Dinner and a Movie

Here's to another ridiculously long weekend.


To start off, the Clipsal races ran from Thursday to Sunday. Basically it's this whole slew of car races where several city streets are shut down. All the bogans (Aussie hicks) come out of the woodworks, and there is this incessant buzzing that can be heard throughout the CBD. At first it was intriguing, and the sound of the cars driving around the track was exciting, but after the first day, I was already getting sick of it.

Before I get in to all the events of this past weekend, let me just say that I have now been out 4 nights in a row. Once again I am exhausted. And naps have been my best friend lately. 


Thursday I was invited out to see a show at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. I hadn't been there yet, so I was quite excited. We went to The Garden of Unearthly Delights, about a 10 minute walk from my apartment. The garden is free to get into, but show tickets and food/drinks are extra. It is basically set up like a really quirky midway/circus. There are circus tents and salons as show venues, as well as a ferris wheel, and a double decker cocktail bus, where we spent a lot of time talking to the friendly bartender. We bought tickets to Sammy J & Randy which was hilarious, and really well done. I noticed there was an act called 3 Canadians, so I'll have to check that out sometime while I'm here as well. 
After the show we met up with Ali and Heather who had happened to find themselves with a Clipsal sponsorship team. So after a few drinks we headed home for the night. 


Friday was the date of our much anticipated Canadian dinner. We wanted to thank all the shack people for making us feel so welcome, so we invited them all over for some Canadian eats. Clearly poutine was a must. We couldn't find any cheese curds in the grocery, so regular cheese had to suffice. We weren't very surprised when nobody knew what poutine was, but we couldn't believe that no one had heard of perogies before. They may not be Canadian, but they are definitely readily available there. Perogies were then added to the dinner menu, but you can't get them here, so Ali had to use her grandmother's recipe and make them all by hand. We realized that most foods you associate with Canada are basically all consisting of starch, so we also threw in some baked veggies to round it out. 


We did the tacky thing and dressing in red and white, threw some of our photos from back home into a slide show (Tim Horton's was featured excessively), and made up a playlist of Canadian artists. Everyone loved the food, and then we introduced them to a few Canadian drinking games (Beer pong, Flip cup, Zumi zumi). Aisha ushered us all into some going out clothes and off we went to find some good music to dance off the rest of the night.
In the morning we made a typical Canadian breakfast for those who stayed over consisting of pancakes, sausages, scrambled eggs, and buttery cinnamon sugar apples all completely drowned in syrup.

Saturday the there was an outdoor cinema set up at the shack. They hired a projector and set up a whole screening area to show friends and family some of the short videos they've put together. What those guys have managed to do is pretty incredible. Afterwards we all hung out at the shack and us Canadians thought it was about time we taught the Australians Slap Jack. I believe it was well received.

Sweet setup

Speeches to start off the night

No one can resist a good game of Slap Jack

Sunday was supposed to be a relaxing day so I re-dyed my hair (it's gone bleach blond in about a month), and had a nap. I was then invited out to the Adelaide Festival at Barrio. I was still pretty awake from my nap, so I headed out. Barrio was pretty cool. They took over an open area with a big sculpture and lots of concrete pillars that are the perfect height for tables or chairs. The entrance was the word BARRIO entirely lit up. You had to walk through one of the R's to get in. The event was free but you had to give an offering to Barrio to gain entrance. I wasn't aware of that, so they gave me a little disco ball to offer up. Inside they had divided the whole area up into sections so that it was almost maze-like. There were several bars all with different themes (desert, ski lodge, candy bar, etc.), a band set-up, a free tropical fruit stand, a dj, some guy setting up a rube-golberg machine, and some free arcade games. The whole thing was pretty cool but unfortunately there wasn't enough light for me to get any good pictures.

Entrance at Barrio

Our relaxing day was pushed back to Monday. Class in the morning, and dinner and sunset watching at Glenelg Beach in the evening. I needed that.