It has definitely been a while! Hope that you all are doing splendidly and loving the lives you're living! If I haven't heard from you in a while, that makes me sad. Unless I harbor secret resentment for you. Then we're cool. As far as you know...
Since I last posted:
- I missed out on an a really cool Queen's event called Ladies and Gent's night! Basically it was a really classy pub crawl. Everyone dressed up in black tie kinda attire and people were paired up in guy-girl couples just to make things somewhat formal. I heard it was super fun. I missed out because I finally snagged a job! I'm working in the dining hall for Wednesday night formal dinner. Next week I'm also starting work for the Queen's Groundskeeper/Gardener! All good news because Australian wages are ridiculous. In a good way.
- I saw my first footy game on TV! It looked like a mess to me but a very fun, enjoyable and intense mess. Things that make it different from rugby or NFL are that it's played on an oval, you can only kick goals, you can't throw the ball (you have to punch it to your teammates), you have to punt the ball to make a long pass, and there's no line of scrimmage so people are constantly coming at you from all sorts of directions (with bad intentions). Can't wait to go to a game at the MCG!
- I've become obsessed with these two videos from some American reality show Sing Off. My friend introduced this group Pentatonix to me, and they did some insane performances on the show.
Ridiculous
Nuts
...yeah they won
...yeah they won
- We played a Queen's scrimmage in American Football. It was really fun. Footy guys make their living going up to snatch the ball out of the air, so you better believe I got skyed a few times by large Australian men
- Cornell Pre-enroll: I wanted something like this
I got something more like this:
It's actually not that bad; I just need to do some rearranging come fall!
My diet has become 90% Chocolate Easter Eggs
Easter break came and went. The social committee has flooded the corridors with little chocolate eggs and they're just so available and so delicious. Easter Sunday was a busy day for me. First thing in the morning (for me at least; it was noon), I got picked up by a Christian Union staff guy to have lunch at his house. He'd invited me to his little house church a few times before, but I'd never gotten around to going. Lo and behold, I was the only young person there! Unless you count the swarms of childrens. It was a good time though and free wine and bbq is never a bad thing!
Highlights from lunch:
- I met a really nice Malaysian couple doing their postgraduate studies at Melbourne Uni. They named their son "River" which I think is amazing. He likes cars.
- A few of the adults were talking about past glories and being into Christian deathmetal. Gold nugget comment from one of them was "they should call it Lifemetal"
- There was a discussion on the theological basis for avoiding relationships with animals as pets
- Someone asked why the cockroach was created as it has no natural predators and you can't eat it (can you?)
- A wife said about her relationship with her husband, "I was attracted to him when he was most ugly" referring to the time when he had accidentally dyed his hair orange. Can't beat that!
After that lunch I went directly to an Easter Sunday Service at City on a Hill Church with a few American girls. It was really nice and super cool also because a bunch of people got baptized! Always fun. The night got less Easter oriented after that. Suffice it to say that I tried to participate in a dunk context (on a six or seven foot hoop), ate Asian food with a bunch of Queeners (Roast Duck and Fried Pork Noodle Soup for me! yeah boi), and went to some margarita bar called Taco Bills. Yes, we got giant fruity drinks and free sombreros.
Sorry, JW. Not Taco Bell
Korean BBQ and Alien Abduction
Also during Easter break I took a trip to the Melbourne Chinatown with some Queeners and got some amazing Korean BBQ! It was sooo good and the service was really fast! Korean BBQ is something that my life needs more of. Anyway that night we watched a ridiculous movie called The Fourth Kind. Two of my friends had seen it already and told me that the reason it freaked them out so much was that there was real live footage in it. Well that was a load of B.S. It was really scary though up until the end. Basically the premise is that a psychologist in a remote Alaskan town notices that all her patients are reporting the same symptoms: they're having trouble sleeping, they wake up around 3am every night and there's an owl outside their window. The details get jumbled from there and the movie uses two different film clips of the same scene happening side by side to make it look like one is the real footage and one is the reenactment. This is a technique they often use and it convinced me at first. The patients say that they're not sure, but they think the owl somehow got inside...it won't go away. It's looking down at them from the foot of the bed...Well the good doc is baffled by this, and she decides to try hypnotherapy to ask them what happened. SPOILER ALERT: THERE IS NO OWL! Apparently the owl is some memory device that aliens had been using to trick the humans into thinking things were all cool when in reality they were stealing into their houses at night, abducting them, and performing terrible experiments on them and their families. Seeing the hypnotized people flip out as they suddenly recalled what had happened was indeed very scary. The idea of aliens coming into your house every night with you being powerless to stop them: also scary. Probably the worst part of the movie was when she's recording herself on a tape going over the case and thinking up ideas. She falls asleep. When she plays the tape back though she hears herself screaming uncontrollably and telling the aliens to stop and you can hear the alien language and it's all very freaky. Anyway none of it is real and I hate the movie for making me afraid of owls, now.
Owls? Or alien mind tricks?
Byron Bay Like A Byron Boss
During Easter, uni kids get a week long break which is awesome! On Wednesday, I flew off to Byron Bay with three other Americans and a German. What is there to do in Byron Bay? That's a good question...Well there's the beach...and there're the pubs and the nightclubs...And that's enough! We stayed in a really nice hostel (part of the Nomads chain) and just relaxed. The weather started off kind of undesirable, with intermittent showers and little sun, but once it cleared up our days were full of naps, beaches and the most beautiful waves and clearest water I've ever seen.
Byron Bay is a surf town, and our roommate did offer us a really good deal on surf rentals, but we think we lost that opportunity when we woke him up a few hundred times in one night coming back from a pub. Nonetheless we had a really good time!
Highlights from Byron Bay
- I hit the game winning shot on a really long game of beer pong (using a full length ping pong table is tough!) with a jump shot accompanied with the name "KOBE!" ringing from my lips. I didn't think it would work otherwise I would have paid homage to someone less despicable. Like Ray "Jesus Shuttlesworth" Allen.
I have never seen this movie
- I woke up to the sun melting my face. Good times!
- On the second day of our trip, we went on a super hike to the bottom of a waterfall! It was amazingly pretty and the hike was really fun. I got my first leech stuck behind my ear! I was displeased.
- The waves. Man they were just so beautiful. Seeing a wave towering above your head and hurtling toward you is a huge rush. Getting half-drowned and pants by that wave is also a good time!
This is me taking it all in
Hiking up to that lighthouse is actually quite easy and it's a very scenic walk!
Hiking back in the dark after a glass of wine is not as easy
What makes koalas so cute? On the way back from Byron Bay we stopped by the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary to get our cute animal fix. All I can say is that cute doesn't even do it justice when it comes to koalas. Is it the adorable way they chew with their mouths open? Is it the understated fuzziness? Is it the careful way they hop from branch to branch like it takes all the energy in the world? Is it the way they casually peer over their shoulders at you? Is it the way they blatantly scratch themselves so that you can almost picture a bag of potato chips at their feet and a wifebeater draped over their boxer-clad bodies? I can't decide if they're more like fat little old men or fat little babies. All I can say is that if all I could do for the rest of my life was watch koalas sleep, I wouldn't have it so bad.
wow
oh
sweet
merciful
mangoes
Only Twits Use Twitter!
The Queen's oratory competition came and went as well! I was really impressed by all the speakers and it was actually good good fun! How it worked was that each student was given a topic that they had a day or two to prepare for. Three guest judges, one of which was the Master, then evaluated them on their delivery and their arguments I think. The topics were (as far as I can remember): happiness is overrated, smokers, drinkers etc should be excluded from the healthcare system, you get the politicians you deserve, the journey is more worthwhile than the destination, drinking is a road to nowhere but it sure is the scenic route!, and only twits use twitter! It was a really entertaining night, and my favorite speeches were definitely the twitter one and the alcohol one. The facetious argument of allowing natural selection to breed out druggies and the analogy of Australian politicians to Halloween candy were awesome highlights as well! Queeners never fail to impress!
OMG the bread on my sandwich is stale!!!!
Random story: Who's smiling now? Not me...
Last month or so, I left a blue zip up hoodie at this fast food place we call "Smiley's." I thought I'd never see it again, but I was wrong! Coming back from church one night I spotted a group of Queeners getting their grease on. I popped in to say hello and the next thing I saw was my hoodie! Awkwardly, the guy serving the pizza was wearing it! Yeah...my friend was ready to pick a fight though, so she marched right over there and told him that she really liked his jumper and wanted to know if it was from Old Navy, where mine was from. Of course he said no. Do they even have Old Navy in this country?
Uni
Uni has been good! The way my classes work, I don't really have to show up for lectures. All I need to do is read the assignments and turn in my essays on time. I still go, but it's a really good feeling having so little stress and so much potential free time! By now, I've turned in my first few assignments. For China in Transition I had to give a presentation in tutorial about the readings and the topic. As I am the procrastination champion, I was forced to stay up late, diligently getting my facts straight. As I am also the not-waking-up-on-time champion, this meant that I woke up at 9am for my 9am tute. Once the "shooooot" factor passed over me, I was out of my room like a bat out of some other room, and I made it just in time to listen to another group finish presenting on the same topic because for some reason that week we were doubled up on presenters. Sweet!
For my Global Health, Security and Sustainability assignment, there was less drama. I just skipped Global Health, Security and Sustainability to write it!
Finally, just yesterday, I turned in my Public Policy Making take home exam. The time constraints on this bad boy were TIGHT, so I thought using all of the day to crank it out would be a necessary evil. I didn't have lectures anyway. Little did I know that not doing the readings and not going to class is a poor recipe for take home examinations, and I finished with just a trickle of time to turn in the hard copy. Sadly for me, I had no idea where that was supposed to happen! And of course the Queen's printers weren't working. Suffice it to say that it was an eventful and frantic 20 minutes. Luckily the Melbourne Uni campus is tiny!
Two months to go!
I can't believe that my time here in Melbourne has passed it's halfway point (I think?)! It's been an amazing time, and I've met some really great people and learned a lot about myself and about Australians. I can't wait to see what the rest of the semester has in store!
Here's a list of things that I wouldn't mind happening!
- The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is happening right now. I really want to go!
- Next week or so, some friends and I are trying to go camping in the Grampians!
- Footy game! I still have to pick a side to back. I feel like I can't do that til I see them throw down
- Sailing in the Whitsunday Islands: this would be unreal
- Fraser Island: I'm not exactly sure what happens here but I've been told it's good
- Roadtrippin New Zealand: this would also be unreal
- Diving in the Great Barrier Reef
- Jump out of a plane??? I don't know. Maybe if I can wear a diaper
- Things that I might do if I have time but I wouldn't mind missing out on: Sydney and Uluru (aren't seeing the pictures enough?)
Uluru
Methinks Sydney is to Melbourne as NYC is to Boston
Grampians National Park
Whitsunday Island
Anyway, that's what's been going on with me! Thanks for reading and hope you're all doing really well and having wonderful lives!
While writing this post, I consumed seven chocolate eggs
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