BUS”.

I found out days later that “how ya going” simply means “how are you”. HAHAHA. She must have thought I was funny.

THE RIGHT

I’m by myself. It’s hot. I’m thirsty.

I walk into a bar and ask for a LEMONADE.

The flavour isn’t quite what I expected, but it quenches the thirst.

Weeks later I find out that Aussie’s call Sprite-type pop “lemonade”. And actual lemonade does not exist (cry).

Hahahaha.

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So it’s been a week since I wrote my exam.

I’m not sure I passed, and I’m not just saying that in a fake humble way.

I definitely knew a lot of the questions for sure. But then there were a whole bunch that I either had no idea at all, or I could only narrow down to 50/50… and then I got home and looked up as many as I could remember and almost all of them I guessed wrong. Soooo… not good. I feel like I probably got 74%, and I need 75%+ (they decide after they look at the results) to pass.

I won’t get the results for another 1-2 weeks. Please cross all your fingers for me. I’m really not sure what we will do if I failed.

In the meantime, I have been surprisingly busy! I had a great week at the gym, with a new PR benchpress x5, and random strangers complimented me EVERY DAY. Weird! I have also been running errands, doing all the dumb tasks I had put off while studying, cooking, and crossstitching. That’s pretty great. And also brainstorming for a new Etsy business idea I have.

Tomorrow we are having people over to watch hockey, and then Sunday I fly to Adelaide to visit Cassia for a few days.

All for now, I need to go to bed because we are getting up early to try and get some free Icebreaker clothes at the newly renovated mall early tomorrow morning.

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I’m super stressed. My AHPRA certification exam is next Friday.

I’m not that worried about the stuff I’ve done in real life, or been tested on already… but I’m TERRIFIED about the stuff that I don’t even know I have to know. Like one of the questions on the practice exam was about a CT table that I never even knew existed. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

The reference list is not super helpful either as it includes about a dozen entire textbooks, and a couple dozen papers that I can’t get. Hgkjghgjjj. Edited to add: I was wrong, it has THIRTY THREE textbooks on the list. O_O

On a completely different note, I liked this quiz about boardgames. Scott and I both rated really high on Conflict and Strategy, which you (cough) might not be surprised about. Yes I do like blocking people for no personal benefit. SO WHAT. Hahaha. Let me know what your results are if you do it!

Alright, back to work.

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And here are some of my paper-based projects lately.

I started a new recipe book, reserved for my all-time favourite recipes. Things we cook all the time. I’m not that good at lettering yet, mostly I just find cool fonts online and then copy them. These are a few of my favourite pages. I’m hoping this book is something that we will keep for a long long time.

Adult colouring. Broke out my set of Prismacolors that my mom bought for me in high school. They’re still good! This colouring page was photocopied out of the book* I gave Rosemarie for Christmas. It is insanely intricate so you’d better have a pencil sharpener handy! I found it very relaxing.

*Not an affiliate link. I don’t know how to do that.

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OK wow, I knew I had been procrastinating doing another Crafty WIP post, but I didn’t realize I’d left it TWO YEARS! Holy moly. I have a lot to show off, so I’ll have to do two posts! Here are some crossstitches I finished over the last couple years.

Papa and me in Fiji. My first photo pattern. I used My Photo Stitch to make a pattern out of a picture. I was so skeptical it was going to look ok because it was asking for like green and purple to stitch our faces, but it does!

The back was a little crazy.

The cloth is filthy and warped so not quite sure how I should display it yet.

Quick little Nintendo controller. I added the letters and the arrows to the pattern myself.

My spirit animal/life motto? Not sure what to do with this one as I didn’t leave enough extra room at the top. I might cut it out if I can figure out how to keep the cloth from unravelling, and then sew it onto something like a patch?

This one was fun to stitch. So cute. I do <3 Canada.

This was a huge project from last year. It’s a Frosted Pumpkin pattern, but I switched all the months around to fit the Southern Hemisphere (particularly Melbourne) because at that point I knew we were moving. I actually purposely didn’t show it to people in case they figured it out before I’d told work. Perhaps I was a little paranoid, haha.

Now I just have to get around to ironing and framing all of them!

My next crossstitch projects are either going to be a 22 page black and white Escher pattern that will probably take 80 years to finish, and/or experimenting with crossstitching on clothing using waste canvas.