Surf's Up

I'm off to the Great Ocean Road in approximately an hour and a half. Clearly that CLC on Straddie didn't get done; this week was just ridiculously hectic. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were all super busy, and then I basically spent Thursday and Friday recovering. It's now very early Saturday morning; I stayed up all night catching up with people from home, and then I had to pack a lunch for today and clothes for the weekend.

The Early Voices Renaissance Dinner went very well on Tuesday night; it was just a long night. We were called at 5pm and rehearsed on and off until the dinner started at 7pm. Performances began at 8, and we weren't finished till 11.

Aside from that, it's just typical end-of-term work. Lots of assignments due in the coming weeks: groupwork, essays, and then preparing for exams. Luckily I only have two exams, though both are in philosophy subjects, so I'll actually have to study for those, haha. It's funny to see that some things are the same regardless of where you're going to uni. The end of term is always like this -- lots of last-second scrambling to learn and do the things you missed, whilst trying to get in the groove of churning out essays.

Nonetheless, I'm really looking forward to this weekend. The Great Ocean Road runs along the southeastern coast of Australia, and is home to some of the most spectacular sights I haven't gotten to see yet, including the Twelve Apostles and the Loch Ard Gorge, which are beautiful rock formations. I've seen some great photos, but rather than posting them here, I'm hoping to post some of my own when I get back. =)

Torquay, the "gateway" to the Great Ocean Road, is also considered by many to be the birthplace of surfing, and is home to the famous Bells Beach as well. We'll go surfing tomorrow as well. I'm particularly excited to get back on a surfboard, though it will probably be a bit chilly, considering we aren't exactly in sunny Queensland, and it's only October, so although spring has arrived, it hasn't really warmed up that much yet. Still, the forecast for this weekend looks good (17 today and 19 tomorrow -- that's around 64 today and 70 tomorrow, in Fahrenheit). And no rain, which will be a welcome change from the constant rain here in Melbourne.

Since this is Melbourne Uni's free excursion, all of the other Melbourne Uni kids will be on the trip as well. Despite the fact that so many of us live together, I haven't seen a lot of people in ages, so it'll be nice to catch up as well.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Shake the cloud from off your brow...

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. =)

The Real World: Melbourne

So, I never got around to doing that footy post, and guess what? This isn't going to be it. I'm currently procrastinating a research plan for my policy class, and I've discovered that procrastination is even easier here than it ever was in the States, since when I'm at Denison, past a certain time of night I have no choice but to do my work because there's no-one to distract me. Whereas now that I'm on an opposite schedule from everyone at home, they can distract me late at night when my friends here are asleep (as I should be as well).

A few brief updates -- first, the last two days of Prosh Week: they were sort of a bust, to be totally honest. I burned out, which I sort of knew I might but had hoped that I wouldn't. I slept late on Thursday morning (partially because I was up so late the night before...I still haven't been sleeping all that well, to be honest), and I swung by for the Scav List drop at noon, but left shortly after that to run to a rehearsal for Vocal Ensemble and then I had my Medieval & Early Modern Music lecture, which I can't miss because Melanie (our lecturer) actually takes attendance.

Then I had rehearsal till 6:15, after which I went and spent some time helping out with Scav Hunt stuff, but I left that to go see David again after promising to return -- and seriously, finding the motivation to leave his place to go back for Scav Hunt was literally one of the top three hardest things I did that week. After going full throttle for the first three days of Prosh Week though, I guess it was more or less understandable that I was tired. I went back to help with Scav Hunt for a little while, but there wasn't that much to do because none of us wanted to get deported, and as such we didn't do anything on the black list. (Rumour has it that black list is currently on total lockdown because there were arrests and now there's a huge investigation. This is like third-hand gossip though, because I heard from Corey who heard from Andrew, so I don't have any details.)

Friday morning I was meant to do the Metcard Drop, but I was subbed out at the last minute because someone else wanted to do it and I'd stopped caring, haha. Apparently our team almost got arrested for public indecency (or something along those lines) as well, but the cop let them off. MUSEX ended up coming in last of the large teams, but we all had a fantastic time, and that's what we were really in it for.

So I slept almost all of Saturday, and spent most of the following week (this past week) recovering and getting back into the swing of things. We're pretty much at mid-term, since this past week was Week 6 and the teaching period is only twelve weeks long, so suddenly everyone is scrambling to do real work. I have one major assignment due this week (Week 7), three due next week (Week 8), break, then one due the second week after break (Week 10), and one due the week after that (Week 11). Then the teaching period will draw to a close, which is really crazy to think about.

At any rate, Friday night it was party party again, and Corey and I headed over to Perseverance, where (for those who don't keep up with me on Facebook or LiveJournal) David and I broke up. Needless to say, that was not a very good night. I'm not particularly devastated, which I suppose is a good thing, just...sort of out of whack. I mean, I did like him, and I still do, and I wouldn't mind still being with him, but if this is how things have worked out then I suppose I'm alright with that as well. It was always going to be over eventually. Of course, I was a bit -- ok, extremely -- annoyed with his poor choice in break-up timing and locale, but I did understand the fact that he didn't want to put it off, and I appreciate that for what it's worth. We had coffee Saturday afternoon to talk things over a little bit more and nothing's changed from how it ended on Friday night, but we're still friends and I was glad for the closure (and of course the fantastic coffee) somewhere that wasn't a loud club where I was distracted and caught off-guard.

But the fact remains that I've been seeing David for a month now, and I realised yesterday (well, Saturday, since it's now early Monday morning) that in that month most of my social schedule had more to do with him than anything else, which isn't really a good thing or a bad thing, just a fact. Only, the other fact is that David and I had been seeing each other since 11 August -- I'm not [totally] neurotic with dates; it was just particularly memorable because it was exactly one month after I arrived in Australia -- and that, combined with the fact that living in an apartment complex is not as conducive as a dormitory for meeting people and making friends.

So suddenly I'm faced with trying to re-establish a social life when everyone else has already done so. I will admit that this is a bit annoying. I do have friends, of course -- Arcadians, and Jarrod, of course, and MUSEX people, as well as a lot of people from IH (who are also friends with David). It's just I've sort of painted myself into a corner and it's not really his fault and it's not really my fault, it's just the way things happened.

So right now I'm less getting over him and more getting back into the way things were before him, which seems like a terribly long time ago, which in some ways I feel like it is and at the same time, the last month has disappeared so quickly I feel as though I've only been here a month at most.

At any rate, Saturday night I hung out with the Arcadians who are at University College (UC) -- Mandy, Isa, Becca, and Cassandra -- for dinner, and we talked in Becca and Cassandra's room for a while afterward. Mandy, Cassandra, and I had planned on going to a party, but instead Cassandra and I decided to go clubbing over in Fitzroy. On our way there we got sidetracked by Koko Black, which is basically a chocolate cafe. Becca, Becky, and I had had dessert there after the Carlton/Geelong match a month ago, but Cassandra hadn't been yet, so we went together and had some very decadent (and slightly expensive) chocolate and did the post-break-up commiseration that girls do.

We eventually made it over to Fitzroy, where we went back to Perseverance, which is the same club I'd been at the night prior when David broke up with me. Part of this was being cheap, because Perseverance doesn't charge a cover, and part of this was the fact that Perseverance is actually quite a good club. A large part of it was sort of a need to establish Perseverance as something other than "that club where I got broken up with."

The night was a bit of a flop. I don't know what was going on with Perseverance last night, but it was like 40-year-old mixer night or something, because the majority of the clubbers were 40+ (there was even a couple, clearly 50+, grinding on the dance floor, which was sort of like -- wow, that's fantastic for you guys, but none of us want to see it). Some guy kept staring at me, and eventually tried to get Cassandra to go dance with his friend, presumably so he could dance with me, but he wasn't attractive and came off as a bit of a douchebag. There literally was not one person there worth dancing or making out with, which was unfortunate.

But Cassandra and I had a great time dancing together, and we left the club somewhat early, shortly after that guy tried to get Cassandra to dance with his friend, and we just walked up and down Brunswick Street looking for a bar we could just sit at and talk or something, but nothing caught our eye. We eventually headed home, but the conversation and the company was wonderful, and I was glad to get out and having fun even if nothing really good happened. Girlfriends are always the best post-break-up company. Even if I wasn't particularly devastated, it was good that I wasn't alone.

I sort of wonder if this whole experience -- not just the whole thing with David, but the whole semester I'm spending here -- will become surreal once I leave. Like something that I intellectually know happened, but something that I feel so far removed from that it almost seems more like a dream. Even now I still wake up some mornings and wonder if it is a dream.

But, what's maybe most important is that I really don't regret anything that happened this past month. Two entries ago I said I didn't want to regret anything I did or didn't do, and I'm glad all of this happened. Denison is such a small bubble, with its tiny dating pool and cookie-cutter guys, and aside from being really glad that I met such a great guy and had a great time with him (even if it is over now), it was sort of a boost in self-esteem.

Not that my self-esteem was low to begin with, but after two years at a tiny school where all the guys are the same and not really my type (and there aren't enough to begin with), with summers and holidays at home where I'm stuck in the Bridgewater-Raritan rut of who I used to be, and being unable to go out and drink and be social like a "real" adult could be, I hadn't met anyone new in a long time. It's hardly an "I'm desperate" situation, but when you're in what seems like a holding pattern for so long, you start to wonder if it will ever end. Or if it's not really a holding pattern, and it's just you being unappealing. I mean, it's not as if I can't be happy without a man, but it's always nice to have one as well.

Melbourne feels more like reality than Denison or Bridgewater ever do, and it's a bit of a relief that I can meet people, and guys are interested.

So. I'm going to attempt to get my work done now so I can sleep. Rest assured that the list of post topics grows ever longer, and they're not all point-by-point recollections of what I did each day. There's one rolling around in my head about Greek life (hee!) that I hope to get written sometime this week.

"Did somebody say naked crowdsurfing?!"

It's 3am on Day 4 of Prosh Week, and I can't sleep (much like I haven't been able to sleep lately, for whatever reason -- except when passed out, of course). So what else is there to do but to update on Prosh Week shenanigans?

Prosh Week is hard to explain. There pretty much aren't even any words to try to describe what happens. There's no point, except to have fun (and maybe win as well). The week is filled with random events, some of which involve drinking, some of which are better with drinking (but during which drinking is not compulsory), all of which are ridiculously hilarious and amazing.

On Monday morning, we got decked out in our Prosh Week regalia (each team has a colour and a theme -- the MUSEX [Melbourne University Student EXchange Club, or something like that] colour is yellow and the theme is jocks and cheerleaders) and headed out to Envelopes, where each team receives a certain amount of (fake) money with which you bid on envelopes containing unknown tasks. Some (okay, a lot) involve nudity, others involve doing favours for the judges, and yet others are just plain bizarre (for instance, one of the envelopes MUSEX got was to research the history of men's shirts and hand it in to a judge). Two MUSEX guys shaved their heads, and we all were tasked with giving massages to any judge that asked.

Following Envelopes, we performed a team song and dance; ours involved a human pyramid (and my being sore the following day). Then, that afternoon, we had a huge waterfall race down the so-called "moat" on South Lawn, after which we had Afternoon Games and competed against other teams with some really random games -- bobbing for apples, eggthrowing, eating a bucketful of creme without your hands, etc. (The boyfriend won the apple-bobbing contest, but alas -- he's on the Geodudes team, not the MUSEX team.) MUSEX put on a good show and even won the Rubik's Cube competition (in which we had to do the Rubik's cube as many times as possible during the course of the afternoon...uh, we may have accomplished this by taking it apart, but whatever).

That evening was the Pub Games, competing with drinking games. I was on the MUSEX Beirut (Beer Pong) team with a Greek guy named Stathi. We won the first round and were doing pretty well in the second round, but our opponents rallied and managed to beat us. Ah well, I got some free beer out of it. =P And a good time was had by all.

I left pretty early that night; I was trying to save money (as opposed to spending it on alcohol), lol, and there wasn't a whole lot more to do unless you were on a team. I stopped by David's place and we spent some time together, but I left around 11 because he had to get some sleep for Long Drive the following morning.

Long Drive is one of the highlights of Prosh Week -- I wanted to do it, but would've been pretty useless since I'm not legal to drive in Australia. At any rate, it started at 9am Tuesday and didn't end till 9am Wednesday; it's a 24-hour drive around Victoria, completing crazy tasks whilst decked out like a rock band. The only thing about Long Drive is that it (obviously) precludes you from doing any of the Tuesday events, which includes a "Mystery Event" -- the Bachelor of Inebriation.

The Bachelor of Inebriation is a 10-hour pub crawl involving 14 bars/pubs and 14 drinking tasks (or subjects) in order for you to earn your BI; a higher degree (Master's and Ph.D) can be earned by doing "breadth" subjects that involve drinking extra alcohol. We cut the pub crawl a bit short because there was awful weather in Melbourne, skipping from pub #8 straight to Turf (which was the last pub), but I still managed to complete all of the tasks. I stumbled back to my room at around 8pm, with every intention of returning to Turf, but needing to get some food in my stomach before I died.

Instead, I passed out, woke up, puked, passed out again, woke up, crawled into bed, passed out yet again, woke around 2am, puked again, and then had a hangover. At 2am. It was pretty epic -- also, in future, I'll refrain from eating salt and vinegar potato chips whilst drinking...they burned so badly coming back up that water tasted too sweet to drink (because I don't like overly sweet things). I was trying to drink water to make the hangover less severe, but it literally tasted like I was eating sugar. Luckily though, since the hangover hit me at 2am, I went back to sleep and by the time I woke up, I was perfectly fine.

MUSEX also pulled a lecture stunt on Tuesday morning, wherein Andrew, our fearless [cheer]leader and team captain, crowdsurfed naked down a lecture theatre. We earned full points for the stunt and "Did somebody say naked crowdsurfing?!" has become like the unofficial tagline of Prosh Week. It was pretty hilarious, particularly since we crashed the Australia Now lecture, and the lecture on Tuesday was about the stolen generation of Aboriginal children. The lecturer had just finished showing a YouTube clip of Kevin Rudd's formal apology to the Aboriginal people for the stolen generation, and Andrew (who, I ought to add, is actually in that lecture) stood up (arse naked, of course) and screamed, "Did somebody say naked crowdsurfing?!" Then he just went. It was fantastic.

And that, of course, brings us to today (Wednesday). There was a nude run at 10am, which I skipped, but at noon, we had jellywrestling on South Lawn. I was the female MUSEX jellywrestler, and it was pretty ridiculous. It was rather cold outside today, and the jelly itself was cold and slimy. I went three rounds all the way to the finals, which was a three-way, since we had an uneven number of teams advancing to finals. Girl A and I teamed up on Girl B (who was bigger than both of us and had beasted all the girls she'd previously wrestled, so this was a pretty damn good idea, haha). Girl B managed to tear off my top, but was defeated in the process, and I was trying to fix my top (I was wearing a halter-top swimsuit, and not only was I hanging out, but it was caught in my hairclip and just a hot mess) when Girl A just came up and shoved me out of the pool. Somewhat annoying, but I wasn't particularly interested in winning anyway, since the winner had to wrestle one of the judges (for double points, but still, it's a judge and you don't want to offend them, lol). Besides, at that point I was exhausted and cold, so I just let it go, or else I would probably have fought it a little harder.

I'd planned on going to the boat race that immediately followed jellywrestling, but I was freezing, so I retreated to my apartment for a lovely hot shower. The slime took a lot of time to get off of me, since (as I discovered when I got in the shower) it got slimier as you added water. All in all, though, a fairly successful day. Trivia was the evening event, and I went for a while, but as I said, I haven't been sleeping well (or really at all, even), and I was tired, so I peaced out.

So, that's Prosh Week so far...the huge culminating event of the week occurs from Thursday to Friday, so we're all gearing up for that event, which is a huge Scavenger Hunt. The "white" list drops at noon, and the "black" list (which contains all of the unofficial, sort of illegal tasks) drops at midnight. I've skipped all my lectures so far, though I did attend all of my tutorials and rehearsals, but tomorrow afternoon I have two rehearsals and a lecture that I really do need to attend (since I already skipped it on Tuesday for the BI, and it's the lecture where the lecturer actually takes attendance). So I'll be missing Proshession, which is a huge fake parade down Swanston Street -- I sort of regret this, because Proshession is one of the great Prosh Week traditions, but I am still (sort of, haha) a student. And I'll probably also miss most of the white list, since I'll be in rehearsal/class from 1pm till 6:15. I might do the black list, depending on what's on it (don't want to get deported, lol). And then Friday morning there's the Metcard challenge that I'm meant to be doing, but details don't get dropped until the Scav Hunt details do.

Looking forward to the rest of the week, but I'll definitely be crashing this weekend. I need some serious downtime...for now, I'm going to try and get some sleep.

Let's Face the Music and Dance

So I haven't updated in a while -- I meant to do a post about footy shortly after the Carlton v Geelong match, but never got around to it. (Footy post will be forthcoming, though, when I do manage to get around to it.)

Life is shockingly ordinary; I go to class, I cook for myself, and I procrastinate my reading. But last weekend (Saturday 8th August) I went out with a bunch of people from International House (one of the UM residential colleges), most of whom I didn't know. Cassandra and I had meant to go out clubbing that night, but she ended up needing to work on a paper, so I texted Corey, who invited me to come over to I-House to pregame before joining them to go to Workshop, a bar down in the CBD.

The pregaming was pretty fun; we played Kings and danced to loud music before hopping a tram down to Workshop. The night that followed was only okay though, since everyone split into their own little groups and I didn't really know anyone but Corey. So I'd just started contemplating heading out (it was getting late, I was tired and not drunk enough to be able to deal with sitting around people I didn't know awkwardly) when the boy (part of the group I'd come with, but someone I hadn't met yet) sitting next to me introduced himself and we started talking.

Long story short, that was a week ago and we've been on two dates since. =) So it's been quite a lovely week -- it makes me laugh that there's past precedent for this, yet I completely didn't expect it -- in fact, actively expected that I wouldn't meet anyone. I mean, I am only here till the end of November (possibly a little bit longer, if I can manage to swing it?). And yet I don't believe in not doing things just because I'm afraid they'll get more difficult, or they'll come to an end; most things do, and it's what happens before they end that matters.

In other news, Prosh Week is coming up. It's an old University of Melbourne tradition, a week filled with fake parades, scavenger hunts, and other various drunken debauchery. (Tradition holds that it used to be the week when all the Faculty Balls were held, so it was called "Posh Week," but due to drunken students slurring words -- trust me, these balls are mainly an excuse to get dressed up and then get drunk -- it became "Prosh Week" instead..) At first I was fairly sceptical about it, but the more I hear about it, the more it seems like something that I should be involved in during my short time here.

I don't want to regret anything -- not anything I did, or even anything I didn't do. So I'm going to go for it. I'm going to go for all of it, and live it up.

Before the fiddlers have fled
Before they ask us to pay the bill
And while we still have the chance
Let's face the music and dance
...
There may be teardrops to shed
But while there's moonlight and music
And love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Trees Full of Starlight

Out of the four days of class I have each week, only Tuesday ends before 6:15 in the evening -- I have a late tute on Mondays and rehearsal on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Nevertheless, today, rather than heading home at 3:15 after my Medieval & Early Modern Music lecture, I popped over to the computing centre to print out some (okay, more like 80) photos to put up around my bedroom.

Grateful that I'd dodged (most of) the rain, which so often comes and goes in Melbourne, I headed out of Union House to head home just before 5:30. Dusk had settled quickly over the city and brought with it a brisk chill. This morning it had felt more like autumn than winter; as I crossed Royal Parade 9 hours later, it was definitely a winter evening. It was just cold enough that I wondered if I could see my breath -- a bit of a novelty for me, since it is August and traditionally very hot. I let out a long exhale to see if I could spot any wisps of breath, but alas. Not quite that cold (yet). The streetlights, the headlights of passing cars, even the lights from the trams were dancing over the still-wet pavement, glinting here and there in shades of peach and champagne.

I've never lived in an actual city. Bridgewater is technically a township, and it's mainly highways anyway, so I would never even think of walking anywhere except maybe down the street to a friend's house or maybe across 202 for a popular event at either North Branch or Duke Island Park. Granville is even smaller -- it's actually a village. I can walk anywhere I need, which is really only up and down Broadway to the CVS or maybe, if I'm feeling adventurous, down to the IGA for some groceries.

Sure, I go to New York City often when I'm home, and generally go to Columbus a few times a semester, so I know my way around a city. I know how to hail a cab, how to use the subway. I know how to get to Central Park, or Times Square, which way is uptown and which way is downtown. But actually living in a city presents a curious dichotomy between being surrounded by people all the time, yet being very, very alone.

It's always an interesting experiment to smile at or say hello to someone you don't know, have never seen before in your life, and will never see again. In New York, if you get a reaction at all, it will be an odd look and then they'll be gone forever -- a brief moment of interaction between two human beings, and yet not really any interaction at all. I haven't tried it yet in Melbourne, but something hopeful inside me says that maybe I'll get a few smiles back. Certainly they're far more open and willing to approach or even help out strangers; the other day a man on a bicycle asked me if I knew where Grattan Street was and how to get there (always a nice ego boost, since Grattan is one of the few streets I do know!). When I first arrived in Melbourne, my friends and I occasionally stopped people on the street to ask directions and they were always very friendly.

At any rate, I haven't had to ask directions in a while -- my daily commute to and from uni wasn't difficult to begin with, and has become even easier in the last week and a half or so. I always pass by a few hospitals on Royal Parade (or perhaps just many buildings of one hospital) between RMIT Village and UM, and they're always busy, regardless of what time it is. First thing in the morning, heading to classes, in the middle of the day, popping back to the apartment for lunch, walking home from class or rehearsal in the evenings, and even late at night on a run to the bottle shop across from Trinity College. There are always people coming in and out -- visitors, paramedics, all sorts of people.

But there's one woman that I see constantly -- nearly every time I walk by, as a matter of fact. She's outside the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a garishly pink robe and fuzzy slippers clearly not meant to be worn outside a building. She's older, probably in her 50s or early 60s, with hair that's dyed a burgundy red and roots that need to be retouched. All of this aside, perhaps what is most obvious is that she is always alone, smoking a cigarette, and never smiling. In fact, it's not even that she looks particularly unpleasant; just on the older side and a bit eccentric, and she strikes me as being very resigned to her fate, whatever it is.

I wonder about her. What's her story, where is her family? In the short week and a half I've been here, she's become a fixture on my daily walks. Is she, likewise, a fixture at the hospital? Or will I stop seeing her in a week or two? Why is she always alone, and why is she at the hospital to begin with? How many times does she come outside to smoke each day? I see her so often on some days that I wonder if she's gone in at all, or if she's just been sitting out there, smoking one cigarette after another, all day long.

Tonight she was sitting alone on the bench again, puffing away at her ever-present cigarette, a look of intense concentration on her face as she took slow drags, examining her pink robe in the rapidly dimming light. I'd known she was there before I could be sure it was her -- the smell of cigarette smoke seemed to carry better in the cold air. She was even more alone than usual. Normally there are other people milling about the bench where she sits, but tonight it had gotten dark very quickly, and combined with the rain it seemed like a good guess that most of them were inside. It was cold; I'd misjudged the weather myself, finding myself wearing only a (fairly warm, but not warm enough) rugby shirt and jeans. These last few days I'd been dressing warmly only to find out as soon as I stepped outside that I didn't need a jacket or even really a jumper; though the camisole inside was too thin for me to be able to take off the jumper, a t-shirt would have sufficed. Today I'd grossly miscalculated; I was underdressed in anticipation of it being warmer than I expected, when in fact it turned out to be just as cold as I thought it might be, and then some.

I wanted to stop and say something, to ask her name. She looked cold. Her robe definitely didn't seem thick enough for her to be out in the cold drizzly evening.

But she sat there, resolutely puffing away, picking at her robe, and I walked on, surrounded by people and yet feeling very alone, on this cold Melbourne evening.

Ordinary People

Last night, at some point whilst I scrubbed at the stove range with steel wool and Lysol wipes, it fully sank in that I live here. Here, at 5-17 Flemington Road, North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Here, in Australia. In Melbourne.

I go to class, I buy groceries, I make dinner every night. I have friends over, and I clean and live my life in my little apartment surrounded by a culture I don't fully understand yet and many, many thousands of people that I do not know.

It occurred to me, as I idly watched the Ashes (for the uninformed, the Ashes are a huuuge cricket tournament between England and Australia. Huge deal around here) and chatted with friends from home, that this is not just some glorified vacation. I had hoped that this weekend would be a little more exciting than it turned out to be; I happen to be of the opinion that the first weekend of term will either be a lot of fun or completely boring, with no middle ground. Certainly I've noticed that most people take one of two stances: (1) "Crap, classes have started and now I need to be a serious student!" or (2) "Fuckk, you mean I actually have to do work? Let's get drunk to commiserate."

We all know which one I wanted to do. After all, I am in Australia, and we are legal to drink here, and, whilst I do honestly enjoy my classes, I'd rather go out with my friends (even if we don't necessarily drink or get drunk) and have a good weekend than sit around at my desk mucking through hundreds of pages of reading.

But it struck me just now as I stood under the water for my four-minute shower that this is my life. Yeah, I should live it up, but I'm here for another four months. There will be plenty of opportunities for having fun.

And all in all, this weekend wasn't so bad. I have no Friday lectures or tutes, so I de facto have a three-day weekend every week. Jarrod came over Thursday night to watch True Beauty (and by watch, I mean mock), eat pizza, and do tequila shots out of plastic shotglasses lined with fruit roll-ups, and the next morning we lazed around the apartment, eating pancakes and muffins and generally wasting time. Hey, not the most productive of days, but a good time with good company nonetheless. After he left, I made dinner for myself and watched the Ashes and caught up with some friends back home. Saturday was similarly spent sleeping in (and I do mean really sleeping in -- like 2pm sleeping in), watching movies, chatting online, and eating leftovers. I cleaned the kitchen for a while; it's probably cleaner now than it has been in a few terms. Then I reorganised my half of the pantry and made a shopping list of things I need to go get. I even managed to get some writing done. This morning, a bunch of the Arcadians came over for a potluck brunch and we had a great time sitting around chatting in my kitchen. It's not the most exciting life, but it's by no means a bad one, either.

Not to mention I've got four more months of this life. Not every weekend can be the all-out, get drunk, go dancing sort of crazy fun. Lazy weekends are fun too. Studying abroad is meant to give you all sorts of learning experiences aside from just purely academic ones. You learn to adapt to a new culture, a new lifestyle.

I've been so concerned with having a good time that I missed the part where I'm doing something that's really, truly amazing -- I'm making a life for myself in a place that, a year ago, I'd only really dreamed about going. I'm living fully on my own, meeting amazing people, and getting to know an amazing city and country.

It's been a great weekend. =)