This weekend was pretty good, despite being bogged down with a cold and sinus headaches that have kept me a bit lethargic. On Friday after I got done with class, I sat outside by the fountain between the campus centre and the library and wrote four more postcards. Slowly but surely I’m making it through them. When I was writing the first couple, the weather was pretty nice and mostly sunny, but by the time I was doing the last one it had clouded up and I was being chased back inside by sprinkles! They say that Melbourne can have “four seasons in a day,” and on several occasions I’ve noticed how it can very quickly alternate between partly-mostly sunny and warm to cold, rainy & windy, even multiple times in a single hour! The weather here is just very schizophrenic, although the dominant “personality” this time of year is definitely rainy. It’s rained every single day for the past week at least. But I digress. After writing the postcards, I went to play some ultimate frisbee with some other American students that I’d just met. We played on one of the footy ovals on campus, and it was incredibly muddy. It was really fun getting to play frisbee again, it was my first time since I got to Australia. I got to the game a bit late, but when I jumped in the game my first toss was a 40m forehand strike for a score, which made everyone think I was some sort of pro or something, hehe. As the game wore on and the disk kept getting muddier and muddier (and accordingly more slippery), I returned to my usual crap throws, oh well. But it was so fun getting down and dirty in the mud and intermittent showers! I think I was the only one not to slip and fall in the mud, but I was still covered in it. And of course I wore my white running shoes there too, not knowing it would be so muddy. After taking a nap (my cold had sapped me of energy), I then spent a good chunk of the evening playing “Return of the King,” the game that Josh sent me in the mail a week ago. It’s really cool, but also pretty difficult. Thanks Josh!
On Saturday after I went grocery shopping I went out to Phillip Island with James, Hernon, Oscar and a few other people (mostly the same group I went fishing with last Saturday). It was rainy and miserable in Melbourne, but by the time we got to Phillip Island (an hour and a half southeast of the city) it was mostly sunny and beautiful out. We basically went on a tour of a bunch of the beaches on the island, including the “Punchbowl” and Woolamai Beach (both of which they’ve regularly fished at for years), and we wound up at The Nobbies to stay and watch the beautiful sunset. The Nobbies is one of the main places where penguins and seagulls nest, and so we saw all sorts of penguin holes in the hillside, and there were literally thousands of seagulls flying around. I even got crapped on by one. Yippee. What luck. But we didn’t see any penguins, because they don’t come in from the ocean until after sunset. And the island is free and open to the public during the day, but right after sunset they kick everyone out unless they wanna pay the $20 entry fee to see the world-famous Phillip Island Penguin Parade. Every night hundreds and even thousands of fairy penguins make their way up the beach from a day of fishing in the ocean to their holes in the hillside, to go spew all over their young. What a lovely way to feed your kids. But we didn’t stay for the Penguin Parade this time, because we didn’t wanna pay the entry fee. At some point I’ll go see it though, but maybe I’ll wait until Mom & Dad come down here so that they can see it too (and that way I don’t have to pay more than once). After our afternoon at Phillip Island we went back to James & Ali’s house to watch “I, Robot.” I thought it was a really good movie, it was very well done with a few really good twists in it. Will Smith’s been in some pretty good movies over his career, but this is definitely one of his best performances so far.
This afternoon I played in my first-ever game of footy! It was Roberts Hall vs Richo (Richardson Hall), and we (Roberts) came out on top by 3 points. Today the footy oval was even muddier than it was on Friday, it was great! Everyone was slipping and sliding all over the place (I slipped once and my entire left side got covered in mud), or diving for the ball or getting tackled or whatnot, it was pretty cool. I guess it’s a good thing I hadn’t washed off my shoes from Friday, because they got really muddy today. Let’s just say that the webbing on them won’t ever be anywhere close to white again, oh well. And then this evening I went to supper with the Christian Union people who live in the Halls, and after that we all went over to Rob’s house for a service (CU has supper and a house church service, called Monash Bible Talks, every Sunday evening). It was pretty much just like the house church services back home, so that was pretty cool.
And in odd news, a German inmate in Spain tried to prevent his extradition by gluing himself to his girlfriend, using industrial strength glue. Also, when you call 911 you expect the responder to at least be paying attention to what you’re saying, right? Well, in Annapolis, Maryland, a 911 dispatcher fell asleep during a call. As a 911 dispatcher in a fairly large city, one would think that there would be enough excitement to stay awake, especially while you’re on the phone with someone who’s having an emergency! And finally, the story of the week. In Los Angeles they’ve uncovered a huge education scam, with several schools being shut down by the State of California. Apparently these schools were scamming immigrants by teaching them that the US has 53 states (and saying that the “Republican branch” of the federal government is disenfranchising minorities by refusing to put the stars of the three newest states on the flag), four branches of government (the fourth being the “administrative” branch, which includes the Treasury Dept), two houses of Congress (with all the Democrats going to the Senate and all the Republicans going to the House), and that World War II lasted from 1938-1942. This isn’t just limited to LA though, apparently there are 77 locations across the country, including places like Iowa and Nebraska, and tens of thousands of immigrants have been sold phony diplomas after a paltry 70 hours of classroom “instruction.” The teachers would even read the answers to the students during tests! Maybe this can help explain all the maddeningly stupid people Jay Leno finds during his Jaywalking segments that don’t know anything about basic American history or politics.