So first off: the internet here at Currie is really screwy, especially at peak hours, and the several times this week I've tried to upload photos it just hasn't worked. So what I think I'm going to do is just make a profile on a photo sharing site and upload pictures there, letting you all know when I do it. Hopefully I'll have that up and running tonight.
Now that that's out of the way, I've been having quite a good week in general, despite the weather doing its best Seattle impression (it was about 55F and cloudy/rainy for a couple days running, but we've had a nice weekend). Nothing otherworldly Monday or Tuesday. Wednesdays I have the afternoon off and nothing was going on so naturally I took the opportunity to go to the zoo, again. It wasn't very crowded at all and a lot of animals were active, including the echidna - I had never before seen an echidna move in person, whenever I've seen them they always just sit there and it might as well be a pincushion because it's not exciting at all. For those of you unfamiliar with what an echidna is, it's a very primitive mammal called a monotreme (the platypus is the only other one) that lays eggs instead of giving birth to live young. It's also adapted to eat termites so it has a long, sticky anteater-like tongue and it also has spines like a hedgehog. I also really enjoyed watching the bilby in the nocturnal house - it's a marsupial that sort of looks like a cross between a rabbit and an aardvark.
Wednesday night I finally got to go out to eat. Janan, who's one of the RA's from Singapore, took a group of about 10 of us out to a Chinese restaurant in Northbridge. It was something called steamboat, which means you have a couple pots of boiling broth in the middle of your table into which you can dump just about anything you want - meat, seafood, intestines (which I tried and actually kinda liked), veggies, etc, etc. There was a huge buffet and it was all-you-can-eat for $35, which was pricey but I think I ate well over that value worth of food. All in all, we were there for about 2 1/2 hours and all left feeling very, very full. Afterwards we got together with a big group of Currie Hall'ers and went to Captain Stirling, which is a local club/bar/hang-out spot. I didn't have much to drink but it was a good time. I left before midnight with a group of people after one of our friends, who had had a few too many drinks, decided it would be a good idea to start grinding on a security guard, which might not be one of the ten stupidest decisions ever but might merit consideration.
Friday I have a big gap in the middle of the day so I went to the gym's Body Balance class, which I did last week as well and is sort of a mix of yoga, tai chi, and some other eastern sort of exercise stuff and includes a meditation at the end. I'm not too good at it but it's pretty enjoyable. Did that with my friends Alison from Canada and Giulia from Italy (I was the only dude in about a class of thirty). Friday night was the college-sponsored Boy's and Girl's Night Out, which was basically seperate pub crawls for guys and girls where we met up at the end. I don't need to go into too much detail except to say that it was a fun, hilarious night out.
Saturday was awesome - I finally got to experience Australian Rules Football, or footy as it's generally referred to, firsthand! The game looks really confusing to an untrained eye, but it's actually pretty easy to understand. The field is a giant oval (probably about 1 2/3 American football fields) with four sets of upright sticks at each end. Players from one team advance the ball by kicking or punching (yes, punching, there's no throwing) it downfield. If you catch a ball that's been kicked it's called a mark and you get sort of a free kick. You can run with the ball, which is shaped like a more rounded and oblong American football, but you have to bounce it once every 15 meters. Scoring occurs when the ball goes through the posts. If it goes through the two middle posts, it's a goal and worth six points; if it's through either of the outside sets of posts it's a point and worth, yes, one point. There's four quarters of a half hour each, and there's actually quite a bit of scoring - our game was something like 96 to 85 at the end. Most of the players are ridiculously ripped and look like they could easily play wide receiver or tight end at a pretty high level. There's a lot of tackling and bumping involved, and no pads; it's a hardcore sport (even though they wear tiny short shorts)
There is more to the game than that, obviously, but that's the basic rules. If you want to read more about it, try wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football
The high-level footy games in Australia are in the AFL (Australian Football League). Western Australia has two teams, the West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers. Traditionally, I'm told, West Coast is a much better team - they won it all a few years back - but they're really stinking it up this year and Freo is playing quite well and have a playoff spot locked up. The two teams actually play in the same stadium, the Subiaco Oval, but as we wanted to see quality footy we went to Fremantle vs the Sydney Swans, who are also challenging for a playoff spot (this was the second-to-last weekend of the regular season). It was actually pretty easy to support Freo as they're purple (and green, which kind of looks like Barney, but whatever) so I just wore a husky t-shirt. Sydney is red, so we had our own little Apple Cup. Syndey actually ended up winning, but it was a close game and it's a sport I'm actually beginning to like quite a bit.
Ten of us exchange students went to the game, and luckily we had Matt, our friend from Melbourne, to explain the rules when we got confused. It was actually pretty cool after the game they let people out on the field, so we went out and tried our hand at punching, kicking, and bouncing (which is super hard - you go try and bounce a football and see if it comes back to you) a footy ball that Matt brought.
Saturday night was quiet, most people were pretty tired, but we did start planning for a trip we want to take next weekend to Margaret River, which is a town/region about 3 hours south. This morning we had to get up early because it was intercollege volleyball. We did about as good as we did in field hockey, which means not well at all - we lost all our games, although the girls won two of theirs. The other colleges had a lot of freaking tall, athletic guys whereas we had some good players but couldn't really match up too well, even though we played well for a few stretches. What I've heard from people is the other colleges take it a bit more seriously than we do - some have formal tryouts - and also have bigger population pools to draw from. Even though we didn't do too well it was a lot of fun and a good way to spend a Sunday morning. I had one savage block to deny a set point, that was pretty fun.
It was a beautiful day today so this afternoon I managed to convince our little group of exchanges to go to the beach again. We were only there about two hours, but it was still a lot of fun - we played soccer and footy on the beach and got some bodysurfing in. Just got back from that a little while ago and I'm very hungry so I'll be heading off to dinner soon. Sorry to bore anyone with too much text, but I explained the picture situation above, I'll try to find time to set that up after dinner; if not, than sometime soon.
Take care everybody.
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