Shayla vs. The World

The most wonderful time of the year. I definitely struggled adjusting to the cold this year. It doesn't take long for you to forget what it's like. And to go from beach weather to 9°F (-12°C) is quite a shock on the system. My trip was a lot less eventful than the last trip home. Most of my friends were still at uni working hard for finals. I intended to make a trip to Ames for the Iowa vs. Iowa State men's basketball game (which turned out to be a pretty great game), but considering the freezing cold weather I decided not to go. Other than that I did the very usual Christmas festivities. Making Christmas cookies. One of my FAVOURITE traditions :) Only a small portion of the colouring that happened with the girls. Who knows what was happening? SNOW!!!!!! I did my best to spend plenty of time with all the kids. They are what makes it so hard being so far away from home. I babysat Grady and Ada one day while Jess and Mitch were at work, and Maddo...

Sydney - LA: 13 hours LA layover : 2 hours LA - Detroit: 4 hours Detroit layover: 2 1/2 hours Detroit - Moline: 1 1/2 hours This trip never fails to completely exhaust me. It has been decided that going this direction is much more exhausting than going the other direction. I feel like it's harder on me each time, and my mother agreed that going home from Sydney was harder than the trip there. Why this is so I'm not entirely sure. I have a few theories but they might be entirely wrong. This time my flight took off at 12:20. I ran into a friend in the security line who was also heading to the states for the holidays (Miami though so he's probably enjoying much better weather.) Security never ceases to frustrate me. Usually not because of the seemingly unnecessary precautions they are required to take (luckily in Australia you don't have to take your shoes off), but because of people's complete disregard of said precautions. One lady held up the line because she ...

I've only ever worked in Food Service. My first job was at the local small town ice cream parlour. The old fashioned type where you walk up to a window and order from someone on the inside where they proceed to feel like animals in a zoo on display while you stare at them making your food in a glass box. I then worked in a McDonald's which is just a whole different experience of it's own. And in Sydney I'm now working as a server in a Lebanese Restaurant (and worked in an Italian Restaurant as well for a little bit of time). It's an interesting experience to say the least, but most of all I've learned a few tricks I now have up my sleeve to help myself when I'm eating out. I've decided to share them with you (although this is also pretty much a rant about some of the insanely rude customers I've had to deal with). It's important to remember that every restaurant is run differently, and these examples are quit specific to the one I work in, but I...

HOLY COW AM I EXCITED TO GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!!! I'm dreading the cold weather though. Okay, not entirely. I'm hoping for a white Christmas. I realise I did not post at all in November. Nothing really exciting was happening. Just working on uni a lot. Made it through exams alive. Then started working at my job a lot to make the monies :) It's finally summer here and we're starting to get some really nice weather. I haven't had much of a chance for a beach day yet though :( I will definitely get on that once I get back in January. The past week I've been working every day, meaning I've literally been living off Lebanese food. As much as I love me some Shish Kebabs and Lady Fingers I cannot wait for some food from home. Random side note, I think the restaurant I work in deep fries more of their food than the average American restaurant. I love it :) Anywho, I managed to leave it to the very last minute to pack, as in I'll leave my apartment in ...

What a great Birthday. I honestly don't know what else to say other than that. It was absolutely fantastic. My day was packed with fun activities. I had absolutely no plans at all until about 5 on Tuesday when I decided I might as well at least enjoy the standard Wednesday double happy hour at the unibar. I studied until 11:30 Tuesday night. I have so much work to do and didn't plan on doing any of it on my Birthday so I worked to the last minute. Just before midnight I met up with the boys I hang out with. They had beers for me. We just hung out and drank for a bit, they played some rugby in the living room (which ends up being way more intense than it sounds). A sort of cool thing about the night was it was thunderstorming. We get a lot of rain but I miss the thunderstorms from home, especially around my birthday which is storm season in Iowa. Once the rain calmed down a bit everyone headed to bed. I woke up with only one thing in mind... The beach. This is what was c...

One thing I learned quite quickly when I first arrived in January was about bush fires (what Americans would call forest fires). They're quite a problem in Australia. Back home I'm used to burn bans on bad drought years but here it's pretty much every year. The weather is getting warmer, so naturally the threat for fires goes up. Yesterday they struck in Sydney. Don't worry I'm fine. I live very far in the city and did not see any actual fires where I am. I did see this however... Our skies looked quite interesting most of the day. It went through various shades of grays/oranges/reds. Even the sun was red. Today is cooler and not as windy so it's clear thankfully. Just hoping there wasn't too much damage :( (Photo credits to my friend Estel. I'm a failure and forgot to take pictures.)

So last post I forgot to mention that it was post #50. So instead I'm going to be all 'HOLY COW THIS IS MY 51ST POST'. Well yeah. Makes me a little nostalgic I guess. Also a little surprised that people are interested enough to read 51 posts about my life. Or maybe people don't read them? Lawls. Anywho. I know you've all heard of Oktoberfest. If you haven't, get out from under your rock and google it right now. Well people around these parts like to have their own little Oktoberfest celebrations. Normally there's a uniparty. They cancelled that this year however, so some friends of mine stepped in and started planning something which ended up turning in to an event big enough to have 3 different cruises around the harbour and an afterparty at Home Bar (in Darling Harbour). I started in the arvo with Abby for food and a few drinks... Fruit drinks neither of us even liked. Mmmmmm Bier She makes me food. I love it. Our cruise went from 6-...