first weekend

our first weekend here in australia - daylight, sun, blue sky, all that good stuff.

after leaving the lab on friday night, we went bowling! the bowling alley (actually called a bowling bar) had just cosmic bowling with flashy lights and disco/techno music, and the like. it was all pretty exciting - even the shoes and screens were all jazzed up. [cool bowling shoes - no neon colored shoelaces!]

[definitely a lot of these]

[andddd the lanes]
on saturday, we headed out bright and early to the city. our first stop was to the eureka tower, up 88 floors, to the tallest point in melbourne. the view was amazing. (: there was also this thing called "the edge" that you could go on (but we didn't), that was basically a glass room that could move in and out of the building, and at first, the walls were cloudy, and then once you were over nothing-ness, basically the room was hanging out of the builidng, the walls would clear up and you'd basically be standing on only a piece of glass 88 floors above ground. pretty crazy - hope that made sense. [the eureka tower]

[the city]

and then we had to leave and go [down to earth]

oh, and spiders - too bad [spiders] sound like yummy drinks here.

then began our walk through many of melbourne's parks. it was so random because there were miles and miles (i guess kilometeres and kilometers would be more accurate) of open park - green grass, trees, flowers, and other random monuments - within the city. it seemed almost like central park or golden gate park, but this was soo much bigger and with so much more. [from pond]

[to statue that seems structurally unsound]

[from sudden rain, at the entrance to the shrine of remembrance]

[to sunny rainforest]

[from cute ducks]

[to eels - i didn't think they existed in ponds!]

[and all of us]

and after dinner, we found this really amusing mirror

on sunday we were a little early for church, so we walked around a bit and found the park close to the claremont. [there was a playground!]

and then we visited the queen victoria market. it reminded me of one of those night markets in taiwan, but HUMONGOUS! it was pretty crazy, with all sorts of merchandise and produce and food. i think we'll have to make another trip back. [umbrella for all the random rain we get]

[cute chicks and ducks for sale, presumably for eating...]

then we headed home for some scrabble and chilling downstairs in the hotel - made [cake in the microwave]

and this is what it [looked like]. not bad, surprisingly. we'll have to figure out other microwave meals for future use.