Who Do You Barrack For?

After three fantastic weeks of visitors, I am now alone in Melbourne again. I officially saw Ethan off early this morning. Ethan left Melbourne at 8 am on Sunday morning and will arrive in Los Angeles around 6 am on sunday. He gains two hours on his flight and then he's set to arrive at JFK sometime around 6 in the afternoon on Sunday. A long long day of traveling. Molly left earlier in the week and she is now in Jerusalem after flying via Bangkok. Australia is far !!!

We had a fantastic time ... really a wonderful trip. The highlights for me was a trip on the Ocean Road -- we traveled south of Melbourne about 4 hours and saw a variety of different landscapes and scenery ranging from rain forest to rock formations in the middle of the ocean. We played mini-golf in the quaint town of Warnambool on the the tip of the Continent and ate kangaroo (not kosher and with a tough gamey taste), dunked in the frigid ocean near Apollo Bay and saw giant wave surfers in Bells Beach. (remember the last scene in Point Break -- with Johnny Utah and Bodie? This is where Bodie went off into the storm) We also visited the fantastic surfing museum hiked to a top of a lighthouse and saw more koala bears.

Ethan and I went to a footy (Australian Rules Football) match yesterday. We saw carlton played richmond, with over 73,000 others at the classic Melbourne Cricket Ground. The MCG is a mecca to Australia's sports fans -- like Lambeau to those in Wisconsin. It hosted the 1956 olympics, as well as other huge events including the huge Aussie Rules final every September. It's right across from Rod Laver Arena and the Aussie Open location ... which we toured as well.

Footy is a great sport!!! Fast moving, requires a lot of skill, incredible conditioning and is easy to follow and understand. I liked it a lot more than rugby. I am now a supporter of Carlton (in Australia to root for a team is to barrack for them -- I barrack for the Carlton Blues -- I also barrack for Barak --) who pulled away from an otherwise very tight game in the 4th quarter. Best of all -- once again got into the game free and also made friends with a guy next to us who was able to explain any parts of the game we didn't get. All in all loved Aussie Rules!

All else is great -- any visitors are welcome and encouraged!!! Off to see some of the Moosilauke Aussies in Sydney next weekend. Oh yeah, I'm working too!!

I Come From A Land Down Under

Greetings. Love from Melbourne. Things continue to be wonderful in this spectacular country. In the blog you'll notice I've included a few photos. The first is of Ethan, Molly and me standing in front of a Koala bear. The second is of molly and me on Phillips Island (read the last post). Notice in the that photo we were are dresses as if it is winter time -- well it's winter time.

The three of us took another fantastic trip, down to the great ocean road, which I'll include in a future blog.

But a little about my job in these parts. Popular to what you may infer from the blog posting, I am actually working quite hard. I am based out of the biggest progressive synagogue in Melbourne called Temple Beth Israel (but everyone just calls it TBI). While I spend most of my days at TBI, I am actually an employee of the Union for Progressive Judaism in Melbourne. I spend my time working for three different progressive synagogues, the progressive youth movement Netzer, a progressive Day School and a few other nick-knacks. I've been assisting with a variety of services, leading a variety of conversations/study groups, teaching parts of an intro to Judaism class, helping out in the Hebrew school and doing a variety of other projects and odds and ends.

The people are wonderful. It's a very playful culture. Australians love play on words, they rhyme lots of things (chicken curry = no worries), call each other hosts of names (bald = curly, big nosed = chiseled) and have other great phrases and mannerisms. I've also learned that people from Melbourne think they have a much much better city than Sydney and vice-versa. Furthermore, the mayor of Melbourne is a Chinese Immigrant named named John So, who the entire city adores, but who, I gather, is impossible to understand.


Off to footy with Ethan this weekend and maybe some lawn bowling tonight.

Check the road, mate

Wild bunch of days in Australia. I need to get my camera working because I would love to add some photos to the blog.

So ... nice to have a few visitors, Ethan and Molly have spent the last few days in Aussie (they are visiting Sydney right now) and we've had a rather grand time. The highlight was a day trip (my off day, I promise I'm working here) to Philips Island which is about 90km south of Melbourne and right on the Bass Straight (between Australia and Tasmania) which connects to the Indian Ocean and then south to Antarctica.

Going to Philips Island felt a little bit like being on a small little American beach town, little boardwalk, nice beaches, a few main roads. Only with some of the best Australian wildlife one could imagine. (Imagine if Montauk or Bethany Beach had Koalas) I promise I'll attach photos later, but we saw Koalas, Kangaroos, Wallabies, incredible birds and little tiny penguins. These animals were incredible. The Koalas (not a bear, but rather a marsupial) are having serious extinction issues in Aussie, so we went to protected national park where they are protected and a few dozen of these little bundles of joy are living and trying to reproduce. They really are incredible animals and we found a few that weren't sleeping and moved around a little for us, even though most of them sit perched in a tree and do nothing but nap.

In the preserve we also saw a host of birds and a wallaby (which is like a small kangaroo). I had no idea what a kangaroo or wallaby actually looked like. But to watch it hop away was really incredible. We didn't see a kangaroo until later on in the evening when, as we were driving on a quiet road on the Island, a Kangaroo hopped in front of my car and I needed to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting it. Seriously! I'm not making this up. We've all seen deer run across the road in the US. Here wallabies and 'roos turn into road kill. Note -- Ethan really wants to eat a kangaroo, they sell the meat in the grocery store. Hey mate, fire up the barbie.

The island is most famous for the daily penguin parade. Hundreds of proud penguins dress up in leather and drag and waddle to the beat of house music while waving rainbow flags. Actually, it's really quite amazing. These little foot high penguins, gather in the shallows at dusk and as little teams of 5 to 15 waddle from the beach to the sand dunes after a day of fishing. They find there mates and chicks who have been burrowed in the dunes. They gather as groups to help avoid predators and they do it right at dusk every single day. It was really incredible -- the only problem that it was such a tourist attraction that the number of tourists outnumbered the number of penguins.

In other news: I drove on the wrong side of the road yesterday. Molly became a member of Joy FM -- Melbourne's LGBT radio station. Am even happier that the Giants beat the Patriots. Have adopted an Aussie Rules Football team. French Press Coffee is called plunger coffee -- "would you like your coffee out of a plunger?" Have not tried Vegemite. Also -- tomorrow is the shortest day of the year.

Waltzing Matilda

So ... things are going rather well down in these parts. The Australians in general are wonderful people. Very friendly, easy to be with, funny, enjoy going out ... it's a good good culture. I've only encountered one not so nice person, and she was Russian.

The nicest thing that happened so far was when I went to the Australia vs. Ireland rugby match a few nights ago. It took place at this big 50,000 + stadium in downtown Melbourne and as we were waiting in line to buy tickets, some guy walked up and just gave us two tickets. They were 15 rows back on the equivalent of the 50 yard line. Rather sweet. Australia won 18 -12, and I must admit, I didn't totally understand the game, but it is a brutal game. Quick moving, heavy hitting and pure force. There is even a blood bin, which people get sent to if they are bleeding too much. It's not as an athletic game (nobody catching passes over the middle, or dribbling through a crowd of defenders) but in terms of pure physical action, it's really insane.

Another wonderful thing about Australia, is that they named the national rugby team the Wallabies. It was the Wallabies vs. Ireland. The national soccer team is the Socceroos.

Everything else is enjoyable, the job is really great so far. I think it's a good match. The city is great, very fun, great neighborhoods, good music/movies/sports, lots of parks. The living is okay ... not the highlight. I live in a nice house, but it's with a grandma (Grandma ... if you are reading this, she's nothing like you). It's a fine location, good for my guests and a nice place, but it definitely isn't my own place. I may look to try a place on my own.

Also ... the blog title. Not trying to endorse Leyton Hewitt, actually don't really like him very much after his racist comment against Blake a few years ago (actually i was trying to play that up in the name ... as in if I ever find you Hewitt.) I liked my father's suggestion of naming it after Toronto Blue Jay great Graeme Lloyd.

Love from a land down under

Blizzard of Oz

Greetings from Australia. I plan on using this as a place where I can muse about my Australian adventure. This way, if you want to read it you can ... and I will not be flooding your inboxes with email. I'll try and post once or twice a week and (if i ever get my bloody camera working) will try and start posting some photos as well.

Did you notice my use of bloody in the sentence above?

Anyhow, I'm now in Melbourne deep in the South of the Southern Hemisphere. I've been here about a week and am generally enjoying myself. I'm here in two capacities 1. To fight crime and 2. as an intern for the Union of Progressive Judaism in Australia.

First things first, Australia is really far from anyplace else. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah we know we know. I'm telling you we have no idea, it's soooo far. It took me over 24 hours to get here -- it's 14 hours different than EST in the USA. (and yes -- I flew coach)

Will try and blog more soon -- give you a better update about my life.

Peace