afl

i went to my first afl (australia football league) game last friday. it was awesome!
afl (aka footy, aka aussie rules) is a great game. we should totally start it up in the states. it's kind of a cross between soccer, gridiron football, and rugby in that it's quick, constant running, you tackle, kick an oblong ball through uprights, and there's no pads. the no-pad thing doesn't seem to stop them from tackling hard though. i wouldn't say it's more violent than our football, but when taking the pad factor into account, it's got to hurt more. these guys are crazy: constantly punching and kicking...they're like little boys fighting over a toy. i love it! haha
i'm a collingwood supporter, but last friday i had the opportunity to go to the hawthorne v. melbourne match with some outdoors club people at the mcg. the mcg is a 100,000 person, oval stadium about 20 minutes walking from my apartment. it's the same venue i watched the commonwealth athletics in, but looks totally different as a footy ground.
games are so frequent (serveral in melbourne each weekend) and the fan base is so spread out (about 10 of the 16 teams are based in melbourne) that it's cheap and easy to get tickets. excluding season ticket holders, all other tickets are general admission, and we got there early enough that we had our pick of seats so we decided to sit high to get a better overall vantage point. we ended up behind this canadian girl and her aussie husband (both die-hard hawthorne fans) who picked up on my american accent right away and started up a conversation. she was relatively entertaining and attempted to give tips on being in australia or explaining the rules of the game. her husband, though, was glued to the match and screaming one thing or the other every 30 seconds. my kind of fan! :)
the game itself was fair... hawthorne was blown out of the water by melbourne loosing 120 to 60 or something like that. but it was still a great experience. each team has adopted a fight song where they change the words to an existing song. both of these teams converted the words from american military tunes such as yankee doodle dandy. maybe we adopted that song from somewhere else, but i still found it pretty funny and couldn't help singing along with our lyrics.
subject change: so the oddest thing about aussie guys is first of all how much they are into thier looks, but more importantly, how open they are about it. they've picked up on the european clothing style around here and have no shame sporting tight, straight-leg jeans, clingy shirts, and styled hair. footy players are by no means an exception.
only in australia is it socially acceptable for a tough, professional football player to gel up his hair before a match. they ALL do it! the style at the moment is this strange half mohawk thing that's highlighted on the tips and all gelled out. i, for one, think it looks competely ridiculous, but who am i to criticize fashion? although i have to point out that no way would any self-respecting guy get away with a look like that at home!
bad hair style or not, they're still great footy players. this weekend i'm planning on going to a collingwood game which i'm super pumped about. i randomly picked them as a team to barrick for at the begining of the season and they've turned out to be having an insane season. at the moment we're tied for 2nd with a 6-2 record. yes - i follow this closely. collingwood, as it turns out, is a team hated by everyone except collingwood supporters. they draw quite the rough, bogan (tough, slummy aussie) crowd who get pretty rowdy at the games. i'm totally going to fit in... i can't wait! go magpies!

work

so i officially have now been hired at three different places: a wedding reception venue, pizza place, and coffee place, but until today was yet to actually be called into a shift. i've been counting on having an income for the past few weeks now, so i was quickly becoming desperate for work. however, i worked at the coffee place this morning from 7:30 to 2:30 this afternoon. this means i had to wake up at 6:30 this morning: by far the earliest i've been up this entire trip including when camping. somehow i dragged myself out of bed and made it in on time: a small miracle in itself. working at a coffee shop comes with its perks though - all the free coffee you need. and i needed it!
so this coffee place is out of control busy at all times. my training was: "this is how to use the juice maker, this is how to use the dishwasher...oh shoot it's busy - abby, can you go take orders?" "umm....sure." "oh by the way this is a shout kitchen, we don't write anything down, just memorize what they say and then shout it out." ok.... first of all i'm not much of a yeller when it comes to being in the work place. secondly, i don't even know what we serve - and there are no menus. so people are asking me questions about the food that i didn't know the answers to, or ordering things and i wouldn't have the slightest idea what they were saying. this was for two reasons. 1) the slang in this country is out of control. nothing is the same as it's called at home - short flat, tall black... and to make it worse they shorten all their words such as brekkie, toastie... and 2) the accent doesn't help. plus people have a tendency to mumble and talk softly around here. annunciate!!! you may think i mumble...they are ten times worse for sure!
ok so it comes time for me to 'shout' to the kitchen and i don't know what to say. and if i say it wrong they make me do it again and seem angry. of course i got about 10 orders wrong and put the kitchen into a bit of a fit. faye, my boss would tell me about 8 things to do at once, and she'd turn around 30 seconds later and if just one thing wasn't finished yet she'd say it again. of the 5 people working, the names of three of us were abby, avie, and matty. talk about confusion in a shout kitchen! but i tried my best, i really did!
by the end of my shift i thought everyone was pretty irritated at me, but faye kept saying how good of a job i did. i wish that encouragement would come after getting yelled at when i feel like crying! :( i sugar coat everything i say, and i wouldn't mind if people would do the same for me. haha. maybe this job will toughen me up a bit. but i don't see what's so wrong about keeping a soft voice and adding pleases and thank yous to the end of comands. the one thing i've got going for me is while working i have a permanent smile stuck on my face. this is what faye liked the most. i feel like i should come with a disclaimer though: although i may be smiling, things are NOT ok, and i am silently FREAKING OUT! haha. oh well! mom: she also wanted me to thank you for making me stand up straight and walk gracefully. (she obviously didn't see me almost fall down the steps over a stool - haha!) but thanks anyway mom!
through all the mishaps, i think i did more good than bad today: stayed out of the red - which is all you can really ask for on your first day. best of all, she paid me $98 in cash for my seven hours and i am now scheduled 2 shifts per week. assuming that's the way it's actually going to be, i may be able to keep myself out of the red the rest of the time i'm here which makes me a very happy camper!

rogaining

for those of you who don't know (and don't worry - i didn't either) rogaining is a competition where you navigate your way through the woods to checkpoints. basically gives a point to hiking - as if there needs to be one.
well that's what i did this past weekend. me and a few people from the outdoors club formed a team for the australian national rogaining championships. yeah that's right - national champs. nothing like starting at the top!
the weekend was really good. we drove up there (the pyraneese range about 3 hours away) friday arriving around 11:30 pm at set camp for a good night's sleep. i don't know if i'd call a cold night in a tent a 'good night's sleep', but i suppose it beats waking up at 5am and driving the morning of. i actually slept pretty well and woke up to a hot breakfast cooked for us by the volunteers. daniel (our trip organizer) kept reiterating that the food was the best part of the event, and i wasn't let down. that's the awesome thing about intense hiking; not only are you expected, but encouraged to eat as many carbs and chocolate snacks as you can. love it! haha
our maps were passed out at 9 am leaving 3 hours for us to plan our route and get ready for the day. this course covered 230 square kilometers of half hilly forrested areas and half fields, vineyards, and sheep paddocks. it was a 24 hour event running from noon saturday to noon sunday. we planned to get it 50-60 K over that time period leaving a few hours during the night to sleep and get a hot meal at the hash house.
we ended up getting in the mileage and making it back to camp in time to get some food, but those were pretty much the only things that went according to plan along the way. haha. 4 of the 5 of us were rookie rogainers so there was some fumbling around with compasses and figuring our exactly which hill we were on. after a wasted hour of searching for our 3rd checkpoint we had to change our route plan. this happened a few times throughout the night, but i didn't bring our spirits down. we were just there to have a good hike anyway and it was only added entertainment when we had no idea where we were. in true australian fashion there was a pub on the course, so at one point in time we were going to try and make it there to get some free soup and take a break, but that didn't really work as planned either. haha.
i've never hiked at night. it adds a whole new angle to the activity. rogains are always held on or near full moons so there is optimal natural light, but it was a bit of a cloudy night so we were more dependant on our head torches than planned. we only stayed in the wooded areas for a couple hours in the dark before making our way to the paddocks where it's easier to see. chasing sheep around is now a new favorite hobby. they're so funny!
anyway, after getting hopelessly lost among the farms on an unmarked road, which we thought was a different road...very confusing, we made it back to the hash house around 1:30 am. in the 13th hour of hiking i had a suprising amount of energy and was feeling stronger than expected, but was moving pretty slow because of these bloody blisters. i had taped the back of my ankles for prevention, but not the bottom of my heal: big mistake. at this point in time my heal was fully surrounded by a bubble of paaain! haha. but luckily the terrain was flat so i just had to suck it up and make it home.
we had some cheese toasties (grilled cheese) and soup and turned in for the night. we didn't go too hard the next morning. slept in until 7:30 or so and got going again an hour after that. we just went out and got 4 more checkpoints before making our way back to the base at 11:30. the novelty had started to wear off and the navigation on the second day was pretty easy so we entertained ourselves by quoting movies which usually included will ferrel, vince vaughn, or ben stiller somehow. they have the best movies!
throughout our 16.5 hours of hiking we covered about 55K. there were 3800 possible points on the course. the highest amount anyone got was about 2500. we got 650. haha. poor showing. but we did our best and had a blast doing it. i'm not sure exactly where we came in for the competition. there were 166 teams with 369 people. i know we beat some teams, so we didn't come in last. and when it comes down to it, in a national competition, that's all you can really hope for. :)

dollar cappachinos

my favorite part of the day is when i get my dollar cappachino from the cappachino man at the train station. this is such a staple part of each day that i just feel compelled to write about it.
so first off, the fact that the cappachinos (not to mention nearly everything else in the stand) is only a dollar is reason to celebrate in itself. you'd be hard pressed to find a coke under $2 never mind a coffee. so when i discovered that not only were the cappachinos cheap, they weren't half bad, i was pretty stoaked.
in addition, i've become good friends with the cappachino man. he now knows what i want without asking (cappachino, skim milk, my own sugar). so he holds out the cup for me to pour in my sugar and makes my drink while asking me what i need the caffiene for that day. so i tell him class or studying or something like that. he agrees that it sounds pretty boring and coffee is a necessary thing, takes my money, and i'm off to my train.
it's a simple thing, but it's a nice consistancy in my life. a familiar face and a smile of recognition is enough to brighten anyone's day. plus, a little coffee in the morning doesn't hurt either.

markets

my favorite thing about living in the city....well, make that a close second behind festivals...so my second favorite thing aout living in the city: markets. i love markets! they're filled with stuff that you totally don't need, but after passing by two or three times you're convinced you do. stuff like hand-painted tiles, hand-woven scarfs, aprons, wooden boxes, and all the jewlery you could ever whish for.
my favortie is the queen victoria market. they have the nik-nac stuff as well, but i go there for the food. this is a new-found place of mine and i only wish i would have gone there 3 months ago. i can buy all the fruit, veggies, meat, cheese, eggs i need for the whole week for about $30. i'd pay at least twice that at cole's and get worse quality food. Plus you just feel trendy and organic when you buy direct from a vendor and get to grate your own cheese. i really like grating my own cheese! :) they also have tons of cool foods and spreads that are pretty tempting, but at this point in time i'm doing good to get a full meal in. maybe one of these days i'll have the funds and time to get creative but for now chicken and veggies every night suits me just fine.
today i went to the sunday markets at southgate. those were your typical artsy booths with the pushy vendors. being a magnet for strangers to talk to (and apparently also looking easily talked into buying) i got the schpeal from all of them. one polish guy, who tried to sign me up for his sculpting class, showed be pages full of bronze eggs with legs. another just seemed worried i was going to break her wooden boxes. but my favorite was this european lady who lured me in with saying her jewlery was all half priced. she told me this was her last market because she was going away on holiday for 8 weeks (these people love their holidays) and just wanted to make a sale. then for whatever reason started pouring her heart out to me about how she just wanted to meet a guy with money so she wouldn't have to sell at the markets anymore. then elaborated with the fact that she actually wanted a rich french man who had everything. she lamented on how it must be nice to be young and only looking for love, but has realized in her age that what you really need is money. i asked if she was going to france on her holiday, which she was, so i tried to give encouragement saying that there are plenty of rich french guys there. haha. funniest statement of all, though, was she told me i looked like lyndsay lohan. that is so far from the truth - at all of her hair colors and weight stages - but anything to make a sale, right? to be quite honest, i wouldn't really give that as a compliment...she's looking pretty strange these days.
i made it out of there with my only purchase being a bag of popcorn - dad, i blame you for that, but it's a good way to spend a rainy sunday. point is: markets are awesome. if i didn't know better, i'd say i'm starting to take a fondness to the city life. there's so much to do and loads of crazy people to entertain. i'll miss all that when i get home for sure, but the space and pace will be much appreciated.

comedy festival

the comedy fesitval has been going on in melbourne the past few weeks. it's the third largest in the world - so that's pretty impressive. i've seen 2 shows so far...warren bates and dave hughes.
i went to see warren bates a couple thursdays ago just because i had nothing better to and my roommates all had plans already. he performed at the 'under the big umbrella' venue which is essentially a big tent down by the river and ferris wheel off of fed square. his act was a family-friendly, feel good, clownish show called la la luna. it was pretty funny and made you feel pretty good about life when it was over. plus he had kids come up on stage which i love. kids are awesome.
my entire study abroad group went to see hughes on study australia's tab (which is probably my tab, but once it's paid for it seems like a nice gesture). apparently he's pretty popular around here - he's on 'before the game' afl footy show. footy = massive popularity around here and i'm quickly becoming a die-hard fan myself. hughes was more your baisc stand-up comic whose material was all aussie based stuff. after living here for a few months it was absolutely hilarious. but if i would have seen the same sketch when i first got here i would a) not be able to understand a word he said through the thick accent and b) even if i could make out the words, not get it. there were heaps of references to melbourne suburbs, local stars, and regional news stories that i highly doubt make it onto the american radar.
aussie humor is a bit dry...kind of a cross between british and american humor i guess. i don't know, i'm no critic. regardless, it got a laugh out of me. then again, that's not a very hard thing to do.

artsy fartsy

i had nothing to do yesterday afternoon (and studying or cleaning the apartment didn't sound like much fun at all) so i decided to roam around the city and see what i could find. i ended up going to a bunch of art museams which is strange for me mainly because i don't really like art. no, correction, i don't really appreciate art (in spite of taking art appreciation last semester). some stuff i like, others i don't, and that's all there is to it. regardless it turned out to be a nice day so i'll tell you about it!
first i went to this little art house i read about in the in flight magazine on my way home from brissy who was displaying 'shag'. shag is a southern cal painter who is apparently relatively popular among the stars. i kind of liked his stuff as well. he did 50s and 60s pop culture type paintings of people in chich settings or immitated famous works of art and incorporated his style of people and settings. he also had some with australiana themes which i particularly liked.
next i walked down to the australian center for contemporary art (a 'must see' in my city guide). i don't know about you, but i just don't get contemporary art. it's just a little too out in left field. this museam featured installation art: first these neon lights on the floor, then a floating square, and then a room with two video projections of a lady's legs sticking out of a diamond shape box dancing around. the one that got me, however, was this maize-type thing. so you go in through this path lined with artificial christmas trees which gives you the eerie feeling of being in the shinning. then you enter a cardboard box maize with walls and ceilings not much bigger than you and doors you can just fit through. i was feeling a bit clausterphobic and slightly panicie and was having trouble finding my way out. the dim lights and eerily calm music was not helping. i ran into a couple other people who seemed to be having the same troubles as i was. one of them said he wanted a box cutter knife...i couldn't agree more. finally there was a light at the end of the tunnel and i busted out of there as quick as i could feeling good about the fact that jack never caught up to me with his chainsaw.
after that i went the the national gallery of victoria which is your basic art museam displaying a lot of boring paintings with a few famous names mixed in. there wouldn't be much to say about this one, but i saw this painting that looks exactly like the pictures of grandma from when she was younger. it was crazy - i was just wandering around the room and was just like - huh, there's a picture of grandma! the painting is by edward burne-jones called 'portrait of baroone madeleine deslandes'. google it and tell me it doesn't have a strong resemblance. i tried to search for it briefly last night, but with no luck. but it's the internet...it has to be on there somewhere - let me know if you find it.
my final stop was at st. paul's cathedral. catherdral's are always nice, but once you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all. this one, however, i kind of liked. it was super colorful: the floors, columns, seat cushions, walls...everything had designs on it. there's not much else to say about it, just that i was a fan. if i were catholic - i'd go to that chuch just beacuse it's pretty.
so that was my day. i felt urban and cultured by the end of it although i don't really fit the mold. however i've been wanting to dred my hair. chill out, i'm not actually going to do it, but i kind of want to. it always looks so cool - from a distance that is. the big turn off is once you get close it smells terrible. plus when you're sick of it you have to shave your head. so straight it stays.