Melbourne

Well we are pretty far behind on here...we're just having so much fun! Let's see! We arrived in Melbourne on Friday night (feb 3) at about 10 pm. We got on the wrong bus and had to go back and start from scratch and then the right bus had a drunk person sleeping so they told everyone to get off the bus but after all was said and done we made it to our hostel at midnight! The hostel is nice and we even have our own bathroom in our room (ooooo!) very exciting stuff! There is a bar on the first floor so we spent Friday night there hanging out there and then walked around the neighborhood to see the place area. We are staying in St Kilda which is a beachside part of Melbourne. Used ti be the Red Light District...not sure how we keep ending up staying in red light disctricts wherever we go! Kind of reminds me of SoCal, lots of hippies, lots of people not wearing shoes, lots of dreadlocks! But it's great we can walk to the beach in about 3 minutes!! We are also a block from maccas so... Free wifi! And occasionally free ice cream :) those are the good days...

Sat we got up and took the train downtown to see the city! It's set up in a grid so very easy to get around, kinda like NYC. But not very tall buildings. There is a river running thru it and you can walk along the banks and a lot of people jog there, very cool. A few cool bridges too! There are a bunch of parks around the city so it's a really easy place to walk around and when you need to rest just find a nice park or sit along the river and have a little picnic! Again we got free ice cream! We really like it here!

The Australian open grounds are right downtown too, and the Olympic stadium!

Also, best news I could possibly tell y'all: my health has restored!! No problems, no more funny business with my stomach not wanting me to eat! I'm healthy and loving it :) just in time too because there is so much delicious food here-Greek,Italian,Asian, vegetarian-and the prices are better than Sydney! We have also been cooking a lot more here which is awesome. We still aren't eating too too much, poor mans diet, so we might need to buy some belts soon!

Saturday night there was a "Super Bowl party" at the hostel. They didn't really do much except decorated with American flags around and had red solo cups. Great representation of America... But we went briefly with some canadians and British people from our room so we embraced the spirit. We were able to take (more like borrow and not return...)one of the American flags and carried it around with us the rest if the night (Alexa really, she was very devoted and even hung it on our bed somehow so later one of our roomies asked if we brought the flag with us from home....) we also told everyone to root for the pats (didn't help in the end) because most people said they were rooting for the giants because NYC is cool. That is true but I don't see the connection!

Sunday we decided would be great to spend on the beach! There was a beach volleyball tournament happening right at our beach with women and men pairs from Australia. It was free to sit and watch so we had second row seats and were able to watch the women's finals!! Some of the players may even be on this years Olympic team! So cool! Of course it rained (anywhere we go it rains so we weren't too surprised). It got freezing suddenly and started raining/hailing on us so it seemed like the right time to leave... We got to go back to the beach later at night and walked down the boardwalk to see penguins on the rocks! Little cuties :) a man from Montana was there researching them so he told us all about them.

Monday was the Super Bowl obviously. It did not feel natural to wake up early for football. It also didn't feel natural to have beer at 10 am but, when in Rome! Don't really have to describe how that went, we were surrounded by giants fans so we left and watched it at another bar with cheaper food and no giants fans :). I don't think they really get the concept of American football...everyone had a different team jersey on and some even had basketball jerseys! Unfortunately they didnt show american commercials :-/. After the game we walked thru the botanical gardens and appreciated not being in New England with a group of crying men!

Also...Periods at the end of a sentence are called full stops! Crazy!