The Last Week

Sorry I haven't written anything in like over a week. It's been a pretty crazy, and pretty stressful couple of days. Today was my first day of classes and it still hasn't hit me that we are actually going to school here. My first class got canceled so I didn't have class until 4, and everyone from Loyola is in my 4pm class. It's about the history of Australia and we go on tons of field trips to the Outback and different parts of Australia. Today if you answered a question right, the professor gave out free beer! He'd just toss a bottle to ya, it was amazing! Completely different than in America. Tomorrow I have 3 more classes, starting at 9. I'm definitely not looking forward to it, especially my philosophy class on enviromental ethics.

THURSDAY
On Thursday we went to the Nott, which is a pub down the street that everyone goes to on Thursdays. It was awesome, and everyone had a really great time. I met a lot of guys from Australia who seemed real cool and I met my man George from Kenya too. He was a winner for sure. He's a lover of life and seemed like an all-around good guy.

FRIDAY
Everyone was a little slow to get up on Friday after a long Thursday night. The assistant coach from Loyola's womens team is in Australia for the next couple of months and she happened to be in Melbourne for the weekend. She invited me to go out wiht her and her friend Josh (this crazy Australian guy, and I mean CRAZY) to a footie game. Footie (AFL) is basically Australia's NFL. It's more of less football, rugby, soccer, basketball, hockey and every other sport combined into one. You can only kick or underhand serve the ball to someone and you can only run with it for so many yards before you either have to pass it or bounce it on the ground to keep going. If someone on your team catches a kick that's over 15 meters then no one can play defense or tackle you until go beyond where you caught it. And if you kick it between the middle goal posts it's 6 points and between the one of the left or right its 1 pt. It sounds confusing, but once you figure it out it's AMAZING to watch. I'm addicted. It's so fast-paced and the field is so big that you can see plays developing. The stadium was inside, and it was HUGE. We had $200 seats right next to the coache's box so it was awesome. After the game we went to a few more pubs where we hung out and listened to music. Overall it was a great night.

SATURDAY
On Saturday we went to a sanctuary an hour away. It was a zoo for Australian animals, and it was amazing. We saw kangaroos, dingos, koalas, tazmanian devils, basically everything Australian. We got a tour and then went to a Birds of Prey show which was awesome. The keepers would stand right above you and the birds would fly right over your head, almost hitting you! It was fantastic. Then we toured around by ourselves and got to pet and play with kangaroos. I took a million pictures, and it was amazing. The koalas were awesome because they were eating when we saw them and we were a foot away from them. The phrase "koala bears" is wrong because they aren't bears, but actaully marsupials. I finally touched a kangaroo so my life is pretty complete.

That's a quick update at what has been going on around here the last few days. The weather is still pretty cold, but the wind makes it 10X worse. When it's not windy, it's really not too bad. I am going to put pictures up from the sanctuary and also a few of what the campus and everything looks like. I'll make sure to keep on top of the blog this week too! Cheers