Pancakes and Policing

Hello dear readers, how are you doing today? A couple of days ago, as recommended by one of our policing lecturers last semester, a few of my friends and I had lunch at the Pancake Parlour (mmm delicious!) and visited the Victoria Police Museum. We have been wanting to go for months now, but the museum isn't open on weekends, and all our classes clashed throughout the week, so this trip has been a long while coming! The museum itself was a little hard to find and it was absolutely freezing cold outside, but it was well worth the trek.

Here is a list of some of the highlights of the museum:

• Seeing the Russell St bombing car and reading more about it. We went over this case briefly last semester, but it was interesting to learn about it in more detail.
• Learning about the second bombing that happened only a few months after the famous Russell St bombing.
• Seeing a 19th Century vampire slaying kit (yes, really! It had a wooden stake, some sort of vampire poison, silver bullets, and a gun, amongst other supplies).
• Seeing some old crime scene photos from the 1920s-1940s. These photos were rather beautiful in a sad sort of way.
• Getting to see a model of a head, with all the traits of phrenology written all over it. If you don't know, phrenology is a pseudo-science which examines the shape of a person's skull, and how this relates to their personality and traits. We learnt a bit about phrenology in my forensics class last year, and it was interesting to see how it was mapped out in person.

If you are ever in the area, or live in Melbourne and in need of something to do, I would really recommend that you pay this museum a visit. You can find their website here, so definitely go check it out if it sounds like something you would be interested in doing.

Let me know if you've ever been to a similar sort of museum, and how you found that. Have a lovely day!

An Afternoon Drive

I remember the first time I wanted to go for a ride in a classic car - it was when my friend and I would carpool to school in primary school. The street we'd park the car in before walking up to school had a classic car parked in one of the driveways. My friend and I adored that car, always talked about getting ones of our own, and driving everywhere in them, although our plans were (obviously) never followed through. Of course, I've been able to sit in vintage cars in museums since then, but I have never actually been for a ride in one, until today that is.

This beautiful car belongs to one of my dad's friends, and he has been restoring it for several years now. Today he brought it round to our house and took me out for a short drive - something I've been wanting to do for only the last 12 years of my life! It was kinda scary to begin with, because these cars have no airbags and no seatbelts, but once you start to relax, it becomes fun to feel the wind whipping your hair around, and to smell that classic car smell.

My trip in this car today has rekindled my little dream of owning one of these cars one day, so I'm going to have to start saving now! (although I should probably learn how to drive first...).

I wish you all a happy rest of your week, thanks for reading!

What I'm Reading This Winter

Hello dear readers, how are you all feeling today? I've been having a pretty good holiday so far - been shopping, went to see the Minions movie with my friend, been working on getting my etsy store up and running, and have been thinking up ideas for Camp NaNoWriMo in July. All in all, it's actually been pretty busy. And in other news, I'm excited for tomorrow because I'm going out for a lovely birthday lunch with a friend!

Anyway, I can't say enough how great it is to be on holidays until August. University is really tough, but you've got to admit, it makes up for it with all the breaks we get! Over the semester, I find that I don't get a lot of time for recreational reading. The books I want to read for my own enjoyment get pushed back by mountains of journal articles and textbooks, so these holidays I'm going to try and focus a good amount of my time off to progressing through my reading list. The three things currently at the top of this list are...

1. A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

I have been meaning to read this books for YEARS now, but it's just one of those things I've never gotten around to.

2. The July/August issue of Frankie

Who doesn't love Frankie?!

3. The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton

This is a book my mum got me a couple of months ago. I have already started reading it, and it's pretty good so far, but I plan to finish it over these holidays.

As you can see, even Storm is interested in reading with me! Let me know what books/reading material you would recommend, or what books you are reading at the moment!

On Learning Dutch

My family on my father's side are all from the Netherlands, and for the last few years I have been really wanting to learn Dutch, but just haven't truly summoned the courage until recently. When we lived in the UK, we visited Holland several times, and I don't remember a lot of what we got up to, but the memories I do have are fond ones - going to the cheese market in Gouda, visiting historic sites, eating sooo many Stroopwafels and Speculaas... I would really love to be able to go back again someday, and be able to speak the language as well.

Resources I am using to learn Dutch:

• Duo Lingo - a lot of you probably know about this site already, but in case you don't, you can go on, create an account, and learn a whole variety of languages for free! I'm currently using it for Dutch and German.
• Future Learn - I'm currently taking part in a (free) 3 week Dutch course, which has been really helping out my speaking skills. It's not quite the same as being able to learn face-to-face, but it's giving me a good start, especially on pronunciation and day-to-day language skills.
• Quizlet - This place is a lifesaver for learning vocabulary! Whether you make your own flashcards, or search for sets that others have made, it has had great benefits for me.

Of course, there are many other resources you can use, the ones I listed are simply the ones I have found to be the most useful, informative, and easy to use.

Now, I'll be honest with you - after learning German for 6+ years, trying to learn Dutch is very hard, and I get the two languages mixed up A LOT! As one might imagine, this does admittedly, lead to some rather awkward situations. However, I also find the similarities between the two languages to be helpful, and I think that already knowing so much German helped me learn words and grammar faster as well.

I have such a great passion for learning languages, and although my schedule is going to be busy next semester with university, my friend and I are looking to do a class or two in Auslan (Australian Sign Language). So, we'll see how that turns out, and hopefully it will be much harder to mix up with the other languages I'm taking!

Apologies for the shorter post today, I've been a little short on time recently what with studying for exams and all, but my last exam is this wednesday, so things will be back to normal soon!

How I Was Productive On My Day Off

This week is one I have been dreading since the start of semester - the week of the statistics midterm. It's not that I don't enjoy statistics, because, as surprising as it may sound, I do I really like analysing things and finding out what's significant and what's not, what I don't enjoy is the 4 tedious hours of class every week, the exam, and the midterm test. Our test goes for 2 hours and for this test we are using the oh-so-lovely-and-simple SPSS (that one was sarcasm) (previously our tests have only been paper-based, and assignments were SPSS based). However, in saying all of that there is something good that comes of of statistics midterm week - no stats lecture!, which for me means I get an extra day off!

After an hour of getting up and procrastinating I decided to tackle my to do list for the day (note: my bullet journal in the photo below is looking much improved since I first started it). 

Despite the cold weather, I simply wasn't in the mood for tea today, so I decided to prepare myself some strawberry water in this cute little jar cup I got a few days ago (actually I got a whole set, but the others are currently storing stationery on my shelves). I know the whole putting-fruit-and-veggies-in-water thing has been a really big thing lately, but it's not as overrated as you might think. Until the start of this year, for me, it had become one of those things that you mean to try out someday, but never do. But one day I watched my friend drinking some one day and got jealous at how delicious it looked, so I made some for myself when I got home that night, and haven't looked back since!

I spent the morning working on my essay for sports psychology (and finally reached the word count!), took a break for lunch, and then came back to my desk to get my readings for the week done.

I successfully ticked everything in my bullet journal off for today, which I'm really happy with. I'm going to try and force myself to take the evening off doing study, and just relax a bit, play some games, maybe watch a few episodes of Dance Academy or Young Dracula (hehehe). I must say I'm rather proud of my efforts today, and I hope this post has inspired you at least a little to make good use of your days off.