Sunday, September 11, 2011

Footy!

Did you start to think that I was going to write about food AGAIN when you read the title?!  Even though I could write another post on the oddities of eating in Oz I will not do that do you again! :)

Last weekend we attending our first (and hopefully not our last!) Australia Football League (AFL) game.  Affectionately known as "footy", the game is sort of a combination of rugby and soccer.  It's played on a HUGE field, with 18 players on each side (team), and scoring occurs by kicking the ball through the uprights.  We were lucky enough to get tickets to a highly desirable match up, the Collingwood Magpies versus the Geelong Cats.  Collingwood is sort of like the New York Yankees of the AFL.  They have a huge fan base and their fans tend to be obnoxious (sorry NYY fans), so of course we cheered against them!   The game was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), which has a capacity of about 100,000 people.  The game was sold out and standing room only tickets were the only tickets remaining on game day.  I've been to "big" football games in the US before, but this was pretty amazing, similar to when I was in Cardiff, Wales to watch Manchester United play Arsenal.

The game was extremely exciting and we were pretty quick to learn what was going on during the game thanks to two of our friends who were explaining everything to us!  This was the last regular season game before the playoffs, and Collingwood is the #1 seed in playoffs, so they were expected to win.  However, Geelong, the #2 seed in playoffs, was not having that!  The Cats crushed the Magpies, and the final score was 149 - 53!!  Most Collingwood fans had left by the 4th quarter (they play four, 25 minute quarters), though there were a few Magpie fans who were sticking around still talking trash about their team even though they were losing (one fan in front of us stuck around for most of the game and he proceeded to take his shirt off at one point).  We were tempted to report his antisocial behavior!

I wanted to bring our larger camera lense because I knew our seats would be far from the field, but they limit the lenses you can bring in the AFL events to 200mm and I didn't want to risk it getting taken.  Of course they barely looked in my purse so I could have actually gotten away with it! These shots don't really capture the enormity of the field (of of the players!), but you get the idea...



And last, but not least, they take running on the field VERY seriously at the MCG!

In other news, we've found a place to rent, signed a one year lease, and moved in the few belongings that we have here with us.  Our container ship is somewhere in the East China Sea, so at least it's in this hemisphere, and hopefully in a few weeks we will have all of our "stuff".  We had a slight issue with the place we are living, as someone broke into our vacant townhouse (this was a few days before we were slated to move in) and stole the alarm system (yes, the burglars stole the burglar alarm by ripping it out of the wall in about 8 places, then proceeded to rip a few of the blinds off of the walls, and decided to take the "Welcome" mat from the front porch).  Mind you, we are living in a pretty nice neighborhood, so this was rather surprising, but the homeowner and leasing company responded quickly and we've since had the locks changed (the police think it sounds like a disgruntled former resident).  Of course this break in has me second guessing the 'hood but I think this really could have happened anywhere.  We are living in Maribyrnong (mary-ber-nong) in a very convenient location close to public transport, a large mall, a gym, and a river that has a biking/running trail next to it, so I think ultimately we will be happy here.  These are pictures that were used for "staging" as this house was recently sold, so unfortunately it probably won't look quite as nice with our things in it!
Yes, that's turf in the middle of our house! 

Not sure what we are going to do with this study-like space, but we think it's pretty cool!


House is to the left, to the right is our 2 car garage, which is rather amusing since we don't own a car!

The rental market is VERY competitive in Melbourne.  Basically you go to an "open inspection" for the place where you'd like to live.  You and other couples (sometimes 2 or 3 and sometimes 10 or 15) have 15 minutes to walk through the apartment/house and decide if you'd like to rent it.  If you like it, you put in an application, or basically a "bid" and you are competing against the rest of those couples for the chance to rent the place. We got lucky with the place we are renting, as someone had signed the lease and was ready to move in and then backed out, so they needed to find someone quickly and we happened to be in the right place at the right time.  We think we were "competing" with a couple of college ("uni") students and a married couple with a pet, so I'm assuming that we were the "best" choice out of those options for the landlord.  Anyway, we are excited to start making our house a "home"!

1 comment:

  1. the house looks amazing! so glad to hear you guys are doing well and the footy game looks so cool too!!

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