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Published: March 30th 2007
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pedestrian bridge
bridge to the city! so ya, I'm in Melbourne right now, as of yesterday. Thursday night, I spend about 10 hours on and off packing my new 50 L ruck sack back pack, which was 356 dollars marked down to 144 mhuahaha. It's dark red and waterproof and has all sorts of little compartments and zippers and straps for strapping my king size down pillow that goes everywhere with me and my giant wide brimmed Aussie hat. I hitched a ride with the Flying Fish van that drives everyone to the yacht club from our accomodation in the mornings, but convinced Stevo, our instructor to drop me off at the Wharf instead to catch the ferry to Sydney where I walked to my favoritest cheap sushi stand counter thingy. Then hiked to Hyde park to catch the train to the domestic airport, fell into a half asleep half awake daze on the 1.3 hour flight to Melbourne sitting amongst a giant family speaking a language I couldn't identify. It was somwhere between Hebrew and Italian. Strange. From there I was asked to be used in a survey about the airport while I waited for my dee[ red bag to come filing out the baggage
claim ramp. Gave them mostly "goods" and one "great". Hopped trains, buses and metros to get to my friend Jaad's apartment in South MElbourne and here I am, alone in the house with a computer that has internet, a fridge, a wicked entertainment system with a flat pannel TV and a nice bed in my own room. Jaad was one of Will VanThunen's roommates from that May Term that everyone who was anyone was at. Yeah the one where you and a dumpster got personal after your skateboard and the parking lot by the 1100 block betrayed you, hahaha.
There's this incredible market just a block away from here! A maze of meat, fish, delis, cheese, coffee, chocolate, gelato, chinese, every wonderful foods you can think of markets. There've got to be about 100 vendors in it. It's a permanent building and all, open everyday. All around the outside are fruit and vege after fruit and vege anfter fruit and vegie shops that get fresh stuff in every morning. Insane. I'm gonna spend like 3 hours there later on this afternoon. The Victoria College of the Arts that I'm looking into applying to is only 2 km away and
one of the guys Jaad lives with's cousin is a student there. He called her, I'm gonna meet up with her on Monday when she said she'd show me around!!!!!! I'm so pumped!!!!!!!!!!
I went to an Aussie rules Football game last night with Jaad, his girlfriend 😞, Linda from Germany, and Erin, another housemate. It was in a stadium that can hold 100,000 people. IT was the Melbourne Deamons against the St. Kilda Saints. Jaad played "Footie" as it's affectionally known when he was younger, so he explained it all to all of us. I really like it!! Watching it not knowing what's going on is really confusing, but once you know, it's really quite simple. Kind of a cross between rugby and soccer. It's played on a circle field with four posts at each end. it's a rugby shaped ball and you can only run with it for about 4 seconds, then you either have to dribble it (bounce it off the ground which is tricky cuz it's not a round abll), pass it by holding it and punching it out of your hand with the other hand to another player in any direction, or kick it
in any direction to another player. If that other player catches a kicked ball, the other team can't touch you, if they drop it, you can get tackled and you can't hold onto the ball on your way down. a turnover is the other team picking up the ball or catching it out of the air. To score you have to kick it through the posts. there are four posts, as I mentioned earlier, so there are three spaces to strive for. The inner space is worth 6 points, that's a "goal" the outer two spaces are worth 1, that's a "behind". You can also pass it through the inner-space, but that's only worth 1. there are 4 25-minute quarters with stoppage of play at each. Otherwise, it's a running clock. If the ball goes out of the giant circle, a ref grabs the ball, turns his or her back to the field and throws it up behind him. And that's the game. It was pretty awesome, at half-time, the little tykes came running out and played mini games on mini makeshift fields. They must have been maybe 7-10 years old. Haha, adorable. Some of them were really friggin' good
too!
The next days journey brought me to the heats of the final day of the FINA World Swimming Championships. The pool's much smaller than it looks on TV. I saw Michael Phelps swim! And watched the United States get disqualified for the breast stroke guy leaving the blocks before the butterflier touched the wall. OY! There's some sort of match up between the US and Australia on Tuesday in Sydney. Not quite the same, but maybe they'll get a chance there.
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