The darling buds of May…uh, I mean September..

Spring has sprung in Melbourne! September 1st marks the official beginning of the season. Today was a beautiful sunny day with a strong, hot breeze blowing around the intoxicating scent of new blossoms. Everyone is thrilled that winter is over: outdoor terraces are filling up, construction workers play footy in the park during their lunch breaks and the Uni campus is overflowing with flowered dresses and thongs (NB: in Aussie-land, thongs are footwear not underwear). Of course, weather is still very unpredictable: I felt like one of those nannies in Mary Poppins on the way to class, very nearly getting blown away by the strong wind. And the clouds may roll in at any minute, spit down rain, and roll away again just as quickly as they came.

The nice weather is making it increasingly harder to study…but that’s okay because I can’t let my schooling get in the way of my Australian education. A few weeks ago, I went on a field trip to Philip Island, about 140 km southeast of the city, with the Melbourne University Outdoors Club. It was a glorious sunny day and our international group (mostly Americans, Brits, Germans, and a few Frenchmen) began the day with a wander on magnificent Wollamai Beach. The sky and ocean seemed to go on forever. I was the first to kick off my shoes and stick a toe in the water…still pretty cold!

After a hike on the cliffs overlooking the beach, we piled back onto the bus and continued to the animal sanctuaries to spot koalas high in trees, feed kangaroos and avoid being trampled by emus. We watched the sun go down over the west point of the island and were treated to a beautiful rainbow over the ocean – I imagined that it ended in Antarctica. Then, the highlight of the day, we gathered at dusk for the penguin parade. Every night during breeding season, dozens of little penguins make their way from the water, across the beach and into their nests in the dunes. They were so cute! The park rangers don’t allow people to take pictures of the penguins, but you can check them out at http://www.penguinfoundation.org.au/.

Back in Melbourne, I recently admitted to myself that I’m a foodie. Maybe trying new foods is my way of experiencing the local culture? The realization that I’m preoccupied by food occurred after a particularly international weekend: Friday night I ventured with my Texans to Footscray, the “ethnic” neighbourhood in western Melbourne, for Ethiopian food. As we wandered the streets looking for the resto, it was obvious that we weren’t locals. A group of Ethiopian men sat outside a café, drinking beer or coffee, and one of them called out to us, “Welcome to Footscray!”

Then, on Saturday, I met up with Chae-yoon (everyone calls her Channie but I like to call her my new Korean girlfriend because she’s such a good date) for Korean BBQ and a chick flick. Sunday afternoon I found myself at the footy (Aussie-rules football) with a beer in one hand and a meat pie in the other. I was still hungry after the game…so I went for a thali at a little Indian place on Bourke Street, in the shadow of the State Parliament building. Seriously, you’d think I’d be getting really fat after all that eating – but this food obsession is more about tasting than gorging myself.

Speaking of footy, going to the game is one of my favourite ways of immersing myself in Aussie culture. The game we saw was the St. Kilda Saints against the Essendon Bombers. We had standing-room tickets and I stood in the crowd surrounded by Aussie blokes sculling (ie. chugging) beers and shouting incomprehensible expletives at the players. Footy is sort of a cross between soccer and rugby: it iss a fast-paced game played on an oval field and the players can kick or run with the ball - they sometimes run up to 20 kilometers in a two-hour game.

Each team footy team has a song. St. Kilda’s is one of my favourites: “Oh when the Saints go marching in, Oh when the Saints go marching in, Oh how I want to be with St Kilda when the Saints go marching in.” (As an aside, I was recently at the sea baths on a lazy Tuesday afternoon in St. Kilda and the footy team happened to be there too, in matching black speedos…how lucky I was to be in St. Kilda when the Saints came strutting in!). The Richmond Tigers, another footy team, have a good song too, called Tigerland. Maybe I’ll let you decide for yourself which song is better (and which team is hotter) by offering these video links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWLsYAqEl8M&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfz8IRmzdRA.

Most recently, I had the pleasure of a visit from Rachel, a fellow McGill law girl who is on exchange in Sydney this semester. She shares my passions for food and shopping so we inevitably had a great time! In between power-study sessions in the sunny courtyard at Graduate House, we bought heaps of fruit, bread and cheese at the Victoria Market, scoured the funky shops on Brunswick Street and had a romantic girl-date, complete with pink bubbly, at a tapas place in Middle Park.

For the next week, I have to hammer down on the schoolwork because (gasp) spring break is right around the corner! I leave for Cairns in a week and I’ll be spending two weeks traveling down the east coast of Australia, stopping to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef and take a three-day cruise on a catamaran in the Whitsunday Islands before continuing on to Fraser Island and Byron Bay. Don’t be jealous…I’ll give you all the juicy details and photos on my blog and Facebook! In the meantime, lots of love to everyone back home.