Birthday! and exams

Happy 21st to me! Instead of having a party, or doing anything special, I studied for an exam. It was a little lame, but I think I did well on the exam, so. . . Instead, I've spread my birthday celebration out. On my birthday, I opened the birthday cards my family sent me - it was so nice to have cards! On Wednesday, Cari and I went out for dinner after our exam to "celebrate" the end of our class and my birthday. And then last night, Cari, Amanda, Carolyn and I went out for Indian at this super fun, cheap place in one of the northern suburbs. And tomorrow I'm going on a pub crawl. So I'm having the longest birthday ever.

I've had one exam, and still have the two I'm most nervous about to go. Our exams are held in the Royal Exhibition Hall (I'll take a picture at some point). Its a huge building on the World Historical Buildings Register or something like that. Its really pretty inside - I'd take a picture to show you, but they're really strict about electronics in the exam hall. About 2,000 students take exams at the same time. We get split up into two groups, depending on which side of the hall we're on, and we're assigned a number - I was 706 in my last exam. The hall is set up with rows and rows of desks and chairs. My Famine in the Modern World class took up about 3 columns of desks, which would be about 120 students. Its super intense. I miss exams in a small room, but obviously that wouldn't work here. The exam hall is also really cold, even though they have portable heaters spread throughout the hall.

My Famine exam wasn't too bad - it was 100 questions multiple choice, and a lot of them were pretty straightforward. Cari and I decided that our favorite question was "Patriarchy is indirectly responsible for child malnutrition. True or False". (True). I'm glad its done; it was a pretty depressing subject, and studying for it was a downer.

I have just over a week left, and then I go home. I'm getting excited to go home - I miss my family and friends, and I really want some mexican food. Its a little hard to believe I've been here almost 5 months - it seems like I just got here! I'll be sad to leave Melbourne - I really love this city. Cari and I were discussing how sad we are to leave the amazing tram system; the buses in Minneapolis just don't compete. I'm starting to plan out how I'll pack in my head, which is helping with the anxiety. I'm terrified I'm going to miss my flight, or lose my passport, or something else stupid and travel inhibiting. I've triple checked my flight time already, but I know I'll check it several more times before I leave next Saturday. I'm getting excited for next semester at Grinnell, too. I've been hired as a manager at Phonathon, and I've been elected one of the captains for the Ultimate team, which I'm pretty excited about. I've signed up for my subjects, and already have homework in one of them - of course, watching four movies isn't much of a hardship! So I'm pretty ready to go home, even though I'll miss Melbourne.