If there’s one thing we’ve learned in our time here it’s that going to school in paradise is rough. Waking up at 6 a.m. for class with the sun already shining and the beach within sight, it takes infinite self-control to turn your back on paradise, trudge to the bus stop and head to class. That’s not to say that classes are boring, not by any means. But going to school in paradise is BRUTAL. Add to that the exhaustion that comes with lounging by the beach, the stress of working on your tan and the pressure of soaking up every perfect second and by the end of the week we are completely wiped out.
Last week we survived off Lamington cake to get through the exhaustion, but this week we needed a bit more of a kick. So Thursday night as we tried figure out what would get the weekend started off right, we decided that a solid night of sushi would do the trick. After bumbling around Broadbeach trying to follow the little blue dot on my iPhone and get it to line up with the red pin that signaled our arrival, we finally found it. Ordinarily being the only people in a sushi restaurant would’ve been a bad sign, but most of the restaurants close earlier here so as we slipped in at 9 they were about ready to close.
But as we gorged on sushi it became clear that it was going to take more to beat the exhaustion. So we decided our next step was to find cookie dough and eat it on the beach. Seemed like a fairly simple plan.
But no.
We walk across the street to Woolworths, the local grocery store, and walk straight to the first frozen food section in sight. No luck. We move on to the next one. Aisle by aisle we go through failing to find cookie dough. Finally we found a woman who worked there and asked if she could direct us to the cookie dough. We might as well have been speaking Swahili. We repeated it a second time and after going through a series of the most confused facial expressions I’ve ever seen, she offered to direct us to another guy who worked there who was apparently the Frozen Section Expert. We repeated the question to him and he looked similarly confused, but assured us that their store didn’t carry it, whatever that crazy foreign item called cookie dough was. We left the store defeated.
And then inspiration struck again.
Around the corner from Woolworth’s was Max Brenner’s aka Chocolate Heaven. As we walked in the hard part became figuring out exactly what we wanted. Brownies or cookies, chocolate soufflé or chocolate and banana pizza, pots of melted chocolate or strawberry fondue. The choices were endless. Two of us went with the chocolate soufflé while roomie #3 tried out the brownie. It was all rich chocolate deliciousness, just what we needed to finish off the week (or start the weekend, depending on how you look at it).
But despite Max Brenner’s ability to bring new meaning to our life, it didn’t make up for the entire country of Australia Not Having Cookie Dough. So we set to work figuring out how to assuage our cookie dough fix. One website alleged that we could find it in some stores while other sites claimed it really didn’t exist.
Two nights later we decided to investigate further. First, we went to the two other convenience stores by our apartment and came up with nothing. So then we decided to make the walk to Pacific Fair and see if the store there had any. By the time we got there it was 5:40 p.m. on a Saturday and they had just closed. Yes, another oddity of Australia. Nothing is open when you need it. So that was strike three. Cookie dough fail.
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