Lions and Footie!

2-3 hours is no where near enough time to sleep off what I drank the night before. Boo! We caught the shuttle to the airport, checked in, and waited. I was a wee bit tired and so excited when our flight was delayed two hours because of fog in Melbourne. Yeah! We did switch gates 3 times and get our tickets re-issued. Yippie. Eventually we made it to Southern Cross train station and then waited for Mike's friend Luke to meet us and take us back to his apartment. We're staying with Luke now. He lives in one of the nicer suburbs of Melbourne and has a fantastic place.

Saturday ended up being a day of recovery for all three of us. Luke had a bit of fun out on Friday night and we lazed around most of the day. We took a crazy cab ride out to the burb where Luke lives (the guy did not go anywhere Luke was trying to get him to go and finally we just got out and the cabby and Luke had "words.") We hit up the grocery store on our way to the apartment and decided to take the grocery cart with us so that I was able to leave all the groceries in the cart with both of my backpacks while Luke pushed the cart. yeah for being lazy!! I get off so easy sometimes .... Luke made some yummy pasta and a huge dish of sauce for dinner. Delicious. We watched kiss, kiss, bang, bang which was a funny movie and I did nod off for a bit of it on the comfy couch. After dinner, we walked to a little local pub. We met Douglas, an older gentleman, who uses the "Queen's English" as Luke calls it ~ back home perhaps we'd just say "proper English." He was a riot all the same and we enjoyed our evening out. I got to sleep in Luke's bed last night (I'm lucky being the girl travler ~ Mike always gives me the bigger bed, the first shower, etc. etc. It's got its perks) and Luke has a real bed. They had crap beds throughout Asia and it was such a delight to sleep on a super comfy bed with a big down comforter and comfy pillows..... hmmmm.... comfy! :) It's bittersweet ~ we're only staying for 3 nights. I'm enjoying it while it lasts .....

Sunday we were going to get up at 7:30 and go into Melbourne before heading to Gilong for a 'footie game.' Ha ha ha. Since we did nothing all day Saturday, naturally we were exhausted. Luke forgot to set the alarm clock and thus we slept until 9:30. I made the boys some eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast. Really yummy bacon. Mmmmmm.... and we headed off to the footie match. The Aussies have their own football league with their own rules. Luke is orginally from Brisbane and Mike studied near there when he did his study abroad. We went to cheer on the Brisbane Lions with Luke's friend Kat. The Lions didn't do so hot (they lost by 50 points or so) but it was a fantastic specticale. The field is oval shaped and you can kick or punch the ball, but you can't run with it. When we arrived in Gilong (about an hour by train from Melbourne) to delightfully cold rain. Luke bought us some cheap ponchos to protect us from the rain and we got our tickets and ended up in the standing room section cheering on the Lions. It was a fantastic time.

And now ... here's a few photos. The connection speed of the internet in SE Asia was usually not very fast and Mike didn't bring a USB cord to upload pics off of his camera. He's primarily the photographer and thus, I know you've been missing my great pics to go along with my stories. Here are a few from today and from Friday night.

Footie Game