On Sunday Livia went to church with me at Curtin Community Church. It was exciting for me because I am pretty sure she is not a Christian and she really seemed to enjoy the service. Other than that, I mostly relaxed and worked on a couple of assignments.

On Monday, which was a public holiday (ANZAC ), I went to the part of Perth City called North Bridge for lunch with my Bible study group. North Bridge is a place with tons of restaurant, most of which are Asian, and it is also the area where most of the night clubs are located. We went to a Vietnamese restaurant, and to my knowledge, that was my first experience at a Vietnamese restaurant. The menu was very overwhelming, and based on my first experience at an Asian place in North Bridge (the very first night when I ended up ordering a dish with 5 or more meats) I chose something very simple: chicken, rice, and vegetables. The food was very tasty. I even tried a special drink (I think it was called Three Bean drink) which consisted of coconut milk, crushed ice, three different types of bean, and a few other things. As weird as it sounds, it was actually quite good. After lunch, we stopped in a Chinese grocery store. This was my first time in one, and it was really overwhelming because I couldn’t read any labels, and I had no idea what a lot of things were.

On Wednesday, I played tennis for the first time in a long while! I played with Du Vihn (my bible study leader) and another student. We were all on about the same level, so we had some good rallies. It was $10 to use the tennis court for an hour! At home, I just take things like that for granted. Later that night, I decided to go out with my friends to the Tav and the Waterford for Karaoke. Most of my friends go each week, but I only like to go once in a while. It was so much less crowded than the last time I was there, and I even sang Karaoke with two of my friends on stage. I barely even knew the song, but I still got up there anyway!

The next day I went on a field trip to the Perth Mint with my Australian studies class. The best part of the trip was getting to see 6 kilograms of liquid gold being poured into a mold and then seeing the pure gold after it cooled. Later on Thursday I went to the movie theater with a group of eight friends to see the Wolverine movie. My friend Nathan bought the biggest tub of popcorn I have ever seen, and between the two of us we practically finished it. I was feeling quite full after the movie though.

Friday Afternoon I went to my small group. We are currently studying Ephesians. It is a lot different being in a Bible study with other international students because everyone has different levels of proficiency in English. We often have to go slower to make sure everyone can understand what we are studying. After the study we went to Du Vihn’s house for dinner. We had a chicken curry dish, which was very tasty. I always learn something new about my international friends and the places they are from because we often talk about similarities and differences between our home country and Australia.

This morning Divya and I went shopping at the Carousel shopping center. We finally got a chance to catch up over lunch. We hadn’t seen each other in about two weeks. I really enjoy having the opportunity to hang out with her one on one, but it is also really cool because she has met all of my other friends as well and she enjoys hanging out with the whole group. I am planning to go to her church service tomorrow morning.