Ryan: Melbourne: Learning the Ropes

So my time in Melbourne continues to be amazing. We are living in a second-story dorm room at University College of Melbourne University. In Australia, the word "college" refers to a dorm hall. So we are living at the dorm hall called University College, which is apart of Melbourne University. The room is actually rather nice (from what Brian tells me, dorm rooms are usually not very nice). It has a kitchen, one bathroom with an awesome shower head in the shower, one bedroom with two beds, an outside patio, and a family room with a small TV that has 7 channels :) In addition, our building has a huge game room and a computer lab with internet access. We get served 3 meals a day in the cafeteria. The food is pretty good, although the chefs (or should I say cooks) usually serve leftovers for a few days in-a-row! But beggars can't be choosers and getting food for free has definitely been nice.

This is the outside of the place where we are living

Mom, I took this one for you

Brian and I both work in pharmacies that are about 2 miles from where we are staying. It takes us about 15-20 minutes to walk there in the morning. We literally work across the street from each other so we get lunch together every day. We have been trying out all kinds of different foods...but the street we are working on is known for being highly populated by Italians so there are so many good Italian restaurants :) That is obviously a good thing!

Tonight we took our first trip to downtown Melbourne. We took the "bus" adventure for the first time. We had no trouble getting to downtown. In fact, we were almost like Melbourne Bus Experts! The way home, however, was a different story! We got lost for quite awhile before finally re-tracking our steps all the way back from where we started before finally figuring out the right bus to get on to get home. Buses in Melbourne ride pretty much anyway. You can buy an all-day pass for 6 dollars at 7 Eleven. This is about 4 American dollars (about 70 American cents is equivalent to a buck in Aussie). While in the city we went up to the top of the HIGHEST observing platform in the western hemisphere. It was called the Eureka Skydeck and was 88 stories high! I was absolutely terrified! While at the top you can go outside the building onto an outside deck that is enclosed by a chainlink fence. This is to allow you to feel how windy it is at the top of the building...and boy was it windy! At times the gusts of wind were so powerful they almost knocked you over. Look at the pics of downtown Melbourne that I took from the top of Eureka...They are pretty awesome.

This is Eureka...It was massive!

Downtown Melbourne

I'm standin' in the outer deck. As you can see, the only thing keeping me safe is this chainlink fence. The winds out on this deck were really wild.

In addition to Eureka, we walked around downtown Melbourne for several hours. It was by far the coolest place I have ever been. In general it was full of the most imaculate, creative, HUGE buildings I have ever seen. There were statues on every street corner. There was a lifesize chessboard. The Yarra river runs right through the middle. In essence, it was beautiful. Also, it was the most culturally diverse place I've ever seen. I have never seen so many different kinds of people! TONS! There was a chinatown, a spanish town, and a vietnamese town. I guess the best way to describe it is if you took Denver, Boulder, Arvada, and Aurora and blended them all together ha ha. I have posted a few pictures below but will post more tomorrow (with the time difference it is 5:40 in the morning for me and I'm exhausted). I am crashin' hard so I gotta sleep. Until next time, luv ya all.