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”*

A full day of holding my breath

So after four underwater hockey practices I decided I’ll go compete with our women’s team in an official competition at Sydney. What was I thinking??? Well, I’m not gonna lie, I really wanted one of the cute red “bathers” that you could get if you were on the team. Secondly, I trusted my roommate, Jessie, who said it would be really fun, and we could have a fun weekend in Sydney.

Thus, I was convinced it would be a good fun time and was really looking forward to it! We woke up early Saturday morning and headed for the aquatic center. (The site of the Olympic Water Polo games!) We got there, checked in, got excited when we saw the fun water slides, and then got a schedule to see when we would play our couple games so we could fit them in around our “playing” time in the other “fun” pool! To our shock/amazement we were scheduled for 7 games against not only women’s teams, but men’s teams and even one spearfishing team who had decided to try hockey for the first time! (Yes! Spearfishing – they actually do that! Who knew?) Okay, Okay – we thought – one game at a time. It’ll be a good…learning experience…
Well, we definitely got “schooled” our first game. (Please laugh…if you want.) It was against Canberra who was not only good, but who had fresh subs jumping in after every play. To say the least, we didn’t do so well. The next game was also pretty bad, but we didn’t lose by so much, and we could tell we were getting more comfortable and figuring things out. I was the newest one of the bunch and played right strike. I had some mask difficulties at first, but once that was figured out things started going better.

Throughout the day we had all improved and we beat the “seedy” spearfishermen! I even scored a goal!!! And then in a tough, final game we beat another women’s team! It was great!

It was also a blast to get to know the girls on my team better. During our one long break we all went down the slide, learned a few synchronized swimming moves from our coach (not sure how she knew them…maybe a past synchronized swimming career before she moved onto the similar sport of underwater hockey ;), floated down the lazy river, and had a few handstand contests.

The girls are really sweet! There were six of us on the team. Unfortunately, our strike – Femke who is from Holland – (you might recall she was the tough one I was against at my first practice; I was overjoyed she was on my side during the comp…she’s really good) is actually leaving for home today! But at least I got to know her…rather than not at all. I haven’t heard how she did, but she was planning on running a marathon the next day in Sydney called the “City to Surf”. She’s crazy! But kudos to her – crazy exercise science major. Jessie, my roommate who is basically the one responsible for introducing me to underwater hockey, played left strike and scored quite a few goals! I was impressed! Her friend, Sarah, played half-back. She and Jessie started going to underwater hockey last session together. She’s really fun too! Sally lives in Sutherland, but goes to school at uni and played half-back on my side. Our coach, Lena, is amazing! She played full-back and has been playing for 15 years! (I heard rumors that she even played on a world team or something!) She’s a blast!

So while we didn’t win the “ugly” trophy (provided by Lena, she said there weren’t any pretty ones, so she picked the ugliest won) we did have a blast! I definitely improved a ton throughout the day! Can’t wait to work on my skills some more tonite at practice!

*Note* Pics from the comp are on my website under “Australia – Sports”. Unfortunately, it’s kinda difficult to get pics of the actual game! ;) (My camera isn’t waterproof!)

Dancing Historical Figures

Friday, August 5th, arrived with much anticipation! For several weeks everyone at Campus East had been eagerly awaiting the Interhalls Ball/Formal. My friends and I didn’t really know what to expect, but we were told it was definitely gonna be the “party of the year”. It sounded like other formals I’d been to – except for the fact that the theme to dress up as was Historical Figures! We all groaned at that, but we ended up having a blast mixing shopping and creativity to make the perfect costumes!

The dance was at a “Fraternity Bowling League” (I still don’t really know what that means), but it was just a nice building down the street. We were served a pretty lovely supper, and then the contests started full force – costume contests that is! Campus East dominated! My roomie’s bestfriend won for the girls as the perfect Barbie! The guy who rented me my bike went home victorious as Braveheart. And the best group costumes went to the gang of Marios and Lugis who where complete with red and green caps and plungers!

I posted a few pictures on my ofoto site! Check ‘em out! I went as Annie Oakely. My friends were known as Cavewoman, Babe Ruth, Wilma Flintstone, a flapper, a medieval princess, and Audrey Hepburn for the night.