My word, shall we have some tea and niceties?

Today I ventured to Mt Tamborine for a delightful afternoon of "tea and niceties". It was for my friend and classmate Nicole's 30th birthday. She can be pictured above - she is wearing the long necklace. All of the other girls are from my class as well, except for Jess who is my favourite friend and in med with Jeremy. Alyssa, the girl in the flowered dress, is in my research group with Nicole and we've become quite the tight knit circle of friends over the last year and a half. Nicole and Alyssa both recently got engaged, so hopefully I will finally have my chance to attend an Aussie wedding (or two!) As you can see, there is an assortment of "niceties" to sample, including round cucumber sandwiches and heart shaped egg salad sandwiches. Ooh lala! Tres fancy. Note that I am not normall this tall, but was wearing very high shoes.

Speaking of shoes, a dilemma has arisen. Speech pathologists are known for their obsession with fashion and expensive clothes (yeah, I don't really fit in here). Recently, our lecturers have started talking about graduation. We even had part of a lecture dedicated to things we need to know for graduation. Part of this lecture (and there were even slides) was pertaining to shoes. Apparently the lecturers get quite bored at the grad ceremonies (I mean...who doesn't? It really is pretty damn boring) and to keep themselves entertained, they critique shoes. So we have been advised that the most important component of our outfit is the shoes, since everything else will be covered up and told to buy expensive, pretty shoes in order to keep our lecturers entertained. Jeez...the stresses of this world!