mugshots and graffiti

It has been awhile since my last post but I’ve been a bit busy and keep forgetting to post!  But I’m going to try to post more often.

Last weekend my floor went on a camping trip to Lorne.  We stayed just down the road from where I was during my surf trip my first weekend in Melbourne.  It was rainy and cold but still so much fun!  We spent the weekend exploring the town and walking on the beach.  It was a lot of fun to spend a weekend away off campus and get to hang out with my floor.

This Saturday I went into the city with a few other international students.  We went to the Old Melbourne Gaol (which is pronounced jail…who knew?).  It was pretty creepy.  We walked around and in each cell they had set up a different story of a person in the jail.  Most of the stories didn’t end so happily.  There was even a story of a person who was accused of a crime, hung, and pardoned in 2008, just a few decades too late.  This was also the jail Ned Kelly was hung in, they still had the gallows set up.  They did a little presentation about Kelly’s life and then we were sent into a different area where we were then put in jail.  We got locked into a cell then toured around the other areas of the prison, at the end we got to take mug shots.  Definitely a strange way to start the day.  After the jail tour we walked along the Yarra River then back towards the city.  We went to a place called Graffiti Alley.  It is literally an alley covered in graffiti, I’m not sure if people are just allowed to do anything they want to the walls or what but the place was covered.  Once we finished walking around the alley we went to Federation Square.  There was a display there called the Australian Centre for the Moving Arts.  It is a hands on kind of museum that was all about how they make movies, TV shows, video games, and pretty much anything that is on a screen.  It was really interesting and fun to see how everything was done and there were even a few things you could play with.  One was making a slow motion action shot.  You went into this room type thing that was filled with cameras and then made some kind of movement and it made a movie out of it and then you got to see it afterwards.  I’m going to try to paste the link onto this blog.  After we finished in Federation Square we walked around the city some more, found some dinner, fed some birds, then took a free city circle tram around to see if there was anything else we wanted to do.  We all decided we were too tired and headed back to La Trobe. 

Next weekend I’m going to my first Australian Rules Football game and I am so excited!  I’m sure I’ll have lots to write about after that game!

I miss you and love you all!