Another Update!

I have a few minutes before we are leaving to go to church(at 6 on Sunday night), so I figured I'd update on our week/weekend activities.

On Thursday we had some training time where we discussed using some different materials on campus as well as how to follow up with the students we will be meeting. That night we went to China Town here in the city and ate at a dumplings place. It was really good and an order of 15 dumplings was only like $6, which is pretty unheard of price around here. That night some of us went to see Harry Potter at a little cinema around here. Apparently the theatre normally only gets indie films and smaller cultural stuff, but I guess HP is big enough of a deal. I thought it was pretty good...not alot of action, but I don't have much to judge it against since I haven't read the books.

On Friday we divided up into groups that we'll be planning special outreaches on the campuses. I'm working with three others from our group to plan an outreach for the RMIT(The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology...I know, pretty awesome name) City campus, which is the one located nearest to us. We planned to set up some tables at different hot spots around the campus and get people to come give their opinion on different questions. For instance, at one of the tables we will have a question like "List three words you would use to describe your life." and "List three words you wish described your life.". From there we will try to transition into more of a conversation and get the person to really talk with us. As an incentive to participate, we're going to be giving out "Tim Tams" which are a specialty of Australia. They're chocolate covered cookies with different filings in the middle. Absolutely delicious. There's tons of different kinds(dark chocolate, mint filled, double coated, etc. etc) and we are trying to try them all while we're here. I'm definitely going to be bringing some home, don't worry. After planning, we met up with some of the Australian RMIT students to let them know our plan and see if they thought it would be a good idea for the campus. After that, we headed over to Jane's house(the Australian project leader). Her and her husband James had prepared a big cookout for us which was great. The food was delicious and there was plenty for everyone. It was so good to have a home-cooked meal and to relax in a house setting!

On Saturday our plans fell through to go to Phillip Island because we couldn't find enough rides, so we decided to go to the Aussie Rules Football Game at the MCG(the 100,000 seater). The teams were the Collingwood Magpies(from Melbourne) and the Hawthorne Hawks from Tazmania. Josh and I have chosen to go for the Carlton Blues(another Melbourne team) but almost everyone else on project is a Pies fan. The Pies are like arch rivals of Carlton, so we obviously went for the Hawks, and they won! The game was really intense and it's lots of fun to watch in person. We are definitely going to go back next Friday because Collingwood is playing Carlton at the MCG. Since they're both from Melbourne, and they're such big rivals, it's expected to be a huge game(and basically packed). I loved the game and could watch it pretty regularely I think. Maybe I can get them online back in the States or something.

Today has been pretty laid back. We had our free pancake breakfast this morning, but the guy making them had never done it before, so they were really thin and undercooked. I guess I took for granted how good homemade pancakes are that are done right(thanks Dad). After that we went to meet up with Carlson(one of the guys from Australian who came to Tech on a summer project in December). He graduated and it working in the Melbourne area, so we won't get to work with him much, but it was good to catch up a little. We headed over to the Queen Victoria market and walked around for a little, and headed back to the hostel.

Starting tomorrow we will beginning our work on campus. Campus life is very different here in that almost everyone is a commuter. There is rarely on-campus housing with the exception being foreign students. That makes it very difficult to establish a community. Many students just come to the university for their classes and then head home, as most have a trip close to or over an hour home by train. I'm excited to get into what I thought of as the main purpose of our trip. We're going to be doing "O Week Questions" where we pass our fliers to try to get people to fill out online surveys. The surveys will ask them questions about life and see if they're interested in any kind of follow-up. I don't know how that's going to go, but I'm optimistic. Hopefully I'll have a good report by the next time I update.

Other than that things are going well. We're really settling in and I feel like I am understanding the area pretty well. Wednesday is our half way point for the trip which is really hard to believe. It's one of those situations where I feel like we just got here but I have been here forever....strange.

Thanks so much for following and for the thoughts and prayers. I hope everything is going well back in the States for everyone and I'll talk to you all soon!