Farewell for now, new friends!

Just as hard as it was to say goodbye to Melbourne, it was also sad to bid farewell to some friends we’ve made during our time there. Though it was reassuring to know that it was more of a “goodbye for now” as we’re hoping to see them again. Here are some photos of our new mates:

We had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Veggie Bar, with our new friends, Dollies, Hendri and Yuma days before we left. Debbie met Dollies at the church’s English Corner class and the two hit it off really well. Dollies even did a great photo shoot for us, and you can check out her skills in a future post.

We got invited to a real Aussie Sunday Roast at our friends Sarah and Chris’ home in a suburb outside of town. What a treat it was! Debbie met Sarah through her volunteer gig at Opportunity International. It’s safe to say that Sarah is both a talented donor relations manager and a gifted chef!

Through English Corner, Alpha Class, City Bubs Bible Study and church, Debbie met many girls. Here she pictured with her new Taiwanese friend, Rebecca, whom she enjoyed regularly meeting up with for a coffee and to practice conversational English.

FOOTY!

If you ask some locals here what's their favorite thing about Victoria during the autumn and winter seasons, you are likely to get a one word answer- Footy! Footy, short for Australian Rules Football is a fast pace, good spirited game, often mistaken by foreigners as rugby. There are 36 total players on the elliptical field during play, and at the particular game we attended (Collingwood vs. Carlton- 2 old time rivals), over 88,000 spectators!

On game days fans sport their team colors proudly, in the form of a scarf or jersey. We have grown to be fans of footy, and cheer for 3 teams, which is quite unusual since it feels like you're to only go for 1 team, perhaps decided for at birth by your family. In no particular order we go for: Collingwood Magpies, St. Kilda Saints, and Geelong Cats. We're still working on learning the team songs. :)

Go Pies!

Friday night Footy at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG)- great weather, great vibe, 2 great rivals = heaps of fun!

Our team won, so it's tradition to sing the team song afterwards- "Good old Collingwood forever, we know how to play the game! Side by side we stick together, to uphold the Magpies name! Good old Collingwood!"