Go Saints!!

So I've been here in Australia for 5 months and I've yet to update anything but my photos. When I've sat down and tried to blog I kept coming up empty, thinking my daily life was too boring. These last few days in St. Kilda though have made me realize the little things, when appreciated, can actually be the most interesting.

The main sport here in Australia is good ol' "Footy", or the AFL. It's a bit of a combination of soccer and rugby played on a massive field. Mark's Australian friend took us to see a game back in May and I found the fans caught my attention more than the game (me not knowing rules might have contributed slightly:-). They weren't playing for a championship, just an early season game, and yet almost every fan there had some sort of team gear or colors on. Now being the end of September footy has reached it's pinnacle with the Grand Final. I live in the cute seaside suburb of St. Kilda, just a few miles from the center of Melbourne, and their football team The Saints is well loved. In their 136 years in the league they have only won once in 1934 and lost at three other attempts at the Final. This year was suppose to be their turn when they made it to the Grand Final against Geelong who've won the title the last three years in a row.

I work at an adorable family owned cake shop on the main street in St. Kilda which has survived there for over 70 years. The owner, Gideon, is a die-hard Saints fan and has spent the last week decorating the shop from top to bottom like a kid given a new box full of crafts. The main radio and TV stations have all stopped by the landmark shop to get his take on the St. Kilda fans outlook for the game. I thought I had little interest in the game today despite all the hype surrounding me and the regulars filling up the small tables to watch the TV perched atop the soda fridge. But with the last 10 minutes of the game leaving the score tied I started routing for the under dog Saints and their die hard fans. Unfortunately they ending up loosing in the last two minutes of the game and so I tip toed out of work knowing better then to try to talk to Gideon for at least a couple of days. I walked down the street to the entrance of the grocery store where the newspaper seller starting chatting to me about the game and inside I said hello to a mutual friend working at the register. The tram ride home was filled with depressed Saints fans but I saw an old friend from our hostel days and found out he's living close by. Today I realized that I finally hit the point here where I no longer feel like such an outsider. That rooting for your local team, knowing the bum on the corner, or running into friends on the tram are all the little things that make a place more then just a temporary residence.

Now that I' become so comfortable here we actually only have 10 weeks left. Me and Mark's plan is to continue saving up until mid-November and then travel for a few weeks before we leave on December 10th. We are hoping to rent a campervan and drive through out Australia (don't ask me where, we haven't gotten that far!). Then were stopping over in NZ for a few days to visit Mark's family and then he's coming back to Philly with me for a week! Yay!!

In the meantime I'm still working full time at the cake shop and actually really enjoying it. Usually there are just two staff on at a time as it's a small shop with Sam or Toby doing the coffee's. I take orders at the counter ringing people up on a 65 year old cash register. It has the old push button keys that make that beautiful "riinnnnggg" sound each time you press a number, which only go up to $7. So we hit keys two or three times and if its more then $18 we just write the amount on a slip of paper above. I've recently started getting to decorate all the cupcakes in the shop. At first I was terrible and my icing swirls always managed to be lopsided and I was covered in icing. But now that I'm a cupcake pro it's a lot more fun, and so is eating the homemade icing!!

Mark was keeping really busy working as a waiter downtown for the first five months. He was happy to leave though a couple of weeks ago when he and our roommate Jana got a job working at the Royal Melbourne Show. It's set up on massive show grounds outside the city and has large pavilions selling just about everything, agricultural stuff, and lots of over priced too old to still be running rides. I went to visit Mark the other night when he got off work and it was a lot of fun, especially since his friend let me in for free! We ended up coming home with a really odd assortment of things including amazing pepperoni, wasabi peas, wasabi macadamia nuts, and sour candy. I am so amazingly impressed with Mark's and Jana's ability to keep getting up every morning for this job. Tomorrow is their last day and they will have worked 12 hours a day for two straight weeks!! But because of Mark we are going to have the travel money that we really needed for November. Mark and Jana's next job through the same employment agency is "train counting". They will be counting passengers on trains. Yes, definitely not very stimulating, but since they both got team leader positions they'll have more hours and make more money so it's all in the name of travel!

Well I'll definitely need to write another blog about when Mark's parents visited last month and they took us on a short road trip down the beautiful Great Ocean Road. But for now I'm going to work on uploading all of my Australia photos. I'll write again soon (I promise I really do mean it this time!!)


Photos