A few highlights that I'll get into with more detail later:
1. Who Dat? Saints win the Super Bowl!
2. We started classes last week
3. A group of exchange students went back to Torquay Beach for more surfing
4. My parents visited
The Apocalypse
The Saints winning the Super Bowl surely is a sign that the end is near right? It has to be. I'm still in disbelief. Having been a Saints fan since I was bout 8 years old, I was speechless when the game ended and the team celebrated on the field. It was honestly a surreal feeling. Lucky for me, I was able to watch the whole game at the Oxford Scholar Hotel & Bar, not too far from school.
It was pretty wild to watch the Super Bowl live at 10:30am on a Monday morning, and it became apparent that the table we reserved at the bar would prove to be completely unnecessary because nobody in this country cares at all about football. I walked in at 10:25am and was one of the 3 patrons in the bar. After ordering a pint of Carlton Draught to ease the pre-game jitters, about 10 or so other exchange students arrived to join me. I thought I was going to have a fun rivalry with one of the girls from Duke, who was from Indy and claimed to be a big Colts fan. When she mentioned how loud the RCA Dome gets and I had to inform her that RCA Dome was demolished and hadn't been in use for 2 years, my desires of friendly trash talk during the game burst in flames.
Another group of undergrad exchange students also found the same bar and it ended up being a decently exciting environment to watch the game. I got excited when the bar filled up around halftime, thinking "wow, alright the locals are interested in the game." I then realized that it was simply their lunch break on a Monday work day.
Anyways, you know the rest of the story; I had a few more pints of Carlton with the exchange students and the Saints came back to cap off a fairy tell story that has led every citizen in New Orleans to partying for the past week and a smooth transition into Mardi Gras.
Back To School
After a two month vacation that consisted of stints in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, California and Australia, Bryan and I started class last Tuesday. We each are taking 3 classes, all of which fall on Tuesday and Wednesday - leaving us with 5 day weekends. Not a bad gig for 3 months right? I'm taking Business and World Trade, Leadership and Change, and Mergers & Acquisitions. The teachers seem to be very accomplished and I think I'm going to learn a lot, even if its only 2 days a week.
Classes here are structured a bit differently with each class being 3 hours long, once a week. Two of my classes (Leadership and M&A) are 6pm-9pm classes and as a result have a lot of part-time MBA students who come straight from work. The part-time program here is very popular and contrary to the US, I get the sense that the quality of the part-time MBA students is arguably better than the full-time students. In fact, there are approximately 3x as many part-time MBA's here than full time.
Torquay Beach: Part 2
Eight of the exchange students, including me and Bryan, ventured back down to Torquay Beach for a 2 day trip. After hurting my shoulder surfing last week, I decided to take a rain check on surfing and rented a body board for the day. About half of the crew went the body board route with the other sticking with surfing. Bryan is picking it up pretty well. He's definitely figured out the "getting up on the board" part and is now exploring the "do something sweet while up on the board" phase of surfing. I'm having doubts I ever get to that stage...
We rented 2 places by the beach to accommodate all 8 of us, a cottage right on the water and a hostel not too far away. I volunteered to stay in the hostel. There were 5 of us from school and one random guy from South Africa who was really nice. The next morning before I left, I had a "this is why I did study abroad" moment - I had just had a great time on the beach with people I had just met and stayed in a hostel in a beach town in Australia with people from:
South Africa
Austria
Bulgaria
Canada
France
Pretty cool stuff.
Visit From the Parents
It's not often you get to meet up with your parents on the other side of the world for a couple days of sight seeing and great meals. I was able to do this the past couple days and it was really cool. I met up with them Saturday around noon at their hotel and we spent all Saturday and Sunday doing some really fun site seeing tours around Melbourne. On Saturday, we grabbed lunch at a nice European restaurant downtown and then I we walked around a bit and I showed them Federation Square, the HUGE cricket stadium (shown below) and Australian Open complex before taking the tram down to St. Kilda to show them my place and the beach (pic below).
After a few drinks and good Thai dinner on Ligon street, I let them crash after their 30 hours of traveling.
On Sunday, we packed a lot in. In the morning we hit up the Melbourne Museum which had some great exhibits about the history of the city and many of the key events that has formed the fabric and culture of Melbourne. We then walked over to the Old Melbourne Gaol (pronounced "jail" but spelled differently...don't ask why). The self-guided tour around the jail was really interesting and had a bunch of really interesting stories about the history the jail, inmate accounts of their time there as well as stories about famous Victorian (Victoria is the state that Melbourne is in) criminals that stayed there, most notably Ned Kelly. Feel free to google him, but needless to say he did some serious damage in Melbourne back in the 1800's.
After a late lunch, we headed over to the Melbourne Aquarium. Both the Melbourne Museum and the Aquarium are very new and modern with great exhibits and layouts. The aquarium had a few really cool exhibits of note - namely the King and Gentoo penguin exhibit and oceanarium.
After a long day of sight seeing, Bryan and I joined my parents for an awesome dinner at Borsari Restaurant on Ligon St, which is a great Italian place. We had a long, but entertaining and enjoyable dinner that lasted 3 hours. As a tip, order as much veal and lamb as you possibly can when you are down here - it does not get any better.
My parents left this morning for a 2 weeks journey all around Australia which will include stop in Adelaide (and the surrounding wine country), Alice Springs and Ayres Rock (in the Outback), the rain forest up near Cairns and a relaxing trip to Hamilton Island before spending their last couple days in Melbourne. I'm incredibly curious to hear about their trip and how I can do a dumbed down college-student budget version of their trip before my time here is up.
This week I have classes tomorrow and Wednesday and then await the arrival of Jim and Micaela who come to visit Melbourne for a long weekend. Can't wait to see some more good friends and show them a great time in Melbourne. Hope all is well and talk to you all soon!
Cheers,
Paul
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