The Weather App said it was going to rain, but that wasn’t going to deter our plans. The day started early with a long walk to Victoria University, as the group had high anticipation for our first full day down under. Drifting through the streets of Melbourne, our group of 12 tracked along and after about 30 minutes had reached our destination. The University’s beautiful brand new building towers as part of the city skyline and was our first destination. The professor led us to a classroom on the fifth floor and started the lecture by honoring the aboriginal culture. The engaging lecture covered everything from the 60,000-year history of life on the island to the rules of Australian rules football and even included the comedy of Jimmy Rees and a reference to the song WAP. My knowledge of these topics (except for WAP) was quite limited coming into the day so I sat in the classroom as an elementary school child with a clean slate and an open mind. I digested what I could and thought I came away a little bit smarter, which is a goal of mine every day on the trip.
The day then continued with lunch in a typical Italian restaurant, in the middle of a back alley, definitely where you would find a high-end restaurant in the U.S, right? While the marinara sauce might have had a little too much garlic, the students joked around the table as the bond between the students, most of whom came off the trip as complete strangers, continued to grow.
With lunch in the rearview mirror, the group walked to a local park where we began our lesson of Australian rules football as we started by running drills. Damion, our instructor, seemingly had all the students incredibly engaged as we learned the game. His positive coaching style and playful and competitive drills made Australian Rules Football a familiar game that both made sense and was quite fun. Coming into the day the majority of us had never even heard of this game and now we were playing it in a beautiful Australian park. I won’t say we were necessarily good at the immensely skillful and difficult game, but there were certainly improvements made by every single one of us.
A bunch of tired students continued, on our day, to the local Victorian market to shop and potentially find something to eat. Some bought Koala backpacks, others bought crocodile belts and knock-off NBA jerseys, and a few even bought a kangaroo scrotum keychain. Yes, you read that right. Me, I just got a nice-looking cantaloupe and enjoyed some fresh fruit.
The conclusion of the night was a trip to an Australian Footy game, which was fitting given we had spent the majority of our day learning and playing the game. Meat pies and screaming fans made the game quite the experience. The group sat in the upper level looking down upon a field three times that of a football field and began to understand the intrigue of the game that consumes the lives of many Australians.
It was supposed to rain today, but that didn’t happen, and dare I say the weather was actually quite pleasant, certainly better than upstate New York in its winter months.
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