May need to update you guys a bit...also Australian Football is confusing. Very. So very confusing.

...It may have been about a month and a half since my last blog. That is quite a bit of time. I'm going to try to do an update once a day for the next few days, so I don't have to upload a huge chunk of pictures at once (I have over 350. Not all of them will go up, but it's still a lot to go through.)

So here's what's coming up
- My birthday weekend (March 15 and 16)
- Sydney (March 29 and 30)
- Melbourne (April 4-6)
- First week of Easter Break (April 18-25)
- General update on weather and experience and school and what not (Don't really have dates for this, but, you know, figured you guys would want to know and such)

So this one is about my birthday weekend and the incredible mess that is the Australian Football League (AFL for short).

As part of our orientation week activities, there was a sign-up to win two tickets to see the AFL game between the Sydney Swans and the Greater Western Sydney Giants. One of the people I'm here with, Avari, won one of the pairs of tickets to the game. On March 15th we left with little to no knowledge of the game.

Embedded here is a post on the official UoN International Student Page. It gives a pretty good overview of the day.

Post by Aaron Darc.

As for what kind of game was being watched...here's a short video I took. See if you can figure out what's going on.

I'll try to give you a more in-depth description of the day and of the game. I wish I would've taken more pictures outside of the stadium, as the game took place in the Olympic Park.

As for the inside of the stadium, it was an oval shape. The field was the same shape with a center circle.

On each end, there are 4 posts. The goal of the game is to kick it between the posts. If you kick it between the middle two, it's 6 points, between the outside ones 1 point. The game starts with tip off in the middle and lasts four twenty minute quarters.

To move the ball down the field, you can run, but you must dribble every so often. Otherwise you can pass it (but only by bumping/punching it with one hand) or punt it. If someone catches a kick, they can't be tackled, otherwise it's a free-for-all.

You can be on any part of the field at any point. On catching a kick, everyone else has to back off a bit and you can back up to kick it as long as you don't pass where you caught it.

On an out of bounds, the referees put their back to the field and toss it backwards inbound.

So yeah, obviously the most sensible game given all of that.

Also, it started to pour partway through the first half.

So that was something. The fact you can clearly see the rain in the pictures is pretty telling of how back it was. At half time, they took about an extra half hour to let the storm clear a bit. In the meantime, everyone moved into the covered areas.

Soon after, the rain completely cleared up and play resumed as normal. Or, as normal as the sport got.

The game ended in a thrilling comeback by the Giants in the last five minutes. I'm glad I got to see the game, but not exactly my favorite sport if you can tell.


The following day was my 21st birthday! Mel and Dani decorated the apartment beautifully with streamers and balloons everywhere. I got some lovely gifts as well (as pictured on right).

We had a grill out for supper and chocolate cake for desert. Had lots of fun with everyone here in Australia.

 

 All in all had a great time and I'm still having a great time here down under. Check back in tomorrow for some pictures of some of Australia's most iconic sights.

Cole is making sure I'm doing all of my blogs.