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My goodness, how time flies! I can hardly believe I’ve been living in Melbourne for over a month now! It really still feels like I left NYC just yesterday. I still miss the Wii nights, the DS time, and being able to use my cell phone freely without any worries of running out of credit!

It was a few weeks ago since my last big Australian update and a lot has happened since then. I’ve settled into my apartment quite well and the sights and sounds of Melbourne (both day and night) have continued to amaze and excite me.

I’ve met a good handful of friends here that I absolutely love hanging out with. Most of them are from Germany, but overall, I’d say it’s a good mix of international faces. It’s odd that I haven’t met too many locals despite being immersed in the local community. I guess it’s hard to tell the locals from the international folks especially since everybody just seems to mish-mash into fantastic friendship circles. It’s unlike the sometimes homogenous American culture where only the same race/cultures hangs around their own kind. I love it here. I really do!

Before I go into the photos, here are just some things I’ve noticed during my one-month stay here in Melbourne:

• Folks here really love their SMS text messaging.
• A lot of people drive motorcycles here.
• I may be starting to understand Formula 1 racing…
• I love asking new friends whether or not they have Facebook.
• They can say “bad words” on regular programming TV here.
• They pronounce the “h” sound in “herbs”.
• I don’t like typing the “.au” after all the URLs here in Australia.
• I feel like I’m out camping every single time I start my stove. I have to let it “click” like 7 times before letting go of the gas knob.
• I’m cooking full meals for myself!
• The Hoyt cinema here has assigned theater seating. When you buy your ticket for a movie, you also buy a specific seat. No moving hopping at that location…it sucks.
• I love watching “morning news” from the US one day late.
• Most of the internet runs on either US EDT or PST
• Kangaroos taste delicious!
• Everything comes in smaller doses here — the food, the containers, the cars…
• A lot of Z’s are replaced with S’s.
• “Zed” for Z, and “Hay-ch” for H

And now, here are some photos to share of my experiences here in Melbourne! Ask me questions about the place, I’d love to answer them if I can!! :) Enjoy!

So there’s this camera store here called Michael’s (it’s kinda like the local B&H) and inside the store there is a camera museum. It’s free to go and check out, so I did.

Michael’s has a collection of gold cameras made from REAL GOLD. It’s simply amazing the collection of old cameras they have there, not to mention the hoards of limited edition devices they have on show.

It’s so nice!

Nearby, there’s a mall called Melbourne Central. It’s sorta the go-to shopping centre if you want something quickly (otherwise, you’re probably more inclined to walk down Bourke Street or some other shopping district).

Inside Melbourne Central is Hoyt’s, a theater that has cheap ticket prices on Tuesdays (so that day is always full). I saw Transformers and The Simpsons here on the big screen. The theater would be fantastic if it didn’t require patrons to go to designated seating areas on the ticket stubs. SUCKS. This basically means that instead of showing up EARLY to get a good seat, you have to show up EARLY to BUY A TICKET. SO GAY. It’s like the worst theater idea ever. I hate it.

Anyway, Melbourne Central is built around this old factory building. They kept the old building and turned it into a store within the mall.

Oh yeah, and there are touch-screen directories all over the place. It’s great! Sometimes I just go up to them and push buttons just for the sake of pushing buttons.

Literally across the street from RMIT is a tiny little corridor of a street that is lined with street art.

Stencils, layups, graffiti, posters, paint, etc. Everything. It’s all on this one little street.

On Brunswick Street, there is a fantastic pizza joint called “Lamb on Brunswick”. It serves pizza topped with lamb!! It’s sooooooo good!!!

Believe it or not, I’ve never had fish and chips until I got here. So here’s my first taste of it.

Random: When you send mail to me, this is where it goes.

Two Sundays ago, a group of us took a trip to St. Kilda beach and had a BBQ (that’s where I had my first kangaroo steak).

I can tell that St. Kilda is going to be a fantastic place come Summer time. Whoo! :)

Mmmm!

Here’s Henning and Rainer cooking up a feast.

My friend Maria was from Spain and she knew how to cook all these great vegetables. It was tasty!

At the BBQ we had “Kanga Bangas”. They are kangaroo sausages and they aren’t good.

This was seconds before my first bite of kangaroo STEAK which was delicious.

Yum!

That’s the city of Melbourne off in the distance.

The following week, my friend Chris invited a bunch of us to his place to have dinner. His landlord was out so we had the place to ourselves.

The salad was prepared by Ale and Simon…

Simon’s really liking the salad packs…

Chris and Rainer prepared the meats…

And Rainer was the cook again!

It was a full course meal. We were stuffed! But there was more to come!

We had ice cream too to finish! Ahh!

Afterwards, we all sat down for some reading time from Henning. The book he was reading: “Everything A Teenage Boy Should Know”. It was an old book.

For some odd reason, the people in Melbourne are absolutely obsessed with instant noodles. I guess since they’re so cheap they have a good reason to be.

There is no Burger King in Australia. Just Hungry Jack’s.

Mexican night (for all non-mexicans) at Estelle’s!

The student exchange club has organized a few events for us to all get acquainted with. Here is a night of bowling with Cat, Ashley, Henning, Chris, and Maria.

Me, Chris, Henning

I’m not very polished at all in bowling. But hey, at least the shoes looked cool.

Here’s Ashley, one of the other two folks who came over here with me from Parsons. It’s good to find a familiar face.

My friend Anna lives on the 20-something floor in Southbank. She has a wonderful view of the city lights at night. I want to go back during the day some time.

This photo is for Joyce. See?!

This is the State Library across the street from RMIT. It’s a grand place with tons of free exhibitions throughout the year. Advertised on the front facade of the structure is Karin Catt’s Famous portraits exhibit.

This is what the study room inside the State Library looks like. Beautiful, no?

Each level of the State Library had an entire floor’s worth of history pertaining to Australia and the city of Melbourne. Henning, Anna, Ann, and I spent an entire afternoon there because there was so much to see.

One section of the library had all these first or early editions of famous books on display (in glass cases). Check out some of them below…

An incredibly old Bible dating back to 1611. The description underneath it says that it was one of the first authorized translations of the Bible into English (by King James).

There was this neat little miniature bookshelf with books.

You had to use a magnifying glass to read it. The book was smaller than a matchbook. Apparently, these were popular in the past.

Also there was one of Shakespeare’s earliest collected volumes of work dating back to the 1600’s.

And I’ll end with the following photo of Melbourne City central.

I am really taking a liking to this city. I still miss home however, and sometimes I wish the weather here would warm up a bit so that I wouldn’t have to be envious of the warm weather that you New Yorkers have been getting. But I guess Australia’s turn for Summer will come soon.

Despite the physical distance from home, I haven’t felt too far from friends because of internet, Facebook, Skype, Meebo, and Doobybrain.com. I’m glad I can still keep in contact with people from home and not have to worry about the distance. The only thing I have to worry about is time. Haha. :)

In terms of school, I’m really enjoying my classes. The only hard thing to get used to is the fact that there are no free printers to print from here at RMIT. It’s a bit bothersome to print with “print credit” especially when all you need is one page. But I’ve found ways around it and such (not to mention other ways around other RMIT nuisances.

Norman said in a recent Xanga entry that it seems like I’m taking in my new surroundings like I would if I were watching a movie. I guess he’s right. It really does feel like I’m watching a really good movie. A movie that will last 11 more months. Wow. It’s hard to imagine that I’ll be away from home for so long.

Anyway, I miss everybody from home. I especially miss Dusty and Oreo and Joey. :)

Until next time, take care! Cheers!