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This may be the longest journal entry ever...so I will probably write it in chunks. I just got back to my apartment from the Melbourne Welcome which is an orientation to the city/the Univeristy run by the University students specifically for international students. TIt is run at the college, so we had to move into one of the dorms at the University. I stayed at Queens college along with seven other students from IES, and the other five stayed at Janet Clark college. Our days were full with tons of activities that kept us really busy, so I guess I will just give a day by day play by play of all the stuff we did. I'll again post a link to the pics on facebook, but I have to wait until I can get some of the pics from friends since my camera battery pooped out on the third day.
Wednesday: We arrived at Queens and got settled into our rooms. I have to start out by saying that the dorms here are much cooler than at GAC. Queens looks like a castle from the outside, and people were saying it reminded them of Harry Potter, but since I have never seen those movies, I didn't get the reference. The rooms themselves were nothing to brag about, but the dorms were my first experience with coed floors and bathrooms which was interesting. Anyway, we moved in and had a quick lunch and then a couple of us took a tram downtown to the QV center, which is like a really big outdoor/indoor shopping mall. We saw these guys make these sugar things (I don't know how to explain them), but they are like those sugar lollipops but not on a stick...they said Melbourne in the middle...it was really cool to see them make them. After that, we went back to the University and hung out until dinner where we had some borderline unedible lasagna (I am really glad that I am not living in the dorm...we were told that they dont have to make really good food since there is a high demand to live in the dorms that they dont have to impress any of the students). Then one of the girls from IES, Anna hung out and watched about ten minutes of a movie before we both fell asleep.
Thursday: Got up and had an early breakfast before we left for the Melbourne Musuem which was a lot of fun. They musuem had tons of exhibits...most of them were related to the Australian and Aboriginal culture. There were a couple on Mind and Body as well as Science. We only had an hour there which was not nearly enough to see everything I wanted. After the musuem we went to the Victorian Market which is a gigantic farmers market that is open everyday. It isn't that far away from the apartment so that is probably where I willl be getting all my food. All the food looked absolutely amazing so I can't wait to go there and buy some groceries. We then walked back to Queens and had a real quick lunch before we left to go to the Eureka Skydeck which is the highest residential building in the world at 88 floors. It was the first time I actually got to see the beach in Melbourne! After the Skydeck we went back and I took a nap before the formal dinner. At the dorms at the University three or four nights a week they have formal dinners where all of the students wears academic gowns and have a fancy sit down dinner. It was a lot of fun to get all the dressed up with everyone and everything. The food was mildly better than the first night...dessert was great...I have become very fond of sticky date pudding which I guess is a special dish in Austrilia. After the formal dinner we went out to a couple bars. The second one we went to was fun because the IES students from Janet Clark came and there was a band that played some awesome 80's music.
Friday: After breakfast we went to the Healseville Sanctuary which might have been my gavorite part of the welcome program. We got to pet and feed kangaroos, emus, pelicans, see some koalas, tazmanian devils, dingoes and wombats. It was so much fun!!! We also had a barbecue there...i had the most amazing veggie burger of my life (I hope youre reading this, Alicia). It wasn't like a fake meat burger, it tasted like a grlilled masted potato with corn, carrots and peas inside. Delicious. So after lunch, we went to a vineyard that was on the way back and had a wine tasting. Since we had such a large group, the tour was less personal so I didn't think it was as much fun as the wine tasting that we did on the way to the Granpians...but I did like the wine more. He served more white wines than reds so that's probably the reason. After we got ack to Queens we had dinner and then went on a scribble crawl which is a bar crawl where you wear white T-shirts and people write on them throughout the night. It was a blast. I only made it to the third bar before Anna and I went back to Queens. We missed out tram stop on the way back which made things a little interesting, but we made it back eventually.
Saturday: Since we had such a late night, I slept in more than usual and didn't do much until lunch where we had "pies" which are very similiar to chicken pot pies. It was impressed with how good they actually were. After lunch we left to go to our first Aussie Rules football game at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds. It was a blast. People get so crazy at the game!!!! The stadium seats about 100,000 people (there were about 85,000 people there) so it was gigantic and we had amazing seats...18 rows up from field. I like the game a lot more than American football since it is a lot faster and there is a lot more scoring. The game was between the Geelong Cats and the Collingsworth Magpies...I guess we were cheering for the Magpies...they lost, pretty badly :( On the way back Kristen, Anna, Alycia and I stopped at a Safeway and bought three bags of Timtams (latte, mudpie and caramel flavor...Timtams I guess are similiar to Oreos but 1000 times better...) and popcorn since we d ecided to stay in and have a girls night. But before that started we had our last dinner with the Queens group at an amazing Thai place. We got so much food, it was ridiculous. We started with chicken and beef peanut saute, then springrolls, beef wontons, squid and veggies, fish and veggies, beef and veggies, lamb green curry, vegetable green curry, chicken pad thai and veggie pad thai...and rice. It was amazing. The only bad thing was that the place was so busy that people waiting for a table literally stood over the table which was kind of awkward, but it was still a lot of fun. After diner we went back to the college...got lost at the exact same spot that Anna and I got lost the previous nigh, so we werent really lost, it just took us longer to get back than it should have...and had our girls night (which Andrew crashed) and watched The Holiday.
Sunday: Breakfast and then signed out and walked back to the apartment. Getting a little sick of typing at this point and nothing really happened that was very exciting.
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