New Computer, finally! And a REAL update...

After 3 long weeks of being computerless due to a breaking motherboard in my old computer, I am now back with a brand new computer! So much to update on, and once this update is done, I hope to regularly update my blog...

Anyway, it is week 3 of Uni, and so far things are great. It's a lot different than Uni back home. Workload has been minimal, thus far. I think things will pick up in April.

I've been doing lots of awesome stuff in my down time- exploring the city, shopping, eating delicious food (Chinese food and other Asian cuisine is so good). Went to the aquarium with Holly and Steve, which was so neat and beautiful. It was like no aquarium I have been to before. Got to
see so many tropical fish.

Melbourne Aquarium

I also got to go to a taping of Australia's got talent over the weekend. It was about 4 hours of watching people audition. There were some amazing people- such as a son and father guitarist duo, a 18 year old Malaysian dancer, and a trapeze artist. There were some not so good ones, such as an Irish dancing group, a singing woman.... All in all it was really fun. And it was free!

Over the weekend I went to the Evermore concert, a New Zealand band which I love. There I met some girls who go to Melbourne Uni as well, and they were so sweet. We got some photos together, and also met Peter, the keyboardist/guitarist. We have plans to go out to lunch, the girls and I. It will be fun!

Earlier this week, I went to see the musical Jersey Boys, which was wonderful! I'm so happy I got to see it- and we got student tickets, so it was super cheap, a nice break from NYC theatre prices.

The weekend before that, my friend Katie and I went to the Moomba festival, where we got stuck in a torrential storm of hail, rain, wind and thunder.

Calm before the storm

Since I am too lazy to write up that whole day, here is an entry from my friend Katie's blog all about our day:
"We head down to the fair, which was really awesome. There was tons of food and all the carnival games where you can win giant stuffed animals. We sat down for a few minutes to watch some waterskiing competitions, and as we sat the sky overhead got darker and darker.

We noticed on our maps that the cultural and more sporting events were taking place on the other side of the river, so we went toward the bridge to head that way. While crossing the bridge, the sky started turning green, giving the city skyline a beautiful but somewhat eerie glow. I took two pictures literally within a minute of each other and you can see how much darker the sky got.

After crossing the bridge, Courtney suggested we hang out by it, since it looked like a pretty bad storm was about to open up. Seconds later the first pieces of hail fell, and we ran under the bridge to take cover. We were lucky that we were so close, many other people joined us, but they were farther from the bridge and soaking wet by the time they got there. The visibility quickly turned from bad to zero, and we watched as the city skyline disappeared altogether and the only thing we could see was the hail dropping into the Yarra River.

Everyone was squishing in under the bridge to stay out of the mist that was being blown around. We got a little wet but compared to everyone else under the bridge we must have looked waterproof because we were overall pretty dry.

I look awfully white and AWFUL in this photo... compared to the darkness behind me.

The couple next to us was pulling hail stones out of their baby carriage, I don’t know how far away from the bridge they were originally but the hail seemed to have gotten in all the pockets of their stroller. Another very prepared mom was changing her kids into spare clothes that she had packed for them and handing out gummy worms. (Everyone knows that gummy worms fix everything!) She even gave Courtney and me each a gummy worm, which was much appreciated because I did start to get a little hungry. We were under the bridge for close to an hour and a half, because after the hail finally stopped it was raining really hard. Eventually we got out the umbrella I luckily had in my purse and decided to take our chances. Upon getting to Flinders Street Station, we saw piles of hail on the roads as well as the flash flooding that explained why there were so many emergency sirens all around the city. Crossing the street we picked what seemed to be the shallowest part of the road, which still left us in water past our ankles.

It was by far the craziest storm I’ve ever been outside for, but I was lucky to be so close to the bridge, because a lot of people were reported to have cuts and bruises from the hail. Also, the rain and hail caused leaks in the roof of the Southern Cross train station, as well as more severe flooding in other parts of town. As for Courtney and me, we ended up in a café down a little alley that she knew about (laneways! Yay!) We got bruschetta and hot chocolate, our little break before we each trekked home to dry off. Since then the weather has been off and on. Today, I was looking longingly out the window at the sunshine while I was in class, but 20 minutes later I had my umbrella blown inside out on my way home. In some ways the rain is good -- the city is in a drought and I need an excuse to stay inside and get some of my readings done. All the same, I hope it stays sunny for the rest of today and tonight, because it’s the last night of Moomba and I want to see the fireworks!"

End Katie's blog entry. Thanks for that, by the way, you saved me a lot of time ;)

I also got to go to my first AFL, or Footy game! It was so neat. People here don't really like American football, and now I know why. American football is so incredibly slow.. always stop and go. Footie is constantly moving. The clock doesn't even stop when they go out of bounds. When my friend Andrew and I went to the Footie game, we both knew absolutely none of the rules. We quickly began figuring them out, and taking guesses.

Our guesses were either confirmed or denied and we finally got most of the rules down, just from observing! For example, there are 3 kinds of goals in footie. 1 point, 6 points and 9 points. It's a really interesting scoring system. After deciding to root for the Western Bulldogs over the Adelaide Power, we got into it and were screaming by the 4th quarter. The end was so close, but 'our' team ended up winning!

Drinking legally at the Footie game!

That is all for today. More blog entries to come regularly! Time to update older entries and write about my trip before I got to Melbourne.