Aussie Open!

Hello everyone!

Thursday was technically our last day of class.  When we first got our schedules we thought it was going to be awful but now it's over and I hardly felt like I was always sitting in a classroom.  We finished with class around 2 and hopped on the tram toward the city to the Aussie Open.  We had a late lunch in the city at a place called Time Out and then headed back to the open.  If you're following the tennis tourney on tv then you may be aware that temps in Melbourne are well above 100 degrees.  Because of the weather, the matches were being delayed.  We bought ground passes, which gave us access to pretty much everything but the main indoor courts.  The Heineken bar area was really cool.  There were bars and food stands all over and tables, chairs, and lawn chairs in the grass facing big screens, which played the main matches.  With the delays, no games were going on and no one from our group had arrived yet so Kendall and I were pretty miserable sitting in the heat.  We thought about leaving and walked around some more when two older women approached us and offered us their tickets to the Nadal match!  It was so nice of them.  The seats were ten rows up- it was amazing!  It was cool too because Nadal was playing Kokkinakis, a 17 year old Aussie, so the crowd was pretty fun.

Oh, Hey Rafa!

After the match (Nadal won, of course) we headed back out to the Heineken bar and met up with Zach, Declan, and Zach's friend Aaron.  The rest of the night consisted of beer and tennis.  It also rained at one point, but we happily accepted the cool down.  We hopped around to different courts and then came back to the big screen for Murray's match.  Because of the delays earlier in the day, the matches went on pretty late, which doesn't normally happen.

Friday morning we were up bright and early to be picked up for breakfast with Zach and Aaron at Red Robyn- NOT the Red Robin in the states!  It was a cute vegan/gluten free cafe and we had some delicious breakfast and lattes, of course.  We had to be back at Deakin by 9:30am to board a bus into the city to go to the Victoria Museum and Immigration Museum.  Both were pretty cool, though we probably didn't need to be at them as long as we were.  Now we're all working on our essays about our visit to the museums.

Tomorrow the weather is finally going to break and cool down a bit!  Kendall and I are headed to Brunswick, an area a bit north of Melbourne.  Harriet, one of the PAs, said it's a cool area that has local cafes, bars, boutiques, and thrift shops so we're pretty excited!

Here's a really short (and silent for some reason) video from the Nadal Match!

-Molly