Go Swans!

Jessie and I had a great weekend in Sydney! After the underwater hockey competition we went to her grandparent’s house. They are really sweet, and her grandma’s cooking was wonderful! (The dorm food here is terrible so it was super special to have a home cooked meal!) Jessie and I then headed to the movies and saw Wedding Crashers. It was hilarious!

On Sunday Jessie and I met up with our roommate, Belinda, and her family and went to the AFL game at Olympic Park. The Sydney Swans were against the Brisbane Lions. Belinda is a huge Swans fan, so we cheered for them too. It worked out well ‘cause their colors are red and white, and I had plenty of that lying around! The stadium was huge! There were over 40,000 fans there and it wasn’t even packed. It was where the Olympic Opening Ceremonies took place – hence, the name.

So AFL is Australian Football League (I’m pretty sure). They call it “Football - Aussie Rules”. The game is really fun to watch! We had great seats too! We were about 6 rows from the field at one of the goal ends. So basics of the game are: you can run with the ball, toss it, or kick it to get it down the field to eventually kick a goal. If a player kicks the ball and another player catches it, that player is safe (they can’t be tackled, etc.) and they can take their time to kick it to another player who will ideally catch it. If the player tosses the ball or picks it up from the ground they can be tackled. The goals consist of what looks like one large field goal, but then there are two poles on the outside of the middle field goal. Once a player gets close enough to the goal they try to kick it through the middle, main goal. This is worth 6 points. If it happens to go through the goals that are beside the main goal it is only worth 1 point.

We cheered the Swans on and due to our magnificent support they beat the Lions – 124 to 40! They got killed! It’s always fun when your team wins!

*Pictures are under “Australia – Sports” and a pic of Jessie’s grandparents and me is under “Australia – Miscellaneous”*