Melbourne yo!

So last week I decided to head over to Melbs for a week, admittedly with my parents, for primarily a med interview at Monash (but really for the holiday =D) 

We flew out earllllllly, and trekked it all the way to the University Campus. Started to really like the campus, it's actually nice how its far away from central Melbourne, so that there would really be a university culture there. 

Melbourne is so nice. It's so arty, so friendly. It confounded me how there was constantly SO many people in the city! It's like the britomart intersection x 10 constantly ah. Did some touristy things while I was there - The NGV (National Gallery of Victoria - a name which I found conflicting... how can it be a "National" Gallery when Victoria is a state? weird) as well as much outlet shopping :) 

Full priced clothes is so expensive in Australia! Outlet shopping is the way to go. 

Even though people earn a lot more than in New Zealand, the cost of living is a lot higher! Can't survive on anything less than $10AUD per meal, unless you want to film Supersize Me 2 or something. 

Federation Square & St. Paul's Cathedral

NGV

Luna Park

State Library

On the trip, I met up with Lizzie from school and we went to Luna Park! The best thing about these amusement parks is the sheer unsafe vibe the rides give off, and also the lack of safety restrictions they must have had when they were building them. I swear if i wriggled enough I could have fallen out of the rides.

I also visited the Shrine of Remembrance, which is such an epic shrine for Australia! It was built in the year after the first world war, but now serves as place to remember all conflicts Aussie was involved in. It didn't hit me until I visited this, but the soldiers of the wars were my age. I can remember going to the Auckland museum all those years ago, when the stories told of seventeen year olds enlisting, but now it has dawned on me that I AM that age. Can you imagine what life would have been like if we were born in another time? Crazy.

Towards the end of the week, I spent an embarrassing amount of time in the State Library of Victoria, which is such an amazing building. If the library in Auckland looked like that, I'd really want to study :P It's just so... antique? It's mind boggling how people sat there so many years ago, studying different things and just in such a different world to the one we're living in today.

I kind of really like Melbourne :) Not as much as Europe, admittedly, but it's pretty great. 

Summer.

random picture that I took at Massey Library

Wow, freedom for the next 3 months? Weird.

No, what's stranger is that we now have no obligation to do anything. I can just decide to go traveling and never come back, or to give up everything and find a good bridge to live under. Obviously I won't - but the freedom to do so is there.

December the 1st was our Graduation Dinner. The last time we'd be as a year group (although only 116 out of 540 year 13's came to the dinner) It was strange, to say the least. It doesn't feel like we're never going to be together anymore. I guess it won't feel like it until we actually are too far apart, too separated by time and space. Amelia and I delivered the Valedictorian speech together. Felt so underprepared and nervous - we finished writing it that afternoon, and practiced it twice - that I didn't eat any dessert. Immediately regretted this after the speech!

There were two quotes that we used that I really like.

From Albert Einstein: "Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.


From a Keynote Speaker at the Rotary Science & Tech Forum: "If your dreams don't scary you, then they aren't big enough."

So, into the future we venture.
But before that, interview at Monash D: