Anyways! Yesterday was mostly just penguins and koalas. To say just sounds like I'm undermining the penguins and koalas, who were awesome. However compared to the events of today, it was pretty luxury to only have one activity. We went to a place called Phillips Island to the south of Melbourne and went straight to the nature park Koala sanctuary. First we had an awesome lesson about Koalas, and then got to go into the enclosed Koala area. We did some Koala spotting which was adorable, and learned some factoids about the little guys. Best one: they all are loners, but when they want to mate, females hunt down the males. BUT the act of breeding is so incredibly unpleasant for the females! Sometimes the sanctuary workers have to give the females stitches for the bite wounds the males give them. Strange koalas. Then we went to the southern shore of the island to the shore of the Antarctic/southern ocean and watched little penguins climb out of the ocean and run up the beach onto the dunes and home to their burrows. They'd gather in big packs, and edge out toward the sand, but then get scared by a seagull and all skitter back into the water. It was adorable. After that we had a long drive to nomads Melbourne hostel during which I just slept on top of others. I did the same while we waited ages in the lobby. Then I slept in a bed finally! And that was day 3 [since we left on day 1 and day 2 didn't exist].
Day 4 began with the Victoria market. We gathered at 10 and walked a tiny distance to something like the Blacksburg farmers market, but 25 times bigger. We got lost countless times in all the sweaters [because Aussie fall is passing into winter], watches, jewelry, boomerangs and didgeridoos, licorice, and other miscellaneous items plus stands of fruit and veggies, plus the indoor meat market, which was pretty enormous alone. We had brunch in the area and then browsed, testing our haggling skills. I didn't get anything so apparently my skills were pretty poor. Then we walked to the University of Melbourne to have a look around the [beautiful] campus. The architecture was very medieval, like a bunch of castles on the outside, but super swanky. Then a soil chemist at uni named Tony gave an awesome lecture on water use. Next we met some old family friends of the brother and sister on the trip, a man with his wife and two awesome daughters, Linda [14] and Kayla [12]. We ate some great Italian food and discussed how Aussies don't really have a characteristic cuisine, only a bunch of different cultures to enjoy. Then we went to the coolest thing ever...an Aussie rules football game! It's an incredibly good time, a mix of rugby, soccer, and American football that is played on a cricket pitch [an enormous oval shaped field] and is extremely violent. It was awesome. It's a purely Australian sport but is the most important game in the country, everyone goes crazy for it. The game we saw was at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, a huge stadium seating 110,000 that was pretty well filled, ourselves included. It was between the Collingwood Magpies and the Sydney Swans, both said to be quite good teams. Collingwood is the team that has an annoyingly large following though so everyone else hates them, according to Linda and Kayla. So we cheered for the Swans. The game was rowdy and really fun, and Sydney came out well ahead, winning 102 to 55. I only half watched though because I was enjoying swapping facts about the USA and Australia with Linda and Kayla. They couldn't believe we have college athletics, that we have a 1 cent coin, or that Christmas is cold. After the match we walked through the artsy part of Melbourne along the river where the night life was raging and every building was a piece of art. It's a really incredible city.
So that was prettying much the day! A really incredible one!
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