Day 28 (LaTrobe University) - Bendigo, Victoria Australia

It's been three months, and I couldn't wait any longer, I had to do it. I PUT ON MY FIRST PROGRAM! You can take the RA out of the Res Hall, but you can't take the RA mentality out of Brad Bender…Okay, that sounded better in my head…I started with something basic, a spaghetti dinner, aka "spag bol" as they call it here. We did run into a few barriers, like not having enough, or big enough, pots or utensils to cook everything, but we adapted, overcame, and succeed. I attempted to provide a poor Uni student spaghetti dinner where everyone just pays a dollar, but some of my flatmates wouldn't have it. We had to get garlic bread and mince (hamburger meat), whereas I just wanted to provide spaghetti and sauce. After I started cooking and accidently burned a little of the mince others starting taking over. I was okay with it.Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and we had a GOOD tea (dinner) instead of the usual 2 minute noodle dinner that everyone eats on the weekend. And the program concluded as most of my cooking programs do, me doing all the dishes…

The night ended interestingly. After hearing about prom while watching American Pie, a few of my mates came in to ask me about/what prom is.I then spent an hour explaining prom, Sadies Hawkins, and Homecoming, as well as other school traditions. I almost started hyperventilating. But once again I naively assumed everyone did these things. Most of you should know that I'm pretty hardcore about school spirit, so learning that they don't have fight songs, alma maters, traditions, etc., it just killed me. They do have somewhat equivalent types of activities, most having to do with competition between houses - basically it's just like in Harry Potter where everyone gets assigned to a house when they start high school (which starts in the 7th grade) and are in that house until they graduate. There's also a dance at the end of the school year where students learn two or three formal dances to perform. I'm still trying to figure it all out…