Penguins, a pretty beach and an essay-machine

Sorry for the long wait. I wanted to wait two weeks to be able to tell about both my Anglesea and Phillip Island trips, as I thought that doing them separately would only make short posts. I was wrong, this is going to be a biggie! I hope that it was worth the wait...

So, after 3 weeks of doing very little for uni (I know, bad me) and being occupied with acting as an exchange student, uni got back at me and hit me in the face. Due next week are three essays and I had a test yesterday and I'll be gone for the weekend, yes the whole 4 days. This means that I really had to start working, and fast, as I'm not such a fast writer (granting me the nickname Slowwrita thanks to Kim). This meant long and tedious hours of research, writing, re-writing, proof-reading and so forth, but I managed to do it in time, something of which I'm quite proud to be honest. Luckily, one of the essays will be about Enzo Ferrari, which made research a lot more interesting :) Hopefully I can manage to keep up a bit better from now on, that would save me a lot of stress.

But of course I haven't been doing uni work all the time! What did you expect? :)
We've been to the Queen Victoria winter night market where they had loads of foreign foods and other stuff, I've seen Jeux d'enfants, Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban (for the 5th time or so but hey, there was free pizza as well) and the new movie about Steve Jobs which was quite good (although I wouldn't pay to go there, for that just too little stuff actually happens). Furthermore, we went to an opera preview at the Melbourne Opera House (free tickets for the win), which was amazingly short, but interesting.
We also planned our spring break: A 12-day trip from Alice Springs (and the big red rock!) to the north, Darwin and Kakadu national park! Really looking forward to that.

On Sunday 18th, we went to Anglesea beach with a bunch of people. Anglesea is a small surfer village just at the start of Great Ocean Road, which we'll visit in about 1.5 months. Besides the gorgeous beach and the cliffs there is not that much really interesting to see, but it was a really cool day, despite the horrible weather at times!

Last Sunday, I went to Phillip Island with Larissa. it turned out to be a bilingual tour, so we got to catch up with our Chinese as well. First, we went to a farm where they held kangaroos and emus as well. This was really amazing! We got a demonstration of sheep shearing and after that we got some time to feed and pet the kangaroos. For me, this was the highlight of the day as I didn't know we were going to do this until we got there. After that, we went to a koala reservation centre where we spotted a bunch of these lazy guys chilling in them trees :) And then, finally, the thing I'd been looking forward to since I knew of its existence: the Penguin Parade! Unfortunately, my night-blindness allowed me mainly to see some distant movements at the beach, and that was it. also, not that many pinguins showed up that day. We did get to see a couple of them up close along the paths to their nests, so it wasn't all for nothing. Sadly, no pictures allowed, but they're also supposed to be at the St. Kilda pier, so I'm definitely going there! Below are a bunch of pictures from the last two to three weeks.


                                                           Queen Victoria night market

                                               Shrine of remembrance, a war memorial

                                          Amazing Melbourne skyline from atop the shrine

                                                     Even the eggs are happy over here

                                                                       Anglesea

 
                                   An amazing rainbow to make us forget about the weather                                    

                                 Some more pictures of Anglesea beach, absolutely beautiful

 

                                                                In Anglesea itself :D

                                   To help you measure your fish, why don't we have that?!

 

The opera House

                                             I'd love to take it but it doesn't fit in my pocket

                                                         At Melbourne central station

                                                            Homework, such a burden

Kangaroos!

                                                        Beautiful cliff at Phillip Island

                                                          Phillip Island stuffed penguins

         Just a regular day at campus...this guy made my day, scaring people all the time and
                                        making fun of them. Spent half an hour watching this!

                                                            Holding a crocodile!!

                                                                     Sheep shearing

                                                                He seems surprised...

                                                               This one seems hungry!

                                                                   More kangaroos!

 
                                                    Trying a kangaroo meatpie, delicious!

                                  They look absolutely satisfied, I wished I was one this week

                                                          With the not-so-happy sheep!

 

 

                  Again, just a regular day :D (copyright by and gratitude to Ms. Sharlen Crespin)

 

 

 

So I hope this post was worth the wait, next time I won't save up on so many pictures and stories, but just post them gradually. This weekend we'll be going to the outback with a bunch of exchange students, to Broken Hill to be precisely! I'll post something on that next week :)