It's like Australia didn't exist before I arrived. Intellectually I knew it did, and though I knew it couldn't be that different from the United States, it was difficult to picture even with the help of photos and stories. Now I can't imagine being anywhere else, and I'm dreading the end of each day because it's bringing me slowly closer to the end of my time here, with these new friends who have become my family, with this new city that has become my home.
I'm definitely planning on coming back, hopefully to do my postgraduate studies at Melbourne Uni. Apparently their standards for postgraduate students are nowhere near as rigourous as their standards for undergraduate students, so hopefully I have a pretty decent shot of getting in in a year and a half. Even if I don't end up doing my postgraduate work here in Melbourne, I most certainly plan on moving here after graduation and spending at least a few years living here. I might not move here permanently, and I don't know how I feel about giving up US citizenship (if nothing else, it's certainly a handy thing to have -- for now) to become an Australian citizen. I suppose I could just be an expat forever, haha. Anyway, I'm hopeful because I know I want to come back, because I love this place so much, but even contemplating leaving makes me really sad.
My mom wants me to come home for Thanksgiving, since my last exam is on 19 November and, aside from a ministerial briefing due for my public policy subject on the 20th, I'm home free at that point. But I know I'll want that last week to say goodbye to the city and to my friends here, even if it would be nice to be home for Thanksgiving and to see my parents and my sister and to sleep in a bed that I can roll over in more than once without falling out. I have occasional bouts of homesickness, because I do miss my family, sisters (of the non-blood-related sort -- well, I miss my actual sister too, but she's grouped under family =P), and friends. But I'm not looking forward to leaving here. Five months wasn't enough time. I don't know if a year would be, or two years. For now, I try not to think about it, and I'm making the most of each day which means more skipped lectures (I really will listen to them on Lectopia, I swear!) spent recovering from nights out. But I'm on exchange, right? I'm here to have fun.
I haven't updated in over a month, and as I'm 
sure you can imagine, so much has happened in that month. I wish I'd kept this blog up better, but at the same time I'm glad I've been out making memories instead of writing them down.
Spring Break at Melbourne Uni is two weeks long, rather than the one week you get everywhere else. Two weeks of break seemed a bit long to me, honestly, but with the second week occupied by rehearsal for Dido & Aeneas, it suddenly seemed too short. The first weekend was spent at North Stradbroke Island (locally called "Straddie"), a lovely island off the coast of Queensland. Details of that trip to follow in a separate entry (I promise this one will actually get written! And within the week, too -- I have to write it for my CLC, haha).
Anyway, I spent the first week exploring parts of Melbourne I hadn't yet gotten to: the Salvador Dali exhibit at the NGV and the Melbourne Aquarium. The Dali exhibit was excellent, a little bit long, but quite good. His stuff is a bit disturbing, but the exhibit was definitely worth a visit. Afterward, Travis and I met up with Kon and Dori, two fellow Melbourne Uni students I'd met a week and a half earlier after a picnic on South Lawn. We wandered lower Melbourne for a little while looking for a pub Dori insisted we go to, but didn't actually find it. Eventually we stopped into a random pub, selected based on their beer list and the fact that they had food. Each of us bought a round of drinks and we sat around talking late into the evening.
Dori was born here in Oz, but raised in Israel, and after serving in the military (it's compulsory for Israelis, I think) for a few years, he came to study in Melbourne. As a result, he's a few years older than all of us, but is only a first year. Kon is a true blue Aussie, and we sat around discussing everything from foreign beer to sex to Obama's healthcare plan. Around midnight, Dori left to go home, and Kon, Travis and I headed into Chinatown for some karaoke and pool, where Kon beasted us at pool and Travis guilt-tripped me into taking a shot of tequila with him before going onstage to sing a Lisa Loeb song.
The next morning, I met Ksenia, the other Denisonian studying here this semester, and we headed down to the Melbourne Aquarium. I confess I was a bit disappointed; the aquarium was rather small, with only four exhibits, and none were particularly impressive. But we got to watch the penguin show and see some jellyfish, and I had a good time hanging out with Ksenia, who I hadn't seen in a while.
Friday was a day spent relaxing in my flat until the late afternoon, when Travis and I headed down to Taco Bill for margaritas and Mexican food. Mandy and Vanessa (a Brit who's also studying at Melbourne Uni this semester) met us there, and Simon joined us later as well. We got well and truly inebriated off of Taco Bill's famous Pancho Villa margaritas (which cost $30 regularly and $20 during happy hour, when we were there). These margaritas are literally the size of your head and contain 11 shots of tequila each. It took me an hour and a half to finish one by myself -- they were delicious, but huge.
(Yes, that's me and my -- almost finished! -- mango Pancho Villa margarita. See, the margarita glass is the size of my head, and when I first got it, it was filled right up to that blue band around the rim.)
I hadn't really known Vanessa that well previously, but over the course of the evening and several margaritas, we all got to know each other pretty well. We left Taco Bill and headed back to Vanessa's house, where we sat around and drank goon and talked some more, sitting around and and enjoying one another's company. Around 11pm we decided we wanted to make a cake (but had no recipe), so Simon just started throwing stuff in a bowl that seemed like it would go into a cake. Somehow it turned out fairly well, and we devoured most of the cake before calling it a night.
The next day was the AFL Grand Final. This is like the Superbowl of Aussie Rules football, or footy. I know I meant to do a footy post, even if it seems like I'll never get around to it, so I won't go through the details. My team (the Carlton Blues) got knocked out in the first round of finals, so I decided to barrack for the Geelong Cats instead, since a lot of my friends here are from Geelong. The Cats were playing the St Kilda Saints, and it was a very tight match.
Ben (in the photo with me, taken after Geelong's win) and Callum, two of the IH boys, came to Turf to watch the match with me. They were having free beer from first bounce till first goal, which was only about two minutes, but I managed to scull three beers in that time. Ben was going for Geelong as well, though Callum was for St Kilda -- something about underdogs, blah blah. We spent the entire match on the edge of our seats, getting increasingly drunk and increasingly absorbed by the game. St Kilda would be ahead, then Geelong would score and be ahead by a few, but then St Kilda would recover and pull ahead again. In fact, I thought St Kilda was going to win until the last five minutes of the fourth quarter, but Geelong rallied and managed two goals at the 11th hour. It was spectacular, and I almost went hoarse from all the screaming I did, both at the television (because somehow screaming at a television in a bar is going to do something for the match being played over three kilometres away, of course) and out of excitement, especially in the end.
After the match, I went back to IH with Ben and Callum for some (free) dinner and to celebrate Geelong's premiership (which is what it's called when you win the Grand Final). David and Nielsen are both from Geelong, and so most of our IH friends were also barracking for Geelong. It was a pretty crazy night, lots of noise and excitement. I hadn't seen a lot of these people since I left for Straddie the previous Friday morning, so it was fantastic to see everyone and catch up on everything that had happened in the last week.
I took Sunday easy, and Monday marked the start of a week's worth of rehearsals for Dido. The rehearsals were interesting at first, especially because we're performing as part of the annual Spring Early Music Festival, and so we're using all period instruments (viola da gamba, harpsichord, theorbo, etc). It's really fascinating for the musicologist in me, and quite an experience to be performing alongside instrumentalists who play instruments I'm not used to seeing -- or hearing, for that matter. The harpsichord wasn't so much of a difference since we use one for all of the Early Voices rehearsals, but everything else was just really interesting to watch and hear.
As the week wore on though, I became less enamoured of the instruments and more enamoured of getting out of rehearsal early. Rehearsals started at 2pm from Monday to Wednesday, which generally negates doing anything in the morning, because who's going to get up early during their holiday to go do something? Wednesday morning, though, I managed to drag myself out of bed to go for yum cha with Jarrod. We call it dim sum in the States, but apparently yum cha is the Cantonese name for it. We found a small restaurant in Chinatown, and it reminded me a little bit of home. My family often went for dim sum after Chinese school on Sundays when I was still living at home, and every now and again we still go when everyone is together at home.
I had Thursday off and spent the afternoon with Corey, exploring Queen Vic Market, looking for souvenirs to bring home, then having a Glee marathon to introduce her to Gleekdom. =P We hung out at IH that night, leading to a rather nasty hangover for Friday's 11am run-through of Dido in its entirety.
Most of the rest of that weekend was spent hanging out at IH, where I spend so much time that I think people think I actually live there. (Being the International House, there are quite a few Asians and Americans, so I suppose I blend in, if nothing else!) Then classes started again in earnest first thing Monday morning.
It was a pretty normal week of classes, but it was a pretty huge dose of reality after two weeks of holidays (even if the second week was mostly spent in rehearsal)! Dido & Aeneas went up Friday evening, so Friday afternoon was spent in rehearsal, then a rushed dinner at IH and our first performance. It went incredibly well, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow's performance, which I'm sure will go equally well, if not better.
I promise I'll endeavour to update again, sooner rather than later. You can look for a Straddie post soon (it'll probably have to be the next one I write actually, since the CLC's are due in a week and I'll be at the Great Ocean Road next weekend), a footy post eventually, and the promised entry discussing the Aussie fascination with Greek life. =)
