Week 5
Hello all! I've now been in Canberra for 5 weeks, and i'm still loving it.
Before I update on what's been going on here, I have to give a quick scold to many of the Hokies who I have not heard from much! :-(I feel a little unloved guys!
Okay anyway, enough of that. Things are going really well and I'm still in love with Australia. School has gotten really busy lately hence the longer time in between updates. This past weekend was a blast however! Friday night we went to a Brumbie's game. To explain it a bit better, 'football' in Australia can mean one of the three things. There is the AFL, which I don't really understand but I will surely get a full education as the Sander's are huge Adelaide Crows fans. Then there is rugby, divided into Rugby League and Rugby Union. As far as I can tell, Rugby Union is extremely similar to American Rugby but its on a much bigger scale here. Anyway, the Brumbie's are Canberra's Rugby Union team and they have quite a decent following. We got there a little late (their stadium is on the North Side, about 30 minutes from where we live) and had to scramble to meet up with Thiru (Lauren's boyfriend) and find seats. It was a group of 6 of us- the two Laurens, Thiru, Thiru's friend Alex, Aaron (who stayed with me at Christmas), and Anna, my friend from Australearn. The game was so much fun! The boys had to explain it from the beginning but by the end I think I had mastered most of the rules. The stadium holds about 30,000 people, maybe a little less, and on Friday there was a crowd of about 23,000. That's pretty good considering we were playing a team from South Africa! I got to try Australian beer finally, which I'm pretty sure tastes the same as most American beers, but for some reason tasted much better while watching a rugby game in that stadium ;-)
after the Brumbie's won we all went to O'Connor (another suburb) to Au Bar Nun, a local bar. It was quite noisy and a Rugby League game was on. None of the girls were drinking so we only stayed for 40 minutes or so before leaving. Anna stayed the night, which was a good break from dormlife for her. The next day anna and I went Lauren's parents to Tuggeranong to drop Lauren off at work. Then we went to do some grocery shopping for anna and met her parents to come home. Later that afternoon Anna and I went into Woden to go shopping (Lauren was still at work). We had just over an hour before we had to catch the bus home, and of course we missed the bus by about 15 seconds, literally. So we took advantage of the extra half hour and walked over to Goodberry's so Anna good try their delicious ice cream. When we walked up, however, I saw that the sign above the door now read "JigSaw" which really threw me because I just been to Goodberry's a week before. Strange. Evidently they're all changing the names, but its still the same store inside with the same yummy ice cream! Thank goodness! Then we caught the bus back home. Anna was so funny because she hadn't really been off campus that much and it was her first real taste of Australia. And if you haven't seen it before, Canberra is gorgeous. That night we stayed home and watched the Notebook. Can't get enough of that movie.
Sunday we dropped Anna back at ANU, well fed and chock full of groceries :-) That evening we went again to Belconnen (in the north) because Thiru had injured himself playing Rugby and Lauren wanted to go visit him. So we dropped her off at his place and then the Sanders and I went to the nearby lake. It was GORGEOUS. We grabbed tea at Subway and ate by the lake. There were black swans and cute little black ducks everywhere. The lake was fairly nice, although you wouldn't want to swim in it, but at sunset it looked amazing. Water always has that relaxing effect. I took a fair few pictures that I'll post at a later date, but it was a really nice evening. Unfortunatly the weather is getting hotter (up near 90) for the next couple of days and then its supposed to cool off dramatically. I hope so, ya'll know how I hate the heat!
This week is going to be super busy, so if I don't update much, that's why. I got slammed with three out of four tutorials in one week, so needless to say I'll be on campus late this week. fortunately i don't think this happens again this semester. This weekend we start housesitting for the people we babysat for. I'm so excited, of course about the dog ;-) But we'll be staying at their place all next week. Then that weekend we go to Sydney for the 4day Easter weekend. The weekend after that is Melbourne for an AFL game and to see the city and two weekends after that we leave for Adelaide for David's wedding! So some awesome and busy times coming up!
Thanks again to everyone who has emailed/sent cards & letters. I miss you all so much!
AJ- long email coming soon, I promise! :-)
Lo
Before I update on what's been going on here, I have to give a quick scold to many of the Hokies who I have not heard from much! :-(I feel a little unloved guys!
Okay anyway, enough of that. Things are going really well and I'm still in love with Australia. School has gotten really busy lately hence the longer time in between updates. This past weekend was a blast however! Friday night we went to a Brumbie's game. To explain it a bit better, 'football' in Australia can mean one of the three things. There is the AFL, which I don't really understand but I will surely get a full education as the Sander's are huge Adelaide Crows fans. Then there is rugby, divided into Rugby League and Rugby Union. As far as I can tell, Rugby Union is extremely similar to American Rugby but its on a much bigger scale here. Anyway, the Brumbie's are Canberra's Rugby Union team and they have quite a decent following. We got there a little late (their stadium is on the North Side, about 30 minutes from where we live) and had to scramble to meet up with Thiru (Lauren's boyfriend) and find seats. It was a group of 6 of us- the two Laurens, Thiru, Thiru's friend Alex, Aaron (who stayed with me at Christmas), and Anna, my friend from Australearn. The game was so much fun! The boys had to explain it from the beginning but by the end I think I had mastered most of the rules. The stadium holds about 30,000 people, maybe a little less, and on Friday there was a crowd of about 23,000. That's pretty good considering we were playing a team from South Africa! I got to try Australian beer finally, which I'm pretty sure tastes the same as most American beers, but for some reason tasted much better while watching a rugby game in that stadium ;-)
after the Brumbie's won we all went to O'Connor (another suburb) to Au Bar Nun, a local bar. It was quite noisy and a Rugby League game was on. None of the girls were drinking so we only stayed for 40 minutes or so before leaving. Anna stayed the night, which was a good break from dormlife for her. The next day anna and I went Lauren's parents to Tuggeranong to drop Lauren off at work. Then we went to do some grocery shopping for anna and met her parents to come home. Later that afternoon Anna and I went into Woden to go shopping (Lauren was still at work). We had just over an hour before we had to catch the bus home, and of course we missed the bus by about 15 seconds, literally. So we took advantage of the extra half hour and walked over to Goodberry's so Anna good try their delicious ice cream. When we walked up, however, I saw that the sign above the door now read "JigSaw" which really threw me because I just been to Goodberry's a week before. Strange. Evidently they're all changing the names, but its still the same store inside with the same yummy ice cream! Thank goodness! Then we caught the bus back home. Anna was so funny because she hadn't really been off campus that much and it was her first real taste of Australia. And if you haven't seen it before, Canberra is gorgeous. That night we stayed home and watched the Notebook. Can't get enough of that movie.
Sunday we dropped Anna back at ANU, well fed and chock full of groceries :-) That evening we went again to Belconnen (in the north) because Thiru had injured himself playing Rugby and Lauren wanted to go visit him. So we dropped her off at his place and then the Sanders and I went to the nearby lake. It was GORGEOUS. We grabbed tea at Subway and ate by the lake. There were black swans and cute little black ducks everywhere. The lake was fairly nice, although you wouldn't want to swim in it, but at sunset it looked amazing. Water always has that relaxing effect. I took a fair few pictures that I'll post at a later date, but it was a really nice evening. Unfortunatly the weather is getting hotter (up near 90) for the next couple of days and then its supposed to cool off dramatically. I hope so, ya'll know how I hate the heat!
This week is going to be super busy, so if I don't update much, that's why. I got slammed with three out of four tutorials in one week, so needless to say I'll be on campus late this week. fortunately i don't think this happens again this semester. This weekend we start housesitting for the people we babysat for. I'm so excited, of course about the dog ;-) But we'll be staying at their place all next week. Then that weekend we go to Sydney for the 4day Easter weekend. The weekend after that is Melbourne for an AFL game and to see the city and two weekends after that we leave for Adelaide for David's wedding! So some awesome and busy times coming up!
Thanks again to everyone who has emailed/sent cards & letters. I miss you all so much!
AJ- long email coming soon, I promise! :-)
Lo
posted by Lauren @ 3/14/2005 10:44:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home