Melbourne is jolly good mate!

Melbourne is awesome! Out of Brisbane and Sydney, it is my favorite so far. Mind you, I didn’t get to see much of the city in Brisbane, and my allergies were skewing my perception of Australia’s awesomeness. The kids here are so fun, and we’ve became good friends with a fellow named Andrew Bird, he’s a real person who just happens to have the same name as my favorite singer. We’ve been staying with his parents Beatrice and Alan Bird, who are some of the most funny, generous and delightful people I have met. Today, we were planning on spending half the day in a Laundromat and half of the day in the city shopping. First, Beatrice insisted on us using her washer and dryer, but we thought that would be too much because each of us probably had a load (four girls). Then she insisted on DOING the laundry for us, she really seriously wanted to do our laundry. We were all really grateful and picked up groceries and made everyone supper, which everyone seemed to enjoy. We took the train into the city, it was very easy and seems like a pretty comprehensive system, while we were in the city, and we took the tram around. The streets are lined with small café’s and cute little boutique stores, most of which were out of our price range, but we found some cute designer shops selling samples and damaged stuff for cheap. I picked up a dress, a scarf and some shoes for $75 all together, that’s about $65 USD, pretty good deal. The city was so busy considering it was a Monday afternoon, we walked through graffiti alley- an alley that is completely covered ground to top with local artists work, I took some pictures and I’ll post them at the end of my stay in Melbourne. Our Sunday morning meeting was at a house literally three houses up the street from us, so we all walked to meeting- Andrew with four girls in tow, and his parents. The meeting was so good; people were singing three different harmonies during in the hymns, some really good singers. There was also gospel meeting that night, their field has two sister workers: Helen Edmonds and Marie (I forget her name), Helen is the elder worker and she knew Connie Dietlen (I don’t know how to spell that). Connie was the first worker I ever heard speak at a meeting, so that was pretty cool. Helen knew Connie when she was teaching English in Aussie a while ago, before she offered for the work. A lot of the Aussies know people in the US, so it’s fun having conversations with people and finding out whom they know that you know. Tomorrow we’re going to head over to Phillips Island and check out the animals and local stuff there, at dusk the fairy penguins come out of the bay for the night, it’s supposed to be quite the spectacle, unfortunately, flash photography can severely damage their eyes, so no pictures.

written by  Clara Douglas on May 31, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia
from the travel blog: Australian Adventure
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