penguins!

So sorry for my lack of updates recently, I’ve just been very busy! Last weekend I went home with one of my friends, along with two other friends.  Friday evening we went to her church for a family trivia night.  It was a blast! Every table was meant to have a theme and our theme was the Godfather.  We all dressed in black and got ready to go.  It was such a great time, even though we didn’t win.  The next day we went to Mornington Peninsula and Phillip Island.  From Mornington Peninsula we had an amazing few of the ocean but could also see the skyline of Melbourne across the bay.  It was really foggy but we were quite surprised we ended up that far away from the city.  After taking a few pictures we headed to Phillip Island.  Once there we went to the information center to see what all the island had to offer (it’s a very small island) before going to the other side of the island for some fish and chips.  Then we went to some lookouts at the island before it was time to see what brought us to Phillip Island...the penguin parade.  The penguin parade happens every evening around sunset when the world’s smallest penguins, the little penguin) comes ashore to their burrows.  They were absolutely adorable! The penguins come in from the ocean in little groups of three to very large groups.  When they are coming to shore they are very cautious because it is when they are most susceptible to prey. They were so scared to get out of the ocean and would often go back into the water to wait for more penguins to cross or just until they felt safer.  After awhile we stopped watching them come out of the ocean and went to the boardwalk to watch them go into their burrows.  Once they were in the safety of the dunes they were much more playful with one another and were waddling around and making tons of noise.  We had so much fun watching them and stayed for quite awhile.  Finally we made our way back to the car and left (after looking under our car for stray penguins).  Sunday morning we woke up and headed into the city to go to the Queen Victoria Market.  It was quite the experience.  Take any farmers market you’ve ever been to and multiply it by a very large number.  To put it into perspective the place where they sell all of the meat smelt so bad and was filled with so many different things and in mass quantities that it made me consider be a vegetarian for about ten minutes, which is a long time for me. Other than that, and in all truth it was pretty cool, the market was wonderful.  I got tons of souvenirs and just had fun shopping and looking around. Once we were all shopped out we went back to school.

This past week started the beginning of finals.  There is a whole month of finals but all of mine are in the last week and I still have class this next week.  This weekend I spent studying with another trip to Queen Victoria’s Market today, this time we skipped out on the meat and fish section. 

I only have about a month left which is ridiculous, but my lovely family comes in two and a half weeks and I can’t wait. I don’t have too much going on until they get here except for studying and two trips home with friends.  I’ll give an update when I have something good.  Love you all and see you in about a month!