Sydney Light Show

 This past weekend I went to Sydney both Saturday and Sunday night for some events. Saturday night about 10 Ihousers went to Olympic Park (where the 2000 Sydney Olympics were held) for a footie game (AFL-Australian Football League) where my Aussie friend's high school friend was playing. He plays for the Sydney Giants. They unfortunately lost to a Melbourne team, but did well for being a brand new program.
On Sunday, we returned to Sydney for the "Vivid Light Show". It is the third annual year of the Light show in Sydney and it supposedly gets better every year. It was the 2nd night of the 18 day show where Sydney buildings and icons have lights shown on the buildings! The Opera House portrayed a rippling effect and had an image a women crawling around it. Other buildings were brightly colored and there were some interactive lights. It is had to explain, but hopefully the pictures help you visualize it. However, I don't think the pictures do it justice and it was one of the coolest, most unique things I have seen!

projection of the women on the Opera House

One of the most colorful shots. The lights are always moving and telling stories

The faster you pedal, the brighter the lights. A bit of engineering :)

Ifeast!

Everyone who cooked for iFeast! (I am in the blue kimono on the left. My Japanese friend Mayumi had a spare for me to wear while serving food!)

Last night (Sunday May 6th) we had and international feast. People from our international house got the chance to form groups and make up to 3 dishes for their country! Since there are about 30 Americans living at iHouse, I decided to help the Japanese team. We made red bean mochi, sushi and okonomiyaki. Red Bean mochi is a dessert made with red beans and sugar inside of a cookie dough and rolled in coconut. Okonomiyaki looks like a pancake or pizza that is made out of seafood and cabbage and topped with special okonomiyaki sauce. The dishes were not too difficult to make, but sharing a kitchen with about 20 teams and serving for 200 people was no easy task. We spent about 3 hours cooking on Saturday and 4 hours on Sunday before the big feast. It was delicious! Some of my favorite dishes were:

-chocolate balls from France

-mango smoothie from Sri Lanka

-goat from Kenya

-Kangaroo stew and lamingtons from Australia

-Pad Thia from Thailand

-noodle stir fry from Korea

-apple danish from Austria

There were so many more good one! United States made macaroni and cheese, apple pie, puppy chow and buffalo chicken dip which were all delicious as well! It was an awesome night and one of my favorite experiences at Ihouse!

We had some help for the China and Indonesia team with the sushi rolling

Serving okonomiyaki at iFeast

Red Bean Mochi

Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road

AFL game at the MCG

 I spent this past weekend in Melbourne and it was amazing! My roommate Kayla, Kenzie from KU and I caught an early flight Saturday morning to Melbourne. We started by walking the city to Federation Square, the botanical gardens and Flinders Street before we headed north to the famous Victoria Markets. That night we went to an AFL "footie" (Australian Football League) game at MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds). St. Kilda Saints beat the Melbourne Demons in an exciting match. A crowd of about 30,000 came to the game in a stadium that fits 101,000. It is only the 5th round of the season so crowds usually aren't too big yet. The atmosphere was fun, even though it rained, but we were undercover and did not get wet. I decided I prefer an Australian football game to rugby. Footie is the more popular sport around the Melbourne area and rugby is more popular in Sydney. They play on a circular field and try to score the ball between 2 central posts untouched for 6 points or anything else for 1 point.

12 Apostles at Sunset

Then, Sunday morning we met up with 6 other people from the Wollongong International House and rented cars to drive the Great Ocean road towards Adelaide. Leaving at 9am, we drove about 8 hours along the coast, making many stops and taking tons of pictures. At our furthest point, we started seeing some of the famous limestone rock formations including the 12 Apostles, London Bridge and the arch. The drive was amazingly beautiful and our weather was perfect. We watched a magnificent sunset at the 12 Apostles before driving the shorter way back to Melbourne. 

London Bridge (middle part fell in 1990)

Graffiti Alley

On Monday, we again walked the city. This time we went along the river, to Chinatown and through arcades (alleys) in the city. My favorite were the unique alleys we found. Some had a lot of personality including the graffiti alley and others were very ritzy. There were lots of different street shops and heaps of people in them. Melbourne is a very cute, quite city with amazing artsy architecture. Many people in Australia seem to be either Sydney lovers or Melbourne lovers. I am very split on the 2 cities and love them both, but almost everyone I was traveling with preferred Melbourne. The last thing we did in Melbourne is go to a rooftop cider beer bar. They had nine cider beers on tap of flavors apple, pear and berry. We all had a cider and watched footie before catching a late plane back to Sydney. I am so happy I had the chance to see Melbourne and am already recommending it to everyone back in Wollongong!

Another "arcade" or alley in Melbourne