Finally Here!

So I survived the fifteen hour flight. I actually slept a good ten hours of it, which didn’t surprise me as I’ve been know to fall asleep at the most inopportune times anyway (such as every day of Ochem lecture and during a 12 hour drive up to Tahoe through a snowstorm to name a few). We arrived at the Melbourne airport and met up with the Arcadia staff, Maz and Kat (they like shortening names here), and we headed off on a twenty minute bus ride to a little town outside of Melbourne called St. Kilda. We split off into groups to explore the area and get lunch. We looked at different shops and then walked along the beach.

After lunch we got back on the bus and drove for about an hour and a half to a national park where we saw our first kangaroos. They reminded me a lot of deer back in Sonora. They just kind of hang out and stare at you and then hop away when you get too close. I got about thirty feet from them. We even saw a few Joeys sticking their heads out of their Mum’s pouches.

After checking out the kangaroos we drove to Sorrento, which is a cute little beach town where a lot of more well off people have beach homes, etc. We stayed at a lovely little bed and breakfast called Whitehall. We had a home baked meal for dinner at the bed and breakfast and after dinner we went on a walk down to the beach to look at the stars. The constellations are all different in the southern hemisphere and the milky way is really bright. After the walk we were advised to stay up as late as we could to help us avoid getting jet lag too bad, but I could only make it until like ten. I slept like a baby!

This is a spider that was hanging out on one of the door frames. I thought it was pretty big and pointed it out to some others. When the bed and breakfast owner saw it he pointed it out to some other Aussies and was like "Oh look...and they think that's a big one!" He and the others then started to exchange horror stories of spiders the size of dinner plates falling on them while they were driving and finding giant spiders being inside of their pant legs after line-drying clothes. It made me feel pretty wimpy.

Sorrento

Whitehall Bed and Breakfast

On Saturday morning I had my first experience with vegemite. At breakfast there was an assortment of jellies and what looked like nutella. I tried a little taste of it on a piece of cereal and my mouth immediately puckered and I had to eat some fruit to get the taste out of my mouth. Apparently the best way to eat it is on a piece of toast with lots of butter, but I think I’ll stay away from it for a while.

Saturday night we had a personal concert by the band Bushwazee. They taught us typical Ozzie songs and little dances and it was loads of fun.

The AFL match

Sunday morning we checked out of Whitehall and drove to Melbourne. The city reminds me a lot of Ottawa in that it’s all centered around the river called the ‘Yarrah’, which literally means “flowing”. The architecture is a mix between older really beautiful buildings and more modern buildings. We explored the city for a bit and then went to an AFL match. The field was huge and we didn’t really understand what was going on at first but people around us explained what the rules were.