Melbourne

Hello all... This weekend I took my first trip besides the one I had to Kangaroo Island at the beginning of my time here in Australia. I went to Melbourne this weekend with the mens and womens ultimate frisbee teams! Most of the men left here on Thursday while all of the women left on Friday around 3pm. The trip to Melbourne was a full 8 hours in the car with a few stops so that we could stretch, pee, grab food and toss the disc a little. I thought I would go crazy being in a car for 8 hours but it actually went pretty quickly. We took six people in the car, five of the girls and then one of the guys who couldn't make it out there on Thursday with the rest of the guys. We were able to entertain ourselves with card games and just talking, with a little bit of sleeping towards the end of the trip. The drive at night was gorgeous away from the lights of the city, because you could see so many stars! It was lovely. Once we finally got to Melbourne we had to find our way around the city and find the hostel that we were staying at. It actually didn't take too long because Claire lived in Melbourne for six months at one point so she knew some of the streets and stuff. How she could know them well enough was beyond because the streets of Melbourne were so crazy confusing! Just a little fact... Adelaide is, I believe, the only planned city in Australia. Melbourne definitely did not have anyone plan out the crazy roads that they have, and on top of the crazy roads they were even more confusing for me because I'm American and I haven't gotten used to the driving on the left hand side of the road!

Anway back to the rest of Melbourne... We finally got to the hostel by 1:30 am and went straight to bed and although I was in bed it seemed like forever before I got to sleep and I only got about 5 hours. In the morning we made our way to the fields and since our women's team only had 5 women we had to pick up a few other girls to play with us to make a full ultimate team. We picked up two girls from the town of Ballarat to play with us (Nikki and Emily). We played the hardest team first but the nice thing was that women from one of the Melbourne teams were nice enough to play with us too so that we would have some subs! We lost all three of our games that day and it was really hot, but overall it was a good ultimate learning experience and I can't wait to actually get a chance to play with our full women's Adelaide team! That evening we all went out to the party that the Melbourne host team was throwing at a pub in town. So both the men's and women's teams piled in two cars and headed over. We all went for food first and then enjoyed a few drinks, some dancing, and a live band and then headed out because we were all pretty tired. Overall the night was really entertaining because I got a chance to chat with not only the girls but with some of the guys. The next morning we, the women, didn't have any games and so we went shopping, looked for socks for our uniforms for when we head out to Perth for Nationals! After shopping and then a very yummy lunch we headed back to the fields and watched the men's team (Karma) win their last game. So I didn't get to see much of the city but I think I will have another chance to see the city over our mid term break. The ride home from Melbourne was another 8 hours of however we could keep ourselves busy which actually was pretty easy when we started playing the game celebrity heads, it was a very entertaining game! Overall the trip was a lot of fun and although I did not see much of Melbourne, from the looks of it, I think I like Adelaide better just because it's a little bit nicer and smaller than Melbourne which was pretty big and kind of dirty looking so I'm glad that I chose to go to Adelaide for the semester instead of Melbourne.

Today, Tuesday is my friend Rebecca's birthday and also the beginning of Tuesday night ultimate league. For league I think I will be playing on two different teams but tonight I'll only be playing on one so that I can get back for part of the BBQ for Bec's birthday and any other shenannigans that are planned for her birthday! She's turning 21 today!

Besides all of that today was a good day at uni, I'm finally understanding what I need to be doing for my Labor Studies class and I think I will enjoy it a lot, and overall classes weren't bad today. it was a little rainy but that didn't dampen my spirits a whole lot, it just made the heat go away a bit which was nice compared to the heat this past weekend. One other thing I should mention is that I played my first game of Futsal last night. Futsal is pretty much soccer but on a smaller scale and we played it on the tennis court here at Aquinas. I played most of the game and it was lots of fun. We only play with five people on each team, four on the field and a keeper and although i used to play soccer those skills were not really showing last night... I don't think I ever really had that great of soccer skills but they might have helped a little! We actually won our game 2-0 i think, which was great! Well that's all that I have for you all. Hope all is well with everyone.
Cheers!
much love,
smuder