More Adventures from the Other Side of the World

This entire continent is a work of art. For example:

A bit of clarification:

A lot of people asked me what I meant in the title of my previous blog, "More Like Mel-Sunbourne," and I realize now that there was a pretty obvious disconnect between when I left America and when I arrived in Australia. A bit of information that I found out upon arrival: Melbourne is NOT pronounced Mel-born. It's pronounced Mel-burn. Also, don't put American emphasis on the R, you'll get made fun of.

Also, when I say I'm doing things in two different hemispheres, simultaneously, I mean two different hemispheres from the hemispheres that I am normally in.

Now that that's taken care of...

More Stories!

White Night

They're all about festivals in this city. This week, there was White-Night, a literally all-night-long festival with art and music all over the streets of the central business district. Buldings were lit up with holographic murals, theaters were offering free art films, drum lines were walking through the streets and stopping to allow people to mosh around them, people were walking, running, dancing all over the place... it was crazy. The city was (and, you know what? is) alive.

Also, the bars stayed open all night, which only made things more enjoyable.

Night Market

For those of you I haven't told, Melbourne (no! even in your head, read it correctly: mel-burn) has this huge open-air market called Queen Victoria Market. For those of you familiar with Ann Arbor, it's basically the Farmer's market, except it's about 25 times bigger, it's open almost every day, and people actually go there. You can buy anything there. Fresh fruit and veg? They got it. Fresh porterhouse steak? They got it (8 steaks for AU$15! ...which is like 12 real dollars). Clothes? They got it. Souvenirs?  They got it, and a lot of you will probably be receiving gifts because of that. Hats? Designer shoes? Dog food? Wallets and watches? Bed spreads and matching towel sets? They got it. They got it all. You can buy literally anything legal at this place (and probably several illegal things, too). The only downside is that they are usually closed by 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

And then there's Wednesdays.

Wednesdays during the summer that is, and this past Wednesday was actually the last one. Even with my limited time to experience it, though, it blew me away. What is "it," you ask? Night Market.

On Wednesday nights during the summer, the market reopens with food stands from restaurants all over the city, accompanied by several bars, live music, and entertainment. To sum it up in one sentence, I exited a pavilion to watch a guy juggle flaming knives while eating a basket full of churros. It was invigorating. Thousands of people were walking, laughing, and eating all sorts of inter-cultural food that was being prepared (grilled, pulled, smoked, rotisseried, mixed) right in front of us. The smells? If only there were words for it.

The fun thing was seeing signs labeled "Philly Cheese Steaks" and "Real Louisiana Chicken" and just knowing right off the bat that they were probably doing it wrong. But the really fun thing was eating a kangaroo steak burger that tasted better than any burger I've ever had in my entire life. Hoppin' good flavor. Ahem, flavour.

Wrong-Side-of-the-Road Trip

"Hey, do you wanna come camping on the beach and surfing with us next weekend?" is not a sentence I would ever rationally say "no" to. And so, one of my roommates, seven of his friends from back home and I embarked on what some, including me, would call an adventure. We rented a couple of campers...

...from "Wicked Campers," a somewhat hippy, apparently common, and incredibly racy (more on that later) rental company. These campers were actually pretty comfortable to sleep in, given the sleeping location...

Instead of hard ground beneath us, there was nothing. And the floors of the tents were padded.

The trip itself was epic. Day one, we drove down to Torquay to check out the beach we were going to surf at...

...Between bluffs, apparently. From there, we just drove along the coast, finding more beaches, running through the waves like we were on Baywatch, screaming "WOOOOOOOOO!" off the edges of cliffs, and we even found a lighthouse!

The fun thing about this lighthouse is that I'm pretty sure my dad has pictures of it that he downloaded off of the internet on his computer.

Then, the really fun part, we found a campsite, set up the tents, and made a bunch of burgers on a gas grill. It was great, camping in the middle of February? Unheard of. Also, every time a big bit me I freaked out a little bit that it could have been poisonous. I'll get back to you with developments on that front.

Day two: Surfing. We got up extremely early to head back to the beach in Torquay and surf. We took lessons (me for the second time, refresher I guess), learned how to "move with the board," and the caught some much larger waves than I was subject to on the Atlantic. Still got up on my board though! Which I'd call a pretty big success. Next stop? Ripping. I'll let you know how that goes from Sidney or the Gold Coast.

Next up was a tourist's dream:

For those of you with crappier computers, it's the entrance sign to Great Ocean Road, the hundred-kilometer, winding, mountain-side, ocean view slab of pavement that has been described by many as, "Holy s#!t, un-f^(king-believable!

A couple of points from the picture;

• No, we are not driving on the wrong side of the road.
• Yes, that is one of our campers in front of us.
• Yes, the car actually says "your thighs won't touch if my head's between them" on the back. It wasn't the worst thing about the car.
• The worst thing about the car, not pictured, was the giant portrait of a naked woman painted on the side of it.
• Remember when I said the rental company was racy?
• Yeah.

So Great Ocean Road was scenic,

beautiful,

stunning,

and really, just altogether unforgettable. I wish I had better pictures of it, but I was a little too entranced to be on my phone every few seconds.

Veering off for a bit, and wandering into the jungle (WARNING! SNAKES.), we found another nice bit of natural beauty.

Looking wasn't enough, though. We were on an adventure, weren't we? So we climbed through and over the rocks to get right up to it, stand in the mist, and enjoy the rush of the waterfall.

That night, same deal. Cooked and camped the night away, and the next day was just an exhausted drive back.

Broken Down

One more notable thing about the trip, our car broke down. Sort of. In the middle of a town called Forest, which was in the middle of the forest. We'd been running low on gas (ahem, petrol) for quite a while, and finding no servos on the Great Ocean Road, we turned off of it to find one... only to drive 30 kilometers down a windy, mountainside, literally, the drop off was centimeters from the side of the forest road... that didn't have a single petrol station. We stopped in forest (after passing the sign and making smart-ass remarks, "Thanks! Thank you sign for informing us! Forest! Who knew we were in a forest! I wouldn't have guessed,") to ask somebody where the nearest station was, and they laughed. About 30 more kilometers down the road, and then take a left. And then he biked off. The other camper (the naked lady one) had to find us and come to our rescue with a portable tank.

Driving on the Left Side of the Road

is so much easier than it looks.

Uni Melbourne

Did you pronounce it correctly in your head this time?

Sorry Northwestern, University of Melbourne is officially the most beautiful school I have ever seen. For those of you familiar with Ann Arbor, the whole thing looks like a maze of law-quads, mixed in with the occasional Ross-style building. The library I'm in right now looks like the first floor of Alice Loyd on steroids, and ALL of the lecture halls are all more akin to 180 chem than 140 lorch or the MLB. Today was my first day of classes for the semester, which is weird because it's been so long since I've been in classes... but also not weird because they are so similar to how classes work in the United States. The only real difference is the Australian perspective on what I'm studying.

That, though. That's like 70% of the reason I wanted to come here. A new perspective. Here we go, into the semester. Full swing. Let's get this party started.