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Somehow another month has passed by and by now most of my year group are back in Newcastle sitting in Introduction to Final Year lectures. This is officially it - no going back!
I came back from Adelaide nearly 4 weeks ago and moved into my new room in a house in Moonee Ponds - such a great find! The house is so nice - in true Aussie style it's a bungalow, it's only 15 min by train to the heart of Melbourne and about 20 min by tram (and the stop is 1 minute away!). The nightbus stop is just 2 minutes' walk away - just good to know on the off chance I stay out after 1am when the trams stop running (so far, I've only needed to take the nightbus 7 times in the last 5 weeks...). It was because of all this (and Anna) that I agreed to move into this house even though it is, wait for it, vegetarian. So vegetarian in fact I was asked not to cook meat. Anyone who knows me will know my motto of "a day without meat is incomplete" and will realise how fantastic this house must be! The room itself is huge: double bed, wardrobe, big desk, TV, DVD player (evil - this enabled my Gilmore Girls addiction!), fridge and still lots of space. I live with 4 other people: Anna (an awesome Swedish girl), Carmen (an equally awesome South African girl), Sean (a very shy Aussie guy) and Kerry (a girl from Hong Kong who I hardly see because she's always out). Oh and I should add at this point that it is in fact no longer a vegetarian household! Sean is vegan but everyone else eats meat rather happily so that is a big relief!
My first week back from Adelaide was a bit medic-tastic. I met up with Martyn Stott to go to Neighbours Night (oh yes, there's a night too - trivia quiz where you can win prizes and meet at least 3 members of the cast!) and there we bumped into Vicky Hough, Aly Fowles and Zara Georgiou! From the Neighbours show we met Dr Karl Kennedy (legend - see video he made for Newcastle medics on my Facebook page!), Rebecca Robinson, Paul Robinson, Connor O'Neill and Dylan Timmins. It was a great night - sadly we didn't win the pub quiz but Aly and Zara danced their socks off in front of 200 people and Martyn pulled a girl in front of 200 people to win a Great Ocean Road trip. Unfortunately for him, he'd just come from Adelaide VIA the Great Ocean Road... so guess who used that voucher?! We also had a big medics' dinner that week at a Japanese restuarant: Trinh Ngo, Trinh's friend John (med student from Monash University), Tiffany Chung, Tiffany's boyfriend Dave, Martyn, Mei Ling and me. We then met Aly, Zara and Vicky for dessert at a Greek restaurant down the road which was good.
During that week I also started seriously job hunting, which was decidedly not fun. After interviews and lengthy computer tests, I signed up with 3 agencies - the first who offered me a call centre job which I turned down, the second who claim to call me with jobs but don't and the third who have been really great. Unfortunately all the jobs have been short term admin placements (ironically generally at medically-related companies!) but I have worked on average 4 days a week so it's not been too bad. I keep hoping for something longer term - I got offered one working for a health insurance firm but it starts Monday at 8.30am. My flight from Sydney gets back at 8.35am.
So anyway, I did the Great Ocean Road tour with Dave (who I met at Habitat - 2nd hostel) and we had 1 hour of sunshine and about 8 hours of rain - the weather was so bad one coach overturned and one of the roads had to be shut! We saw wild koalas in trees, the Twelve Apostles, London Bridge, lots of pretty beaches and we did a rainforest walk. A great day so thank you Martyn!
I also went skiing last Saturday at Mount Buller - skiing in August in Australia, what a novelty! It was a full-on 24 hour day: got up at 3am, got 2 nightbuses across the city to meet Dave, Dave, Phil, Scott and our trusty rental car and made our way towards Mt Buller. We stopped to get chains which took a lot longer than it should have done and eventually made it to the base of the ski lifts at about 11am. It was so weird getting back into skiing - the snow quality was different as well - very sticky and heavy on the lower slopes, perfect on the upper slopes with no ice in sight! They only had green, blue and black runs (black seems to = moguls here) so I spent most of my time on the blues and blacks to avoid the crowds and stumbled on some beautiful runs through the trees going to the bottom of a T-bar (safe bet to avoid the crowds as everyone hates T-bars). We left the mountain at about 6 and got back at 10 - the logical next step was bed so we got changed and headed out to Chapel Street to go to a couple of bars. I eventually got home (by nightbus) at 3am and went to sleep! It was interesting spending that much time with 4 guys - who knew there was so much to say about burping and video games lol?!
Hmmm, what else have I filled my time with? I've had quite a few dinners with people - both at my house and sampling Melbourne restaurants. I had dinner with Trinh, John, Anant (a Newcastle medic who dropped out, sorry "transferred to Melbourne Uni" halfway through first year) and his girlfriend Ashley on Lygon Street, which is also known as Little Italy. I have never seen so many Italian cafes, restaurants and gelatarias in one place! It was great to swap stories with Anant about how our year is getting on and it made me realise how much has changed in 4 years. It has been an awesome four years though! Anwyay, I'm sidetracking! I have also been on a couple of dates which was exciting but didn't go anywhere. I joined a gym (I went for the free 7 day trial and signed up for 2 months. I don't know how they do it but they are good!). I've watched a whole season of Gilmore Girls (5, in case you were wondering). I've called lots of people and spent horrendous amounts of money on my phone - but oh-so-worth-it to keep in contact with people!
I think that's pretty much all to say for now - my life is settling here now I have work (generally speaking), a library card, a gym membership, cool housemates and lots of people here I want to catch up with. I still haven't decided how long I'm going to stay here but I am definitely growing to like it! Tonight I leave for a long weekend Sydney to catch up with my Fiji travel buddy and cool cat, Zoe Tang which I'm very much looking forward to and I'll update you again after that!
- comments
Mei Ling Woop, what an awesome few weeks of Melbourne! ahhh i soo miss it. SOunds like ur settling well into aussie life, so happy for you :) You know ur part of the place when u have a library card and gym membership! heh... and glad that u got to see the Great Ocean Road! oooh and hope the weather is getting warmer, right? love xxx