the water in the toilet doesn't spin the other way

i don't think. errr i don't think it really spins at all. there's two ways to flush the toilet - half flush and whole flush. what that means? i'm not quite sure. they seem to be pretty much the same.

last night we got home and decided to go explore the area around the claremont. it got dark really fast (since it's winter - i still can't get over that), so it felt waaay later than it actually was (probably also 'cause we were tired from the plane ride). anyway, most of the stores were closed at around 7:00p, and many of the restaurants were pretty much deserted, but it was nice walking around in melbourne. everyone walks really fast, and we have to remember to walk on the left side of the sidewalk (don't know when i'm going to get used to that). anyway, our first dinner in australia was at a cute mexican restaurant called fiesta just a couple stores down from the hotel (apologies for the bad photo, we need to get pro at taking pictures of ourselves with 4 people). [at dinner]

anyway, it's winter here in melbourne. it's raining and pretty windy, almost makes us want to bust out our christmas music - pretty exciting. (: but, it's the end of june. so, this morning most of us woke up pretty early, likely due to jet lag of some sort. the claremont includes breakfast, and so we go down to eat. there's this spread in australia called vegemite, basically yeast extract. note: it's probably an acquired taste, so large amounts of it may not be so good.

anyhow, we made our way to the train station (luckily it's only a minute walk from the claremont), took the train (about 15 min) to the uni, and walked the minute to the building. we got here at around 10:00a, and there was no one here! at around 10:30a, people started trickling in. we're still trying to get all set up, and maybe learn a little about nimrod today. but for now, just chilling and hanging out. [in our cubicle]

>> NIMROD is the program that we came to Melbourne to use. From what I understand, the people in David's lab developed this program, and what it does is basically runs the program over and over again with slight changes so that we don't have to do that manually. (don't quote me on that, i'll get a more detailed descirption later :P )