Footy, Comedy and Art....The Past Few Weeks in a Nutshell

Hello again friends and family! Sorry I haven’t posted in so long…I’m not the best at keeping up with this. I’m going to give you an update on my life and will tell you about the fun and interesting things that have happened to me in the last little while. This will be a long post since there is a lot to tell so I’m sorry about that. Feel free to read it in several sessions haha. I will try to post more often from now on to keep each post shorter.

As I’ve already told you, I work Monday to Friday, 9-5 so most of the fun things that I do are on the weekend. Although I do try to do things during the week nights as well to keep myself busy,  but they often include things like going to the park by my house for dinner and to read, going for a swim or to the gym or meeting up with friends for dinner or after-work drinks. I live in a great location since I’m so close to the Central Business District and have to bike through it to get home. I have a few friends who work in offices in the CBD so I’m able to meet them easily after work for a drink or dinner and to catch-up. It makes my work weeks so much nicer when I am able to see my friends even though we are all busy with work.

So the last time I did a post was after my camping weekend in early March. I’ve had some fun weekends since then so I’ll tell you about those. The weekend after camping (March 15^th and 16^th) was quite relaxing and productive as I was able to catch up on life a little (shopping, laundry and all of the other things I didn’t get a chance to do the previous weekend). During the day on Saturday, my roommate Kevin and I walked to a Greyhound Exhibit which was showcasing retired greyhounds…and when I say Greyhounds I mean the dogs and not the buses (that would not have been nearly as exciting). There is a greyhound adoption program that finds nice homes and families for older greyhounds who have retired from racing. They had a cool photography exhibit with pictures of the dogs and families brought in their dogs so you could pet and play with them. That was the reason Kevin and I went since we both have dogs at home and miss them so it was a nice way to get our much-needed dose of dog time. On Sunday, my other roommate Sam (who’s French) invited a few of her French friends over and we had a crepe night! She made us authentic French crepes…savoury ones for dinner and sweet ones for dessert. It was a great French evening with awesome French food, wine, company and talk (it’s been great living with a French girl since I’ve been able to practice my French a little, not to mention be a taste-tester for her amazing cooking).

The following weekend was a very musical weekend! On Friday night I met some friends at Federation Square (which is the square near my apartment that always has lots of cool events going on) for a free Cat Empire concert. Cat Empire is a very famous Australian band (originally from Melbourne) and they were giving a free concert to celebrate it being their 1000^th show! This was a big deal because they are really huge here and usually it’s pretty expensive to go to their concerts. They were an awesome band! They have so many instruments that they switch between so it makes their music really interesting. I would suggest looking them up on YouTube if you’d like to hear a famous Aussie band! On Saturday night I went to a French folk/Jazz concert with Sam and some of her friends. It was at a cute little pub in one of the suburbs and the music was great. After the concert we all went for Indian food….it was a very multicultural night! This multicultural night was really outdone the next day however, at the Viva Multicultural festival in Federation Square. It was a whole-day festival that showcased hundreds of performers, artists and food vendors from all over the World. They had 3 stages set up throughout the Square and had bands and dance troops performing throughout the day. I heard lots of different music including Celtic, Caribbean, Bollywood, Indigenous Australian and Spanish and I saw street dancers and belly dancers. They also had craft stalls set up where they were selling crafts from many countries. The day was finished off with dinner at one of the many food stalls with authentic and delicious food from every country you can think of. It was a beautiful celebration of how multicultural and inclusive Melbourne is, and a fantastic way to spend my Sunday!

Bollywood band at the Viva festival

 

Some good 'ole Celtic music complete with one of my favourite instruments...the bagpipes :)

 

The next week at work was really busy, since the CEO of Earthwatch has asked me to help him with a big project and that took up a lot of time and energy. I’m enjoying the work, but at the end of the week I was really looking forward to a day trip out of the city, to see some of the Victorian countryside and to recharge. Alas, that was not meant to be. I have not had many bad days here, but that Saturday was definitely one of them. Kevin and I were going to get up early and take our bikes on a train out to a town called Lilydale. It’s about an hour out of the city, and has a cool rail trail (biking trail along the old train tracks) that goes to another nice town called Warburton. I accidentally slept in a little, so was getting the train half an hour after Kevin. He was going to check out the museum in Lilydale and wait there until I got there. The day started off with me biking up to the North Richmond Station instead of the Richmond Station. I had no idea there were 2 stations with such similar names, and when I typed it into Google Maps it took me to the wrong one. So I missed the train I planned to take since I then had to bike to the correct train station. That was no big deal, Kevin was enjoying the museum anyway and had no problem staying there for an extra 30 minutes. I had been on the train for about 40 minutes when it suddenly stopped in the middle of the tracks. The driver said we had lost power and he didn’t know why. We sat there for about 15 minutes not knowing what was going on, when the driver informed us that we didn’t have power because a train at the station up ahead had caught fire (just the roof, no one was hurt). They had to bring in the fire brigade and shut down the whole track until it was under control. We sat on the train for another 20 minutes thinking we would be on our way soon, but unfortunately the fire was bigger than they first thought, so we had to have the police come and do an “emergency evacuation” off our train. Since we weren’t at a station we were quite high off the ground so couldn’t use the normal doors. We had to climb down an emergency ladder onto the track. I had my bike of course, so had to have several police officers work together to get it out of the train. It was quite an inconvenience! We then had to walk a while to get to the next train station and when we got there it was total chaos! So many people stranded there, trying to figure out how to get to their final destination. The staff were really cranky and unhelpful since they didn’t know what was going on either and were sick of people asking questions. I couldn’t figure out how to get to Lilydale since there didn’t seem to be a bus going there, so I had to get on a bus that was heading to another train station close to Melbourne that would take us back to the city. You’re not allowed to bring bikes on the buses here since they really don’t fit, but I had no choice since I wasn’t leaving it there and it was too far to bike back to the city. So I had to squeeze me and my bike onto this overly-crowded bus, with people getting mad at me and giving me dirty looks for trying to bring my bike on the bus. I stood in the aisle extremely uncomfortably for an hour to get back to the train station, then had to take a very packed train back to the city. I ended up back at home 5 hours after I’d left, after  having to pay more than I should have for public transportation and with nothing to show for it! Needless to say, I was not a happy camper! Oh well, such is life, and I figured you can’t have as many great days as I’ve been having without one bad one thrown in there somewhere.

The next day made up for it because I went to an Australian Football (or as they call it, “footy”) game at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds with some new friends. It was a really fun afternoon and was so great to go to a game with Australians since I’ve tried watching it on TV but I could never understand what was going on. It’s like a combination of American football, soccer and rugby, but even more complicated than all three. It’s a really fun and fast-paced game to watch and it was great being able to see it live. That was a very small game though, with only 22,000 people in the stands. I’m going to make sure I make it to a big one soon, where there will be more than 100,000 people there!

The Melbourne Demons versus the Perth West Coast Eagles at the Melbourne Cricket Ground

 

On Wednesday of the following week (April 2^nd) I went to see a few comedians with some colleagues after work. It’s the Melbourne International Comedy Festival right now, which is a month-long comedy festival, with famous (and not-so-famous) comedians from around the World. It has made the city very busy since there are hundreds of shows in venues all over the city every night of the week! The ones I went to were great, and I’m planning on going to see another one this week after work.

Last Saturday Kevin and I biked along the Yarra River to get to the punt (a ferry) where we met one of our colleagues and went across to a suburb called Williamsburg. It’s technically a suburb of Melbourne, but really feels like you’re out of the city. It was a beautiful bike ride because we got to bike along the water the whole way with an incredible view of the Melbourne city skyline in the distance. It was a glorious sunny day and we stopped for a morning coffee along a pier, surrounded by sail boats on the bay. Once we made it to Williamsburg, we went on a free tour of one of the Sea Shepherd boats that returned to Melbourne during that week. For those of you who don’t know, Sea Shepherd is an international non-profit marine wildlife conservation organisation. They have been known most recently for their commitment to stopping illegal whaling practices. Their efforts to stop the Japanese whalers from illegally harvesting whales in the Antarctic waters has been all over the news lately. They are incredible people who literally risk their lives to protect the whales and our ocean’s wildlife. The show “Whale Wars” is based on Sea Shepherd and all of the footage is real. If you want to see some amazing and terrifying footage of the brave Sea Shepherd crew then just look up Whale Wars or Sea Shepherd on YouTube and I’m sure you’ll find some. It was really cool to hear some of the crew talk and to see their boat and learn what life is like for them while out on the Sea. There’s been a huge win for Sea Shepherd (and for whales and all of us in general) since just two weeks ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan refrain from whaling since they were not conducting scientific research, like their permits previously said. Sea Shepherd is not convinced however that this will stop Japan from going back down to the Southern Ocean in the 2015-2016 whaling season, so they are back in Melbourne fixing their boats and getting ready to go back down there in the summer (when the Japanese fleets would head down there) if they need to.

 A view of Melbourne's city skyline from Williamstown

One of the Sea Shepherd boats (this one is called the "Steve Irwin")

 

Yesterday was another fun day…AIESEC (the organisation that helped me find this internship) had an “Intern Servicing Day” which meant they planned a whole day of things to do with the interns. There were only 3 of us that were able to go (me and 2 girls from South America), but 10 AIESEC members came so we still had a big group of us. It was a day all about art, so we went to several free art galleries in the city to see some Modern Art, European and Asian art and Indigenous Australian art. We also walked down some laneways covered in street art since Melbourne is famous for its incredible street art. We had several art breaks throughout the day since we went to a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch and a Malaysian restaurant for dinner (Asian food is the cheapest here so I end up eating at Asian restaurants every time I go out haha). It was a really nice day and I got to see a lot of Melbourne I hadn’t seen yet.

Picasso's "The Weeping Woman" at the National Gallery Victoria

A street artist updating an alleyway in the CBD

Those are the main things I’ve done since my last update, although there have been other fun and interesting things that I chose not to get into (since this is already very long!). I am getting very excited since I only have 4 more days of work before I get 10 days off! We get Friday and Monday off next weekend for Easter, so I am driving to Adelaide with a friend after work on Thursday. She is from Adelaide and invited me to come spend Easter weekend with her and her family there. I also have a friend from my exchange in Scotland who lives there so I am going to spend some time with her. We are planning on going to the horse races, do a tour of some of the famous South Australia wineries and go on some bush walks so I can see the countryside around there. The weekend after Easter is ANZAC day weekend (the weekend that commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders who served and died in all wars) and we get that Friday off too. So there are only 3 work days that week and I chose to take them off so I can spend more time in South Australia. I am then flying to Sydney for Anzac day weekend to see all the sights there and visit another friend from my exchange in Scotland. I can’t wait to see some more of Australia and to catch up with friends I haven’t seen in more than 2 years! I’ll be sure to update my blog after that trip to tell you about my travels.

So there you go, I’m finally all caught up. I’m sorry again that this was so long, but I had a lot to tell you about. I hope you’re all doing well and are enjoying the melting of the snow and the singing of the birds. It’ll be summer before you know it! Love and miss you all! Xoxo

Kate

ps. good luck to all of my friends who are writing finals within the next few weeks...you're all going to do so well!