I know it’s been almost an entire week since I’ve posted anything, but I’ve just been having so much fun this week I haven’t had time to post! So here’s a recap of what I’ve been up to, sorry if it gets a bit lengthy again, but by now you’re all used to that on my blog, right? 🙂
Back on Tuesday I rucked up to the All-Star Sports Cafe at Southbank in the city at 1pm to watch the Vikings-Colts Monday Night Football game. It’s too bad the Vikes got edged out in the waning seconds, but at least it was a fun game to watch. I think All-Star Cafe is single-handedly helping me get through my withdrawal symptoms of gridiron (the Aussie term for American football, which they almost universally think is a sissy game). After the game I decided to take a walk to some areas of Melbourne that I hadn’t been to yet. I spent an hour or two wandering through the Alexandra & Queen Vic Gardens, wrote a couple postcards there, saw some statues and the Floral Clock across from the National Gallery, then spent two or three hours strolling through the Royal Botanic Gardens. There weren’t quite as many flowers as I had been expecting in the Botanic Gardens, but it was still really nice and peaceful there. A bit before sunset I made my way over to the Shrine of Rememberance, which is a tribute to the Australian veterans (“diggers,” as they’re called here) of primarily World War I, but also all the other wars Australia has taken part in as well. 
I was up there for at least a couple hours just enjoying the view of the city looking straight down Saint Kilda Road/Swanston Street, mostly waiting for night-time in the hopes of getting some good photos of the city from there. In the meantime I struck up a conversation with a couple of cool cops who were on patrol at the Shrine, and I talked with them for about an hour. One of them told me about his recent trip to the Red Centre, and of course recommended that I visit Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata-Tjata (the Olgas) and Kings Canyon, but he also said that I should check out the “very very strange” town of Coober Pedy at some point. It’s an opal mining town in the Outback between Adelaide and Alice Springs, and the town is two-thirds underground apparently. He also said that the residents have fences around their property that are made out of just whatever old junk is laying around — bike or car frames, scrap metal, or even old missiles (the military testing range isn’t too far away) — but then usually at the entrance to their homes would be a very nice (but very out of place) wrought iron gate with some flowers and everything, with the “junk fences” continuing on both sides of the gate. Yeah, very bizarre indeed. It sounds like it’d definitely be an interesting place to visit next time I come to Australia. Anyways, after getting some night photos from the Shrine I took the walk down St Kilda Road, a beautiful boulevard of green-lit trees (blue-lit trees in winter), and got some more photos of Federation Square and the night lights by the Yarra before hopping on a train back to Monash at Flinders St Station. My feet were very tired by the time I got back to my room, especially since I also had to walk to Monash from Clayton Station. Who knows how many k’s I walked on Tuesday, but it was worth it.
On Wednesday I took it easy after spending two days walking all around the city. In the evening I went over to Peter & Naomi’s place with Bradwa and Kieran to play some “Risk.” A few other CU people showed up too, like Jillian, Emily, Connie, John & Paul, so we had to split it up into two games. But I was pretty excited because I finally managed to win a game of “Risk” by total domination. I even beat Peter, which is apparently kinda tough. Afterwards we played a couple games of 500 before heading back to Monash around 3am. It was fun to play some games with everyone again and get another chance to hang out.
Thursday afternoon I played a bit of Starcraft with Bradwa & Kieran, it was good getting a chance to play that game again finally (especially since I won all two or three games, woot woot!). Then we watched “Ocean’s Eleven,” but also with Connie and their friend Lyndall, who had just returned from a few months of travelling the world. She’d been pretty much everywhere too, including China, Vietnam, Namibia and other African countries, plus all over Europe, so it was cool hearing about her experiences. After that Brad, Kieran & I picked up Rob from work and went to the cinema at Knox City to see the movie “Hero.” It’s a Chinese-language action film starring Jet Li, and it’s in a similar style and genre as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (especially in the fight scenes, where the characters fly around a little bit, but it just adds to the aura of the film). I’d have to say that “Hero” is the most visually beautiful and artful film I’ve ever seen, or at least in the top five. It’s simply a stunning film, with a refreshingly different plot progression. After we dropped Rob off at home Bradwa, Kieran & I, since we were starving from not having eaten anything in forever, made ourselves a nice pasta dinner after midnight. A very good midnight snack indeed.
Friday was the third day in a row that I slept in due to really late nights. Definitely starting a bad habit here. In the early evening Bradwa, Kieran & I went into the city to the Old Melbourne Hotel, the restaurant where Rosie works (Rosie is one of the girls from MBT, and she’s sorta actually in charge of most of the staff at the restaurant). We were hoping to give her a bit of a surprise, and judging from her reaction she definitely was. 🙂 The meal was a bit expensive but very good, it was super-nice to have a delicious steak again. And then coconut sorbet with fruit salad for dessert, it was sooooo good! After dinner we drove back to Monash, and then they dropped me off up at Mars’s place for a fun little party (unfortunately it was pouring) while they came back and played some Starcraft (I let Connie use my room and my computer for it while I was gone). But it was good to say goodbye to Rowan & Stuart too, Ro bought himself a nice $30 Cuban to celebrate being completely done with uni for good. Congrats Ro! Brad came back up to Blackburn to pick me up around 2am or so, and when we got back I beat him in another game of Craft, since I wasn’t at all tired. Chalk up yet another 3am bedtime this week.
Saturday I slept in till 1:30pm. That’s definitely the latest I’ve slept in probably ever, I was almost pulling a Purdham (for those of you who don’t know John, he’ll routinely sleep till 4 or even 6pm on weekends, it’s crazy). But anyway after a bit more Starcraft, this time with Simon (and I lost, he’s much closer to the other 202ers in skill level than me), and a bit of helping Bradwa move out, basically everyone from Christian Union drove over to Colac (a couple hours west of Melbourne) for Kathryn’s 21st. I rode over there with Jimmy (Mars). It was actually a joint 21st party for Kathryn and her cousin Jess from RMIT, so it was a whole bunch of their friends from Colac, plus basically everyone from the CU groups at both RMIT and Monash, it was pretty cool. Kathryn’s dad had a couple of big bonfires going out in the paddock too, that was nice, especially since it was kinda drizzling and cool all evening. A lot of people stayed the night, but since Jimmy was my ride and he wanted to go back to Melbourne at 1am or so, we went back. Tally a 3:30am bedtime. I’m sure doin well in the staying up late department these days!
Today (Sunday) I actually got up relatively early, before 11am! I didn’t do too much during the day, although I did call my parents to start ironing out a little bit more of the itinerary, and I called James to get the process started for me renting a car on Wednesday morning for my drive over to Sydney. But then this evening was the last MBT of the year. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but after the talk several of us stayed at Rob & Simone’s till midnight or so, playin some foosball and “Taboo,” so that was a fun way to end it. It was definitely Australian Taboo though, as there was a fair bit of Aussie slang in there. Good thing I’ve been paying attention this semester! But yeah, I’m definitely gonna miss everyone from MBT (and everyone from CU for that matter), all the Christian Union stuff has been the highlight of my semester abroad, I’d say. Hopefully some of them will be able to come visit me if they ever take a trip to the States, or vice versa if (when) I come back to Australia someday.
So tomorrow I’ve really gotta start packing, as I’m gonna be trying to move out of Monash on Tuesday afternoon. The end of my time here really is drawing to a close, it’s hard to believe. I’ve really got a lot to do to get ready for heading out.
One of the bigger stories in the news back home, apart from the Fallujah invasion of course, was John Ashcroft’s resignation as US Attorney General. I would tend to agree with Jonah Goldberg that Ashcroft was actually a pretty good AG, despite his extreme demonization and villification by the forces on the Left. And then I also recently read a wonderful piece by Charles Krauthammer on the myth of the “bigoted Christian redneck” voter, who again the Left is blaming for their loss in this year’s elections. Basically, it’s a myth that “moral values” was the #1 issue that people voted on. Yes it was near the top, but it wasn’t the all-important issue that the media’s been claiming it was (and in claiming so they’ve been trying to demonize Bush supporters in the same breath). And will the Western world turn a blind eye to China’s abominable human rights record just because the Olympics are coming to Beijing in four years? Hopefully not. Also, it appears that there’s some serious debate in the scientific world about the recently discovered “Flores man” in Indonesia. It now appears likely that the hobbit-sized humans were actually a variant of humans that simply had a condition which stunted the growth of both their brains and bodies.