The train makes its way through Melbournian suburbs while I write something I will later type out for you if I happen to like what I wrote. The sun finds its way to the earth through big high clouds that happily spill their rain on this dry country. While the rhythmic cadence of the train makes the passengers doze off…lost in their worlds of iPhone music and window staring, trees that turn more red everyday seem to try and underscore the message the increasing cold has been trying to get through to us: the winter is coming. Besides that rather depressing message, they carry another one: three and a half weeks to go and semester will be over. Three and a half weeks…can you imagine that?!!! The downside is that I find myself swamped in essays and exam preparation. 24 hours a day do not seem to be enough to get everything done by the time trees have lost most of their leaves…
But I do fun stuff too, believe it or not! Almost two weeks ago, with a few other girls we hired a car and made a trip to Phillip Island. This island is about 2,5 hours driving from Melbourne and famous for its cute little penguins. We managed to pick the finest weather in weeks to spend a day out and thus got a lot of sun to recharge our batteries. The honor of driving was entirely mine and after my first apprehension with driving on the “wrong” side of the road, and thanks to my fabulous co-driver, I had lots of fun! It was good to drive again!
The island was prettier than I had expected it to be, so we enjoyed green cliffs, sleepy koalas, an incredibly blue ocean and gum tree forests crowded with birds and wallabies. At the falling of the night we were delighted with the slightly overrated but even though good fun coming ashore of world’s smallest penguins who, defied by intimidating seagulls and hundreds of people staring at them, gather enough courage to march over the beach and make their way into the sand dunes to spend the night. (It’s absolutely prohibited to take pictures of them, so you will have to use your imagination on this one!)
Furthermore, last Monday I had to fulfill a participant observation task, seemingly compulsory for every Melbourne-visiting-human-being: A Footy Match! Footy is Australian-rules (American) football and consists of an oval field with a lot of players who try to shoot a very unhandy bouncing ball through some poles, thereby being aloud to hit one another practically however they like, something that contributes to wild cheering of the crowd. Although the constant scoring of points (especially because one team was way better than the other) made it less exiting, in my eyes, than soccer, I ended up amazing myself with wild cheering (especially on the fights) and with having a great deal of fun during the almost 3 hours such a game takes!
Besides that, my life is colored by occasional parties and dinners, working at Lentil as Anything, some rare but beautiful sunsets at the beach, the friendly smile of my coffee makers every morning, the letters, postcards and emails from the other side of the world, my guitar, Sterre’s return from Fiji this weekend, and traveling plans!
This is how the future looks now:
May: battling towards the end of semester
June: Uluru, Kakadu National Park and two weeks of WWOOF
July: Road trip on the East Coast with Sterre and Ilse
August: Cambodia (with Sterre and Ilse) and Vietnam (with Sterre)
And this is some visual material for those who think images say more than words :)
Cheers to you all!
Sunset at the beach
Chilling on some friday afternoon
Walking around on Phillip Island
Sorry, I just have to keep posting Koalas :)
And a Wallaby!
The crew!
Beautiful coastline
And amazing weather!
Waiting for the penguins...
Sara driving Left!!!
