Australian for a Day

Greetings from the Southern Hemisphere! If you read back into the meager history of posts, you’ll see that my sister and her roommate so graciously set up this blog for me in order to keep my friends, fam, and potential followers updated on mine and Steven’s life in Melbourne.  Knowing that we were going to be living 16, 253 kilometers from home and lacking all of the beautiful people that enrich our daily lives puts a little more than a damper on all of the sunshine and adventuring we’re planning on doing. I had the idea for the blog, with little to no time to develop it, so crazy thanks to Riley and Rebecca for shaping it up for me! I’m a blogging virgin, so these first few may be a little rocky, y’all bear with me now. I’ll try not to make out like my text messages and give capitals, spelling, and grammar a good go.

I’ll aim to bring you our true-to-life stories as they unfold over the next 12 months. Possibly peppered with hyperbole, now and then, just to make everyone a little jealous, in hopes that you pinch your pennies and manage to come visit.

To spare you the un-glamorous details of setting up life abroad, I’ll blast through the first couple of weeks and chalk up a general guideline: food poisoning from kangaroo meatballs, blisters from hitting the city streets in search of a dwelling, a few 40 degree days in which I felt like I was sucking on the end of our Dyson (yes, we have a Dyson), no exotic animals, lots of funny city smells, and a bank account with diarrhea. So far, so good… can we come home now??

Just kidding. Along with all of those downs came so many ups. Walking through a city for the very first time, you have fresh eyes. A viewpoint on that space that you will never have again when looking on it a second time. When you go through your everyday life, you know what to expect to see, and you start missing all of the little cracks in the sidewalk, the pieces of street art, the funny signs. Taking a breath of fresh Melbournian air and enjoying the simple qualities of life was enough to justify all of the miniscule trials we had to deal with to get here.

Along with a new lot on life, Steve and I got amongst it right away and treated ourselves to tickets to the Australian Open. Of the 3 matches we got to see, we witnessed Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Victoria Vazarenka play (who is dating Red Foo from LMFAO and we can now say we sat in the same room as the party-rocking star…thank god we weren’t sitting behind him, don’t think I could see over the ‘fro). Didn’t know Steve and I were into tennis, you say? We dabbled in it at home, but we’ve gotten really involved in the tournament down here – even to the point of sitting on the edge of the couch and yelling at the TV – I know, I didn’t think I had it in me either.

Steve’s 27^th birthday passed, as I’m sure some of you know all too well  - harassed via skype in the wee hours of the morning and in pure-Lobo style, were peer pressured into having a shot with us when you’d barely woken up.  This just makes you the best friends ever, we’ve made note of it. We had the best dinner of our LIVES (to date) at a Spanish style restaurant called Movida, down a famous graffiti alleyway. The feed was courtesy of Warmels - he picked up the tab as a gift for our engagement (shit, we’ve got a lot going on, don’t we? Do try to keep up, will you?) Some of the menu items included; chili peppers, where 1 in every 10 were hot, so we had a culinary Russian roulette going on, Wagyu beef and a 63 degree egg, lamb’s neck, and octopus. I’m not doing any of these dishes justice, but I won’t bother to bore you with references to their seasonings, tenderness, or originality – I will simply leave you with a succulent picture to whet your imaginations…

As for friends, Steve and I reconnected with our friend Johnny, a kiwi bloke whom we met during our NZ adventures and who was savvy enough to score an awesome girlfriend, Rebecca. The four of us have been a neat little crew so far and I’m sure they will be featured in future posts and roadie escapades. Considering they have a beat up old box van they have named “the van of joy,’ I think we’ll be getting on quite well! We took the van of joy  (VOJ) to Brighton beach today, to see the famous colourful beach houses and shake off our hangovers. But now I’m getting ahead of myself.  Allow me to explain the hangovers…

Australia Day. Much like Canada day, only with funnier accents and more beach action. Our squad fired it up at 11am, with nary an Australian in sight. Steve, Johnny, Rebecca, her visiting kiwi friend Olivia and I shucked out the cards and began the drinking games after plastering ourselves with face tattoos and patriotic flags, as you do. More kiwis joined our festivities, and I believe it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that we had a bonafied Australian join the team (cue, Leyla, neighbor we met in the hot tub some nights ago, who came by for a drink). With her under our wing, we felt justified enough to stagger to the nearby Belgian Beer Gardens, a mere 5 minutes away from our complex. Many ciders and several bowls of chips later, our starry eyed lot schlepped back to the place for a real Aussie BBQ. I’m talkin’, nothing short of prawns on the Barbie, with chili and lime sauce, salad with Avos (they’re big on the avo’s here), lamb saucies and, well, garlic bread (which is pretty much multi-national, am I right?).

Fuelled up, with a new lease on life, we decided it would be a good idea to have another 6 beers and break a few glasses before finally venturing back out to rub shoulders with the people of Oz. Admittedly, it almost didn’t happen, Olivia and I had to prod the men off of the couches and onto the trams. We successfully managed to get half of the partygoers down to St. Kilda beach area, where, by some stroke of glorious fate, we ended up at the illest live music show I’ve ever witnessed. The quality of the dj and performers was such that after being in the bar for 5 minutes, it was only when we approached the stage that we realized the beats were live and not being played off of pre-recorded tracks. Cow bells, violins, and real-live bouts of the saxophone from the band “Jacket Off,” ignited our dancing shoes until, alas, we could groove no more and began the weary journey to the nearest Macca’s for a good feed.

Here is a sampling of Jacket Off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgV5d6oFo0E

All said and done, I think we passed as honorary Australians for the day, and have set an impressive precedent for the year to come.