I didn't end up going wine tasting in Hunter Valley on Wednesday ... car stuff was just too hard. I was okay with that, we just rescheduled to next Wednesday and hopefully we can figure it all out by then! Instead Katrina came over and we decided to do a little baking. We made the most delicious peanut butter cookies I have ever had in my entire life, the secret is to add a bit of lemon, to really bring out the pb flavor! While those were in the oven I decided to try out a recipe I had discovered for making homemade oreos! They were basically two cookies with the same oreo filling in between them. It was surprisingly easy to make! The secret we discovered is to keep the choc cookes smaller because they tend to expand quite a bit while in the oven. I also discovered that they do not have vegetable shortening/Crisco in AU! I went all over the shops looking for it and asking people for it and no one knew what I was talking about. They have a different substance called Copha which is like a harder version, which I discovered once I got home and my handy flatmate did some Aussie-American translation for me to understand! So instead of shortening I used butter, which worked pretty good... we just had a light yellow creme instead of the usual white oreo creme, but it tasted the same! After our cooking adventures I decided to start reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe which is the sequel to Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe. I really enjoy this book although it takes a lot of mental effort to read. I was looking for a lighter read but it's kinda nice to have to be paying such close attention to what I'm reading. It's written in the same way as the first book/movie so there are a lot of nonsense words and definitions to learn, but it's great!
On Thursday I had lunch with Jess & Hayley in the city. We chilled in Starbucks of which I haven't had since America! It actually felt like I was drinking a little taste of MN, even though Starbucks is an international company I guess I just associate it with Grand Ave. Then I met up with Kaz in Newtown for some good ol' Max Brenners. I'm really going to miss being within walking distance of a chocolatier!! Thursday night ended up being pretty chill. Headed home for a lateish dinner and just spent the arvo hanging with Jess and reading. We got inot a convo about Love Languages which really got me thinking. I decided to start reading a book of hers called Love Languages for Singles so I can get a better view of Love Languages, I mean I know the generally but not really specifically or how to actually apply them to the relationships around me.
Friday morning was really relaxing. Slept in, spent like a good hour reading the Bible. I love doing one on one time with God but I generally tend to enjoy praying or worshiping or pretty much anything else other than reading the Bible. Don't get me wrong I love the Bible but I tent to generate towards verses I want to hear rather than letting God speak to me through whatever passage I am reading. But this morning was different. I read Ephesians and Phillipians, which are AMAZING books! I mean I know key verses bu this time I decided to read them as actual letters written to like me, to the people of this generation and of today. It was so encouraging. If you get the chance I strongly encourage you to just sit down and read the entire book of Ephesians as a letter. It will change your world. Then I delved into reading more of the Love Language book. That also continues to CHANGE my world! I read about the love languages of Words of Affirmation, Gifts and Acts of Service. I had no idea how prevalent these things are in our life! I had never really considered myself to be a words of affirmation person, Jess had tagged me as one the day before when we had our conversation so I decided to really read into it and see how it applied to me. It totally did. I pretty much sat there crying while reading the entire chapter of it because it was my life, and the story that they used to illustrate it was just so beautiful. That is most definitely my most prominent love language. I think my second love language is Acts of Service. I never really realized how often I do acts of service for other people because that is what feeds into my words of affirmation and into others doing acts of service in return! Like that explains why I love cleaning for other people so much, and like doing anything I can to make peoples lives just a little bit easier. It was interesting because the book was talking a lot about how people tend to get hurt by their parents because they don't always know how to speak the love language of their children, but I feel like my mother and I have the exact same love languages which is why I find it so easy to have her as my best friend! See since she's pretty busy I've always loved doing little things such as cooking dinner or cleaning for her or anything that would make it so she would have one less thing on her to-do list and she would often love cleaning my room or my car or just doing stuff for me too. Here's where things get interesting in my dissection of my love languages... My mom always have given me praise on specific things that I do around the house and she always speaks to my personality and how it is reflected in the kind things that I do. That is exactly the type of love language I need! But I don't think that I've mastered how to love others with my language as much as would be beneficiary. I also have no idea how to love with gifts. Although we need all of the languages spoken into our lives, gifts is the one I identify the least with! I mean now I can definitely see how I've had strong gift givers in my life, that I've loved and appreciated... but have never really given as many gifts back. I'm still in the process of wrapping the concept of having like an object represent love so strongly. I'm going to be intentional in improving in that aspect and loving in that way! I seriously cannot wait to finish this book and apply these things to my life. Usually I'm really bad at reading these types of 'self-help' books but this one has a lot of psychology and a good integration of Christian perspective too so it's really fascinating.
I headed off to work after my huge morning of revelations happier than a clam! :) After work I was in a super happy energetic mode, so what did I do? Love my housemates by giving the bathroom & kitchen a thorough cleaning!! Jess and I were going to head out for some adventures but she was pretty tired at the end of her long day so we decided to go get some pizza and I had brought home some good ol' rum & raisin gelato so we had a little feast! We're also having another Student Life misso stay with us this weekend so he joined us as well!
Today Jess and I headed to the shops and picked up everything we needed for a little dinner party! Erins mom and sister have been here in AU visiting and they're coming over along with some close friends of hers (and ours) to just show her family some Christian community (her family aren't Christians). Jess is a freaking amazing cook so she's been teaching me a lot! She's making a roast for tonight along with this beautiful crumble dessert with a side of Ice Cream (made from scratch!). SHe taught me how to make ice cream today! We made 4 different smaller containers; added blue food coloring and blueberries to one, red food coloring and rasberries and strawberries to the other, left one a plain white, and swirled in color to the last one. If you haven't caught on the colors are red, white and blue! We are most def having a 4th of July party, with hot dogs and alllll! Gonna show these Aussies how to celebrate America (said in a joking way.. haha).
So yeah we're expecting about 10 people total for the dinner tonight. Unfortunately I have to work at 8 so I'll have to probs leave before desert :( but I'm still gald I'm at least able to be there for a little bit!
