Beach volleyball - at last!

Staying at Lorenzo’s house down by the Dee Why beach has pushed me right into the Australia I came for, and it’s about time. It’s been a long week in the city and suburbs considering I came here mainly for beach volleyball.

Lorenzo reminds me of a mix of my favorite Ninja and my favorite half-brother, which is about as good of an appraisal anyone could ask for, and he shares a lot of my interests which obviously is an indispensible aspect of becoming and staying good friends with someone. Thank the founders of Couchsurfing.org for an easy way to find platonic friends worldwide. Yay!

Needless to say, the breakfast mentioned in my last post was nothing short of delicious, but then I’m sure you had already assumed it would be. How can anyone fail with such ingredients? There’s a big party in your mouth when the smoothness of the Nutella hits your pallet almost simultaneously as the ripe banana, and then the perfect pancake tops it off and nearly sends you off your chair in pure gourmet ecstasy.
Add to that a view over the ocean, so close that you could hit it with a rock (something I was discouraged to try because of some insignificant kids playing by the water).

This wonderful batch of pancakes all made from scratch reminded me of the breakfast fiasco when I tried to make it from a Trader Joe’s-package during my last morning in Flagstaff. We ended up drowning them in yogurt and lingonberry-jam, which made them edible, but just barely. It sure wasn’t the Swedish Pancake Feast that I had advertised with such pride the previous night, and now I’m finding myself beat by an Italian.
The disgrace! I realized I was going to have to stand up for myself and my country by impressing him on his own arena, which I ended up doing the very next day. More about that further down.

After our breakfast we headed down to the water for a swim, and since the swell wasn’t all that bad, we went back and grabbed a couple of boards from Lor’s garage. It wasn’t the best surf, but it was a good, fun way to start off the morning, and just the fact that I could do it comfortably without wearing a wetsuit was enough to make me giggle with joy. Sydney can become a decent home after all, I thought to myself.

Back at the apartment we made a couple pizzas; feta cheese and pumpkin, and a more typical Italian kind with cheese, tomatoes, tuna, mushrooms and onions. We spent a while online trying to find a snippet of a Family Guy-episode about an Asian woman changing lanes on a freeway that I had been telling Lorenzo extensively about, but it turned out hard to find because it apparently was considered racist (or at least generalizing) and therefore was censored in most versions. For those of you who want to see what I’m talking about, it’s from Season 5, in the Adult Swim episode called “Prick up your ears” (which also features a funny part about abstinence).
Peter Griffin: From now on, I too will be abstinent. I'll be as untouched as the turn signal in an Asian woman's car.
[cutaway to an Asian woman driving]
Asian Woman: How much signal I need to cut across eight lane? None? I turn now. Good luck, everybody else!
[cuts across eight lanes, causing four cars, a truck, and a gas tanker to crash; tanker explodes]

After some slacking around Lor’s apartment with his friend, we caught a ride to Manly Beach, where the beach volleyball supposedly was best. I’ve heard a lot about this place from Kristen, and consequently had high hopes. There were far fewer courts than I had expected, and the level of the players was low, but I went over to some guys to inquire about what the times of the week and day one should be present to catch some games.
I had already emailed someone at beachvolleyball.com.au a few days earlier to hear about what was offered in the area that I would be living in, but was disappointed when I learned that in Maroubra the nets were taken down in between league games out of fear for vandals, and that the league itself cost $220 from now ‘til mid-May.
Now I asked one of these two random guys if they knew what I should do to get to play for free. One of them asked me if I was from Sweden, and if my name possibly was Anna. I must have looked a bit surprised when it turned out he was the guy I had been emailing. I mean, I just got here. So much for big city anonymity.

I learned that there are two other Swedes that played down here almost all the time, and apparently weekends were quite busy in Manly. Sometimes the weekdays were as well, but according to these guys there was not much at Maroubra where I’ll actually be living. Oh well.

Lor and I left and walked over to what was to become my first Aussie Barbie, and we were the first ones to show up, so Lorenzo spent a good hour trying to teach me how to juggle with four limes to pass time.
After a while more people started dropping in. They were all nice, interesting folks, and they all got about as pissed as one would expect them to. The first few hours were fun, but then my body started to get whiny. Lor had woken me up at 7AM that morning to go surf, and I hadn’t had a nap to help me get through a long night, so I slowly got tired. The soporic effect of eating a massive meal after hours of hunger started to set in as well, and at 10PM I would’ve taken off, had I only known what direction home was. Instead I had to feign interest in conversations and make futile attempts to remember people’s names and origin (which was hard since only 3 our of 18 were actually Aussies), while waiting for Lor to feel ready to head home, which took 3 additional hours.
That whole night I couldn't help but wonder; why did we get to take naps in kindergarten? It’s horribly misleading. Everything else in that place was designed to show us what it’s like in the real world, where you have to know the months and the weekdays and the colors and whatnot, but then they throw in nap-time like some curve ball, without enlightening us to the fact that those are actually just going to be a temporary allowance, sort of like the diaper was (can't say I miss the latter, though).

The next morning started off too early, which I’m learning is what it’s like staying at Lorenzo’s place.
Breakfast was fruit salad and yoghurt, and we then went over to Manly to catch the peak hours of volleyball.
Once there I glanced around to find the best players in hopes of getting a foot in, and maybe even a game. I saw a co-ed couple that seemed to be pretty much on my level, and went down to talk to them in between two games. After only a few seconds I detected a Scandinavian accent in the girl's English, so I asked them where they were from. Sweden, of course.
They explained the jump-in system to me, which was simple; you placed one of your flip-flops in a queue by the pole, and when it came up first it was your turn to play.
But in OZ-land flip-flops are called ‘thongs’, which of course led to juvenile giggles from me when a big guy came up asking who had moved his thong. It got better yet when another volleyball-player next to me said that he practically lived in thongs, and almost never wore anything else. I know they’re talking about footwear, but in my head it’s so much more entertaining if I allow myself to imagine the lingerie. Ha ha.

As for the Aussie boys, I’m not really impressed by the hyper-pigmented, muscle-clad surf-dudes that prance around on the beaches, usually with a number of lame tattoos on their too-taut bodies.
As for me, I’d rather have myself an American dork-boy if I could choose.
I got to play a few games, one with the Swedish girl, and another with Lorenzo, who actually was pretty good for not being a volleyball player. While waiting for my turn in the first game I went to buy some boardies and a baseball cap in a nearby shop. While waiting for the next game we went for a swim, but after a couple of hours of so much sunshine and activity, we started to get hungry. We took the bus back to the apartment where we already had purchased all the necessary ingredients for pesto-making, and I managed to really impress this culinarily inclined Italian with one of Italy's own national dishes.

Lorenzo felt like blueberry pie to quench the inevitable sweet-tooth that follow those quantities of cheese and garlic in one sitting, and I wasn’t hard to convince, so we got right into it. While waiting for the dough to sit, we grabbed his long board and went out to a parking lot where I tried skating a bit. It was heaps of fun, and I reconnected with the child within for about the 9th time this weekend. On our way back we went for another swim, me in a tank top and boardies, since I hadn’t foreseen more swimming that day, and then we went up to the apartment to finish the pie and shove it in the oven. By now we we’re hungry for food again, so we cooked a coconut-pumpkin soup for supper, which we ate in front of “Who Killed The Electric Car?”. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a good documentary-ish movie about (you guessed it!) electric cars and their mysterious disappearance.

Now I’m off to the city for some errands, but before I leave I want to mention that I’m very happy so many of you are reading this blog.
I feel a little closer to everyone I love when I know that you can partake in my solitary adventures on the other side of the planet.
This trip is better when shared with you all, so thanks for that.

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