Travelogue Day 52

15/7/06

What is this? Only last night I thought I would be feeling extra terrible after the beating my throat took, but it is now morning, and everything feels very much better. Oh, the wonders of spicy food and wine.

After clearing the nasty gunk from the various orifices of my head, I continued packing. I also finished the slice of carrot cake I got with my meat pies yesterday, for breakfast. As you would expect, it was rather tasty. Everything but the last-minute things, like my suit, has been packed.

Devon drops in just around noon and suggests we see if Fred is still in his room, and if so, we invite him to lunch. He was in his room, but he couldn't come to lunch as he was already meeting a friend who would later take him to the airport. We did, however, sit and chat with him about various things (the rather large cost of books in Australia, what we did and did not like about our undergraduate education, teaching styles, food). I also couldn't stop myself from coughing nearly constantly for the duration of our stay in Fred's room. It was rather embarrassing.

We left Fred's room to go to lunch, but when we hit the lobby, we ran into Tom, Mike, and Donna. Wondering what they got up to, we asked. They didn't do much as it turns out, just hanging out back in the UniLodge. We stayed there long enough to see Fred leave to meet his friend before setting out for Nando's.

Nando's is a chicken sandwich chain. They offer various Portuguese-style spiced versions of the sandwich. They spice it with peri-peri sauce (peri-peri is a chili pepper the Portuguese came across in East Africa if I recall their information correctly) to your desired level of hotness. The food is rather tasty even though it is a chain.

We continued preparing for our departure after lunch, and I realized that I was depressed that I was leaving. All of the signs were there. The bad attitude, relatively flat affect, tendency to have emo songs run through my head more than usual all tipped me off. That must mean I really like it here. But whinge as I might, I cannot change the schedule.

There was a tentative plan to find some kangaroo pizza tonight, but far too many people wanted to come along, so those plans failed before they had a chance to materialize. We still went looking, so the plan wasn't a total failure, but when we finally got to the Australian Hotel in The Rocks, seating options were not in our favor.

Despite this, we did order and eat. I had a small BBQ emu pizza and a little bit of Devon's kangaroo pie, which I traded a slice of my pizza for. Both were quite tasty, and I was surprised that the emu came as one large slice that covered all four pieces of the pizza (Anna was kind enough to cut it apart for us, since we both had our hands full). I have to say that I liked the kangaroo meat better than the emu.

After we finished, we met back up with the rest of the group (we had scattered earlier to find seating), and most of us walked back while four or so took a cab. Mike an I killed the goon. It tasted horrible; why did I drink that? We then came in on the middle of a drinking game in Donna's room. That was actually fun to watch, but I had to cut out when there was talk of going to the Lansdowne. I just didn't have it in me; too tired.