Cozzie

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It's been a very busy weekend for me and I still don't have internet access, a laptop, or a tram pass (my sponsors are frustratingly unprepared). I start work again tomorrow as today was a holiday (Australian Veterans Day). Hopefully my sponsor will get their act together tomorrow. Until then I'll just have to use the internet cafes/library. So I guess I have to continue my story. I need to catch up so this will probably be a very long post. So here goes.

The three of us (Putnam, Dahlberg, myself) arrived in Melbourne around 8:30 in the morning. We grabbed a cab and headed towards the hotel. Almost immediately I noticed the huge amount of artwork and decoration the city displayed. Large colored steel pillars with no noticable presence other than decoration hung at angles across the highway. On every block corner there is a sculpture or a building that looks like it was designed by Picasso. They seem to be very creative around here. The buildings are all unique and the city is a very basic grid so it's difficult to get lost in Melbourne. After a half an hour of driving, we arrived at the hotel only to find out our rooms weren't ready. We were the first to arrive. So we dumped our luggage and set out to explore even though we were exhausted from our trip.

We went to a 7/11, which isn't hard to find as they're more common here than in the states, and got some basics (toothpaste, soap, etc.). We picked up phone cards at a cellphone store but waited on the cellphones for the group. We found the mall as well and hit up the food court. The food court had stuff of every nationality. I've decided that while I'm here I'm not going to eat anything American when I go out and I'm going to be adventurous. While here, I've already had sushi, mediteranean kebabs, german meat pastries, and much more. Melbourne is a very diverse city and it's cuisine shows that. After grabbing some food, we found a backpack for Dahlberg because he ripped his and we found some sunglasses for me cause I don't own any and it's always sunny in Melbourne. In fact the weather here is very hot and very dry most of the time. Australia is the dryest inhabbited continent. There's a huge drought going on right now actually. Victoria's water reserves are around 30% full which is no where near normal (75-85%). When we got back to the hotel around noon, we met our other roommates coming in the door and found out our rooms were ready and we crashed hard.

Our room is very small but I like it. It consists of a one room kitchen/living room and two bedrooms with a double door bathroom inbetween. It has basic cable, airconditioning, a very small dishwaser, a very small washer/dryer, and other stuff. It's simple but nice. The best part is the balcony. We're on the 13th floor and have a decent view.

After sleeping for a couple hours and cleaning up a bit, we got up and set out to find internet access and explore some more. It's wierd crossing the street here. First of all people drive on the other side of the street so you have to look the other way for cars. Also vehicles don't yeild to pedestrians here. It's the other way around and as a result people drive like maniacs here not to mention you have to watch out for trams every where. It was kinda scary at first but I'm getting the hang of it. We found the library after a couple of blocks and spent some time catching up with the other side of the world. So Brett Farve retired and Randy got resigned. Good news for Ben, bad news for Steve. I guess Steve will have to follow Peyton Manning and the Colts now because he's prolly gonna break all of Farve's records. Cowboys resigned all of their important free agents and haven't done much else but that's fine with me. That's what I wanted them to do. We don't have much cap room but we had 13 pro bowlers(an NFL record) so we can add through the draft and should make another playoff run next year.

Anyways on our way back, we grabbed some basic grocieries including some wine. Wine is extremely cheap (from $4 a 750ml) here because Australia produces a ton of it. Beer is extremely expensive (around 40$ for 24 stubbies which are small bottles) :( because it is taxed heavily to protect the wine industry and most of it is imported. We then went to a boring orientation meeting. We ate some dinner and got ready to go out for the first time with everyone. We bar hopped a couple of places around the university (we spotted it earlier and figured that's where the young people would be). However, like in Sydney, the city was deserted. We enjoyed a couple pints ($6.50 per) over the rugby game and headed home early. People continued to drink when we got back. Of course some people over did it big time. Jason down the hall was the first to ruin his room when booted all over his rug. Tyler blacked out hard and we had a fun time watching him make a fool of himself. All in all a fun first night even though it wasn't what I was expecting.

We woke up early on Thursday and decided to go find the Victoria Market. It's an open air market and it's absolutely huge. It has everything you could possibly want from seafood and delis to clothing and video games. There's awesome food and awesome deals near the end of the day. We explored that for a while and picked up some food for dinner. We got back to the hotel and decided to go to the beach.

We woke up the girls and took the tram to St. Kilda beach. We didn't know it at the time but the St. Kilda district is notorius for partying and adicts. The beach was dirty with lots of trash. Also no waves because Melbourne is in the middle of a big bay. But the weather was nice and the water was cool so it was fun. We were just about the whitest and least attractive people there. Everyone in this city is fit and generally good looking. Obesity really is an American problem. I haven't seen many fat people here at all. Anyways we needed sunsceen badly and none of us had any. I warned the other guys that they were gonna burn bad but they didn't listen to me. I walked back to the city and eventually found some and went back to the beach. By the time I had gotten the sunscreen (30 mins) my neck and face were already burned. By the time I had gotten back the guys I warned were much worse than me. They we cooked lobster red. They were well done. Some of them were almost purple by the end of the day. It was really funny. We spent another couple hours on the beach and I saw some cool blue jellyfish as well as a football sized pufferfish that had washed up on shore. Went shell hunting but the shells really aren't that different or exotic compared to what I was expecting. Also found a hypodermic needle washed up on shore. That was gross.

We headed home burnt, gross, and salty. We cleaned up and had a group wide barbique provided by our adivsers. We applied some aloe and headed out to the bars again. Again the city was deserted and after wandering around for about an hour looking for some place to hang out we ended up at an asian beer garden. If you ever get the chance to try asian beer, don't. I've had several varieties and everytime it tastes like awful keystone light. It's not worth it. So once again we struck out on the night life. The bar closed around midnight and we headed back and turned in early.

Well I've got to be going as it's around 11:45pm here and the internet cafe is closing. I'm hoping to get my laptop today so I can finally catch up. I've finished up to Friday so more about this weekend soon. Talk to you guys soon.