A little late...

Well, after nearly 2 1/2 weeks in Australia I've finally got around to setting up a blog! The reason for the delay is mainly laziness, and the catalyst for finally doing it was I heard something on the radio today that I didn't want to forget, and I'm rubbish at keeping a diary. Basically, I was listening to the radio in the car and a man phoned in, sounding remarkably happy. The host said "you're sounding cheery!" and the man said "Well, I woke up alive this morning, so I'm already ahead!." This just seemed to me such a good example of what I've experienced in Australia so far-- people are nice, they're friendly, they remember your name and are interested in hearing about you. The person who you're buying a ticket from at the station calls you "mate." My friend Lily, who I'm staying with here in Brisbane, keeps telling me that I shouldn't sound so surprised when people are nice, but I am, because it's so different from what I'm used to. (not that that's bad, by the way-- the niceness kind of freaks me out, to be honest) Anyway, now that I've said that I should probably do a bit of an update as to what I've been doing in Australia.
As I said, I've been in Brisbane for 2 1/2 weeks, and the first 2 were purely holiday. Lily and I went to most parts of Brisbane, it seems-- scoped out some markets, went to two different comedy shows (Frank Woodley and Tripod, both hilarious. Australian comedy is wonderful), watched a lot of Gossip Girl (and West Wing, to be fair), and just had a relaxing time. We did some good Australian things as well, like going to Brisbane Forest Park and seeing all the Australian animals-- wombats, wallabies, snakes, and a platypus who we watched for about 15 minutes. Last weekend we went up to Toowoomba, where her relatives live, for a big party for her Uncle. It's only about an hour and a half outside of the fairly large city of Brisbane, but as soon as we were on the way it was suddenly farm country-- lots of cows and even an emu farm, which was kind of awesome. The party was also typically Australian (or so I'm told)-- a game of hide-and-seek involved the phrase "Don't hide there, that's where the cane toads and snakes are," and later in the evening (when quite a lot of alcohol had been consumed by some), some cousins embarked on a mission involving golf clubs and cane toads, justified by their being an "introduced species" and a "pest." (To be fair, again, they did examine one animal and, seeing it was a green frog, declared it a "good one.") There was also a massive bonfire and, the next morning, what looked like a full English breakfast except for the fact that it had been cooked entirely on the barbie (and lacked black pudding.)
Coming up to date, this Monday I started an internship at Michael Johnson's office. He's the federal member of Parliament for the district of Ryan, which is made up of Brisbane's western suburbs. It's been very good so far (everyone is, of course, nice), and next week I'll be going down to Canberra because Parliament will be in session, so that should be good.
Anyway, sorry this is such a massive post, I didn't think I had quite so much to say. I'll try to update this semi-regularly.
Bye for now!