Trivia Tuesdays

Every Tuesday night, a few friends and I go to a pub for trivia night. Pub trivia nights are pretty popular in Melbourne, and we sort of stumbled into one at this great local one, The Drunken Poet. It’s this little Irish place across from the Queen Vic Market and attracts an older Irish crowd, which is kind of hilarious in Melbourne. It’s got dark wood and portraits of famous Irishmen interspersed with posters for Guinness. The bartender, Siobhan, is such a sweetheart too. She knows us now, because we’re literally there every Tuesday. She also has the greatest Irish accent ever, it’s awesome.

So trivia consists of six categories: geography, science and nature, movies and television, music, and two general knowledge rounds. Difficulty seriously varies week to week. There are also two bonus rounds, one is matching dates and another is a sheet of eight images you have to name. For the bonus rounds, if you get the sheet up to the front first you either get a special prize or a bonus point, so it gets a little hectic. We take our trivia very seriously. We have yet to come in first, but we have placed second a few times. For being one of the youngest teams, we hold our own.

Honestly, it’s one of the things about Melbourne I’ll miss the most. I’ve been going with friends since almost the beginning, and since starting I haven’t missed a week. It’s just a great way to break up the week and blow off a little steam.

Melbourne sunset from my balcony

In other news, I’ve just been working to finish assignments. It’s the last week of classes, so there’s a lot to wrap up. The weather has actually been beautiful lately, which is good but also bad when I have so much to do. If winter in Melbourne means upper 50s, lower 60s and sunny days, I think I can handle these next few weeks.

Saturday I’m off to New Zealand! I can’t wait, I think it’s going to be an amazing trip.

Updates and More Tasmania Stuff

So I've officially been in Australia for three months. Time is flying, but luckily I still have another two months to go! I was talking to my roommate, and she's getting home exactly a year after she left. I can't imagine being gone that long, five months seems like a lot.

This week was pretty slow for me. Getting back from Tasmania, I was instantly hit with a bad cold, so I spent most of the week sleeping and catching up on school work. It's a little weird for me, since I only have three more weeks of class, but I'm still in Australia for another three months. Part of the reason is that University of Melbourne holds exams over three weeks rather than the single week I'm used to at home. Don't ask me why, it seems a little excessive to me. Luckily I'll be finding out my exam schedule tomorrow (again, I don't know why it took so long to post the schedule, this school is a little unorganized I think), and hopefully I'll be able to do more traveling then.

On Thursday, we did have a mini Cinco de Mayo celebration. One of my friends here, Maddie, is half Mexican and she insisted on cooking a feast for us (not that any of us were protesting). It's one of the weird things here, Mexican food is hard to come by. I know geographically that makes sense, but I'm used to such good options at home. At this point I would kill for a Chipotle burrito bowl. But anyway, Maddie made us delicious guacamole and homemade salsa, and chicken tacos with two sauces on homemade tortillas. We also splurged and made margaritas. One of our Australian friends came and we had to explain the whole holiday to her since it is definitely not celebrated much in Australia (except by us Americans). Overall, it was a very fun night.

I'm getting really excited about New Zealand, the planning phase has definitely begun. If anybody at home has any suggestions, I'd appreciate them greatly! Unfortunately we're sticking to the South Island so I probably won't get to see them filming The Hobbit (Wellington, the main town they're working out of, is on the North Island). But we're leaving in one day less than three weeks! Time is flying!

I have a few pics from Tasmania that I've stolen from friends that I wanted to add, just to show some of the stuff we did on the trip I didn't get to document:

At Laser Skirmish. See how intense it was? There was even a German flag on my uniform

Group skirmish pic

Jet boating. We had to wear very silly waterproof outfits

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers in my life and happy birthday to my big sister! Hopefully Spring has finally come to the states, it's definitely Fall here (I'm writing this curled up in my comforter).