David and I around Melbourne

So, after getting back from our trip, David came to most of my classes with me, I think he enjoyed it. :P I wanted to have a day to wonder around Geelong and Melbourne with him before he left, so we only had that week. I had a lab scheduled from 2-5 on Tuesday, but otherwise no classes that day, so instead of going to Melbourne that day (like I was planning before I saw that I had a lab that day) we wondered around Geelong for the first part of the day. We walked along the water, went up to the Botanical Gardens and further. It was a beautiful day, we couldn't have asked for much nicer. We then went to this sushi place for lunch, they had the most amazing chicken, so good we talked about it up until he left. ;P We then caught the 1:00 bus home so I would be in time for my lab. I got all of my stuff ready then walked over to the school, David was staying in my room till I was done. I got there and there was no one there, I found out that I had had the right date, but it had recently been changed and I hadn't recently looked on the schedule (cause I assumed that the dates would stay the same!). So, I didn't have lab that day, I was a little mad cause if I had known then I wouldn't have had to skip class again on Wednesday to go to Melbourne, but it was ok. We went to Melbourne the next day (took the earliest bus to the train station), we got there about 8:00 and were surprised that a lot of stuff didn't open until 10:00!! Crazy Australia, even in the big city places don't open until 10 and close at 5 on weekdays!! We walked around Federation Square, then went to see if I could find this place that I wanted to show David as a surprise. I thought I knew where it was, but my memory thought it was where it wasn't. ;P Luckily some people I asked knew where it was YAY! So, I took David, and made him close his eyes as I lead him down the stairs, which made him uncomfortable. ;P It was totally worth all the trouble of finding though when he opened his eyes! It's a bookstore of all language books!! It's amazing they have EVERYTHING! They even have books written in Latin! Including Virgil and Harry Potter! It's just awesome, I knew we would love it, and he did! We agreed that it was kind of a tease at the same time cause we didn't have money to actually buy anything. ;P Anyway, after that we went to the Australian Centre of the Moving Image where they had an exhibition on independent and student films, which we watched a few of. It was really neat.They had just taken down the big exposition (and the big Mario out front :( ) on video games. Oh well. :) I was on Youtube a few days ago and just happened to see a video that they had a figure of the main character of at the ACMI! I recognized it and so watched the short film, it's quite cute, I recommend it. Geoffrey Rush narrates too! Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouyVS6HOFeo

Then we went to the Arts Centre, looked inside the art gallery and found they had artifacts from the Aztecs and Egypt and Greece up! It was really neat, we were both very glad we went in there! We then went to the Botanical Gardens, which were very lovely. We sat by the lake for a while and there was a lame bird laying on the grass near us just eating grass. He seemed to be doing quite well for having a bad leg, he would get up and waddle closer every now and then, by the time we left he was sitting right next to us! Some of the other birds were funny too cause they would chase each other, quite violently too! One also chased a seagull and wouldn't leave it alone! It was hilarious. We couldn't have asked for a better day that day either! What luck!! We got a little grub at KFC. We walked all over town, we passed by the old gaol (that's how they spell jail here... weird I know ;P), I wanted to go in and see Ned Kelly's armor, but it turned out to be like $18 admission and I didn't want to see it that badly. We then walked over to the Queen's Market, which we found out once we got there that it was closed on Wednesdays!! That was sad, but oh well. We then went down to the docklands (where I had heard there were good places to eat) but there was a lot of construction going on and we didn't see anywhere to eat! Some areas were neat, but there was just too much construction. At the very end of our walk it started to get grey and rainy, we decided to just head back to Geelong and eat there cause we didn't see anything really appealing that was nearby and (at least) my knee hurt. :) We did have to wait an hour though cause we had a return ticket for non-peak travel time and it was 5:00, peak stopped at 6:00, if we wanted to leave earlier we'd have to pay extra. We wouldn't have wanted to do that anyway cause there were LOADS of people heading toward the train station, we had to time our walking down the sidewalks to in between crowds! So, we sat in Gloria Jeans (a coffee place) on the corner across from Southern Cross (train station) and shared a white chocolate; it felt nice cause by then it was getting quite chilly. When we got back to Geelong we ate at a mexican restaurant just near the bus stop, and then took the last bus home (8:42). It was a really good day.