Last days of January summer

Eric and I are coming home on January 30th. Eric will be going to Denver to see his family and pick up our car and I will be coming home to snowy Minnesota. It's bittersweet because we don't want to leave all our new friends, its summertime, we love Australia. But we have not had any luck with jobs and we are running out of money and we decided that it was wiser to come home now while we still have enough to buy our plane tickets home. So we bought tickets to come home on January 30th which means we spent exactly 2 months in Australia. Our friends are sad to see us go but we have to do what we think is best. It will be strange to go from 80 degree weather to below zero weather in 24 hours! I am going to have to go get all my winter clothes out of storage. Anyway, Eric and I are trying to get in a few last Australian things we wanted to do before we come home. We took the train into the city yesterday and walked around. We got an awesome watermelon berry fruit shake from a little cafe in one of the alleyways. We also window shopped a bit and then rode the train back to Dannii's work. Dannii was about a half hour from closing so she played dress up with me (she works at a women's boutique) and I tried on some crazy clothes. She took some photos of me pretending to be a model so that was fun. Then we decided that we wanted to try out this asian restaurant that Dannii has been telling us about since we got here - it's called Jack's Satay Bar. Dannii and I had the sizzling beef and I was so hungry I scorched my tongue trying to eat it. It was really good. Then we were thinking about going to the night market which is this cool artist market that happens in the city on Wednesday nights but Eben was tired so Dannii decided that she wanted to use me as a model for a real mini photo shoot that she has been wanting to do (Dannii does professional photography on the side). The sun was starting to go down so it was getting cooler but we thought we would go for it anyway. The shoot was me in a swim suit while Eric and Eben were on either side of me and they threw buckets of water on me. Dannii would take the shot just as the water hit me. We are going to try it again next week on another hot day. Today Eric and I rode the bus to the mall and I picked up my last paycheck and told my work that I wouldn't be back. Then we went to this place called the pancake parlour (sorry if you're hungry I know I'm talking about a lot of food but I love food okay). Anyways, there were 4 birds that got in somehow and were flying around the restaurant while we were eating. I had a chocolate pancake with ice cream and strawberries and Eric had a buttermilk pancake with banana's foster and ice cream. YUM. Then we walked around some more until our stomach's settled and then we had to go buy stuff to make dinner. We made a chicken shepards pie basically it was really good and I have the recipe if anyone wants it. I got it out of an Australian food magazine. I told you I love food! Tonight Eben, Dannii and Eric went to see Charlie Parr a Minnesotan musician that they like. I decided that since I don't care that much about seeing him that I would stay home and save us the money from an extra ticket. Maybe tomorrow we will go to the beach or to Brunswick Street - those are 2 things that I want to do again before we leave. This weekend we are going to go to Phillip Island. I'm not sure what's there but I will be sure to tell you about it when we get back. xoxo Paula
P.S. like me and Eric's "family photo" :) the other one is me and the lovely Daniella!