MELBOURNE SPRING BREAK: SATURDAY

Saturday was actually almost just as amazing as friday. The day started off a heading down to the Cricket ground for our AFL (Aussie Rules Footy Game). We also had planned for that day to go to the Olympic museum which is located in the stadium. We walked over to the Cricket ground (which is where the opening ceremony and some Olympic games we held in for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and the 2000 Sydney Olympics). The Cricket Ground, first of all is a beautiful stadium let me say... Unlike Rugby, AFL stadiums are circular (rugby is rectangle like a football or soccer stadium). Today The Hawthorne Hawks played against the Port Adelaide Power.
Before the game they open up the museum so we wandered around the museum for a few hours before the game. Unfortunately they do not allowed cameras into the museum or i would have taken probably a billion... For those who want to travel to Melbourne, this museum is a must see. I learned so much not just about the different sports in the olympics, but the actual olympics and the progression form year to year. it is small, but theres a lot of material in the layout of the museum and I was first of all overwhelmed, but also blown away by all the material in the museum. They had many mini theatures set up displaying accounts of different competitors telling the audience of their experiences in the olympics etc... they had a huge cricket and AFL section. (probably because the Cricket ground actually has those two sports play there throughout the year). After we went through the museum it was about time for the game. On the Ocean Road Tour from the day before some guys on the tour told us we should root for hawthorne and that they were the favored team winning last year's championships (also they were more the home team than the other team and therefore the majority. Unfortunately for the most favored team, they failed miserably with a terrible score of 115 to 85. so much for the best team in the league..... but I have a confession to make about this game.. watching this game i have discovered my new favorite sport. let me repeat that....AUSSIE RULES FOOTY HAS BECOME MY NEW FAVORITE SPORT. this means, even back in the states I plan to follow AFL. I am so stoked. I love watching this style game more than any other sport. even Rugby. There is always something going on and I enjoy every secound of it!. The task I have now is to find the team i want to follow. Hawthorne will deffinitely not be the team. they are sloppy when they play and drop the ball to much. I was thinking maybe the Sydney Swans. I think they are the closest to Newcastle... i want to try to go to one of their games..... i will do some research.

anyways... moving on from my rant from the AFL... after the game we walked all the way home.. (did i mention before that it probably took us like 40min to walk to the cricket ground....we walked everywhere thsi week if your couldnt tell.) we picked up flowerds for the girls whp let us stay in their appartment for the week. That night i watched two AFL games and fell in love even more with this game..... (sorry i said i wouldnt talk about it again and i did.. sorry..) Allison and I TRIED to get to bed early due to the fact that we had to get up at 4:45 to head to the airport. I went to bed around maybe ten or so but only ended up getting about three hours of sleep. i was, for some reason, not tired and I woke back up at midnight and read for a few hours.

a few hours later Allison and I woke up at 4:45 and by 5:30 we were packed and headed out for the train station where a bus would pick us up and take up the airport. keep in mind the sun was not yet up so here we are in the dark draging our suitcase 3o minutes to the train station..... we got the the airport on time and headed back to newcastle. we got back home at about 10:30 or 11. by then Carly got home from her road trip up the coast with the boys so i cooked myself some food and chatted with her about her trip. and now i am here in the hub writing this blog.....

something i have decided i will do, at some point is start blogging about my thoughts. just random things. last night i read a book called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (actually for the second time) and it got me thinking and I feel like i should write down my thoughts. so whoever want to check that out, keep looking at my blog and i will post a link to that blog soon enough.. maybe i will make it when i am here in Aussi land.. i am unsure.

anyways.. this lack of sleep is catching up with me..... ill write back soon enough...

follow this link to the pictures of all this....
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=113977&id=1067220169&l=c05627128b

MELBOURNE SPRING BREAK DAY 5: FRIDAY

well today was the best day of the week for sure.

We went on the Great Ocean Road Tour. I had actually never even heard of the Great Ocean Road but then i believe in one week i had three people tell me that taking the Road from Melbourne to Adelaide on the Coast would be one of the greatest sights one could ever see in Australia so Allison and I decided to take the tour.

The day was cloudy with a slight chance of rain, but couldn't have been a better day. Allison and I got up at 6 to leave by 7 and meet the driver in front of the closest hotel which happened to be a 20 minute walk... (yay us!) we get there and the lady at the reception tells us to wait outside. we sit for about 10-15 minutes and a man waiting with us asked us if we were waiting for some kind of tour and when we replied that we were, he then told us our driver had been looking for us about 20 minutes prior to our arrival at the hotel (apparently the website decided it would tell us a different time to be at the hotel then the printout did and we went by the website only not knowing out printout said differently) fortunately we called the number on our printout and the driver swung back around after his other pickups and then we were off.

The Great Ocean Road was actually designed after the Pacific Highway which was hilarious to me, here I come all the way around the world to go to a place that is designed after where I live. O well. Anyways.. First stop, Bells beach near a suburb Torquay, is one of the biggest surfing beaches in all of Australia. It is actually the home of the Easter Festival which is a huge surfing competition. This past weekend Kelly Slater, one of the world's most amazing surfers was at Bell Beach for the competition and was actually beat by a local (i was interested in this tidbit on information). We actually didnt stop here, but just drove by while our tour guide told us all this information. After this our Tour guide preceded to play us some good ole surfer music.. of course the Beach Boys(our tour guide actually had a song for seriously every occasion and stop). We then continued to drive by the ocean, all the meanwhile taking lots of pictures.. (i do not think i can quite stress this idea of lots of pictures. lots...) Our first real stop was one by a arch over the road that said "The Great Ocean Road." of course here we paused for pictures and got to walk down to the beach so that was pretty fun. on our way from there we passed by a few areas that had been burnt in bush fires (not the recent Melbourne fires, but just fires in the brush) and learned an interesting fact about the trees that grow in this particular area (i believe some kind of Eucalyptus). The fact is that these trees (whatever they are) drop little seeds on the ground to reproduce, but the weird thing is that in order for the seeds to start to grow they need to have intense heat which is why, brush fires are actually necessary to help restart plant life. this i thought was so amazing, that God would make fire, something seeming to be so destructive, to actually be necessary to start new life. anyways...

Next element of fun on our tour was a stop by another beach maybe 30 minutes later (also a bathroom break) with some cookies and tea. it was on this break from the bus that Allison and I got to talk to some other people on the tour and to our guide. one of the craziest things to date, will be this next person we met. This man was named Kevin, and he worked for Costco. He actually builds them. This man was sent to Australia from like CO (but he has been all around the US building Costcos) to build the very first Costco in Australia. we are witnessing history in the making (the day before) of Costco blessing the country of Australia. also, this man has built many Costcos we know of including the one in San Dimas and a bunch in the OC and a few up North by Allison. This was a weird "small world" moments that i had to share with you all. also on this break I talked with the tour guide who had just got back from doing 4 years of being a tour guide in Europe. after talking to him, I have decided I am first (before I decide whether or not I go, or attempt to go, to graduate school in London, for graduation I am going to save up money to take a tour (for like 45 days i believe) in Europe. Our guide (actually names Neil) was telling me it hits every major city and most major sites in Europe and even has a week in either Egypt or the Greece Islands and I have decided I am going to save up money for that. I have always wanted to go to Europe and travel and that will be my perfect chance.. anyone want to pitch in? haha kidding. i have two years to save.

On our way to the next stop we drove through an area where Koalas chill in the trees. There were actually a few chilling in the nearby trees so we got out and took some pictures.... This was my first time seeing a real Koala in the actual wild!!! I was super-stoked!! (the rain-forestation had them contained so it wasn't technically in the wild) i found out some weird things about Koala's today. FACT ONE: they are territorial and stay strictly in one tree (or at least in the same area of trees) until they have stripped them clean (in my pictures which are not up yet (they will be posted on my last blog of melbourne...) i have pictures of these trees totally stripped. FACT TWO: Koala's eat Eucalyptus trees that are actually toxic, but Koala's have an enzyme that can break down this toxic for them so it is not dangerous to them. FACT THREE: Koala's are NOT born with these enzymes, rather they must acquire them. FACT FOUR: Koala's acquire these enzymes from eating their mother's poop for the first few weeks after birth. that is just gross no lie.

Next stop, we walked a little through the rainforest and learned a little about the trees and bug and such. We saw the 2nd tallest tree (first is of course the redwoods in California!!!! heck yes!) which was pretty cool. Many trees were hollow due to a fungus that eats the inside of trees, and back in the day they used to put bars on these hollow trees and used them as jail cells.

The next stop was my favorite. This is a spot on the Ocean Road called the 12 apostles which are tall rock formations that are in the middle of the ocean because they broke off from the shore and the space in between was eaten away, so now all is left is just random rocks jetted out from the surface. The sight here is just breathtaking i cant even handle it. I loved this section of the tour!!!

Next we went to Loch ard Gorge which is a inlet/cove area from the ocean that, in the past, ships got stuck in and got shipwrecked. There is actually only two survivors and it at first is like a love story, but it ends up falling apart, but i dont remember it. i took a picture of the story so you all can read it in my picture when they are up. The last place we stopped at before dinner was the London Bridge rocks. This one holds quite an interesting story. The London Bridge rock formation was named mostly because it used to have two arches in the rock that jets out from the shore, but actually in 1990 on half of the arch (the on closer to the shore) fell into the water. People used to be able to walk out on the rock out to the sea and there were actually people who were out on the rock the day it collapsed (luckily no one on the part that fell) but it did leave two people stranded out on the rock for a few hours. When the film crew arrived to interview the two stranded travelers, they actually jetted home not wanting to interview, and later it was found out that the man stranded on the rock was skipping work for the day (when he had told his boss he was sick) and the woman with him was actually his mistress. This to me was a funny story.

After the London Bridge our official tour was over. The Guide let us borrow PSP electronics to watch some movies while we made the trip home. (thought that was pretty cool) and got to drive in on the bridge into Melbourne at night driving into all the beautiful lights and such. so beautiful. Did you know that Melbourne is the third largest city (spread out) First LA, then Sydney. I thought that was cool....

well thats it for now.... hope you enjoyed the small book i just wrote.

to view the pics for this day follow this link....

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=113975&id=1067220169&l=caedf1ae9a

MELBOURNE SPRING BREAK DAY 4: THURSDAY

Well today was an extremely lazy day for some reason. we woke up late again and watched TV.. so sad of us to do, but then after awhile got out to head to the Docklands. We first stopped by Victoria Market to pick up some last souvenirs (our lists of people to but for is slowly getting smaller.. YAY!) After we headed to the Docklands. Now this is what we thought was going to be the Docklands.... Harbor-side cafes and little touristy shops and just a fun little strip of shops, however either this version of "the Docklands" was never found or does not even exist. so that sucks. we asked a few people and got to the Docklands center which is like a shopping center. Allison and I were not down to shop since we have no money, but we did decide to find the souvenir shop there and check our what fun little gizmos we could pick up for those on "the list."

Afterwards we decided to head toward the Ferris Wheel that we keep on seeing around everywhere we go (it is huge you see, but by the docklands, we were extremely close to it). right by the Ferris wheel (that is actually called the observatory wheel or something like that) was an amazing sight that we were craving and that would be called ice cream. I do not remember the name (something like Cold Rock...), but it is basically a Cold Stone and I had never tried it so we went there and I got the most amazing mixture..... mint ice cream with Tim Tam's blended in. Now i am unsure whether i have told you all of the Magic of Tim Tams. basically graham crackers with chocolate in the middle and then covered in chocolate. some of you may say, yea well we have that kind of thing in the states, but NO you are wrong. we do not. Tim Tams are one of a kind-the most amazing thing ever, especially when frozen. i will bring them back for all to enjoy... so yea, best mixture of ice cream ever... After our ice cream date we started to head back, but we were surprised by something, quite american chillin' in the Australian city of Melbourne, and i am not going to lie i got excited. This thing, was a Costco. Now the Costco was not opened, but the exciting date of June 10th 2009 meant there was some hope for Australians.....anyways, after this we walked to the hotel that the bus for our tour the next day would come to, and we timed the walk. we actually got a little lost for the street we walked by was named two different things depending on which way you looked at the sign. After like an extra half an hour we found the hotel and headed home. we went to bed early since we had to wake up at 6. yay early!

to view all the pics of my trip up to this day follow this link...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=113969&id=1067220169&l=41d94c89e2

MELBOURNE SPRING BREAK DAY 3: WEDNESDAY

Well today ended up being pretty chill as well. we started off heading down to Victoria market which is famous for little shops and booths with a farmers market section as well. we walked around there a little looking for gifts and such for you know, the fam and friends. Afterwards we headed home for a little and looked up movie times for 17 Again.. you guys know, the movie that my husband is in (zac efron of course) and ended our activities of the day with an amazing end!!!!! 17 Again was an amazing movie and i will buy it!! haha. anyways tomorrow will be a day full of sightseeing. we have a bunch of churches and cool buildings to go see tomorrow... sorry I dont have too many things to say today.

MELBOURNE SPRING BREAK DAY 2: TUESDAY

Well today was another chill day, although i am pretty stoked to say that I really have been learning my way around melbourne already. I can get to most needed places by memory and it is only the second day. i actually told allison that she and I need to come back since we have  already memorized the city.  

First off we set off to go to china town. it was actually quite uneventful actually and found ourself done a lot earlier walking through it than planned. then we walked up maybe a couple miles or so to the melbourne museum. We knew that we may or may not get in for free depending on if they will let us in as "students" or not (its dumb the way they do student prices here, they call it concession and it is technically only for Aussie born or exchange students, not study abroad..lame). we ended up getting in  for free.. which is always awesome and definitely needed for us poor study abroad college students. in the museum they had many many exhibits. some were about the aboriginals and the "stolen generation" which is aboriginal children that were taken away form their families by the government of australia when they first started colonizing australia. there are many reason why they may have taken the children and i and actually writing a paper on that soon, so by may 1st (when my paper is due) i will have a reason for you as to why they stole the children from their families... anyways... besides the aboriginal exhibits they had a mind and body exhibit which i found quite interesting. the body section of the exhibit was a little redundant to me for i had seen it all many times from the body world exhibit at the science center in LA and also from anatomy class, but the mind section was super interesting... in tis section it showed about the toll different disorders or diseases have on your bosy whch was especially interesting for me to see being a psychology major and all. it was interesting and fun for me to read up on my schooling... haha. after that there was a small exhibit for dinosaurs which was pretty fun to go through and look at. they actually had a 3d little short movie set up for people to come in and watch. i think... that my father will be very happy when i say.... going to this museum made me really appreciate all the times as a kid we went to history and just any other kind of museums. it made re appreciate how much i was encouraged as a child to learn more about the world around me. it felt good to go around this interactive museum and learn more and more about all these things that i have mentioned. i really loved the feeling of discovering any new thing the museum had to offer to me. it made me excited to WANT to go around and look at the different things at the museum. that is all. i am a nerd. i take after the family... hahahaha.

one of my favorite exhibits though was the exhibit for the Melbourne Cup horse winner PHAR LAP. this horse help save the sanity of Australia during the great depression. while the world was having a difficult time dealing the economic crisis, this horse helped the Australians keep up their spirits. this horse won 37 out of his 51 races in just a few years time. the whole time i kept thinking of my sister Brett and how much i really wanted her to be there and see that exhibit. she would have loved it so much... they even had a really old Breyer horse of Phar Lap on display and i just wish i could have gotten it for her...

after the  museum found a popular street called Brunswick street and walked down it a little. unfortunately we went after 5 which is apparently the popular time to close up shop out in Australia so most things were closed which actually was better for us, so we were not as tempted to buy stuff.... afterwards we walked home... the short way since we are now pro at learning streets in melbourne.... now we are just back at the apartment that we are staying at. we watched a movie called Picture Perfect and have been working on booking our NZ trip...... i think ill be able to blog tomorrow... as for the day tomorrow we have just  bunch of sight seeing stuff planned..... talk to you soon... miss you all...

love,

Neille

MELBOURNE SPRING BREAK DAY 1: MONDAY

So the way the Melbourne situation worked out...... Jeff, the guy from APU had a friend come up to visit him from University of Melbourne (she is also on study abroad) and she was actually heading out of the city as we were heading down so she gave us her room key and we are crashing at her apartment for spring break.... free accommodation is amazing... we spent the first night resting since we flew in last last night. today we walked around the city a little walking down some fun little streets and around some little farmer's market trinkety shopping places..... we have some fun things in store for the week soon tho. next sunday we are going to an AFL game which is basically a more brutal style of rugby. we are also going on the ocean riad tour which will be basically  lot of beautiful sights including the 12 apostles rock formations. i cannot wait! thats about it for the day. we have just been chilling out learning the city. tomorrow will be another long day of walking. cant wait..... haha no but really i am excited!

miss you all though. hope all is well at home guys.... i will be home sooner than you know it.

love you guys.....

Newcastle Knights win!!!!!

well. I went to a rugby game sunday...... We took the train a few stops over to the stadium. We went to see the Newcastle Knights and of course we won! -because we are awesome!!!! allison and I got these pretty cool but cheat jersey type things that were only 20 bucks! afterwards we walked over to get some food and drinks at a bar nearby and just hung out there. after wards we took taxis to our friends house and just hung out there for the rest of the night. its always nice to have just a chilled out day.
here are the pics for it>
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=113267&id=1067220169&l=1c6aa10d84

o and btw... allison and I are traveling down to melbourne for break. we leave in 4 days and will be there for like 7 or 8 days. we may or may not also try to make it to adelaide and kangaroo island. we will see........ more on all that later!

Nelson Bay...amazing

well this weekend we actually ended up randomly heading up to Nelson Bay. Nelson bay is about an hour and a half bus ride north of Newcasle. We left pretty early and we were all pretty exhausted and i slept on the bus there. We arrived at our hostel around 11 30 or so. First we headed to the bay and went on a Dolphin Cruise. the bummer is that it was raining pretty much all weekend so the dolphin cruise was quite a different experience than i could have been. we saw a lot of dolphins which was awesome. we even went into the side net that they have off the side of the boat that you can sit in and you can be in the water next to the dolphins. too bad it was pouring rain when we went into the net. with the rain, wind and water all being pretty cold we were shivering but enjoying every second of it. (I have pictures of this on my album in the link below.)
afterwards we headed to a bar and tried some really fruity cocktails which were bomb. we then went home and got pizza watched a little AFL football on the TV, played pool, met a british guy who hung out with us that night all in the "shack" which is like a rec room. We then headed outside and played a bunch or cards and met some girls from Switzerland and some guys from Denmark. that night we slept at the hostel and in the morning we woke up and headed home. thats all... here my pictures for that...

Nelson Bay pics> http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=113124&id=1067220169&l=304bf09f82

The Socceroo game!!!!

sorry it has been such a long time since i have last blogged. a lot has been happening.

one of the biggest things that happened lately was the Socceroo game i went to Wednesday the 1st of April. The socceroos are the Australia's national Soccer team. We left around 3 or so and headed down. The train ride was i think 9 dollars and about 2-3 hours long. I actually talked to my each member of my family on the way there. used up sooo much of my minutes.. haha.... i have to now be way careful or ill have to buy a new cap early... anyways.. on the train Allison and I met these guys who were also going to the game and the proceeded to tell us that the color jackets that we were wearing (blue) was the color of the opposing team's jersey. we had to find jerseys soon.... Allison and i actually went down to central station in Sydney and called our friends Betsy and Emma to see where we would meet them cause they were coming down a little later and meeting us at the stadium. Emma then informed us that with our ticket for the game we would have been able to get to the game and back home for free cause they had some deal with the train stations.... so that kinda sucked cause we found out 9 dollars later... but at least we saved the money on our way home.we got to the stadium and outside of it we found jerseys and scarves and stuff for the team so of course we bought them. Once we got into the stadium we proceeded to find out seats and realized what amazing placed seats we got. the view was perfect. It was just high enough to see the whole field but not too high. the game of course was super excting. the first half there were no points but enough attempts. the crowd would errupted at attempts and everyone stood to watch the kick. in the second half we scored twice and beat the Uzbekistans 2-0. amazing! the entire day it was raining but we our seats were under a roof so we were proteced from the rain. We werent too lucky after the game. basically were were soaked by the time we go to the train. the train home was pretty fun. we sat by these guys that had just came from the game. we foiund out they live close to us in Newcastle. We got home around 2 or so. basically it was amazing! look at my pics!!!!

socceroo game:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=113049&id=1067220169&l=1d952dd1a5