Ello y'all!

Well, we have officially been Aussies for TWO WEEKS! I think it’s safe to say that we are still in shock that we are even here! These past weeks have been the absolute best times of our lives. Not only have we met some of the most amazing people, we have made great memories. Apparently all of our local friends love our accents, who would have known, people love American accents! Especially when we use the Texas word known as “y’all”, this gives them a good giggle when they hear us say it. We are even getting lessons from our Aussie friends how to, in our case, attempt to talk in an accent… we will have to keep working on that because it sounds more British than anything! Give us a little bit and we will be pros at this lingo!

Meet some of our awesome new friends!

Anyways, this past week has consisted of the busy but the fun filled O-week. It’s a combination of sessions, toga parties, free food, registering for classes, delicious beverages and meeting new people. Lets just say, we’ve had a pretty good time! This coming Monday is our first day of classes, and mark my words, I’m actually REALLY excited! Yes, I said it, I am stoked to get to sit in a classroom and listen to my professor’s lectures… That might be the only time that comes out of my mouth. Y’all should be proud! 

With that being said, I would like to say sorry to our family in friends back in the states, but… we will not be coming home to you. That’s right, I think Adri and I will just reside in the beautiful Australia for the rest of our lives. Maybe we will open a coffee shop or even a beach bar! Who knows, but I think that’s our final decision :) Please send care packages including our dogs and Mexican food this way. Thanks, much love!

Rainy Day

It’s a rainy day in Bundoora. Did y’all know that people actually use umbrellas? It isn’t just a thing they do in movies and isn’t just for soccer moms at little league games! Today, I found myself running across campus with a gym brochure over my head! The weather here is as changing as it is in west Texas, no joke. We were at a BBQ at noon eating burgers on the grass and with in 20 minutes our sunny day was now a torrential down poor! Lauren and I were with our friend Joe and when the rain hit we all ran separate ways! I was lucky enough to be close to my dorm so I didn’t get too wet, although the gym brochure is comparable to mush! When I got to my room I was locked out! (Adri being irresponsible and forgetful, surly not!) A friend from the dorms was nice enough to wait with me then walk me to the residential services desk. This was less than 30 minutes since running to my dorm to get out of the rain and it was already sunny again. Nutty weather to say the least!

Since my last blog Lauren and I have attended a toga party! We spent three semesters at Texas Tech and never saw a toga party I had decided its only something people do in stero-typical frat house films! We used the white sheet that La Trobe provided us for bedding and wrapped up in togas! Lauren says we looked much more like the Michelan man than Greek goddesses. We had a blast though! My entire dorm was in attendance and everyone was having a great time! I didn’t know we would have to fly across the globe to go to our first toga party! Totally worth it though!

I have decided that each dorm on campus is more like a frat house! I didn’t pledge at Texas Tech so I can’t be the best judge but the dorms have racy chants about one another and compete in everything! The “newbies” at the dorms are treated to initiation games. (Lauren and I were not above these activities.) Each floor is quick to become a huge circle of friends! I really am loving the dorms, even at 20 years old! Everyone is so nice and accommodating!

We have spent most of this week on campus. No blind exploration of the city! We have had a lot of orientation stuff! Class starts Monday! We are both pretty nervous. Most classes only meet twice a week and they require a lot of independent studying and research. I guess that we will find out! We have made a lot of friends this week and are starting to get the experience that we imagined! Talking to the Australian students is fun and a little hard at times! I am glad that no one knows me well enough to read my face and see that I haven’t an idea what they are saying to me! This doesn’t happen to often and is almost always associated with “aussie English”. Their slang is quiet different! I went to get a drink with one of the girls in the dorm and we both repeated everything that we said for the other! She would ask, “pardon?” and  I, “do what?” I’ve gotten better with her but some of the boys I am lost with! They tend to mumble and use their own English rendition, “aussie English.”

I am going to use the rest of this rainy day to take a short nap! Tonight there is a music festival on campus! (Assuming that it wont be hailing or something) Friday the entire dorm is going to the beach! I am pretty excited!

Oh ya, we went on a “wildlife walk” through the campus sanctuary and it was terrible! Day 10 and still no kangaroo sighing! All we saw on that walk was a sugar glider and lizard with a blue tongue.. And were provided with useless plant knowledge! Also, there is a spider living in my room… I am petrified of it! My room is hot and I don’t have a fan yet so I have been moving my bed to be in front of my window to get a breeze at night but this spider has been living under the latch and I cant get to him to kill him so I have been moving my bed to be in front of the window but about a foot away from the wall! Someone please help! I told my friend Ben about this problem and he briefly told me about some spiders commonly seen in this area and I think this one is harmless just ugly and scary! I guess I am going to name him and charge some rent… Or pay him rent because I am scared of him! 

This is where the spider is living! He doesn't come out very often.

The lizard from the wildlife walk! (Lauren has a picture of the blue tongue I'm sure she'll post it.)

Love y'all! Leave feedback if you want to! 

Week One Down!

We have officially made it one week down under!

If feels like a month though! I think y’all can tell through our blog that we have had quiet the adventures! Lauren and I have been setting off exploring all we can! We had a little bit of school stuff to this week but a ton of free time! Two days we just got on the tram and jumped off when it looked like an area we wanted to explore! The city is beautiful! We don’t have many pictures of that yet but we will soon! On both days we spent hours roaming around! The main roads are packed with shops and cafes and sporadically down these roads there are small alleys that really expose the Melbourne culture! In these alleys we have found shops that exclusively feature clothes made my designers in Melbourne and cafes that only brew organic coffee that was grown in the area! It’s rich in culture! (Sorry for the cliché)

            A big transition when leaving Texas it seems is adjusting to the people! I was raised with southern hospitality and have come to almost expect it. In Europe people would push and shove if we were near where they desired to stand!  Here it is like home! People are so nice and accommodating! Just today we were eating desert and coffee at a café and a seemingly Italian lady leaned over and asked us what we were eating and told us about the different things she had tried and liked!

            I think we both pride ourselves in how we have learned our way around! We gave in and bought a tram and bus card and have very successfully used both! We only got on the wrong tram twice!

            We are getting a whole lot of attention for being Americans! Apparently Melbourne doesn’t get a lot of Americans! The older men especially love it! We got group hugged by an older man on the beach the other day just because we were Americans!

            We love the beach! We have spent three of eight days there! It is beautiful! And on Fridays we can get two-dollar oysters on the half shell! I love oysters so yesterday I was especially excited for our beach trip! Lauren had never tried raw oysters and I knew that she would love them! I ordered four oysters for two dollars each and they were served on the half shell on a bed of ice! The only doctoring we could do to it was squeezing a lemon! No crackers, no tobacco, no cocktail, no nothing! We held the shell up to our mouths and pushed the boogers in! It was different! Fresh, a little fishy, but good! I don’t think that I am going to carry this home with me but we will partake in two-dollar oysters again soon!

            Last night our dorms were having “scribble parties” we were told to wear white shirts and prepare to get drawn on! It was a ton of fun! We met some people in my dorm and had a great time! We got tons of signatures on our shirts and even picked up the nickname, “Texas”!

Sunset at St. Kilda beach (second day here)

View from the tram ride into the city

St. Kilda Beach

Friends from the dorms

Scribble Party

Let us know if you would like us to blog about anything specific! We are doing a wildlife walk tomorrow so we will have pictures to post!

Love Y'all

Also, happy late birthday Paw pa!! I wish I was going to be at dinner tomorrow!

Awkward girls have awkward moments...

Lets just get right to the point, Adri and I know that we can be a bit awkward or embarrassing at times, but at least we make the best of it! Here are are some of our memories to give you a good laugh, just like they gave us! 

Situation 1:

While Adri and I were enjoying a few beverages with some locals, we got on the conversation of how annoying the birds are in Australia. You will not understand until you actually experience the infuriating, loud shrieks that sound like a car alarm exploded as your wake up call every morning… Anyways, while explaining to them the difference in sounds, I thought it would be a grand idea to actually imitate the American birds. I stated, “Please excuse me, but ours sound like this (begin squawking)!” I honestly don’t know what I thinking before I started making bird noises at those guys, I just thought it would justify the difference… Apparently not, because they ended up leaving the table about five minutes after. Sorry I’m not sorry you don’t understand our awkwardness.

Situation 2:

After having an adjustment of jet lag and being hit with the scorching sun, we decided it was finally time to get dressed up and make our way to the city! We were SO excited that we got to be somewhere that we could wear heels and not be looked at like a bimbo. So there we were, looking citified and quite cute I might add! As we were wondering our way down a city street feeling confident in the fact that we haven’t tripped yet, we kept on moving. Then, about thirty seconds later… wait for it… Adri took a little tumble to the concrete. We must have jinxed ourselves! Of course, being the great friend that I am, I busted out in laughter as she brushed that off. She didn’t even want to look back to see if anyone had seen her fall, but I did… and they were. Constantly throughout the day, we’d randomly break out laughing super hard and know exactly what we were thinking. At that moment, it might have been embarrassing, but she was a trooper! Lets face it; it definitely gave us something to be entertained with the rest of the day!

Situation 3:

The other day, Adri and I were sitting at a bar when we ended up meeting a group of locals. We made friendly conversation with them and finally realized that we had found normal, not creepy, younger guys! So of course, we had to take the offer of going to a concert with them, right? Well, being the adventurous people that we are, we thought so! We left the bar and ventured through the city only to find ourselves at another, seemed to be normal bar. They ended up paying our way through and that’s when we walked through the doors to notice that normal would be an understatement. We were now at a HEAVY METAL concert. Yes, these two little Americans that are used to George Strait were now very awkwardly trying to understand what each scream meant coming out of the “lead singer”. I don’t even think you can consider them as lead singers… but whatever floats your boat. Songs came and went and by this time, we were just making our own words up of what we though they were trying to say… And for some reason, we came up with them yelling “RAIDER! POWER!”. Yep, we were totally those little college girls yelling our school chant instead of that rubbish they were (I honestly think they were better lyrics that the originals). By this point, we got a little tired of banging our heads too hard to the awesome tunes, so we decided it was time we “go to the restroom”. We were off to make a plan in the restroom and just as we opened the door we see an unexpected sight of two men standing at the mirror… umm, excuse me; you must be confused with yourself, because this is the ladies bathroom! No offense, but I don’t think you will ever find these two girls at another hard rock metal concert anymore. Obviously, this was just not our cup of tea!

The adventures of white Americans on a tan Australian beach...

Ello there my friendly followers! 

I couldn't help myself from keeping y'all from a few details from our lovely day at the beach... Although Adri did tell y'all most of what happened, I knew you'd be entertained with this little blip. 

So, lets just start out with a picture in your head of two pasty white American girls going to a very tanned beach... Of course, there are going to be those boys that we normally see on the beach and just think, "Wow! You're kind of perfect. Can I please be your friend?" and then there are the older men that should absolutely not be wearing budgie smugglers (speedos)... it's just like wearing socks and sandals, that's just a crime to put yourself and the public through. So, moving on, as we were attempting to nonchalantly people watch, we had finally found THOSE kind of boys; the perfectly tan, nicely built, Aussies. We sat there for just a bit contemplating our move of action, then we were off and away to the water to get a closer view! We were now sitting in the perfectly cooled water on a hot summer day enjoying ourselves watching them play a game of throwing and playing fetch with a ball (we're not creepers, I PROMISE). Then, it happened, the other kind of MEN showed up... Yes, we were now getting hit on by guys that were clearly way too old for us! They made friendly conversation and we laughed it off. So there we were again, planning our move of action to get away from them! And of course, being the awkward people that we are, we ran away (literally). We finally took that one piece of information serious from when our parents would tell us to never talk to strangers. It's ok mom and dad, we made it back safely to our beach towels! As the day went by of baking our white skin, we decided it would be a good idea to enjoy a nice beverage and watch the sun go down from a bar patio. That could have easily been one of the best decisions ever! I had quickly made friends with the bartender, and he now says Texas is one place he wants to visit :) Fine by me! We then settled in, ordered a few coronas and sangria, then ate the most amazing seafood ever. Then, it happened again, we were having conversation with those kind of older men... Don't get me wrong, they were friendly and it was nice meeting locals but those aren't exactly the ones we were hoping to meet. We ended up chatting for quite a while and got asked to contact them on Facebook. Sorry, but I don't think we'll be taking you up on that offer... We then (sadly) parted ways after a few drinks (sarcasm) but it was time to head back to Bundoora. 

All in all, even though we did end the day being lobsters fresh out of the crystal clear ocean, getting hit on by older men instead of the pretty, young surfer boys, we did manage to have an AMAZING time at St. Kilda!

Equator sun

Hey guys!

Its 9 am Monday morning in beautiful Australia! I am waiting to meet Lauren to go to orientation.

Yesterday we went to St. Kilda beach! It was beautiful! We could see our feet even at waist deep in the water! It was absolutely beautiful! There were food places and bars all along the beach it was just like being at a resort hotel.

Lauren and I got to the beach at about noon and ate some salads then hit the sand! We quickly noticed that we were lacking in the skin color.. We were pale everyone else had a great mid summer tan! We had already put on sunscreen so we just laid on our towels. (somehow we made the sand look dark) When the heat got unbearable we would run into the cold water, well not cold but not 80 degrees! We did this till about 4 o'clock then we went onto one of the patio bars. We started feeling sore and our skin was aching.. The sun had got the best of us! The longer we sat in the shade the more burn we felt! The right sides of our bodies are red and burned! I have just lines where half of my right leg and right arm are burned! My hair is doing this natural ombre thing where my roots are staying dark and the ends are bleaching out! We were insanely unprepared for the equator sun! Luckily I packed some coconut oil so last night I basically took a bath in it and was relieved from the burn enough to sleep!

On the bright(er) side! Yesterday we had oysters and possible clams and two other seafood dishes that were wonderful! We aren't sure what either of them were.. one was wrapped in seaweed and the other pan fried in a sort of cheese stick thing..

Sorry to cut this short! I am going to meet Lauren!

yesterday at St. Kilda beach!

Our first experiences!

Hi Everyone! As Lauren said, we made it! We love it! We got here at 11 a.m. Friday morning and were absolutely wired! Something was in the air or maybe it was just AUSTRALIA, but it had a mesmerizing effect on us! We took a taxi from the airport to La Trobe, the cab driver was from Asia and had an Australian accent; we had an interesting conversation with him.

“Where are you girls from?”

“The states!”

“Oh really, where in the states?”

“Texas!”

“Is that in New York or California?”

So far this has been the only person here that is completely obvious about Texas, or the states in general!

We got to La Trobe and unloaded our luggage, totaling five suitcases and two back packs! We were dropped off at my dorm, Glenn College, and we were walking around with all of our luggage and apparently looked as lost as we were because two girls walked up to us and asked if we needed anything, “yes please” was our answer! They took us to a nearby room and we dropped off our luggage then they walked us to the residential living center and helped us check in. One of the girls ended up being my RA and lives only a few doors away from me! They were so so so sweet and accommodating to us! They both live on the coast, one on the relaxing beach part and the other on the surfing part. They invited us to come and stay with them! They said we could take a train or something between their houses! How cool is that? They also want to take us to the Great Ocean Road! They were amazing! My RA took me back to my dorm and showed me around and gave me her phone number! Mine and Lauren’s dorms are about 4 blocks from each other.

looking out of my dorm window

Lauren and I met back up in less than an hour after being taken to our dorms. We were showered and ready to explore our new campus and town! We walked to the agura which is where the shops and stuff are on campus. We got smoothies, despite not knowing how to pay with our new money! We walk basically not knowing anything around campus for about an hour. We looked at all of the signs and were pretty sure that we could find the tram, but we didn’t have a tram map or any clue as to where to go once we got on the tram! So we had to go back to my dorm room and look through the guidebook that Mallary gave me for Christmas. We decided that we wanted to go to Federation Square, but we still didn’t have a clue as to how to get there! Look up the tram system it’s a friggin rubric cube at first (and 42^nd) site! So we leave the dorms and walk back the way we came in with the cab driver. When we get off campus (still heading in a estimated direction) we are walking in a parking lot hoping that it ends in Kingsbury drive. There is a neat looking walking path under the street so we take it and end up on a sporting field. Hmmm, so we walk along the parking lot beside it, it is separated from the street by a chain-link fence. We walk in the direction that we estimate the tram stop to be, toward Kingsbury drive. This parking lot was several blocks long and we could not see the end, a car on the street parallel to us honked and waved at us, which was exciting. The bugs were annoying the crap out of us; they really haven’t stopped yet actually! I just took a shower with a spider that I couldn’t reach to kill and every drink that I have had has had a fly in it! Anyway, back to this adventure to find the tram. We walk several block and the parking lot finally ends and Kingsberry drive is at the end of it! Perfect, except the parking lot seems to be enclosed by this fence! We are probably 50 yards from the end of the parking lot and just staring at the stupid fence that has enclosed us! We stood there for several minutes laughing and trying to decide what to do! Then Lauren sees that there is a small gate! WHEW! We leave the parking lot and at the Kinsbury drive intersection there is a tram stop! We go to this tram stop and have no clue how to get on or pay. We read the signs and scratch our heads… It seems that we can get a tram pass at a bus stop and there is one across the street! BOOM we got this guys, we got this! We walk across the busy intersection (crossing streets is a whole new story, THEY DRIVE ON THE WRONS SIDE OF THE ROAD! Don’t worry we wrote letters to the government to explain the situation) and we walk around the buss stop still scratching our heads. There is no tram information or any pay stations. We decide to ask for help. We approach a guy that is about our age.

“Is this where we buy tram passes?”

“You girls aren’t from here are you?”

“Haha no”

“Ok, well I don’t know anything about the tram where are you wanting to go?”

“Federation Square we think, we don’t know much.”

“Just jump on the tram and go into the city. I wouldn’t worry about paying just ask when you get on, they will know that you aren’t from here.”

“Which way is the city?”

This guy was very helpful, we would have gone the wrong way on the tram even! We go back to the tram stop and there is a tram there in perfect timing! The doors open and several people get on and they all swipe a card. Lauren steps in then shoots backwards!

“I don’t know what to do! That guy is watching!” –L

“Ok, lets get the next one!” –A

So we sit back down on the bench and wait on the next tram. I can only imagine the people watching us; we had to have looked dumb and American! Several minutes later another tram comes and we get on it and sit on the first bench inside and avoid eye contact! 

About 30 minutes later we finally arrive in the city, La Trobe is in the suburb of Bundoora. We get off the tram and walk to a small pub that looks good. We ordered an appetizer platter with squid, calamari, mushrooms, chicken wings, and salad. It was amazing! Although, we are still not sure if we ate the right part of the squid! The thing was pulled out of the ocean and fried! It still had eyeballs and all of its legs and skin! At this tavern there was a game playing (either soccer or footie something about the league that it was not sure, a guy tried to explain it to us and I still have no idea) it looked like a really rough game of hot potato… They used a nerf football looking thing and they threw the ball, kicked the ball and tackled each other and stomped on each other’s heads. The men in the bar were going nuts though! They would chant in unison and cheer and yell! Girls were wearing their jerseys and the whole bar was so invested! We stuck out just a little. This was especially exciting because we were now the legal drinking age! We ordered a beer just because we could, the bar tender scrutinized our IDs and poured us beer, crazy right? It was awesome and 11 whole dollars... We didn’t drink any more beers... We hung out in the city staying by the tram until dark! We then went back to campus and after being lost for quiet a while we found my dorm room and decided to stay together since it was our first night and dark!

That was day one! It was an adventure and we loved it!

Currently it is the end of day two! 10 o’clock Saturday night! Today we walked around for literally hours! We found the tram that takes us to the beach! We sat there (in dressed and skirts) for about 45 minutes! (My back is burned and other than my roots my hair is halfway blond) Tomorrow we plan on going to the beach better prepared and staying most of the day! I am sure we will blog about that as well as tell more about today’s adventures!

Love you y’all! We are being safe I promise! 

Here are a few pictures I took today!

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